Profile: Tegan and Sara

So lately my blog has been devoid of pictures- as well as profiles, as I'm trying to keep up with everything after the tire accident of doom.

Plus, I was having trouble picking a group/person to profile this week. And then I stumbled across this picture:And I squealed like a fan girl. The thing I like about Tegan and Sara is that they are big- an internationally known band that gets their music on TV and in the movies. A band that has sold out shows.

And they don't have their asses hanging out of miniskirts to do it. In fact, most of the time, they look a bit like androgynous indie boys. Which, you know, is kinda my ideal image.Plus, they've never made any exceptions for themselves in their music and have been open about their sexualities. They're lesbians, and they admit it without guilt. They have cds that you can buy even in little podunk towns like mine, and open the case to find pictures of women who are not femmed-up, eroticized superstars. Hello, role models.

I had a couple songs off the "So Jealous" album, but it wasn't until I read Tegan's introduction in Kate Bornstein's Hello, Cruel World that I began to take an interest. She discussed growing up feeling different, being bullied, rising above it.There's a reason for all the hype around these ladies. And, if nothing else, if you can't handle the PC idea of them being *gag* role models, remember: pretty twin lesbians singing pretty awesome music. Enough said.

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.

Passing: Banjo Edition

I started this week on an off note.

The weekend previous had been awesome, mostly because:

1. I hung out with my bff from high school and realized I was no longer in love/attracted to her at all (huge milestone)
2. I got to stare at pretty butch girls at the Pride parade (including a used bookstore employee that fueled a lot of my adolescent fantasies)
3. I went swimming in the rain with my best friends at school, one of whom is moving forever away this week.

And then I ripped up a tire driving home. I was barely out of town and scared shitless when it happened, though there are much more desolate, Deliverance-esque areas on my journey.

After I calmed down, I called my friends to come help me try to change my tire or at least follow me back to school, and then managed to park my car outside a little country store/gas station where I stayed.

Never have I been so glad to be wearing pink. This was the podunk that makes my podunk look like NYC, complete with a table of old men drinking coffee and gossiping.

The men were sweet, and used to work near my home town, so we talked for a good half hour. All the while, I was so happy that I wasn't trying to pass that day, that I was in pink tie dye with girly hair, jewelry, and women's jeans.

And I really felt ashamed afterward. I mean, to them I just looked like a little funky college student, but I amped up the Southern accent and talked at a higher pitch, trying to say "Look! Normal, heterosexual girl here! Sweet as sugar!"

I was stuck in a town with a population of like 400 with sketchy cell phone service and no one that I knew. And then I realized how important passing can become.

My bff transman came in to get me, and I'm pretty sure he just registered as "guy" to them, because, well, he passes pretty damn well. But, had I been dressed more masculinely, I think I'd come off more as just a dyke to them.

Dyke + small Southern town full of strangers = B horror movie or Dateline Hate Crime Tragedy

I shouldn't care what strangers think, and I should be able to defend myself if need be. But sometimes, I just want to be a sweet Southern girl who makes old men laugh, rather than stare.

I just don't know if that feels right or not.

Vestlove

I have a love affair with vests. Long vests, short vests, crochet vest, cargo vests that make me look like I should be hosting some wildlife/nature show.

I love them all, and I have for some time, despite the removal efforts of the unofficial queen of my college band. Apparently I looked frumpy in vests.

I like them because they're dressier, but still cooler than a blazer or something.

Anyways, I was reading some old stuff on the What is Gender? forums that I lurk around, and I found this conversation about using vests as binders. I'm excited, though none of mine are really appropriate.

One of the posters makes an excellent point about the nature of vests, a point best taken into account by those vest virgins.

Women's vests are cut for women, while men's are cut for men. I own a couple women's vests, and they are most definitely tailored, however subtly, to accentuate the curves.

Plus, they often come off looking horrendously ugly:
I'm a big fan of men's waistcoats though- the kind of thing worn under a suit. One of these over a band t-shirt with jeans is my favorite outfit right now. The only thing to remember with these is that they often have some sort of cinching mechanism in the back that conveniently hits where a female person's waist would be.
Resist the urge to cinch up your vest (I know, it's hard for me too). It'll only emphasize your natural curves.

I'd like to start a movement creating more unisex jersey vests, like the one seen on this woman:
Only, you know, not girly. I have one that I sewed from two t-shirts (Woo reversible!) and I think it "passes," depending on the right clothing that it's worn with.

Anyways, if all else fails, there's nothing sexier/trashier than a good ol' fashioned biker vest:I like to think fringe is coming back in style.

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.

And the Wind is Always Shifting

"Straight Edge" by Minor Threat

But I've got better things to do,
Than sit around and fuck my head,
Hang out with the living dead.
Snort white shit up my nose,
Pass out at the shows.
I don't even think about speed,
That's something I just don't need

I've got the straight edge

I'm a person just like you
But I've got better things to do
Than sit around and smoke dope
'Cause I know I can cope
Laugh at the thought of eating ludes
Laugh at the thought of sniffing glue
Always gonna keep in touch
Never want to use a crutch

I've got the straight edge."

I've said before that I was once one of those annoying "AFI is God!" kind of fan girls. (In my defense, they were tied with Ani Difranco).

However, I was also a Straight Edge kid then, and took it all very seriously. Just as I was destined to always wear only black, I was also destined never to drink, smoke/use drugs, or engage in casual sex.

Oops.

I tumbled off that pillar of morality slowly- then very, very fast. And I woke up about a week ago to realize how far I've gone.

Well, the good news is that I haven't smoked in about nine months, haven't drank in three, have never done drugs, and usually have no trouble avoiding the casual sex part.

For a split second, I considered "reclaiming" edge. Aaand then I read this post, and remembered why I was uneasy with being edge in the first place. Aside from the general bitchiness, it made me realize that I just don't belong in this scene anymore. Like when my best friend from high school and I decided to go to Warped Tour this summer. We checked the band list and realized we didn't know half the bands performing. We've been out of the loop.

We outgrew punk. Hell, I outgrew being a crazy little hippie. So I look at my opinions on gender and breaking down the gender dichotomy, and I wonder: Will I lose this belief too? Is this just another phase/scene?

I like to think it's not, because I've never felt more comfortable in my skin- though, after feeling so masculine for so long, I was freaked out when I woke up one day feeling girly. Part of me worried that, if I gave in to that effeminate longing for the day, I'd be breaking some promise to myself.

Well, fuck that. That's the old punk vs. poser mentality I adhered to in high school. How I feel that day is how I feel, and I don't care what other people think.

I should live my life less by trying to adhere to the same appearances and tastes all my life, and instead expect people to view me more like Ani Difranco in "The Million You Never Made:

"I am warning you I am weightless,
and the wind is always shifting,
so don't hang anything on me
if you ever want to see it again.
I am telling you I'm different than you
think I am."