Labels and Libras
Jul. 22nd, 2003 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
judecorpBecause my secret desire is to write cool queer things like ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
technodyke and noog:
When I was in high school, I never really wanted to date. I was much happier going out in groups, or hanging out with groups of friends, watching movies or complaining about our teen angst melodrama or writing equally odious poetry. Eventually, though, I got to that age when not dating signals you as some sort of freak, and well, never one to be TOO freaky (my clothes and my hair and my politics did enough freaking for me), I figured I'd enter the dating pool. If anything, it shut my stepmother up.
There aren't really a lot of places for a high schooler to meet potential dating partners than at, well, high school. I quickly surmised that the path to relationship bliss was to find a friend that you liked spending some time with, but more importantly, that your friends liked (and your parents, if you were into the parent-pleasing schtick), and then well, start hanging out. Together. Exclusively. Almost all of my friends were boys, so it was pretty easy to pick one that I had some goofy times with, start holding his hand, and call it a done deal. It was at this time that I decided I might as well be straight. I certainly didn't understand girls - heck, I really couldn't even stand to be friends with more than two or three of them, and even then in small doses - so I wasn't going to start bucking the system and pursuing them, regardless of how my eyes would wander to their eyes, their faces, their bodies. How could I date someone I couldn't even be friends with? The idea was mind-boggling.
College brought a new challenge - female friends! Somehow in the vast network of university-ness, I found not a couple, but a veritable handful of girls whom I adored and wanted to spend time with. And I even found a girl that I could, in all likelihood, spend nearly every moment of every day with. This was a good thing, since we shared a 12'x12' (or so) room for several years. Somewhere in the midst of hanging out with Jodie and Lia and Dominique and Kelly and Mel and Kathy and Chrissy and Louise and the girls from the crew team, I started using the very liberal arts term bisexual to describe myself. How trendy!
I got around the sticky coming out process by practicing serial monogamy with a host of boys, all somewhat effeminate and entirely long distance. I dated one boy in college that actually was in the same state as me. I was 18. We dated for one week. So I amused myself for the next several years with sporadic weekend visits, a fantasyland of couplehood that occured every four to six weeks. The other weekends were free for excessive female ogling, and more than one trip to a clandestine bathroom stall. How often does one have to bring one's Janes home to Mom and Dad? I was totally set.
Somewhere in this whole process, I graduated and went to grad school. My superior post-BA intellect latched on to the quaint term 'pansexual' as my thoughts on gender and sexuality widened. BU was the first place I was totally out to anyone who would ask, the first place I openly hit on and propositioned women, the first place I went into a queer space on my own, and the last place I ever expected to become engaged in. I clung to bisexual and pansexual as a way to separate myself from the boring old heterosexuals, and I swore up and down to anyone who would listen that some way, somehow my marriage was going to be queer. Yeah, I can hear myself laughing now. Or is that you? Anyway, I realized somewhere that I didn't really understand boys either. Who does?
I moved with my fiance to ruralness and clung to my engagement ring like a life preserver in a sea of closed-mindedness. I got my frustrations out not in the girls' room, but in the op/ed page of the newspaper and in my academic research. The internet opened my arms (and aching fingers) to a slew of female possibilities, fantasies I could entertain mentally if not physically, while still keeping up a small-town front. At this point, there was no use pretending that the male body had any sort of appeal to me, and the adage that sex stops when you're married was proven deathly false - all that crap stopped way before I ever walked down the aisle. All I can say is, "What was he thinking?" I chose 'asexual' as a more accurate term, and celebrated it.
A bit later, I decided to take him up on our agreement that I could have sex with women. (I never did tell him about the bathroom encounters. Oops.) I had frivolously given my heart away out of desperation. Oh, not that she was unworthy - hardly so - but unattainable on way too many levels. I got a weekend of fantasy fun out of the deal, had one of those life-blowing made-for-tv-movie self-awareness moments (camera close-up on a piece of torn notebook paper left on an unattended desk, scrawled upon which were the words, "and then she kissed me, and I realized she probably was right, there must be fifty ways to leave your lover"), and promptly plummeted into my wedding. Several days before the blessed event, I looked at my intended, deadpanned, and said across the dinner table, "You know you're marrying a lesbian, right?" He said yes.
Switching terms yet again, I moved halfway across the country with my spouse and started all over again. For the first time ever, I was stuck in a bind of words, a conundrum of labels. Terms had always been good to me in the past, evolving and changing with my fluidity and bringing motion of their own. In this new place, I was known simultaneously as The Married Girl and The Queer Activist. I futilely shouted Bisexual Pride from the rooftops, and no one was buying it. In one group, I was straight (but not straight enough!) and in the other, I was gay (but not gay enough!). I'm a Libra by birth, but I'm not /that/ dichotomized. Please.
When all that marriage stuff fell apart under its faulty foundation, I had several years' experience in forming quality bonds with women in ways the high school me never imagined. With all of that work behind me, it was somewhat easy to "root root root for the homo team" and begin my dating search with (once again) only one gender in mind, though not the one I'd chosen in high school.
And then, because all good stories have an "and then" in them, I fell hard and fast. For a transwoman. Well jumping jesus on a pogo stick, what was I now? Was I having lesbian sex? Was I having lesbian love? I pulled the word 'pansexual' back out of my backpack and stood behind it with pride, swearing off the confines of societal gender and once again examining my own place in the faulted binary system. What on earth /do/ you call a relationship between genderqueers anyway? Destructive, I suppose, because it all blew up under the pressure of newly-discovered wounds. Sorry.
Back to the L-word, I suppose, and into the fabled sea of Dyke Drama. Oh yes, this was something I could relate to, my dear sisters, and with a passion. She-said-she-said was not outside the realm of my experience, and the clusterfuck that is "when exes and love interests intertwine" sat firmly upon my doorstep. And then I dated my brother's ex-girlfriend. Does Hallmark make cards for that?
Oh, but women were where it was at, and though I was once infuriated at my princess's attack, "I'm sorry I didn't have a vagina," I couldn't help but admit, and admit loudly, that there was a certain visceral satisfaction at the sight and the feel and the taste. It was all over, ladies, I'd found my home, and though I didn't know where I stood on the gender line, I could at least proclaim, "I love women - do with that as you will." Using 'queer' as my personal word of choice, I let the outside world define me 'lesbian,' and I liked it just fine, thank you very much.
So here I am, end of the road, in (for all of society's intents and purposes) a committed lesbian relationship. And you know what? Everything I ever believed about myself in high school is still 100% true. I still don't understand a damn thing about girls. Or maybe I don't understand a damn thing about me. What's the label for /that/?
technodyke and noog:When I was in high school, I never really wanted to date. I was much happier going out in groups, or hanging out with groups of friends, watching movies or complaining about our teen angst melodrama or writing equally odious poetry. Eventually, though, I got to that age when not dating signals you as some sort of freak, and well, never one to be TOO freaky (my clothes and my hair and my politics did enough freaking for me), I figured I'd enter the dating pool. If anything, it shut my stepmother up.
There aren't really a lot of places for a high schooler to meet potential dating partners than at, well, high school. I quickly surmised that the path to relationship bliss was to find a friend that you liked spending some time with, but more importantly, that your friends liked (and your parents, if you were into the parent-pleasing schtick), and then well, start hanging out. Together. Exclusively. Almost all of my friends were boys, so it was pretty easy to pick one that I had some goofy times with, start holding his hand, and call it a done deal. It was at this time that I decided I might as well be straight. I certainly didn't understand girls - heck, I really couldn't even stand to be friends with more than two or three of them, and even then in small doses - so I wasn't going to start bucking the system and pursuing them, regardless of how my eyes would wander to their eyes, their faces, their bodies. How could I date someone I couldn't even be friends with? The idea was mind-boggling.
College brought a new challenge - female friends! Somehow in the vast network of university-ness, I found not a couple, but a veritable handful of girls whom I adored and wanted to spend time with. And I even found a girl that I could, in all likelihood, spend nearly every moment of every day with. This was a good thing, since we shared a 12'x12' (or so) room for several years. Somewhere in the midst of hanging out with Jodie and Lia and Dominique and Kelly and Mel and Kathy and Chrissy and Louise and the girls from the crew team, I started using the very liberal arts term bisexual to describe myself. How trendy!
I got around the sticky coming out process by practicing serial monogamy with a host of boys, all somewhat effeminate and entirely long distance. I dated one boy in college that actually was in the same state as me. I was 18. We dated for one week. So I amused myself for the next several years with sporadic weekend visits, a fantasyland of couplehood that occured every four to six weeks. The other weekends were free for excessive female ogling, and more than one trip to a clandestine bathroom stall. How often does one have to bring one's Janes home to Mom and Dad? I was totally set.
Somewhere in this whole process, I graduated and went to grad school. My superior post-BA intellect latched on to the quaint term 'pansexual' as my thoughts on gender and sexuality widened. BU was the first place I was totally out to anyone who would ask, the first place I openly hit on and propositioned women, the first place I went into a queer space on my own, and the last place I ever expected to become engaged in. I clung to bisexual and pansexual as a way to separate myself from the boring old heterosexuals, and I swore up and down to anyone who would listen that some way, somehow my marriage was going to be queer. Yeah, I can hear myself laughing now. Or is that you? Anyway, I realized somewhere that I didn't really understand boys either. Who does?
I moved with my fiance to ruralness and clung to my engagement ring like a life preserver in a sea of closed-mindedness. I got my frustrations out not in the girls' room, but in the op/ed page of the newspaper and in my academic research. The internet opened my arms (and aching fingers) to a slew of female possibilities, fantasies I could entertain mentally if not physically, while still keeping up a small-town front. At this point, there was no use pretending that the male body had any sort of appeal to me, and the adage that sex stops when you're married was proven deathly false - all that crap stopped way before I ever walked down the aisle. All I can say is, "What was he thinking?" I chose 'asexual' as a more accurate term, and celebrated it.
A bit later, I decided to take him up on our agreement that I could have sex with women. (I never did tell him about the bathroom encounters. Oops.) I had frivolously given my heart away out of desperation. Oh, not that she was unworthy - hardly so - but unattainable on way too many levels. I got a weekend of fantasy fun out of the deal, had one of those life-blowing made-for-tv-movie self-awareness moments (camera close-up on a piece of torn notebook paper left on an unattended desk, scrawled upon which were the words, "and then she kissed me, and I realized she probably was right, there must be fifty ways to leave your lover"), and promptly plummeted into my wedding. Several days before the blessed event, I looked at my intended, deadpanned, and said across the dinner table, "You know you're marrying a lesbian, right?" He said yes.
Switching terms yet again, I moved halfway across the country with my spouse and started all over again. For the first time ever, I was stuck in a bind of words, a conundrum of labels. Terms had always been good to me in the past, evolving and changing with my fluidity and bringing motion of their own. In this new place, I was known simultaneously as The Married Girl and The Queer Activist. I futilely shouted Bisexual Pride from the rooftops, and no one was buying it. In one group, I was straight (but not straight enough!) and in the other, I was gay (but not gay enough!). I'm a Libra by birth, but I'm not /that/ dichotomized. Please.
When all that marriage stuff fell apart under its faulty foundation, I had several years' experience in forming quality bonds with women in ways the high school me never imagined. With all of that work behind me, it was somewhat easy to "root root root for the homo team" and begin my dating search with (once again) only one gender in mind, though not the one I'd chosen in high school.
And then, because all good stories have an "and then" in them, I fell hard and fast. For a transwoman. Well jumping jesus on a pogo stick, what was I now? Was I having lesbian sex? Was I having lesbian love? I pulled the word 'pansexual' back out of my backpack and stood behind it with pride, swearing off the confines of societal gender and once again examining my own place in the faulted binary system. What on earth /do/ you call a relationship between genderqueers anyway? Destructive, I suppose, because it all blew up under the pressure of newly-discovered wounds. Sorry.
Back to the L-word, I suppose, and into the fabled sea of Dyke Drama. Oh yes, this was something I could relate to, my dear sisters, and with a passion. She-said-she-said was not outside the realm of my experience, and the clusterfuck that is "when exes and love interests intertwine" sat firmly upon my doorstep. And then I dated my brother's ex-girlfriend. Does Hallmark make cards for that?
Oh, but women were where it was at, and though I was once infuriated at my princess's attack, "I'm sorry I didn't have a vagina," I couldn't help but admit, and admit loudly, that there was a certain visceral satisfaction at the sight and the feel and the taste. It was all over, ladies, I'd found my home, and though I didn't know where I stood on the gender line, I could at least proclaim, "I love women - do with that as you will." Using 'queer' as my personal word of choice, I let the outside world define me 'lesbian,' and I liked it just fine, thank you very much.
So here I am, end of the road, in (for all of society's intents and purposes) a committed lesbian relationship. And you know what? Everything I ever believed about myself in high school is still 100% true. I still don't understand a damn thing about girls. Or maybe I don't understand a damn thing about me. What's the label for /that/?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-07-22 02:47 pm (UTC)hugs!
no subject
Date: 2003-07-22 07:57 pm (UTC)hugs!
no subject
Date: 2003-07-22 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
no subject
Date: 2003-07-22 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
no subject
Date: 2003-07-22 07:43 pm (UTC)Don't I write cool queer things?
no subject
Yes, YOU also write cool queer things, and they get published and everything. Hooray!!
no subject
Date: 2003-07-24 11:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-24 02:53 pm (UTC)*blush*
no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 04:02 am (UTC)I think the label you are looking for is Human.
That was really beautifully written.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 08:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 08:54 am (UTC)The greatist thing you can ever do is make someone understand you better.
:)
no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 04:55 am (UTC)I feel dumb asking, but what is "pansexual"? I've not heard the term before.
no subject
Where 'bisexual' is often used to describe a person who has attraction to, and is capable of loving, both men and women, the term implies an acknowledgement of a binary gender system. 'Pansexual,' on the other hand, describes attraction and the capability to love men, women, and any individuals who may identify in between those two extremes, or not at all. The term includes transgender, genderqueer, intersex, etc. individuals.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 09:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 09:52 am (UTC)The term 'pansexual' seems to be biggest in the academic community, so I suppose it's a little snotty and pretentious. Maybe that's why I like it. :)
no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 09:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 10:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 08:46 am (UTC)I realize I still have quite a bit to learn, but I've strayed from favoring any particular gender for companionship. It's easy to say I dislike men or I dislike women, but I've found both good and bad members of each.
I just place value purely on the individual.
Hmm, I wonder how naive I come off here.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 10:01 am (UTC)We all have a lot to learn.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 10:28 am (UTC)I've been help Ka with her move, and last night as we were trucking a load of her things over to her new apartment, we got to talking about me and how gender relates to me. She still doesn't seem to get it as well as I'd like for her to, but I know that there's not alot that I can do other than try and teach her more and more. I was telling her that one of the things that bothers me is that I have so few people who can really relate to how I feel and it's nice to have a sounding board. I think that she's got a better grasp on things at this point, but everytime I start to think that, something happens that makes me wonder if she understands at all. Sometimes I wonder if it's something that anyone who hasn't been there can truly understand.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 11:35 am (UTC)Does anyone /ever/ really understand something personal if it doesn't even remotely apply to them? I mean, one can sympathize, but can one truly empathize without being there?
In some ways, my background as a therapist has to see me believing that it /is/ possible. But if it was so possible, why would we strive so hard to connect with other people who have had similar experiences?
Oy.
There have been times when I would try to explain something to Jen and it just didn't seem like it was getting through - likely because I was having a terrible time trying to explain it all. But there's nothing worse than having someone say, "I understand how you feel," when you know that they don't. Ugh.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 11:49 am (UTC)Of course, I have just as much trouble relating to the "community", too. Just look at my Sunday post. *laughs hollowly*
no subject
Date: 2003-07-24 02:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-29 07:42 pm (UTC)