Deconstructing Relationships

I used to believe in soul mates. I carried around this rather depressing view that there is only One True Love for everyone, and that not everyone is lucky enough to find their soul mate in their lifetime. I used to believe this quite strongly, and I still find this ideology lurking in the back corners of my mind every time I find myself falling in love.

Let's not mince words. The idea of 'soul mates' is fucked up! It perpetuates this false hierarchy of romantic love being better/greater than any other form of love, which then gives people excuses to behave like horrible human beings to the other important people in their lives (I've just finished watching the entire Twilight saga, and Bella Swan I am appalled!). And it creates this vicious cycle of rather unnecessary pain when a romantic relationship ends. It's hard enough saying goodbye to a relationship with someone you've cared about... having that ending imbued with these bullshit ideologies that either a) the love you experienced in that relationship was not as grand as it could have been, or b) that you will never experience a love as grand again... Can we all see how incredibly unhealthy that is?

While I don't think I've ever officially outed myself as a nonmonogamist, it's no secret that I'm not big on monogamy. Like with my sexual identity, it's one of those things where I had the feelings and ideas, but not the language or the conceptual framework to make sense of it for a long time. It's really only been in the past couple of years that I've started to explore what alternate ways of doing relationships can mean.

For a long time I've envisioned myself - my future, adult self - as a fairly independent person who is not tied down to a single, committed relationship, but who has intimate friendships and sexual relationships with lots of different people around the world. And when my last relationship ended, I decided it was time to become the future me that I have longed to be. The funny thing is, after making that decision I pretty quickly realised I already am.

When I was at the IASSCS conference in Buenos Aires, I was introduced to the term 'Relationship Anarchy'. This concept appeals to me because it does away with the idea of relationship hierarchies and acknowledges the value in all different types of relationships. It is a thoroughly queer way of relating! What appeals to me most about this concept is quite beautifully described on The Thinking Asexual blog (linked to above):

What relationship anarchy hinges on the most, for me, is the equality it seeks to create across the relationship board, so that sexual relationships are not superior to nonsexual relationships and “romantic” relationships are not superior to nonromantic friendships, and that equality means that a nonsexual and/or nonromantic friend has the same amount of access to love, intimacy, physical affection, support, etc. That means a nonsexual/nonromantic friend is just as likely to become an RA’s life partner or one of their life partners. Relationship anarchy provides the kind of respect, security, opportunity, equality, and love that a celibate asexual needs, especially if they are single or they’re not necessarily looking for just one romantic life partner to fulfill all of their major needs in a traditional romantic relationship.

When I think about my life and how I have done relationships, this is what I see. I see the friendships I have had that have provided me with more support (emotionally and materially) than any romantic or sexual relationship ever has. I see the joy (and the pain) that romantic connections have provided me. I see the fun and the playfulness that my sexual relationships have given me. And I see that all of these things overlap; that their boundaries are not clear and that I don't want them to be clear.

The most obvious example of Relationship Anarchy in my life is my relationship with my BFF. Thus far, that has not been a sexual relationship, but it's been pretty much every other kind of relationship. We used to jokingly refer to each other as our life partners, but that's stopped being a joke. That is what we are. We love each other, we support each other, we accept each other for the flawed individuals we both are, we challenge each other to grow, we even go out on cute dates. Our relationship will never be exclusive; we will never limit each other's ability to connect with and develop relationships of any type with other people. We will always be of importance to one another, even though we may not always be the 'primary' person in each other's lives.

I think that there is too much emphasis placed upon the form a relationship takes, and not enough emphasis upon the content. Increasingly, I am trying to focus on what it is that I get from my different relationships that I enjoy. What pleasure do I derive from having someone in my life? I am trying to acknowledge what that is more, even if only to myself. And in doing so, I am hoping to make myself more open to the possibilities of those relationships expanding. To finding support, to being nurtured, to giving, to growing. Instead of saying "Oh, I don't have a boyfriend/girlfriend!" and looking for that type of relationship, I am thinking about what ways of relating I feel are missing from my life and considering how I can fulfill my emotional needs for those particular kinds of relating.

For instance, currently I have a longing to have a connection where I can be both emotionally and sexually vulnerable. There are people in my life that I am emotionally vulnerable with, and people I am sexually vulnerable with (being vulnerable is a good thing, btw, perhaps a topic for another day!); but it is harder to find somebody who can offer me both of these things, on an ongoing basis anyways. (Life is complicated! Getting two adults to sort their shit out so they can build something together is actually a pretty big ask.) While I want to have that kind of a connection with somebody, I don't need for them to be my 'partner'. And I certainly don't need for us to share our emotional/sexual vulnerabilities with each other exclusively! There is no reason for that connection to be the most important connection in my life; it is just one of many ways of connecting, and happens to be a connection I currently don't have but would like to have.

The thing is, life is fluid. Relationships shift and change, and the emphasis we place on any relationship does not stay constant for the duration of the relationship; especially in long term relationships! To illustrate, I have one close friendship that is over 20 years old. At times that friendship has been pretty central to my life, and at other times it has been peripheral. The content of our friendship has certainly changed as we've gone through life! We started out as quite different people, found ourselves leading parallel lives for awhile, and are now pretty much polar opposites of each other. This friendship has remained important to me, but of course its role in my life is different now. How we can offer each other support is different now. This friendship has less emphasis in my life, less energy put into it, right now. Because it's not what either of us needs right now. And that will change as it needs to.

I think that people get that about friendships, but act like it is somehow different when it is a romantic/sexual relationship. But why would it be? Emotions might be felt more intensely in a romantic/sexual relationship, but they are not somehow immune to the ebb and flow of life and individual needs. When two people decide to commit to each other in a romantic/sexual relationship, it is not as if they suddenly become one person; they are still two separate individuals with unique emotional needs and life circumstances. They are both on their own life journeys, even if they are each other's travel companions.

As I said at the start of this blog, I am not immune to the ideology of One True Love. I do not think that forming romantic/sexual partnerships is a bad thing, nor do I think that it is bad for that type of relationship to be of primary importance in a person's life. I think it is incredibly problematic to idealise that type of relationship though; to treat someone as if their life is incomplete for not having that type of relationship in it.

I don't know how I'll feel the next time I find myself falling in love. I think it will be different, because I am redefining what relationships mean for me and look like in my life. I have stopped looking for particular types of relationships. Instead, I like to meet new people and just see what develops with them. What sort of chemistry do we have? What can we share with one another? What journey will we go on together? I have found that this has made me open to a lot of different possibilities and has lead to some really beautiful experiences.

Along with forming relationships in new ways, I am also trying to engage with them differently when they end. I like to focus on what was good about the relationship. What pleasure did that person bring to my life? What joy? What did I learn from them? How did I grow? I am choosing to honour those memories, to think kindly of the relationships that are no longer in my life. To remember their beauty and to let them go, thanking them for what they gave to me for however long that lasted. I think we focus too much on the pain and the hurt when relationships end, and that's not helpful. I try to remember that all relationships are temporary, even if they last a really long time. Focusing on the good doesn't make the hurt go away, but it helps. Because any amount of beauty and joy that something brings to your life is a positive thing.

The Q in Alphabet Soup

Apparently yesterday (or today, depending on your time zone) was International Bisexuality Visibility Day. Personally, I'm not a fan of the term 'bisexual' and I cringe every time it's applied to me. It feels dated and incredibly limiting; 'bi' implies a duality and when it comes to gender and sexuality, there are a helluva lot more than two options! Also, I feel like it's an identity that has been co-opted by this fantasy whereby bisexual ladies (and their nubile friends) are seen as eagerly available to fulfill all your sexual desires.

I don't say this to be dissing on any bisexuals. If that's how you prefer to identify, that's up to you. I'd be interested in having a conversation about why bi, though, given that 'queer' and 'pansexual' are also well established options (though I have an uneasy relationship with pansexual too because I feel like it presents all sexual desire as being on an even field and is therefore quite reductionary of sexual desire).

I identify as queer. Queer is something of a catch-all phrase, though not in the way it is often used! While you can say that a lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, etc identity is a 'queer' identity, each of these categories are identity categories onto themselves - and contain their own plethora of subcultures and ways of being which may or may not be 'queer'. What I'm trying to say is, these categories are overlapping, yes, but distinct. A lesbian is not necessarily queer. And yes, my eye does start to twitch every time I hear someone using the term queer interchangeably with other identity categories in the rainbow flavoured alphabet soup.

The reason that queer is a catch-all phrase, and why I identify with it so strongly, is because it is about a lot more than who you fuck. Sure, that's a part of it, but you can be staunchly heterosexual and still be queer. Queer is about critically engaging with the politics of gender, sexuality, and relationships. For a start. I'd say it's also about engaging with the politics of class and race, but as a middle class white woman whose academic focus has tended to be on other middle class white people, I'm going to leave that discussion for people who actually know what they're talking about. (Sometimes I feel like it's narcissistic to be so focused on deconstructing myself. But, firstly, it's my blog and I'll do what I want with it! And secondly, the only thing I can really claim to be an expert on is myself.)

So, to clarify, I feel that it is incorrect to identify as 'queer' on the sole basis of having sex with someone of the same gender as yourself. Being queer is about challenging 'normativity'. You know, that thing where women and men are supposed to like each other and get married (to each other) and be monogamous and have babies. And that thing where boys and girls look and act in certain ways, and those ways are different from one another. Or, you know, the idea that certain ways of doing or learning or creating are more valid or productive or useful than others.

The reason all this is on my mind as of late is because my life underwent a pretty big change a couple months ago, and it's taken me down a rather unexpected path. My girlfriend and I broke up, and I decided to start seeing men. It's...complicated and I don't fully understand how I went from being adamantly disinterested in men and happily committed to a beautiful woman to falling out of love with said woman and becoming happily uncommitted to some wonderful men. But it happened fast. Or, it didn't. At any rate, the turn around from being devastated about the breakup to being really fucking happy with my life happened incredibly fast.

Have I magically turned straight? No, definitely not. Am I still into women? Yes...no...I don't know. After a 7 year hiatus from men it's just feeling really nice to be in the company of men. This whole thing has left me with more questions than answers, but, for the most part I feel like the answers to the questions I've got are pretty much irrelevant. As long as the answer to the question "Am I happy?" is "Yes." Which it is.

Which is funny, because, for a long time I felt like I couldn't be happy with men. Because 7+ years ago I was really, very unhappy being with men. But... a lot has changed. What I realise now is that it wasn't men, as such, that I was unhappy with, but heteronormativity. The expectation that I would conform to particular ways of being gendered, sexual, and in a relationship did not sit easy for me. Especially in Calgary, which, in case you didn't know, is a very conservative place! Nonconformity isn't exactly encouraged in Calgary.

But, I've spent the better part of past decade gradually developing my queerness and now feel quite comfortable to be myself - in all my normative and non-normative glory - across all my relationships; be they with friends, family, colleagues, lovers, strangers, housemates, or service providers. My relationships with men now are quite different from before. For starters, they occur on my terms or they don't occur at all. I feel quite free, actually. Even more so than when I was just dating women. Because now, other person(s) consenting, I can have whatever kind of relationship I want with whomever I want. My reflections on queering relationships and the problem with monogamy are probably best left for another day though!

I will just say this: I really am happily uncommitted. And I really do feel free. I'm very nearly finished my PhD, and I have absolutely no idea what kind of a journey that's going to take me on. It was wonderful to have a partner for a good chunk of this last push to finish my thesis; I will forever be thankful to my ex for the support she gave me in what was a very difficult and trying period of my life. A lot of the happiness I feel now I owe to her - both for being with me and for breaking up with me. I want to be focused on myself now. I want to be able to pursue whatever interesting opportunities come my way in this next phase of my (professional) life, without having to negotiate that with another person. And I'm very thankful that I get to do that.

Why I Don't Support Marriage Equality

If you're looking at my blog, you've probably encountered the recent sea of red marriage equality pictures on Facebook. Maybe you've even joined in yourself, changing your profile picture to some version of this:

Perhaps you've noticed my hostility to these 'marriage equality' campaigns over the years. I figured it's about time that I addressed why I do not support this movement, and why I think you should be critical of it too.

I am not a supporter of marriage, gay or straight. Its basis - women as the property of men - is extremely misogynistic and has never been effectively critiqued and reworked on a societal level. Sure, my father can't exchange me to a man of his choosing for a predetermined number of goats anymore, but that is not really a challenge to the underlying gendered bias of marriage. Although individual couples may be much better able to negotiate the terms of the gendered roles of their relationships than in the past, the cultural 'script' of what it means to be married - that is, the picture we immediately get when we think of a married couple - continues to be one where the man is the head of the household, and the woman takes care of the kids. Until we have a non-gendered cultural/societal understanding of the roles within a marriage, there is nothing 'equal' about it!

Same-sex marriage is not inherently more progressive than heterosexual marriage. Our understanding of 'married couple' is shaped by assumptions that the relationship consists of two people who engage in particular gendered behaviours; whether or not their genitals match up with these roles is pretty much irrelevant. I suspect that same-sex marriage actually promotes a more conservative understanding of same-sex relationships than currently exists. Instead of opening up the possibility to reconsider how gendered roles are negotiated within heterosexual relationships, I suspect same-sex couples will instead be bombarded with more questions of the "So, which one of you is the man?" variety.

Gaining the 'privilege' of entering into a heterosexual institution also means playing by their rules. Hinging civil rights onto marriage further exasperates inequalities. There are many valid reasons not to want to get married, regardless of who you don't want to get married to. I worry that when equal rights are attached to marriage, unmarried same-sex couples who try to fight against discrimination will be left with little other recourse than to marry. For instance, parenting rights. Many heterosexual couples have kids without getting married and the father is still recognised as the legal co-parent. I think that as a society it would be easy for us to just expect that same-sex couples would get married in order to access rights that are granted to heterosexuals simply for being heterosexual. This is because underlying issues of homophobia are not being addressed by the marriage equality movement.

Marriage equality will not end homophobia; after all, interracial marriage did not end racism. Instead, it creates a hierarchy of relationship types whereby being married is privileged over all other relationships and other relationship configurations are dismissed as not possibly being as committed/serious/caring. I'm sure we're all familiar with some of the abominations of heterosexual celebrity marriages, so I probably don't need to spend a lot of time talking about how ridiculous it is to assume that marriage is the best possible type of relationship to be in. Heterosexual couples already have to deal with the pressure of marriage privilege when they choose not to marry. Same-sex marriage will only make the marriage monster a bigger, badder, harder to resist machine of cultural conformity.

Because same-sex attracted people have been excluded from the tradition of marriage, we have had to come up with other ways of being in relationships. This has meant creating new ways of making commitments to one another, and finding new reasons to stay together when things get tough. Marriage presents itself as a 'one size fits all' kind of relationship, but we've got stockades full of evidence that shows it does not. The marriage equality movement is closing the queer community off from having those discussions. Our voices are silenced and we are made to feel guilty for not jumping on the bandwagon.

Same-sex marriage is being heralded as a band-aid that will fix all our gay issues. I keep hearing that once our relationships are recognised as 'legitimate', we will be much better able to fight for issues like queer suicide and homophobic bullying. I hear this from intelligent, critical thinking people who should know better. If we have to get married for our relationships to be seen as legitimate, that is NOT acceptance! That is barely even tolerance. In many ways I think that allowing same-sex marriage will make it harder to fight against homophobia and what it produces. It shifts the attitude to "We gave you marriage, what are you still complaining about?" It makes it harder to point to the systemic discrimination that lead to things like higher rates of depression and suicide amongst the queer community. "Give it time, it takes time for the benefits of marriage equality to trickle down." I don't see how anyone can think that is 'good enough'.

Queer relationships are legitimate, diverse, alternative models to the heteronorm. I refuse to belong to a movement that tells me what I have is not worth valuing and asks me to conform to someone else's values. Marriage equality denies the good things about different types of queer relationships and tells us we'd be so much better off if we aspired to be like heterosexuals.

Remember second wave feminism? Where women were told they should strive to be like men and that would be super awesome? Remember what that produced? It created an even greater devaluation of traditional femininity, making it harder to engage men in feminism because asking them to step into the home was asking them to voluntarily become social outcasts.

I think the marriage equality movement, like second wave feminism, started out with good intentions. But it has been co-opted by conservative values and it's time we let it go and moved on to something new. Something that recognises the value within different types of relationships and doesn't place one type above all others. I don't want to take the marriage model away as a type of relationship that people engage in. What I want is for the marriage model to be recognised as one of many different, legitimate types of relationship models that some people engage in. And I think that's something that we can achieve, if we start to think critically about what marriage equality will actually produce.

Entitlement

About a month ago Trouble and I met up for a rainy afternoon breakfast stack at one of our favourite cafes and had a good, long, intellectual talk about Life Stuff. She was telling me that on her way to meet up with me a car full of men had been yelling and honking to get her attention. When she finally realised they were honking at her, for no other reason than to express their sexual interest in her, she was pretty pissed off and told them to fuck off. As well she should! This is a frighteningly common experience for women. But what is really frightening is how bad women are made to feel about themselves when it happens.

Welcome to slut shaming 201. Today's topic is 'entitlement', or more specifically (since there are more forms of entitlement than I can shake a stick at) sexual entitlement. There is a part of me that wants to qualify that further and say male sexual entitlement, but this is a problem that is more complicated than simply being men's fault. Blaming men for entitlement isn't really any better than blaming women for rape. Patriarchy and misogyny know no gender bounds.

So what is sexual entitlement? It is the belief that a person's sexual desire for another person gives them the right to that person's body/mind/time. At this point I feel that it is important to note that while feelings of sexual entitlement are not exclusively the purview of men, given that men continue to have social dominance over women (broadly, yes I know this is not always the case) it is much more problematic when men feel sexually entitled to women's bodies/minds/time. It is also much more common that this is how sexual entitlement plays out.

The problem, as I see it, is that when it comes to sexuality, women are set up to fail. There is no possible way for women to 'win' if they play along with the patriarchy's rules. No matter what the situation, men's sexual desires trump women's. Three heterosexual examples (since I hate binaries and want to guide you gently through my argument; I will queer it up a bit later in this post) to illustrate my point:

1) A woman who abstains from sex until marriage, then marries a loving, respecting man is still expected to satisfy her husband's sexual desires over her own. She may be able to negotiate having her desires met, but there is no social expectation that her husband would have to negotiate getting his desires met.

2) A woman goes out to a party with the expressed intent of having casual sex. When she picks up a guy, there is a sexual script already in play that dictates the satisfaction of his sexual desires. If she is lucky, he will also satisfy her's. But again, there is no expectation on him to do so.

3) A woman walks into a brothel looking to buy the sexual services of a man. If she's done her research, she's gone into a brothel that actually provides such a service. If not, she may be met with ridicule and/or homophobia. Or maybe the brothel staff will be friendly and point her in the right direction. At any rate, she can't just walk into any brothel and purchase sexual service. I am not aware of the existence of any brothel that absolutely does not provide service to men.

Given that men's sexual desires hold more social value than women's, it is not surprising that sexual entitlement is so prominent. And unquestioned! I started writing this blog a month ago, and in that time I've been noticing sexual entitlement everywhere I look. In an earlier draft of this blog I had a long list of examples of times I've encountered something similar to the anecdote I started this blog with. I think most women could come up with a few personal examples pretty easily if you asked them. I'm not going to list off my experiences here, as I've decided to go in a bit of a different direction with this post, inspired by a recent night out with my siblings in Kelowna. I want to talk about what I think men don't realise; I want to talk about what happens to women when they encounter sexual entitlement.

I'm currently in Canada, visiting family, old friends, and working on my thesis. Right now I'm in Kelowna, soaking up the last of the summer sun. Last weekend, two of my siblings were out here with me and we decided to go have a bit of a night out on the town. I wasn't crazy about the first pub we went to; it was loud and very heteronormative (that is, everyone was heterosexual and seemed to be aspiring to social standards of 'normal'). We headed off to another pub where there was a local band playing. The crowd was still pretty hetero, but less normative. I was excited to find that not only was I not the only lesbian in the place, but the other lesbian was pretty darn cute!

I thought that she was there with a straight couple, but as the night went on I discovered that she was there with a female friend who some guy was hitting on (I discovered this, btw, when said guy tried to stick his hand down my shirt while giving me a very unsolicited hug - that's a very obvious example of sexual entitlement that I hope my readers don't need me to further deconstruct). When I told my brother that I thought the lesbian was really cute, he encouraged me to go talk to her. I said nah and continued to sit and listen to the band, occasionally glancing over towards the cute girl.

As the night went on and the cute girl made her way to the dance floor, my brother dragged me onto the dance floor and tried to push me over to go and 'mac on' the girl. At that point, I got really angry with him and told him if he didn't back off I would punch him. He backed off and I was left to scratch my head about why I reacted so strongly to him trying to be my wingman.

I'm not shy about hitting on girls. I like the chase and while I don't always initiate, I'm pretty upfront about my interest. Chances are, if you're wondering if I'm into you or not, I'm probably not into you.

Eventually, I realised what was bothering me about my brother's approach: it reeked of sexual entitlement. It seemed that for my brother, my thinking the girl was cute was reason enough for me to go talk to her. In this framing, my desire for her gave me the right to access her mental/physical/emotional space - or at least the right to try. But for me, having been on the receiving end of unwanted sexual attention far, far, too many times, I didn't feel that my desire for this woman gave me any right to her at all.

I think that there is this big misconception that being hit on is a nice experience. Sure, it can be nice. If you want it to happen. But if you don't, it can be horrible. Even if the person doing the hitting on isn't horrible; even if they are, in fact, pleasant, it can still be a horrible experience. This is because of the social protocol that deems it rude not to talk to someone when they initiate a conversation with you, and the gender differential that is at play. For a man to blow someone off, he is simply being rude in that instance. If a woman does it, even once, she is forever a bitch.

Women face a lot more social pressure than men to engage in conversations with anyone who decides to talk to them - whether they want to or not. This means, when you hit on a woman, she may not be talking to you because she wants to, but because she is socially obliged to! So please, everybody, think about that the next time you decide to strike up a conversation with a woman, whatever your intent.

The reason I didn't want to go up to this woman and strike up a conversation with her was that while I was sitting at my table watching her, she wasn't watching me back. I wasn't leering at her, but I also wasn't being subtle about the fact that she had caught my eye. If she had been interested in me, it would have been easy for her to make eye contact with me. That she didn't told me that she just wanted to hang out with her friend and enjoy the night, and I can (and did) respect that.

I did contemplate doing one of my favourite moves: the toilet queue chat. There is a lot of solidarity about women's toilets and the secret business that goes on in them. It is quite easy and acceptable to strike up a conversation with someone while waiting for the toilets, and it is also a space that if you are not interested in talking, it's easy and safe to signal your disinterest in a conversation. It's a great way to break the ice with someone and get a sense of if they are interested in having a chat or not. Of course, a willingness to have a chat does not equate a desire to be hit on; it's more that if they're not interested in talking to you in the toilets, they're not interested in talking to you. As I didn't have the chance to try this move, and she had not paid me any particular attention, I felt it would be incredibly presumptuous of me to strike up a conversation with her on the dance floor.

The thing with sexual entitlement - and entitlement in general - is, I think a lot of people are really unaware of when they are acting from a place of privilege, and how that privilege impacts on others. And I also don't think that people are aware of the accumulative affect of entitlement. Because, yeah, a single instance of a bit of unwanted flirting is probably not going to cause someone a great deal of grief. But while it might be a single instance for the person doing the flirting, chances are it's not a single instance for the person on the receiving end. Your single instance may just be the straw that broke the camel's back.

I remember my straw. Back when I worked in an adult store, I had a guy come in one day and tell me that I looked very pretty. He wasn't being lewd or particularly aggressive, and his comment was incredibly tame compared to many of the other men who felt they had some sort of right to comment on me as a sexual being when they came into the store. His comment would have been sweet if it had come from someone I trusted. But he was an older man, a stranger, and the only other person in the store with me, and I did not feel safe being alone in the store - in the middle of the day - with a man who felt it was not only acceptable but innocuous to sexualise me.

I'm not the kind of person to let something like that slide, so I informed him that I did not find his comment appropriate. This made matters much worse because then he felt like he needed to justify himself, and the only way he could do this was by vilifying me. There was nothing wrong with him and what he did; it was my problem, my fault that I couldn't "take a compliment." If I didn't want to be complimented on my appearance, I shouldn't put any effort into looking professional. Nevermind that my employers required it of me, or, more importantly, that it made me feel good about myself. Apparently the only reason a woman puts any effort into her appearance is to invite the attentions of men, and she should be damn grateful when she gets them! Eventually he left the store. I ended up quitting my job - which I loved - over this, and how the company refused to deal with it.

This is what happens when we construct reality in terms of binaries: a person's disinterest in someone's sexual advances becomes a personal insult. When a person is insulted, they have to defend themselves, usually by pointing out how the other person is wrong to be insulted. There is a term for this, it's called 'victim blaming'.

But why should a person's disinterest in someone's sexual advances be taken personally? I wasn't personally insulted when the woman at the bar didn't show any interest in me. I don't actually think it has anything to do with me. She wasn't looking, and it would be insulting of me to assume that she should be.

Confrontation makes a lot of people uncomfortable. I think there's this cultural assumption that women are a lot more uncomfortable with confrontation than men are, but I think if that was true then slut shaming and victim blaming wouldn't even be things. These are tool that are used against women (by men and women) to uphold sexual entitlement. Because it's when women stand up for themselves - when they are confrontational - that they risk encountering slut shaming and/or victim blaming.

Let me take a step back here to talk about our social understandings of how women are meant to negotiate sex. On the one hand, women are told - ad nauseam - to just say 'no' to sex. On the other hand, women are told that they are horrible people if they reject someone. You know, because it is a woman's job to make everyone else feel good about themselves and nevermind about how she feels about herself. So when a woman is faced with a sexual advance, she's faced with a catch-22 situation. She's not meant to say yes because that makes her a slut, but if she says no she'll hurt the other person's feelings and that makes her a bitch. What to do, what to do? For a lot of women, the result is a complex game of avoidance.

Going back to my experience at the adult shop, it was the very innocuousness of that man's comment that made the experience so upsetting for me. He was paying me a compliment; and as he was not in clear violation of social norms, he could not understand why I would be upset by his compliment. It was much easier to deal with men who knew they were overstepping their bounds because they understood that if they didn't respect my 'no' they were in the wrong. Their actions may have been a lot more explicit, but my rights to be offended by their actions were also a lot clearer.

It's these smaller experiences that are a lot harder to avoid, and a lot harder to negotiate. I feel like there is some sort of confrontation/entitlement binary/blind spot happening in society. Some people feel that they are entitled to make sexual advances onto others, but then forget that the person they make the advance on is entitled to tell them to fuck off. And when they get told to fuck off, they feel like how dare this person feel entitled to put them in a confrontational situation, but ignore the fact that it was actually them who put the other person in a confrontational situation - and what right did they have themselves to do that?

I feel like I'm starting to spin out here, so hopefully I'm not losing you along the way. The point that I'm trying to make is, I don't think people are often aware of when they are putting someone into a confrontational situation. And I think that women get put into confrontational situations a lot, and that society does not adequately prepare women for how to manage these situations. I also think that men are not put into confrontational situations nearly enough. And I think that for everybody who gets put into a confrontational situation - whatever the situation and whatever their gender - there is far too great a tendency to try and get out of the situation by placing the blame on somebody else.

So if I can leave you with a few takeaway points, it's this:

1) Think before you act. Consider how your actions might impact on the other person, and try to think of at least 3 possible outcomes, because there are always more than two options.

2) Learn to be comfortable with your own discomfort. Nobody likes being told they are in the wrong, but before you jump in to defend yourself, consider the possibility that maybe the other person has a point.

3) Question your assumptions. What makes it OK for you to behave in a certain way? Are you sure? Is that always the case? What might happen if you behaved differently?

4) Look out for nonverbal cues. Most people are pretty crap about communicating with their words. It's not their (or our, since I am certainly not exempt from this!) fault; as a society we're pretty crap at teaching people how to communicate, and we tend to penalise those who do. Especially women. Understand this.

5) Be aware of and listen to your instincts. If you feel uncomfortable in a situation, there probably is a good reason for it, whether it's apparent or not. If you sense that someone else is uncomfortable in a situation, address it! Remember point 4. Sometimes you'll have to be the one to start the hard conversations, even when it's the other person who's got the issue.

I have so, so, so, much more to say on this, but that is enough for Part Two. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this, and writing Part Three when next the mood strikes. Until next time...

Who should be ashamed?

As the Olympics have started, I'm spending a lot of time watching Channel Nine. For those of you that don't know, Channel Nine is absolutely appalling! It's right-wing, conservative, homophobic, racist trash. But... I am actually really interested in watching the Olympic coverage. At least of the swimming. Yes, I did spend my morning yelling at the TV and talking to myself, but seriously, my love of swimming is intense! I have much love for the Australian women's freestyle relay team.

Anyways, there is a weekly 'news' show on Channel Nine called A Current Affair, and they've been advertising a story about how teenage girls are going out in Melbourne with not a whole lot of clothing on. With tag lines like "Would you let your daughter go out looking like this?" and "Do you want to look like a hooker?"

This advertisement is causing me serious distress!!! There is so much wrong about it, I don't even know where to begin. It completely infuriates me. I started to critique it last night while my flatmate and I were sitting around watching the games, but that just left me feeling even more upset. As a flatmate, mine is great. But politically, we are worlds apart.

I commented that it was a total load of bullshit to claim that parents have any control over what their adult children wear out, and she replied that if these girls were taught some self-respect then they wouldn't dress so trashy. I replied that if men were taught to actually respect women it wouldn't be an issue what women wear. This is an emotional issue for me, and so I left it at that. But it's still bothering me, so I'm gonna blog it out!

What is it about women taking ownership over their sexuality that is so threatening and offensive that it has spawned this massive culture of shame? Why are women's bodies assumed to be available for consumption by others? Why do people - both men and women - feel that they have any sort of right to tell a woman how she should or should not look? How is it that our society feels it's appropriate to claim that women are wearing too little or too much clothing? Why does anyone take these social mores seriously when they simultaneously claim that wearing a headscarf or wearing a mini skirt are disrespectful of women's sexuality? Why isn't it blatantly obvious that it is this attitude - and not the clothes women choose to wear - that is offensive?

This is something that I have been exploring both personally and academically for, oh, a decade now, and I'm still struggling to find any satisfactory answers. I think this is a really complicated issue! There is such a strong belief that sex is this mega-valuable thing that if it's just given up, makes it cheap. The problem with this though, is that it only makes it cheap for women! Men can have as much sex as early as they want and there's no claim that anything about them loses value.

The thing that bothers me the most about this is how women oppress each other through the language of slut shaming. Judgements pass so quickly and uncritically that when it happens, I wonder if women are even aware of how much damage they are doing to others and to themselves. I'm shocked that it happens at all, but I'm especially shocked at how often it happens amongst women-identified types in the queer community. Our lives are organised around a sexual 'otherness' and yet there can still be so much disrespect for those who do not follow normative conventions about women's sexuality!

Sex is something that is meant to make people feel good - physically, emotionally, spiritually, etc. So I guess that makes it an easy tool to make people feel completely horrible about themselves. It's interesting, thinking about the sexual double standard, and how women are often made to feel bad for having sex.  From my interviews with heterosexual men I learned men have a lot of insecurities and anxieties about sex too. The difference is that men are encouraged to have more sex to deal with their issues, and women are encouraged to have less.

For my own part, I try to challenge assumptions about sluttiness. While reclaiming the word 'slut' is fraught with problems that I don't even want to pretend to be able to meaningfully be able to discuss, I feel like I can at least reclaim my own sexual agency, and if I'm lucky, help a few other women do the same! I don't think anyone should be made to feel badly about acting upon their sexual desire with a consenting partner. But even more than that, I actually think that people - and especially women - should be made to feel good about doing so.

Anyways, I could talk about slut shaming forever, and there very well might be more posts on this in the future. But I'll leave it at that for now. So go forth and fuck, but for fuck's sake, be nice to each other out there!!!

Kissing Sydney

Have you ever met someone and just clicked with them, forming a friendship before you even really know much of anything about one another? I've made a heap of friends like that recently. It may seem like the kind of connection that is superficial and won't last, but when you click with someone so easily, maintaining a friendship with them is really quite easy. Case in point, my friend T. We met 7.5 years ago when we were both studying in Amsterdam and have stayed in touch over the years. In one of those funny coincidences that make me think the world is not such a big place, she moved to Sydney not all that long after I moved to Melbourne. As I never seem to travel anymore, we try to catch up whenever she's in Melbourne. When she was down in November, she invited me to come up to Sydney for Mardi Gras and stay with her. I booked my flight the next day.

On New Years Eve I declared 2012 the kissing year and was issued a challenge to kiss 52 girls in 52 weeks. This was turning out to be easier said than done. By the beginning of February I hadn't kissed anyone; not even hubby! One night I was out at a queer club with Trouble and she made a comment about how it was obvious we weren't together as we were both checking everyone else out. So I grabbed her and pashed her and declared it a date (a running joke between us). The kissing picked up from there, but still, when March rolled around I'd only reached 4/52. Drastic actions were needed if I was ever going to reach my goal! And I knew just the thing...

T was marching in the parade with Scarlet Alliance and Gender Agenda, promoting sex worker rights; something that I am very much in favour of. She invited me to march with them, but initially I decided to be a big lameypants and said I wanted to just watch the parade this year as I'd never seen it before. But we went out for dinner with some of her friends on Friday and they informed me that when you march in the parade you spend several hours in this holding area where everyone lines up and it's a big ass party. Quite frankly, that sounded like a helluva lot more fun than standing around on some street corner all night. So I marched! And boy am I ever glad that I did!! In that one night I managed to pash 31 girls; all but 3 of whom were a direct result of my marching in the parade.

Having decided to march, I of course needed something outrageous to wear. Our group had a decriminalise sex work theme, so some people were wearing orange jumpsuits and shackles, some were dressed as sexy cops, and everyone else was dressed in red. And then there was me...

The outfit certainly got me lots of attention, especially the eyelashes! Girls kept stopping me and asking to take a picture with me, to which I replied "Sure, but it will cost you a kiss." Most of those kisses were really conservative ones - on the cheek or a peck on the lips - and did not count as part of my tally. Had they, my total of girls kissed would be significantly higher. That pre-parade area was insane! For awhile there it was like everywhere I turned I was kissing someone.

But it wasn't all about the kissing. I met heaps of lovely people who would just come over and have a friendly chat. My favourite non pashed randoms that I met were the Snow Queen and King (both women, obviously) who I met in a queue for the loo. It was absolutely pissing down rain and they were both standing under a massive umbrella, so I stood under it with them and we struck up a friendly conversation. They were marching with the Jews, and had I been Jewish I apparently would have made excellent marriage material (no, I did not tell them that I'm both anti-religion and anti-marriage).

We were in the pre-parade holding area for at least 3 hours before we started marching (possibly longer as we were bringing up the rear) and it was pouring rain. We were marching with red umbrellas, which was fortunate, but I still got completely drenched. And you know, since I was wearing a white t-shirt that had been completely soaked through, the only sensible thing to do really was to ditch the bra... And of course, after mixing champagne and vodka, the next logical move was to flash the drag kings...

My strategy for kissing girls was basically to run up to anyone who looked kissable and made eye contact with me for more than 5 seconds and pash them. It made the march super fun! Sometimes women were screaming from the sidelines for me to come over and kiss them. It was awesome!!
After the parade we went to a party at the Red Rattler called Oi!! Monsta Gras. That people would be dressed up like monsters had not even crossed my mind, so when I walked in, I was blown away by all the amazing costumes. And, like any good queer party, I ran into people I knew and a couple gay guys fell in love with me. It was a pretty awesome party. I mean, I was grinding with The Hulk and I pashed a unicorn! But more on that later.

As the night went on, it got harder and harder for me to find girls to pash. This seemed counter intuitive; usually as the night goes on, lips get looser. But then I saw myself in the mirror and suddenly I understood why!

We made it home at about 4am, which, given T lives in Manly, was about 3 hours earlier than I actually had expected to be home by. And, true to form, I woke up at 7am the next morning. And by next I mean same. There was nothing for it but to go wander down to the beach, get some Ben and Jerry's for breakfast, grab a coffee and get a pedicure. I know, it's a rough life!


Well, I'm sure you're all dying to get the goss on these 31 girls that I pashed. There is no way that I could possibly recall them all - like I said, it was a lot of me running into the crowd, making out with random people, then running back - but I can give you a Greatest Hits summary!

#5: The Boys
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they weren't meant to count BUT it was Mardi Gras and everyone's a little bit queer anyways, right? Both the boys I pashed were marching with us... as were several of the girls, but I'll get to that! After some random pashing in the pre-parade area I was complaining about how conservatively people were kissing me, and a guy from the Australian Sex Party offered to give me a real kiss - the kind you see naval officers give their girlfriends when they return home for shore leave. That didn't count at first, but after the third time I figured he could be an honorary girl. Same with the pirate. Goodness he was gorgeous! Tall, dark and handsome in an effeminate way, and totally straight. And very confused as to why I - as a lesbian - was giving him a free pass to kiss me. Desire is a funny thing and kissing is a lot of fun! There's no need for it to be anything more.

#4: The Unicorn
At the after party, I had wandered up to a couple of girls on the dance floor and was trying to convince one of them - or probably all of them - to pash me. I recall that I was focused on the one who was not dressed up as anything, who then informed me that while she wasn't going to pash me, her friend - the unicorn - would be most happy to oblige. I looked at her friend and said "I've never pashed a unicorn before." To which she shrugged and gave me a kiss, with just a bit of sneaky tongue. I didn't realize it was sneaky tongue until after we stopped kissing and this blue haired woman was staring at us going WTF?! I am interested in many things; causing lesbian drama is not one of them! I gave her friend shit and apologised to the girlfriend and walked away. Still, I figured pashing a unicorn has got to be good luck...

#3: The $20 Kiss
This was just beyond outrageous! One of T's friends said that she'd help me with my pashing numbers but couldn't because she's in a relationship. Fair enough. But then, as the night went on, they came to an agreement that she could kiss me if I paid her $20 for it. I was just like "Dude, you're barking up the wrong tree if you think I'm going to pay $20 for a kiss!" She kept going on about how amazing a kisser she is and how at a loss I was, and I was not budging about the money, so we were at a stalemate. But then! T, highly amused by the whole situation, bought me a $20 kiss with her friend!!! It was... a very vigorous kiss. Personally, I like tongue to be more hinted at than made explicit. We felt differently about this. The bite at the end was pretty hot though.

#2: Special Guest Appearance
I have another friend who is from Melbourne but has moved to Sydney and I was hoping to catch up with her over the weekend. I called her up and let her know I'd be marching in the parade and she said she'd be my cheer squad. We both had plans to go to the same party after the parade, so I figured I'd see her there. I tried to keep an eye out for her during the parade, but I figured I must have missed her. Then, all of a sudden, as I was just walking along, pulling our suitcase and having a break from the pashing, she jumped the barrier, ran into the parade, and pashed me! It was pretty hot! Given that was all I ended up seeing of her during my trip, I'd say we made the most of our time!

#1: The Mardi Gras Miracle
So as I said before, I pashed a few of the people who were marching with us. There was this one girl who I had seen before we left the Scarlett Alliance office that I thought was pretty cute and was a bit shy to go up to (I am a lot more forward with people when I know all I want is a kiss). As we were waiting for the parade to start we were sitting on the sidewalk, in the ran, having a chat and I told her about my kissing challenge. She said "Well, I'll pash you." And we proceeded to have a very nice kiss that left us both smiling. We resumed our conversation and discovered that we were both planning on going to the same after party. Then I got a call from T and I had to run off and try to find her. As the evening progressed, I still had this kiss on my mind. So when we returned to actually get lined up to march, I went up to her and pashed her again. She informed me that if I was to continue doing that it would really make her night. Unfortunately, I was being a bit too in the moment and that was the last I saw of her! I had not even thought to exchange numbers to ensure we were able to meet up later. This did not play too heavily on my mind on the Saturday, but come Sunday, I had regret!

Sunday afternoon there were various post Mardi Gras parties happening around the city. T and I made plans to meet up with some of her friends at a party in Newtown. We were all pretty exhausted and even though the party was pumping, the rain was still pouring down, and the dance floor was outside. So we decided to head off and get some food and hope that the rain would let up. It did, and we returned, but none of us were really all that keen to stay. So we decided to have one drink and hit the dance floor and then head off. I was dancing away when a familiar face walked past - one of the guys who had been marching with us, and was friends with the girl I had pashed! At first I just smiled at him, but then the logical part of my brain gave me a thunk and I asked him if he could either give me this girl's number or give her mine. He gave me her's and I promptly sent her a text. We weren't able to meet up again whilst I was in Sydney, but she has plans to come down to Melbourne, and I have a date! You see? Pashing a unicorn is good luck!!

Queer Aesthetics

You know when you're trying to write about one thing, but you've got something else boiling under your skin? Yeah, that's what's happening with me at the moment. I'm trying to finish my final data chapter (!!!) but there's something else that is on my mind: aesthetics - and particularly lesbian/queer aesthetics.

This has been something I've been pondering for awhile, especially over the last six months, as I've come to the end of (or rather a pause in) a massive physical transformation and have been quite actively exploring what it means for me to be single and gay, and where I situate myself within the queer community.

To contextualise this: I only realised I was gay about 2 years ago, after breaking up with my first girlfriend. Since then, I have lost around 30kg. This was the result of a very intensive campaign to get fit and improve my health; it was never about being thin (something I have no desire to be). I have talked about my weight loss a lot on this blog, and I don't want to get into it again here. All that needs to be said about it here is that I reached a point where I was happy with my body, sick of spending all my time exercising, and annoyed that my clothes never fit me for more than a couple of months (that's all well and good when you can afford to buy new ones; I can't!); so my body transformation project has been put on the back burner for the time being. Over the past, erm, 8 months I've also been figuring out - for the first time - what it means to me to be gay and single. When I first came out I felt like my sexuality was contingent upon my relationship status. It wasn't until Lady Cop and I broke up (for the final time) that I started to explore life as a single lesbian; in a nutshell it's AWESOME!

When I first started dating women, I was quite insecure with myself, particularly about my appearance. Coming from heteroland, I felt that I did not have enough beauty capital to attract the kind of man I was attracted to, and I did not know if those same beauty dynamics would transfer over into the lesbian community. How would other women engage with my body, and how would I engage with their bodies? It has been completely fascinating for me to observe and experience a variety of queer aesthetics. Heteronormative beauty standards do not hold the same influence within the queer community - though they are not completely absent either - and while I have found that incredibly liberating, I have also discovered that queer aesthetics can be quite difficult to navigate.

For me, aesthetics are extremely important. They are important because they are about how I represent myself to others, and about how I interpret others. I think it's also really important to differentiate between aesthetics and looks/attractiveness, because while they are related, they are not the same things. I understand looks/attractiveness to be about how one measures up to some external standard of beauty. Looks/attractiveness is often quite a disempowering framework because it is quite narrowly defined, is always about comparison and conformity, and its standards are nearly impossible for most people to obtain. I understand aesthetics to be about how one expresses one's individuality. I would say that it involves developing a stylized version of one's self, though technically such a stylization could involve completely disengaging from the dictates of the fashion and beauty industries.

The reason I believe aesthetics are so important is because of their link to desire. And this is precisely why I find myself so fascinated by queer aesthetics; because they signal queer desire - often in complex and messy ways. Our aesthetic practices (generally) signal something about our personality to others: wearing gym clothes tells people you are interested in fitness; wearing a suit is a sign of power; high heels are a sign of femininity; and asymmetrical haircuts are, apparently, a sign of living in Melbourne's inner north. Queer aesthetics complicates this, because queer culture is about challenging binaries and finding new ways of being. Queer culture is further challenged by the fact that not everyone in the gay community is queer. This has meant, for me, that sometimes I am misread.

I suppose that being misread is part of the parcel of being queer; not everyone is going to get it and that is, after all, the point. Why I struggle with being misread is because I misread myself for so much of my life. Being heterosexual was an identity that never sat comfortably with me and ultimately made me very unhappy; I am eager to distance myself from it in as many ways as I can. I spent far too long passing for a heterosexual; I want my body to signal to myself - as much as to anyone else - that that is not who or what I am.

Since coming out, I have sought to make myself visibly 'queer'. Many of you are familiar with my quest to achieve appropriately 'lesbian' hair: in an effort to make my gayness immediately obvious, I have shaved off most of my hair. My hair certainly signals to the right people that I am gay, and as I joked before, that I live in the inner north. I have this desire to achieve an aesthetic that is unmistakeably queer; an aesthetic that is not linked to clothing, but is of my body. Tattoos are good for this, though  even the visible and aggressive ones have been appropriated by certain heterosexual aesthetics. At the moment I am experimenting with being a hairy lesbian, since body hair seems to be something straight women shy away from. The problem there is that I am ridiculously blonde, so even after months of growth my body hair is not immediately visible.

The reason that I, at times, am misread within the gay community is because there is a disconnect between what my aesthetic says about me, and how I actually am. You see, I like to wear dresses. I always have, and I reckon I always will. But I am not now, nor have I ever been, a 'girly girl'. If I had to sum myself up in four words, I'd probably go with: wears dresses, throws punches. The picture of me at my 4th birthday that I have on this blog I think demonstrates this divide nicely. Because of this, people often tell me that I should go for the rockabilly look. And while it's true that this style suits me remarkably well - it is a style that celebrates the hourglass figure - there are three reasons why I am not taking on a full time rockabilly aesthetic:

1. I have 'commitment issues'. I do not not want to be boxed in to any one way of being. I would get extremely bored if I only ever expressed myself in one particular way. Besides, my personality is far too all over the place to be contained by any one aesthetic.
2. The best thing about being poor has been that it's forced me to breakup with consumerism. I am a recovering shopaholic. I have found it so liberating to not be concerned about wearing the flashest clothes, and have found it incredibly empowering to experiment with fashion I can afford. As it turns out, if you wear your clothes well, it really doesn't matter that they came from Kmart and Savers.
3. While I enjoy the rockabilly aesthetic, I feel no particular connection to rockabilly culture. Largely because, from the outside looking in, rockabilly feels quite heteronormative to me. I know that there is a huge queer engagement with rockabilly, but, it strikes me as often reproducing the butch/femme dichotomy, which is something that I personally do not want to engage with. I consider my personality to be quite masculine, and while there is room for that within the rockabilly femme aesthetic, I don't know, it just doesn't sit well with me. Maybe that's unfair. It's based on a personal experience I had with a woman who - I think - expected me to act femme when I dressed femme. Which just made me want to act incredibly butch. Which made her not want to talk to me anymore. There's good reason for why I have a rep at my office for topping from the bottom!! Maybe I just need to come with a disclaimer...

Embodying a queer aesthetic is something of a moving target. What it means to be queer changes over time; what it means to me to be queer has changed over time. Which aesthetics are appropriated by the queer community change, and are gradually reappropriated by the hetero community (cuz we're the cool trend setters that move society forward). There is no permanence to queer aesthetics; it is always read as queer because of how it is situated within a particular socio-historical context. For instance, my struggle to have my personal aesthetics reconciled with my queer desires may be specific to the Melbourne scene. I wonder if I would still be read as femme if I was in Calgary, where there is a much more conservative aesthetic culture? I suppose in a few months I will find out!

Queer aesthetics are about pushing the boundaries of existing ways of being, and opening up space to become something new. Doing so involves inhabiting spaces where, as Cressida Heyes described it, one is - to some extent - unintelligible to others. I have not quite worked out how to signal my desires through my aesthetic: I am a masculine woman with feminine aesthetics who desires masculine women with masculine aesthetics. But this is part of the fun of being single: I get to experiment with my aesthetics and see who responds and how.

body love

And while it would be nice to have my self and my desires read correctly through my aesthetics, I find that having conversations with people tends to clear up any misinterpretations that may occur (if only everyone was as open to having such conversations as I am)! Besides, even if there was some aesthetic that did signal exactly who I am and what I want, desire is much too fluid to stay in any one place forever so any successfully occupied aesthetic is always going to be temporary anyways. Thank goodness I am finally happy just being me!