Crossing the Shithead Rubicon

I write here not to praise the poly community, but to bury it.

So this mess recently appeared on Reddit's /r/polyamory: Am I delusional to think that anti poly backlash is especially ironic and bigoted?

I grew up in a poly family, and am happily ensconced in a my own poly LTR, stable and happy for years.

I get the normal "oh you must be taking advantage of your poor girlfriends"* thing, but am I wrong to find this especially offensive and ignorant when it comes from a LGBT person? I Mean, Really? It seems like of anyone, I would expect them to understand or at least not be so vocally opposed - but honestly, I get the harshest feedback from these folks...Is it just me?

*(I joined a happy bi fem couple that was looking for a man to play with / be a father, so that couldn't be farther from the truth - if anything, I am the third wheel!)

So it starts out fucked up and quickly devolves, leaving the original post as a high-water mark of poly tolerance an awareness.  And for those who followed the link, yes, the OP really calls himself "I_love_latinas".

One person in the thread is reminded of reading Maus and there being a Holocaust survivor character who was racist.  Someone else suggested that it was a bad idea to compare anything to the Holocaust that was not in fact a genocide.  That person was repeatedly down-voted, because suggesting that polys aren't exactly like the Jews in the Holocaust is as bad as, I don't know, maybe the Holocaust.

The polys then veer off to complain that it's not like Jews and Nazis, but rather like "the black community", and no I'm not making that up, and how they're all hella homophobic, including, I guess, the gay ones.  The polys go on to say that it's even worse when black people are homophobic, as they all are, given that white people have gotten so good at tolerating their blackness.  Hear that, people of color?  You're disappointing white polys.  Get on that.

One guy makes up a conversation he supposedly had wherein he told a gay man that he was thinking of trying out polyamory and the man responded with, I shit you not, this is him quoting the guy, "I don't think I approve of your lifestyle".  Yep, that definitely happened.  That sounds exactly like what a human would say to a person suggesting he might be interested in polyamory.  Wait, no!  It doesn't even sound like something that an alien impersonating a human using only lines of Java code as a guide to human dialog would say.  I mean seriously, who the fuck talks like that?  No one.  Ever.  That's who.

What really gets awful, is that the most fucked up, racist, homophobic posts got up-voted while those very few people dissenting were down-voted dozens of times in single comments.  So the message is loud and clear.  See what happens you social justice types?  If you don't let the polys into the parade, you're probably taking your orders from the homos, the Jews, or teh blacks.  The whole thread rapidly started to feel like it had cribbed the script of an episode of "Fox & Friends", but with 50% more bigotry.

And this is not just an example of Reddit being the gaping asshole of the Internet.  It's the steady state of online poly meeting spaces.  It's a fucking constant.  It's a feature, not a bug, and it's only gotten worse.

Poly is largely white, middle class, and thoroughly clueless about privilege and race.  Want to see how they really feel about the gay community, drop into a poly sphere and bring up marriage equality.  Better yet, do that at in the same post as you suggest that co-opting the language of queerness  while suggesting that a relationship model can't be a sexual identity is maybe not cool.  The indignant sputters will be heard all the way from Minneapolis.  But I was born poly!  It is so a "coming out".  People are killed for being poly all over!

If you really want a fiesta of whining, try suggesting that there's something to the fact that non-monogamy has been super common in the gay community long before poly was a thing, yet the number of gay people identifying as poly is shockingly small.

So many are quick to point out that they can't be homophobic.  After all, the wife is totally bi and hooks up with a bi woman some times.  Also, they know a lesbian who has been to their Saturday munch.  Hell, several of them even have a gay friend or something.  Just kidding.  They don't have friends.  Potential friends tend to scatter when a pack of gamers wearing Three Wolf Moon shirt and kvetching about the gays walks into the room.

No, we're not poly.  The reason we're not now, or ever going to identify as poly comes down to the community and their fucked up baggage.  We date other people, but to call ourselves poly is to stand in solidarity with some really shitty human beings behaving badly.

No, not all poly people are like that, but a quick look at that thread is a clear demonstration that the the bad is a huge majority.  It's also not going to get better any time soon.  Look around and see what serious discussion is going on in the poly community.  Nothing.  Zip.  Nada.  Pepomint used to write some really insightful pieces on it, but now we're just left with people posting about snuggling with their paramours and talking about the great things about poly.  They get mad that the queer community keeps them at arms' length but don't care to understand why beyond throwing out homophobic statements with little prompting.  That is, fundamentally, a function of privilege and a function of poly.

If it gets better, we'll let you know.

It's not getting better.

Problems With Asexual Identities: Part 1 of 634

Before you string me up as an asexual-hating bigot, please carefully re-read the title of this post.  I'm not saying asexuality is a problem, but I want to have a discussion about the issues that asexual identities raise.  This is not saying that asexuals are faking it, or there's something wrong with them, but an attempt to examine and yes, at times, critique what is a chosen social identification and the issues it brings up for non-asexuals, particularly women and queer people.

Because the fascinating thing to me about asexual identity politics is how it often challenges and appropriates concepts from other movements, particularly queer movements.  And I should start by saying that from my perspective, how one identifies is a choice.  This doesn't mean I don't believe there isn't (usually) a biological or inborn component to queerness - or asexuality, for that matter.  But identity - how we choose to label ourselves - is a choice, within a social context.  This applies to virtually any category of person on the planet, really.  Today we tend to take the categories "gay," "straight," and "bi/pansexual" as gospel, forgetting that these are actually modern concepts.  While there have been people who have engaged in same-sex relationships throughout history, our concept of "gay" is actually a pretty recent label to describe a group of people who have always existed.  Likewise for "asexual."  And I reject the notion that exploring the validity and appropriateness of these labels within a political or activist context is inherently negative, although it's often incorrectly dismissed as "identity policing."

My goal is not to say, "asexuals don't exist" because I very much believe asexuals' own reports of their own orientations and identities.  But I don't think it's inherently oppressive or even mean-spirited to explore what informs a person's choice to identify as asexual and to think about ways in which such an identity may be problematic.  I think this is an important distinction to make.  There is a huge difference between disbelieving a person's reported person experience, and critiquing the ways in which they present that experience to the larger world.

One of the most pressing problems with asexual activism online is the insistence by many that asexuality is fundamentally queer.  Many queer people feel this is approprative and deeply offensive, particularly given the nature of "queer" as a slur reclaimed by the people it's directed against. Queer activists who feel strongly about this define "queer" as someone who experiences same-sex attraction, and do include homo and bi/pan-romantics under the queer umbrella, but reject the notion of asexuals who do not experience same-sex attraction or relationships as belonging in the tent.  Some asexual activists counter this by claiming that they're not straight, since the definition of straight is "heterosexual" and they aren't sexual.

That refutation is inherently troubling, however, because it falls into the fairly typical asexual trope of defining non-asexuals on the basis of their sexual activity (and I can't fail to point out here that this is something that homophobic society does all the time to queer people to begin with).  As I mentioned in the previous post, the standard word asexual activists use to describe non-asexuals is "sexuals", which is also really fucking offensive for a number of reasons - even more so when applied to queer people specifically.  I am a rather slutty woman with a higher-than-average libido who hasn't experienced an ounce of personal shame for my sexual behavior in a decade yet even I bristle at being categorized as "sexual".  It feels so reductivist and simplistic.  My sexuality is a lot more complex than "person who has sex."

And this leads into another problem within the asexual community, which is the somewhat understandable yet still often offensive misunderstanding of the spectrum of how non-asexuals experience sexual attraction, desire, and sex.  This is particularly evident when discussing demisexuals, or people who define themselves as a variety of asexual who only experiences sexual attraction once an emotional bond has formed between them and the desire object.  Of course, this is how a huge part of the world experiences sexual attraction, and most of those people wouldn't dream of identifying themselves as the identity-within-an-identity that demisexuality claims to be.  The implicit statement within the definition of demisexuality is that all non-asexuals experience sexual attraction to people they don't know (or don't know very well).  While some of us fall into that category, it's not true for most of us, and it really calls into question whether demisexuality is a useful identity with regards to political activism, particularly given that it mirrors heteronormative and misogynistic notions of how womens' sexual attraction is supposed to function.  I've spent the last two weeks reading endless wanks on Tumblr and blogs about the validity of demisexuality and yet I haven't seen a coherent, convincing argument that what people call "demisexuality" is not simply a rather common sub-group within the non-asexual group.  One does not have to experience sexual attraction to everyone, everywhere, at all times to be a "sexual" person, yet many asexual activists still seem unwilling to listen to the voices of non-asexuals who are sharing their experiences of sexual attraction and desire.

But the problem is, this variety of asexual activist has adopted the framework and language of other oppressed groups, particularly queer groups, to claim that they are actively oppressed by non-asexuals and as such do not need to listen to or empathize with the experiences of the "oppressor."  This is also the argument that is used to justify calling non-asexuals "sexuals" despite repeated pleas to recognize how offensive this is.  Next time we'll examine the concept of "asexual oppression" and "sexual privilege" in-depth and also hopefully get around to talking about the intersection of sexual dysfunction and asexuality and the problems that exist there.

iGive Up: Even in death Steven Jobs provides distraction

In the span of one week, we saw the deaths of two civil rights pioneers, one of whom defined the modern gay rights movement, and the other a cornerstone of the last century's fight for racial equality. In that same week, a former CEO of a tech company died. Two gave hope and voice to millions. The other marketed shiny tech toys.

One could argue that Mr. Jobs' impact was as great as that of both Rev. Shuttlesworth and Frank Kameny. Based on press coverage of their passing, though, one would get the impression that commercialization of the computer mouse stands head and shoulders above the fight for basic civil rights. The goals of a man driven to make his company number one in the marketplace must be more noble than the two who gave their lives and their safety so that others could live without fear, if media coverage is the barometer.

Slate would get some credit for at least memorializing Frank Kameny, if only the piece they published had not served to demonstrate their complete indifference. Not only does it say little about his life, but it appears to have been completely ignored by Slate's copy editors. One paragraph features the sentence, "They then and force the shrinks to listen to their claims that they were not crazy." The previous paragraph tells us that he founded the Mattachine Society. He did not. He founded the Mattachine Society of Washington. A week after the readers pointed out the error, Slate still
had not corrected it.

Farhood Manjoo eulogized Jobs for Slate in an article titled "The Man Who Invented Our World". He also deified the man, going so far as to say "Jobs had no patience for evolution. He was the intelligent designer." The writer even took his family on a pilgrimage to Jobs' house.

Slate's Rachel Larimore wrote "Steve Jobs Baby-Sat My Kids", about how Pixar, and by extension Jobs, raised the bar for children's entertainment. Thanks. Until that, few people had been aware that Pixar puts out good family movies.

On the same day, Aaron Lammer reposted a Longform.org collection of Job's speeches and interviews. Not to be left out of the dogpile, William Saletan wrote about how one should become an organ donor to honor Job's memory. Seriously, if you became an organ donor only to honor Steve Jobs, you should probably consider expediting the process.


Ron Rosenbaum's article on how Jobs was inspired by early phone hacking was published by Slate the day after Larimore's piece. Jobs was clearly inspired by the idea of using technology to circumvent paying for phone service so much that he created devices like the iPad where you are captive to the company store for content.

There was more in Slate about Jobs and Apple that week, but the point stands. And how many pieces about Reverend Shuttlesworth did Slate publish? Zero. Its African-American spin-off, TheRoot, had an announcement, a decent piece on the man's life and work, and a section of Al Sharpton's piece on HuffPo, but apparently didn't think his passing relevant to the general interest. Slate's editorial staff decided that its readers had no interest in Shuttlesworth's life. In keeping with the rest of their coverage, they could have at least tied it back to Steve Jobs, "Civil Right Leader Inspired Millions, Despite Failing to Impact Cell Phone Market."

What is clear is that they were judged based on how their efforts impacted us today. Largely straight, white fans of iPhones carried the moment because their interests dominate our view. This is a small part of the larger picture of how groups must continue to fight for basic rights in an environment of apathy and distraction. It isn't enough to say that Don't Ask, Don't Tell is over, or that people can no longer be fired explicitly because of the color of their skin. The fight for equality is far from over and it never will be as long as we fail to value freedom from oppression over the latest touch screen baubles.

Queer Enough

(X-posted from School For Scandal)

I am queer. I am a “biological” woman who likes to fuck men.

I am genderqueer. I have a vagina and like to wear dresses.

Confused? I will try to explain, though most of the time it’s easier not to.

Invisible queerness. Invisible transgender. Passing privileges- but exactly who and what am I passing as? People tend to assume I am a lesbian by my short hair and swagger. They looked at me like I’m a dirty tissue when I say, no, I mostly sleep with men. Soiled in their eyes. Un-queered. So much for queer as an inclusive “umbrella” term.

I’ve had sex with women, and I probably will again. But it’s not lesbians that identify with, as much as I love them as friends. It’s gay men. Gay men, I understand like none other. They understand me. And I can’t help but be attracted to them, even if I don’t act on my desires. Instead, I find the men, who, like me, are queer but like to sleep with women. Men who prefer anal sex and fisting to straight intercourse, men who wear eyeliner and skirts, men who sit down to pee because they don’t give a damn about being perceived as being “manly enough.” Men who have been called “faggot” their whole lives for refusing to conform, when ironically, they love women.

And we exist, queerly heterosexual, guy dykes and girl fags in love.

I am a femme androgyne, a fagette, masculine in short hair and muscles, feminine in lipstick and heels. I am man and woman as one, and I refuse to pick a side. I love having big breasts and rocking a 10” strap on at the same time.

My man- self is a femme faggot. Johnny Weir ice dancing to Lady Gaga in roses and sequins. Oscar Wilde, a sissy genius in lavender silk with a poison pen.

My woman- self is a lusty warrior. Grace Jones in a James Bond film, power-lifting a full-grown man over her head in haute couture and heels. French novelist, burlesque dancer and body builder Colette, dressed in a 19^th century men’s suit.

I am queer. I am genderqueer. I am femme.

And if you can’t wrap your brain around that, well, I wasn’t planning on sleeping with you anyway.

Don't Tell

Less than ten minutes ago I awoke from a vivid dream. I was a young sailor again. Rather than dreaming of big adventure, my mind took me to the experience of showing a new shipmate around and trying to show him the ropes. In the dream, as so many times in real life, that queer Spidey sense was tingling. I knew and I thought he knew each others secret. It was a quiet understanding that neither of us could voice. We had just met and already there was an old secret between us. Our understanding was restricted to glances and the sense one acquires over time about these things.

That is the day to day anxiety and pain of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Someone across from you, knowing your frustration and anger, but neither one can breathe a word. Being queer can be very isolating, but it's so much more so in the presence of other queer people but bound to say nothing.

DADT gets talked about in terms of straight people having to serve along side queers, but nothing is said of queers serving along side each other. It is a stifling loneliness that breeds sadness and desperation. It is being alone in a crowd.

The Low-Down Dirty Truth

ColorLines reports on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researcher Greg Millet's White House statement on Black men and HIV transmission.  Turns out that according to the data, the myth about Black men "on the down-low" (i.e. men who identify as straight but have sex with men secretly) spreading HIV to Black women is largely untrue.  Black bisexual men are more likely to have protected sex with male and female partners and less likely to test positive for HIV, which explodes the myth of bisexual men as disease vectors.  Also interesting is the finding that most gay and bisexual Black men identify as gay or bisexual and are not closeted as the cultural myth seems to suggest.

There's a lot going on here in the intersection of race and sexual identity, of course largely filtered through White social constructs of Black masculinity (and white fear of Black masculinity). White people "hear" that Black people are homophobic without learning anything about Black GLTBQ culture, and the myth of the down-low as a widespread phenomenon in the media further stigmatizes queer Black men as disease carriers and Black culture as homophobic.  The findings of these studies are important, so kudos for ColorLines for its great reporting on this issue.

San Francisco Pride: As Queer As A Five Dollar Bill

So this is what the same-sex marriage has wrought. The homonormative white moneyed gay male collective has worked very hard to put up images of gay life as a series of set pieces depicting happy wealthy white men pedaling bicycles and smiling benignly. Pride, once a radical public casting-off of fear and shame, it is now street party in which vendors hock astroturf and pricey Smirnoff coolers.

The Saturday before the Pride Parade is focussed around Dyke March. This one day may contain the vast majority of true Pride spirit, and well, pride. People congregate in Dolores Park, drinking beer and mingling, looking for old friends striking up conversations with strangers. And queuing up for the Port-a-potties. Later in the day, people take to the streets, marching, dancing, and celebrating queer pride.

Saturday's vibe is much more community and queer focused. It's truly celebratory and that's what is really missing from the big show on Sunday. While Sunday has the parade, stages and booths, it feels out of sync with the grass-roots nature of the communities represented and their struggle for representation. It feels straight. It's a rainbow flag painted on any generic street festival. The parade feels like a presentation for straight people. “Hey folks, marvel at the queer zoo, and when you're done, go grab some brochures about vinyl siding!” Dyke March works because it is their march, not a function of the local tourism board or straight out-of-town gawkers looking to stare at crazy SF queers.

Maybe it's time to take the whole Pride festival back to its roots. Replace the show with more focus on issues and the people fighting for recognition. The big issues should not be reduced to bumper sticker political messages held up on floats. What I'm saying is, call the dykes, we need their help.

A movie that's good

Ben Tanaka and his girlfriend Miko Hayashi exit a movie theater. There is a sign by the entrance saying "Asian American Digi-Fest." They walk to their car.

Miko: Well, I know that probably wasn't your cup of tea, but thanks for coming.

Ben: Did you really like that?

M: I guess it was kind of corny, but... yeah.

B: I can't believe that was supposed to be the best of the festival. Talk about a big fish in a small pond.

M: Well we had more submissions than ever before this year.

B: Yeah... of digital videos made by Asian-Americans who happen to live around here. Didn't they also have to be left-handed or something?

They get in the car, and keep talking.

M: We worked really hard to put this festival together.

B: I know! I'm not criticizing you. I'm criticizing the shitty movie. Am I allowed to voice my opinion?

M: You don't have to. You made it perfectly clear with all your fidgeting and groaning. I'm sure that Ling could hear you snickering throughout her film.

B: It's good for her! You can't control an audience's reaction.

M: Well it's a little embarrassing for me. And really, who are you to criticize?

B: Hey... I know a lot more about movies than she does. I'm in the industry...

M: "The Industry"? You manage a theater!

B: That's right... a real movie theater. Where none of those movies are good enough to play at.

M: Look, if you didn't like the movie, that's fine. I don't understand why you have to get so angry.

B: Because everyone knows it's garbage, but they clap for it anyway because it was made by some Chinese girl from Oakland! I mean, why does everything have to be some big "statement" about race? Don't any of these people just want to make a movie that's good?

- from Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine

I'm really looking forward to the Frameline San Francisco International LGBT film festival. There is something very exciting about being in a room of largely queer people watching films depicting queer lives, perhaps because so much of the oppression of queers is enacted through invisibility and shame. Of those films I am especially drawn to films set in Southeast Asia or made by Southeast Asian queer directors or starring Southeast Asian actors (the photo above is from the publicity page for the short film "Swing" set in Singapore)

On the one hand it's a little embarrassing. I worry that I'm falling into some kind of trap of just liking a film "because it was made by some Chinese girl from Oakland" (which would somehow destroy my discerning-cinema-goer-cred). On the other hand, I think that there's something particular about the filmmaking process too that resists shame in a powerful way which in turn makes the film good just by nature of its usually devalued subject matter. In order for a film to be made and shown, generally a whole mess of people has to be involved, not least of which is the audience. Queer film for queer audiences, but screened for the public is liberating because it says "we will spend time and resources to document our lives and make those documents public, and we will do so in a way that engages us as a community, but invites any who care to see it to do so." That's pretty wow to me.

And the other thing is... there's some kind of affinity for me between my queerness and the medium of film. It's been a long cultural trope that gay men, especially, are more creative, or that we have special talent at the arts. I don't want to give too much credence to this, but there has, at least academically, been a connection between queer theory and film. For myself, and for many others, our first exposure to "queering" was through film - learning to re-read ostensibly "straight" movies made during the time of the Hollywood "code" through a queer lens (even some of the central metaphors of queer theory invoke film. We speak of 'lenses' and 'performativity').

At the same time, of course, I must admit I've sat through many terrible movies and even sort of liked them just because they had gay or bi male central characters. Sadly I can't say I had the same indulgence for films just because they depicted queer women or transgender characters (this was made abundantly clear to me when, after a back-to-back screening of "Beautiful Thing" and "Better Than Chocolate" my lesbian friend and I expressed diametrically opposed views about which film was 'the sweetest thing ever' and which film was trite and boring).

Ok so this post was mainly an excuse to publicize the festival as well as Tomine's excellent book, and to use the word "affinity."

Retrosexuality's a Drag

There's an annoying trend in journalism these days toward trend reporting. The New York Times leads the pack in this dubious field. In fact, back in the April 1998 issue of GQ, Daniel Radosh wrote a trend piece about the rise of trend pieces. Kinda hurts the brain. In that vein, The Philadelphia Inquirer recently ran a piece called Manning Up, that claimed there was a trend afoot for men to dress like Jon Hamm's character in Mad Men. Supposedly these guys are in search of genuine masculinity and are using an AMC drama's characters as templates.

Not only is this basically a form of asinine cosplay, as Aaron Traister pointed out on Salon, but it has been done far better for years by the English. The Chap magazine has been selling to men who wish to permanently live in the English countryside in the days before Churchill could muster any respect and after the Kaiser had lost his.

This is simply Don Draper drag. It has as much to do with a real search for masculinity as women drinking cosmos with friends after watching "Sex and the City" had to do with feminism, despite what Caroline Hagood has to say. Dressing in sharkskin suits is just as much cosplay as urban guys driving pickups and wearing cowboy hats. These are not expressions of masculinity, but grown men playing dress up. There just happens to be a tendency among men to try to ascribe certain values to their costumes. Wearing wranglers and driving a F-150 shows that they're rugged western individualists but sporting a gray homburg tells the world that they believe in their grandfather's values. One can practically hear the Sam Elliot and Wilfred Brimley narrative voices going through their heads as they walk by. Wearing a hat, be it a ten gallon hat or a trilby, will not connect men to society in a meaningful way, and isn't that what all this horseshit is supposedly about, men's role in modern society?

Traister made a good point about how his father would have been a retrosexual role model, but was unhappy. Hell, GQ is constantly telling men to put on suits and act like their grandfathers, but this was a magazine that was thought of for years (and by many still is) as a gay men's magazine. In the early 60's when the Don Drapers walked the earth, they still thought people telling them to get their suits tailored seemed queer. Look at the way the Beats shunned those oh so retrosexual ideas of masculinity while sneering at convention. In short, men have always been fucked up about about their masculinity, and no trend piece in the New York Times is going to change that.

I have a feeling that these trends are nothing more than hipsters passing out of their skinny-black-jeans-and-vinyl-phase. They know they're too old to rock that look forever, but have never existed without a posture. Don the accoutrement and strike the pose, it's just as easy as riding a fixed-gear bike and primping bed-head was after college. Maybe it's a trend.

We're Not The Only Ones Thinking About "Out"

I was really gratified to read this post on Feministing regarding the judgements people in general and the "blogosphere" (I really, really, really hate that word) in particular regarding celebrities who come out, citing Ricky Martin's situation in particular.

Yes, of course most people's reaction to Martin coming out was, "DUH," and I think I even said something along those lines in conversation myself.  But I thought about it some more, and two different issues came to mind:
1) In the U.S. we think of Ricky Martin as a two-hit-wonder has-been.  But he's still incredibly popular in Latin America, where the politics of him being an out gay sex symbol occur in a different cultural context than it does in the U.S.  Nobody has noted that in his self-outing blog entry, Martin first wrote it in Spanish and then in English.  I really don't think white Americans were necessarily the audience he was primarily speaking to here, yet our reactions to his self-outing act as if we were, because, well, we're white Americans - that's what we do.

2) Intersecting with my previous entry's point about Anderson Cooper, Ricky Martin wasn't closeted.  One of the realizations the Boy and I came to the other night is that "closeted" is not the opposite of "out" although people who are highly vested in the outing of public figures pretend that it is.  Being out is a public statement, but being closeted implies lying, secrecy, and shame.  Based on the quick research I did, Ricky Martin never said he wasn't gay.  If he was trying to pretend to be heterosexual, he did a bad job of convincing people, given that he decided to have children via a surrogate and was widely known to hang out around Miami with his boyfriend.  That's not a closeted life, folks.

Anyway, Lori says it right:

"As a bi-racial cis-gender able-bodied woman in a heterosexual relationship, I may not be able to say I know what it is that Ricky Martin went through before deciding to come out. But I can't help but be struck by the hypocrisy of an America that forbids disclosure from their armed servicepeople and demands it to the point of issuing a frenzied media mandate from everyone else. Whether the criticism was coming from other gay men and women or not, rushing to judge the timing or impact of his decision fails to acknowledge his humanity and undercuts the ownership of his decision."

Just another area where identity politics are tricky, as they intersect with the personal and the political, and above all, a largely straight populace either demands people come out, assume they're already out, or demand they stay closeted based on entirely arbitrary modifiers to the situation.  At this point, can we really blame some queer people for deciding they don't necessarily want to play that game?

"Post-Out" Post #1: Johnny Weir as Post-Out Poster Child

Despite our open-mindedness, there is definitely a dogma that exists as an undercurrent to almost any discussion on sexuality within progressive, queer-friendly circles.  I'll name a few: biology is destiny; identity is orientation and vice-versa; there are three distinct, non-overlapping categories of sexual orientation; female sexuality is fluid, whereas male sexuality is not; queer celebrities "owe" it to "the movement" to be out yet every out queer celebrity has been accused and will continue to be accused of using their identity for attention.

It's obvious that I don't agree with many of these "truths" -  the intersection of what we call "orientation" - assumed to be inborn (and probably is in many cases) with "identity" (a social category if there ever was one) is so complicated, yet due to the gay rights movement shaping the language of visibility, the distinction between these two separate markers and what they mean has often become blurred.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing - the gay rights movement as we know it started in a time, not all that long ago, when visibility was very low, due to culturally-enforced messages of shame and the ever-present threat of violence (which still exists today).  Having a movement that dared to state that "we're here and we're queer," was incredibly important when most same-sex behavior was conducted secretly.  And as a result, we get the concept of  being "out."

This will be the first of several posts examining the concept of being out and how it relates to identity and a changing cultural landscape.  As a disclaimer, I'd like to state that personally, neither one of us are one of those assholes who claim that identity politics are pointless or useless.  Without identity politics, we wouldn't have any of the modern liberation movements.  I think we can acknowledge identity politics as a tool that is still useful, while also critiquing what aspects are limiting or no longer applicable to everyone.  Hence: Johnny Weir.

For those of you living under a rock, Johnny Weir is a world-class figure skater and phenomenal athlete whose "flamboyant" style and "outrageous" personality get more attention than his actual performance in various competitions.  Weir is androgynous - not in the the sexless, aloof sense, but in the visceral "Mick-Jagger-and-Alan-Cumming's- lovechild-but-with-more-sequins" kind of way.  He exudes sexuality, masculinity, and yes, femininity as well.  He's not the "safe" kind of male figure skater who attempts to butch up his routines and costumes in an attempt to prove how very "not gay" figure skating is (and in the process, makes it seem perhaps even more gay - Evan Lysacek anyone?  Regardless of Lysacek's orientation, there's something  macho yet queer about his Village People style of masculine performance).

The problem, however, is that Weir is not "out" in the traditional sense.  He has never said, "I am a gay American," or "I am proud to say I am a fortunate homosexual man." 

And yet the reaction in the queer blog world is not to condemn Weir for not being out, the way recently out Ricky Martin and Sean Hayes, or not-yet-out Anderson Cooper have been condemned, but rather to celebrate his snazzy yet thoughtful statements on the media's attempts to categorize him.

In response to critics who claim he's too gay or feminine, Weir has said:

"I hope that more children have the same opportunities as me, with the same parents as me, that let me be an individual, who gave me freedom, and taught me to believe in myself before anyone else would believe in me.
I hope more young boys and girls can grow up to have that love and support from their families, and it's very clear to me that those two men talking on that program did not have that kind of upbringing."

He has also said:
"Figure skating is thought of as a female sport, something that only girly men compete in. I don't feel the need to express my sexual being because it's not part of my sport and it's private. I can sleep with whomever I choose and it doesn't affect what I'm doing on the ice, so speculation is speculation. I like nice things, and beautiful things, so if that is the only way people are determining that I swing one way or the other, then to me, that's sad. You can't judge a book by it's cover, ever. I never get angry about things because it's human nature to be jealous and rip people to shreds if you don't like them, regardless of the subject. I am who I am, and I don't need to justify anything to anyone."

There's multiple awesome examples across the Internet of Weir defending his right to be his own bad self, and plenty of examples of the media fixating on his orientation and gender presentation as well.  I haven't seen a single gay site demanding that Weir out himself, however, yet plenty of sites do the same for other rumored gay celebs.  The difference?  I suspect it has something to do with Weir's "flamboyance" and "fierceness" - that is, his lack of conformity to masculine gender norms.  The idea is, nobody who wears that much fur and poses in heels could be straight.  And it's apparently irrelevant that Anderson Cooper's reasons for not commenting on his orientation are as valid as Weir's - Cooper is gender-conforming, Weir is not.  The former is perceived as having a responsibility to out himself, the latter isn't seen as needing to, we already know - have you seen the photoshoots?  OMG!!  He wears mascara, like, ALL THE TIME!

Of course, the notion that an androgynous or feminine gender expression automatically renders a man gay is an inherently problematic one.  For all we know, Weir is bisexual, or has a serious political aversion to labels, and who knows, he could even possibly not like the cock.  It would not be the first time a flamboyant guy was into pussy. The aforementioned Jagger, Bowie, and half of my high school drama club all fit into that category.  As a woman long known for loving, in the biblical sense, men who don't conform to gender roles, I can assure you there are many flamboyant guys who dig the vag, regardless of how they identify.  The conflation of gender expression with sexual orientation and/or identity is a useless trope yet still ever-present.

I don't know Weir's motivations for not commenting on his orientation - I can only guess.  But in a world were people are still assumed to be straight unless their expression of gender deviates slightly in which case they're the gayest thing to ever have gayed, it looks like he's giving the mostly-straight sports world, as well as the media, the middle finger.  After all, they're the ones going nuts attempting to comment on his sexual orientation without the ability to actually identify him as a homo.  Weir has positioned himself to be a role model to every gender non-conforming kid out there, but actually declaring himself "out" while already being perceived as gay wouldn't benefit him, or even the queer rights movement - it would just benefit a straight society and media intent on categorizing him.  And he doesn't seem particularly interested in giving them the satisfaction.

So the question shouldn't be, "Is he?" or even necessarily, "Does it need to be said?"  but rather, "Does it matter?"  Celebs and people in general are not expected to comment on how straight they are unless they are perceived as being gay - Hugh Jackman and his famous love for musicals comes to mind, and the rumors swirl despite a decades-long marriage to a lady.  It's true that people are more likely to care about queer civil rights if they know someone who is out, but I don't think anyone can seriously argue that it matters to gay liberation if someone as non-conforming as Weir is out or not.  So does it matter when queer celebs such as Cooper, or pre-outting Rick Martin live their lives without hiding their queerness, if they're not shouting it from the rooftops?  I'm not sure, yet, but I think the more important question at this point is who, exactly, does the outing of assumed-gay or unofficially-gay celebs serve? 

More importantly, this video is basically the best thing of all time:

Paquin Steps Out; Internet Responds

Anna Paquin outs herself as bisexual and people across Internet out themselves as assholes. She took part in an anti-hate PSA wherein she said that she is bisexual. According to people at the taping, they had no idea that she was going to say that. Todd Wright of Technorati wrote this:

"It defies credulity to suggest that such women are the object of discrimination. Based on an abundance of movies, sitcoms, men's magazines, women's magazines, teen magazine's, talk shows, websites, porn sites, and idle male conversation, civilizations from other galaxies have long since decided that such women rule our world."

That paragraph made me throw up in my mouth a bit. Yes, because being objectified in men's magazines, pornography and male bullshiting sessions means one cannot be the object of discrimination. So if Anna Paquin wanted to marry a woman, she can because she's wank material for readers of Maxim. Take that, Prop 8!

Wright goes on to say, "The danger here is not in discrimination but in the creation of an identity out of this now rather commonplace behavior. This is Paquin's ego telling her, 'I am not enough.' She's bisexual because she feels she's lacking."

Wow. Luckily, he didn't stop there. "This is true of all sexual identities: straight, gay, bi, transgender. We are not categories." So straight people are also straight identified because they're lacking. Now I'm at a loss.

The comments section of virtually every site featuring the news of Paquin's bisexuality are infuriating, but that's the Internet for you. What really stings is when people who should know better prove they can be bigoted assholes too.


Luckily, Todd Wright isn't the only asshat on the web this week. We also have long-time defender of the bisexuals, Dan Savage. In his blog for The Stranger, Dan said, "Paquin is engaged to be married to her "True Blood" co-star Stephen Moyer. Which pretty much proves that she's bisexual." This echoes his usual sentiments about bisexual people. He makes a biphobic comment, then gets angry e-mails, claims he doesn't have an issue with them, and the cycle repeats. He's consistent if not honest.

It's worth noting that Spike TV's celebrity blog was far less obnoxious. Go figure.

Identity: What Is It Good For? Something, Maybe?

I guess it's fitting that I start this blog off with a navel-gazing look at identity - both my own, and the concept.  I'm not trying to write a thesis here (besides, others have done a far better job examining what, exactly, sexual orientation and gender identity entails than I ever could) but rather to provide a general introduction to who we are, why we decided to start this blog, and other useless nonsense.

In my previous life, when I played for the little leagues (i.e. LiveJournal, home primarily to angsty 17 year-olds and bored stay-at-home-moms taking a break from playing WoW) I frequently got into arguments about things that interested and mattered to me, regarding GLTBQ rights, feminism, polyamory, and identity.  The problem was that while doing so I identified myself as being a straight, cisgendered woman in a monogamous relationship with a guy.  What's the problem with that?  In a LiveJournal identity politics debate, plenty, but the main problem for me was that it wasn't entirely true.  But, lacking the vocabulary (or perhaps, the courage) to speak honestly about the very excruciatingly personal issues that lead me to self-identify as the tripple-whammy of straight, cisgendered, and monogamous in the rough-and-tumble world of a semi-notorious LiveJournal D-lister in which statements of sincerity are the fastest way to lose the game, that identity served its function for a time.

Let's break it down, then, with a serious commitment to honesty and pretending that anybody cares about my narcissism.  Straight?  In terms of who I've actually had sex with so far, absolutely.  If we're going to define orientation based on behavior.  Fact is, I used to identify as bisexual (and for a brief moment, pansexual, before I developed a distaste for the term) but gave it up, because I'd never gone past second base with a girl, and felt like I was one of the legion of young women appropriating a queer identity without ever having faced any sort of oppression as a result of my queerness.  I felt like I was claiming a label without having "done the time" as it were.  So despite my confused and complicated sexual yearnings, I made the decision about five years ago or so to just identify myself as straight.  After all, I was in a monogamous, heterosexual relationship that I intended to be in for the rest of my life, so since I didn't see any future opportunities to prove my queerness to myself or anyone else, I decided to take the political high road: I'd identify myself as a breeder, and take one for the team. None of that trendy bisexuality stuff for me, thanks!  I'd have to be satisfied with my attempts to be a queer uber-ally, because if I present as straight and normative, that's what I am, right?

What I didn't realize at the time was that I'd just basically put myself in some sort of weird, mixed-up identity-politics/radical theory closet out of guilt regarding my own privilege.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I suffered for my own mislabeling,far from it.  But I wasn't being entirely honest with others and in the long run, with myself, either.

This would be the point at which it would be appropriate, perhaps, to have my co-author and fiancé weigh in with his own clumsy paragraph about his identity.  Which he would, except he's out having what I can only imagine is incredibly amazing sex with some cute twink while I'm stuck at home with a terrible head cold, getting a nice buzz on from this mimosa.  Hey, vitamin C is very necessary when overcoming illness!  Anyway, I suspect that answers at least a couple basic questions regarding his identity and our current monogamous status.

Anyway, the point of this isn't to be all, "Blah blah I'm confused about what makes me hot despite being 30 and how pathetic is that, but validate me regardess," but just to give a context for how I personally relate to the identity issue, which overall I think is the most misunderstood and radically changing aspect of sexual politics today.

Outside of the magical Internet anti-kriyarchy blogowhatsnot most people automatically identify themselves as straight or heterosexual, when they bother to think of it, and the majority of everyone else identifies as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.  What we fail to realize is that the very notion of an identity based on sexual orientation is entirely a modern one, and how we identify ourselves and others with regards to orientation and gender has been in a constant state of flux ever since.  Pandora's box is wide open, as evidenced by a lot of the lesser-known orientations flying around as well: not just asexual, but say, panromantic asexual.  Sapiosexual. (Look that one up.  Please.) And so forth. 

Fine, so there's a lot of wacky terms to describe something complex like orientational identity, no need to stop the presses, right?  But the thing with identity is that once you start to think about it, you can't have a conversation about sexual politics without dozens of unsaid assumptions about what identity is and what it means coming into play.

In the conversation that lead to the start of this blog, my co-author and I were talking over tasty burgers and beer at Barney's on Piedmont.  He was raging on about the relatively new concept gaining significant pop culture momentum of women having inherently fluid sexual orientation, with the mostly unspoken corollary that men have inherently static sexual orientation, as exemplified in Lisa M. Diamond's "Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Desires."  In laymen's terms, women are inherently bisexual, and we shift throughout our lives through periods of being, whereas men are born straight, or gay, with little inbetween, save for those annoying bisexual men who persistently refuse to have their identity invalidated. 

Of course, one can't even start to have a basic conversation about whether or not womens' sexual orientation is fluid and mens' static without engaging with the very concept of what identity is and how it is defined.  Diamond seems to be, despite some claims to the contrary, an essentialist - a loaded term if there ever was one.  Essentalism refers to different things in different contexts, but with regards to sexual orientation, it does refer to the belief in some sort of inborn, inherent preference with regards to sex partners.  This is, essentially the mainstream view: people are "born" gay or straight.  We like to pretend this view is rooted in science, but it's far more political, borne out of anti-gay movements that claimed that gay identity was a chosen behavior, and thus could be stopped, usually through a liberal dash of Jesus and prayer.  The early LGTBQ (back then, just "gay") rights movement was based in a purely reactionary stance: if they say we can choose to be gay, we will say you can't! Sexual orientation is inherent.  We're born this way, so you have to accept us.  The problem is, in the real world, we all have anecdotal and perhaps even personal evidence that sexual identity, if not orientation, can be fluid.  Hence Diamond and her thesis.  Part of the problem, for Diamond, myself, and many people out there, I suspect, is conflating "orientation" with "identity" to begin with.

In his brilliant post "Respecting Sexual Identities" (linked twice now, it's that awesome), Pepomint writes:
"Identity functions as a kind of personal strategy. This is most obvious in the social arena, where a person considers their position and weighs how to describe themselves. Identities tend not to match perfectly, so expressing a sexual identity often is an exercise in compromises. For example, say a man only falls in love with men, but has good sex with women on occasion. Should he identify as gay, bisexual, or queer? If he identifies as queer, will everyone just assume he is gay? If he identifies as gay, will women assume he does not want to have sex with them? If he identifies as bisexual, will everyone assume that he is mostly straight but does men on the side occasionally?"

He goes on to talk about how identity is personal, political, and full of strategery.  So is it really surprising that something this complex could be ever-shifting?  At this point, I see identity politics primarily valuable as an organizational tool, and a way to frame a conversation.  In terms of describing what burns in a person's hearts, or loins for that matter, it tends to be woefully insufficient, regardless of how many new terms we make up.

Between mouthfuls of sweet potato fries and gulps of Sierra Nevada Ale, I suggested that because we have frustratingly common conversations like this on a daily basis that we do what any good egotistic Americans should and commit said thoughts and discussions to the public realm vis-a-vis this much-touted blogosphere.  Plus, I really just wanted to get away from LiveJournal.  So here we are.