I’m just plain tired. I’m tired of having to explain how I identify, especially to the same people over and over again. I’m tired of people making assumptions about me rather than letting me make my own definitions and letting them know what my labels are. I’m tired of people thinking I’m straight because my partner is cismale or that I’m a lesbian because I prefer female-bodied people. I try not to let it bother me when someone mislables me, but it hurts every time.

It’s difficult to inhabit middle identities while living in a binary world. There are many days when I wish I could just feel “one or the other” instead of seeing all the wonderful options out in front of me and wanting to have one of every flavor. Call me indecisive if you want, but when I can see the beauty and joy I could get from every option I can’t just pick one, it’s not in my nature.

I’m not straight or a lesbian, I’m queer. Bisexual, maybe, though I don’t like the binary aspect it implies and prefer other terms. Queer is the best description I have. Really I tend to be attracted to other queer people regardless of their gender and specifically because of their intelligence and/or personality. I’ve used intellisexual for quite some time, sapiosexual also fits which is a slightly more common term. I am attracted to people’s brains more than anything else, and usually those brains have to be queer in some way shape or form.

Similarly I do not identify with the term woman. It’s simply not a word that I identify with nor is it a way I see myself or desire for others to see me. While I may often wear feminine drag that does not make me a woman (or any spelling variation thereof). The same goes for girl. My gender identity is genderqueer regardless of the gender expressed within my gender presentation⁰¹. My gender presentation is always drag.

While I do associate with the term femme I embrace it as part of my gender presentation. I embrace the gothy glittery drag queen femmeininity that is all mine most days, though not all days. Femme is my presentation more than anything, but there are also days when I wear my too-small-sports-bra-slash-binder and present as fagette. I do think that my “fagette” presentation confuses some people, however, because it still some femininity in it, dressing in boy drag is not a spectrum-banging event for me. I am realizing more and more, though, just how much femme and fagette go hand in hand for me. There are no days when I am femme that I am not a fagette, and no days when I am not genderqueer.

Recently I’ve begun using gender neutral pronouns when I am able and it makes my entire being sing. A friend of mine referred to me using ze and hir without my first requesting it and it nearly brought me to completely unexpected tears to be seen in a way that aligned with my own gender. I catch myself internally wincing when words and identities other than my own are thrown at me in conversation, but often I don’t have the energy or desire to confront the misconception of me in the eyes of others, which just ends up perpetuating it.

I’m trying to get to the point where I am not looking for the validation of others for any of my identities, but it’s difficult not to want that. I want to be seen rather than assumed away as something else. I realize that I am responsible for making myself a whole person in the eyes of others and do not put the responsibility of figuring me out completely on other people but I’m so damn tired of having to correct people. It seems like a petty difference to ask someone to not refer to me using certain language, and yet it cuts me deep whenever it happens. I just haven’t gotten to the point where I am comfortable asserting my gender identity, perhaps because it is such a fluid work-in-progress.

1. I’m using gender identity and gender presentation to mean two different things. Someone’s gender identity has to do with the internal gender feelings the person has, whereas their gender presentation is the outward gender they show to the world. These do not always go hand-in-hand. [↩]

This has been posted a few different places including The Femme’s Guide, and I decided it needed to be posted here as well.

It’s not often I’m moved to tears… or maybe it is often when someone articulates something so well as Ivan E. Coyote has here. The title of this post is a line from the first video, “The Femme Piece.”

Through watching the first I found the second, “A Butch Roadmap,” also by Mr. Coyote.

Onyx and I have settled in to a remarkably comfortable D/s dynamic. We have talked extensively about it, but the difference this time is that it just clicks, for lack of a better term. All the background issues that were making so much noise the last time we were trying these power roles have been resolved, thanks in large part to the many things we learned through the trial of the triad. I find myself enjoying to do things for him, and he is now more able to push and guide me than he was before. It is, in a word, wonderful.

I have noticed that I am hesitant to share this power dynamic with others, even on here to an extent. I believe this is in part due to it still, in some ways, being so new and foreign but mostly it is because it is still private and vulnerable. Despite the abundance with which I share my private feelings and thoughts on this blog (less so now than I have before, but I’m working on writing more when I don’t have writer’s block) I have an extremely difficult time sharing personal things with others, especially in person and especially those I don’t know very well. Hell, I even have trouble expressing things to Onyx sometimes which I would have no issue writing to him.

The last couple of weekends while going out with amazing people I’ve noticed myself being slightly more comfortable but still not all that comfortable with expressing my submissiveness, and that was with fellow kinky perverted people who have read my blog including stories of me being slapped and dominated and fucked. I don’t mean showing my submissvieness to them, but just talking about it.

I see others so secure in their submission and happy to proclaim to the world that they are submissive and I find myself having trouble with that. Perhaps it is because I am a switch. I can’t fully embrace my role as submissive because, although I feel submissive to Onyx, I do not feel wholly like a submissive. I cannot throw myself into submission with complete abandon because I am also a Top. Or, that is the roadblock I come to in my mind.

Although I don’t consciously think this is true, there is a part of me that thinks embracing submission fully would mean giving up the parts of myself that are not submissive. Call it internalized binary programming that says I have to be one or the other but never both. The way some people say someone can’t feel Dominant and submissive at the same time, but I highly disagree, I say I am always both and it is the people I am with and situations I am in that bring each out in me.

However, I don’t have any hesitations about expressing my dominant side. I think in part this is because it is less vulnerable, less private, in a way. I am more comfortable with it, but also because it seems to be less normative. It’s more “okay” to express because it somehow shakes up the expectations.

I feel the same way with sexuality and gender, I’m far more comfortable expressing my desires when they have to do with cis-females or trans-people than when they have to do with cis-males. Essentially, I’m far more comfortable expressing my queer sexuality than what would be seen as a hetero-sexuality, as if expressing desire for cis-males somehow makes me less queer. Of course, in some minds it does. In some minds it would completely invalidate any other expression of queerness.

Similarly with gender I have been desiring lately to express my masculine side, the personae (yes, plural) I designate as Quyn or Sebastian sometimes. I used to dress more masculine and drifted to the feminine and now I’m working on finding the way to be both or neither, to dress as I please. While I’m more comfortable expressing my femme drag queen gender identity I think because that, in some ways, is the one that is less normative, despite being assigned female at birth, but that’s a whole other post.

Perhaps in the same vein expressing submissive desires could somehow invalidate any expression of dominance. I’m not saying this is the case, but I do think that Aristotelian logic is so ingrained in our culture that it is difficult to work against. If we express ourselves as being on one side of a cultural binary we are not only saying what we are but we are saying what we are not. By this logic when I say I am submissive I’m also saying I’m not dominant. It works for everything, really: power, sexuality, gender, etc. All the identities I hold middle ground on, certainly, and others as well.

I’ve talked about this many times before, I know, and read about the phenomenon. It’s not new, but it is significant. The point I’m trying to make here, though, is that I’m more comfortable expressing one aspect but not another on these supposed binaries (and I should point out that I do not see power dynamics or sexualities as part of a binary system, but they are largely seen culturally to be so which makes operating outside of them difficult and that is why I am referring to them as binaries), and my comfortability seems to be backwards. I am comfortable expressing the non-normative desires, those outside what is culturally expected, when it’s usually (or so I think) the opposite.

I want to be just as comfortable expressing and embracing all of my identities, and the first step just like with anything is acknowledgement. I have internalized binary and aristotelian logic programming. I have internalized power dynamic programming. I can actively work on acknowledging this programming and work to move beyond it, and that’s what I’m trying to do. Instead of thinking of these socially contrary ideas in terms of conflict and feeling dissonance over them I want to get to a point of doublethink, where I am comfortable with embracing these identities that seem to be contradictory and am, further, comfortable in my own skin. That’s what it’s all about in the end, anyway.

I’ve been gravitating toward a much more “masculine” gender expression lately, really since we moved to Seattle. I’ve been slowly making my way over, though it’s only selectively masculine, it’s my fagette persona, my feminine masculinity that I’ve been working on developing.

Like my transition from bottom to Top to switch I believe this gender exploration will bring me from femme to fagette to femme fagette. Just as I knew I would end up a switch I had to explore the individual parts of that identity expression before I was able to really claim switchness for my own.

I believe in order for me to truly embrace all that is my gender identity of femme fagette, my own gender phrase and identity, I will end up never staying still in one gender for too long or coming to rest, much like switch is it’s own identity along with being Top and bottom identities and various other aspects of power and sadomasochistic and any other sexuality aspects thrown in. I claim femme fagette in the same way I claim switch, as a identity in perpetual motion, forever morphing and changing to fit my current desires.

The fagette aspect of my gender identity is somewhat femme in and of itself, so the two really are tied up within each other no matter what I do. I have days where I want to pack, wear a binder, and walk with a swagger and other days when I feel like putting on a ruffled skirt, corset, and a wig, and those days might not coincide with the identity automatically assumed.

My gender definitely has to do with both masculine and feminine energies but also a purposeful queering of those energies as much as possible. I often feel the most feminine when wearing traditionally masculine clothing, and visa verse. For me it is less about the specific gender expression than it is about playing with gender and experiencing it in a way that jives with me, however that might be.

As I mentioned in my last post I’m a bit of a chameleon, which is why, I think, I cling to such transitory identities. I enjoy labels, as I’ve gone on about ad nauseum, but the labels I end up claiming tend to be ones that are fluid such as queer, switch, poly, and femme fagette/multigendered/gender fluid, each of these can mean different things depending on the day and my mood.

One thing I worry about with terming myself “femme fagette” is that damned gender binary.

I recently opened FetLife and Twitter accounts for a “masculine” persona, Quyn or Quyntin Ari St. Syr. It was somewhat of a spur of the moment thing and inspired by Mina Meow and her persona Aiden. Ever since I’ve been thinking about what that means to have the two accounts and I know I as a whole am not fully represented now by either Scarlet or Quyn, but I wonder if I’m even partially represented.

I don’t feel like I have split personalities, both Quyn and Scarlet are me but are aspects of me but not the end all and be all of me either. There’s something missing there, and maybe that’s the complexity of how the two personae interact and feed off each other and there may be another aspect of me not yet fully grasped. I occasionally toy with the idea of getting rid of the Scarlet persona and expanding the scope of Quyn, but Scarlet has been such a part of me for so long.

I worry, however, that splitting the personae up in to, basically, a “masculine” and a “feminine” persona isn’t doing justice to what I’m actually feeling and is just working to reinforce the gender binary, as if in order to express an “other” gender identity I have to break it down into accepted gender norms. Though it could have the opposite effect, I suppose, since although I am setting up these two personae I think what I do with them could be potentially gender explosive and bust through the confining ideas of binary gender. I guess it all depends on how it’s perceived and what I do with it more than anything.

I’m still exploring and getting used to my newly embraced identities and I’m excited to see how everything progresses. I have had a lot of time recently to think about myself and my genders are something that I am working on figuring out more.

I bought a new fedora last night and love it so much that I needed to show it off. What better way to do that then with a series of HNT pictures? It is 100% organic cotton and possibly currently my favorite accessory, though that’s not a definite as I’m an accessory slut.

I had to pair it with a tie, of course. The tie is Onyx’s technically but I helped pick it out, it just works better with the hat than any of my ties. I was packing during this as well, though you can’t tell from the pictures.

I started out sans makeup, this first one (to me) feels a little more masculine, a little more debonair. I feel like a private eye.

On the flip side, this one is the one I see as most feminine. It’s mischievous, maybe a little dangerous, a slight smirk, though those aren’t necessarily the feminine qualities.

I tried out the purple lips to match the tie but didn’t really like them as much, this was my favorite shot of everything that included my breasts though, I really love the way they look and the angle.

Finally, a head shot/portrait/my new twitter picture/etc. This one looks to me like the me I see in the mirror these days, which I really enjoy.

It’s been a while since I’ve participated in HNT, so what better time than now? It’s been a while since I’ve done much on this blog, but that’s going to be changing as I’m getting back into the spirit of writing and feel like I have some things to say.

Number 124 from The Adipositivity Project

This is the twelfth of many posts with answers to my Size & Sexuality Study questions within them. The responses have not been edited in any way. I hope you find them as interesting and informative as I have. I have gotten a huge number of responses already and I still want more! If you would like to answer these questions you can find more information on The Size & Sexuality Study here including links to the other responses.

This set of responses comes anonymously from a 28 year old “femme (sometimes ultra-femme) female” lesbian who is “As married as I can be in Virginia.”

What size is your body?

I am a size 20 – currently 235 pounds – so definitely large

How comfortable are you with your body both in general and your body size specifically?

Not so comfortable now, since I just gained 40 pounds in a year, after losing those same 40 pounds the year before.

How has your relation with and attitude toward your body and the size of your body changed over time?

I’ve been large my entire life. Two years ago, I actually managed to start losing weight and dropped 40 pounds, and 2 dress sizes – I was actually buying clothes in the regular sections, not the plus size. I felt pretty okay with my body before the weight loss, but then really felt great afterwards. I was wearing much more form fitting clothes and went out a lot more. Thats when I met my wife, and was pretty confidant the whole time, which is partly why she was attracted. Then, I had to start some new medicine, and all the weight came back. Since then, I’ve been very negative towards my body – I know I’ve been driving my wife nuts with the negative talk – and I’m trying to get back into losing the weight again, and stop the negative back talk.

How important is sexuality to your life?

Very – I love sex. Our bedroom is a shrine to our combined nymphomaniac sex and sex toy addictions. Well, not quite addictions, but I’m not saying no anytime soon. I know the best way to cure a headache is sex :)

How has your relation with and attitude toward your sexuality changed over time?

I love sex – and since I’ve come out, its been a much more positive relationship. When I was younger, and still trying to fit into the heterosexist norms, I was very promiscuous, because I craved sex and the closeness with another human being, but on the other hand, hated being that close to a man. I would actually get physically ill afterwards sometimes, and of course, I was the most stereotypical commitment-phobe – no one came to my place, and I never had breakfast. But after accepting myself for who I am, and getting over the ingrained homophobia, I’ve never loved it more! Unfortunately, with the weight gain, I’ve found myself more reluctant, but my wife always makes me feel so sexy when we’re getting to it!

How comfortable are you with expressing yourself and your body sexually?

Not so much now that I’m larger – if I can lose the weight again, I think I would be much more comfortable. Definitely will not be going to fetish ball in my leather corset this year.

How comfortable is society with the idea of viewing your body as sexual?

Rather uncomfortable – at least it seems that the younger folks are. Even when I was under 200, the people attracted to me were usually older – thirties, forties and even fifties. Younger girls (and guys when at a hetero bar) would sometimes even make nasty comments. But when I was confidant about my body, it seemed that most of the mature people were very positive about my overtly sexual attire – but now, with the extra weight and lowered confidence, I’m not sure it would go over as well.

Through answering these questions and/or thinking about your relation to your body and your sexuality, have you noticed any links or similarities between the two? If so, what?

I think since I actually lost weight for the first time in my life (as opposed to just gaining), when I did gain it back again, I was much more negatively affected than ever before. It was almost like a I got a glimpse of life on the thin(ner) side, and now can’t accept the change. This might be okay if it could be a positive influence, but I’ve never lost weight when I’m trying to lose weight – I lost weight by giving up on losing weight and just trying to get more healthy. My sex drive, while still healthy, has also dropped off some since the weight gain, and I think its because of how self-conscious I am about my body now. Plus, with the new weight gain, I’m not as proportioned as I used to be – used to, I didn’t like my size and I was hourglass – now I’m an apple, and look like bigger than my size, so its been a difficult adjustment.

Anything else you would like to add?

I’d love to hear what others have said! Especially the skinny women who always stand in front of us big women and complain how fat they are – I’ve always wondered if they really think that, or if they are just fishing for compliments (which, by the way, I never give – Instead I suggest weight watchers ;)

*N.N. stands for “nomen nescio”, Latin for “I don’t know the name.”

Image from The Adipositivity Project

This is the eleventh of many posts with answers to my Size & Sexuality Study questions within them. The responses have not been edited in any way. I hope you find them as interesting and informative as I have. I have gotten a huge number of responses already and I still want more! If you would like to answer these questions you can find more information on The Size & Sexuality Study here including links to the other responses.

This set of responses comes anonymously from a 34 year old “woman? not butch, not femme” lesbian who is “in an (open) relationship (i say open in brackets since neither of us have actually acted upon the opening up of it yet, and we haven’t quite worked out how this will take place exactly).”

What size is your body?
quite big all round, especially my thighs, I am a US size 18 for pants (UK size 20) – if they’re cut right… tops are easily 1-2 sizes less. (I don’t live in either of the countries I mention, and where I live I am way above average). if this helps, medically I am obese (and no longer just overweight).

How comfortable are you with your body both in general and your body size specifically?
I have always been overweight, ever since I can remember. I tend to oscillate between not paying any attention to it (as long as I don’t put on any more weight), and dieting strictly. I get very frustrated when I make a big effort to diet and it doesn’t work. I don’t recognise the image I get from mirrors – my inner image of myself hasn’t kept up with my weight increase.

Having said that, I do like my body in itself. I do wish it were smaller; but I also wish all that social pressure and absurd anorexic role models didn’t exist.

So, when I’m on my own and away from society I love my body- I feel self-conscious with people I don’t know, but I am happy to walk about naked on my own (I rather enjoy this), and also when my girlfriend is there. I probably don’t look at it much though…

How has your relation with and attitude toward your body and the size of your body changed over time?
Though I am bigger now, I am more comfortable with my body size now than as a teenager, when I would hide it more deliberately. I look at photos from the time and can only laugh at what I thought about it then -didn’t like it!-, and I’d love to come even close to the size I then was!

I have recently (3 yrs or so) done some sporadic yoga practice, and partly through this I have stopped thinking of myself and my body as two separate things. I hadn’t realised how I was doing this! I am trying to treat my body better.

How important is sexuality to your life?
Sexuality is very important right now. I have since my teenage years been very aware of my sensuality (my body’s!) and enjoyed that aspect very much, although not consistently, rather on and off (I have also gone through very, very nerdy, ultra-intellectual phases).

How has your relation with and attitude toward your sexuality changed over time?
This has also changed, it used to be that if I didn’t have a sexual partner I would try not to think about sex (but would seize any occasion to express this!). Nowadays I fell a lot more sexual and am exploring this intensely.

How comfortable are you with expressing yourself and your body sexually?
I am extremely comfortable – in the privacy of my home or my partner’s, on my own or with her. But not outside. I can be very self-conscious. I often don’t wear prettier, more striking clothes for feeling that dressing up a lot looks ridiculous on my body. I go for neutral, trying not to stand out. I am also shy by nature but my size has never helped… If I am considering approaching a girl I find attractive, it never occurs to me that she might not reject me because of my body, since that is the reaction I expect from everyone; I assume only after they get to know me there might be a chance that they decide to overlook the fact that I am fat… and so, unless I am already desperately in love, or maybe if I’m very very drunk, I never approach anyone.

How comfortable is society with the idea of viewing your body as sexual?
I am very aware of the anorexic role-models in today’s society and all the pressure put on women through them. I always comment on -and am comforted by- how famous paintings depict women with nice round bellies and hips as sexual, eg in famous artistic nudes. Look at the first bikinis and the girls who modelled them – they all had a belly and a nice round bottom! So I am aware that the extreme rejection of body fat is a circumstantial, prejudiced view of our times, and cannot be accepted as objective. I rebel against it; however, I still feel the enormous pressure out there and I hate it. – I also realise I am much bigger than the female figures I mentioned, but it is in this society where I will be furthest from the touted ideal. I also feel it is unfair that men are not rejected immediately for their size, at least if they are intelligent or succesful, and women don’t have that luxury. This I find particularly harrowing: I am successful on an intellectual level, but will stay a social pariah.

Through answering these questions and/or thinking about your relation to your body and your sexuality, have you noticed any links or similarities between the two? If so, what?
Of course! I have slowly come to terms with my body, but the outside obstacles to expressing my sexuality remain. This excludes my girlfriend, but they would reappear if I were single again, or when I consider whether or how to actively seek fuckingbuddies withing my open relationship. It’s not just a stupid hang-up: first impressions are extremely important, and I can’t help my body size (or stupid social obsessions) from playing a big part in them.

Anything else you would like to add?
I do feel very lucky to be lesbian, though, because the pressure on straight women is so much greater. Until I fell madly in love with a girl and realised I was a lesbian, I used to date men, and I felt even more inadequate. Either growing old or lesbian relationships or both have helped immensely in the positive changes I described in earlier answers.

This week’s HNT was Marla’s idea. We’ve been doing a lot of gender play since she got here in many different forms, and that combined with my newly cut hair, walking through this park a couple days ago and wanting to take pictures in front of the waterfalls, and the dress she’s wearing (which I was wearing yesterday) all gave her the idea for these shots.

I set up and took the pictures with my tripod and little camera remote (so handy!).

We got a little naughty in the park, it’s rare I’m on the other side of the skirt and I took full advantage of the fact she wasn’t wearing panties. Luckily there weren’t too many people around. You can see a hint of that in a couple of the pictures below.

Click any picture for a larger version of the same.

First a little of me…

One of her…

Then a little of us…

Check out Marla’s HNT for some of the same and some different photos!

Though it’s technically no longer Thursday I’m all about posting dirty pictures for HNT but late or whatever. I don’t usually “participate” as far as posting on the weekly HNT round-up thing but I like any excuse to post pictures. Mostly I participate in HNT whenever I have the inspiration to do so.

Last week Carnivalesq asked me to help her choose what pictures to use for her HNT, one of which was a packing picture. Being of the loving-to-pack persuasion as well I suggested that this week she, Marla, and I should all post packing pictures, and even though I’m a day late (and Marla will be too) we definitely wanted to participate!

Carnivalesq’s HNT (password protected) and Marla’s HNT!

These first couple are from a few weeks ago, taken specifically for my Daddy.

While we were out on our balcony taking Marla’s HNT we decided to take a few pictures while both of us were packing and stroking each other’s cocks.

My long-distance love requested some pictures of me yesterday, and I was more than happy to oblige. Specifically she said: “You should send me pictures of yer booty!” So once Onyx got home from work I got together an outfit, and it was Onyx’s idea to take the pictures with me leaning over the ledge of our (teeny tiny) balcony. It was rush hour-ish so there were cars going by while we took them, though you can’t really tell.

I also promised her pictures of my seven “down there” piercings… but that’s not something I would post up on this blog.