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–Samhita Mukhopadhyay, interviewed on her book Outdated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.

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.

Is “Queer” A Useful Umbrella Term for Organizing?

This past weekend, I got into a discussion with a couple of friends at a gathering of mostly queer-identified, mostly female-identified folks.  We were talking about the problem with LGBT (or QUILTBAG, or any other acronym) as an umbrella term.  Two of us preferred not to use LGBT because of the tendency to exclude trans people and others not actually represented in the acronym.  One woman had an interesting argument, though, against the use of the word “queer” as an umbrella term for the movement.

She explained that she would include a lot of marginalized sexual identities under “queer,” including asexuals, kinky people, poly people, etc., but that she didn’t think trans and genderqueer people fit.  Her understanding of “queer” was that it necessarily refers to sex, not gender, and so it wouldn’t make sense to lump in gender identities.  She preferred LGBT because transgender people are a small enough group that some coalition-building is useful, and her take was that LGB priorities in many cases match up with transgender priorities.

Regardless of who is right in this debate, she does bring up an interesting point, which is that people tend to have an inherent sense of what any gender or sexuality term means, and often there are disagreements.  Since we don’t yet have set-in-stone language (and maybe that’s a good thing), reasonable people are likely to disagree on the meaning of terms.

I like “queer” as an umbrella because its original definition is odd or different.  I think it’s a good way to lump together all marginalized gender and sexuality identities when one wants to speak generally.  But I’m also conscious that when I say “queer,” some people may not be hearing trans and gender non-conforming under that term.  I’m also very conscious that queer people have different policy priorities.

When we’re talking about personal identity, of course, the best thing is always to simply ask a person for their personal identity terms.  When we’re talking about policy, I think it’s most useful to think about how groups naturally form around a particular issue.  When the same (or more-or-less the same) group forms around a number of different issues, then that group might be a unit that can work together and form organizations or a policy agenda.  But it’s also important to recognize that not all members of the group are going to agree on everything.

Even when we’re dealing in smaller units, we need to keep in mind that priorities may not be the same for everyone in the group.  For example, a lesbian organization needs to be aware that the priorities of its supporters of color in urban areas will differ from the priorities of white lesbians in a rural community.  Trans people and gender non-conforming people often act in coalition, but in some areas, they will have different policy priorities, and that’s okay.

Coalitions are a powerful tool.  Often, one small group will take the lead on a priority, but others can lend support when they agree.  This, I think, is what we’re getting away from with the “LGBT” idea, but it’s where its power could potentially lie.  My friend was right in saying that trans people are a relatively small group when it comes to making concrete legal and policy change.  Trans activists usually have to ally with non-trans people to get things done, and often gay and lesbian people are supportive of trans issues because there is a common thread linking sexuality-based and gender-based oppression.  But it’s important to respect the autonomy of each group, and not to use a coalition to dominate.  The best way to operate is under an “I’ll scratch your back, now you scratch mine” philosophy.

Chaz Bono on Dancing with the Stars: Again, We Need a Queer Movement

Recent debates on whether Chaz Bono on Dancing with the Stars is an appropriate viewing experience for children exemplify a dangerous conservative trend in the LGBT movement.  As in debate on same-sex marriage, queer activists find ourselves being ask to defend our simple humanity, backed into a corner where visible queerness is seen as a bad strategic move.

Again, I find myself using an example of a queer celebrity in the media to argue the necessity of a truly queer movement.  The more time we spend arguing that we are normal, “just like” our opponents, the further we get from our policy priorities.  When we allow hate groups to define the debate, they have already won.

How can we turn this disaster around? Refuse to engage by framing our position around being like our opponents.  We are not like bigots, homophobes, and transmisogynists.  We embrace diversity.  We fight with creativity and humor.  We shift the ground under gender stereotypes and we regularly fuck with patriarchy.  We don’t accept conservative arguments that dehumanize us and challenge our right to occupy our space.

We’re here, we’re queer.  Join us.

Should Bert and Ernie Get Married? A Queer Feminist Perspective on LGBT Characters in Popular Media

The Internet has been all a-flutter the past few days with an unlikely question: Should Bert & Ernie get married on Sesame Street?

There have been a number of responses, from those claiming that queer representation for young children is crucial and Sesame Street should use the puppet-roommates to get back to its slightly subversive roots, to those suggesting that queer human characters make more sense, to those who are concerned that gay marriage might ruin the innocence of Sesame Street.  The powers that be have explained that the Sesame Street puppets are not human, and therefore, don’t marry.

I’m not too invested in the outcome of the Sesame Street question, but I do think this is a good time to look at queer characters, and more broadly, what TV and film should be doing from a queer feminist perspective.  My suggestions fall into two major categories.

You’re Not Alone: A Video Project for Queer Youth

There’s been a lot of talk about the It Gets Better project and how “It Gets Better” is mostly true for cis-gendered, white, gender conforming, able bodied, middle-class gay and lesbian youth.  This is an alternative project aimed at youth for whom it very well may NOT get better.

The You’re Not Alone Project asks for video contributions from everyone, but especially those who are queer, trans, genderqueer, gender nonconforming, people of color, immigrants, disabled, or any other often-ignored part of the queer umbrella. The message is not that it gets better, but that queer youth are not alone.  We’re a large, diverse community that can offer support and understanding, even when change is slow in coming.

To participate, upload a short video (less than 10 minutes) to the video service of your choice.  The goal is to communicate your own experiences in your own “words”–speaking, singing, signing, using art, dance, whatever medium you prefer–with the theme You Are Not Alone.  All languages and means of communication are encouraged.  Focus on queer youth in general or on a particular population.  You might tell a story, talk about your identity or your community, or provide resources for support.  Don’t forget to tag your video with You’re Not Alone and any keywords that are relevant.  Once you’ve uploaded, submit your link to me at one of the following:

Facebook

Twitter

Google Plus

Tumblr

Blog

You can also e-mail the link to yourenotalonevideos [at] gmail [dot] com.

If interest is high, I will buy a domain for the project and post an index of all these videos on the web.  Please reblog and share widely!  This won’t work unless we get a diversity of voices to contribute.