Sorry about the RSS issue!

If you’re following me on RSS, I am so sorry about the spew of posts this morning!  They’re all old, and some don’t even reflect my views anymore.  Oops.  Shouldn’t happen again.

Evolution of a Blog: From Scholar to Activist

I don’t normally get this meta, but I’ve just read or skimmed through the past few years of this blog, which started in 2008 as “A Lesbian & A Scholar,” and it’s been interesting to see how things have changed over the years.  Besides the obvious fact of my gender and sexual orientation being different now from what they were four years ago, I’m realizing that a reader who once e-mailed me, asking why my writing had become less scholarly over time, was right.

I started this blog when I was in law school, and many of my posts were comments on something discussed in class, something I read, or a lecture I attended.  I don’t exactly read less now, but I do much more skimming.  In the Twitter age, much of what I read is quick and opinionated, and my reactions are similarly quick and opinionated.  While a scholar has time to research and develop a thesis, an activist in the 21st century has to constantly be reacting, assessing strategy, using the news as leverage for change-making.

Is one approach better than the other?  Not necessarily.  I have learned from other writers and from reading my past material that I could stand to use more links and references in my writing here, like I do when I write for other sites.  I used to do more writing about law, and now it’s more about culture, policy, and theory related to gender and sexuality.  I’m happy with that shift, but I have been craving more action, less writing about problems and more writing about how we might solve them.  That said, I do enjoy cultural commentary and critique and I’ll keep doing that.

I’ve done some messing around with categories this week to better reflect what I’m actually writing about, and to make it easier to find old posts.  I do want to note that if you’re looking back in the archives, there are plenty of opinions that I no longer stand by.  I’ve left them up because I prefer that approach to “editing the past,” but some of what I said then makes me cringe.  It’s pretty amazing to see how my attitudes on gender, feminism, sexuality, and relationships shifted so drastically in the space of a year or two.  In a way, I think it’s inspiring, because it means that when folks fuck up, we can change.  We just have to do the work to get there.

Radical Reading: Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?

When I started to read Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s newest collection, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? (AK Press), I had an idea of what to expect.  There are plenty of examples in the trans/queer blogosphere and Twittersphere of queer, trans, and/or non-binary individuals critiquing femme erasure and femme invisibility.  Usually these individuals are young, white, college-educated, and politically radical.  They (we) critique a mainstream gay culture that attacks or erases femme expressions of gender, is bothered or even disgusted by trans queers, and deifies masculinity.

Some of the contributions in this volume come from this group, but the collection as a whole takes on a different tenor, one that is sorely needed in our communities.  Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? focuses on brown bodies, on AIDS, on colonialism and nationalism, and on the intersections between these themes.  These essays are about love and fear–the potential of queer creativity and the impact of a faggot-coded epidemic.

This volume asks us to question our fears–not only of femininity but of brown bodies, trans bodies, poverty, drugs, open sexuality, terrorism, and AIDS.  The essays engage explicitly with sex, linking queer desire to ideas of nationality, safety, and acceptability.  The authors ask us to build a political discourse around sex and desire and to see the potential in brown, femme, and/or diseased bodies that the collective mainstream gay imagination fears and has forgotten because of the terrifying possibility of death.

Some of the most controversial essays challenge the idea of “safe sex” and ask us to consider barebacking as a sexual practice.  How do we pose bodies and sex as dirty or clean?  The public health discourse around AIDS jibes well with a national rhetoric of individual responsibility–you are either safe/clean or you are not, you are a citizen or a terrorist, you are with us or against us–and if you cross the line, it is your fault.

“The ‘risk reduction’ we practiced often meant avoiding intimacy with the very people we needed in order to overcome generations of internalized shame; we ended up limiting the types of connections that had historically led to personal health and community well-being.” –Chris Bartlett, “Levity and Gravity”

Some of the authors in this volume suggest solutions to the status quo that are wrapped up in sex, desire, cruising culture, creativity, and femininity.  These solutions also challenge the white, middle class, masculine gay norm.  Ali Abbas, for example, tells the story of a white colleague accusing him of “playing into” his own Middle Eastern culture while simultaneously ignoring the queerness of some Middle Eastern cultures.  Masculinity here is linked to nationalism and citizenship, which in turn is linked to the mainstream gay American culture’s focus on marriage (a right linked to citizenship) rather than human rights, immigration, sexuality, or poverty.

Several essays challenge the assumption of norms, usually presented in a “good vs. bad” binary, around desireability and sexuality.  CA Conrad wants to know why fat men are assumed to be undesireable, while Philip Patston asks the same thing about disabled bodies.  Patston’s story of going to his therapist and initially assuming, when told that things would be different for him because of his disability, that gay men would see him as a rare and desireable potential partner, challenges the assumption that normal desire focuses on able bodies–or on white ones, thin ones, cis ones, or masculine ones.  Discussions of creativity in the early AIDS movement and of the good things about HIV-positive sex challenge readers to consider whether even an “infected body” is necessary less desireable.  The gay community is used to the idea of collective trauma (ie, AIDS) vs. collective Pride, but why does Pride have to be found principally in middle class white bodies?  Why not in a community of “Others”–brown, trans, pos, disabled, queer faggots?

I agree, at least in part, with the criticisms of the mainstream public health response to AIDS.  There are no “good gays” and “bad gays.”  The community, such as it is, would be a better place if we consciously engaged with disease, with sex, and with the creative potential of our fringes.  I agree with Patrick “Pato” Hebert that our power lies in sex and storytelling, and that these things are linked.  “We make ourselves through storytelling.  We reproduce the queer power of ourselves through our sex.”

The narratives in this collection are a first step in looking at ourselves as sexual, positive, worthy wholes and as a powerful potential community of activists and artists.  As Nick Clarkson explains in his story about a gay cis man who is unwilling to go home with him because of his trans body, we are not solely defined by our histories.  It is important to recognize queer people both collectively and individually as a whole–through our histories, our identities, our bodies, and our stories.

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.

Assumptions About Trans* Genders and Histories

During the last #transchat (next one is tomorrow, 12/11, 2-4pm EST on Twitter) Nat (@quarridors) got me thinking about trans medical history and the kind of assumptions we make based on appearance.  Though I don’t think it’s appropriate to ask a person whether they’re trans*, or a genderqueer person what their “birth” gender was, and I don’t assume that I can tell anything about gender by looking at someone, I do tend to assume that it’d obvious from looking at me what I was raised as, or what’s in my pants.

When I think about that, of course, I realize it’s not true.  No one knows that for sure unless I tell them.  And I’m thinking about the value of not disclosing that kind of information as a way to destabilize or deemphasize gender in our interpersonal relations.  What’s in your pants is about as private as it gets, but we don’t treat it that way.  We also make assumptions about bodies and medical histories based on a person’s gender identity.  On the other hand, I think there may be value in my writing about my experiences as someone who grew up female-identified, because that background is a huge part of my trans* story.

Anyone have experience with this, or has anyone changed approach over time?

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.

 

White Feminists: It’s Time to Put Up Or Shut Up on Race

Listen up, white feminists.

We have a problem.  I’m including myself because none of us are immune from this problem.  We all fuck up.  And you can say “fucking up is natural,” and that’s true, but it’s time for us to start identifying our fuck ups, and not just learning from them, but acknowledging the hurt they cause other people.

We need to acknowledge that we cannot know what it’s like to be an oppressed racial minority.  Cannot.  The end.  Period.  We don’t know because we’re queer, because we’re disabled, because we’re Jewish, because we were the nerdy kid in school.  These things may have hurt us severely, but we need to stop playing Oppression Olympics and acknowledge that when we’re talking about race we Do.  Not.  Know.  No more metaphors.

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.