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My mother reads Dear Abby religiously. She’s done it for as long as I can remember, always picking out the “Lifestyle” section of our local daily paper and turning to page B2. Some days growing up, my sister or father would abscond with the section before she got to it to do the crossword or read the comics, but she would keep her eye on it, calling dibs on the section next. As a kid, it didn’t occur to me to question her loyalty to the column, and in fact I blindly followed suit–reading Dear Abby, it seemed, was something one did if one was to be a Woman. I was never all that impressed by the advice “Abby” ( It wasn’t until I was in college, home from a break one year, that I thought to ask my mother why she liked Dear Abby so much. I was sitting at the breakfast table with her some late morning (summer? weekend?), watched her reach for Lifestyle and turn to B2, and was momentarily struck with mild curiosity. “Mom,” I said, “why do you read Dear Abby every day?” She looked up at me, stricken, and sighed. ”Well,” she said, “I guess there’s no reason not to tell you.” When she was 11, she told me, she’d been assaulted by a friend of her parents. At that age in 1964, she didn’t have the language to identify what specifically had happened, she just knew she’d been violated. And she was scared. She knew, vaguely, that babies were made by men “doing things” to women, unspeakable things, and she knew that something unspeakable had been done to her, because the man had told her so, admonishing her that it was their “secret.” She felt isolated, ashamed, and was afraid that it meant she would have a baby. So, unable to talk to her parents and lacking knowledge or awareness of any other resources at her disposal, she wrote to Dear Abby. Asking if she was pregnant. And every day, 11 years old, she read Dear Abby, hoping for a response. And she got one. Dear Abby printed her letter, and wrote a warm and kind response explaining exactly what would’ve had to have happened for her to be pregnant, affirming that no matter what he’d done, it was wrong and not her fault, and telling her about some books that she could check out at the library for girls about their bodies and their sexuality. In printing her letter, Abby made a connection with my mom that she didn’t have in anyone else, validated her when otherwise in her life there was silence, unflinchingly and lovingly spoke to the fears and ignorance of a little girl coming of age in an environment so sexually repressive that she couldn’t even ask what exactly it was that made babies. In printing her letter, Abby unwittingly secured for herself a lifelong follower. It is an emotional connection, my mother told me, that hasn’t wavered, even though (she admitted) the printed responses these days seem more canned. I cried when she told me this. I cried for the lonely and scared little girl in 1964; I cried because suddenly my mother wasn’t just my mother but a complete person whose life began way before I was even imagined; and I cried because I’d silenced myself, too, at 15, perhaps not so ignorant as my mother at 11 but every bit as lost and alone, when I’d been raped. I cried because I hadn’t told my mom, just like she hadn’t told hers, generation after generation recommitting itself to isolation. Wait, no, strike that — we don’t commit ourselves to isolation — isolation is imposed on us by a dominant society that reprimands and shames sexuality expressed, that awkwardly and embarrassedly approaches very limited and basic lessons about sex and sexuality, that embraces tired discourses of women as sexual “gatekeepers,” men as sexual animals, and rigid heterosexuality within the confines of marriage as the only acceptable sexual option, that does not invite questions, conversation, or any sort of genuine human connection around the topics of sex and sexuality. My mother’s and my own fear and isolation after experiencing sexual violence is only one effect of the smothering silence. My fear in high school of being gay and praying to a god I didn’t even believe in to send me a boyfriend was another effect. My complete ignorance of any kind of sex and sexuality other than heterosexual penis-in-vagina-in-and-out-cum-done sex, including ways that non-heterosexuals have sex and specifically have *safe(r)* sex, is another. My going to the public library after I was raped to search for ways to force a miscarriage in case I was pregnant, rather than asking my mom for help or my health teacher or anyone for crying out loud, is yet another. And these are just the ways that a dearth of information and conversation about healthy sex and sexuality affected me. My heart hurts for all the other kids and teens out there now who are suffering through the silence in their own unique ways. Scarleteen is a website that is breaking through all of that, providing a robust, inviting, kind, and healthy space for teenagers to get answers, make connections, and feel supported in all aspects of their awakening sexualities. They need support to stay on the web, and kids need them. I needed them. My mom needed them. If you can, give a little bit. If you can’t, tell people in your life, especially teenagers, that the website exists. You know, just slip it casually into conversation… teenagers don’t respond well to directions ;) *** This post is part of the Scarleteen Sex-Ed Blog Carnival. See aagblog.com for a full list of participating blogs! There have been a lot of really fantastic posts so far.
The other night, I attended a volunteer orientation for the Frameline queer film festival. (You get a voucher to see a film for every volunteer shift you take.) There were probably a hundred fellow volunteers, and most of them were men. But when the volunteer coordinator stepped up to address us, I was surprised – because the volunteer coordinator was a woman. A queer woman. As in, asymmetrical haircut, half a shaved head, totally tatted, hip young San Francisco queer woman. And after a few moments of being surprised, I became perplexed, because after all, it is a queer film festival. So why the surprise at the volunteer coordinator being a queer dyke? It reminded me of the feeling I got when I first visited my women’s college campus as a junior in high school. Until I visited, I had been pretty vehemently opposed to attending a women’s college. I had thought it would lack diversity (which in retrospect seems laughable). But when I visited, I was suddenly struck – wow, this all exists for the education of women. The male professors and campus police and facilities staff etc., despite being men, were working at an institution that educated women. Women matter! Holy shit! And it dawned on me that it had been so internalized in me that women don’t matter that I was actually surprised and delighted to be confronted with evidence to the contrary. And I got the same feeling at the very first Dyke March I ever attended in San Francisco, in 2006. I was with my ex-girlfriend at the time, and I remember holding her hand, processing down Valencia, feeling giddy from all the solidarity and empowerment I felt, due in no small part to the fact that there were gay men hanging out of windows, waving rainbow flags and hoisting banners that read “FAGS <3 DYKES” and the like. And I was all, “omg! Gay men love us! They care! Whoaaaaa!” And somehow I got the same feeling while at this orientation – because here was a group consisting largely of middle-aged-ish white gay men and they were all paying attention to this queer-as-fuck dyke, who, by the way, was absolutely hilarious and cute and rocked her job. I felt somehow vicariously visible. And it struck me again, as it did at my first Dyke March and when I first visited my women’s college, that I’m so accustomed to women being invisible to men in any way that’s not sexual. And it’s so consistently ingrained in women that we’re only useful to men as sexual objects that it surprises me every time I find myself in a situation in which I’m being genuinely appreciated, as a woman (or in which women in general are being genuinely appreciated), by a man for a non-sexual reason. And it makes me wish that it would happen more often. Not just to me, on an individual level, but publicly, and in media, and in culture-at-large. You see, gay men and gay women are natural “bedmates” (har har).* We are among the few combinations of adult human beings that (in general) have a non-romantic/non-sexual connection. And there’s something really special about this bond, I think, that goes largely ignored. And it’s different from the relationship between gay men and straight women, which, if judging by the connotation lent by the term “fag hag” alone, is largely a mutually objectifying relationship (and, yes, that’s a gross oversimplification, but fag hags are not the topic of this post, and the relationship between gay men/straight women has been addressed again and again elsewhere). Maybe I’ll write about my thoughts on that some other time. No, the point is, I wish the common bond between gay men and gay women were more acknowledged and respected. When I went to Berlin’s pride celebration in 2007, I was struck by how different it felt from San Francisco’s pride. In San Francisco, there’s Dyke March of course, and then Dykes on Bikes lead the main parade the following day. In Berlin, there’s neither – and without the women-centric portions of the celebration, I realized how gay-male-centric the whole celebration felt and was. Specifically, how middle-to-upper-middle-class-white-gay-male-centric. At the time, I remember having conversations with the folks I went with (a mix of genders and sexual orientations) about how these men were taking up all the “space,” probably without even realizing it. Gay pride parade means gay (male) parade. Gay bar means gay (male) bar. Gay issues are gay (male) issues. Gay white men are the default Gay, just like straight white men are the default Human in our society. And obviously, yes, gay men’s issues are super important. Of course they are. It’s just a matter of gay women’s issues also being important. And being similar, yes, but also largely different. The problem is, though, that there have been so few studies on lesbian/queer women’s issues specifically that we don’t even know what our issues are and what distinguishes them from gay men’s issues. And this, of course, isn’t the fault of gay men individually or even as an entity. It’s the fault of a society that naturalizes maleness as the default human, and that renders women a sub-category of human. (Same goes for queer people of color – their issues are woefully under-studied too, and POC are always just sub-categories of a humanity in which White is default and “normal.”) So, right, individual gay men are busy taking up their own issues and fighting their own battles and taking care of their own survival, which completely totally makes sense. And yet I think it’s really sad that the bond between gay men and gay women is so often overlooked, or dismissed, or undervalued. I think it has tremendous value, as we are perhaps each other’s best natural allies. Sex and romance doesn’t get in between us, not personally and not in terms of prescribed roles. When I see a gay man, I see someone who both understands what it feels like to be queer in this straight world, and who will relate to me inherently free of any sort of sexual tension or sexual judgment. We understand what it feels like to be otherized. The homophobia we each experience often looks and feels different, sure, but when all is said and done, it’s the same animal. We can learn a lot from each other. I have learned a lot from my gay guy friends, and I count one of them as among the best friendships I have. I hate this phrase, but it just is what it is. There’s nothing underneath, no undercurrents, no invisible social glue that’s trying to glue us together in awkward ways. We just get each other. And I wish this were more typical, not just on an individual level but on a socially recognized level. Because then, maybe I wouldn’t be so surprised by gay men holding “fags <3 dykes” signs, or laughing at a queer gal’s jokes. Has anyone else felt this way? Or is this peculiar to me? Maybe in other communities, gay guy/gal crossover is much more common. But even if that’s the case, where are our friendships ever portrayed in the media (TV, books, news outlets…)? Right, exactly. Never. And why do I not know a single gay male blogger? Where are they all? I just want to be friends, guys! What’s your experience? *In this post, I’m addressing specifically gay cismen and gay ciswomen — and yeah, I know that leaves out a lot of people, including queer but not-gay-identified folks, as well as genderqueer and trans people… Sorry about that, this is just what’s most familiar to me. I’m a few days late (hello 2010!), but, well, as they say: better late than never. (Funny aside: when I was visiting visiting my family for Christmas, my brother and sister and I one day decided somehow (don’t remember why) that we would talk to each other only in cliches, idioms, and proverbs. Easier said than done! Ha. Ha. But certainly provided some entertainment.) Anyway. I’m not usually a fan of reviews and resolutions, but I figure I’ll do one this year because (1) this has been quite an eventful year for me, and some of it’s made it on my blog and some of it hasn’t, so this will be a good way for y’all to come up to speed on my life where it’s at (Cliff notes, if you will), and (2) I’m hoping that 2010 will also be eventful and transforming for me, and so I’d like to make note of some of the changes that I’d like to see. Not so much resolutions as goals. So, in 2009, I: - fell in love with mi’lady. We started dating in November of 2008, but I definitely consider the falling in love part to have happened in 2009. It’s been my best relationship yet, without a doubt, and the sex has been the best sex I’ve had too. With her I feel safe to be my best and also sometimes (unfortunately) my worst, with the confidence that we’ll come out on top. With her I can communicate better than I’ve ever been able to communicate, and she inspires and motivates me to be the best person and lover I can be. There are ups and downs, of course, as there always are in any relationship, but I am deeply content and very, very excited about what’s to come for us this year. - moved out of my former flat in the Outer Sunset in San Francisco, where I was living with a friend from college (a rocky situation at its worst, but absolutely lovely at its best), when she left SF to go to medical school in July. I moved into a tiny flat in the Mission with a wonderful roommate who has become one of my best friends here. Living with roommates I think can be very tricky, and our roommate relationship has its sources of tension and frustration, but we communicate through them pretty well, and I feel very lucky to be here. - started taking anti-depressants for my PMDD (pre-menstrual dysphoria disorder), which was diagnosed in July after a particularly scary episode during which I was afraid I would actually do something really dangerous. I’ve had an interesting time with the medication, which I’ve discussed a bit on here, and I’ve actually stopped taking it temporarily because it was interfering with my orgasms (!!), but it was a really important step in my self-care regiment and in my acknowledgement that sometimes, it is really, really important to seek outside help. - learned that my parents are getting divorced. Still processing this one, and I imagine I will be for quite some time. - started coming to terms with my identity as femme. This has been thrilling! I don’t think I need to elaborate on this here at all, because I’ve expounded on it quite a bit on this blog already — just check out the archives. - have been at the same job all year, and have become increasingly dissatisfied with it. I almost decided to leave it recently, and then realized that even acknowledging to myself that it is in fact my choice to be there (and that there are major advantages to being there, such as: the income, the fact that it’s a job I can leave behind when I leave the office) was enough to help me feel un-stuck for now. - applied to several graduate programs in both public policy and cultural anthropology. I’ve yet to hear back from any of them, and don’t expect to hear anything until March at the earliest, but this is exciting for me and has also helped me feel more direction and purpose in my life. - started working as a volunteer crisis counselor at a local rape crisis center, which has been deeply gratifying (while certainly not cheerful), has helped me feel more rooted here, and has been the catalyst for several new friendships. I haven’t written here too much about the processing I’ve been doing surrounding my own sexual assault(s), but I do plan to do so in the (near?) future, as it’s been a pretty profound influence on my life and my thinking and my sense of direction. It’s hard to write about, but it’s so so so important to me that I can’t imagine not doing so at some point. - erased most of this blog and more or less started over! Writing here in the latter half of this year has been a source of comfort, comradery, introspection and motivation for me. Thanks y’all so much for reading! And in 2010, I hope to: - continue to fall in love and deepen my relationship with mi’lady. I’m looking forward to more great sex, more power play, even better communication as we learn each other through and through and more and more, mini-retreats (that hopefully won’t be too expensive), accompanying her to her sister’s wedding where she’ll be outing herself to all of her extended family and family friends, and maybe even moving in together (!) (but we’ll wait to see what my grad school plans are before we really talk about that seriously). - start graduate school (speaking of). - leave my job (which should be concurrent with grad school, but in case I don’t get into any of the programs I’m hoping to enroll in, I STILL would like to leave my job). - continue to take care of myself and be strong enough to seek help in taking care of myself, from medication and therapy, but also from intellectual, spiritual, and physical mentors, as well as friends and family. - come out to my grandparents. There. I said it. I made it a goal. - continue to write here and use it as a platform for airing my relationship-, life-, and self-processing, and continue to strengthen my internet bonds. Happy new year! In German, they say “guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr,” which means “good slip into the new year” and I love that, it makes the actual moment, the ball-drop at midnight, seem less critical and stretches it out, makes it seem softer and more gradual and a little whimsical, whoopsydaisical, and allows for some glitches and mess-ups. So, I hope you all have a good slip into 2010! We started talking a few days ago and continued talking last night about how to make sure sex is a central part of our relationship, and not just an incidental part. What I mean by that is this: When you first start seeing someone, it’s all about sex. Or mostly, anyway. Obviously you’re attracted to her as a whole person; she makes you laugh, you have conversations about God and past relationships and what your favorite drink is, you share an interest in music and books, you can rib on the northeast, since you’re both from there originally. But if you get right down to it, it’s about the sex. Every gesture of her hands, every toss of her hair, every sideways glance makes your heart thud and your pussy pulse. And when she touches you, even casually, accidentally, you swoon. You’re liquid in the lap of Eros. Luckily for you and everything else in your life, this isn’t indefinite. The time returns when you can be in her presence without feeling completely dysfunctional, you can exchange emails at work without the rest of the day becoming a fluster of distraction and desire. It’s lucky for your relationship, too, because you can finally get to know and trust and love each other deeply, talk about difficult things and fun things, share stress and anxiety and joy and excitement, unwind together, and (perhaps most importantly) get some sleep. With your bodies warm against each other, of course. But a side effect of this natural progression of a healthy relationship can be, if you don’t pay attention, that you forget about sex. Or rather, you don’t forget, but sex becomes The Thing You Do In The Bedroom When You Want To Be Intimate Or Just Want An Orgasm. It’s The Thing You Do At The End Of The Day When Everything Else Is Taken Care Of. It’s like “recess” for elementary school kids. A regular occurence, but distinctly separate from everything else you do. For kids at school, it’s workworkworkworkworkPLAYworkworkwork. For you two sexy partnered people, it’s workworkworkworkworkSEXworkworkwork. And, YAY!, we have great sex. It’s not boring, it’s not mediocre, it’s not slowing down, it’s not tired or old or mechanical or artificial or put on or anything like that. There are days, sure, when it’s kinda like “ok we’re both super tired, let’s just make out a little and get each other off” but even those days are intimate and binding. We desire each other. But, I guess that rather than the workworkworkworkworkSEXworkworkwork model, I’d rather cultivate a model that looks more like sEwoRXkeskoRseoSEXworsekWORKkerweX. Um, does that make sense? I definitely still want there to be uninterrupted, undistracted, maybe even scheduled SEX time. Time when there’s nothing on our minds but fucking. And, to that end, I want there to be time for just “work” (and that doesn’t just mean “job” work, but anything else, too, like writing, or doing music, or cooking dinner, or fixing the heater, or whatever it is that we do). But I also really want sex to be integral and fully integrated in my day. So that it’s not just cordoned off into its own little section of the day. In other words: I want to practice eroticizing the daily grind. For example: cook in a corset, garters, thigh-high seamed stockings, and four-inch heels. Why not? Rather than the more typical “I’m feeling horny, let’s do some role-playing, how about I’m your submissive wife and I cook whatever you want while you boss me around,” let’s make it “I’m feeling hungry, so I’m going to go put on some lingerie and head to the kitchen.” Another example: get a piece of jewelry that designates a particular role, so that if I, say, wear a particular ring on a certain finger, it means that I’m sexually available the whole time I’m wearing it, and so I’ve got a constant physical reminder of “SEX!” on my body during the day. Or even a gesture, a particular innocuous gesture (biting my lower lip?) could be re-identified as meaning “I want to fuck you hard” or “I want your giant cock inside me.” I think Sinclair‘s idea of homework is a perfect example of this, too, because it sends the erotic outside of the we’re-fucking-here-and-now, extends it beyond the moments in the bedroom, and builds it into the regular structure of the day. The reason we’re talking about this is not, I repeat, because our sex is getting boring or tired; it’s not because I want to “spice things up.” It’s because I think our mainstream culture has a way of stifling sexual energy – we’re not supposed to talk about sex in public, with anyone other than our closest friends (if even them), and sex is supposed to take place privately and discreetly. (And, hypocritically, it’s simultaneously obsessed with sex.) But that’s not what I want. I want to cultivate an active sexual energy that isn’t constrained by the bedroom door or the time of the day, and that can be nurtured and activated throughout the day by various things. That way, when I finally do get to have sex, I’m not starting at 0 (or 5 or 10) and going to 60; rather, I’ll already be going at 30 or 45. That’s a whole lot easier to manage, frankly, when I’m tired and stressed and anxious and the thought of needing to find the momentum to get from 0 to 60 is daunting. And on that note, I’m going to go write mi’lady a dirty email ;) A long, long time ago—back in August?—I got an email from a reader named Asha, (1) asking where I came up with the name “alphafemme” and (2) saying that before she’d even read any of my blog, she felt a click—the word alphafemme, she thought, worked really well for her, and would I be offended if she appropriated it for herself. I promised her a post on the subject, and it is woefully overdue. Let me first address the second thing—if the word alphafemme seems like a good fit for you in your identity, and even if your reasons for finding it a good fit are completely different from the reasons I will articulate below, by all means, if it feels good to you, use it. I think there’s a huge difference between deciding that alphafemme works as an identity label for you (which I would not call appropriation), and deciding you’re also going to publish a blog under the title “alphafemme” and write about (many of) the same things I write about or telling people that you’re me (which I would call appropriation). I would guess that most people are not inclined to do the latter, but I fully endorse the former! Run away with it people! And now I’ll go back to the first thing, which is where I came up with the name “alphafemme” in the first place. I address this a bit on my About page (which needs updating anyway), but let me go into a bit more detail here. After the obligatory coming out identity crisis, which I think many (if not most) queer women go through at some point or other (and I think this in itself is fascinating, and I totally want to write about this too), I started grappling with that all-important question: Who Am I? And maybe I have less self-awareness than most, but it took me quite a lot of trial and error to come to an understanding of my identity that felt right. I guess that was part of what I wanted this blog to do for me, to help me go through it all and decide what works for me and what doesn’t. And while I’ve (for now) finally settled on femme as a sort of umbrella-word for how I identify, it was hardly easy to come to terms with that. I’m sure part of the insecurity in identifying as femme was internalized sexism, that some of the fear had to do with not wanting to choose what might seem to others to be “unenlightened” or, worse, hurting feminism. I’ve pretty much gotten over that now (see my post on femininity for a discussion of that), thank goodness, and am now fiercely, comfortably, and even subversively feminine. But another major qualm I had with identifying as femme was this fear that I somehow didn’t actually know what femme meant, and that I would be scoffed at by other self-identified femmes for identifying as such. (“YOU’RE not femme, you have short hair!” or “but I hardly ever see you in dresses! that’s not really femme!” or “femmes don’t strap on! femmes don’t do the fucking!”) In San Francisco, it seems to me like everyone I’ve met who identifies as femme fits a certain image: dyed blonde or raven black hair, porcelain white skin, bright red lipstick, fishnets, tattoos… And believe me, these ladies are smokin’, but it’s just not my look. And so I was like, well, if that’s what femme is, then I’m not femme. (There are, of course, many other femme-identified ladies in SF who do also do not fit that particular description, as I’ve come to realize. Yay!) And yet it still appealed to me. I still felt that my mild obsession with high heeled-peep-toe pumps and my growing infatuation with cooking still somehow made femme the right word for me. But since I was still kind of hesitant, it needed a qualifier. Something that made my identity mine.
It came to me last summer when I was watching old episodes of The L Word with a friend of mine, reminiscing about the pre-Dana’s-death days of the show. Or, rather, it came to my friend. We were watching one of the episodes where Bette is dealing with the protestors to her gallery’s art show. My friend turned to me and said, “she reminds me of you, she’s such an alpha female.” “What does THAT mean?” I asked. “Well… you’re strong, and fierce, and driven, and you’re always on top of everything, always in control. And you dress sharply feminine, powerful. But you’re also vulnerable, I think, I mean right? Don’t you sometimes just want someone to hold you and have someone else be the stronger one?” And oh. my. god. YES. She was so right. I think my similarities to Bette end there (I’m not a raging bitch who cheats on my lovers in order to maintain a facade of Control Freak, and unfortunately I look nothing like her), but such as they are, the similarities ring so true. And “alpha” is an excellent way of describing me. I’m confident in my intellect, and I am meticulous, in control, ambitious, and driven. But I’m not just alpha. I’m alphafemme. I’m an alpha who wants to be enfolded at the end of the day. I’m an alpha who loves to pretend I’m a 50s housewife, a la Betty Draper, but happier (I’m currently obsessed with Mad Men). I’m an alpha with soft eyes and a maternal edge. I’m an alpha, with femme. Alphafemme. Of course, to you, it can mean anything you want it to. If it conjures anything else for you, please share! I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while, for months, really, and then when G posted about it recently it was just the shove I needed to actually sit down and write it. There are so many layers of femme (in)visibility to me. There’s how we’re seen (or not) by straight people, by society at large. There’s how we’re seen (or not) by fellow queers. There’s how we’re seen by fellow dykes. And how we’re seen by each other. And of course, there’s how we see ourselves. And in all of this, there’s the personal, and there’s the political. But I don’t really know how to write about it except in terms of my own experience. And of course, my experience isn’t representative of anything except itself. But I think there are probably parallels and similarities to and “mmhmm”s and head nods from other femme-identified folks out there. It starts with not being able to see myself. That must be at the very root of it. As a little girl, I loved to play house, and I always wanted to be the mom. I loved to play school and wanted to be the teacher. I loved tea parties and dollhouses and dresses and patent leather shoes, I loved American Girl dolls and dress-up and imagining my future wedding. I was obsessed with Queen Elizabeth II as a little girl (I had a book about her written by her nanny) and with figure skaters and ballerinas. I fit snugly into my gender box. No questions asked. Come junior high, I decided to start having crushes on the boys in my classes. Each year on the first day of school, I would scan homeroom for that year’s candidates. I carefully weighed my options, and within 20 minutes or so had selected the object of my external focus for the year. Seventh grade: Dillon. Eighth grade: Ryan. Ninth grade: Jason. In tenth grade I started dating, but never really cared much for the guys. In fact I think I was somewhat scared of them. Touching them, kissing them, doing stuff with them made me feel weird and nervous. I’m not going to go over my whole coming out story here, but suffice it to say it took me quite a long time to come out to myself. I started questioning that year, tenth grade. I had a friend who I was in love with, but I couldn’t quite believe it. There was no way I was gay. It just didn’t make sense. I was a girl. I was supposed to like boys. That was that. Understanding of sexuality is so, so so tied up with gender. That’s really what makes femmes so invisible. To ourselves as well as to others. There often aren’t any outward signs that we digress from the norm. They’re all inward. And society tells us (all of us, not just femmes) all the time that the inward things? Are figments of our imagination. Depression, addiction, anxiety, sexual orientation — it’s fabricated, it’s (no pun intended) just in our minds. You can’t get an MRI that says “whoops, there’s some depression in there, we’ll have to medicate you” or a pap smear that tells you “yep, yer gay alright, no two ways about it.” So unless you look different, unless there’s some physical proof of it (whatever it is), there’s plenty of room for people to doubt you. And judge you. And feel justified in doubting and judging. Because all that stuff? It’s in your mind. So I can tell you you’re wrong. That’s what I, as a femme, was up against. Convincing myself that, actually, no, I’m right. That gut feeling that made me ask my mom, as an 11-year-old, whether it was normal to like other girls? That was right. Even though I liked ruffles and paper dolls and the Sound of Music. It took me so. long. to learn how to trust that feeling. I guess I’m still learning, really. In my first years after coming out for good, I went through all kinds of identity shifts, trying to settle on the self-expression that felt right for me. I just didn’t think it could be that I was both totally feminine and gay. I thought I was just fooling myself that I was gay. To be honest, I sometimes still do have those moments of doubt. “How is it possible that I’m gay?” And, dude, I’m gay. I fuckin’ love pussy. The best compliment from mi’lady is when she looks at me in wonder, after a good fuck, and says, “you’re so gay.” In fact, I think that’s probably the best compliment from anyone. Even people who mean it as an insult. To be recognized as gay makes me puff out my chest and stand up straighter. Really. I just want to belong here. I want people to know that I’m a member of the club. Sometimes, I do get some sort of signal, a wink maybe, and I just about die, every time. Especially when it’s the older, butch lesbians, in their late 30s and 40s. A wink from them is so gratifying. Not transgressive, not presumptuous, not inappropriate. Affirming. I’ve spent up enough time and energy proving myself to myself, you know? I don’t have much leftover to try to prove anything to anyone else. So I don’t try, not much anyway. And for the most part, I don’t let the invisibility get to me. But those moments of visibility are all the more precious because of it. Mi’lady isn’t butch. (If she were, there’s no way in hell I would call her mi’lady.) She’s not femme, either. Not particularly. Not the way I am. She doesn’t really fit into any sort of butch<–>femme spectrum at all. Maybe she’s androgynous, though somehow I’m uncomfortable with that word too to describe her. We talked about it a bit on Sunday, and didn’t really come up with a label that fit her precisely. But what she definitely is is a dyke. I guess her gender energy is somewhat akin to Shane from The L Word. (Though I know Shane was commonly referred to as butch, I really don’t think she was, or at least not in the way that I understand butch.) Mi’lady isn’t quite the same sort of aloof player that Shane was portrayed as, and she’s much more outgoing and free with her emotions. Allows herself to be more vulnerable than Shane’s character. But she has a similar posture, a similar sort of slightly disheveled look, a similar style. Another stylistic reference would be Tegan & Sara — she’s got a sort of punkish female androgyny–tattoo, skinny jeans, chucks, indie t-shirts, black eyeliner. And I wouldn’t say our relationship feels particularly butch-femme, either. It’s not that clearly defined. In some ways it does feel very butch-femme. I’m very much a nurturer, in that I’m constantly doing little domestic things. Cooking, tidying, grooming, both for me and for her. I’m a multi-tasker and I’m very attentive to detail. I like things just so. In that regard I can be a care-taker of her. Because she’s disorganized and rumpled and a bit chaotic and kind of messy. Not at all detail-oriented. She’s fantastically creative, and I help keep her grounded. In a femme way. She is a nurturer too, in a different sense, maybe in more of a (dare I say?) butch sense. She’s always “big spoon,” and we almost always fall asleep that way, with her enfolding me in her arms. She’s very affirmative with words, telling me often how sexy or beautiful I am or how much she likes what I cook or how hot those heels look, in a way that affirms and strengthens my femininity. She was the one who pursued me from the get-go, bold and a risk-taker to my subtle flirting. But in otherways, we’re not very butch-femme. Sexually, for example, we have great sex in which she’s more dominant and I’m submissive, and great sex in which I’m more dominant and she’s submissive, and great sex that doesn’t have bottom/top roles at all. I love strapping on and fucking her with a cock (she loves it too), and don’t particularly care for the reverse (she’s open to it if I want it but isn’t insistent on it). And aside from the ways I articulated above, there isn’t really any other way that our relationship feels gendered. We’re both women. I wonder, in a way, whether I’m most suited to a butch, considering the extent to which I think I’m really femme. For example, mi’lady doesn’t really have (or at least hasn’t at any point articulated, to me or to herself) a matching and inverted fantasy of being a “protector” and having a “wife,” the way I’ve got this fantasy of having a protector and being a wife. But… I love her. She makes me laugh, she helps me move beyond details and be flexible, she motivates me to break out of my comfort zone a little bit and then gives me room to go back in, she challenges me. And really, I don’t think it’s necessary for our fantasies to match up. I think as long as we’re willing and able to work out the kinks and figure out our dynamics and make sure we’re both giving what we’re able to getting what we need, then we should be ok. And, you know, she really does love it when I cook for her :) It was the best welcome home she’s ever had, she said. After all my thinking and processing last week about my femmeyness, I allowed myself to just revel in it. I spent all day Sunday preparing for her to come home. I booked a Zipcar to pick her up at the airport when her flight came in at 6. (Typically we would just take BART, and I had told her I would meet her to help her carry her stuff home… the car was a surprise!) I got my nails done in the morning (fingers and toes!)–short, a little bit squared, bright red polish. Paraffin wax, so my skin was silky smooth. I’d gotten a fresh legs and bikini wax on Saturday, so that I’d be ready and smooth for her. I planned out Sunday evening’s meal, bought the necessary ingredients on Saturday, and brought them over to her place on Sunday afternoon to begin prep before her flight came in. AND, on Sunday morning after the manicure and pedicure, I went to my favorite lingerie boutique in San Francisco, Dollhouse Bettie (they specialize in vintage and pinup lingerie), to make sure her welcome home would be *extra* special. (Dollhouse Bettie’s website doesn’t have a link to the piece I bought, so I found a link to it elsewhere instead. It’s got gorgeous detailing, and I got nude seamed nylons instead of black ones because I really wanted the basque to speak for itself. With these shoes and my full-sleeve black leather gloves from Doncaster, this is a stunning get-up.) And it was such a wonderful day, from start to finish. Waking up and knowing that I was going to be getting my nails done, going lingerie shopping, cooking, and seeing/fucking mi’lady for the first time in a week was such an amazing feeling. I don’t think there’s anything I’d have rather done on a gorgeous Sunday. Seriously. And it all went off without a hitch. The only thing I think could have gone smoother was cutting the pumpkin. Pumpkin soup was one of my menu items (and as SOON as she saw it she was really, really excited… she loves pureed vegetable soups), but I’d forgotten how ridiculously hard it is to cube and peel a raw pumpkin. SO HARD. I wrestled with it for a good hour. But it was so ridiculously worth it. It was really, really good, if I do say so myself. And the recipe is really simple — really all that’s in it is pumpkin, onion, a tiny bit of garlic, bay leaves, a bit of orange rind, butter, vegetable stock, and a tiny bit of milk. I garnished it with fresh chives. And that’s it. The best part though? Was mi’lady telling me that the pumpkin soup she’d had earlier that week at an upscale restaurant in Boston with a client “wasn’t even half as good as yours. Well okay, maybe half. But seriously, only half!” The other menu item was risotto with leeks, spinach, white wine, and a little bit of plain yoghurt. I love cooking. The best part of everything was that she just felt adored. I love that. Love it. It turns me on and makes me stand up straight. I’m doing what I do best, what I love to do. Fuck yeah. From getting picked up by me at the airport in a car, to having dinner planned and prepared to the AMAZING fucking hot sex we had, it was the best welcome home she’d ever had. And I’m responsible for it :) Whoopee! I’m going to Mexico! Wednesday is my birthday. Wednesday is also the day that mi’lady and I hop on a (direct) flight from San Francisco to … Puerto Vallarta! Yesterday, in preparation, I got a pedicure, and my toes are now painted a suitably tropical color. Late August is not, I must say, the best time to be going to the tropics. We’ll be there until Sunday (short and sweet) and the current weather forecast predicts thunderstorms every day. Ha. Coming from the bay area, though, thunderstorms are a rare commodity, so even if we do get them every day, it’ll be out of the ordinary and worth flying south for. Plus, if it rains, it’ll just mean we’ll have to have more sex! Speaking of sex, we’ve now each read one of The Topping Book (me) and The Bottoming Book (her). We do plan to swap and each read the other as well, but it’s a good start. We’ve talked about it some, and plan on talking about it (and doing other than just talking, ahem) some more while on vacation. We’ve both agreed that there are things we really like about the books and things we really dislike. We like that they have made us think about how vital communication is to having satisfying, gratifying, and truly consensual sex. If I’m going to top her in a way that works, I have to first know what she wants from me, what turns her on most, what she thinks it means for me to top her, what it means to her to be submissive, what her limits are, et cetera. And conversely, she has to know what I want from topping, what it means to me to be a dominant, what expectations and needs I have from topping, and what turns ME on. I mean, right? It sounds obvious, talking about what you want. But really, it’s a lot to talk about. Certainly we’ve talked about our sex before–we talk about it all the time in fact. We generally talk afterwards about what worked and didn’t work, whether it was good, how it felt… We communicate during sex as well (and I find it to be absolutely a necessary part of good sex). But neither of us has really thought to really sit down, maybe even with pre-thought-out notes (!!), or even a pen and paper to jot things down, and truly discuss and understand each other’s desires, fantasies, and needs. I’m really, really excited about doing that. One of the things that both of us disliked about the books, on the other hand, was that they seem very geared to people in some defined BDSM “Scene” whose goal it is to “Play” with other individuals who are also in this defined “Scene.” Mi’lady and I are monogamous and are not particularly interested in having “Playdates” with others, certainly not at this point and I’m not sure about ever. If our relationship ever evolves in that direction, then sure, I’ll consider it at that point. But I don’t think that that direction of development has to be a given, and that exploring BDSM with a partner has to involve this sort whole sort of BDSM culture. I don’t want to really go to dungeons, or have sex in front of an audience, or switch partners all the time. To me, sex and romantic love are very connected, and I don’t know that I want to try to unconnect them. (And additionally, I tend to only feel developed romantic love for one person at a time.) But the books, to me, seemed to implicitly enforce this idea that in order to do BDSM the Right Way, you have to be willing to open yourself up to this whole new way of contextualizing sex. And it’s not that I’m not open to it. I’m certainly very open to it on an intellectual level. But it’s a culture that just doesn’t feel like a good fit for me. And I just don’t agree with the notion that if you’re interested in BDSM, or if you identify as Kinky, then you must also somehow belong to this Culture-Capital-C. Anyway… hmmm. I’d like to develop those thoughts some more later. When I’m not at work, haha. In any case, though, I’m sure you’ll hear more on this, if nothing else in the form of a full vacation report! |
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