Pleasure is my business, my life, my joy, my purpose.

Tag: queer Page 5 of 8

NaNoWriMo Glimpse – Anticipation

I decided to participate in this year’s NaNoWriMo that is, National Novel Writing Month, which is November 1st-30th. I didn’t start right on the 1st, but this is part of what I had so far, not necessarily at the beginning, but it could be, we’ll see. I thought you all might like to read it, and I’d love any comments/critiques/criticism that you have, including telling me that it’s simply way too cliche (though it’s supposed to be a little cliche).

I need to read up on my noir fiction style, but I can always revise to add more noir-sounding phrases, but that’s the style I want to work within, partly Onyx’s idea, he’s been super into noir lately. Though, who knows, that aspect of it may end up being scrapped due to lack of ability. In any case, enjoy!

She walked into the room like she owned it, her deep red dress hugging her curves in all the right places, emphasizing her hips as she swayed toward me. She was the kind of dame you wouldn’t mind staying through the night, but she never would. I touched the cool glass of my drink to my lips, the ice clinking softly as the clear alcohol passed through my lips like water. She grinned once she saw me, sly as a cat having already caught the bird, and simply held out her hand for me to take.

She was the one who invited me here, to be part of a crowd and an atmosphere I didn’t usually partake in. I liked to stick to the shadows, preferring a fast tumble to a slow chase, but this girl was different. She had blown into my life like a brushfire, and seemed to like the chase. If she wanted a chase I’d be happy to oblige.

I tried to be cool as she led me to the dance floor, my half drunk glass abandoned on the counter I had been leaning on. Her arms were encased in black gloves up past her elbows, they looked elegant but were rubbery to the touch. A shiver ran up my spine as I touched the material. My arm slid around her waist as her head moved to rest on my shoulder, crimson lips grazing my cheek as her body molded against mine. Her hair fell down past her shoulder blades, and my hand ached to delve into the dark smooth mass of it, but I resisted for now. Each movement of her hips against me made me bite back moans that threatened to tumble from my lips, I couldn’t help but want her.

I could tell a lot of others in the room were watching us, and why wouldn’t they? Many who knew me were more surprised to see me in this setting and less so with the beautiful woman pressed against me. Those who knew her well, watched with a mixture of jealousy and smirking knowledge at what might later come to pass.

We did make a striking couple. Her in her red dress and gloves, elegant with a touch of fetish, her black heels tall, making her taller than me by a few inches. Me in a perfectly fitted three-piece suit I’d bought for this occasion: black with red pinstripes, black shirt, red tie, and a black fedora with a red band. I even had on red socks, though they were nearly impossible to see covered by my slacks and dress shoes. I knew she had a thing for suits, and for red, that much had been covered already. Though it had only been a few days since we met I could tell by the fire in her eyes that red was a color that suited her well.

Her arms were folded around my shoulders, my hands clutching her waist, knowing that if I slid them down just a few inches I would be able to feel the slope of her ass. I tried to keep my breathing steady, even as her arms wound tighter around me, her breasts crushing against my chest, inhaling the scent of her as she curled her fingers into the hair at the nape of my neck. I exhaled a heavy breath.

“Something wrong, darling?” She mused, her soft whisper against my ear sent another shiver. I growled low and she just chuckled as we danced to the soft jazz playing not far from us. She straightened in my grasp and shot me a knowing glance before taking my hand in hers and leading me out of the room.

We arrived in the bathroom before I realized where we were headed, she pushed me into the largest stall and pressed her hand against the bulge in my pants. I groaned. This was not the way I had imagined the evening would go. I was going to be smooth and charming, win her over through the night, invite her back to my place for a drink, and then make my move, instead she decided to lead me to the bathroom and unzip my pants.

I glanced down just quick enough to watch her red lips as they engulfed the length of my cock, making me throb with desire, the familiar clink of my belt buckle made me moan aloud, watching her as she watched me writhing in anticipation. I licked my lips and thrust my hips toward her, my pinstripe slacks falling around my red socks as she moved her hand under my cock to slowly insert a finger into my hot cunt, now I knew what the gloves were for, though I’d suspected all along.

Queering Onyx

Another issue with our relationship that I was having recently is that it was getting more and more… straight, for lack of a better term. I know that there are ways for males and females to interact sexually and romantically that are outside of the heterosexual relationship model and sexuality. I have come to realize something I’ve always known but never quite had the ability to put into words before: regardless of the relationship I want a queer connection. It’s something that has come clear to me through reading The Leather Daddy and the Femme and also PoMoSexuals, which both talk extensively about queer relationships between male and female partners. While neither of us are straight I’m more in touch with my queerness than he is.

One of my goals lately has been to open him up to that queer side more and more, to help him embrace it, which we’ve talked about quite a lot and he is open to. He’s identified as heteroflexible or somewhat-bi or things like that for most of the time I’ve known him, and I’ve also known him to suck cock (not just mine, flesh-made ones as well) and have affection and desire for men.

I’ve always maintained that he is far more queer than he will often admit to, partly because I’m not attracted to men who aren’t queer, there has always had to be something queer about them in order for me to get interested and while that doesn’t always mean queer attraction, I know that he is attracted to men, and has more than just a casual desire. He has come to agree with me a bit more, and we have talked about potential additions to our poly family which have included (queer) males.

Recently we read The Leather Daddy and the Femme together, taking turns reading it to each other chapter by chapter. I think that helped him recognize and embrace more of his queer desires, which was part of my reason for wanting to read it together. Not to mention it’s hot and I knew he would love it. I know he has issues with the idea of queerness, we all have internalized homophobia and he is no exception.

It’s difficult to embrace something, too, that will disprivilege you, especially when you have the ability to not embrace it. What I mean by that is: it’s easy not to embrace queerness when you have what society would consider “normal” heterosexual desires, because the queerness can be abandoned if you choose to let it be, not that it’s easy to do that for all of us, but it may be easier to ignore the queerness than it is to embrace that which would disprivilege.

I’ve been trying to open him up further to his queer side by opening him up to mine and sharing my own desires. Also I’ve been trying to bring his awareness back to his desire to get fucked in the ass and suck cock and such, something I’m more confident doing now that we’ve started switching (something I’ll be telling you more about soon). As I mentioned above, we’ve talked about adding a third or others to our relationship, he suggested a transgirl or feminine male we could play with.

I feel like Georgia Strong helping Demetrius discover his gay/bisexual/queer desires, reminding him that there are multiple ways to have queer sex and that heterosexuals can have queer sex too. Teaching all the things he’s always wanted but wasn’t sure how to get. I’m sure I’ll update more on this issue as it comes.

Identity Musings – Part 3

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

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

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…

Go PoMo!

I seriously want a shirt that says “Go PoMo!” now. How I hadn’t seen this video before today is beyond me, but thanks to the PoMoSexual group on FetLife I discovered it today, and will forever be on my list of favorite videos, much like Fagette. It also helped me discover PomoWorld.com, which I am now delving into.

At the end, post-credits: “The makers of this film would like to extend a special thanks to homo sapiens; the breeding oxymorons who lurk this giant mudball floating in this vast abyss we refer to as “The Universe”. Do not deny your human fallability. Without you, Dear Expatriates, this concept wouldn’t have been realized.”

I thought some of you may enjoy this as well. For some background: I do have definitions for both PoMo and PoMoSexual in the lexicon. I recently acquired PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality by the ever delightful Carol Queen, a book I’ve been desiring to get for quite some time, but due to my long list of books to buy I only recently bought it when visiting Powells in Portland on my recent trip. I’ll be sure to post a review once I’m done with it.

On Being a Label Fetishist

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]

It's Difficult to Write about Sex

…when you’re not having it and not feeling sexy.

You may have noticed I’ve taken some time off. Perhaps it wasn’t too noticeable, though, since I still posted a bit and it really hasn’t been that long since I last posted. However, the content of my posts lately has been a lot of me re-posting others’ ideas/works/announcements. That’s what I mean by taking a break… which is strange in and of itself.

The reason for this largely has to do with my current situation both financial and romantic. First thing’s first: I need a job. And although I’ve been applying at many places and trying to get a job it is difficult also because I’m not prepared or willing to sacrifice myself for my job, and getting a job with my appearance here in Utah is not exactly easy. But, this is really a whole seperate issue than (though tied in with) the larger reason for the break.

Dominus and I have been having issues. Some of it has to do with what I wrote a week ago, about my own fears of his leaving me. But, in reality, it has to do with his fears of the same subject. I have changed rather dramatically in the last few months, including embracing aspects of myself such as my Domina personae, which he cannot really touch or interact with on much of a level.

I mean, I’ve always Topped him a little bit, but he’s always been my Dominant, if that makes sense. I have always teased him and I’ve fucked his ass, and things like that, but I’ve never Dominated him, and I don’t have the desire to dominate him. This is a semantic difference, obviously, but it’s a big one. I enjoy Topping him at times, but he’s always the Dominant in the situation even if I’m the Top.

One big problem with our sexuality is that our sex is becoming more and more straight. This bothers me, as, despite the fact that Dominus and my relationship is heterosexual we are far from straight. The sex we had when we first got together is worlds apart from the sex we have now. It’s hard to explain the difference, and I’m not even sure if I could if I tried, but there are different things which go into straight sex and queer sex, and we have not been having queer sex even though we have before.

We talked a lot these last few days that we’ve been communicating a lot about the issues, we talked about lack of time and energy and we talked a lot about sex. We both are not satisfied with where we are right now, and we are going to change it. One big issue is that he will never be able to fulfill me completely. I don’t mean this in a negative way, and I don’t expect to be able to fulfill him completely either. We come close to it, but I also think with poly-wired people such as ourselves it’s nearly impossible to be fulfilled 100% by one other person.

How much I am fulfilled is also directly proportionate to our sex life, as well. I have an extremely high sex drive, and in some ways being on orgasm restriction like I have been is not conducive to our sex life. One would imagine that orgasm restriction would make me want sex more often, but the opposite seems to be true. Rather, the more sex I have the more I want to have, so putting me on restriction or going days without sex just makes me desire it less rather than more. It’s strange, but that’s the way I work. Also, because he has allowed me to orgasm on my own while trying out my toys to review, I have gotten used to getting myself off and him not getting me off.

The biggest issue for him pulling away from me is my Domina and queer desires, which he doesn’t seem to fit into, and thus since I have been focusing heavily on those sides for the last few months it has seemed, in some ways, as a rejection of us. I can completely understand that, though it was far from my intention. We’ve talked about it a little bit over the last few months as well, but never to the point of resolving anything satisfactorily.

One of the wonderful things about The Leather Daddy and the Femme and why I’ve attached myself to it so fiercely, is that it depicts a heterosexual relationship much like my own and also with many differences, but it depicts a very queer heterosexual relationship, and that’s the kind of relationship I desire. Our relationship was much more queer in the beginning, and has been slipping toward something far more straight, and a lot of that is because of where we live. Salt Lake City isn’t exactly conductive to queer heterosexuals.

So, we’ve talked. Ad nauseam, really. Slowly we’ve gotten past the surface issues to those which have been really bothering us. I haven’t had as much attraction to him sexually because we’re getting away from queer sex, and I don’t do straight sex, I just don’t. I finally have understood where that has been coming from, and he (I hope) has gotten to understand where he is coming from in all his fears as well, and we’ve come to a greater place of understanding and the desire to work on this together.

The wonderful thing about our relationship is that neither of us is willing to give up on it. We both are dedicated to it as well as to each other, which means that even though we have rough patches (as every relationship should, really), we always get through them and are stronger for them. It’s perfect, really. No relationship that is worth having is easy.

Queer Psychotherapy Conference

Found via Sinclair. When I read this my inner Psychologist was purring at the thought of it. I knew there must be conferences like this, but I had not heard of them definitively until now. Needless to say, I desperately desire to attend, and I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to do that.

QUEER BODIES IN PSYCHOTHERAPY CONFERENCE
www.ciis.edu/publicprograms for more information.

Queer Bodies in Psychotherapy calls attention to queer sexualities, identities, and practices that are inadequately addressed in both psychodynamic and somatic psychologies.

The Queer Bodies in Psychotherapy Conference is an opportunity for LGBTQI and straight therapists, queer theorists, somatic therapists and practitioners, members of various queer communities, scholars, activists, and educators to surface questions, develop theories, share case examples, and explore best practices in this emerging field. The Somatic Psychology Department at CIIS and The Center for the Study of the Body in Psychotherapy are organizing this conference as part of our ongoing commitment to exploring issues of embodied difference, marginalization, and the sociocultural understandings of somatic formation.

DETAILS

October 17 – 19, 2008
Hotel Whitcomb
1231 Market Street, San Francisco, CA

$225 for full weekend
$25 for Tim Miller Event (if not attending conference)

FEATURING

Tim Miller
Jewelle Gomez

Alzak Amlani, PhD
Matthew Bronson, PhD
Richard Buggs, PhD
Randy Connor, PhD
William F. Cornell, MA, TSTA
Dossie Easton, MFT
Karen Erlichman, MSS, LCSW
Zachariah Finley, MA, MFTI
Connie Hills, PhD
SJ Kahn, MFT
Kristin Kali, LM, CPM
Betsy Kassoff, PhD
Keiko Lane, MA, MFT
Janet Linder, LCSW
Connors McConville, MDiv, MA, MFTI
Elena Moser, LCSW
Rev. Trinity A. Ordona, PhD
Vernon A. Rosario, PhD, MD
Shoshana Simons, PhD
Steven Tierney, MA, EdD
Dylan Vade, PhD, JD
Center For Nonviolent Education and Parenting

COSPONSORS

Community United Against Violence
Jewish Mosaic: The National Center for
Gender and Sexual Diversity
Maia Midwifery and Preconception Services
New Leaf: Services For Our Community
Pacific Center
The Psychotherapy Institute
Visual Aid
Women’s Therapy Center

Visit us on the Web!
Go to www.ciis.edu/publicprograms or call (415) 575-6175 to register

Semantics Sunday: Fagette

One of my new favorite words, one which I’m even considering adding to my long list of labels up on the masthead, I’ve already added it to my gender description. I first encountered the term in the Fagette video by Athens Boys Choir which is absolutely lovely, hilarious, wonderful, and perfect.

Doing a search on google for faggette brings up over 18,600 results which are a mixture of pages with the Athens Boys Choir video on them or linked, personal profiles like myspace or digg, information for people with the last name of Fagette, some is information about La Fagette, France, and random other things. Aside from the video I’m interested in the Urban Dictionary definition of fagette which reads:

A lesbian or a woman that displays either a masculine or feminine attitudes, mannerisms, and dress depending on their whim at the moment.
At the Lesbian Club, Cheri was such a fagette that she was receiving looks of interest from both the Butch and Femme crowd.

As opposed to the simple other definitions: 1. A gay frenchman. Derived from “faggot” and “baguette.” 2. A female homosexual/lesbian. I would say I prefer the first definition of fagette(s) from UD instead of the other for fagette.

Further, I would propose my own definition (as that’s what this post is all about, right?) which brings it slightly away from sexuality, though I would say queer is a necessity as I believe queerness and gender have some sort of link together but queer doesn’t always have to do with who one sleeps with. I really like the “depending on their whim at the moment” part of the definition, and I think that is key for my own feelings and adoption of this label.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my boi side, especially since reading The Leather Daddy and the Femme since it is so amazing and is a queer femme who also dresses as a boi, who has both aspects (genders) within her and plays with both and in between. I have been feeling more of my boi side lately, but also enjoying and analyzing my femme side, yet another “switch” label for me to inhabit, perhaps, switching from boi to femme and back again and everywhere in between.

It’s often difficult to not have a definite place in this gender galaxy, or to be circling around more than one sun. At the same time it’s very freeing, because through embracing these specific labels I am able to then open up my own gender expression to fit inside or outside of the gender lines as I see fit. Just like I feel it’s sometimes necessary to restrict something or go to one extreme in order to find where you really feel comfortable, and I’ve had to do that.

Back to my definition of fagette. Basically I think of it as a queer who mixes masculinity and fem(me)ininity and creates their own version of both, whether their biology is male or female. I know it’s a rather open-ended definition, but I think gender is open-ended in some ways, a lot more open-ended than society would like us to believe anyway. A fagette can look like Athens Boys Choir: a boy with a vagina, or a bio-female drag queen, or like Miranda/Randy of The Leather Daddy and the Femme, or all sorts of other configurations. There’s something about femme masculinity in it (not to be confused with female masculinity), which seems contradictory, in any way but I’m talking simply gender and not biological sex.

There’s a type of femme which can only be achieved by mixing a little masculinity in, I think, the drag queen is a drag queen because it’s putting a feminine gender on the socially “wrong” body, but a similar gender is difficult to achieve when you are putting a similar gender expression, drag queen, on the socially “correct” body. Fagette is recognizing that wrongness, that queerness, and embracing it.

It doesn’t come out as femme drag queen for everyone, that’s just my experience of fagette, having to map it onto my identity in order to have it fit. It’s similar to what I mean by “femme drag queen,” the purposeful combining of femmeininity and masculinity in order to create a new gender all my own, an androgyny that doesn’t come out looking primarily masculine as most androgyny does.

Fagette is not limited to the gender expression “drag queen” as some drag queens are not fagettes, but some fagettes are drag queens. Fagette can encompass any gender which is a mixture of femme and fag (I believe).

Page 5 of 8

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén