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February 6th, 2006
12:38 pm - Taking Both Sides
There are certain advantages to going unseen. You can slip in and out of rival camps without a trace. You can study the disharmony between them, collecting precious perspectives from each. You can, perhaps one day, even learn to hold the paradox of both within yourself.
If you are bisexual, you are such a moving target. You are too slippery to be bound to fierce alliances. You don’t make the Either/Or choice that inherently leads to opposition. You are a chameleon who takes on the colour and climate of all sides, every shade as real as the last, on your changing skin.
But what if all you’ve ever wanted was to be visible, to be one solid, neutral blend of both? What if you wish you could lend a shaking fist to the injustice of segregation, but the ‘side’ you’re on doesn’t even exist? What if it’s the fence itself you’d like to tear down, but everyone keeps accusing you of sitting on it? What if the very people whose oppression you identify with, turn and exact the same discrimination on you, and your shapeshifting kind?
( more )
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December 28th, 2004
03:01 pm - Beyond Both
I was walking my regular route through the U of T campus when I noticed the crimson stencil on the pavement that would change me forever. It read: ? Your Gender. Though amused by the question, I dismissed it quickly since my own gender seemed obvious to me. I was a girl, of course, plain and simple.
But the subversive little phrase lodged itself into my unconscious and niggled away there, despite my conviction. It drummed around in my ears for several days before I realised that it wasn’t a question at all. It was a bidding.
( continued )
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November 26th, 2004
November 2nd, 2004
08:53 am - Lifted from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) abstrusenj
From the introduction of Brazen Femme:
"Finally, we want an articulation of femme that is not tied to butch. We are tired of seeing femme tied to butch identity as its Other. Just as we have articulated femme as transcending the binaries of male/female and gay/straight, we want to liberate femme from its binary relation with butch. This anthology both celebrates and complicates femme as a gender experience on its own terms, as an experience that expands, exceeds, and troubles the familiar framework or "norms" of lesbian (butch) femme."
From Quantum Femme, an essay by Elizabeth Ruth:
"Quantum femme is an intergalactic insomniac, a shark who must keep moving in order to preserve the species and continue into the next generation. She's here and now. A prehistoric icon, cartoon figure. Comic strip tease. And stretching all her images across time becomes a bore. So she remembers with a vengeance, fucks with resistance, and loves only when every other need has been tended to first. All of this comes at a price; the universal exhaustion of a hard-working, working girl. She's tired of strangers ordering her to 'smile.' Tired of walking down city streets as though crossing a grenade field and trying not to step on the wrong onlooker. She's perpetually stuck in a time-warp between bright high neon flashing eclipse and absolute invisibility.
Can anybody see her?
She's a time traveler moving faster than the speed of sound, linking past, present and future. Bridging across the galaxy between straight and bent. Between woman-loving and woman-hating. Between the pages of a book. She's here to remind the galaxy that is is possible to be more than one half of any duality, more than just an extension, an opposite: male/female. Rational/emotional. Butch/femme. So she's nobody's princess, baby doll, babe...
The truth is she can make you comfortable in your skin even when you shouldn't be, and she wears great pain. There's a reason you would never see a quantum femme cry in public. Her acid rain tears would flood the planet, create a burning wave, tsunami undertow that threatens to swallow everything...
So beware. Up close, microscopically, she might not be what you envision. She might shock with her unkempt reality: clothes that haven't seen a washing machine in months, unshaven legs, breath that bites back, and teeth that wear fur coats. Wrinkles across her soul. Quantum femme is older than time, made of miniscule particles insisting that even small matter, matters. She lives in chaos where random, inexplicable events defy logic, where unforeseen tragedy strikes when least expected. She's guarded by the protective rings around Saturn. Shielded by the armour-thick glow of the Aurora Borealis. Leery of newcomers. You can't label her neuroses, identify her predilections, or even predict what she would eat for breakfast. She's slippery, gliding through expectations like spilt mercury dancing down your leg, curdling and separating. She's been many people in many places but somehow always the same...
You can't begin to imagine what sadomasochistic lifetimes she's consented to. Or, those she didn't. You can't know her by defining her parameters, testing her tolerance, or crossing her boundaries. Quantum femme has a voracious appetite for the truth and the truth hurts most of all...
She doesn't want to demand that you make her come - she wants to dare you. Make her come so she can go away, leave herself with the pounding pounding of your hand, fist, anything inside her centre. Let the vibrbrbrbrbrbrbrations on her clit stop time. She's woman enough to give it up for you and astronomical enough to make each explosion feel new. She won't break or fall to pieces. She knows no singular force is strong enough to reach her now...Her people are flawed beyond repair so she's had to learn to love and hate simultaneously. Don't be surprised by the company she keeps.
Quantum femme comes from way down low, on her knees. Pressed into dank mattresses. The deep metamorphosis lesson that teaches young girls how to become cosmic women: impenetrable. Unflinching. Brazen. She keeps a good secret unless the price is too high and then she'll share it with the stars, naming one for every scar on the inside lining of her flesh. She's a body housing infinite possibilities for women, some of them snuffed out at a tender age. Some of them raging till dawn. You only think you know her...
Quantum femme will close her eyes and give birth to new planets, an entire universe balancing on a single eyelash. She sees the future staring back at her with bloodshot eyes. Lips on fire, arched eyebrows, and bottoms up. She's the woman-child who never fit because she learned too soon not to be satisfied with mere mortals. People are like fish, she thinks, they only grow to the size of their bowls. She doesn't run for cover, shade her eyes from the blinding sun, or expect to be whisked away on white steeds or black Harley Davidsons. Quantum femme rescues herself. And she knows, every woman needs to be rescued at least once in her life..."
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October 11th, 2004
02:00 pm
Flashes of the life I am meant to live have returned. They are like roadrunners in my peripheral innervision that vanish under scrutiny. But the impression of them lingers, however vaguely, for me to redeem.
It has been difficult wearing a yang suit for so long now, because it requires a pressed disconnect. It finds me more concerned with myself than others, and what a lazy subject that is. In all this self-reference, a million vestiges go unwritten. Yang eyes only see outwards, one thing at a time.
Yang feet are like cement, entitled in every step. They refuse to be moved unless they choose. But there is balance in the Autumn wind. And by balance, I mean willingness to fall. It is a thing of greater courage, to allow oneself to be moved - to where new ground will be found.
The glassy winds of October loosen the dirtysummer slug. As the cold sets into things, turning their inner colours out, making them weak with extraversion, pushing them off branches, suddenly the interior world comes alive again. Possibilities, alight on dismissive winds, fly by our ears ripe for the pluck.
To think of oneself as a tree in the course of seasons, is to notice past the unchanging trunk of it.
Yes, there is that heavy stem that grips down with a hundred thick fingers. But up top, above where most of us can see, there is constant change. We are briefly aware, crossing the threshold, that change is chance - but the room grows familiar fast so it's with fugitive wisdom that we have to prune and hope for growth. The rest is building up of mostly dead weight.
*
I have become unrecognizable. People who once knew me pass me in the street. They look directly at me, even speak to me without knowing who I am. When I say their name, they look ghostly, and have to triple-take to place me. How frightening and compelling anonymity is. Strangers have become my new tribe, since I am one of them, a tourist in the town my former self. Have you lost weight? they'll ask when they finally recognize me, has your voice changed? Yet when they want to know what is new, I can not say a thing.
How can I explain that I am no more in disguise than anyone is in every moment of every day. How can I say that though everything is different, nothing has changed. I have collected a bunch of rejected bits and glued them into so convincing a mosaic that not even I can tell what they were before.
I amble through my old streets and hang in her haunts, but only as a turncoat. Irreversibly so.
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October 6th, 2004
12:01 pm - Queer Reviews
3-episode BBC Series "Tipping the Velvet"
Quite by accident, I discovered this wonderfully rich BBC drama set in the 1890s about a young English woman who falls in love with a drag king and finds her calling. It is based on the novel by Sarah Waters and has all the peaks and pitfalls of any great hero's journey plus some great dirty bits. This story spoke resoundingly to me, more than any of the others.
Showtime series "The L Word"
Okay, so the secret's out. At first I slammed it for predictability and lack of diverse queer girl portrayal, but since then I have become thoroughly addicted. I realise now that seeing one's queerself represented in most any form is a relief. And I am in love with Shane.
"Better Than Chocolate" (with Anne Marie Macdonald!)
This is a completely charming movie that had me sobbing and laughing all at once. It has a diverse cast of queer characters, all of whom are completely lovable and it deals with discrimination, censorship, sexuality, art, coming out, etc... There's something of the Hedwig campiness in this one that makes it light, despite it's tackling of so many challenging issues. I dare you to try not fall in love with it. Canadian, don'tchyaknow.
Aimée & Jaguar
Set in Berlin during the war (1943/44), an intelligent and courageous Jewish woman living under an assumed name falls in love with and seduces a German mother of four. The fast dialogue translated into subtitles made it hard to enjoy the subtleties of this film. There were still some exquisite and painful scenes, given the context, but it didn't rock me.
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October 5th, 2004
10:24 am
Does anyone else find it interesting that ED is both an acronym for Eating Disorder and Erectile Dysfunction...?
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October 3rd, 2004
07:07 pm
Morocco, my oldest friend in this life, said "I like you like this...not just the clothes, but the whole... change. I feel like I've got a new friend."
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October 2nd, 2004
04:31 pm - simply, yay
someone called me sir today.
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September 30th, 2004
10:07 am
Beyond Both: When I meet others now, I never assume. Everyone might be the opposite of what they seem. Everyone contains the potential for both, and beyond.
*
Under the Scope: Yesterday was the first day I wore girl clothes. (Even though the final day was Sunday, the subject of my experiment has become rather attached to hir boi-ish attire.)
As soon as I walked into the office, my coworker Brutus sent me an instant message saying I looked "f*cking hot today". It didn't matter that I felt like crap with a pounding headache and sore throat, or that the only reason I wore tight-fitting cords was because they seemed warm. In the past, I might have even taken this as some sort of compliment. Now it makes me wish I had worn my button-down, and tensor bandage.
I notice how vulnerable it makes me feel in my body, to be watched this way.
*
Consideration: It occurs to me that people of non-visible, other gender must get endlessly frustrated with being assumed straight. I have begun to feel that when men hit on me now, that it isn't their right. How strange that I ever thought otherwise.
*
You Are Not Your Clothes: We choose clothing mostly to project a certain image to the world, the world then responds to it and it is this reflection that we become addicted to. We forget that we are conveying something because we have identified with the attention it gleans. Be it a sexuality, anonymity, be it toughness, niceness, professionality. We think rather; I am those things. But what if circumstances change? Then what are you?
Ever met one of these women who always has a faint smile on her face? That was me. Projecting a disarming niceness, openness everywhere I went. As a boi, others smile first.
*
Seek/Sought: Perhaps the most dramatic shift this project has manifested, is from being sought to seeking. What a difference it makes to be in the position of Seeker. It holds a different kind of power in the sexual dynamic. It doesn't wait around to be noticed. In fact, because it is not the object of desire, it doesn't scrutinize itself at all. And what a weight lifted that is.
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September 29th, 2004
10:10 am
i was thinking i needed some time away from everything to process the impact this project has had on me. i didn't mean i wanted to get sick. ow.
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September 27th, 2004
09:10 am - Day 29 - 30
Painting, writing, dreaming, falling apart.
*
Spent the final day with my boys, Elvis and Morocco. We went for a white tablecloth brunch in the atrium of the Art Gallery. We ate things like souffle and scones and the waiter put our napkins in our laps. We talked about whether there will ever be an art movement again, and if we will ride it on magic white tablecloths. We smoked inside the Henry Moore sculpture and I was suddenly overcome with love for our threesome, a friendship we will surely idealise in our old age. Back in the days when we laughed and made art. We decided we should do a road trip together, keep chronicles.
*
I dream there is a gathering of people in a large house engaging in some sort of game. Rain is there, in the circle, but though she's right in front of me, I don't see her at first. She gets pissed off at me; as if I'm denying her. I've come to submit someone, a man, for entry into the game. Someone puts their hand up on the wall and it seems unstable, loose as a baby tooth. Suddenly, it begins to fall over...revealing children playing in the rafters. But like dominoes, the entire house begins to crumble and fall - splintered wood flies off in every direction as the roof, walls collapse. I scramble out the door and up the back hill, where I watch in the night. To my surprise, some of the house still remains intact.
*
I dream I am pregnant. I am set to have the baby and the doctor is nowhere to be found. The labour hasn't started yet, so I figure I can still buy myself some time.
*
So ya, death and life, destruction and creation, end and beginning. You know, the usual.
*
Also, check out Kael's incredible ftm transition page: http://kpscapes.tripod.com/transindex.html
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September 25th, 2004
12:15 pm - Day 28
joined a gym today, hoping to pack some big guns soon.
next stop, sailor tattoo.
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September 24th, 2004
10:52 am - Day 27
Who Knows? The gender-highlight of this day was when Marie came, as one of a motley group, to make a presentation to our office. When the presentation was through, each member of the group spoke to us individually. She made a b-line for me and gave me, to the great jealousy of my male co-workers, her focused attention. I worry of becoming one of those guys who imagines every woman wants to suck his dick, despite the actuality. But it really seemed, and I'm sorry for the growing sexual confessional tone of this journal, that she was flirting quite generously with me.
The confusion was the lack of obvious context, such as queer club walls and cropped hair. With straightness, it is mostly obvious when two people are flirting with one another, but in the bendy world - you are never quite sure.
She excited me, with her freckles, petite frame and soft eyes. Her Australian accent and the way she rolled her eyes at her boss' obnoxious methods. Later I saw her nestle her head into the crook of another man's neck and began to doubt my radar. But it was me that she locked eyes with as she left.
As Stridal recently said, "I was just remembering that when I first began to really explore my sexuality, I started becoming hyper-conscious of the volume of sexual, energetic exchanges I was having with women and queer people generally. Those exchanges freaked me out at the time because I had this "everyone knows" feeling and I didn't want them to. I wasn't totally comfortable with my sexuality yet. Now I'm very, very happy that my vibe comes across ... but I still find it interesting that people who's minds bend in a certain way can sense where others are at!!"
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09:32 am - Day 26
Nowhere Ready: Sunday will be the last day of the both project. I'm not sure I could make the radical change back to what I was before, even if I wanted to. There was one night last week, when Jane and I were practicing a skit for the Damn My Swell cabaret in which I had to play a woman. I experienced pronounced affliction as the body began to move with a lingering swirl, the swagger evaporated, the knees knocked together. It was like slipping into a familiar old suit. A woman's suit, that is. (I hear they're all the rage.)
It's like I was telling a friend the other day; once you see - you can't unsee. I feel I am just at the hub of it. Just at the threshold of the repairs. There is so much more to explore. I'm nowhere ready to give up the swagger yet. It has just begun to move beyond dress rehearsal, towards integration.
I am excited for the next phase of this, the creative outputting. I am planning for the cabaret and look forward to not being constrained by the program of keeping daily updates so I can write the skits, out myself as the performer. The lover, too.
Mine: On this day, I meet with Stridal, who has a bevy of information about underculture gendertweaks. What inspired me so much about her story, is that she organized a large-scale fetish/bondage ball out in the prairies a few years ago. It was such a huge success that even once she left, the community remained...uh...bonded.
The key to her success with it, and I speak with the cabaret in mind, was that she had a collaborative partner who shared her vision. In this way, I think Jane and I are liabilities to one another. You remember she was strongly asserting her environmental agenda in our last meeting? Though the ecological issues are deeply connected to the issues of gender, esp regarding the culturally impoverished yin, I think they are of dissonant tones.
The brain could easily harmonize them, saying that one is the interior consideration while the other is the active counterpart. But perhaps what is more the issue, is my deep inclination to author something undiluted by the agenda of others. As has been the theme of this month. Nay, lifetime.
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September 23rd, 2004
05:53 pm - Day 25
Rain: It was on my lunchbreak that I decided to visit her. We haven't really seen eachother, excepting the odd run-in, since I quit working for her...which was the day after our first and last date. There were a lot of complications. The main tangle was that, though I was attracted to her, she told me she loved me too quickly.
She was prepared to leave her partner and move into my life before knowing a thing about my interior world. There were drive-by flower bestowings, fervent phonecalls, unexpected gifts.
My heart skips to an outrageous rhythm and my legs have a mind of their own as they take me to her door. Within minutes we are just where we left off; exchanging music gem-finds, talking about architecture, performance art, carpentry, nature. I tell her I thought I might see her at the Savour event. I say "there isn't anywhere for women to go anymore" and she says, "i wouldn't know, since I'm not a lesbian." This may be confusing at first listen, but she is a guy. She asks me with surprise if I'm into girls? Ya, I shrug. Ya.
She writes her number in huge characters on the back of my hand, which I seem to know less and less.
*
What frightens me most about being with women, is being devoured. I mean, not in the good sense.
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10:22 am
1. Think of a word you would use to describe me.
2. Go to Google Image Search and search for that word.
3. Select the picture you see as most fitting, and post it as a reply.
4. Post this meme in your journal.
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