One of the things I had bookmarked to read when I got home was this interview with Alison Bechdel from Monday’s Guardian. It focuses on the graphic novel, Fun Home, reviewed by Farah Mendlesohn in Emerald City. Something that caught my eye was this:

“My mother comes from a different generation. She really believes that people should shut up.”

I suspect she’s not just talking about writing books about your family either. People of my parents’ generation, I have found, no matter how accepting and understanding they might be of gays, lesbians and so on in private, always draw the line about talking publicly about such things. What you do in private is your own affair, but if your sexual proclivities become public then it shames not only you but your entire family and all of the friends who supported you. And they’ll quite likely turn on you because of it. I am so glad I was born when I was and not 30 years earlier.