TW: The F-word, British for cigarettes

Hello!  It's been a while, hasn't it?  And it's been an especially long while since I've done any book reviews.  This weekend I picked up a book called Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?  The subtitle is important:  "Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform".  I'd read the other two anthologies by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (Nobody Passes and That's Revolting), and enjoyed them, so I wanted to give this one a try as well.  I'm only on the second essay, but I can tell that the book is going to be educational and thought-provoking (although, it should be said, some of the content is sexually explicit, if that bothers you).

[Image: The cover of the book]

The first essay is about a cruising website called Dads and Lads.  Now that, I cannot relate to, but it did have some things to say that mirrored my own experience with online dating:

Worse yet, [the dropdown menu] suggests there's something wrong with anyone or anything that doesn't fit into those clear-cut, self-explanatory, "natural" options.  Sure, you can express in your profile's personal statements the scope of your sexual tastes and practices as fully and with as much imagination as the text field's character limit will accommodate.  But when you first encounter that dropdown, when you first look at the choices available and note that there are none with which you cleanly correspond, there is a moment of creeping doubt, of uncertainty, of a nagging sense that there is something wrong with you.  You should be one or the other.  (D. Travers Scott, "Imagining a Faggoty Web", 6)

and also:

The example of this humble and by now much-maligned dropdown menu is an illustration of how the web is not neutral.  The technologies that constitute the online experience did not appear out of thin air or descend from Olympus as gifts from the gods.  They are not separate from culture, somehow innocent and pure, but as deeply intertwined with culture as an episode of The Hills.  The design and functioning of online technologies is far from immune to racism, sexism, homophobia, and other social ills.  (7)

It hadn't really occurred to me that people with more well-known orientations might have the same dropdown menu problem that I do (apparently I haven't been spending enough time on Dads and Lads).  But dropdown menus seem to function similarly to those pants you try on in the dressing room.  They don't fit, so you must be too fat.  We seem to have this habit of blaming ourselves first, and once we've done that, it can be hard to see other options.  If you want to be pissed off about dropdown menus, I'll stand behind you.  It might seem "small", but you have a right to be frustrated about people who will sacrifice human diversity for some dating algorithm.  

Although they may be different from my own life experience, reading these sorts of anti-assimilationist queer accounts often feels very refreshing to me.  I feel like asexuals, myself included, are often hesitant to take up space.  Like the "flaming faggots" in this anthology, we're often told that no one wants to hear about our sexuality.  With gay men, the perception is that there's too much to tell, and with asexuals, there is presumably not enough.  I would like to be flamboyantly asexual, although I'm still trying to figure out what that is.  Books like this remind me that there's value in that attempt.  As the introduction states, "Existing simultaneously outside queer and straight norms is liberating and constantly exciting in ways I had never anticipated".  This sense of liberation and excitement is what I wish for us.

Expect a part 2 to this post!

Understanding + Resistant Aesthetics

Here's an interesting essay: Dress to Kill, Fight to Win, by Dean Spade. Somehow he manages to tie together both fashion and trans surgery in a fairly short piece. It ends with a question:

"Why would we want to do things that don’t require explanation, that are obvious, impervious to critique because no one even notices we’re doing them?"

Well, to fit in, of course. I've always had such a strong desire to be understood and to avoid misunderstanding. Confusing people on purpose is something that hasn't really occurred to me. Although...I like the idea of it. Don't get me wrong, understanding is an incredible thing. But it isn't always going to happen, and it's heartening to know that there might be some value in the alternative.

Spade also talks about "resistant aesthetics", which I think is a helpful term. I do want to resist, through my appearance, the sexual and gender norms of our culture. But I don't think anyone is going to figure this out just by looking at me. For women and those read as such, dressing "entirely outside of the sexual dimension" is virtually impossible. (Either we're sexy...or the absence of sexy.) I recently read a post called "Femme Visibility". The writer says that "femme presentations are often done to queer the idea of women as objects of men’s desire. It can be done to parody traditional ideas of women’s gender roles and dress." While these femmes are coming from a place of aesthetic resistance, they're often not perceived as queer or transgressive by society at large. I can relate to that dissonance, because I keep trying to dress outside of sexuality and gender. Spade seems to maintain that there's importance to these efforts, as imperfect as they may be. In some ways, my style does require explanation, even though it isn't unusual enough to draw much questioning.

Romantic Comedies = Sci Fi

"I regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world operates according to different rules than my regular human world. For me, there is no difference between Ripley from “Alien” and any Katherine Heigl character. They are equally implausible. They’re all participating in a similar level of fakey razzle-dazzle, and I enjoy every second of it."
--Mindy Kaling, here.

I don't think I love them quite as much as she does, but I enjoy them sometimes and feel the same way in terms of them being sci-fi. When I was a kid, I loved reading fantasy novels. I'm not as into them anymore, but I've always had an strong fascination with world-building, which has stayed with me. I'm always intrigued by how more "reality-based" genres, such as romantic comedies, world-build in a fantasy-like way.

Pies of Love: They're Back!

From the book All About Love, again by bell hooks (thanks Autumn!):

When we see love as the will to nurture one's own or another's spiritual growth, revealed through acts of care, respect, knowing, and assuming responsibility, the foundation of all love in our life is the same. There is no special love exclusively reserved for romantic partners. Genuine love is the foundation of our engagement with ourselves, with family, with friends, with partners, with everyone we choose to love. While we will necessarily behave differently depending on the nature of the relationship, or have varying degrees of commitment, the values that inform our behavior, when rooted in a love ethic, are always the same for any interaction. (pg. 136)

Reading this passage was jarring to me. I had long seen love as a "pie" which had different "pieces": Platonic love, romantic love, sexual love, etc. This was comforting to me because I felt that if I couldn't have the sexual and romantic pieces, there were still others. However, bell hooks seems to view love as one pie with different toppings: Love topped with romance, topped with sex, topped with a parent's nurturing. When I thought about it, hooks' conception started to make more sense to me than my own had done. And, anyone can have the whole pie. So, do you agree with any of these pies, or are you eating a different baked good altogether?

More Involved, More Determined

A little over a year ago, I did a series on historical BFFs (best friends forever!). One pair that I wrote about were Paul Cezanne (painter) and Emile Zola (writer). I had no reason to think I'd ever mention them again...this is a blog about asexuality, after all. But I recently went to an Impressionist painting exhibit where I saw this quote on the wall, and just knew I had to blog about it (Thanks to my mom for risking a stern talking-to in order to take a picture of it for me):

In 1869...Manet invited me to join him every evening in a cafe [Cafe Guerbois] in the Batignolles quarter, where he and his friends would gather and talk after leaving their ateliers. There I met Fantin-Latour, Cezanne, and Degas...the art critic Duranty, Emile Zola, who was then embarking on his literary career, as well as some others. I myself brought along Sisley, Bazille, and Renoir. Nothing was more interesting than our discussions, with their perpetual clash of opinions. They sharpened one's wits, encouraged frank and impartial inquiry, and provided enthusiasm that kept us going for weeks and weeks until our ideas took final shape. One always came away feeling more involved, more determined, and thinking more clearly and distinctly. (Claude Monet)

It sort of reminded me of this, the "Epicurean" living arrangement. But even more so, it reminded me of this-- my own dream of a personal "utopia" involving a community of creative types. Oddly enough, what impressed me even more than the assembled names was the fact that they all met daily in the same cafe. It sounds like a simple thing, maybe, but it seems so elusive to our 2010 world. Even if you exchanged "Batignolles quarter" with "Duluth" and the famous artists for amateurs, something about their meetings and the way they felt about them would have still touched me.

Their gatherings met many of my "pillars of community": A shared purpose, individual fulfillment (at least in Monet's view), commitment, a meeting place and exceedingly regular contact. And from the quote, it all seemed enjoyable. That exhilaration described by Monet is something that I've come to associate with community. I think a lot of people have gotten the idea that you can only feel that kind of excitement through romantic love, but I find that to be an overly narrow view, and an undersell of community.

We all know that attraction tends to happen spontaneously, whichever sorts of attraction you experience. But if you wanted to, say, get married, you'd have some idea of a strategy for that-- dating online or in meatspace, getting friends to set you up with their friends, going to places where your preferred gender congregates. But if you want community, there's not a lot of common wisdom on how to go about that. There are no rules. I don't think I'm capable of writing them, and I'm not even sure there should be any. But in this series that I'm sneaking on you folks, this nuts and bolts discussion of community, I want to at least talk strategy.

And because pop culture only gets you so far, here's my favorite painting from the exhibit:

"The Bridge at Maincy" by Cezanne. I wish I could walk into that painting and stand on the bridge for awhile. I feel similarly about this one, "Snow at Louveciennes" by Sisley:

I love those random little alleyways that you can find in some places. Sadly there aren't a lot of them in the suburbs.

"The Basic Daily Obstacle Course"

The whole book is well-written, but I really liked this passage in particular from "Rose of No-Man's Land", a novel by Michelle Tea. The narrator is Trisha, a 14-year-old girl living in a small town:

The television was on, always on, always turned to talk shows or news, something real, no chipper family sitcoms or emergency room dramas, only the real dramas of real living, everything going wrong all the time, everywhere. And yet I see very little on TV about how creepy men are in the streets or about the basic daily obstacle course a female is forced to run through. About how you can be walking along absolutely not thinking about your pussy your ass your tits, but then, wham, thanks to the drooly curbside dude, now you are. Now your mind is consumed with the idea, the reality of your pussy, ass, tits; the possibility of blow jobs, of getting fucked. I wish more attention would be paid to this phenomenon. That there would be long-term psychological studies on the mental effects of this, the changes in brain waves it produces in girl-brains. I can go days without leaving my room and never think of my boobs once. Then I leave the house and it's all anyone wants to talk about (155, emphasis is the author's).

Well I'll pay it some attention. Right now, I live in the 'burbs, where people pretty much leave you alone unless you get too close to their lawns or Suburban assaUlt Vehicles. But it was interesting that I was visiting a small town, probably one that's similar to the one Trisha lives in, while reading "Rose of No-Man's Land". While a friend and I were walking down the street, we heard some guys yell at us from their car. What they were saying was completely inarticulate; I couldn't make out any words. Even so, I was surprised how unsafe it made me feel. I think Trisha was right to wonder what these little incidents can add up to when they happen to you frequently.

Men can get harassed on the street, too. But it usually isn't just because they're men who deigned to leave their homes. And the big city is not immune from random harassment, either. There's an organization, Holla Back NYC, that encourages people to take pictures of street harassers. A lot of the stories on that site are really shocking, and would make comments about "tits" seem tame in comparison. The idea that anyone would find men shaking their penises at random women in public (as in one Holla Back story) to be "just part of city life" seems a comment on how far feminism still has to go. We're still living with the idea that a woman is public property-- that anything can be said to us, at any time, much like someone would make a casual comment on a piece of public sculpture. Our sexuality in particular is fair game, and that's one reason people can react with such hostility to female asexuals. (People can react negatively to male aces too, but for other reasons.) While I think the vast majority of men have gotten the memo that unwanted advances are not okay, there seem to be a problematic number of holdouts.

If you want more reading on the topic, "A Guy's Guide to Approaching Strange Women Without Being Maced" is a very awesome post for all genders to read. There are also various tips out there directed at men on "Ending a Street Harassment Incident".

Longings

Apparently, at least one person is using "mountainsexual" as a sort of ski-slope alternative to "metrosexual", but I have to say, I still hope my usage might catch on. (Although I heartily endorse the creation of new slang terms, aren't we all tired of anything even remotely related to the concept of metrosexuality by now?) However, if mountainsexuals were serious about defining themselves (which I don't think they would be), they could also use the Latin, monsexual, pointed out by Mary in the previous post on the topic. We'll definitely need to settle on a term for when we all publish papers on the subject. Anyway, here's the mo(u)n(tain)sexual, as I see it, quote of the day, and God, those parenthesis are awkwardness itself:

“Antarctica left a restless longing in my heart beckoning towards an incomprehensible perfection forever beyond the reach of mortal man. Its overwhelming beauty touches one so deeply that it is like a wound.”

--Edwin Mickleburgh

Ideally, you won't find this unforgivably random, but while we're on the subject of quotes, I uncovered another one today that I could relate to especially well:

It is a curious emotion, this certain homesickness I have in mind. With Americans, it is a national trait, as native to us as the roller-coaster or the jukebox. It is no simple longing for the home town or country of our birth. The emotion is Janus-faced: we are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.

--Carson McCullers

Well, I'm all for exploring curious emotions, and my ears always prick up at the sound of nonsexual longings. It reminds me of the "inextinguishable longing for elsewhere" that Junot Diaz wrote as besigeing people from New Jersey. When I read that I was like, "Finally! I'm not just crazy!" (Or maybe I am, but at least the population of an entire state is with me.) I've felt that way for as long as I can remember, and it always seemed like a curse. I even wrote a poem once about a crush I had on a guy and how minimal my feelings for him were, compared to the longing McCullers wrote about. To this day, channeling it into some kind of creativity is the only way I know how to deal with it.

Compassion

According to Merriam-Webster's dictionary, "compassion" means "sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it". I'm mentioning it because it may come in handy when reading the following quote, from Miriam Greenspan's Healing Through the Dark Emotions:

Many spiritual traditions speak of a larger sense of Self connected to the Divine. We can realize this Self as we grow in compassion through the alchemy of the dark emotions. This self sees the larger picture and knows that compassion, the highest form of love, is the greatest healing balm for universal suffering. This kind of love is the Divine at work in the lives of humanity. Compassion is the gold in the accumulated sludge of humankind's sorrows. It is the best medicine for what ails the human family. (241, emphasis mine)

Now, this seemed asexually relevant because most asexuals will, at some point, run into some person who will say that we're missing out on the "ultimate expression of love" (ie, sex) and therefore are not quite fully evolved. I always thought this was pretty ridiculous, because aren't there as many expressions of love as there are people? Anyway, I thought it was refreshing to come across these thoughts on compassion; now you have a renowned psychotherapist backing you up against those "supreme act of love" people. And goodness knows compassion is what the world needs more of (although I'll settle for making love and not war).

That's My Song

There's a song that describes me perfectly. Well, there are probably a few, but this is one of them. I wish I could say that it was something sophisticated and high-brow, perhaps by a British band from the 1980s that you've never heard of. But it's not. It's "Dancing With Myself" by Billy Idol. Yeah:

On the floors of Tokyo
Or down in London town to go-go
With the record selection
And the mirror reflection
I'm a dancing with myself

When there's no one else in sight
In the crowd and lonely night
Well I wait so long
For my love vibration
And I'm dancing with myself

Oh oh oh dancing with myself
Oh oh oh dancing with myself
Well there's nothing to lose
And there's nothing to prove
I'll be dancing with myself
Oh oh, oh oh

If I looked all over the world
And there's every type of girl
But your empty eyes
Seem to pass me by
Leave me dancing with myself

So let's sink another drink
'Cause it'll give me time to think
If I had the chance
I'd ask the world to dance
And I'll be dancing with myself

Oh oh oh dancing with myself
Oh oh oh dancing with myself
Well there's nothing to lose
And there's nothing to prove
I'll be dancing with myself
Oh oh, oh oh
Oh oh, oh ohhh, oh
Oh oh, oh ohhhh
Oh oh, oh ohhhhhaaaawwww!

Much like Big Star's "September Girls" (discussed in an earlier post), I barely have anything to add to that. It's like Oscar "Quote Factory" Wilde's "To love yourself is the beginning of a lifelong romance" brought out to the dancefloor. If you can't find anyone to dance with right now, don't waste the music worrying about it. Just enjoy the opportunity for some good dancing with yourself. You know, you deserve to have as much fun without a partner as with one.
So, what's your song?

Give It Up

Even though My Gender Workbook was impossible to get through, there were a lot of neat quotes in it. Here's one of quite a few I really liked:

We've pretty much come to the end of a time when you can have a space that is "yours only"-- just for the people you want to be there. Even when we have our "women-only" festivals, there is no such thing...to a large extent it's because we have just finished with that kind of isolating. There is no hiding place. There is nowhere you can go and only be with people who are like you. It's over. Give it up.
-- Bernice Johnson Reagon, West Coast Women's Music Festival, 1981.

I just noticed that this quote is from 1981, 26 years ago. Does it mean that no one really heeded these points, since they're still exactly as relevant today as they were then? Or does it just mean they're good points? I love the straightforwardness of that statement-- just let go!
However, it's not just "them" that need to let go, sometimes it's "us" as well. I was thinking aloud on AVEN-- Hmm, I really don't get it when I try to come out to people and they don't say anything, what's up with that? It's like they're totally indifferent! One wise person responded: "Not everyone's interested in your sex life!" At first I went, AHEM?!, but upon further thought, I found it was an excellent point. I've always been interested in other people's sex lives; but then again, sexuality is a big interest of mine. Not only am I fascinated by it on a theoretical level, but I like the low-level thrill provided by living vicariously. Much like you'd be interested in hearing stories about time travel, dragons, or other things that don't really apply to your life, I'm interested in hearing about sexuality. However, I needed to get over myself and realize that some people just don't care. And you know, that is probably a very good thing. People that care deeply about your sex life are probably among the same people who say, "WE NEED TO GET YOU LAID, KID!", and other things I can live without. Aaah, letting go...now doesn't that feel better?

This Woman's Work

I'm sorry that I traumatized you the other day with visions of Burt Bacharach's sex life. It won't happen again. To make it up to you, here's a great quote, in honor of this whole ENDA situation:

"...the moral center of a movement is not defined by how well and how long we fight for our own rights. Important as that is, it's also enlightened self-interest: We all want our own rights. The moral center of a movement is defined by how well and how long we fight for those who are not us, for those more easily left behind."
--Riki Wilchins, from "Gender Rights Are Human Rights"

This comes from an essay in the book Genderqueer: Voices From Beyond the Sexual Binary. It's a collection of essays from various people, and so it gets rather spotty at times, but in general it's pretty interesting, and I recommend it. What's so great about the gender binary anyway? (And I really do challenge anyone to answer this...especially from a female perspective. There's another essay in the aforementioned book claiming that being a woman in a patriarchal society is to be inherently genderqueer. That might be pushing it a little, but as things are, women don't seem to have anything to gain from the gender binary.) What else is this ENDA thing showing me, other than the fact that some people have strange ideas about discrimination? We need some transgender politicians, obviously.

The Sound of Silence

Classes with massive amounts of reading; I feel too old for this. I've learned more than I ever wanted to know about John Hammond this week, but I've only gotten through about 5 pages of Exotica. However, in those 5, I did find a relevant quote from someone I never thought I'd be writing about: Burt Bacharach. He says:

"I could never make love to music because I'm not into the woman, I'm into, wait, what did that saxophone play in the sixth bar? Oh man, Jesus, that was not good!"

Wow Burt, I think that would totally be me. But I ask the question: Without music, how would you know when to start having sex? Aren't the suddenly-appearing, velvety tones of Barry White usually the best indicator of what's to come? I wouldn't know what's going on without the soundtrack. But for flying by his own internal compass, Burt is apparently an adventurous guy.

So, my goals...they still don't exist yet. Should I try to get us a steady meeting place? Aim for a certain number of participants? Start up office hours?
I need to remember to start small.
These are as much community goals as personal ones, so suggestions would actually be appreciated. Anyone?