Yes, I fully recognize it's been a while since I've posted. Yes, we are going to ignore this.
Anyway...
This post stems from a conversation I had with one of my friends, one of those friends you see about twice a month but when you do you have intense, soul-bearing, fulfilling conversations with them. And the conversation we had was about kids.
I was the kind of kid who for 17 years never wanted children. I didn't coo at little babies; I thought they were kind of ugly, actually, all wrinkly and pink. I couldn't imagine one in my stomach or drinking milk from my breast (actually, I still kind of shudder when I think about that). I didn't imagine myself caring for or nurturing them; I didn't imagine how they were going to be like me and how they were going to be like my partner (at the time, I was still thinking husband, although tellingly the man in the picture didn't really have a face). But when I turned eighteen, a biological switch flipped in my head, and suddenly I was imagining all these things (minus the birth and the breast milk). Suddenly I was cooing at little babies and peering in the windows of children's clothing stores and mentally assembling cute little outfits for the imaginary sprogs.
In the conversation, my friend confided that after years of a "Fuck relationships, I'm fine on my own, I'm going to have dogs and I won't need kids" attitude (which, I hasten to mention, is a perfectly viable one), she had begun to picture herself settling down and adopting a few children with someone. But here you have to add in our gay(ish)ness, and my genderqueerness, and suddenly raising children in this day and age is a whole new picture. To begin with, we can dispense with the pink and blue.
There's a couple in Canada who are overtly raising a genderless baby -or, that is, keeping his/her gender a secret to anyone but the immediate family. The child, named Storm, is pictured in "gender-neutral" colors like red, or with his/her brother, Jazz, who has pigtails. While part of me applauds this effort to denaturalize gender norms, the other part of me sticks her finger in the back of her throat at the theoretical language, and quivers to think of what's going to happen when little Storm is asked, on his/her first day of kindergarten, "So what are you?", meaning his/her sex. Who knows, Storm might have an answer then. But what if he/she doesn't? What if he/she still likes both his/her pink and his/her trucks? What if he/she says, "I'm just me"? Hopefully the interrogator will be growing up in a more freely gendered world and be able to accept that, but maybe Storm might get bullied for his/her cheek.
Beyond that, from my psychology class I've learned that it's a point of pride at a certain age for a little one to be able to stand up, puff out his/her chest, and say, "I'm a boy!" or "I'm a girl!" It's kind of like choosing teams- Red Sox or Yankees, Autobots or Decepticons, cats or dogs. The psych textbook made it seem very clear-cut: one day you look down and see what you've got between your legs, and a sudden sense of team pride is instilled into you. But as anyone who's been raised in a Red Sox household but has felt inexplicably drawn to the power and pride of the Yankees knows, it's not always that simple.
It certainly wasn't for me. When it came time for me to choose, I looked down, saw what was there, and then I looked up and looked around. Everybody was dividing along gendered lines; it was just something that absolutely everybody was doing, and I guessed I needed to do it too. But there was heartbreak involved there. The kids with the long hair were all playing with dolls or doing their hair; the kids with short hair were roughhousing and playing the kinds of games I'd always loved. But my hair was long. It was clear where I needed to go. So I slouched over to that corner of the playground, and thus began a decade-long struggle with the world and with myself over what I could and could not do. In the end, I decided it was my opinion that mattered; the world could go fuck itself, I was going to roughhouse and play my boy games and wear my shit-kickin' boots. I get the idea that this is a sensation that more people than just this butch has experienced.
But while it was a moment of intense personal empowerment for me, it came after that approximate decade of struggle, a soul-rending and immensely painful one. The world itself was telling me, day after day, that the way I felt and the things I wanted were just intrinsically wrong, and therefore I myself was fundamentally wrong. This is a struggle that I want to spare my progeny. If I had my druthers, enforced gender would be ended tomorrow, kids could come out as whatever they wanted to, and the tyranny of blue and pink (did you know that originally, when the Romans invented the blue/pink baby scheme, it was pink for a boy and blue for a girl? The people who re-established that practice, a soap-making company looking for a marketing scheme, fucked it up! Now tell me that's natural.) would be toppled. But this isn't going to happen.
Who knows, maybe my kids will be as truck-loving boys and doll-loving girls as ever lived (although no one in my household will ever be taught to value army men over tea sets). If they are, they will be valued and loved no more or less than gender non-conforming children; my sons will play soldier with me and I will drink endless cups of tea with my daughters. But if they're not, and if they come to me and are confused about why everything has to change and why they can't play the way they want to anymore, they will find a sympathetic ear. If my son wants to grow his hair long and wear lovely pink dresses, he will. If my daughter wants a crew cut and cargo pants, she'll get them. And I will protect them with all my power and my anger from any indignities the world and its inflexible gender scheme might try to inflict upon them.
But here's the thing that makes me the happiest, and the most proud: the conversation my friend and I had.
Things are already different, we said. The world is still hard for trans kids, for genderqueer kids, even for little straight tomboys and little boys who'd rather play with ant farms than soccer balls. But it's getting easier. There are already several "Mommy bloggers" who talk about defending their gender non-conforming kids from ignorant parents (not their children!). Things will already be easier for them. But the most important thing is that they will find only support and love, not ignorance and fear, from us. If they were to come to us and say, "Mommy, I think I'm a boy/girl/not really either of those things," we would say, All right. What would you like me to do? Would you like to talk to me, or someone professional, about it? Would you like some books on the subject? Do you want to go shopping for some new clothes? But most importantly of all, I want you to know that I don't care what you are, you are my child and I love you. Above all, I want to impress upon them the knowledge that masculinity and femininity are ways of feeling, states of being, are not monolithic in the least, and that you can be either one or neither or both, and that neither is better or worse than the other. I don't want my children to have to fight, like I did, to be who they are, but if they're going to have to I want to give them the tools and the love that they're going to need to do so.
I don't want my kids to start their lives as gender experiments; that's not fair to enter them into a struggle before they're old enough to understand what they're fighting for. Before they're old enough to notice or question such things, I'll refer to them as the pronoun of their birth sex. But I'll let them know that it's possible to change, to be something and someone different; I'll offer them the buffet of gender, the pronouns and the names and the clothing choices and the haircuts on one large, richly spread table, and let them choose from the available dishes what they want, or let them cook their own.
But goddammit, if my son's or daughter's skirt is too short, or his/her jeans hanging so low I can see his/her boxers, "Mister/missy, you are so not going out of the house like that. Upstairs now, and change before I count to ten, or you are grounded for the rest of your natural life. I mean it!" Just because I'm an accepting parent doesn't mean I'm not going to be a hardass.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Marking time
George R.R. Martin has not put out a book in the Song of Ice and Fire series for six years, so you can imagine the anticipation that proceeded the release of the fifth book (out of seven) in the series, A Dance With Dragons. I'm proud (but not necessarily pleased) to say I just finished this brick, weighing in at 1,022 pages. It was...well, not necessarily disappointing, just a bit of a letdown. Why?
Because GRRM was marking time. People march, or plan, or sail, or brood. Everyone is going somewhere but no one seems to be getting there. Every little detail seems to need to be arranged. I get Martin’s impulse for realism- I raved about it in one of my previous posts- but the truth is, reality is boring. It’s full of bathroom breaks. We don’t need to hear about all the bathroom breaks, and we don’t need to hear about each little nitpicky detail of Jon’s disposition of the food stores and extraneous wildlings, or Dany’s attempts to organize the refugees from Yunkai, or anything like that. These may be fascinating administrative organizational problems for Martin, but for a reader, they are deadly dull.
Another of my issues is Martin’s propensity to begin nearly every chapter—especially the Jon Snow chapters—by recapping what happened to the character previously through the book, sometimes even throughout the series, while the character walks the Wall or visits a refugee camp, and broods. Martin should give his readers more credit—we can probably manage to remember what happened between chapters, and if we can’t it’s not too hard to go back a few pages and figure it out. I probably wouldn’t find this propensity so annoying if it didn’t take up half the chapter on several occasions, and a good five to ten pages on most of the others.
And there’s also a ton of brooding. I’m sorry, Martin’s books are by no means art. The prose is workmanlike and adequate to carry the story along; it’s the plot that I actually care about- when he's writing well, it gallops along at breakneck speed, or sneaks creepily up behind you and then knifes you when you're not looking. When it meanders about uselessly like a blind horse, I am seized with the impulse to rip out great gouts of pages (virtually, as I was reading this on my Kindle), which is what Martin’s editor should have done. But anyway: I don’t really care about Dany and Jon and Davos brooding on what happened in the past. I get that they are troubled by what they’ve seen and done, but a few paragraphs suffice—I don’t need or want whole chapters. Martin should have listened more to the phrase Dany constantly—and uselessly—repeats: If I look back, I am lost. Considering that this book consisted mostly of looking back, Martin is lost ten ways from Sunday.
About four things actually happen in the book: Dany makes a breakthrough with Drogon, her biggest, blackest, meanest dragon. Jon lets a ton of wildlings through the Wall to help him defend it from the Others’ incursion. Tyrion takes up with the exiled lord John Connington, who appears to have been hoarding a dragon prince, Aegon, whose death was feigned during Robert’s Rebellion, and who intends to conquer the Seven Kingdoms. And Stannis, who is still entirely unlikeable, tries to retake Winterfell. If all Martin intended was for these four things to happen, he could have deleted about five hundred pages from his book and made it sleek and swift, maybe not the satisfying chronicle we hoped to get after six years but at least not this rambling monstrosity. Clearly, Martin was engaged in a furious fight with his editor, who must have at last thrown up his or her hands in frustration and stormed off—much to the detriment of the book.
As an author, I know that while the words of the book are my own, it is also on me to create a story that is readable and exciting to a wide audience. I foist my writing on my beta readers and ask them to give me detailed responses on what works and what doesn’t. While I often consider myself a better writer than many of these people (for the most part my beta readers aren't writers; they are scientists, lawyers, and musicians, and brilliant at all of these things, but they don't identify as writers), their input is invaluable for one simple reason: they are objective (at least, far more than I am). Every word in the book was put there by me; every word is my baby, and I am loath to kill my babies. But my readers don’t have those qualms; they can tell me when I’m going on and on and on about nothing, or when something seems stunted and underrealized. I have learned, as an author, when to keep my own counsel and when to listen to my readers and realize that, no matter how much I love something, it’s not necessary or it’s not working.
Now, I’m a young, unpublished author; Martin is the author of over twenty successful books, one of which has been made into an extremely popular and high-rated television series. He has even been hailed as the American Tolkein. I’m sure, given all of the accolades he often gets, that it’s easy to forget one simple fact: he is writing for an audience. He is writing for himself, and well he should be—if writing isn’t in your heart, your bones, your blood, then you have no business in the profession—but he would be nothing without the legions of adoring fans to buy his books, write him star reviews, and make TV series out of his works. There are also wise people trained in the art of being objective and telling authors when to kill their darlings, as is often famously said. These people are called editors, and it is their job to make the work translatable from the author’s pen to the public’s eye. Martin would have been well-advised to listen to all of these people.
Because GRRM was marking time. People march, or plan, or sail, or brood. Everyone is going somewhere but no one seems to be getting there. Every little detail seems to need to be arranged. I get Martin’s impulse for realism- I raved about it in one of my previous posts- but the truth is, reality is boring. It’s full of bathroom breaks. We don’t need to hear about all the bathroom breaks, and we don’t need to hear about each little nitpicky detail of Jon’s disposition of the food stores and extraneous wildlings, or Dany’s attempts to organize the refugees from Yunkai, or anything like that. These may be fascinating administrative organizational problems for Martin, but for a reader, they are deadly dull.
Another of my issues is Martin’s propensity to begin nearly every chapter—especially the Jon Snow chapters—by recapping what happened to the character previously through the book, sometimes even throughout the series, while the character walks the Wall or visits a refugee camp, and broods. Martin should give his readers more credit—we can probably manage to remember what happened between chapters, and if we can’t it’s not too hard to go back a few pages and figure it out. I probably wouldn’t find this propensity so annoying if it didn’t take up half the chapter on several occasions, and a good five to ten pages on most of the others.
And there’s also a ton of brooding. I’m sorry, Martin’s books are by no means art. The prose is workmanlike and adequate to carry the story along; it’s the plot that I actually care about- when he's writing well, it gallops along at breakneck speed, or sneaks creepily up behind you and then knifes you when you're not looking. When it meanders about uselessly like a blind horse, I am seized with the impulse to rip out great gouts of pages (virtually, as I was reading this on my Kindle), which is what Martin’s editor should have done. But anyway: I don’t really care about Dany and Jon and Davos brooding on what happened in the past. I get that they are troubled by what they’ve seen and done, but a few paragraphs suffice—I don’t need or want whole chapters. Martin should have listened more to the phrase Dany constantly—and uselessly—repeats: If I look back, I am lost. Considering that this book consisted mostly of looking back, Martin is lost ten ways from Sunday.
About four things actually happen in the book: Dany makes a breakthrough with Drogon, her biggest, blackest, meanest dragon. Jon lets a ton of wildlings through the Wall to help him defend it from the Others’ incursion. Tyrion takes up with the exiled lord John Connington, who appears to have been hoarding a dragon prince, Aegon, whose death was feigned during Robert’s Rebellion, and who intends to conquer the Seven Kingdoms. And Stannis, who is still entirely unlikeable, tries to retake Winterfell. If all Martin intended was for these four things to happen, he could have deleted about five hundred pages from his book and made it sleek and swift, maybe not the satisfying chronicle we hoped to get after six years but at least not this rambling monstrosity. Clearly, Martin was engaged in a furious fight with his editor, who must have at last thrown up his or her hands in frustration and stormed off—much to the detriment of the book.
As an author, I know that while the words of the book are my own, it is also on me to create a story that is readable and exciting to a wide audience. I foist my writing on my beta readers and ask them to give me detailed responses on what works and what doesn’t. While I often consider myself a better writer than many of these people (for the most part my beta readers aren't writers; they are scientists, lawyers, and musicians, and brilliant at all of these things, but they don't identify as writers), their input is invaluable for one simple reason: they are objective (at least, far more than I am). Every word in the book was put there by me; every word is my baby, and I am loath to kill my babies. But my readers don’t have those qualms; they can tell me when I’m going on and on and on about nothing, or when something seems stunted and underrealized. I have learned, as an author, when to keep my own counsel and when to listen to my readers and realize that, no matter how much I love something, it’s not necessary or it’s not working.
Now, I’m a young, unpublished author; Martin is the author of over twenty successful books, one of which has been made into an extremely popular and high-rated television series. He has even been hailed as the American Tolkein. I’m sure, given all of the accolades he often gets, that it’s easy to forget one simple fact: he is writing for an audience. He is writing for himself, and well he should be—if writing isn’t in your heart, your bones, your blood, then you have no business in the profession—but he would be nothing without the legions of adoring fans to buy his books, write him star reviews, and make TV series out of his works. There are also wise people trained in the art of being objective and telling authors when to kill their darlings, as is often famously said. These people are called editors, and it is their job to make the work translatable from the author’s pen to the public’s eye. Martin would have been well-advised to listen to all of these people.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
So...maybe? (update on my last)
Maybe- just maybe- I've found my candidate. The candidate who will get me excited about the GOP- and the election- again.
OK, maybe I'm already excited. I'm just trying to tamp down my excitement, because he's kind of a dark horse candidate, but that could actually be what works in his favor...
Oh and I read about him in Esquire. Seriously, I need to get a subscription to that magazine. What more could a fashion-conscious butch want? Anyway, I'm well aware I'm stalling. Drumroll, please...
Jon Huntsman.
He's pro-gun, anti-abortion, fiscally conservative, socially moderate, has some rather alarming views on global warming (which I don't agree with, but we can work with that), and is- get this- PRO CIVIL UNIONS. Ever since C and I talked about gay marriage laws and why they're good and why they're not, I've been pretty convinced that civil unions are all the government should have to offer the gays- or, for that matter, the straights. Marriage is primarily a religious institution and if we are truly to honor the separation of church and state that our founders intended, the ceremony should be administered and regulated church by church (I'll skip the PC stuff; just read my other post).
That being said, civil unions are different from marriage; most people consider them a step down. I kind of do too- I like the idea of getting all churchy, with me in a dashing tux from The Butch Clothing Company, and the bride in a beautiful white dress, and...getting misty-eyed again. Somehow I always forget to consider the inevitable series of fights I'll be having with my mom:
Her: OK, I think we've got the caterers all set up, and the reception, and we should be able to fudge the flowers, but we just need to take care of your dress.
Me: Mom...
Her (talking over me): It's pretty short notice, and I have no idea why you've been dragging your heels so much, but I've got a list of a few places that can do the fitting-
Me: Mom!
Her: -and they have some pretty nice designs, I'm sure you'll like them, and-
Me: Mom! The tux has already been ordered. It's tailor-made, it's hanging up in my closet, and if you don't shut up about me getting a dress you don't get to come to the ceremony. I'll see you at the reception.
Anyway- Jon Huntsman. I like him. He's the consummate diplomat, literally- he was the U.S. Ambassador to Beijing while the country was blowing up all around Obama, and he has by and large avoided most of the flak that the primary Republican figures have been taking. But he also takes a softer line than most of the Tea Partiers- much as I may agree with many points on their agenda, he's not shouting about how teh gay life is "a very sad life...[a] part of Satan."
So already I like him better.
My sister reports that many of the kids in her generation are looking at the mess Obama and his government have made of their futures- debt and taxes and Social Security crashes up the wazoo- and are suddenly starting to shift right in their fiscal thinking, if not their social. And that seems to be where Huntsman stands- socially moderate, but fiscally conservative. He was a successful governor of Utah, twice. That's gotta count for something. Maybe he could be the candidate that gets the kids energized about something besides an impossibly liberal agenda, just because they have the better musicians (The Beatles vs. Christian rock=no contest).
But nobody knows his name.
In Autostraddle's guide to the Republican candidates for 2012, he doesn't even show up. He was in New Hampshire at the time of the Esquire article, talking to constituents in coffee shops and feeling out his potential voters, getting to know them and what they thought of him and adjusting his political strategies accordingly. The guy is smart. He's fluent in Mandarin, he's been ambassador to a country that does not love us, and he's been governor of Utah twice. He's got a bunch of kids, two of which are going to the Naval Academy this fall and one of which is adopted from China. He looks wonderfully all-American.
Can he do it?
I sure as hell hope he can...
OK, maybe I'm already excited. I'm just trying to tamp down my excitement, because he's kind of a dark horse candidate, but that could actually be what works in his favor...
Oh and I read about him in Esquire. Seriously, I need to get a subscription to that magazine. What more could a fashion-conscious butch want? Anyway, I'm well aware I'm stalling. Drumroll, please...
Jon Huntsman.
He's pro-gun, anti-abortion, fiscally conservative, socially moderate, has some rather alarming views on global warming (which I don't agree with, but we can work with that), and is- get this- PRO CIVIL UNIONS. Ever since C and I talked about gay marriage laws and why they're good and why they're not, I've been pretty convinced that civil unions are all the government should have to offer the gays- or, for that matter, the straights. Marriage is primarily a religious institution and if we are truly to honor the separation of church and state that our founders intended, the ceremony should be administered and regulated church by church (I'll skip the PC stuff; just read my other post).
That being said, civil unions are different from marriage; most people consider them a step down. I kind of do too- I like the idea of getting all churchy, with me in a dashing tux from The Butch Clothing Company, and the bride in a beautiful white dress, and...getting misty-eyed again. Somehow I always forget to consider the inevitable series of fights I'll be having with my mom:
Her: OK, I think we've got the caterers all set up, and the reception, and we should be able to fudge the flowers, but we just need to take care of your dress.
Me: Mom...
Her (talking over me): It's pretty short notice, and I have no idea why you've been dragging your heels so much, but I've got a list of a few places that can do the fitting-
Me: Mom!
Her: -and they have some pretty nice designs, I'm sure you'll like them, and-
Me: Mom! The tux has already been ordered. It's tailor-made, it's hanging up in my closet, and if you don't shut up about me getting a dress you don't get to come to the ceremony. I'll see you at the reception.
Anyway- Jon Huntsman. I like him. He's the consummate diplomat, literally- he was the U.S. Ambassador to Beijing while the country was blowing up all around Obama, and he has by and large avoided most of the flak that the primary Republican figures have been taking. But he also takes a softer line than most of the Tea Partiers- much as I may agree with many points on their agenda, he's not shouting about how teh gay life is "a very sad life...[a] part of Satan."
So already I like him better.
My sister reports that many of the kids in her generation are looking at the mess Obama and his government have made of their futures- debt and taxes and Social Security crashes up the wazoo- and are suddenly starting to shift right in their fiscal thinking, if not their social. And that seems to be where Huntsman stands- socially moderate, but fiscally conservative. He was a successful governor of Utah, twice. That's gotta count for something. Maybe he could be the candidate that gets the kids energized about something besides an impossibly liberal agenda, just because they have the better musicians (The Beatles vs. Christian rock=no contest).
But nobody knows his name.
In Autostraddle's guide to the Republican candidates for 2012, he doesn't even show up. He was in New Hampshire at the time of the Esquire article, talking to constituents in coffee shops and feeling out his potential voters, getting to know them and what they thought of him and adjusting his political strategies accordingly. The guy is smart. He's fluent in Mandarin, he's been ambassador to a country that does not love us, and he's been governor of Utah twice. He's got a bunch of kids, two of which are going to the Naval Academy this fall and one of which is adopted from China. He looks wonderfully all-American.
Can he do it?
I sure as hell hope he can...
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
I'm finally old enough to vote in an election...now what?
Reading this article-http://www.autostraddle.com/gop-presidential-candidates-unanimously-ensure-gay-apocalypse-bachmann-fears-lesbian-attack-93938/- has made me seriously depressed. Like, really. I guess with Obama in the Oval Office I was able to hate the vast majority of his politics but still be kind of happy with what was going on with the gays/marriage, if not how slowly it was going. But now, looking at the rundown of the Republican candidates lining up to unseat him, the future looks pretty grim for those who, like me, would like to save our economy but also get married to our (same-sex) partners in the not-too-far future. Pretty much all of the major candidates have something nasty to say about same-sex marriage. Michelle Bachmann is, frankly, quite frightening. While I would adore having a woman for president, it's like I said for Hillary: I'm not going to vote for her just because she's a woman. If she thinks that because I love who I love I'm "part of Satan," as she says in the article, I can't find it within myself to cast my vote for her.
Sigh...
When I was in high school taking Poli Sci and I read about how many Americans JUST DIDN'T VOTE in presidential elections, let alone regional ones, I was appalled. I couldn't understand it. Of course, I was at the height of my political activism then- reading at least six political blogs a day to keep abreast of the election news, and watching the news every night- but even so, it seemed unconscionable. How could you just not care?
But now I understand. It's not necessarily about not caring...it's about being caught between a rock and a hard place, Scylla and Charybdis. If I go with the Democrats, it is entirely possible that I will be able to get married, but I am firm in my belief that the majority of their economic and social policies will ruin the country (Obama's doing a great job of it right now). I also think my vote might hasten the slide into socialism. If I go with the Republicans, their economic policies just might save the economy- we can hope- but my very being what I am, a genderqueer gay butch who loves a beautiful, wonderful girl who loves her back- will be condemned as wrong, evil, and "of Satan."
Let me put that more clearly: the very best thing in my life- my love with and for this girl- mean, to these candidates, that no matter who I am and what I do, I am wrong, evil, and "of Satan." At best, I am woefully misguided, some sick, sad sort of deviant who just needs to be "cured" or "healed." At worst, I am a menace, looking to corrupt innocent young children. God forbid I try to adopt some- there would be no hope for those poor youngsters. I would corrupt their minds and, to quote Bachmann again, force them "to learn that homosexuality is normal, natural and perhaps they should try it". Even if I and whoever my partner might be would just be trying to provide them with a safe, loving home, we are automatically worse than wherever they might have come from- abusive or neglectful as their birth parents might have been- simply because there is no Y chromosome in our relationship.
Beyond this, however, I'd simply like to point out one more thing: http://www.autostraddle.com/hrc-polling-trends-say-lawmakers-are-behind-the-public-on-gay-marriage-74868/ WE WON. The kids, the public say gay marriage is a good thing, if you want it- in the minds of the populace, that battle is over. And here I thought democracy was supposed to reflect, at least in part, the mind of the majority- with due consideration taken for the protection of the rights of the minority. But I don't see gay marriage as violating the rights of the minority at all- after all, how am I hurting YOU if I want to get married and have a family? I'm not stealing your children; I'm not having my awesome gay sex in front of your children, nor am I telling them that being gay is what they should do. I am living, existing, and procreating with the person I love, who loves me back. And here I thought this was a basic human right, one that everyone simply received, not was given or stole from someone else. Just because I have the right to get married doesn't mean that you don't. What about this don't these candidates get?
This is just causing me a lot of pain right now, because in my economic and most of my social policies I am very staunchly Republican (or at least I agree with them more than I agree with the Democrats on these issues), and if it was anything else I'd bite the bullet and go with it. But this is an issue that is very near and dear to my heart, because when I look down the road and see that I will be unable to marry , like all of my straight friends; that I will be unable to have children and have them carry both mine and my partner's names; that if my partner is dying in the hospital I will be unable to see her without her family's consent; that I will have to pay thousands more in taxes simply because I am not married to a man...what is it they say in the pledge of allegiance? "One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
Guess they skipped the justice part.
Postlude: I was just talking with my girlfriend, and she raised some excellent points. I was ranting about the fact that the candidates who are against gay marriage would be imposing their particular religious views on the entirety of the electorate- not all of Christianity/Judaism/Islam/whatever, but their particular views- and I thought our "separation of church and state" clauses in that funky old thing called the Constitution were designed to prevent exactly that. After all, marriage was, from the beginning, a religious and social institution. There should be no governmental blanket mandate telling everyone that they can only get married if there's one penis and one vagina in the mix.
However, C brought up the point that that's the same thing the gay-marriage supporters want: a blanket governmental mandate telling all the churches and synagogues and mosques and everything that not only do gays have equal rights under the law, all of the religious- not governmental!- institutions must marry them, no matter how that clashes with their religious beliefs. And that struck me as wrong too. If I were president, at this point, my stance would be that gays should have the same civil rights as any other human being, and that civil unions should carry the same rights as marriages. However, marriage is something to be decided on a church-by-synagogue-by-mosque basis. If it is against your religious beliefs as a pastor/rabbi/whatever it is in a mosque, then you shouldn't have to perform those marriages. You're a bigot, but you're not hurting me; if it's my church/synagogue/mosque/whatever saying it won't marry me and my fiance, that's your prerogative and I need to find another religious institution that will marry me. But no one should be forced to have to do something that is against their beliefs...and it is against my beliefs that I am an evil, sick, deviant human being and that I should not be allowed to get married.
Sigh...
When I was in high school taking Poli Sci and I read about how many Americans JUST DIDN'T VOTE in presidential elections, let alone regional ones, I was appalled. I couldn't understand it. Of course, I was at the height of my political activism then- reading at least six political blogs a day to keep abreast of the election news, and watching the news every night- but even so, it seemed unconscionable. How could you just not care?
But now I understand. It's not necessarily about not caring...it's about being caught between a rock and a hard place, Scylla and Charybdis. If I go with the Democrats, it is entirely possible that I will be able to get married, but I am firm in my belief that the majority of their economic and social policies will ruin the country (Obama's doing a great job of it right now). I also think my vote might hasten the slide into socialism. If I go with the Republicans, their economic policies just might save the economy- we can hope- but my very being what I am, a genderqueer gay butch who loves a beautiful, wonderful girl who loves her back- will be condemned as wrong, evil, and "of Satan."
Let me put that more clearly: the very best thing in my life- my love with and for this girl- mean, to these candidates, that no matter who I am and what I do, I am wrong, evil, and "of Satan." At best, I am woefully misguided, some sick, sad sort of deviant who just needs to be "cured" or "healed." At worst, I am a menace, looking to corrupt innocent young children. God forbid I try to adopt some- there would be no hope for those poor youngsters. I would corrupt their minds and, to quote Bachmann again, force them "to learn that homosexuality is normal, natural and perhaps they should try it". Even if I and whoever my partner might be would just be trying to provide them with a safe, loving home, we are automatically worse than wherever they might have come from- abusive or neglectful as their birth parents might have been- simply because there is no Y chromosome in our relationship.
Beyond this, however, I'd simply like to point out one more thing: http://www.autostraddle.com/hrc-polling-trends-say-lawmakers-are-behind-the-public-on-gay-marriage-74868/ WE WON. The kids, the public say gay marriage is a good thing, if you want it- in the minds of the populace, that battle is over. And here I thought democracy was supposed to reflect, at least in part, the mind of the majority- with due consideration taken for the protection of the rights of the minority. But I don't see gay marriage as violating the rights of the minority at all- after all, how am I hurting YOU if I want to get married and have a family? I'm not stealing your children; I'm not having my awesome gay sex in front of your children, nor am I telling them that being gay is what they should do. I am living, existing, and procreating with the person I love, who loves me back. And here I thought this was a basic human right, one that everyone simply received, not was given or stole from someone else. Just because I have the right to get married doesn't mean that you don't. What about this don't these candidates get?
This is just causing me a lot of pain right now, because in my economic and most of my social policies I am very staunchly Republican (or at least I agree with them more than I agree with the Democrats on these issues), and if it was anything else I'd bite the bullet and go with it. But this is an issue that is very near and dear to my heart, because when I look down the road and see that I will be unable to marry , like all of my straight friends; that I will be unable to have children and have them carry both mine and my partner's names; that if my partner is dying in the hospital I will be unable to see her without her family's consent; that I will have to pay thousands more in taxes simply because I am not married to a man...what is it they say in the pledge of allegiance? "One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
Guess they skipped the justice part.
Postlude: I was just talking with my girlfriend, and she raised some excellent points. I was ranting about the fact that the candidates who are against gay marriage would be imposing their particular religious views on the entirety of the electorate- not all of Christianity/Judaism/Islam/whatever, but their particular views- and I thought our "separation of church and state" clauses in that funky old thing called the Constitution were designed to prevent exactly that. After all, marriage was, from the beginning, a religious and social institution. There should be no governmental blanket mandate telling everyone that they can only get married if there's one penis and one vagina in the mix.
However, C brought up the point that that's the same thing the gay-marriage supporters want: a blanket governmental mandate telling all the churches and synagogues and mosques and everything that not only do gays have equal rights under the law, all of the religious- not governmental!- institutions must marry them, no matter how that clashes with their religious beliefs. And that struck me as wrong too. If I were president, at this point, my stance would be that gays should have the same civil rights as any other human being, and that civil unions should carry the same rights as marriages. However, marriage is something to be decided on a church-by-synagogue-by-mosque basis. If it is against your religious beliefs as a pastor/rabbi/whatever it is in a mosque, then you shouldn't have to perform those marriages. You're a bigot, but you're not hurting me; if it's my church/synagogue/mosque/whatever saying it won't marry me and my fiance, that's your prerogative and I need to find another religious institution that will marry me. But no one should be forced to have to do something that is against their beliefs...and it is against my beliefs that I am an evil, sick, deviant human being and that I should not be allowed to get married.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Thrones (and the games we play for them)
Reading a series like George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire can really ruin your faith in humanity.
The best part, and the worst, of George R. R. Martin's series is that it's REAL. There are white knights in the books, but they are the most dishonorable knights of all. There are kings, but there is no such thing as a good one. There is love, but it rarely comes without a twist. The bad guys don't all die, the good guys often do, good rarely wins, and evil usually has what it takes to prevail. The innocent die, or don't stay innocent for long. And everybody plays the game of thrones.
It's a breath of fresh air, let me tell you. I love a story where the hero wins and gets the girl (insert any alternative genders or non-genders that you wish into that old trope, I know I do), where they vanquish the evil and restore the good king to his throne. But it gets tired. You look around at the world today, at the people who are in politics and power, and you don't see Gandalf; you see Peter Baelish, or Littlefinger. You look at heads of state and you don't see Aragorn; you see Robert Baratheon, feasting and wenching and drinking himself into an early death (or, say, golfing and sending his family on fancy European vacations, on the taxpayer's dime. Just a random example). Experience is usually what triumphs, and innocence dies a hard death, or learns to survive- but in doing so, begins to look curiously just like experience.
Why did I decided to (re)read SoIaF? Two reasons. First, the beautifully done new Game of Thrones series (I say new, but it ended two weeks ago). It's MARVELOUS. It's like, LotR quality, but in TV. It's also crazy true to the books, which is excellent, although it makes me spit at some of the fans because they got all up in arms after the ninth episode, whining about how they didn't want Ned Stark to die, and how the producers gypped them and just wanted to get good ratings, but BITCHES, THAT'S HOW IT WAS IN THE BOOK. Ugh, this is such an indicator of the liberal culture we live in today. "Wahhhh, I don't want my favorite character in a show based on a book series to die, EVEN THOUGH HE DIED IN THE BOOK AND THAT WOULD CHANGE PROBABLY THE WHOLE DAMN SERIES, because I DON'T WANT HIM TO! Mommy, FIX THE WORLD FOR ME!"
...okay. I'm good now. I promise you, Walt Kowalski didn't just take over my body and write my post for me. Well, maybe a little bit.
I guess the whole problem I have with people today is that they cling to the fairy tale notion of how everything is always going to work out perfectly in the end. We can do whatever we want, but nothing bad is going to happen to us. We can refuse to take responsibility for our actions, because it'll all turn out okay. We can elect a man to the presidency just because of his skin color, and give him a Nobel Peace Prize less than a year into office, and he'll turn out to be the best and wisest president we've ever seen, and he'll fix unemployment and make sure everybody has health care and all the wars in the world will cease and we'll have peace everywhere, just because we HOPED he would.
Just, you know, a random example.
One other thing I love that GRRM does is show that appearances are deceiving. Joffrey LOOKS like he should be the perfect king: handsome, golden, well-formed, carrying authority easily, everyone looks at him and says he must be wonderful. Inside, however, he's a monster. But I guess we're still going back to The Tempest:
There’s nothing ill can dwell in such a temple.
If the ill spirit have so fair a house,
Good things will strive to dwell with ’t.
Well...not so much. I mean, Cersei and Jaime are blond/e and gorgeous twins, but they've been fucking since they were fifteen and now have three kids together. Just sayin'. There's part of me that thinks the crybabies that our nanny state have created need a harsh lesson in how tough things can be in this world, but I guess that's uncharitable of me. First, because nobody deserves the things that happen to the people of Westeros during the war- constant raping, pillaging, the destruction of houses and homes and hopes, and death- constant, inexorable death. And second, because the vast majority of the American people wouldn't make it through the first day.
The best part, and the worst, of George R. R. Martin's series is that it's REAL. There are white knights in the books, but they are the most dishonorable knights of all. There are kings, but there is no such thing as a good one. There is love, but it rarely comes without a twist. The bad guys don't all die, the good guys often do, good rarely wins, and evil usually has what it takes to prevail. The innocent die, or don't stay innocent for long. And everybody plays the game of thrones.
It's a breath of fresh air, let me tell you. I love a story where the hero wins and gets the girl (insert any alternative genders or non-genders that you wish into that old trope, I know I do), where they vanquish the evil and restore the good king to his throne. But it gets tired. You look around at the world today, at the people who are in politics and power, and you don't see Gandalf; you see Peter Baelish, or Littlefinger. You look at heads of state and you don't see Aragorn; you see Robert Baratheon, feasting and wenching and drinking himself into an early death (or, say, golfing and sending his family on fancy European vacations, on the taxpayer's dime. Just a random example). Experience is usually what triumphs, and innocence dies a hard death, or learns to survive- but in doing so, begins to look curiously just like experience.
Why did I decided to (re)read SoIaF? Two reasons. First, the beautifully done new Game of Thrones series (I say new, but it ended two weeks ago). It's MARVELOUS. It's like, LotR quality, but in TV. It's also crazy true to the books, which is excellent, although it makes me spit at some of the fans because they got all up in arms after the ninth episode, whining about how they didn't want Ned Stark to die, and how the producers gypped them and just wanted to get good ratings, but BITCHES, THAT'S HOW IT WAS IN THE BOOK. Ugh, this is such an indicator of the liberal culture we live in today. "Wahhhh, I don't want my favorite character in a show based on a book series to die, EVEN THOUGH HE DIED IN THE BOOK AND THAT WOULD CHANGE PROBABLY THE WHOLE DAMN SERIES, because I DON'T WANT HIM TO! Mommy, FIX THE WORLD FOR ME!"
...okay. I'm good now. I promise you, Walt Kowalski didn't just take over my body and write my post for me. Well, maybe a little bit.
I guess the whole problem I have with people today is that they cling to the fairy tale notion of how everything is always going to work out perfectly in the end. We can do whatever we want, but nothing bad is going to happen to us. We can refuse to take responsibility for our actions, because it'll all turn out okay. We can elect a man to the presidency just because of his skin color, and give him a Nobel Peace Prize less than a year into office, and he'll turn out to be the best and wisest president we've ever seen, and he'll fix unemployment and make sure everybody has health care and all the wars in the world will cease and we'll have peace everywhere, just because we HOPED he would.
Just, you know, a random example.
One other thing I love that GRRM does is show that appearances are deceiving. Joffrey LOOKS like he should be the perfect king: handsome, golden, well-formed, carrying authority easily, everyone looks at him and says he must be wonderful. Inside, however, he's a monster. But I guess we're still going back to The Tempest:
There’s nothing ill can dwell in such a temple.
If the ill spirit have so fair a house,
Good things will strive to dwell with ’t.
Well...not so much. I mean, Cersei and Jaime are blond/e and gorgeous twins, but they've been fucking since they were fifteen and now have three kids together. Just sayin'. There's part of me that thinks the crybabies that our nanny state have created need a harsh lesson in how tough things can be in this world, but I guess that's uncharitable of me. First, because nobody deserves the things that happen to the people of Westeros during the war- constant raping, pillaging, the destruction of houses and homes and hopes, and death- constant, inexorable death. And second, because the vast majority of the American people wouldn't make it through the first day.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Vacation (coming back was the best part)
I was on vacation with my family at Universal Studios Orlando for the past week and a half, which may be why I haven't posted in a while (plus I'm just lazy. It had to happen sometime). The trip was in honor of my sister's graduation from high school, and our primary focus was the brand spankin' new Wizarding World of Harry Potter (shorthand: Harry Potter World). It was, in a word, AWESOME. You enter through a stone arch, under which hangs a sign that says Hogsmeade Village: Please Respect the Spell Limits and has a picture of a boar. The first thing you see is the huge scarlet Hogwarts Express, steam billowing and everything. To your left is Zonko's Joke Shop, one of the few actual shops in the area. It sells about five things, but everything is so cleverly arranged that you think there's a lot more variety than there is. It's appended to Honeydukes, which is a wonderful mix of Potter-themed sweets (Sugar Quills, Chocolate Wands, Fizzing Whizbees, Cauldron Cakes) and regular candy. Beyond that is the Three Broomsticks, done up like an old British pub and complete with food like Cornish pasties (which are delicious) and butterbeer, which is wonderful frozen.
Beyond that are empty storefronts, including Scrivenshaft's, a parchment and quill store, and Dogweed & Deathcap, an exotic plants store, which has an animatronic mandrake in a pot that moves, and occasionally screams. Beyond that is Hogwarts Castle, rising splendidly above a lake. Within that is the park's hottest ride, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, a part 3-D and part animatronic Harry Potter adventure. I did not appreciate the sojourn through the arachnid part of the Forbidden Forest.
Back in the village is Olivander's wand shop, makers of fine wands since 382 BC. If you're pressed for time, I recommend getting your wand in Dervish and Banges, which has the "personalized" wands for sale in the back, because a) you're not getting into Ollivander's without at least a 40 minute wait, and b) the wand show, which is what goes on in there, happens to only one person in a group of thirty, and that person is invariably a younger child. It's worth it to wait on the line, though; the wand show is glorious, even if it's not happening to you. Dervish and Banges is the real gold mine in Harry Potter swag, however. That's where you can get normal wands, character wands, robes, house pillows, house sweaters, plush dragons, Remembralls, Sneakoscopes, the Monster Book of Monsters, house ties, and just about everything you can think of. Yours truly is prepared for the premier of the final movie, with her house (Slytherin) uniform and her very own wand.
Other than HP World, the park is a lot of fun. The age group is generally two or three years older than the Disney World set, and that meant there were less little brats zooming around underfoot. It also meant less temper tantrums in lines and at gift shops, which was marvelous. Plus my family had the express pass because we stayed at one of the Universal Orlando resorts, the Loews Portofino (decked out like a port town in Italy), and thus we got to cut most of the lines.
So if someone can tell me why we needed to get up at 6:30 every morning and charge around the park for 7 hours, I will give them my sincere thanks (because I'm a poor college student, or at least I am now after I got through Dervish and Banges). I seriously need a vacation from that vacation, although getting up at 8 for work at 9 seems kind of like heaven, after it seemed like such a drag before. It was really nice to come back to Cecilia, however, and not just for obvious reasons. Being the wonderful, caring, considering person she is, I came back to find my room actually clean for once (I soon got to work on dirtying it again), my bed made, and a vase of truly fresh tiger lilies on my desk (she picked them from the huge stand of them outside our dorm), and my birthday present, finally come from the Lucky Dog Leather leather workshop: a lovely wrist cuff, custom made and sized for my wrist.
And, of course, her.
I missed her more than I can say. Bear in mind, we dated for three weeks our freshman year before we went to separate sides of the country for summer break: me to Connecticut, and her to an undisclosed location in the Midwest. We created a relationship through copious texting, letters, three-hour Skype sessions, and Facebook chat when her phone fell into a river (that was hell, let me tell you). You'd think, after three months of not seeing each other, that one week would be cake. It wasn't. It was really hard. I never realized how much I needed her and how very much I relied on her until she wasn't there to hold, to bitch to, to kiss, to cuddle. I missed her like crazy. And now I'm glad to have her back.
That's pretty much it :)
Note: Cecelia is so awesome that I have created a new tab category for her: My Girlfriend Is Awesome, abbreviated as MGIA.
Beyond that are empty storefronts, including Scrivenshaft's, a parchment and quill store, and Dogweed & Deathcap, an exotic plants store, which has an animatronic mandrake in a pot that moves, and occasionally screams. Beyond that is Hogwarts Castle, rising splendidly above a lake. Within that is the park's hottest ride, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, a part 3-D and part animatronic Harry Potter adventure. I did not appreciate the sojourn through the arachnid part of the Forbidden Forest.
Back in the village is Olivander's wand shop, makers of fine wands since 382 BC. If you're pressed for time, I recommend getting your wand in Dervish and Banges, which has the "personalized" wands for sale in the back, because a) you're not getting into Ollivander's without at least a 40 minute wait, and b) the wand show, which is what goes on in there, happens to only one person in a group of thirty, and that person is invariably a younger child. It's worth it to wait on the line, though; the wand show is glorious, even if it's not happening to you. Dervish and Banges is the real gold mine in Harry Potter swag, however. That's where you can get normal wands, character wands, robes, house pillows, house sweaters, plush dragons, Remembralls, Sneakoscopes, the Monster Book of Monsters, house ties, and just about everything you can think of. Yours truly is prepared for the premier of the final movie, with her house (Slytherin) uniform and her very own wand.
Other than HP World, the park is a lot of fun. The age group is generally two or three years older than the Disney World set, and that meant there were less little brats zooming around underfoot. It also meant less temper tantrums in lines and at gift shops, which was marvelous. Plus my family had the express pass because we stayed at one of the Universal Orlando resorts, the Loews Portofino (decked out like a port town in Italy), and thus we got to cut most of the lines.
So if someone can tell me why we needed to get up at 6:30 every morning and charge around the park for 7 hours, I will give them my sincere thanks (because I'm a poor college student, or at least I am now after I got through Dervish and Banges). I seriously need a vacation from that vacation, although getting up at 8 for work at 9 seems kind of like heaven, after it seemed like such a drag before. It was really nice to come back to Cecilia, however, and not just for obvious reasons. Being the wonderful, caring, considering person she is, I came back to find my room actually clean for once (I soon got to work on dirtying it again), my bed made, and a vase of truly fresh tiger lilies on my desk (she picked them from the huge stand of them outside our dorm), and my birthday present, finally come from the Lucky Dog Leather leather workshop: a lovely wrist cuff, custom made and sized for my wrist.
And, of course, her.
I missed her more than I can say. Bear in mind, we dated for three weeks our freshman year before we went to separate sides of the country for summer break: me to Connecticut, and her to an undisclosed location in the Midwest. We created a relationship through copious texting, letters, three-hour Skype sessions, and Facebook chat when her phone fell into a river (that was hell, let me tell you). You'd think, after three months of not seeing each other, that one week would be cake. It wasn't. It was really hard. I never realized how much I needed her and how very much I relied on her until she wasn't there to hold, to bitch to, to kiss, to cuddle. I missed her like crazy. And now I'm glad to have her back.
That's pretty much it :)
Note: Cecelia is so awesome that I have created a new tab category for her: My Girlfriend Is Awesome, abbreviated as MGIA.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
A variety of birthday things
To begin with, yesterday was my birthday. It was a good birthday, despite the oppressive heat and the working 7 hours that filled most of it. I woke up with my girlfriend, who has decided to allow me to call her Cecelia (not her real name), and she kissed me good morning. I brought her breakfast, and we enjoyed that. She gave me a mix CD that she’d made, and a vase of fake flowers, which she has promised to transmute into real ones soon. She’s also apparently ordered me something that required my wrist size, but because I kept forgetting to measure it it’s going to be pretty late.
Work was good, except for the fact that I was on a mega caffeine high, which never happens considering that I don’t have blood in my veins, but coffee. I felt crazed, and I thought I was going to wind up on the ceiling before long, staring down at everyone with wide, bloodshot eyes. The second half of the day, I was grouchy with withdrawal, but the infinitely wise powers that be at the office put me in the cage reorganizing old monitors and hauling buckets of cables to tech trash, so I couldn’t put anyone off with my ill-tempered muttering.
Last weekend, I went home to keep my mother company (my dad was on a motorcycling trip, and my sister was at a friend’s cabin), but when they got back we celebrated my birthday. I got, among other things, a Kindle, the sickest headphones that ever lived (SK Pro Sparkle Motions), and a pair of Sperry’s! The Kindle is my baby; I go everywhere with it. Literally. When I’m at work, I take it with me to the bathroom—that’s how much I love it. Not sure why; I’ve always been someone who loves the feel and smell and heft of books, but something about this gadget calls to me. Maybe it’s the fact that I can carry ten books and more around with me at a time, though I’m only reading one of them…ahhhh, I don’t know. I just love it.
As for the headphones, they are SICK.
And the Sperry’s…well, they’re beautiful. They’re a rich brown leather with tan laces, and very, very comfortable—as someone who doesn’t like to wear shoes in the summer, let alone socks, but is required to by her job, they’re an excellent compromise, and because they’re slip-ons I can sort of fudge it if I’m on a desk shift…until my boss walks by and yells at me. My only complaints are that a) they’re attempting to tear a hole in my right heel, and b) they somehow manage to vacuum up dirt from wherever I am (the ground, a carpet) and suck it right into the shoe, which is, as you can imagine, annoying. But other than that, I love them, and I can’t wait until they break in, because I’m sure they’ll be mega-comfy, wonderful summer shoes. Plus I can wear them with my khaki Dockers for something a little more formal than sneakers, but not so formal as my dress shoes. So, as I always said to justify buying something to my mother, they fill a gap in my wardrobe. Plus they make me look like the preppiest prep that ever prepped, and Cecelia likes that.
After work, I got a haircut that made me look like a bro, put on a nicer shirt than my “Nerd Herd” shirt, and we went to the Cheesecake Factory, where C treated me to a wonderful dinner. Then we went home and did wonderful things that you don’t get to know about.
All in all, I feel incredibly…gifted. Given to. I don’t know…I don’t think there’s a good word for it. I’m just grateful. Last year at around this time, I wasn’t sure I was going to see my 20th birthday—I hadn’t even believed I’d see my 19th, just before. I thought the depression was going to take me. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to see either of those birthdays. But since, I’ve been given reasons to keep going to see them—and the next one, and the next one, and the next after that. I live for C, for my parents and sister, for my friends, for the marriage and children I hope to have someday, for the job I hope to have, for the books I want to publish, for the life I hope to live. In the words of Dan Savage’s excellent campaign, things DO get better. They have already done so for me, and I hope they will continue to improve. From here on out, it’s only up.
Plus next year, I can legally drink!
Friday, May 27, 2011
My Write Hand
I’m writing again.
That in itself is a huge deal. When I was fifteen, I wrote a 421 page novel called Unforeseen, about the gayest straight girl in the history of the universe who learns that she’s actually heir to a kingdom that hasn’t been a kingdom for 500 years, and that only she has the power to stop the evil that threatens to engulf the world…I promise, it’s not as lame/derivative as it sounds. It’s actually not a bad novel, just…well, I wrote it when I was fifteen. I’ve been editing it ever since, but the core comes from when I was fifteen. And for anyone who’s ever read Eragon, or anything else by Christopher Paolini, well, you know that just because a fifteen-year-old wrote a book doesn’t mean it should be published.
But I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I’ve known that since I was six. I’ve loved books ever since I started being able to read them, and one of my earliest memories is of looking at an author’s name on the spine of a book and thinking that I couldn’t imagine anything finer than seeing my name there, on the spine of my very own novel. I’ve been drawn to fantasy from an early age, but I’ve been developing my taste in that area for a while, ever since I was turned onto Limyael’s rants. I’d say that that, and learning how not to write fantasy from reading Eragon, did the most of anything to develop my writing and my taste. I learned what tropes were common and what had been done to death. I began to recognize what was fresh and new and what I just liked because it was recycled, with barely a hint of fresh writing, from my old favorites. I learned that it’s ok to gank the old ideas from your favorites just so long as you’ve got a new, fresh way to spin them, something that makes them seem old again.
When I wrote Unforeseen, I was a deeply unhappy kid. I had few friends, and I was waiting for something—anything really—to be my ticket to a better life. I saw Unforeseen, the product of my intellect and my burning ambition, as that ticket: it was going to be a blockbuster, I was going to get rich, I was going to get famous, and all the people who’d teased me or ignored me or laughed at me were going to feel really, really stupid. Everyone would want to be my best friend. Some handsome boy was going to ask me out (HAHA!).
Well, that hasn’t happened.
I even wrote the sequel, Exile, and that hasn’t happened. To be fair, I haven’t tried very hard to have them published—one editing agency rejected my cover letter—but while trying to write Darkling, the final book in the Alarian Saga (as I call the trilogy), I realized that my heart just wasn’t in it. It still isn’t. I think a lot of it has to do with my being queer, but I’ve also developed quite a few changes in my mindset. For one thing, I realize that I need people now. I need them to make me happy, I need them to pick me up when I’m sad, and I need to be around them. When I was fifteen, I was the most introverted misanthrope in the history of the universe, and my writing showed that. It was all about individuals doing great things, achieving great heights, gaining great power. There was maybe a love interest allowed into the equation, but that was about it. Everybody else was a lackey or a secondary character.
Now, well…I’ve learned how important friendships are, and how much the vast majority of us need them to keep us afloat. I thought it was the depression that originally killed my writing, and while I think that was part of it, I also think it was because I needed an attitude adjustment, and a big one. I treat people better now, because I know that to lose them might kill me. Literally. That’s one of those things depression taught me.
And then there’s also teh gayness that has come over me ever since. Ty—the main character—was a font of female masculinity, with a lean, hard body and a short, shaggy, alternative haircut. Her body was everything I wanted from mine. A couple of readers told me that they couldn’t tell which gender Ty was (ahahahahaha) until they were told outright in the text. That should have clued me in on something, but it didn’t; I just got annoyed. But there’s also the fact that Ty is resolutely straight. She loves straight sex, and she loves straight guys. I wrote this from a time when I had absolutely no experience of sex of any kind, just a very powerful and very frustrated sex drive. Now…well…I have to bow to the inevitable and realize that she can continue living a lie, or she can give into the very strong crush she should have on Morgyn, the captain of one of the other Guard units, and they can ride off into the sunset together. Sigh…but I wrote the first two books straight, and I should finish them straight. I just find it difficult to write convincing straight relationships when I am occasionally attracted to guys sexually, but think I would tear all my hair out within the first week of trying to have a relationship with one.
So that’s where I am on Darkling: disconnected from my MC, trying to write straight when I’m very, very gay, and in a different place mentally than I ever was. But now I’m writing again, albeit on a different project: the Dragonlord Quintet. In this one, the main character (yet to be named, because I have to change her name for certain reasons) IS very, very gay—sort of a soft butch type, a la Shane McCutcheon, but able to go femme when she needs to. She lives in a kingdom embroiled in a very, very long war with another kingdom over a disputed territory of 100 leagues, called the Hundred Leagues’ War. And while a lot of the fighting is done by Middle Ages-type ground troops, there’s also an aerial war going on, fought by dragons.
The riders of those dragons are called dragonlords, and they form a kind of animal and mental bond with their dragons, carefully cultivated from the time of hatching. But my MC is the niece of a socially climbing, somewhat wealthy merchant (her parents died of plague when she was fourteen), and by all rights she should have nothing to do with dragons or dragonlords. Until, that is, her uncle attempts to secure a fat little lordling from a nearby town as a business partner, and he brings his cousin along with him. That cousin just happens to be a dragonlord, who intends to use my MC’s town as a place to convalesce.
Of course my MC, being the curious, meddling type, is intensely interested in the dragon and actually manages to form a kind of animalistic bond with it, by which I mean it doesn’t try to roast her on sight. However, before she can progress any further her uncle reveals that the final clause in his deal with the lordling means that she’s going to have to marry him. The lordling tries to rape her, and she escapes…to the dragon, who protects her. The dragonlord then agrees to take her on as his boy, a candidate for receiving a dragon if she performs well enough in the examination, which is six months away…and most of the other kids get 2 years.
Sound interesting? I think it does. I wrote a whole chapter on Tuesday and three pages yesterday, and I look forward to writing more tonight. I might post particularly good snippets of it up here, but…
I’m writing again!
You have no idea. Being a writer was my primary identity for so many years, as in: “Hi, I’m Jackson, and I’m a writer.” To not be writing felt like…I don’t know, like my arm was removed. I could still function without it, but it was different, and harder, and worse, and it still itched and ached sometimes, but it was gone. I feel like I’ve been given my arm back, and I feel the familiar ache in my right (write, haha) hand, and it’s like I’m back again. Or part of me is. Except that part of me is now part of a different me, and…
I’m writing again. That’s all that matters.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Upon having been raised as a boy (or, my masculinity, part 2)
Oh, don’t get me wrong- my gender was always firmly assigned as “F.” The clothes I was given were always from the girls’ section; if I was lucky my shoes were unisex but they were usually from the same place. But as I look back, someone was doing some gender subverting in my raising, and—hint—it wasn’t the feminist in the family.
It was my dad.
While I was always his little girl, and he still relates to me as that little girl no matter what (and I kind of like it, because I don’t get treated like a little girl very much anymore), he sorta kinda raised me as the son he never had. Instead of Barney, we watched old Japanese Godzilla movies together, and he bought me a mountain of definitively un-girly Godzilla toys. The same with my obsessions with knights, Lord of the Rings, Captain Hook , The Call of the Wild, and various other “boyish” subjects: I was always fitted out with the accoutrements proper to my favorite games and imaginary pursuits. To be fair, my mother was usually the one who provided the costuming, and once she collaborated with my grandfather to make what was and still is my favorite toy ever: a four-harness miniature dogsled (she made the leather harnesses, he made the sled) that I could hitch my stuffed wolves and dogs to and pull around the house.
But my dad was the one who took me shooting for the first time when I was eight, propping the smooth, beautiful .22 rifle on a pile of sandbags, teaching me with care how to hold it, how to handle it, how to sight my target, how the squeeze the trigger in a smooth, unhurried motion rather than jerking it and throwing off the aim. He also taught my sister and me safety exhaustively, and once, when my sister ventured under the partition between the standing areas and the range to look for particularly shiny pieces of brass, he became furious, yelled at her, and took us home immediately, because she had violated one of his primary tenets: NEVER go beyond the firing line while the range is hot. We weren’t shooting at the time, but we hadn’t called a cold range.
Shooting became one of our “male” bonding activities, and it was often accompanied by Dunkin Donuts and avoiding church—in a manner of speaking, because we often referred to our trips to the range as attending the “First Church of the Bang-Bang.” But throughout my entire experience, safety was tantamount. It was more than technique, more than speed, more than aim—it was everything, because our safety was everything. It was eyes on, ears on, wear a hat so that hot brass doesn’t fly onto your head and burn your scalp. It was ALL GUNS ARE LOADED and must be treated as such, even if you have just removed any possible ammunition from a gun yourself. You must also never point a gun at something you don’t intend to destroy. When I was younger, he had me pretend that there was an invisible laser beam emanating from the barrel of all guns at all times that would destroy anything it was pointed at.
It wasn’t just guns, though that was a big part of it. In general, I was expected to be a boy. I was given boy chores: unloading and loading the dishwasher, mowing the lawn, doing yardwork. If I fell down and skinned my knee, I was allowed to cry but not bawl. When I got into fights at school, it was somewhat expected of me—I had always shown a warlike disposition as a kid, and while they didn’t say “boys will be boys,” they said “Jackie will be Jackie.” For most of my childhood years, at least with my dad, I was an incurable tomboy—and he liked it.
When puberty started, however, and my long war with my mother over my femininity, or lack thereof, began, my dad became…bewildered, I think, is the best word for it. I remember reading in S. Bear Bergman’s Butch Is A Noun about what hir father wanted for hir as a woman, to be strong but feminine too, equally capable of changing a tire and choosing the right outfit for the right boy for the right date. I know those women; I’m dating one of them, and my mother is one of them. I am not, however, one of them; the femininity is lacking. I can fix my tire pressure or mow a lawn in under an hour, but put me in a dress and I look like a drag queen who’s not making much of an effort to pass.
And that is what bewilders my dad, I think. He looks at people like my mom or my girlfriend and sees what he thought he was raising me to be. He doesn’t understand what got lost in translation, and indeed it seems like, these days, we’re speaking two different languages. And it’s painful, this language barrier where none used to exist. We used to speak the same timeless language of fathers and sons, relating to one another in few words but many actions that displayed our care, our enjoyment of each other’s company. And I feel as though I’m still speaking that language, but it’s not being recognized; there’s an error of computation somewhere in there, and just when I need my dad to be Daddy he can’t understand what I’m saying, because it’s coming out of the mouth of someone who should be a girl.
I want to ask him about girls, about how to tell if a girl is mad at you and what to do about that. I want to talk about clothes; I want him to take me out shopping for ties and dress shirts and dress pants and dress shoes, and eventually my first suit (which I am not looking forward to paying for all by myself, but such are the pains of being a butch). I want him to nod and smile at me in approval when I come out of my room, dressed to the nines, everything polished and buttoned and tied properly. I want to find Godzilla cufflinks (like he has) in my stocking come Christmas, and have him smile in the way that lets me know they were all his idea. I want his ideas on the perfect gifts for the women in my life, because if there’s anyone who can lay claim to being the Master of Gift-giving it’s him: I’d say his crowning achievement is tickets to the Metropolitan Opera for him and my mother (and bear in mind, he HATES opera) and an utterly gorgeous dress to go with them. I want him to help me put the finishing touches on my tux on my wedding day, and he can even walk me down the aisle if he wants to. I am 99.9% sure that this hypothetical wedding will be gender non-conforming after all; why stop with just the bride and the “groom?”
But all of these things are in a far-distant future, if they’re possible at all. Because we’re still working with that gap in communication, and right now it seems a gulf too impassable to even think about.
But I’m working on it.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Elegant Disappointment: A Review of The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
I greatly enjoyed Patrick Rothfuss' first novel, The Name of the Wind. It featured a highly developed world, a well-thought-out and interesting magic system, a plot like a Thoroughbred racehorse, and a clever, engaging main character (if slightly Mary Sue*) in the form of Kvothe. The writing was gamy but altogether taut, with little frippery or choppy sentences. Best of all, it fit together like a clever puzzle: every word, every action, every tiny detail was like a stone thrown into a river, whose ripples caused a tsunami at its other end.
The Wise Man's Fear features what at first glance appears to be the same cast of characters, the same settings (with a few added in), the same clever tricks. But the first thing that struck me was the writing. The sentences are stilted and chunky, and not even, in some cases, fully formed- and not in an artistic manner, but in the sense of someone who doesn't know how to formulate a complete sentence ("The night was dark. Like a cave"). Similarly, even the sentences that are complete are lackluster, the metaphors and similes hackneyed (which is deadly for characterization, considering that Kvothe is supposed to have written songs that make the minstrels weep." They made me weep, but for a different reason than I think the author intended. Form has completely fallen to function, fulfilling the worst stereotypes of fantasy, and while it is still a capable carrier for the plot, its is no longer a streamlined carriage, but a humpy buckwagon.
And the plot is no longer a Thoroughbred, but something far less fleet and prone to long dalliance where the rider (reader?) is thrown and the steed stops a while to crop grass and pontificate. Where in The Name of the Wind there was never a dull moment, The Wise Man's Fear bears all the hallmarks of a blocked writer struggling to live up to his own length and deadline (see: George R. R. Martin). It also reads like the book's editor didn't have nearly as much time as he or she wanted, because I could stand to see the book lose a couple hundred pages, such as the dalliances with Denna: once sweet, but now boring and cloying. Also the longwinded, tiresome descriptions of paging uselessly through books in the library. This wasn't exciting for Kvothe; why would Rothfuss assume it would be interesting to the reader?
Now, after unleashing the venom on my tongue, what's good? The introduction of new, non-University environs was welcome, especially the foreign, interesting political system of Vintas and the seductive, alluring glimpses of Faery. The Cthaeh was suitably chilling, and the advent of Kvothe's real, Taborlin the Great-type magic was highly exciting. But all these moments lacked a sense of purpose, as though Rothfuss weren't slowly revealing more pieces of the puzzle that is Kvothe but simply filling in the blanks of the abstract we were given at the beginning of his narrative: "learned name of wind: check. Spent night w/Felurian and stayed sane: check."
I did greatly enjoy Kvothe's time with the Adem, and it was refreshing to see him try his hand at something he wasn't actually automatically good at. It was also fun (and necessary) to see him get some humility knocked into him, and recognize that he's not the best at everything just because he can kick the shit out of spoiled lordlings whenever he wants to. It's also a necessary step towards minimizing his Mary Sue content.
Altogether, however, the book- well, it was not quite lackluster, per se, but it had a good deal less of the luster of the first. It's sort of a Wizard-of-Oz reveal for me: the man behind the curtain is revealed as just a man, and this is just a fantasy book. I guess I'm just disappointed because I was hoping it'd be, you know, a new epic or something.
*Mary Sue: fanfic word for a character who is often a stand-in for the author, but is always well above average in practically any category. Frequently characterized as precocious, the best in everything (at such a young age!), and, worst of all, perfect as so few (if any) people are.
The Wise Man's Fear features what at first glance appears to be the same cast of characters, the same settings (with a few added in), the same clever tricks. But the first thing that struck me was the writing. The sentences are stilted and chunky, and not even, in some cases, fully formed- and not in an artistic manner, but in the sense of someone who doesn't know how to formulate a complete sentence ("The night was dark. Like a cave"). Similarly, even the sentences that are complete are lackluster, the metaphors and similes hackneyed (which is deadly for characterization, considering that Kvothe is supposed to have written songs that make the minstrels weep." They made me weep, but for a different reason than I think the author intended. Form has completely fallen to function, fulfilling the worst stereotypes of fantasy, and while it is still a capable carrier for the plot, its is no longer a streamlined carriage, but a humpy buckwagon.
And the plot is no longer a Thoroughbred, but something far less fleet and prone to long dalliance where the rider (reader?) is thrown and the steed stops a while to crop grass and pontificate. Where in The Name of the Wind there was never a dull moment, The Wise Man's Fear bears all the hallmarks of a blocked writer struggling to live up to his own length and deadline (see: George R. R. Martin). It also reads like the book's editor didn't have nearly as much time as he or she wanted, because I could stand to see the book lose a couple hundred pages, such as the dalliances with Denna: once sweet, but now boring and cloying. Also the longwinded, tiresome descriptions of paging uselessly through books in the library. This wasn't exciting for Kvothe; why would Rothfuss assume it would be interesting to the reader?
Now, after unleashing the venom on my tongue, what's good? The introduction of new, non-University environs was welcome, especially the foreign, interesting political system of Vintas and the seductive, alluring glimpses of Faery. The Cthaeh was suitably chilling, and the advent of Kvothe's real, Taborlin the Great-type magic was highly exciting. But all these moments lacked a sense of purpose, as though Rothfuss weren't slowly revealing more pieces of the puzzle that is Kvothe but simply filling in the blanks of the abstract we were given at the beginning of his narrative: "learned name of wind: check. Spent night w/Felurian and stayed sane: check."
I did greatly enjoy Kvothe's time with the Adem, and it was refreshing to see him try his hand at something he wasn't actually automatically good at. It was also fun (and necessary) to see him get some humility knocked into him, and recognize that he's not the best at everything just because he can kick the shit out of spoiled lordlings whenever he wants to. It's also a necessary step towards minimizing his Mary Sue content.
Altogether, however, the book- well, it was not quite lackluster, per se, but it had a good deal less of the luster of the first. It's sort of a Wizard-of-Oz reveal for me: the man behind the curtain is revealed as just a man, and this is just a fantasy book. I guess I'm just disappointed because I was hoping it'd be, you know, a new epic or something.
*Mary Sue: fanfic word for a character who is often a stand-in for the author, but is always well above average in practically any category. Frequently characterized as precocious, the best in everything (at such a young age!), and, worst of all, perfect as so few (if any) people are.
Friday, April 29, 2011
New Clothes!
So, my girlfriend and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary on Monday, and being the workaholics that we (she) are, we decided to grab takeout pad thai and do our homework on our ACTUAL anniversary. However, every time we went to the local Borders we smelled the delicious steakhouse behind it, and if there's anything yours truly can't refuse, it's eight ounces of filet mignon in bearnaise sauce. So we decided to investigate. However, at about 4:30 this morning I realized that while I had semi-nice pants that sorta kinda fit me, a nice, basic white Oxford from Ralph Lauren Rugby's men's section, and my dashing red skulls tie from the same, I had nothing to put on my feet except sneakers and too-large wingtips.
So I hightailed it out to my local Macy's and because I got lucky they were having a sale. By the time I had descended the staircase into the men's section, however, I was sweating bullets. I don't know why, but I just have this idea in my head of the men's section of any store being a bastion similar to the men's room, in which at any moment I was liable to be accosted and told that not only did I not belong here, I was going to be forcibly ejected any minute and was not expected to return-- only in much uglier terms.
Instead I found a graveyard of bored guys and their girlfriends/wives cruising the racks, taking for dull-eyed granted what I saw as a cornucopia of magnificence: styles, cuts, colors and fabrics that I would not be even allowed to look at were I to go shopping with my mother. Here were the clothes that I'd been coveting for so many years, all laid out on racks before me, free for me to...buy. Anyhoo. I scooted down to the shoes section and quickly got lost, starry-eyed, in the kind of shoes I'd only been dreaming of for years. I of course wanted to buy everything in every color imaginable, but I made myself focus. I was here to get brown Oxfords, preferably wingtips, to go with my brown belt, and I wanted to get them as cheaply but as fashionably as possible.
I soon found myself choosing between two lower end brands, one pair at $40 and the other at $60. The $40-dollar ones were acceptable, but at the same time I could tell why they were $40. Plus I knew that I would look like a twelve year old boy dressed by his mother and forced to go to church, a far cry from the suave, debonair butch that I wanted to be. So I gritted my teeth and grabbed the $60 pair, brown Alfani Oxfords, and started looking for a sales rep to get me sizes. This proved a little tricky but I was lucky enough to get a wonderfully flamboyantly gay man to help me out, and he even aided me in picking out dress socks (though I had to tone down his taste a little bit- I'm not quite ready for crazy colors). Then, pleased with myself, I headed to the checkout counter- and stopped.
They were having a sale on Dockers dress-casual pants, and as I stared at them with what I'm sure was a lustful, longing look that one often sees on nerds confronted with hot girls, I thought about the pants I had at home. They were...all right. A little tight around the waist, a little bit short as a result, and not particularly dressy. Dammit, I was taking a classy girl out tonight (trust me, if you knew my girlfriend you'd know she is undyingly classy) and I was NOT doing it in American Eagle relaxed fit casual chinos! Grabbing a pair of flat-front Dockers (I just don't really like pleats), I headed to the dressing room.
Annnnnd...dilemma number two. This was the men's section. The dressing room was, typically, reserved for men (though it didn't say that, it was pretty well assumed). After a moment of quandary, I headed upstairs. I had already done enough nervewracking gender trespassing today and I figured I'd done my part towards the dissolution of gender regulation; it was my turn to trend for safety. Of course, I'd have to get past the guard dogs of the women's room, but at least my voice and the gender cues (flippy wrists, hip swing) that I turn on specifically for places like dressing rooms and public bathrooms would protect me there.
Looking in the mirror, I had that experience again. You, if you are any kind of genderqueer or alternatively gendered creature, know the one- and even if you don't, you probably do too: looking in the mirror and finally, FINALLY liking what I saw. I've gotten that more and more since I've embraced my other-genderedness, but it's still a relatively new experience. Which makes me mad, and makes me wont to talk about the tyranny of regulated, regulation gender, but that's a whole nother post (or bunch of them).
Anyway, I got out of the dressing room with no comment, and paid for my stuff. Best part about all of this: Dockers pants, Alfani Oxfords, and (splurge!) Calvin Klein dress socks: $90. Score at Macy's! Unfortunately, the gf had a lot of homework last night and got about two hours of sleep, so when she begged off from our evening out I was inclined to be merciful. Tomorrow night, however, is a different story. I'm going to see what I can do about posting pictures, but I look pretty damn debonair, if I do say so myself. The only thing I'm worried about is the proverbial bathroom problem, scourge of genderqueers and transfolks all over the world. But that's a different story; milady must go to bed early tonight and it is up to me to enforce that. So for tonight, adieu...but for tomorrow, more posts!
So I hightailed it out to my local Macy's and because I got lucky they were having a sale. By the time I had descended the staircase into the men's section, however, I was sweating bullets. I don't know why, but I just have this idea in my head of the men's section of any store being a bastion similar to the men's room, in which at any moment I was liable to be accosted and told that not only did I not belong here, I was going to be forcibly ejected any minute and was not expected to return-- only in much uglier terms.
Instead I found a graveyard of bored guys and their girlfriends/wives cruising the racks, taking for dull-eyed granted what I saw as a cornucopia of magnificence: styles, cuts, colors and fabrics that I would not be even allowed to look at were I to go shopping with my mother. Here were the clothes that I'd been coveting for so many years, all laid out on racks before me, free for me to...buy. Anyhoo. I scooted down to the shoes section and quickly got lost, starry-eyed, in the kind of shoes I'd only been dreaming of for years. I of course wanted to buy everything in every color imaginable, but I made myself focus. I was here to get brown Oxfords, preferably wingtips, to go with my brown belt, and I wanted to get them as cheaply but as fashionably as possible.
I soon found myself choosing between two lower end brands, one pair at $40 and the other at $60. The $40-dollar ones were acceptable, but at the same time I could tell why they were $40. Plus I knew that I would look like a twelve year old boy dressed by his mother and forced to go to church, a far cry from the suave, debonair butch that I wanted to be. So I gritted my teeth and grabbed the $60 pair, brown Alfani Oxfords, and started looking for a sales rep to get me sizes. This proved a little tricky but I was lucky enough to get a wonderfully flamboyantly gay man to help me out, and he even aided me in picking out dress socks (though I had to tone down his taste a little bit- I'm not quite ready for crazy colors). Then, pleased with myself, I headed to the checkout counter- and stopped.
They were having a sale on Dockers dress-casual pants, and as I stared at them with what I'm sure was a lustful, longing look that one often sees on nerds confronted with hot girls, I thought about the pants I had at home. They were...all right. A little tight around the waist, a little bit short as a result, and not particularly dressy. Dammit, I was taking a classy girl out tonight (trust me, if you knew my girlfriend you'd know she is undyingly classy) and I was NOT doing it in American Eagle relaxed fit casual chinos! Grabbing a pair of flat-front Dockers (I just don't really like pleats), I headed to the dressing room.
Annnnnd...dilemma number two. This was the men's section. The dressing room was, typically, reserved for men (though it didn't say that, it was pretty well assumed). After a moment of quandary, I headed upstairs. I had already done enough nervewracking gender trespassing today and I figured I'd done my part towards the dissolution of gender regulation; it was my turn to trend for safety. Of course, I'd have to get past the guard dogs of the women's room, but at least my voice and the gender cues (flippy wrists, hip swing) that I turn on specifically for places like dressing rooms and public bathrooms would protect me there.
Looking in the mirror, I had that experience again. You, if you are any kind of genderqueer or alternatively gendered creature, know the one- and even if you don't, you probably do too: looking in the mirror and finally, FINALLY liking what I saw. I've gotten that more and more since I've embraced my other-genderedness, but it's still a relatively new experience. Which makes me mad, and makes me wont to talk about the tyranny of regulated, regulation gender, but that's a whole nother post (or bunch of them).
Anyway, I got out of the dressing room with no comment, and paid for my stuff. Best part about all of this: Dockers pants, Alfani Oxfords, and (splurge!) Calvin Klein dress socks: $90. Score at Macy's! Unfortunately, the gf had a lot of homework last night and got about two hours of sleep, so when she begged off from our evening out I was inclined to be merciful. Tomorrow night, however, is a different story. I'm going to see what I can do about posting pictures, but I look pretty damn debonair, if I do say so myself. The only thing I'm worried about is the proverbial bathroom problem, scourge of genderqueers and transfolks all over the world. But that's a different story; milady must go to bed early tonight and it is up to me to enforce that. So for tonight, adieu...but for tomorrow, more posts!
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Clothes make the genderqueer, or my masculinity, part one
First off, take the title with a grain of ironic salt. I know very well that clothes don't make the genderqueer, they just have always been an integral part of the experience for me.
I have always felt, for the most part, like a boy. When I was little, I was the most incorrigible tomboy. All my friends were boys, and I didn’t have a Barbie bone in my body. To show my distaste for such gifts, I tended to dismantle them and leave the pieces strewn all over the house. Having tripped over enough of these gruesome little displays, my relatives soon learned not to get me the latest Barbie that my cousins always wanted. Everything was knights and pirates and interstellar space wolves (don’t ask) with me. When, at a Ren Fair at about seven years old, the champion of the joust attempted to award cute, blonde little me the crown of flowers on the end of his lance, I thought he was challenging me and attacked the tip of his lance with my plastic sword. My greatest wish was a pair of zip-off cargo pants, but my mom said she’d only buy them for me if I could find them in the girls’ section. Oh, and I reviled pink, like any good tomboy.
Then puberty happened and, much to my horror, I didn’t stay slim-hipped and flat-chested. Other girls of my age were budding too, beginning to glory in tight clothes that hugged their curves, and lip gloss and makeup and doing their hair, and I stared at these hyperfeminine creatures and wondered how I could ever measure up to them. I seemed to have missed some “Femininity 101” class that they’d all passed with flying colors. For many years I tried to make myself care about such things, and would buy makeup kits and nail polish and let my friends give me makeovers, but a week later the makeup would be gathering dust in my closet and I would no longer be imagining myself on the cover of YM or 17. Femininity, like my clothing, just fit wrong, being too small or its sleeves and pant legs too short, and I felt like a pig in a skirt and blouse. My hair, blow-dried into an hour or two of wave, hung limp and stick-straight to my shoulders. I grew to hate girls my age for having femininity come so easily to them. Its performance seemed exhausting to me.
Especially since I had nothing invested in it: I looked at the boys and envied them their slim, sure, athletic bodies, their pants that were more often too long than too short, their Oxford shirts that didn’t cling to what uncomfortable body fat they might have as if screaming, Look! She needs to lose ten pounds! Plus their shoes were cooler too (shoe whore that I am, of course I noticed that). But put me in a clothing store and I wouldn’t even glance over casually to the boys’ section, so afraid was I of being suspected to be anything but normal. Of course, my peers had already figured it out. It was in the way I walked, the way I didn’t wear makeup, the way I twitched at my mother’s “business-casual” clothing selections, the way I only felt happy and comfortable in my gym clothes, on a sports field.
And then Cari happened when I was sixteen: what I thought of as my first girl crush. She was on my field hockey team (of course) and had the nastiest temper ever, and the crushes I’d had on boys were like candles compared to her bonfire. I’d had crushes on girls before—my field hockey captain when I was eleven , for example—but I called them off as “fascinations,” and thought them odd, and squashed them as fast as I could. But here, now—this was more than I could ignore. It was as if the combined weight of all the fascinations had broken a dam somewhere inside me, and came pouring out for Cari.
Nothing happened. I struggled with it for a week then fell easily into the category of bisexual, and worked hard on repressing it, rationing how often I looked at her, how often I spoke to her (though that wasn’t hard; I was always bashful around people I liked, and she never gave me the time of day), trying not to talk about her. I was good at it. Nobody, especially Cari herself, had any clue, as I found out years later when I came out to my best friend at college. But that was high school, essentially: always wanting people, never getting them. I might as well have been a sexless individual for all the attention my peers gave me.
At college, I was still trying to be feminine, but as I met more and more girls who didn’t care to conform to the rigid, preppy standards of my high school, I let myself, finally, begin to indulge. It helped that I had great role models of course: first the (relatively few) butches who walked around in cargo shorts and topsiders, and then the genderqueer hipsters in their skinny jeans and flannels, and the shapeshifters, wearing motorcycle boots and leather one day and gorgeous, flowing dresses the next. These creatures were strange, wild, wonderful, and everything I had ever hoped to be. Following their example, I began to look at the books of the “Lesbian Immortal” class out of the corner of my eye; I fell in utterly burning, hopeless, wildfire love with my field hockey captain (of. Freaking. Course.), and I started looking at the men’s section of American Eagle online, albeit clandestinely. I adored the cargo shorts, the men’s jeans—their cuts, their washes, the easy way they sat on the models’ hips, the way they broke at the models’ feet. I felt a burning need to wear them, to look like the models inside them. It wasn’t too long before I guessed my waist size and inseam and bought my first pair.
They were a disaster. I’d botched my measurements (they made me feel fat) and they were the wrong cut for someone with my hips and waist. They looked like mom jeans, and they hit my dorm’s free box as soon as I’d gotten them off me. I was disgusted with myself…but not so disgusted that I didn’t immediately rehash my measurements and go in for shorts, jeans, and T-shirts, all but wiping out my miniscule savings account, because while my parents usually bought me clothes, I knew very well that they would not pay for these.
But it was worth it, worth every inch of fabric, of cotton and jeanscloth and Oxford cloth. Because when I looked in the mirror wearing what I have on today—dark wash, low rise bootcut jeans and a blue and white checkered Oxford—I saw a beautiful young man, a handsome young woman, and one damn fine alternatively gendered thing. I saw Jackson on the outside for the first time, and for the first time I liked what I saw.
That’s not to say it was always easy. Tune in later for “my masculinity, part two: gender wars!”
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
The obligatory "all about me" post.
So, where to start? Let's see...
To begin with, Jackson is not my real name. It is nowhere close. I like my privacy and I like the privacy of those who appear in my blog, so their names and some details will be changed. One thing that's important is that I'm currently in the process of changing my name, from Jacqueline to Jackson, because I never liked the name Jacqueline (which I actually do, but it's not my real name anyway, so) and feel that Jackson better expresses my gender. Which is butch and genderqueer.
I work at my school's computer desk, helping people out with their computer problems, from mildly to moderately complex (anything beyond that goes to the full time tech staff). I really enjoy it, oddly enough, and if I have a good story I'll share it with y'all. I also play World of Warcraft--Horde only--and my current project is a level 76 orc marksmanship hunter named Boreal, so I may expound upon him in the future. I'm also a DJ, and I'm having fun playing with the DJ software on my MacBook Pro. I'm a total and complete Mac snob.
I hate spiders. My girlfriend kills them for me. Yes, I'm a butch. I have short hair and I wear men's clothing (and isn't that so stupid, that a whole style and type of clothing can get completely reserved for one gender only!), much to my mother's chagrin and girlfriend's delight. I sometimes feel like I'm more than half a boy, but I flap my arms a lot when I get excited and I'm one of the world's biggest shoe whores. And you know what? I spend way too much time justifying both/either my masculinity or femininity to people, so I'll stop there. For now. Because I'm having a shameless, dirty, delicious love affair with queer theory right now, I can't really keep from talking about gay stuff for long. All of that will be posted under "Teh gay."
I’m a libertarian. Wait a minute, gays can’t be in the least sense right wing! And yet, here I am. As you may have figured out already, I’m a walking contradiction. See also: athlete, computer geek, violist.
To begin with, Jackson is not my real name. It is nowhere close. I like my privacy and I like the privacy of those who appear in my blog, so their names and some details will be changed. One thing that's important is that I'm currently in the process of changing my name, from Jacqueline to Jackson, because I never liked the name Jacqueline (which I actually do, but it's not my real name anyway, so) and feel that Jackson better expresses my gender. Which is butch and genderqueer.
I work at my school's computer desk, helping people out with their computer problems, from mildly to moderately complex (anything beyond that goes to the full time tech staff). I really enjoy it, oddly enough, and if I have a good story I'll share it with y'all. I also play World of Warcraft--Horde only--and my current project is a level 76 orc marksmanship hunter named Boreal, so I may expound upon him in the future. I'm also a DJ, and I'm having fun playing with the DJ software on my MacBook Pro. I'm a total and complete Mac snob.
I hate spiders. My girlfriend kills them for me. Yes, I'm a butch. I have short hair and I wear men's clothing (and isn't that so stupid, that a whole style and type of clothing can get completely reserved for one gender only!), much to my mother's chagrin and girlfriend's delight. I sometimes feel like I'm more than half a boy, but I flap my arms a lot when I get excited and I'm one of the world's biggest shoe whores. And you know what? I spend way too much time justifying both/either my masculinity or femininity to people, so I'll stop there. For now. Because I'm having a shameless, dirty, delicious love affair with queer theory right now, I can't really keep from talking about gay stuff for long. All of that will be posted under "Teh gay."
I'm an athlete. I've played field hockey and lacrosse since I was 11. I recently quit lacrosse for rugby for reasons we won’t get into yet, and let me tell you, it is a very difficult experience to be playing a sport I don’t know inside out and backwards. I may not be a great player, but I make it my job to learn the minutiae of the field. Thankfully, my school isn’t very good at sports (with the exception of badminton and rugby), so they let me play on their teams. Of course, most of the people at my college were picked last for gym class all their lives, and they are all too pleased to never have anything to do with athletics ever again, so as alumns they never donate. So sports at my college are kind of a labor of love.
I’m a libertarian. Wait a minute, gays can’t be in the least sense right wing! And yet, here I am. As you may have figured out already, I’m a walking contradiction. See also: athlete, computer geek, violist.
And I’m a writer. And English major. I hope to be a publisher someday, and put queer (fantasy) fiction in the mainstream. Like Philip Pullman, I’d like to be a realist writer, but no matter how hard I try a demon or a dragon or a vampire-werewolf hybrid (not as lame as it sounds, I promise) always pops up. I love Philip Pullman, Robin McKinley, George R. R. Martin, J.R.R. Tolkein, Pamela Dean, Lev Grossman, and anything about walking through a door, a wall, or a wardrobe into another world. I do have a crippling case of writer’s block that has felt like my arm’s been off for over a year. Which brings me to…
Early in the second semester of my freshman year, I was diagnosed with acute clinical depression. It nearly claimed my life several times. It’s in remission right now—I think of depression as like cancer, in that it doesn’t always completely go away but goes into remission. I’ve had a few flare-ups, but thanks to my loving, caring, beautiful, wonderful girlfriend, as well as my therapist, I’ve never gone back so far into the darkness. But that doesn’t mean I don’t remember, and I will talk about that here too. Mental illness is unfairly stigmatized and it’s important to bring its suffering out into the open and show people that it’s real, it’s serious, and it’s not just “all in your head.” It claims lives. It ruins them. Its sufferers need support and care and love, not injunctions to “get over it.”
Other than that, I will try to post at least once a week, on Fridays. I will talk about gender and sexuality, World of Warcraft, mental illness, procrastination, fantasy (and realist) literature, DJ software and sick tracks, college athletics and college politics, and the trials and tribulations of being an English major.
Ready?
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