National Coming Out Day [observed]
Oct. 10th, 2006 09:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wisdomeagle previously: check the tag.
Yep, still queer.
I identify as a lesbian because I am a female person who's physically, emotionally, sexually, romantically attracted to other female people.
I identify as queer because my sexuality is not normal, typical, normative, or standard.
I identify as a dyke because I choose to reclaim words that have been used against me. I am not a bulldyke or this thing you call "butch," but I have been called a dyke, and the word is mine.
I identify as femme because, comparatively, I am. I don't do a lot of intentional work to construct my gender, but what shakes out is a feminine femme who doesn't care about clothes or makeup or her own appearance much at all. I am and can be attracted to both butch and femme women.
This year, I am no longer identifying as sekretily bisexual, because, while I am theoretically capable of being attracted to male people, it hasn't happened in awhile, and I feel it's more important to acknowledge my lesbianism (and yes, especially in a generation where many, many of my peers identify as bi) than my potential attraction to male people.
My self-identity is more than a matter of statistics, ~13 female people vs 2 male in eight years. My self-identity is about more than the girl I'm dating now or the girls I've dated in the past. My identity, my sexuality, has defined my life, the people and events that have been most important to me, for my entire teenaged experience. I identify as lesbian because attending a church that was not queer-friendly would be a deal-breaker for me these days. I identify as lesbian because I can't forget middle school or high school. I identify as lesbian because I can. I identify as lesbian because I can't not. I identify as a lesbian because of the faces and bodies that make me take notice, because of the fear in my gut when I tell someone I have a girlfriend, because of the moment of surprised discovery on the schoolbus eight and a half years ago when I was in love for the first time.
[And with that, folks, I'm off! I'm leaving in about half an hour and will be back on Friday -- I'm spending Thursday night with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hermionesviolin after an exciting week of Nat'l Coming Out festivities at school. As always, email will be the best way to reach me during the week! Try to get by without me, okay? <3<3, Ari]
Yep, still queer.
I identify as a lesbian because I am a female person who's physically, emotionally, sexually, romantically attracted to other female people.
I identify as queer because my sexuality is not normal, typical, normative, or standard.
I identify as a dyke because I choose to reclaim words that have been used against me. I am not a bulldyke or this thing you call "butch," but I have been called a dyke, and the word is mine.
I identify as femme because, comparatively, I am. I don't do a lot of intentional work to construct my gender, but what shakes out is a feminine femme who doesn't care about clothes or makeup or her own appearance much at all. I am and can be attracted to both butch and femme women.
This year, I am no longer identifying as sekretily bisexual, because, while I am theoretically capable of being attracted to male people, it hasn't happened in awhile, and I feel it's more important to acknowledge my lesbianism (and yes, especially in a generation where many, many of my peers identify as bi) than my potential attraction to male people.
My self-identity is more than a matter of statistics, ~13 female people vs 2 male in eight years. My self-identity is about more than the girl I'm dating now or the girls I've dated in the past. My identity, my sexuality, has defined my life, the people and events that have been most important to me, for my entire teenaged experience. I identify as lesbian because attending a church that was not queer-friendly would be a deal-breaker for me these days. I identify as lesbian because I can't forget middle school or high school. I identify as lesbian because I can. I identify as lesbian because I can't not. I identify as a lesbian because of the faces and bodies that make me take notice, because of the fear in my gut when I tell someone I have a girlfriend, because of the moment of surprised discovery on the schoolbus eight and a half years ago when I was in love for the first time.
[And with that, folks, I'm off! I'm leaving in about half an hour and will be back on Friday -- I'm spending Thursday night with
hermionesviolin after an exciting week of Nat'l Coming Out festivities at school. As always, email will be the best way to reach me during the week! Try to get by without me, okay? <3<3, Ari]
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-10 02:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-15 04:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-10 02:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-15 04:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-10 02:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-15 04:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-10 03:30 pm (UTC)like:
[--------------------------------*-----]
straight..............................gay
is you.
[--------------*-----------------------]
straight..............................gay
is me.
i don't think that anyone ever falls exactly on either end.
but duh, of course i'd consider you a lesbian before i'd consider you some silly bisexual. ugh, i hate that term, really. it has such a terrible stigma from being overused by "experimenting" slutty college girls. =*( i don't really like even identifying myself as bisexual, 'cause it just sounds like i'm calling myself something i'm not. i just like people. damnit.
either way, i'm proud of you and i love you, and i really miss talking to you.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-10 04:51 pm (UTC)"Lesbian" and "gay" still have such terrible stigma from rampant negative use by the homophobic (if they didn't, we wouldn't need a National Coming Out Day). When bisexuals themselves are afraid to use the term because of the stigma given to it by others, even among an accepting group, it makes me really sad. We take back horrible words like "dyke" and "faggot" but we're still so afraid to identify as bisexual, because bisexuals are "not real" or "whorish" or "fence-sitters." I often find bisexuals are the least comfortable coming out amongst gays and lesbians and that's just wrong. To be an outcast among outcasts, how on earth is that an easier way to live?
I'm sorry, Ari, this probably isn't the place for this. I just become sad when I see people afraid of words.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-10 04:57 pm (UTC)i'm not afraid of words. don't get me wrong here. if someone asks me if i am gay or straight, i respond "both". i don't feel the need to reclaim the term "bisexual", because i'm not even bisexual. pansexual, maybe. not-aware-of-gender-assignment-whatsoever-sexual. i don't feel like an outcast. i feel comfortable in my choices and my life. i am happy not calling myself a bisexual. i don't need a defining term to be happy. i'll march in any parade alongside all my dyke and faggot friends, with a smile and without a title.
oh ari, i'm sorry for cluttering up your lj with posts so reminiscient of qt.
oh look, a wave of nostalgia...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-10 08:19 pm (UTC)But you meant no offense, and I obviously misinterpreted your meaning, so you are totally right, and I apologize. It wasn't cool of me to bring it up in Ari's journal to begin with.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-15 04:37 pm (UTC)I love you too. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-10 04:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-15 04:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-10 09:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-15 04:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-10 10:16 pm (UTC)Also, you r0x0rz.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-15 04:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-10 10:32 pm (UTC)I'm confused.
But not about my sexuality, or yours! Hooray!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-11 01:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-15 04:40 pm (UTC)And indeed, hooray! :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-11 01:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-15 04:52 pm (UTC)I've been thinking more about id-ing as femme due to this comment and to your post... partially in this post it's to balance my identity as "dyke" which does not mean "butch" in my context (though I think that mine is a minority usage in the queer community) but simply "lesbian." I'm not a femme in any classic sense because I'm not part of a butch/femme dyad. (Well... no. I'm not.) Possibly it's that when I am attracted to butch women, I feel femme-y in my response to them. Which is impossible to disentangle from the issues of age and shyness that permeate my every experience, but even when I was with Rachel, who's not classically butch at all, things shook out that way? (And I'm trying hard not to conflate Dominance/submission with butch/femme, but it's hard. I kind of want to just like, point to Jeane and say "Here. I want to be a femme to her obvious and self-evident butchness," but instead I'm struggling to articulate something that I probably shouldn't be in a public post. Sigh.)
So, there you are. Some of my naval-gazing to go with yours. <3<3<3
You're gonna get all sticky, hugging my brain :)
Date: 2006-10-18 02:48 am (UTC)Personally, I'm not usually attracted to traditionally-butch-looking women, but regardless of the appearance of the person I'm attracted to, I never feel any desire to act/appear/whatever either butch or femme in relation to them; I just want to get to BE in relation to them.
I would be interested in hearing more about connecting butch/femme and dom/sub since they're not at all connected in my brain (though obviously you don't have to share in a public post).
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-14 10:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-15 04:56 pm (UTC)For me: I don't believe in "female" in any essentialist way and recognize the highly constructed and artificial nature of gender and of gender binaries. But I feel like, for me, failure to identify as lesbian would be disingenuous; constructed or not, my lived experience compells me to claim a label. (And I've always been far fonder of labels than a good postmodernist ought.)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-18 02:53 am (UTC)However, while my personally preferred ID is "queer," I often identify as "bisexual" esp. when coming out to people, because it pithily conveys that I like male type persons as well as female type persons. (That one or the other of those aspects of how I engage with the world's host of pretty is usually being elided in any given situation frustrates me much.)
So I'm impressed by your flat-our rejection of the term "bisexual" and am curious as to how that has worked out for you.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-21 04:48 pm (UTC)I am using polysexual (the "poly" meaning "multiple" personally satisfies my need to acknowledge a broader gender spectrum), which elicits very mixed responses. The gay community I've encountered - namely, the one at Wellesley, because I don't know many communities outside of the single-sex college environment that's so openly queer - tends to be very wary of someone who in their eyes conceivably "not gay." I had this problem when I identified as bisexual, especially because I'm dating a man: the "but wait, you can't be a REAL queer" response. This response is elicited occasionally again when I say "polysexual," because those who are inclined to believe that I'm just saying I'm gay to get laid or be known on campus are further inclined to believe that "polysexual" implies "willing to hump anything that walks." Which is, in my opinion, a reaction that is frequently aimed, in many environments, towards female sexuality in general.
Although, I've found this attitude has decreased substantially, but I believe that it may only be in relation to me because, having been there for a few years now, people have more or less realized that a) yes, I am still actually gay, and b) no, I'm not just saying so to be socially accepted on an openly lgbt campus. A freshman girl I know is going through the exact same thing I did when I first started. In fact, in retrospect, I haven't gotten a single skeptical look all year, although there were a couple eyebrows which quickly went down when I came out as polysexual this NCOD.
Which brings me to the third point: I have many, many friends who are either transgendered, transsexual or questioning, and their flat-out support and enthusiasm for the overall goal of looking at gender in a broader way than it has been looked at for so many years. As a result, there have been precious few on-campus snarkings about my identity, because people are beginning to understand that frankly, the issue stretches beyond what happens in on-campus bedrooms.
And this entire question is frustratingly Wellesley-centric, because outside of Wellesley I'm not out to any large community, but rather to single individuals. Those individuals are people who know me really well, and understand my perspective on gender and sexuality, and I haven't gotten a single negative response from them.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-23 03:14 pm (UTC)I wasn't really active in the queer community at Smith, so my only experience with being/coming "out" is with individuals.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-23 03:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-23 03:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-23 03:51 pm (UTC)On reflection I feel, like you, that I'd tend to think of "polysexual" as one of the meanings of my short-hand "poly*" (which means "polyamorous, polysexual, polygymous, polyandrous and/or polygynous," I think, and now you know why I use the wee star), though I can see how it could also mean "sexually attracted to people of multiple genders."
Since it all comes down to my experience, I've only ever met one person in meatspace who was any variety of trans*, and I wasn't attracted to him [pronoun used per his preference], and my self-identity as "lesbian" continues to be about my history and not my theoretical orientation.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-23 04:02 pm (UTC)"Bisexual" accurately encapsulates my historical and current desires, but for the reasons listed upthread I prefer "queer."
["Polygnous"?]
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-23 04:09 pm (UTC)I was aware of trans* issues since about 4th grade from reading every book on homosexuality in the children's section of the local library and then moving on to the adult section, but there was a very small trans* populace at Baldwin (see above, one person), so it's generally seemed like a theoretical part of our LGBTQQIAlphabetsoup umbrella in most queer communities I've been peripherally attached to. I feel there might have been some trans* individuals at Queertopia, but no one I was very close to or who followed us to LJ.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-23 04:23 pm (UTC)I was in I think high school when I blew through the MLN catalog's GLBT offerings. There was and is very little trans lit, though, so it was mostly just something I included in the acronym without thinking about it much or understanding it much. It's still the concept I have the hardest time grokking. ("The Naked I: Monologues from Beyond the Gender Binary" is made of awesome, though. It's in the style of Eve Ensler's "Vagina Monlogues" and was a Smithie's senior project my... sophomore year I think. It really helped me grok it and has been performed various places since, which makes me so incredibly happy.)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-23 04:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-23 04:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-23 04:31 pm (UTC)... Seriously.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-23 04:08 pm (UTC)Similarly -- which caused a lot of my issues with the community at large itself, which in turn I was only aware of through individuals, because oddly enough even though I live off campus and am not really active in the gay community, I found (and still sometimes find) myself dragged into the communal drama through the wellesley women I do know well.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-23 04:15 pm (UTC)