Tag Archives: queer

0

Pride Challenge: Day 20

|

Maureen or Joanne? (Or your favorite LGBTQ show or queer-positive show).

I don’t even have any idea what this is in reference to, so I’m glad that they included that last little bit in the prompt.

Sense8.  Without question.  It’s probably pretty cliched to say that, but it is my current favorite.  I love Queer as Folk (both US and UK) and The L Word, but they each had their problematic aspects or concepts they had difficulty portraying well, and I have become less in love with each of them over time.

0

Pride Challenge: Day 14

|

Your favorite LGBT song or artist. 

So, I’m going to be cliched here and say Mary Lambert.

When I was dating Minx, hearing her songs for the first time – that was revelatory.  Not that I didn’t think that there was something worth celebrating about being in a relationship with a woman, but that there was a relatively mainstream artist who was celebratory about her queer relationships, instead of sweeping them under the carpet.

Then I heard she was a local artist and that she went to school with Lola.  So, yeah, the connection to her music hasn’t withered at all.  “Same Love” still makes me tear up, each time I hear it.

0

Pride Month Challenge: Day 2

|

Did you have any experiences as a child that might have foreshadowed your sexuality?

A crush on Poison Ivy from the Batman pop-up comic.  Seriously hot stuff there.  I didn’t have any judgments about that crush at the time – it was just a thing that I liked, a character that I kept coming back to, looks-wise.  And considering I can count the crushes I’ve had in my life on one hand (both fictional and real life), that sticks out.

0

Pride Month Challenge: Day 1

|

So, some of my friends on Facebook are doing this LGBT Writing Prompt thingy for this month, and I like it, so I’m going to do it here.  I misssed the first day, but I will just do two posts today.

Define your sexual orientation or gender identity. Be creative in your definition.

I’m like ice cream – I come in many different forms and variations and can fit in different containers, but at the beginning and end of the day, I am fluid.  Sometimes I am more tart, sometimes more sweet, sometimes decadently sinful, but I am always delicious.

To be real – I find it hard to be one or the other – the binary does not suit me very well.  In fact I’m not sure it ever has.  I mean, really – queer (bisexual/pansexual), switch, poly, non-binary gendered.  I live the middle.  The middle lives me.

3

Enough?

|

I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts this afternoon as I was driving and they were talking about expanding sexual orientation in relation/response to non-monogamy.  The idea came up about not being queer enough to claim queer.  My first response is to call bullshit on this, but I know that I have internalized a lot of the “not enough” bullshit.

I do not feel “queer/bi enough” because I am currently a Kinsey 2.  I have a female partner who I have sex with, and might be interested in having sex with another female partner, but am otherwise not really interested in pursuing any other women.  In the past a great majority of my relationships have been with male or AMAB people.  Am I queer enough?

I sometimes do not feel “poly enough” because my saturation point is fairly low and in the past I have chosen to only have one partner when I was not mentally stable.  In that particular case I began doubting myself – not my identity, but myself, as being poly is rather central to being me – because I was not sure I would ever fall in love again.  Fortunately, that did not end up being the case.  But that still remains in the back corner of my head (more quiet than not these days).  I am not loud and proud about being poly, but don’t make much effort to keep it any bit of a secret.  Am I poly enough?

I sometimes do not feel “genderqueer/genderfluid/non-binary gendered enough” to claim that identity or to claim being transgender.  I tend to look lazy femme or just tomboyish in my presentation.  My dysphoria only flares up occasionally.  I do not have any issues with how my genitals look or work or the fact that I have visible breasts and other curves that may not be easily disguisable.  I strongly prefer they/them pronouns, but am willing to accept she/her in some contexts.  I am not out about this identity to anyone except friends.  Am I trans/NB enough?

I sometimes don’t feel “mentally ill or neurodivergent enough” to claim those.  My depression is cyclical and my anxiety is, in at least half of cases, controlled enough not to show.  Yes, I have sensory processing issues, but those tend to just come across as being a little weird to most people.  My ADHD is moderately well managed and also just tends to come across as a bit odd or flighty when not.  Am I mentally ill/neurodivergent enough?

I sometimes don’t feel “physically ill” or in pain enough to claim being a spoonie.  But the truth is – I have an autoimmune condition that I will have to take medication for for the rest of my life and does have an effect on my energy levels.  However, that’s under control and my migraines have mostly abated.  My joint pain is getting worse and I’m starting to think it might be something other than the barometric pressure shifts to that pain (the remaining migraines are definitely just that though).  My pain levels do affect my energy levels.  Yes, there are many people who have it worse.  It is hard to remember that my pain is also valid.  Am I physically ill enough to be a spoonie?

Am I enough of a partner for my partners?  The idea that I was defective because I was not the only partner a partner has, that they were looking for someone else because I am not enough never was an issue for me.  Instead it is a matter of other measures.  Am I available enough, physically or mentally?  Am I stable enough (physically and mentally) to be in a relationship with them?  Am I pretty enough to keep their attention?  Am I satisfying enough in bed for them to still want to sleep with me?  Can we build enough of a relationship to weather the years (can I contribute enough to the relationship to this building), if that is indeed something we want?

Am I enough?  To myself I can be, that I know.  And I am very glad that I am at a point in my life where this matters most.  It was not easy getting here and sometimes I slip back into old thoughts.

0

August Post 20

|

Feeling: nervous…and nervous because I don’t know what I’m nervous about.

So, it’s my 10 year high school reunion tonight and I’m nervous.  I’m nervous about presenting properly.

Ack, that’s a complicated idea.  I want to present as myself – some elements of the feminine, some elements of the masculine.  Coding only subtly as queer – which is weird for me – because I’ll be with a group that I’m not used to coding as queer with.  Plus I’ll have Trydaen with me, which codes as straight.

I’ve come across this before when I was in college and I was just seeing a guy (not monogamous, just only seeing one person at that time).  Going out to queer spaces with just a guy – it made me uncomfortable.  Everyone would see me as straight, a straight person invading queer spaces (bi-erasure for the lose… 😦 ).  I tried to combat this by distancing myself from him, but that just feels awful, for both of us.

I’m not comfortable with either side of this.

I’m not straight.  I never have been.  I’m uncomfortable being seen as straight.  But, how can I break through the assumptions, while still dressing in a way that makes me comfortable?  I think there’s some bigger questions going on here.

0

To say something…

|

I feel like I haven’t written in a long time, so I figured I’d share something I wrote today.  I wrote this as a response to someone’s question about what the difference between the terms “cissexual” and “cisgender” is, and I rather like it.

I subscribe to this idea: [www.gendersanity.com] where a lot of descriptors are separated from one another. To use myself as an example: I am biologically female (biological sex–far right); have a gender identity that is close to woman (gender identity–right of center, but not far right); express my gender in a way that on average is sorta androgynous (gender expression–near the center); and have a bisexual orientation slightly favoring women (sexual orientation–slightly left of center). I am both cissexual and cisgender.

Cissexual: my mental and physical sexes are aligned (biological sex and gender identity). I am not transsexual.

Cisgendered: this is a little more complicated. It also means gender normative. By the strictest definition, I am not 100% cisgendered, but I consider myself to be. My gender expression does not exactly line up with society’s expectations of how I should perform my biological sex. Society is conflating bio sex with gender expression in the term gender normative.

0

Identifying

|

To put this out there before I get started with any of the rest of this post: I am all about people not wanting to put themselves in boxes or limit themselves with words. Trust me, I think the English language (well, any languages) are too limiting to encompass the whole of humanity and that we lack words for feelings and ways of thinking that I wish we had. So, given this disclaimer, I’m going to talk about the identifying word boxes I place myself in.

This is not about the boxes that society places me in because that’s how they see me. Those are easy to say, though challenging to deal with in real life. They call me white, female, average height, overweight, brunette, student, with a loud voice and fairly large breasts. Yes, these are true, and yes they have affected the shape of my identity. However, they are not how I identify.

I call myself a bi dyke, a feminist, a transgender ally, a woman of thought, a queer person, a poly lady, and a switch who loves to bottom and takes pleasure in topping the right person, in no particular order.

I ride the middle of the Kinsey scale, sometimes on a daily basis–if you want to put numbers on it (and there are sometimes I love numbers, but other times they are harsher and more judgmental than words) I range from a 2.5 to a 3.5.

I believe that chaos is another form of organization and the chaos in my spaces reflects how my mind works–some things have to be in a certain order and others require no order.

I am working on being an ethical omnivore–buying any meat I can from places that treat their animals right in life and death–I am working my way out of being a near vegetarian because I realized I am not that.

I love the word kinky. To me it is like “queer”: so many definitions, so many ways to work it.

I call myself a liberal, but I find myself increasingly disenchanted with the political parties in this country–too conformist, too middle of the road to be good for people. If I had to pick a party that represents the majority of my interests, I would be a Lib Dem.

That’s me, in a very small nutshell.

0

Queer Umbrella

|

From what I’ve read this is a pretty common idea. Some people don’t like the use of the word “queer” because of past negative connotations, so they may use GLBT, LGBT, gay, or some permutation of those to describe the same idea.

The queer umbrella started out with just gay men, then expanded to include gay women. There is some argument about this however, because those people who participated in the events that started opening this umbrella, Stonewall being the most obvious one, were possibly trans as well; a lot of them were “cross-dressed” and that’s part of the reason the cops bust in on their scene. Bisexual people were the next to come in under the umbrella, although it probably wasn’t until after the time that the trans- people were included under the umbrella that people who identified as loving/being attracted to a wider spectrum of people than the term “bisexual” usually encompasses were included. There are, of course, many people who are queer or identify as such that don’t fit under these labels or don’t want to be labeled and arguably these people fit under the umbrella too.

The point of an umbrella is to provide coverage and protection for all people who can fit underneath it, whether from rain, snow, or sun. Any lack of inclusion means that there are people who feel queer who aren’t protected in the way that everyone else is.

There are people who have more privileged spots under the umbrella. First, I would argue that those (arguably straight) people who identify as queer, but have entirely straight relationships partake in straight privilege, but still, because of their identification, which may come from any host of reasons, belong under the umbrella. There is a thin line between these people and bisexual people who never engage in relationship-style behaviors with people of their same-sex. Sometimes people of the first group acknowledge that it may be possible for them to be attracted to someone of the same sex, but they never are. Sometimes people in the second group are the same way. I do not place myself in this category, although others who just look at my recent behaviors, would place me there.

Second, I would argues that gay men have a privileged spot under the umbrella. They were the first to be under the protection of the umbrella and for a long time they controlled who the umbrella protected. They are often still considered the voices of the queer community to the straight community. They also get to partake in male privilege.

Third, I would argue that gender-conforming LGB people have a privileged spot under the umbrella. Femme lesbians are what the media presents as representative of the lesbian population. Most of the time they dress and act like they are expected to as women in this society. Anyone who is not gender-conforming is seen as abnormal or deviating from what is accepted by “society” and are treated in accordance with that. It is also easier for people who are gender-conforming to pass as straight if they are in a society that does not look kindly upon queer people or even passes the death sentence upon them.

The discussion of a federal ENDA brought up the issue of whether trans- people are or should be included. After all, many trans- people identify as straight. Does the state of being outside the sexual orientation part of the queer bubble mean that these trans- people should not be included under the queer umbrella? There are ramifications for not having a trans-inclusive ENDA for LGB people. If a LGB person is not gender-conforming enough in their dress or attitudes for a certain employer they can still be fired for that reason. I have read some people argue that most GLB people are also trans- because they don’t conform to standards of gender-based behavior for “society”, and while I think that this is an intriguing idea, it is one for another post.

0

This is what I want to say…

|

This man says a lot of things I want to say about being bi and bisexuality. He talks mostly about male bisexuality, but it is fascinating to read his stuff.  I have more than once found myself nodding along, going, I know what you’re talking about, this is an experience I’ve had or something I’ve noticed.  I am adding this to my links in the sidebar, so it doesn’t get lost as time goes by.

http://www.bitheway.co.uk

(Oh, and as you may be able to tell from the URL, he’s British)