(no subject)

[judecorp]

I am the man who will fight for your honor.
I'll be the hero that you're dreaming of.

I've discovered that her hands on my female body do not emasculate me. And that my masculinity doesn't defeminize me. I think I want to spend more time exploring that idea of female masculinity for my lesbian love, while at the same time continuing to explain my genderqueerness to her.

Balance.

Comments

[juliann.livejournal.com]

You are a never-ending enigma.

I guess I just never had issues with gender. I was a boy, then I was an it, then I was a girl, now I am an it. *shrug* I've always played fast and loose on the whole gender and sexual orientation scales and never had much concern for either myself or others place on the sliders.

I guess I might have had to deal with it had I not married a body that has both boys and girls in the head. *shrug*

[auntiesiannan.livejournal.com]

You will always be a nice little lesboy to me :D

[http://users.livejournal.com/_epiphany_girl_/]

Beautifully written and well-said. :)

Keep us posted on what you discover.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

I guess it's just different ways of thinking, Momma. Because I know that I wouldn't like being an 'it,' but that's how you describe you. I can't imagine saying, "I was a ___, and now I'm an it." That's enigmatic to me. :)

But really, I'm not out to be enigmatic, or even to call anything an 'issue' at the moment. I just really enjoy thinking about things, especially constructs that most people tend not to think about, because they're 'just the way things are.'

You burrow your mind in history and europe and all of that, and I can't imagine thinking about that stuff for more than 15 minutes. So you have your nerdies, and I have mine. :)

Now, being partnered with someone with DID... THAT I find fascinating.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Well, as long as I'm nice. :)

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

I just really like having time to read and think. And I know it won't last forever, and besides, the negatives of being unemployed and lazy far outweigh the benefit of free thinking. But it's nice to be able to go through books so quickly (for me).

Social work tends to leave me so emotionally and physically drained, that I tend to come home and just want to rot.

[auntiesiannan.livejournal.com]

okay, then you are a nice BIG lesboy :D

[sudrin.livejournal.com]

I'm confused as to why loving hands on your body would change who you are in any way at all and how your gender has to be eclipsed by any behaviors that you have or do not have. don't the gender's exist as an absolute that you might want to fight against?

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're asking...

As for the bit about the hands... well, it's kind of hard for me to explain exactly what I mean. There are parts of my body that I don't like (who doesn't have that, really?), and I used to shy away from people touching them or whatever because I didn't like them. It was almost like a betrayal for certain parts of my body (like, say, breasts) to give me pleasure when I hated them so much. But I'm starting to accept that, to accept the pleasure that my body gives her (and myself in the process), and that's a pretty cool thing.

[sudrin.livejournal.com]

Well, its when you said "And that my masculinity doesn't defeminize me.". I'm just trying to understand how your masculinity might betray you somehow and make you less feminine. It makes it sound like "Women good.. Men Bad" to me. But in all seriousness, the whole is less than the combination of the parts. You exist as yourself, not your Masculinity at Odds with your Femininity like some internalized war of the sexes doesn't it?

[sudrin.livejournal.com]

And granted, I'm probably the last person to the party on this one. (I admit, I don't spend THAT much time, as a Man, involved in Lesbian studies) but Ann Bannon was on Fresh Air. (Monday 8/25) I thought it was very interesting to hear her speak. Its archived from 1999

The link is here

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

On a somewhat-random aside, I love lesbian pulp novels.

[sudrin.livejournal.com]

So its of some interest to you then? I pride myself on these things you know. ;-)

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess it's like this:

I have been thinking, recently, about growing up with my grandmother (probably because I'm going home tomorrow). She spent 20 years basically telling me that I shouldn't look the way I do, like to do the things I do, or act the way I do, because I was "a girl."

I combatted this by rebelling against anything I saw as remotely girly. It sounds immature, and it was - I was an adolescent. But it worked for me. And then I went through a period where I started re-exploring all of the "girly" things. I wore a lot of dresses, for example, and that was kind of interesting.

But it made me feel sort of phony, or like I was playing pretend every day, so I went back to my old self. And I immediately decided that I wasn't really feminine, because I didn't like those things. It's /really/ short-sighted, I know - it's like ingrained misogyny or something. I don't know.

So lately I've been thinking about femininity, and how even though I wasn't my grandmother's idea of girly, that doesn't mean I can't /really/ be girly, just in my own way. Does that make any sense?

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

You're always good to me. You know that.

[sudrin.livejournal.com]

Yep.. I understand. Its all about self actualization and coming to terms with who you are vs. who everyone else thinks you should be. Sticks and stones hurt a lot less than names in the long run even if we don't want to admit it. All those things we hear as kids actually have some affect, so its hard to come to grips with where our feelings end and our burned in impressions of what others tell us we should feel begin. While I can't say I have fought with the issues the way you do, I think I underrstand in my own way.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

You're right about the sticks and stones. :)

[zuzubailey76.livejournal.com]

My housemate is doing her dissertation on female masculinity in WWII propaganda. Just thought I'd share.

Have you read Halberstam's work?

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Have you read Halberstam's work?

I actually just started it last week.

p.s. That sounds like a fascinating dissertation. I should go back to school!