Thursday, July 06, 2006
MY GIANT IDENTITY RANT
"They call it climbing and I call it visibility,
They call it coolness and I call it visibility,
They call it way too rowdy -- I call it finally free."
-Le Tigre - Viz
So, it has come to my attention that this blog may have some need for a little mission statement of sorts, an attempt to explain who I am and what I'm about, or at the very least, a little identity rant of the kind I have not attempted in WAY too long.
Plus, it gives me a chance to get my mind and this blog off the topic of my ludicrously overwrought and entirely not torrid enough personal life.
And so, ladies and gentlemen and everything in between, I present to you this ever-humble attempt to describe to you the awkward and strange pariah-like state in which I exist.
I'm going to do in in point form, because it's easier and prettier.
1) I hate boxes. Those little cramped spaces that someone is always and forever trying to shove me into. I have spent way too much time with my knees inside my eye sockets, trying desperately to escape from a confining existence that squashes and represses everything that I love about my life. And I have to believe that those who would shove me into boxes actually hate them too, or at least that they hate what they do to me when I'm forced into them. I simply was not meant to comfortably occupy such a space.
2) People would feel better if I told them I'M GAY / QUEER / LESBIAN, OR if I told them I'm STRAIGHT AS AN ABSOLUTE LINE. It would help them sleep at night, like warm chocolate milk and a hot bath.
3) I know that just about everyone would feel better if I told them that because people love boxes, even when they say they don't. They love being able to tick them, check them off, figure people out with them, and go on with their delightfully ordinary and average lives.
4) Bisexuals get a helleva lot of abuse these days. Notice I say ABUSE, because I'm not allowed to use a word like HOMOPHOBIA because technically it's not accurate. Doesn't that suck a lot? I think it does.
5) By abuse, I don't mean to say that we're getting dragged behind cars and being beheaded, though I'm sure this does happen in some parts of the world. The real rub here is that bisexuality is TRENDY. Yep, it's cool, so cool that the Georgia Straight, our local free-and-liberal, gay-friendly-but-not-officially-gay newspaper posts regular ads (like every fucking week) by straight couples looking for a bi girl to "join in the fun." My own father and brother think I'm "following a fad," by falling in love with a girl, and I'm pretty sure that my mother doesn't have me figured out, either. In fact, very few people seem to have me figured out, and even those who claim they understand me very rarely actually get it.
6) I don't have a problem with threesomes in principle, and even in practice if the circumstances are right. The problem I have is with the assumption that because I'm attracted to both men and women, I must want both of them at the same time, all the time. That's simply not true, and it's unfair.
7) I tend to be viewed as something of a pariah in the so-called lesbian community, for the following reasons:
-I'm not a vegetarian or a vegan.
-I place the rights of human beings above the rights of animals, 9 times out of 10.
-I don't own or plan to buy a motorcycle.
-I don't like piercings and don't want any.
-I won't get matching tattoos with my significant other, EVER.
-I adamantly refuse to cut my hair short.
-I do not feel that I am a boy trapped in a girl's body, unlike my friend Jon and many, many others I know.
-I do not wear boys' clothes or baseball caps.
-I don't use alternate pronouns (hyr, zhe, guh, whateverthehell).
-I adamantly refuse to spell 'women,' 'womyn,' or 'history,' 'herstory,' or for that matter 'discman,' 'discwomyn.' Fyck that shyt.
-I do not own combat boots and am unlikely to wake up one morning and find I suddenly need a pair.
-I have no desire to get holes in my back so I can suspend myself from metal hooks in the ceiling.
-I think most S&M is more hilarious than it is hot.
-my hair products contain chemicals, and I'm okay with that.
-I. Like. Boys.
....bla bla bla and more of the same. Are these things stereotypes? Absofuckinglutely. But they're also more than that. Whether or not anyone cares to admit it, these are badges of belonging for some people. And while I completely respect everyone's right to express themselves in any way they see fit as long as it's not hurting anyone else, I usually just plain don't fit in.
8) I tend to be viewed as a pariah in the so-called straight community for the following reasons:
-I'm pretty sure that lipstick was created to make women look like prostitutes.
-and oh yeah, I won't wear it, EVER!
-I fail to adequately appreciate David Beckham, Matthew Mcconnaughey, Orlando Bloom, Tom Cruise, or any of the other pretty boys of my generation.
-I check out girls on a regularly basis, and I'm getting worse and worse at pretending that I don't.
-I won't tolerate even a semi-homophobic or shall-we-say homohumourous remark.
-I don't subscribe to and absolutely refuse to go along with gender stereotyping.
-I loathe chivalry, even when the guy means well by opening a door or pulling out a chair.
-I'm definitely not butch, but I'm no fairy princess either. You'd have a hard time getting me to put on a short skirt and go to a club with the intention of getting boys to buy me drinks. Ugh.
-I hate makeup and refuse to wear it unless we're talking a wedding or a funeral or my mother physically putting it on my face despite repeated protestations.
Are these stereotypes? Absofuckinglutely. Are they things I've actually noticed that people want from me, even when they claim to know what I'm about and understand and accept it? Definitely.
9) I like the word queer, because to me it reflects a sort of out-of-the-ordinariness that I think I possess. It denotes to me a desire to act and be the way I want to be and was meant to be, and not the way society, my family, a higher power, religious organizations, or the government say I should.
10) Jag has a terrible but very illuminating book on her bookshelf (and I can't possibly remember the name of it....Jag, can you post a link?) that I was reading in the couple of days I was staying with her. Anyway, its thesis goes something like: Bisexuals are people who are attracted to both sexes out of a promiscuous need for lots and lots of sex. In trying to fill the sexual void in their lives, they inevitably wind up in relationships which are unfulfilling, meaningless, and exclusively sexual in nature. Blech!
11) A thesis like that makes me angry simply because while I cannot speak for anyone else, it DOES NOT DESCRIBE ME or my relationships in the slightest. I am and always have been something of a serial monogamist. I genuinely love and am truly loyal to the people I care about, and I am terribly, absolutely ridiculously bad (go ahead, ask around), at casual sex. I've had very few flings and all of them have ended in disaster.
12) I must out of sheer necessity believe in some kind of sexuality spectrum like our friend Kinsey here. I also tend to agree with him that one's rating is not constant. I know it isn't for me. While perhaps I'm a 3.5 or a 4 right now, I could be a 2 several years from now, or a 6, who knows. Perhaps tomorrow I'll wake up a flaming lesbian, but I doubt it. Or maybe the next day I'll be totally straight. Again, I doubt that very much. But in the end I just don't know.
13) What I do know is that I meet lots of men I want to sleep with, and lots of men I would start a relationship with. I also meet lots of women I want to sleep with, start relationships with, write poetry for, and make dinner for even when I'm not hungry in the slightest. I'm never exactly on an even keel. Today I like PJ Harvey and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but tomorrow may be a Bob Dylan day.
12) The result of all this meandering is that I remain somewhat frustrated by my state of being. The world still finds it ridiculously difficult to see me for me: not a trendy porn star type, not really gay or straight, but somewhere in between.
Why is this so hard?
You. Tell. Me.
Thanks to anyone who's still reading.
And please, comment. I genuinely wonder what your thoughts are on this.
-N
