Honey

They say you never fully recover from your first fall over the precipice of love. Time and distance eventually, mercifully tarnish those horribly (and wonderfully) intense feelings that you thought would never be abated. Surprisingly, you don’t spend your entire life, every waking moment, thinking about the love you lost, even though at the time, it felt like the world had ended, and in a lot of ways, it had.

I was 15 years old, a sophomore attending Holy Names Academy for Girls on First Hill in Seattle. Since the summertime, I had followed a long succession of crushes on girls, innocent but inspired by holding hands and giving back rubs. I was a naive, athletic, excitable kid with some emotional problems, seeking intimacy and love.

Those emotional problems got a little worse toward the wintertime. I was in a support group for adopted kids that was making me feel stuff I wasn’t really comfortable facing. I was chasing after a friend, wanting more attention and time, and I was losing my grip. I had a hairline fracture that made my usual outlet, highschool sports, inaccessible. I started smoking, too. I was a mess.

The mess that was me started whittling on my arms and hands with sharp objects. I don’t know what gave me the idea to do such a dramatic thing, nor do I really know why I did it. It was certainly the climax of my adolescent angst, a cry for help (of course), and a precursor to my admiration and love of self mutilation in the more acceptable art of tattoo.

In the midst of all this pain and suffering they call being a teenager, I met a schoolmate who, in many ways, saved my life. I didn’t know her very well, but I was drawn to her anyway. She had soft blue eyes, a compassionate smile, and a propensity toward caring for sad and needy kids. When I asked for her help as a friend, she immediately dropped everything and came to my rescue, full of empathy, crying the tears I didn’t have the courage to cry. Our love for each other was immediate and true, deeper than anything I had ever known in my life. I had finally found everything I was looking for.

And then, we fell in love.

I really hope you had this kind of experience with someone, the falling in love for the first time. It’s a consuming, life altering, spirit lifting adventure full of joy and fear. I was so happy and connected and impressed. When I looked in her eyes, I witnessed the universe as pure, divine light. I wasn’t alone anymore. It was the best feeling in the whole world.

We certainly didn’t label our relationship in any sort of way that would be shunned by our friends and family. We were best friends, the best friends there ever were. That didn’t change even after our first kiss.

I will always savor that moment in my memory, the moment when all my experience and my assumptions flew out the window and when something else, something greater than me, guided my lips to kiss a girl for the first time. What a frightening moment that was, my heart pounding and my mind racing. I couldn’t believe what was happening, and yet it was, and everything felt so right and good about it.

Things got a bit more complicated after that. Neither one of us was willing to out ourselves to anyone, especially in a Catholic highschool. We spent almost two years keeping things on the down low. It was sad that we couldn’t be open with the world about our experiences, but it also kept the intensity high, always afraid of getting caught.

I had fantasies about us getting an apartment together after highschool and living our lives happily ever after, but it was not meant to be. She went off to college and I was left behind, broken hearted and confused, wondering if my love for a girl meant that I was headed for a life a little out of the ordinary.

After I wrote the post about being a queer woman, I had a really interesting discussion over IM with a friend of mine. She talked about how she periodically measures her femmeness by determining how sexy she is. I’ll be the first person to admit that I’m a little baffled by the femme experience, but the conversation got me thinking about how we apply sexual attractiveness to gender and how we measure how femme, how butch, how woman, or how man we are. How do we set ourselves up against someone else and think, this person is more (or less) butch than me? What determines the quantity of gender, and by contrast, what about the quality? Could I be measurably more butch, but less real in my presentation?

Truth be told, I think I’m pretty sexy. Any one of my ex-girlfriends, and even my current girlfriend, will attest to my substantial vanity. I look in the mirror and think, that’s a hot babe. Sometimes, I feel an urge to be extra sexy, especially when I’m going to Gaycation or any one of the other queer dance parties in Portland. The way that I satisfy the urge to be more sexy is to apply a femme technique to my outward appearance. I’ll show more skin, either by rolling up my sleeves or unbuttoning my shirt. I’ll wear eyeliner and pluck my eyebrows. I’ll find a femme edge to my butch nature, and become, what I consider to be, extra sexy.

In amongst the meandering personal tales of a baby dyke on her way to discovering her inner butch, is a story of an intense and awkward obstacle that confuses me to this day. I wasn’t yet 21 years old, excitedly exploring a new relationship with a femme girlfriend and all the wonders that entailed. I was certainly trying to be open to new ideas regarding sex (I’m a missionary man by default), and an idea my girlfriend had freaked me out so bad that I was sobbing explosively all over the place. All she wanted me to do was to put on a teddy - you know, the red and white, lacy, frilly things that don’t cover much of your body. With every encouraging word she said to try to get me to at least try it on, the more upset I became. I felt like the whole world was imploding, and I cried for a long time.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t wear something so obviously sexy, so feminine. I’ve dressed in drag a number of times, and enjoyed it, with short skirts and low cut tops and lots of makeup, but the teddy thing just sent me right over the edge. I know that it’s wrapped up in the relationship between sex and gender, but I can’t quite grasp what it means.

When I’ve dressed in drag (it’s been many, many years since the last time), I have felt very femme and very sexy. I certainly equated the amount of sexiness I felt with the amount of femmeness I felt. I suppose that’s one of those cultural constructs we have that applies a sexual value to women. I wonder how femmes feel about that.

I’ve witnessed the posturing that goes on among us butches to establish dominance and control. I remember learning of the word “posturing” in the context of butch and laughing at how perfect a word it is. Who can be tougher, stronger, colder, rougher, and more placating? Who’s more butch? I’ve certainly felt less butch than people, especially when they are dirtier and more closed than I am. Being comfortable in my gender, I haven’t really worried about it. I guess I don’t remember what it was like when I was trying to figure out my gender among a bunch of distant bullies. I probably blocked it out.

Other than all that silly posturing, I don’t know if us butches really feel all that concerned about “how butch” we are. I’m only assuming that femmes have the opposite experience. This entire post only serves to show that I really don’t understand very much about any of this, but maybe I’m edging a little closer to my truth.

Lesbians love potlucks. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as a conglomeration of strangers and friends, gifting and inhaling home cooked deliciousness, whilst chatting enthusiastically about everything and nothing in particular. Potlucks glorify and celebrate the feelings of home and friendship and provide a comfortable atmosphere to get to know all sorts of people.

At first, I was embarrassed to call our new weekly get together a potluck. Even the word potluck is dripping with lesbian sentimentality I thought I’d be unable to bear. Unfortunately, there just isn’t another good name for the typical event of inviting friends to bring and share food in your home. As other people threw the word around, I started to get used to it, and have even begun to feel some ownership over the idea. The fact of the matter is that I had convinced myself that anything lesbionic somehow didn’t apply to me, cause it’s just not cool. The funny thing is that I am the utter representation of everything that is dorky about being a lesbian, and it’s high time I start to feel a little bit of that pride that surely exists outside the months of June and July. What is and isn’t cool becomes so much less important after 30 (mostly).

What is important, to me anyway, is hanging out with people I like and having fun. Although every week hasn’t been spot on (some weeks it’s just me and Agent), mostly the potlucks have been quite excellent. Every week we’ve welcomed people we’ve never met before and some we’ve known for a while. It’s always a mixed crowd of folks who wouldn’t have otherwise ever known of each other’s existence. The food has been delicious, the conversation has been entertaining, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

I guess if having a weekly potluck in my own house with my girlfriend of 7 years and our two dogs and all our random friends makes me a lesbian, then so be it. I didn’t always feel so funny about being a lesbian. I was 17 years old, innocent and eager at my first pride parade, confidently walking around with a t-shirt that read “Nobody knows I’m a lesbian”. I thought it was so funny that I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face all day long.

I wore a three-piece suit to my community college graduation ceremony over 10 years ago. I was just a baby really, beginning the long discovery of my strange and fascinating gender identity. I felt this was my breakthrough moment, the very first time I left the house wearing something so obviously, and loudly male. I was embracing a long held desire to dress formally in masculine attire, and I was proud of it.

Unfortunately, not everyone shared my enthusiasm. I waited and waited for my mom to show up at the graduation, but she never came. When I went home to my parents’ house, worried out of my mind, my father told me that she had seen me leaving the house in a suit and had experienced such an intense, emotional reaction, that she had been unable to come to my graduation. After confronting my mother, I stood in the driveway and cried harder than I’ve ever cried in my life. I had broken my mother’s heart by being gender queer, and she had broken mine by being offended by a part of me I was no longer willing to ignore.

I’m really not sure how much of my mother’s revulsion to my gender expression was based in fear of the queer, so to speak, or if she was only wildly disappointed in my attempts to cross over into the male identity. My mother is a feminist, and she taught me well of the patriarchy, which to her represents repression, unchecked power, arrogance, greed, control, and injustice to women everywhere. She would tell me later that it was the vision of her daughter in a three-piece suit specifically that gave her such a shock, attire in her mind only worn by power-hungry corporate executive types who have little to no respect for women in general.

So many times since I began wondering about gender have I thought that perhaps I am, in fact, a man trapped in a woman’s body. I’ve pondered excitedly the idea of going all the way, taking testosterone, becoming physically as much of a man as is possible in today’s vast landscape of medical and social possibilities. I’ve watched a lot of my gender queer friends do just that, or some version of that, growing facial hair, going bald, beefing up, and passing as men, a clear realization of the gender that drives them from within.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) for me, it’s never been simple. Although most of me happily basks in the knowledge that I’m special and freaky, a part of me yearns so much to be just another normal person, someone who doesn’t conjure fear and confusion in the minds of the common people. If I were a man, everything would be so much easier, I think to myself: I could marry my girlfriend anywhere, I could finally have a manly, muscular body, I wouldn’t feel as vulnerable, I’d fit in with ease, I could grow some side burns, etc. It would be amazing to watch my body and my perspective change as a result of injecting hormones. I would finally and absolutely know what it was like to live as a man in this world, and I would surely enjoy all those benefits that come with male privilege.

There’s some other part of me, though, that has stopped me every time I’ve come close to beginning a physical transition. I went as far as to make an appointment to begin hormone injections a few years ago, but realized at the last minute that it just wasn’t the right thing for me to do. It may be childhood brainwashing, it may be fear of the unknown, it may be any number of subconscious lines of reason that I will never be able to fully comprehend. All I really know is that I am a woman more than I am a man, no matter how full of penis envy I might be. I may be a representation of a new kind of woman, an atypical reminder of the fallibility of a binary gender system, a slap in the face to traditional female roles, and a poster child for the next (and perhaps, sadly, the last) generation of butch dykes.

Unfortunately, it appears to me that my particular situation is only a jumping off point for most gender queer folks of my age and younger. I felt angry and betrayed as a young dyke discovering the butch community. I watched my peers and role models changing into something else, something I had no desire to be, and I felt left behind and alone. The more I hear about queer kids rejecting anything with feminine associations, the more disappointed (and worried) I become.

I believe we live in a misogynistic society. I realize that a lot has changed over the past hundred years, “we’ve come a long way baby”, and all that, but I still see the sickness pervading our world. One of the most obvious symptoms is the self-inflicted hatred that all women seem to share. So many of my fellow queers are more than willing to date and love women, but refuse to allow themselves to express a gender that ever reflects any sort of womanness at all. We instead choose to mirror the typical man whose masculinity is in question, becoming righteously offended and defensive against anyone who dares to perceive us as female: using the incorrect pronoun, including us in the collective “we” when referring to “us women” or “girls night out”.

I am by no means trying to submit that my trans friends who identify as he, man, male, and him deserve any less respect or acknowledgment as the gender they have chosen. Every single person deserves to be perceived exactly as they desire, as much as that is possible by our limited psychic and communicative abilities. Many of my queer brethren rock the same fence I do, and have ended up on the other side. I will continue to support them in whatever identities they choose to explore and discover for themselves. Above all, we must support each other.

Perhaps that is why I worry. I worry that an already difficult experience as a woman (and as a queer) has made transitioning an all too obvious assumption for those that grow up confused about where their gender fits into the inflexibility that is mainstream America. I worry that the only way we know to support each other is to provide transitioning as the only solution to our dissatisfaction with the state of our body and mind. Are there any other solutions (besides taking hormones and having surgery) that will help us to feel good (or at least alright) about who we are?

For a lot of queer people I know, gender identity is a complex, personal experience, full of hope, introspection, pain, need, self-love, curiosity, wonderment, and confusion. It’s never simple, and it’s never the same for any two people. Gender is just a part of all the other stuff that makes us who we are, a neverending, beautiful web of expression, identity, and understanding. Here’s to the continuing journey of our own discovery as well as the ongoing support of all of our queer brothers, sisters, and others.

I’m a long way from home this week, hanging out with a bunch of CF nerds (ok, I’m one too) in Washington, D.C. We’re in a ginormous convention center, impossible to describe. My coworkers, Barney and Joshua, are here too. We had a great time today playing a modified version of disc golf outside the curtained bounds of the common conference area.

I’ve had the most fun talking with other developers from all over the country (and beyond). I enjoy talking about technology and the web, what’s possible and what’s awesome. The primary topic of discussion, ColdFusion, is especially close to my heart.

I’m one of a few women in attendance. I’d estimate approximately 5% of the folks here at the conference are women. I even saw a big butch lezzie, identifiable by the familiar wide hips and spiky hair. Unfortunately, I think there is an unspoken law about speaking to each other, because she refused to even make eye contact. What’s up with that? Here we are, a couple of techie dykes in a sea of bald / long haired white man weirdos, and we can’t talk to each other? I guess it could be presumptuous of me to assume that we would actually have anything in common.

Although attendance is 95% men, and proudly logical men at that, there is a good sized helping of good old fashioned drama in almost every session and key note address. ColdFusion has a bastard step child, an elite set of name-droppers, and a throng of masses who seem to bend and sway with the community’s latest “cutting-edge” ideas.

I want to remain objective. Even though I’ve used (and loved) ColdFusion and other web technology for years, I struggle to feel like I belong here. As my queer friends dedicate their lives to a grueling life of social service, I spend most of my time with a mainstream population that may sometimes briefly reflect me in human and occupational mind only, but mainly makes me feel like an outsider. It’s confusing for me, especially when I long to grow exponentially as a programmer, but have limited resources to do so.

There’s something mysteriously cool about the quintessential woman who is a programmer (especially a hacker) but usually only when that woman meets our current social standards for what is deemed sexy. She’s straight, visually female, young, skinny, and hard to get. She reminds me of the typical straight man’s fantasy lesbian, someone who appears out of reach but will ultimately cave for a man’s attention.

Does it make any difference that I am not the gender or sexuality of the typical person in attendance at this conference? It seems it would matter less if I only proved my enthusiasm for any relevant discussion, and these outward, distracting expressions of my identity would just fade away. I would be perceived and treated like just another CF geek. The flaw in this idea is that I became tired of proving myself a long time ago.

As Barney explained on his blog, these conferences are made up of at least 2 dimensions: the sessions where I might learn a thing or 2, but more importantly, the chance to converse with like minds about technology we all use and usually admire. I enjoy seeing and talking with the people whose names are behind the blogs I read and the frameworks I use. Deep down, I know that I fit in as much as I think I do. As long as I separate myself through the eyes / perception of the unique aspects of my identity, I will continue to feel out of place and alone. As soon as I open my mind to these nerdy white guys (and realize that I am one of them), I will accept myself entirely and allow myself to recognize my place in this sometimes dysfunctional but mostly friendly ColdFusion community.