Role Models

So, like I said, the bff and I went to the Pride parade this weekend.

That is, the end of the parade, because everyone knows that twenty years can a. not go to bed before two on a Friday night and b. are damned if they'll wake up before nine.

The important thing is, we were at the rally afterward. In Arkansas heat. In June. On asphalt. We didn't stay the whole time, but we did see one girl pass out. Oh, South, we love you too.

It's always unsettling, not necessarily in a bad way, to go to Pride. I look around and wonder where all the pretty queers crawled out of the wood works, and I think I just need to get out more.

There were feminine girls, hot hot butch girls, a boy in a bikini, a former cheerleader from my high school holding hands with another girl, and then there was her.

I don't know this woman's name, and I never have. Let's just call her D, since she looks and acts like the forty year old Daria I aspire to be.

She works at a notorious used bookstore in the city near where I live, and she has since I was about fifteen. There's nothing about her that screams "Lesbian!" She's just a sarcastic, feminist bookstore employee who didn't bat an eye when I purchased books from the GLBT section, and actually recommended to me, after learning I was a musician, a songbook for Indigo Girls' "Nomads Indians Saints."

Still, in those five minutes I checked out at the bookstore, she would be my role model. Confident, swaggering through the bookstore, unafraid, grinning in her long shorts and wife beater without a bra.

Saturday we saw her at the rally, holding signs and holding hands with a pretty butch woman. I grabbed the bff's arm and pointed, saying "I knew it!" This woman, who I barely spoke to, was my role model that I only hoped was like me, when I only knew one girl like me (the one then standing next to me).

Later in the day it hit me. This woman has no idea what she meant to me; to her, I was probably another bratty hippie-looking kid coming into the bookstore to soak up the A/C and spend ten bucks.

And I wonder now if there are kids somewhere looking up to me. Makes me a little more nervous about my actions, to be honest, but also a little more determined. This woman was out there and confident and unafraid to offend because of who she was. So I should at least pay it forward to the teens now who look around, hoping to see someone else like them.

Dental what?

Okay, so I got the safe sex talk in school. Abstinence!condomsbirthcontroldiaphragmsblahAbstinence!

Anyone else get this kind of health class? Joy for Arkansas education. Because teens totally aren't having sex- that's why my high school had a daycare for all the teen mothers, not to mention two pages in the yearbook.

Fact is, they were. And all the little straight kids and gay boys got a healthy enough dosage of information about condoms, though it was usually suggested by teachers and whispered by peers.

What about all the lesbians in the class? Or straight guys, for that matter.

I've yet to meet a lesbian who practices safer sex, at least in terms of using a dental dam or some equivalent. I've had the most educated of lesbians tell me that it's okay, since women have such lower chances of "catching" anything.

Uh huh. Just like gay men didn't really need to worry about safer sex because, after all, they weren't risking getting anyone pregnant. Then *poof* AIDS.

I'm not saying that's how the AIDS epidemic went down. I'm just trying to make a point. AIDS showed up out of nowhere, devastating an entire generation of gay men.

Just because we don't have penises doesn't mean there isn't some new, life threatening disease waiting on the horizon to attack the cunning linguists of the world.

I know I'm paranoid, but really, anything's a possibility in terms of new diseases.

And for that matter, there are plenty of diseases to be caught now, just through oral sex, including herpes, syphilis, and hpv (not a disease, okay, but a virus that can cause cervical cancer. Ick.)

However, since we don't have to worry about getting knocked up, and since we're considered a "low risk group" for contracting HIV, we don't bother with safer sex. We don't talk about it; it's an uncomfortable subject.

For that matter, while I'm on the soap box, let's talk about gynecology visits. According to some websites, lesbians are less likely to seek regular gynecological treatments. After all, the main reason most women go is so they can acquire birth control, which isn't a problem so much.

Newsflash: a penis doesn't have to touch you for you to have gynecological problems. Tumors, cysts, endometriosis- these are all problems which can be left untreated if you don't go to a gynecologist or if you're open with him/her/other about your sexual history. If your doctor makes you uncomfortable, get a new one. If you worry he'll have problems with your sexuality, then 1. Who cares what he thinks? and 2. Get a new doctor.

So. Try at least to be aware of safer sex practices, and get your cunt checked out. The end.

On Community

This weekend, my bff from high school and I are going to the NWA Pride Parade. In August, I'm hanging out with some friends at Diversity Weekend in Eureka Springs.

Behold. My extent of"community" support.

I guess I've never been much of a joiner, but I do try to get more involved in the tiny gay community in Arkansas. I'm a member of the GLBTQA organization on campus- that conveniently only meets when I'm in class/fraternity meetings. I wrote Lambda 10 about my fraternity having a non-discrimination clause that includes sexual orientation. I even tried volunteering for the NWA Center for Equality, but I chickened out/panicked and never showed up at the offices.

My heart's in the right place. I want to help promote tolerance and understanding an all things PC. But maybe I just haven't felt the brunt of that discrimination yet. I mean, I've only had two bad coming out experiences- my mother, who's still a little freaked by the prospect that I like vaginas, and a girl I was planning on rooming with who completely lost it. Oh well.

Maybe it's that I've never really felt like "a lesbian." I've never actually come out as a lesbian to anyone. I usually just say that I'm gay, or, better yet, that I'm attracted to girls. Honestly, most of the time I don't get along with girls, so I worry that trying to be friends with lesbians will only end in a train wreck.

Furthermore, the "community" in NWA is centered around Fayetteville, and I'm most definitely not. It seems like I'm trying to join a club where everybody knows everyone, and I'm the little kid on the outside.

Yes, little kid, because I don't see a lot of people my age working with the NWACfE, or working the Pride parade. And I wonder if this is an Arkansas trend, or a national one.

I mean, I know a lot of gay/bi students at my college. But few of them actually belong to our GLBTQA group, even though they're out. Maybe, since we've all grown up in a more tolerant generation, the need to fight for rights doesn't seem as pressing.

Besides, we're young right now- too young to be worrying about marriage or adoption rights, or dying and leaving a partner of twenty years out on the streets due to a malicious family. All we worry about right now is meeting that person.

Or, meeting a lot of persons for a lot of short term fun until the gray hairs start showing.

I think larger, metropolitan areas have a stronger political community composed of people in their twenties. I'd love to see this happen in Arkansas, but I don't think it will until we stop chasing tail and start settling down and worrying about the rights we lack. And I know I'm not ready.

But I also remember the first Diversity Weekend I attended. With my parents. On accident. At seventeen, with my two best friends who were also in the closet. I remember losing my parents at some point, and getting crammed in for a photo at the park, surrounded by happy, gay adults. It made a difference to us then, and I'd like to think that the community now makes a difference to teens. I'm just not sure how.

When Tomboys Grow Up

(Inspired by being stuck at home all summer and this book.)
I didn't stand a chance really.

I grew up on a small farm in Podunk, Arkansas as the only child of an only child. Until I was ten, the only other child on my road was the boy next door. We were born a month apart.

So, naturally, we played what boys played. I still had Barbies. I played with them by myself, concocting long, drawn out tales about parole officers and running from the law.

I know, I was strange. But my parents encouraged my imagination, and after a few botched attempts at all-girl playdates, let me hang out with the neighbor boy- and all my elementary school guy friends.

Fast forward to high school, where I'm a tuba player- yet again one of the guys in a group of friends. As in, one of the guys had a "no girls allowed" birthday party- except, of course, for me.

I like to think subconsciously that my parents knew about me. I mean, running out at three in the morning to drive around town in a car full of boys? Fine. Spending the night at my one female friend's house watching movies? They threw a fit- which is understandable to them in retrospect, since I spent most of high school following her like a lovesick puppy.

The problem is, I'm not a ten year old brat trading Pokemon cards or fighting with stick swords. And I'm not a teenager staying up late to steal traffic cones or talk about starting a band.

I'm twenty, and I'm having a bit of a crisis. Exactly what do tomboys grow up to be? How do we stay happy and keep those around us happy? Is it even possible?

I don't want to give in and learn how to become a pretty, proper woman. Besides the fact that I hate the idea of buying into gender roles like that, I also have a twenty year learning curve to face.

Plus, I've realized that coming out to my mother was probably one of the worst mistakes of my life. She's always accepted my tomboy nature because, being honest, she's a bit of a tomboy herself. I think she feels that, because I like women, I'm threatening her sexuality or something. As if I'm made in her image.

I get straight A's while doing two majors with course overload every semester. I have three jobs- one during the school year, two in the summer. I'm an officer in a very busy music fraternity. I mow my grandma's lawn, and I buy all my vegetarian food (anything not packaged or meat). I depend on my parents for nothing. No tuition, no allowance, no trips to visit me at school.

I just depend on their approval- specifically, my mother's. And after coming out to her, I feel like nothing I do is good enough. I'm working my ass off to go to a good grad school, and she's just upset that I'm moving even farther away. She complains incessantly about me going to school two hours away, but is encouraging her best friend to send her daughter to school nine hours away- at a school where, unlike me, the daughter is not being paid to attend.

I see my future, what makes me happy, and I'm beginning to realize that, for all their insistence that whatever makes me happy makes them happy, I'm never going to be perfect for them. So now I've come to a crossroads. It's tempting to drop it all, marry some nice boy, take the online graduate program and work at the local library that I've been volunteering/working at for ten years already.

I know this is the life they want for me. I also know I'd probably shoot myself in the head five years down the road. So, I'm considering, after I graduate college (if I last), completely cutting off contact with Arkansas. I know that being at school and away from home has already made me feel much better about myself, and allowed me to explore becoming an adult independent of my parents' beliefs and criticisms.

But walking out on them means walking out on that rare stamp of approval from another human being. Walking out means learning to trust my judgment alone and not caring if I screw up. Walking out means learning to not give a fuck.

And maybe that's what happens when tomboys grow up.

To Queens

I love gay men. I've noticed that, before college, most of my non-straight friends were gay men, and that I only associated with lesbians when I was interested in them. In college, the token Queen of the marching band took me under his wing, partially because I was horribly awkward and in the closet, and partially because he had the hots for one of my friends.

Of course, I've always been one of the boys. It's just nice having boys who are often a little more in touch with their feminine sides, if for no other reason than that I feel less silly when I'm in touch with mine.

The past few days, I've been surprisingly effeminate- I say this in honor of my roommate, who once told me I was often "effeminate" but never really "feminine." My hips swish, and God help me, I actually like my long hair that I'm usually debating cutting off.

This is always a disturbing feeling, like the first time I got tipsy around boys and started paying entirely too much attention to member of the men's music fraternity. The next day, I freaked out. I thought he was hot. What did that mean for my sexuality?

Then I decided it really didn't matter. Desire, actions, and identity are three separate categories and, while related, don't always have to fall perfectly into place. I know straight girls who kiss girls, straight boys who kiss boys, and gay girls who sit in the laps of boys with questionable sexuality to tell them how pretty they are (guess which one I am!).

I just wish I could have this same attitude towards gender. Sexuality is one thing; with the growing media attention on sexuality, accepting sexualities outside of the Beaver Cleaver norm is becoming easier. But gender is firmly ingrained in our culture, and it's hard to escape.

Still, it shouldn't matter. Some days I feel like a tomboy. Some days I feel like a boy boy. Some days I feel like the world's most effeminate queen. Roll with it.

I think that, at the end of the day, I'd rather come off as effeminate/androgynous than butch. Queens have more fun. Just look at Emmett from QAF:

Passing Gay

Dwight of The Office with his official Gaydar machine.

Yesterday, my two best friends came to visit and spend the day bumming around Fayetteville, spending money on more books and candy than we probably needed.
While in Romancing the Stone, one of my friends nudged me and pointed out two (hot) guys who were semi-obviously a couple. We proceeded to see them throughout the day at the mall, the encounters culminating into a point where we passed each other, and I turned around to watch them leave, and one of them turned around to look at us in much the same way. We grinned a little, and his boyfriend nudged him back into walking forward, and then they were gone. My friend pointed out that he probably thought we were a couple.

How did I know these guys were gay? Granted, they walked together everywhere, but so did a lot of guys. Other than that, there was nothing- except maybe the way they dressed (very neatly), or the way one of them, the more obvious of the pair, walked (with his hips) and talked (with his hands).

However, I wouldn't consider these sexuality cues so much as gender cues. This man was not presenting himself as being particularly masculine the way so many men in the South do. Of course, my friend's proposed assumption, that the guy thought we were together, followed much the same guidelines of gender cues. Wilting Southern belles we are not.

The thing is, so much of what I read about gender identity makes a huge deal about taking gender identity and sexuality and putting a vast canyon between them. I can understand the point, to differentiate between who you are and who you are attracted to, but you can't deny that in the queer community, gender identity and sexuality blur together a bit.

I think that, as members of the GLBT community make more strides towards legal equality, they also assimilate into straight, vanilla culture, as if to say “Look, we're here, we're queer, and we're just like you!”
There's a quote, I'm having trouble finding it, that says something along the lines that “Gays want you to think that we're just like you, only the sex is different. Actually, we are nothing like you; only the sex is the same.” And I can see this. Few things considered to be gay/lesbian sex are exclusively practiced by gay people.

I know lesbians who like straight girls, who love finding the most feminine, most straight laced coughs girls and “converting” them. They've given me shit for the girls that I like, and God help me if they found me looking at the boys I, on occasion, like. But I'm not queer because I like straight, normal girls. I'm queer because I like other people who are queer, and I wish people would stop drawing their black and white lines in my happy gray area.

Also, reading this book, which will hopefully help me deal with my issues of assimilation and such.