Tag: genders Page 5 of 8

Identity Musings – Part 3

On October 16, 2008

A follow-up post to Identity Musings – Part 1 and – Part 2, I highly recommend you reading those two first.

For a long time I wondered if I was just trying to make up an identity that isn’t necessary. If I was so transphilic maybe I was just making up an identity so that I wouldn’t be cisgendered. Is that the case? I still wonder that, but reading through Pomosexuals has helped me realize that I’m not the only female-assigned person to have this conflict inside of me, I’m not even the only female-assigned bi-/pan-sexual/queer person to love queer men and women and to have a boi personae as well as a femme personae, as also evidenced by The Leather Daddy and the Femme.

Still, that nagging fear that I’m just trying to not be cisgendered (not that there’s anything wrong with being cisgendered, but as I mentioned, I’m rather transphilic so it’s not as much a conscious desire not to be cisgendered, but one I wonder if I have internalized), that I’m trying to make more of something that’s inside of me and not exactly being true to it, that fear makes me doubt and question, and I hate it. I’m not sure how to prove to myself that this is the case, except to examine it, embrace it, and see how it feels.

I’ve said for years that my embraced drag queen identity was not just about all gender being drag, but also because I identify with a type of femininity that can not exactly be expressed by female-assigned people. It’s a queer over-the-top femininity that I love and identify with, it’s similar to femme but it’s not quite the same. Part of that identification, I think, is being “larger than life” or, larger than society tells women we are allowed to be. My fatness allows me to inhabit a space that non-fat women can’t (pun intended).

In addition to just being fat I’m also tall, about 5’10”, and have always been tall. I was 5’8″ by 7th grade, I’ve worn size 11 shoes also since 7th grade. I remember being proud of that, proud to wear my freak label, proud to be taller than most of the boys in my class, proud to be large and queer and strange and a freak. It was difficult at times, but I embraced and owned my queerness from an early age, because I knew that there wasn’t another way for me to be.

I identify with drag queens, but I also identify with femmes. It’s two different yet similar kinds of fem(me)ininity, and I try to inhabit them both at different times, perhaps that’s another personae I need to adopt a name for, to adequately seperate the differences so that I can analyze them easier, so that I can understand her better.

The truth is I have multiple personas within me, each with hir own voice, each needing recognition, and so I’m trying to recognize all of them, but it’s a long and dubious process. I’m not sure I’ll ever know all of them fully, but I have to try, otherwise I will be out of touch with myself. Each personae has different desires, and I fully intend to figure them all out.

The first step to analyzation is to recognize that which you are analyzing, right? Otherwise you aren’t able to analyze something you don’t know about. These “Identity Musings” posts have been about just that, going back to track the expansion and development of these identities in a new way, so that I am able to recognize these different aspects of myself and therefore come to a greater understanding of them. I have a more specifically queer related one on the way (since these have dealt mostly with gender).

Identity Musings – Part 2

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On October 15, 2008

In Gender Galaxy

Continued from the post yesterday, Identity Musings – Part 1 I encourage you to read that first if you have not.

I started leaning back toward femme the last year of high school. I didn’t have any serious relationships during high school, the few queer girls I knew either had boyfriends, didn’t seem interested, or I didn’t know them, and I wasn’t attracted to boys in my high school with the exception of very few. I lost my virginity at 16, the day it was legal for me to fuck someone over 18, to a man I didn’t really know. I don’t regret it, mostly I just wanted to get that whole virginity thing out of the way, but I do sometimes forget it happened.

I’m not sure what leaned me back toward femme, and, really, in some ways I had never left it. I was a wonderful mixture of butch and femme: keeping my hair short but wearing wigs when desired, wearing any manner of clothing I felt like, skirts, dresses, pants, capris, suits. I wore a suit to my junior prom: black coat, shirt, and pants with pink tie, socks, and hair to match my date’s dress. I look back on that time and realize in some ways I had my own gender figured out better than I do now.

I had this intense desire to grow my hair out, partially so that I would actually start attracting anyone. I didn’t think I was terribly attractive, but I looked back at myself with long hair and thought maybe that was the issue. I don’t believe that’s the case, but it was one of those non-logical I-really-want-to-get-laid-or-at-least-have-some-sort-of-sexual-encounter-with-someone-to-sate-my-skin-hunger type of things, so I started growing it out.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my long hair, but I miss it being short. I definitely had this “boy phase” from middle school to near the end of high school, what I thought was a butch phase, but I really do think it was a bit more than that. I wouldn’t play female roles in plays for a few years (and I was in a lot of plays), and the first one I did rather reluctantly.

I embraced that genderqueer boi inside of me so wholly, and I really was more of a boy than anything, but I was often a cross-dressing boy.

When I have expressed my confusion regarding my gender, my need to have both of these in me, I’ve had people not quite understand what the issue is, why I can’t just be “in the middle”, why I can’t be both, where the confusion is coming from. There are also people who express their own blend of masculinity and femininity when I mention it, they say that they don’t feel that pull, that they exist with a little of both and don’t understand that pull either.

If I feel like a femme, why hasn’t that been enough? If I feel butch, why hasn’t that been enough? I’ve thought multiple times that because I could be butch I should be, because we need more butches around. But then I know that wouldn’t be honest with myself.

In some ways I feel like a transsexual femme, that I used to be a boy and now I am femme. Looking back I really do see the gender trends of my life rather clearly.

I feel like I started as a boy who liked girls things, but who was a boy, we’ll call him Sebastian. I was a queer boy who liked boys and girls, even though I looked like a girl I was still a boy. I grew up to be a boy, and then I decided to change and become a femme. Then I was a femme, I embraced that femme and she felt good, we’ll call her Scarlet. Now I’m realizing that while Scarlet is as perfect as I first thought her to be, that she fits me just like she originally did when I first had that femme-epiphany-moment, that she is not enough for me. I miss Sebastian, but I don’t want to give up Scarlet, I want to be both.

The thing is I’m both boi and femme, both male and female, both masculine and feminine, both Sebastian and Scarlet, and I always will be. I’m also not a mixture of the two. I’m not somewhere in between boi and femme, I don’t have my own planet that is a mixture of the two that I orbit around, no, I am a boi and I am a femme, sometimes completely separately and sometimes at the same time, but they are always to distinct identities. I have two different planets that I orbit around, and sometimes I orbit around both and sometimes I orbit around neither.

I have suppressed Sebastian for quite a while, but he is coming back with the realization that I need both of them to be whole. I am working on regaining that. And, who knows, maybe I’ll find another personae hidden in there as well, someone completely different than Scarlet or Sebastian.

Continue the musings with part 3…

Identity Musings – Part 1

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On October 14, 2008

In Gender Galaxy

I’ve been reading Pomosexuals for the last week or so, and loving it immensely. I read it while I’m on the elliptical at the gym, and I end up thinking about all these wonderful things that I would like to post about while I’m nowhere near my computer, or even paper to write ideas down with. This post has been swimming around in my head for days, thinking about how I got to the identities I embrace now.

Since gender, I think, is difficult to disentangle with sex and sexuality, I will be talking about all of those in this. It will be as much my general identity progression as it will be my gender identity progression, just focused a little more heavily on gender. Also, since this is turning out very long, it will be in two parts.

Any or all of these memories may not be entirely as they happened, as with all memories, but they are as I remember them.

I remember being younger–pre-school age, so 3 or 4–and taking a bath with my then-best-friend who was a boy, I remember us doing the “that’s weird” thing regarding each others genitals, wondering about the differences. I recall knowing the terms vagina and penis, though that may be that my brain at some point added them, and I remember remarking that my clitoris (I didn’t know what it was called at that point) was like a little penis. It’s not that I expected my clitoris to turn into a penis, or thinking that I was a boy, but I didn’t think there was much of a difference between them. Of course, I know now that they come from the same tissue, but that wasn’t exactly what I was thinking at the moment.

I remember growing up and liking dresses, while my (very 2nd wave feminist) mother did not like me liking dresses. She didn’t discourage me from wearing them exactly, but she would suggest that I did not wear them. The same goes with pink. Pink was never my favorite color (that elusive childhood obsession of a “favorite color” which changed nearly weekly), but I always have loved purple, and I think I would have liked pink sooner if it wasn’t for my mothers “yuck” reaction to it.

I remember my best friend M had a cinderella dress, and I coveted it. I remember liking to wear satiny nightgowns and have sleepovers with friends where we would play by rubbing our mounds together. I remember pretending to get married, and I would always be the preacher, rarely the bride or the groom.

I remember being girly, and I remember loving it. I was a femme, until I hit puberty, but I never “felt” female, I’m not even sure what that means. I think I mean that I didn’t really identify with being female or being a woman, though I did like girly things. I remember having “crushes” on boy celebrities that I wasn’t really attracted to, but that my friends A and T both did, and I was trying to fit in.

I remember hitting middle school and starting to wear all black when I used to wear all sorts of other colors. I came out to my then-best-friend W on the school bus before school in seventh grade, saying “I think I’m bisexual.” We talked about it, and he was cool with it, I’m not sure he quite knew what that meant. I remember having that spread around without my wishes, and then my own firm desire to spread it around.

I was sexual since sixth grade, or earlier maybe, but sixth was the first time I really started thinking about it, I had my first in fifth (October 10th–my best friend’s birthday party, it was a swimming party and I remember having to use a tampon for the first time that very first time I bled). I used to read romance novels, I read over sixty of them (I labeled them with numbers in my own OCD way), I was enamored with penetration, but lusted after the girls more than the guys. I masturbated… a lot.

When I was fourteen (though I certainly didn’t look fourteen) my older sister took me to Babeland (then Toys in Babeland) and bought me my first sex toy, a glow-in-the-dark bullet that I loved until it died (from overuse?).

I cut my hair short (about two inches) freshman year of high school. I started wearing pants more than skirts, though I still wore skirts because I’ve always loved them. I was very much a goth/punk butch fagette. I dyed my hair just about every shade of every color you can think of (ROYGBIV and more), and had all sorts of combinations, including pink with blue tips, yellow with green tips, pink and purple mixed around, red and purple, purple and white, and a very cool looking rainbow.

I was very out. I started the Gay/Straight Alliance at my High School my Junior year, and was the president that year and the next. I organized both high-school and community wide events. I worked with PFLAG and went to some of their meetings. Most people thought I was a lesbian, some of the people in my hometown still do, even though I was very out as bisexual. A friend’s lesbian mothers were surprised when she told them I was with a man.

I’ve been told that I was an inspiration to those around me, that I have helped them discover themselves and not be afraid of doing what they wanted or wearing what they wanted, because I was there to be a little more bizarre so they could go to their own personal extreme.

More of the path it took me to get here in part 2…

Family, Friends, and Identity

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On October 7, 2008

In Introspection

My trip is long over, I got back to Salt Lake on the 1st of October, though I started writing this before I got back, it’s taken me a while to get to finish it.

I had dinner with Coy Pink one of the nights I was in Seattle, who was absolutely delightful and gorgeous and I felt like we connected. My friends in Juneau are talking about moving to Seattle, and that combined with the possibility of getting to know Coy Pink better, as well as the general draw to the pacific northwest which I have all makes me want to move there. It’s rather probable that Onyx and I will end up in Seattle after we go to San Francisco, but that won’t be for a few years.

The week while in Juneau was nice, and gave me quite a bit of perspective, on a lot of things. The general life insights were pretty basic ones, really, but the identity-based insights were slightly more interesting perhaps… and one of these days I’ll get back to smut writing. A lot of the identity insights were because of the wedding/family reunion I attended the first weekend I was gone, but then there were more through spending time with old friends while in Juneau.

The first weekend of the trip consisted of going to a wedding, an activity that I do not do too often. Nearly all of the relatives of that side of the family were attending, so it was also considered a family reunion, just centering around the wedding. I think being around that much family makes one focus in on whatever it is they think the other people see, specifically I thought a lot about who I used to be, who I am now, and how that is the same/different.

I also felt like I had to squelch all my multiple queer and non-obvious identities and just fill in the family/relative identity. While everyone was interested in getting a little snapshot-idea of my life, it was mostly to figure me out and file me away, not because they actually wanted anything in-depth. I can understand that, and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing exactly, but it did make me feel a little invisible. Partially my own obvious identities are the culprit of my invisibility. I have a male partner and present myself as femme most of the time (though I’m sure most of my family didn’t get femme vs. feminine), they didn’t see the queer genderfucker inside of me because I didn’t highlight it.

It’s also difficult for me to get out of the role I was in for the first eighteen years of my life, that of the baby, the daughter, the sister, or even to escape the role that my extended family knows me in: the baby, the cousin/niece/etc., the one who will always be twelve in their minds (or some other number, but I actually had that one said to me). I’m so much more than that now, and it’s difficult to get rid of that. I have grown quieter, though, less social, and that hindered me throughout the weekend. I found myself “family-d out” quite a few times, and wishing I had more time alone rather than being with my dad at nearly every moment. I stole privacy whenever possible, but I was still a little overwhelmed.

While there are many in my family who are larger, I was one of the largest at most events (or, at least, that’s how it felt to me). I’ve been focused on my weight for a while, I’m the largest and heaviest I’ve ever been right now, and I want to change that, mostly for health reasons. I was reminded multiple times on this trip that I am at risk for diabetes. I doubt I will ever be “skinny” or even not plus-sized, and I actually like that, my build doesn’t lend itself to a size 4 or even a size 8, and I’m okay with that, in fact, I like that.

Once I got up to Juneau I was able to focus a little more on myself, though not a lot. I feel like I didn’t have much time to myself up there as well, which wasn’t actually that bad. I spent a lot of time with friends, which gave me a little perspective on how I’d changed and how much they knew and yet didn’t know me, which is to be expected as I’ve not been around too much in the last four years, and I’ve changed quite a bit. They have changed as well, of course, but we still fit together, which was very nice.

One of my friends mentioned that I’m one of the last people our age who still dyes her hair crazy colors, and that made me question my motives for doing so. It came down to the same reason I’ve always had for dying my hair or dressing the way I do: it’s not for other people, or even personal expression exactly, it’s just me being me. I’m not making some statement I’m just doing what I want. Granted, there is a statement made, but I can’t control how people take it, really, but I can control what they see.

Since coming back home I’ve been a mixture of all sorts of things, including feeling rather unsexual, which is highly unusual for me. I’ve been depressed and unsure of just about everything, as all the things I was depending on have fallen out from under me (read: money sources). I’ll turn it around, as I always do, but I’ve been feeling stuck for quite some time. I’m hoping to change that, though.

Baby Dyke (HNT)

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On September 18, 2008

In Gender Galaxy, Introspection

Click for the larger version.

My card reader is still broken… I really must get another one of those! Hopefully I’ll get one tomorrow while I’m in Seattle. Since I’m leaving for Seattle, I thought I’d post this HNT of me in Seattle. This is also a long time ago, 2002, I think? All young and fresh, hence “baby dyke.” This is kind of a perfect example of my femme fagette boi blend, short hair, no make-up, a little butched up but with a corset on. I was a gender genious six years ago and didn’t know it! I’ve gotten away from my butch-ness in recent years and it’s something that is slowly coming back to me. I’ve been reconnecting with my gender map, or the road to my current orbits in the gender galaxy, and so it’s also fitting that this be the image today.

I have many posts in the works, and many toys and books to review for you all, and I have some posts automatically set to post over this weekend. I’ll be in the Seattle area until the 22nd, and then up to my home town in Alaska to see the other side of my family and my friends that are still up there. I’m hoping to have internet access most of the days, but we shall see. There’s also lots going on, so I don’t know how much time I’ll have. I’ll be back on the 1st of October, but I’m hoping posts won’t be too sporadic (does that word make anyone else think of Clueless… just me? Okay.)

So, fear not. I will have, hopefully, a new picture of me not an old one in a week, and I will still be posting, though just from a different time zone!

Cisgender and Getting Rid of a "Safety Blanket"

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On September 12, 2008

In Gender Galaxy

Sinclair brought up a great point the other day in his post define: cisgender that I want to touch upon and explore. Now, I’ve had cisgender in my lexicon since I started this site, and have been in the process of reading the book Sinclair mentions in his post, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity for longer than that (though am currently starting it over now that I’m not in school and can devote more attention to it). Whipping Girl is also where I got the definitions of traditional vs. oppositional sexism used in my definition of femmeinism. Needless to say, I think it’s brilliant, and look forward to finishing it.

For those of you who have not read Sinclair’s post (though I highly encourage you to), here is a definition of cisgender: people whose gender aligns with the cultural expectations of their sex and who have only ever experienced their subconscious and physical sexes as being aligned (e.g. feminine female, masculine male). “The word has its origin in the Latin-derived prefix cis, meaning “on the same side” as in the cis-trans distinction in chemistry.”

Now, back to the point. I have used the term “bio-female” in my gender/sexuality/general description for quite some time, and quite purposefully. Ever since reading Sinclair’s post I have been questioning this, and as you may notice I have taken it out of my description on the sidebar and in my about page. I have done this for a number of reasons.

First, however, I would like to explain my initial reason for choosing the term bio-female when I have been fully aware of the terms cisgender and cissexual for quite some time. What I realize now I meant was assigned-female-at-birth, as opposed to cis-female, because I have never quite felt cis-female, my gender has always been a little (or a lot) queer. Not only am I not cis-female because of my femme identity, but then when other identities are taken into account they dispute this as well. While I often do appear to the casual observer to be cisgendered, there are also plenty of times when I do not.

Sinclair’s post got me wondering: why do I have that in there? Why does it matter what I was assigned at birth if I don’t believe in binary genders or sexes? What was the reason for me to include this in my own description? The only answer I came to was that I didn’t want my sex misinterpreted. When I realized this I mentally laughed at myself. I realized it was a safety blanket, my version of a blue-blanket, and something I didn’t need anymore (perhaps never needed).

Because of that realization as well as the realization of the incorrectness of the term “bio,” for as Sinclair put it “there’s nothing non-biological about trans folks,” I decided to take it out of my description. I simply don’t need it anymore. Obviously at one point I thought it was necessary, I felt threatened that I would be assumed for anything other than female. I say this with a little bit of shame, it was my own internal cissexism rearing it’s ugly head. Despite being a decidedly fierce trans supporter and advocate for years I am still subject to my internalized cissexism, but I’m working on it.

There were two distinct times I can think of where I was “mistaken” for a male queen. These were both many years ago during high school. Nowadays I would be rejoicing for such a reading of my sex and gender, but in those days I had not gone through much if any gender revelations and while I wasn’t disgusted or outraged I was confused and taken aback (mostly because my boobs were huge and in both instances I was wearing a low-cut top, in one instance a corset). I think my original adoption of “bio-female” was in part due to those instances.

I have more thoughts about the differences between femme and cis-female, but will have to save them for another time.

On Being a Label Fetishist

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On September 12, 2008

In Discourse

After my stint with labels a while ago, it’s time for me to revisit them as they have been brought up a lot lately. While I did revisit my queer label more recently in a post about my queerness and I have been using my Semantics Sunday posts as a way for me to explore my individual labels, I want to go back to the more general subject of labels.

I want to start by saying this: I love labels. I would even go so far as to say I have a label fetish. This, in many ways, informs a lot of what I do, and there will be more on my label fetish later. As I’ve said before, basically any noun and most adjectives are labels. The problem with labels is that we need to realize that labels are useful tools but do not speak of us as a whole.

From my last post on labels:

An example: you order a burger at a restaurant. While this is a burger, it could be made of beef, turkey, chicken, soy, vegetables, black beans, or something else entirely. It could come with: lettuce, tomato, onion, mushrooms, pickles, garlic, pastrami, bacon, swiss cheese, cheddar, pepper jack, provolone, smoked gouda, or any number of toppings. It could also have: mayo, mustard, ketchup, ranch, hummus, barbecue sauce, or any number of sauces. It could be served on: whole wheat, white, sesame seed, rosetta… I think you get my point. These combinations create an almost infinite number of variations under the common label of “burger.” So it is with any label.

We call both garden burgers and buffalo burgers “burgers,” but they are radically different entities, and are often not (though sometimes are) consumed by the same people.

A lot of people dislike labels because they are limiting or because they believe if they choose to embrace a label it is then expected that they will never deviate from that label or appear in any way contradictory to it. This is part of the reason why I embrace a whole string of labels–femme and boi and faggette and genderqueer and drag queen to name a few… and those are just my gender labels–because if I present myself as a whole large group of labels it’s hard to push me into one box, because I’m already spreading myself across a thousand. By embracing a multitude of labels I am also trying to change the way we think about labels, because I can’t be pigeonholed into one label if I openly embrace multiple labels. How could someone choose just one label to put me into?

But I’m a rare case, though not as rare as some may think. Most people are not as comfortable straddling multiple labels, or orbiting multiple identities in the gender galaxy or any other galaxy. My multitude of labels enables me not to be shoved into one box, but how does that help those who don’t feel the pull of multiple identities, or who feel mostly one gender and a little another but who don’t want to embrace the second label fully?

That’s where realizing that while labels have the ability to box you in, they also have the ability to free you so that you have a better idea of yourself but also so that you can figure out the way you think of yourself, or what you think of yourself as, and then be able to move within or beyond that. Labels don’t have to be permanent nor do they have to inform who you are at every moment, just who you are at some moments or most moments or different transitive parts of you. The “problem” with labels can be “solved” by the realization of impermanence and fluidity, and that even if you embrace a label that does not mean you have to fit anyone’s definition of that label but your own.

I am aware that not everyone is obsessed labels in the same way I am (nor have they fetishized them). I don’t mean fetish in the sense of something that I need to get off, though it can in the right context, it’s more of an obsession or a desire. Perhaps more accurately it is actually a language fetish, theory fetish, or analyzation fetish… and there I go trying to nitpick my label of my fetish into something more precise).

Like I’ve said, I believe labels can be extremely useful when thought of in the right context. Labels are also extremely important, they can bring us together as much as they can tear us apart, the problem is so many focus on our differences instead of our similarities.

And I’ll leave you with a quote from The Leather Daddy and the Femme:

You want me to say I’m bisexual because you’re a woman, okay, I’ll say it. It’s no skin off my ass. But I don’t love women. I love you. Far as that goes, I don’t like most men all that much either. But I’d die for the guys in my tribe. Now are you beginning to get it? … See, it’s all well and good to call yourself whatever. I answer to faggot and gay male and leatherman and all those names, but if answering to a name means I can’t do something I decide I want to do, fuck it. And if someone wants to give me shit for what I decide to do, it’s their problem. … some rules exist just to prop up somebody’s prejudice, and they’re bullshit just like any other rule that’s meant to ensure conformity. … I’ve begun to wish more women were like you. Then maybe calling myself bisexual would make sense. Because believe me, if I had any objection to fucking pussy I never would have fucked yours, dear. I did not just screw you that first night to be polite. [bold emphasis added]

The Butch in Me (HNT)

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On September 11, 2008

In Gender Galaxy, Introspection

Click the image for a second image. Click here for the larger version.

So, the card reader for my camera is not able to be read on any of the computers in the house, meaning I need to get a new one but I have not done so yet. In lieu of a new HNT I am pulling from my stock of old photos. It took me a while to decide to actually post this, if I was brave enough to face the possible reactions or lack of reactions. It’s interesting that some aspects of myself are more vulnerable than others, and usually those I haven’t processed fully.

The second image (click the image to see) is one I added mostly for my own amusement. Looking back I’m not sure what I was going for, and I find it a laughable attempt at looking “cool” or “badass” or something like that. I was feeling rather hot at the time, I will admit.

These images I’m pulling from 2006, the pictures I took while getting ready for the Gender Bender Ball at Southern Oregon University, an event which I began during my term as President of the LGBTASU (now Gender/Sexuality Union) and which is still going on today. The shirt and tie are the same as in my Drag Quing HNT. The shirt is the one I wore to my High School’s Junior prom, accompanied by black bondage pants, the red tie I’ve had forever, as well as my terra firma harness and faithful Leo.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my boi/Syr side, and it’s something I’m going to work on developing further. Look for a post regarding that in the next few days. And, please, be gentle.

Musings on Masculinity

By Onyx V St. Syr

On September 9, 2008

In Gender Galaxy, Posts by Onyx

Ellie Lumpesse has been posting a series of interviews with men about masculinity all of which are absolutely fantastic, and I highly encourage you all to check them out. A little from her on her interviews: “So the other day I was thinking about masculinity. And then I realized I should probably think about it in conjunction with men. So, I asked a few guys to answer some very difficult questions about their relationships with masculinity. I’m amazed by the response so far and I hope that a dialogue will begin.”

When was the first time you remember being aware of masculinity? How old were you? What was the cultural climate or influence?

Growing up I don’t recall much of a focus on what masculinity was per se. I was raised by a single mother and largely raised by my two grandmothers; in fact I never even met my father until I was 7. Also I grew up in Norway which means a slightly different culture than in the US, though the ideas of Masculinity and Femininity are similar enough, if perhaps somewhat less extreme.

My first real experience with a Father Figure was when my mother got married to another man, a man I hated with a fiery vengeance. He also had a son who was 4 years older than me and we disliked each other even more. Growing up I had never been in to a lot of “proper” masculine activities, I hated sports and while other boys would love to play soccer or go skiing I would prefer staying home reading a book.

This didn’t fly with my step father, he had rather traditional ideas of what boys should be into and so he set out to “make a man of me”. Of course, even back then I had a rather stubborn and surprisingly well-developed anti-authoritan streak and I fought back against pretty hard. Luckily it didn’t last long as he and my mother had problems that resulted in a short marriage.

Do you think of yourself as masculine? Why or why not?

Yes and no. I like to think that I’ve embraced some of the better aspects of masculinity while rejecting the aspects I consider useless or counterproductive. My “embrace” of my masculine side began in High-school where I went through a large shift in personality, seeking to become more assertive, more confident and more in charge of my life. But with my typical contrariness I put my own spin on it and refused to easily fit with a masculine stereotype. Where other boys were still enamored by sports and physical prowess, I focused on mental prowess and poured my energy into becoming some sort of Intellectual Alpha-Male. The advent of the internet made this even easier and I adopted an online persona where I felt I explored a more aggressive masculine persona. I found it easier to be what I had been taught a Man should be online where I could play to my strengths than in real life where I still found the typical male bravado and chest-thumping to be rather distasteful.

Eventually as I got more comfortable with my masculine sides they also began to mellow and I began to feel more like moving outside the limitations they in some ways imposed on me. I feel less of a need to prove my masculinity, but more of a need to really explore it beyond what I had been taught about it, to find a masculinity that’s my own instead of that imposed by culture and society. I am still going through this process and am probably going to be doing so for the rest of my life. In fact the whole question of masculinity becomes just a part of a larger context of self-realization where simple labels increasingly fail to convey any real meaning about who I am and the ideas, thoughts, opinions and desires that I’m composed of. Masculinity fits, better than some other labels, but my Masculinity is to me unique, in some ways more forceful, in some ways more compromising than what others expect. It is in some ways subversive while in others it is almost frighteningly conformist.

How does your masculinity relate to your sexuality (be it your orientation, preferences, or expressions)?

For me my Masculinity in many ways ties in with my Dominant preferences. I don’t consider myself strictly heterosexual, but I’m primarily attracted to Biological females who are “feminine”, and I tend to present my Masculine side to others. Occasionally though, I feel a need to move completely out of that framework, to be the one not in charge, the one being fucked instead of the one doing the fucking, the one who surrenders control, while at the same time I have a very hard time doing so, and even talking about it or acknowledging it becomes very challenging. My appearance, mannerism and demeanor are thus almost universally “masculine” often in an almost exaggerated manner, especially around strangers or people I don’t know too well. In some ways this might be a defense mechanism, an easy way to keep others from really learning about me, from really getting to know me. Opening up and being vulnerable is something that I’ve always had a hard time with and even with my current partner who I feel closer to than anyone my whole life it still takes enormous effort on her part for me to really open up and show my vulnerable sides. The only consolation here is that it’s gradually getting a little bit easier.

Now this is not to say that I feel bad about my expressions of Masculinity, I definitely feel they are an important and cherished part of me, but I also feel a need to move beyond them and no longer be restricted by the limitations I feel they impose on me.

An Introduction

By Onyx V St. Syr

On September 7, 2008

In Posts by Onyx

Hi there,

Long time reader, first time poster.

I’m Onyx, Scarlet’s oft-mentioned Dominus and new guest blogger here on the femmeinist fucktoy blog. I hope to contribute occasionally to this site in order to offer a different, but hopefully complementary perspective on many of the issues Scarlet covers and hope that I have some thoughts or at least witty remarks you, her readers, will enjoy.

So by way of introduction I’ll offer a quick biography of myself.

I was born far away across the sea in a relatively small town in Norway. I moved to the US almost a decade ago and made it through a failed marriage before I got involved with Scarlet. We first met online on the chat network IRC and were sufficiently intrigued by each other to meet in the flesh, the rest they say, is history.

I interests tend to be centered on three main areas: computers, occultism and kink. The first two are things I may touch on tangentially, but in keeping with the theme of this blog I will be focusing mainly on the third category in my posts here.

I will be covering some of my thoughts on such topics as gender identity, polyamory, BDSM and D/s in general and my relationship with Scarlet in particular. I’m also open to any questions readers might have not to mention Scarlet’s ever so subtle hints about what she’d like me to blog about ;)

I’m excited to be posting here and hope you will enjoy my contributions.

You can find me on Twitter as Onyx93 or on FetLife as Onyx93.