Rethink Your Sexuality with Back-to-Back Workshops in DC!

I’m getting very excited about two items on my speaking schedule for this month!

First, this Saturday at American, come join me bright and early at 10 am for the first workshop session at the Visions in Feminism Conference.  We’ll be talking about embodied sexuality and learning how we can use our agency to voluntarily construct our bodies as a/sexual.  Then, a week later, join me as we move from the body to orientation.  I’ll be presenting at 9 am on Sunday, April 1 at Momentum, the sexuality conference of the year in Arlington, VA (Crystal City Marriott).  Late registrations for the conference are still available, and if last year was any indication, it’s going to be amazing!  Come workshop your sexual orientation with me and learn new ways to self-define and self-describe.

Details below the cut.

Do Feminist Dating Messages Apply to Queer Dating?

In the past few years, I’ve noticed a lot of blogs and articles talking about 21st century dating, particularly focused on the qualms of feminist heterosexual females.  Conservative women bemoan feminism and the death of the traditional relationship while feminists offer alternative dating models and insist that dating isn’t dead.  Both of these sides, however, tend to dismiss queer women and queer people generally by specifying that their arguments apply to heterosexual dating only.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’d like to examine some of these messages and ask whether queer daters can glean anything from them–or if not, what are some feminism-based dating and relationship messages that do apply to queers?

Feminist Messages on Heterosexual Dating

From lingerie, to expensive getaways, to candy to cars, flowers, all of these things work together to create a specific romantic experience that has almost replaced the actual authentic experience.  Like when someone gets engaged, the first thing you ask them is to see their ring.  Everyone says that, “can I see the ring.”  It’s become this materialistic marker of progression in your relationship as opposed to this more special moment.

–Samhita Mukhopadhyay, interviewed on her book Outdated

Point being, it’s awfully easy to look at other feminist women and think that they are making obviously terrible choices with their love lives; it is much harder to actually find someone who meets all the requirements of a feminist litmus test, and is single and is someone you’re attracted to and is also attacted to you and is someone who you want to discuss things other than feminism with and is in the right place at the right time. So if you want a relationship — and I think that most people really do want relationships — you have to be able to put some things aside. Where and how you put your feminism aside is, for me, significantly harder than he likes cats and I’m more of a dog person.

–Jill Filipovich on dating while feminist

But while my dating quantity has gone down as I identified as a feminist, the quality of dating has gone way, way up. If I never again talked to most of the guys I slept with before I was 24, I would not much be bothered. But the guys I’ve met and loved and screwed since will, I hope, remain my friends to some degree or another.

–Andrea Grimes at Heartless Doll

When I first meet someone, and decide that I adore them, I don’t really consider their politics at first. And while I usually mention that I’m a feminist, I do it in a flirtatious way—“yeah, I’m a feminist. A hardcore one.” . . . I don’t mind being anyone’s challenge, not initially, probably because I believe that initial attraction is always pretty superficial. I don’t even care if a guy offends me at first, because I’ll argue with him, and maybe he’ll argue back, and maybe we’ll discover that we actually have more in common than we realize, or else even less in common than previously thought. I’ve made my peace with the fact that “feminist” tends to be a loaded term, and when it provokes a reaction, I just deal with it, and move on. I don’t even think about it much anymore. It’s a little like being on autopilot.

Whenever I sacrifice my feminism for a man, I do it while remembering that it’s feminism that allows me that choice in the first place.

–Natalia Antonova on falling in and out of love while feminist

What happens to me that drives me up a tree is this: The guys who respond to me and are like, ‘You’re awesome. You’re kind of a hellcat.” They think it’s cool and kind of bad-ass that I’m outspoken and passionate about things. They think that’s really hot. They’re into it. But then when that outspokenness gets applied back to them, it’s suddenly game-over. You know the idea of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl? She’s light, and quirky, and she has no inner life of her own, and just there to serve our hero’s development and erotic interests. I sort of feel that I get cast in these dudes’ narratives as the Hellcat Dream Girl, there to prove how bad-ass they are because they’re dating such a bad-ass woman. They think it’s cute or sexy. But when I use that smart, outspoken bad-assery to challenge their own perspectives, it’s suddenly not sexy at all. It happens when they say something that I disagree with, and I act like a person and not someone that is playing out their particular fantasies.

It’s happened to me a million times . . . they want it as a trophy. “Hey, look at my bad-ass girl.” They don’t want to deal with me as a person. It follows this pattern where it usually comes from a person who seeks me out. They try to seduce me. They think I would be an accomplishment to conquer or something. They seek me out and try to get me interested in them, and then I am, and then they flee. . . . I feel like the same thing happened with the guy I dated for two years. He liked the idea of being a guy who would be with someone like me, but ultimately it turned out that he wanted someone who wouldn’t challenge him as much, a person who was easier and quicker to sweep away. I got evidence of that when, within three months of breaking up with me, he was dating a 23 year old who lists her political views on Facebook as “moderate.”

–Jaclyn Friedman on Fucking While Feminist

So What About the Queers?

As I was reminded in a recent panel on heteronormativity in pop culture, you don’t have to be heterosexual to be heteronormative.  While the questions about who pays for dinner and the fear of the strong woman don’t necessarily come up as much in queer dating, feminist principles of negotiation, communication, consent, and shaking up power relations can certainly be applied to queer dating.

It’s not uncommon for a modern queer relationship to start or continue more-or-less along the lines established by heteronormative pop culture.  When queer characters do show up on TV, they’re often following those same dating scripts.  If we want to truly queer the dating experience, we can do so with ideas borrowed from feminism.

Mukhopadhyay’s point about the “romantic-industrial complex” is a particularly good one, as queers are by no mean immune.  In fact, a huge complex has sprung up around queer dating, offering queer-focused jewelery, all manner of rainbow paraphernalia, gay travel packages, gay hotel stays, you name it.  A queer Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to completely espouse romance, but it might not be a bad idea to wake up to the way the romance industry tries to exploit us like everyone else.  There are certainly better ways to express our love for our partners, and for our communities.

Several of these quotations focus on the difficulty of identifying as a feminist while dating men–when to disclose and whether to do so, whether feminists will be seen as a dating challenge, whether it’s worth it to compromise on feminist ideals.  Of course, these fears are largely based on the model of feminist woman, reluctant man, and theoretically don’t apply to queer dating.  I would argue that they can, certainly, but the difficulty in a queer relationship is less likely to be convincing a partner that it’s okay for you to be a strong person or a feminist and more likely to come down to internalized gender norms or heteronormative patterns.

Many of us are socialized into queer communities to fit a particular type, so while female strength isn’t necessarily seen as a bad thing, there are examples of queer partners seeming to “go against type.”  Butch/femme may not be so prevalent as it was in the 1950s, but there is a theme of types, from lipstick lesbians to masculine gay men to androgynous genderqueers.  If we tend to be perceived as a particular type, part of the dating challenge may be expressing oneself as more than meets the eye, or avoiding being dating-typecast.

I particularly like Friedman’s commentary on the Hellcat Dream Girl, because I do think this kind of behavior is fairly common in queer communities.  There’s a tendency to fetishize, whether it’s beefy gay male gym rats, young punky androgynes, or tough femmes.  If we fall into a type that’s often fetishized in our communities, then we may find ourselves trying to live up to it.  If we do not, the queer dating scene may be more like a nightmare.

What these applications of feminist messages to queer dating seem to boil down to is that whether heterosexual or not, heternormativity isn’t doing anyone favors.  The dating scripts we learn both from traditional stories and from more modern twists are flawed and inflexible.  They rely on relatively rigid gender norms or at the very least, gendered tropes.  They de-emphasize communication and negotiation, and over-emphasize the idea of a sought-after character, an experience for which the rules are already written and everyone knows their parts.

Anyone who’s ever had good sex can tell you that this cultural framework is heading for a landslide, big time.

So how do we make queer sex and dating a positive experience, feminist-style?

Know thyself.  Self-care is a hot topic in the feminist blogosphere lately, but self-care isn’t all about lotion and massages and masturbation.  It’s also about taking time with yourself to ask some tough questions.  The more you know, the more honest and comfortable you’ll be in conversation, whether looking for a hookup or a long-term relationship.

Talk that talk to me all night.  I can’t resist a Rihanna lyric, but it’s good advice.  Talk when you meet, talk when you’re considering hooking up, talk in bed, talk about your relationship.  Anti-feminists like to make talk sound unromantic, boring, and repetitive, but a silent relationship is almost never a good thing.  When we’re silent, we operate on assumptions.  There’s no way of knowing if those assumptions align, and we can save ourselves many embarrassing moments and uncomfortable encounters by verbalizing what we want, need, and prefer.

Enthusiastic consent.  This is another one that has a lot of naysayers.  “Oh my God, how unsexy!  You have to ask every time you touch someone?”  Yes, but that can in fact be pretty hot.  It doesn’t have to be a big deal–if you don’t want a litany of questions, you can talk about your interests and limits upfront.  Or you can simply ask “is it okay if I touch you here?”  Either way, asking for consent gives you a chance to hear out any uncertain or negative cues and be a supportive partner if it’s time to take a break or switch gears.

Discourses of Purity in Queer Communities & Lavender Languages 19

First, I have to do a quick apology for the radio silence around here!  Rest assured that I have quite a backlog of ideas to write about on this blog, I’ve just been very busy with a number of different projects and events.  In January, I attended Creating Change, which was a fabulous experience, and my workshop on ambiguous identities went quite well.  I also launched QueerFeminism.com, which is already featuring two great posts on service in BDSM and femme/trans identities.  If you’d like to write about what feminism needs to do better in your community, please suggest an idea!  Along with that, I’m now a staff writer at Gender Across Borders, where I’m writing a lot about international trans issues, and I’m collaborating with Kyla Bender-Baird on a really fun column called Body Politic at Girl w/ Pen that focuses on queer bodies, law, and policy.

So the topic of this post actually comes from a conference I attended this weekend at American University, Lavender Languages.  It was a really great conference–I was actually pretty skeptical when I read the panel descriptions, wondering if it’d be too theoretical and out of my depth.  I’m a language nerd, but I haven’t really been immersed in that kind of academia for a while.  As it turned out, almost all the presenters were very easy to follow, and raised a lot of ideas in my mind for future blog posts and maybe even academic work.  My own discussion group on non-binary language also went very well, and I wish we’d have more time!

One theme that kept coming up that is of particular interest to me is the notion of purity and “clean” bodies in queer discourse.  This was either explicitly stated or implied in a number of talks.  For example, a paper on blue collar gay pornography considers how working class men, and particularly men of color, are coded as “dirty” or “greasy.”  Another presentation on the idea of the gold star lesbian in the Portland community touched briefly on the concept of virginity/purity, and I was interested in how the “gold star” definition positioned trans female bodies as contaminating while trans male bodies might still be “pure” (and transmasculine identities therefore erased).

There was also some talk about colonialism, capitalism, and citizenship, and I would be interested to get into how the purity narrative plays in there.  This isn’t a one-way effect–I’ve noticed that the language of some African and Asian leaders, for example, invokes the image of Western homosexuality and transgender identity as an infecting force (juxtaposed with AIDS) to corrupt traditional cultures.  At the same time, the fantasy of gay male erotic tourism places black and brown bodies as both “dirty” and “exotic,” a thrilling danger zone where privileged white men can use their American dollars or Euros to spend some time in the muck.

I wonder if any readers know of some related reading that might be helpful to me in negotiating this discourse, or if you’ve heard similar themes in your communities?  I’ll definitely be coming back to specific points on this topic in future posts.

Queer, Trans, Feminist Projects to Watch in 2012

Happy New Year!

As we dig into 2012, I have several exciting things to announce.

First, a href=http://www.queerfeminism.comQueerFeminism.com/a has officially launched! Focusing on areas where the feminist movement could improve, including queer/trans inclusion, anti-racism, disability, and decolonization, this is a collaborative site that welcomes contributions from anyone who has thought I wish feminism would do better with me and my community.

Second, Ive been very pleased with participation in the Sunday Twitter chats I launched in the fall. #transchat and #queerchat take place alternating Sundays, 2-4 pm. Anyone can suggest a topic by contacting me on Twitter or just leaving a comment here.

Finally, I have several cool workshops and talks coming up. At Creating Change, the nations premiere LGBT organizing conference in Baltimore, Ill be leading a workshop Friday morning, January 27th, on incorporating ambiguous identities in queer organizing. At Lavender Languages (Saturday, February 11th) Ill be facilitating a lunchtime workshop on the words used to describe non-binary identities and populations. At Momentum (last weekend in March, workshop date TBA) Ill be leading Workshopping Your Sexual Orientation, a unique experience that will break your sexuality wide open. If youd like me to speak on your campus or at your organization, let me know. I still have spring dates available.

Also, no details yet, but look for more coming from me at Gender Across Borders.

Radical Reading: When We Were Outlaws

Jeanne Córdova’s memoir When We Were Outlaws: a memoir of Love & Revolution, recently released from Spinsters Ink, fills an important gap in the existing first-person accounts of the history of gay and lesbian liberation, but suffers from an unfortunately inconsistent tone.  When students take up gay or lesbian history in the US, the starting point is often the Stonewall Riots.  The picture of gay and lesbian liberation has a decidedly East Coast slant, or it is told more generally in the context of national movements–homophiles, gay liberation, lesbian feminism, and so on.  Córdova’s strength is in the details she provides on the day-to-day life of lesbian activism in 1970s Los Angeles, centered around the strike against the Gay Community Services Center.  Her weakness lies in a tendency towards melodrama and an inflation of her own importance in the broader story.

The reason why accounts such as Martin Duberman’s Stonewall are so gripping and effective is that the narrator or the individual subjects of the story are portrayed as mere players in a bigger picture.  The power of those individuals in the narrative comes from how subtly their story is told.  Córdova has an amazing story–the details of the relationships between gay men and lesbians in LA at the time, the struggle between gay liberation and labor movements, and Córdova’s journalistic relationship with “her Nazi” are particularly interesting.  There is a good balance between broader themes and particularly interesting historical snapshots in the book.  Where it starts to come apart is Córdova’s tendency to drop into melodrama in describing her personal romantic relationships, non-monogamy in the movement, and her own role as an activist.  The dialogue doesn’t come alive, and whenever Córdova focuses directly on analyzing herself at the time or her role in the movement, the subtlety that helps a reader relate to a narrator is lost.  The dynamics of butch and femme in the 1970s LA lesbian community and the trend of non-monogamy are interesting, but the moralistic tone that weaves through the narrative will make it uncomfortable for some.

I would recommend this account for those who are particularly interested in first-person history of lesbian liberation on the West Coast, but with reservations.  A shorter, more tightly controlled narrative would be more effective in communicating this particular story.

 

Ask Me About My Queerness

A couple of weeks ago I got into a Twitter discussion about using the word “queer.”  Usually when people ask me why I describe myself as queer, I explain that because I’m neither male nor female, none of the words for sexual orientation that reference the subject’s gender apply to me.  And that’s true, but it’s only part of why I like the word queer.

Queer is a term that is both descriptive and vague.  It signals that I am probably involved in some way with gender or sexuality difference, and it’s noticeably different–because it’s not lesbian, gay, or bisexual, it leads to questions.  I like that because queer doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone, and questions are a good thing.  My sexuality and my gender are hard to sum up in a word.  Queer sex and relationships generally don’t follow a recognized script–communication is mandatory because there’s nothing to use as a default.  I can’t see how this is a bad thing.

So, if you want to know, you have no choice but to ask.

A Free Sexuality Workshop, the Perfect Holiday Gift to Yourself!

Listen up, sex-positive feminists!

Starting in January 2012, I’ll be facilitating a workshop of Jaclyn Friedman’s awesome sexuality workbook, What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety.  Of course, the workshop will be free, and we’ll be meeting weekly (likely on Google Hangouts, though I’m open to suggestions there) to encourage each other through the book and through the journey of reclaiming our sexualities.

To participate, you simply need to be willing to commit to a weekly check-in, to doing the exercises in the book, and to being open and honest about your sexuality in a group of strangers.  Easy, right?  Well, maybe not, but everyone involved will sign a confidentiality statement–what’s discussed in the group stays in the group–and we’ll have some safe space rules to hopefully encourage everyone to open up and speak their minds.  Having participated in the initial workshop for the book, I can tell you that it’s a fantastic experience and hey, you might get some friends out of it as well as making progress on your own journey.  You also do need to buy a copy of the book by the beginning of the year.

In the interest of having a diverse group, I’m asking everyone who’d like to participate to please e-mail me the following information to avory [at] avoryfaucette [dot] com by December 23rd:

1. Name (doesn’t have to be real one), and demographic information you’re comfortable disclosing such as age, race, geographic location, gender, gender identity, disability status, sexual orientation, etc.  Whatever you’d like to tell me–nothing is mandatory here.
2. Why are you interested in participating?  What do you hope to gain from workshopping this book with us?
3. What’s your starting point?  In other words, how are you feeling about sex and sexuality right now?
4. Anything else you think might be relevant.

Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Paradigm Shifts

In the most recent episode of the Polyamory Weekly podcast, Minx answered a question from a listener about the difference between polyamory and open relationships.  She basically defined open relationships as those with a couple already at the base, and polyamory as more of an orientation.  So Minx is single and poly, but she couldn’t be single and in an open relationship.  This is a little different from how I’m used to thinking of polyamory vs. open, which is basically that poly is multiple relationships and open means sex outside one or more relationships, but it did get me thinking about how these structures function in my life and generally, and how being polyamorous affects the way one looks at the world.

When I started out with polyamory, I didn’t really feel comfortable with the idea of “open.”  Part of that was that it seemed rather chaotic and haphazard.  I didn’t think that there was any reason to limit romantic relationships to just one, but the word “open” gave me a mental picture of extreme promiscuity and I think especially, a lack of control.

Without really thinking about it, though, I’ve ended up in an open, poly situation and I’m happy with that.  It was mostly accidental, because I had no interest in setting rules about sex and dating, outside of the important safer sex questions, of course.  I still think of myself primarily as a “polyamorous person,” even though I’m only with one person right now, because polyamory has become a lens through which I view the world, rather than a simple way of describing what’s going on in my love life.

Queer Thanksgiving Survival Guide

Dreading Thanksgiving this year because of the inevitable tense relationship between your family and your queerness, polyamory, or progressive ideals?  Here are a few tips for survival:

1. If you’re hiding a secret from your family, whether your gender, your sexuality, the existence of a partner, or something else, Thanksgiving can be particularly tough.  If you’d rather stay quiet, be prepared for awkward questions and have a dodge ready.  If you’re not comfortable lying to the inevitable questions about a partner, job, or something else that intersects with the secret, try flipping the question around.  ”Still single this year?”  ”I’m pretty busy these days with work… so how are things with Susie?”  You can always tune out the answer.
2. If you do want to come out, see whether you can arrange for some moral support.  Whether that’s enlisting a supportive family member or bringing along a friend, if worse comes to worse you can always escape with that person–or at least take a long walk together to release some tension.  If you’re coming out as queer or poly, of course, your partner might be the secret–and depending on your family members’ personalities, that might ease them into it.  It might be harder to get upset to your partner’s face, and that time with them present could give family a chance to get used to it.  If you can’t bring someone, arrange a call or IM date for Thursday night so you know you’ll have some support if you need it.
3. What about dinner table conversation?  It can be awkward if your job at a great feminist organization, your participation in Occupy Wall Street, or your recent article on sex worker’s rights comes up during Thanksgiving dinner.  Or the reverse might happen–what do you do when the Republican debates come up, or your family is cheerfully celebrating a holiday that’s all about how thankful we are that genocide succeeded?  Again, allies are helpful, but if you don’t have anyone available on your side of the debate, try reframing the discussion in a way that makes more sense to your family.  Set up a hypothetical or tell a heartstrings story about the 99% or a child abuse victim your organization helped.  Sometimes the kind of thing that would never work in an argument with a friend will fly with family that just haven’t thought that hard about it yet.  The same tactic can be helpful when trying to explain something your family just hasn’t been exposed to, like genderqueerness, kink, or polyamory.  Even a BDSM relationship can be distilled down to good ole’ American values if you try hard enough.
4. Make plans for Friday.  If all else fails, it’s good to be able to decompress with people you actually like.  When the family rushes to the mall Friday morning, escape to the comfort of friends.  Have a leftovers potluck–if you drink, bring plenty of booze.  Sob stories turn hilarious over bourbon and leftover sweet potato casserole.  If you’re not near your friends and/or partners, look for meetups in your area.  Sometimes LGBT centers do Thanksgiving weekend dos, or you can just poke around a social networking site looking for likeminded folks.  Of course, remember to be safe!

I hope all my US readers have a safe and relatively happy holiday weekend.  I’ll be spending a large portion of it on Twitter, so feel free to say hi.

Radical Reading: What You Really Really Want

For this Radical Reading column, we’re doing something a bit different.  I was lucky enough to be part of the group that workshopped Jaclyn Friedman’s What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety.  This groundbreaking workbook takes the lessons learned about rape culture from the Yes Means Yes anthology and helps the reader take sexuality into his/her/hir own hands with practical guidance on sex, sexuality, and enthusiastic consent.  One of my favorite things about the book is how it breaks down our culture’s sexual scripts and encourages us to define our own sexuality–a skill that few of us are taught otherwise. I’ve invited Jaclyn, and some of the other folks from the workshop, to stop by Radically Queer on the WYRRW blog tour for a roundtable discussion on sexual agency and defining our own sexualities.  

 

Avory: Thanks so much for stopping by, everyone!  I wanted to start things off by just saying a little bit about my experience with using through the book to help define my sexuality, and hear where you’re all coming from.

For me, what was really useful in going through the exercises is they tend to be open-ended.  At one point, for example, we were asked to just list the things we do and don’t want when it comes to sex.  I ended up listing things I want that seem sort of inane, like being fed by hand, or having my hair petted, or a hand on my throat, and then listing common sexual things I don’t want, like having my breasts touched.  Coming up with that list from scratch was new for me because most of what I’ve learned about sex, even from comprehensive, liberal sources, is that there’s a straight script, or a gay script, or a lesbian script.  As a genderqueer person, no one ever gave me an appropriate script, so part of what I’ve done with this book is thought long and hard about how I define pleasure.  A lot of that has to do with things like food, and sensation, and power dynamics, that aren’t included in traditional “sexual” activities.  I’m still struggling with how to communicate these things to a partner, but it’s a big liberating step to climb out of the box of what’s generally seen as “sexual,” and often based on gender expectations.