Care and Feeding of an East Coast Liberal

Lust Objects

2007-09-11T12:30:00.000-04:00

A lot of these, you'll probably notice that I go for people that starred as couples in movies, or who had great chemistry together (IMO) onscreen...

A lot of my crushes are pretty mainstream: Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles are still, however-many-years-after-Ten-Things-I-Hate-About-You, my ultimate couple fantasy. (Heath Ledger is probably a good base for most of my boy-likes: wavy hair, non-scruffy [at his best], FANtastic smile, muscular but not in a muscl-y way.)

So cute.

Speaking of Heath Ledger movies, people that have been his co-stars:
Dear Jake Gyllenhaal: thank you for fucking up my dreams FOR MONTHS. Also, Jena Malone is pretty cute.

A Knight's Tale - Laura Fraser and Alan Tudyk!

Unsurprisingly, Alan Tudyk also shows up here:
The cast of Firefly. Yes, the entire cast of Firefly. Even Book. And Jayne.

But especially Morena Baccarin. And Jewel Staite and Gina Torres. And... yes, the entire cast of Firefly.

Morena Baccarin, incidentally, is also FREAKING GORGEOUS in real life.

Back to really, really mainstream: Angelina. Brad I can give or take depending on his looks.

Keira Knightley and Johnny Depp...

The chemistry again - John Cho and Kal Penn.

Ziyi Zhang.

Oded Fehr. Normally I hate beards - it's like the #1 turn-off - but FUCK is he hot. And here.

Russell Peters, a hometown boy: here; and his manager, Big Shake.

What I'd call my "cutesexy" contingent, which is also surprisingly dominated by Big Love cast members: Ginnifer Goodwin, Amanda Sayfried, Tina Majorino, Tom Felton (agh, is he even of age yet?).

Not cute at all, but hot: Dame Judi Dench

And also:
John Abraham and Lisa Ray (here too), stars of Water. Boys in glasses OMFG.

Aishwarya Rai. It's the eyes. All about those eyes.

For the completely random: Kunihiko Ikuhara, the creator of Shoujo Kakumei Utena. He's just ADORABLE. And WEIRD, but mostly adorable.

I'll back Belle up on pretty much everyone here... ESPECIALLY the "total fucking SF fangirl mode". *fans self* Jennifer Tilly? Yes please.

And, to top it off: every single cast member of Heroes over the age of 18. Not pictured: Mr. Bennett. But he's on there too. And let's especially select out Sendhil Ramamurthy: oh yeah. Another one where he's SO cute that the scruff can get a by...

Eulogy

2007-09-05T14:12:00.000-04:00

This post is the eulogy that my mother wrote for my grandmother's funeral. Both my mother and my grandmother are pretty amazing women, and I hope this gives you an idea of why...:

Wee Hazel, when she drew herself up to full height, stood all of five foot three (and as she insisted) ¾ of an inch. Her stature was the only thing small about my mother she had the most loving heart, most charming personality and the wisest, creative and intuitive mind of anyone I’ve ever known. As a kid, I always hated that intuitive part – I could never get away with anything.

Over the years, people have asked me if I was ever lonely growing up as an only child. My answer was always a resounding “NO”. Mum was my best friend, closest confidant and biggest cheerleader. She had a way of hugging you that made all the problems in the world go away, and if a hug didn’t do the trick, one of her “wee cups of tea” always would.

Mum was a self-professed “softie” and a crusader for social justice long before the term became fashionable. I remember on more than one occasion acquiring an “older sister” - some young woman who had confided in my mother about being abused. Mum would take them into our home and there they would stay until they could manage on their own.

I have also watched 7 foster brothers and sisters grow up and flourish – children from Africa and South America that mum sponsored through Christian Children’s Fund. You may have seen a picture of Hamdu Sulemana in the visitation room. He wants to become a doctor and help the people in his village who have very little access to medical care.

And if that weren’t enough, the Booth household always had a steady stream of animals running through it – hamsters, cats with frozen paws, a three-legged dog, a pigeon, and once, a raccoon I had captured. That lasted about a day, until Mum figured out that there was absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Like I said, mum was smart. So smart, in fact, that homemaking was never enough for her. She went back to work six months after I was born – something virtually unheard of in the early 1950s.

What I never appreciated until years later was that my dad supported her pursuits. I remember seeing him help cook and clean house, while mum would help him in the yard. The modelling they provided have shaped my attitudes about marriage and work throughout my life.

From her first job as a ticket-taker “on the buses” in wartime England, which is where she met Dad, to secretary at White’s Hardware, co-ordinator of Marketing and Advertising for Dow Corning, and her role as President of the Women’s Advertising Club of Toronto, I always felt proud of my mum’s accomplishments and never felt deprived at being the only kid on the block that didn’t have a stay-at-home mother.

That’s because mum’s lasting legacy was her warm and loving nature – we who are lucky enough to be family got to experience that love all the time, but work colleagues and friends were also drawn by her kindness, charm and wisdom. I used to swear my mother could walk into a closet and come out with a friend.

There are many lasting lessons mum taught me, like: if you have a good story, especially a funny one, tell it. If you can ease someone else’s burden by a kind word or a thoughtful act, do it. Take responsibility for all of your actions. (That’s another one I hated as a child, but certainly grew to appreciate in adulthood.) And, there is no such thing as too much education. Guess I took that last one to heart.

Many Things I Love About Myself (More Dots, Many Dots!)

2007-01-21T01:13:00.000-05:00

Okay. Zuzu wants us to give at least five things we love about ourselves. Let's go.

First, though, full disclosure: I was (and always have been) the kind of girl that many other women envy for her body. When I wasn't, it was because they worried that I was anorexic. (I never was - I love food far too much for that - and it always simultaneously pissed me off and heartened me that they wondered so. The former because goddamnit, I was not into self-denial; the latter because, thank god, someone was willing to voice that worry to me rather than doing something like not realizing that I was underweight.)

I am still underweight. One of my resolutions this year is to get up to the minimum healthy weight my doctor recommends. But I've never been into the body hangups that my sister and best friend have gone through; it just never touched me. This may be related to the fact that my internal picture of myself doesn't equal the external reality... mine just works to my benefit rather than not.

Anyway. Onto zuzu's challenge.

1) I am brilliant, no matter how fucking down on myself I get some days.
2) According to several people, my tits are perfect. ;) (I think they're pretty awesome - naturals, in fact - but perfect might be a little far. Critical, perhaps. ;)
3) I am getting better at art every time I sketch a Fanart100.
4) I can write. I know story, characters, structure, voice.
5) I have a musician's hands; lithe, long fingers. One day they will be strong enough to play guitar!
6) I am unabashedly a geek, and I have the t-shirts and sweaters (and punchlines) to prove it.
7) I have a dirty mind, and take comfort in the hilarity it provides me.
8) I love being tall.
9) When I get down to it and battle the stove/oven, I win.
10) I love my singing voice. It's suited to more operatic songs rather than pop, so I take great enjoyment out of belting out hymns. Or singing pop songs like they're opera.
11) I'm witty.
12) I am well-read.
13) I am friggin' lucky to have what I do.
14) No matter how much I believe I'm going to fail, I always succeed.
15) I have no economic debt.
16) I tell people when I think they're being asshats.
17) And I don't waste my time with repeat-offender asshats.
18) I love learning languages: French, Italian, Spanish (even when I can't keep them apart!), and I want to learn more.
19) I love having sex, I love getting pleasure during sex, and I love giving it, too.
20) Did I mention fantastic sex?
21) I can think of, right now, six university degrees that I want to take. I have no shortage of interest in the world.
22) I love my looks in casual jeans, a sweater, and no makeup.
23) I also love them in a dress, heels, makeup and jewelry.
24) I know what I want sexually, and what my body enjoys, and I have no qualms about giving it to myself (so long as I can find the right tools and/or people - and if I can't, I'll come up with something just as good!).
25) I have no fear on the street, even at night, despite the fact that many people think I should.
26) I have a strong handshake.
27) I give awesome backrubs, neck rubs, and massages of all sorts.
28) I love my spine. It does this little... 'trill' is the best way I can describe it... if you stroke it properly. It's one of my erogenous zones.
29) I can write 100-word stories and make people KNOW the characters I'm writing for.
30) I can write this fuckin' list despite being depressed out of my MIND.

Hah.

Because damnit, I want to link to it

2007-01-19T03:18:00.000-05:00

Especially after the recent brouhaha. Normally, no one here reads my blog that doesn't read someone (much larger than I) on my linklist, so I don't bother...

But damnit, Little Light wrote something that actually moved me, which is fucking rare nowadays, so I am going to post it.

They probably won't come to me, but let's see them come if they do. I, also, have teeth. I like to bare them when I smile.

Seam of Skin and Scales

Note to self

2007-01-08T03:56:00.000-05:00

There's a fucking reason you don't read things at Twisty's. Especially when you're already fucking depressed! Moron.

Let's see if I can string this together coherently.

2007-01-06T04:03:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone! (All, what, four of you that pass by here occasionally. ;)

So, uh, it's the new year! Hooray!

If my New Year celebration has any predictive quality, this is going to be a year of Guitar Hero, geekery, and nakedness. Altogether, I think that's a good year to have.

At any rate, I said in my last post that I had a thought churning around in my head. I think I'm going to chuck out all my intentions to research this and just write it, though (although I did read the blog and essay so kindly linked to me :).

Basically it goes like this:

There are some forms of pain that are culturally acceptable.

There are even some forms of pain that it is OK to seek out, even desirable.

Athletics-related pain is specifically what I'm thinking of. We talk about "the burn", muscle stiffness, the feeling of the body breaking down in order to rebuild itself (faster, stronger - we have the technology). It is even possible to have other-created pain that is not undesirable, even if it is to be avoided (being tackled in American football isn't exactly a walk in the park, and let's not start on rugby or boxing).

I have seen exactly one feminist ever say that all pain she could cause herself or others was bad, even if it was unintentional. I wanted to ask her if she was prepared to give up figure skating, because I cannot envision a world in which practicing sports does not cause some amount of pain.

This is, in part, why I wanted to hear feminist perspectives on sport. Because I don't see a lot of feminists arguing that sports are bad. Sports create a winner/loser dichotomy. They're traditionally male-oriented (and I have seen that analyzed). But no feminist I've ever seen has explicitly said that sports should be banned. (Gym class, maybe.) The gendered connotations and language of winners/losers, yes. The competitiveness to the exclusion of sportsmanship, yes. The sports themselves? I haven't seen it.

But there is pain involved.

Let's take boxing. You're deliberately consenting to another human being punching you. Unless you are absolutely the most fantastic boxer ever, you're probably getting (at minimum) winded, and probably bruised, sore ribs, sore jaw. Possibly a broken nose, possibly brain damage, broken teeth, possibly open wounds.

Yes?

So should real feminists not box?

Or an example from my real actual very-own life. I took kung fu for three years. During that time, I willingly put my body through hell. (At one point I was on the demo team and the accelerated black belt group, although I quit shortly after.) Even just self-inflicted, there was the ache of my arms from pushups, shortness of breath after running, injured ankles from landing improperly, bruises from sparring, sore shoulders, sore legs, sore back, eyes that burned when sweat got into my eyes... And at least on some level, I was enjoying it. Even getting taken down by sparring partners was fun, because it helped me learn about my own weaknesses and blind spots.

...I'm sure most of you have figured out where I'm going with this, but let's make it explicit:

Why is it that when my pain is explicitly consented to, but presented in the context of sexual activity, that it becomes vile, evil, dark, and upholds the patriarchy?

Hell, even if it's not explicitly sexual, but is for sensual gratification, BDSM is considered all those things. Maybe because there's no way to "fight back" (but there is: the safe word) - and let's face it, if a sparring partner keeps pummelling you long after you're down, well, wait a minute, that's assault/battery. So... why do people somehow think that one distinction is harder to make than the other?

It really isn't.

And people get into sports for bad reasons, too. Work out to uphold crazed beauty standards, to fulfil parental dreams, to earn perceived respect, to earn ludicrous amounts of money. (Without the love of the game, that is, for the last two.) Body dysmorphia. Any number of things. Right?

And yet we don't generally belittle or shame these people for doing it once we realize the motivation, I think. Generally.

So I guess to sum up:

If a woman and a man spar, and the man wins, does it uphold the patriarchy? If the woman wins? If they come to a draw? If they laugh about it afterwards? If the "inferior" thanks the "superior" for what they have learned about themselves and about the sport/sex? If the superior does likewise? If the "inferior" in kung fu goes on to "beat" the "superior" in their next "match"? If both participants are male, as above? If both are female, as above?

When are we feminists going to give up on sports? (I, for one, would like American football to be the first on the chopping block, if only because it makes no sense as a game.)

Or when are we going to come to the conclusion that yes - we really can consent to, own, and love our own pain, so long as it remains within our defined bounds? And that this pain is not, necessarily, horribly damaging patriarchy-mimicking cultural backwash? That motivation, as with anything, is key, and that we should not treat those with lamentable motivations with contempt (save in the case of abuse/rape) but rather compassion?

Yeah? Anyone with me?

And, for the record:

2006-11-16T21:17:00.000-05:00

Things I fantasized about without any input from men, porn, or other sources of sexual ideas (save for the concept of dildos, which came up in sex ed - from female teachers, always):

-lesbian sex with a dildo/strapon
-spanking
-double penentration, both by (a) one woman with two toys and (b) two men
-threesomes
-moresomes
-roleplaying
-fire and ice used in sexual ways
-bondage
-any of the above in varying combinations

Hetsex, including hetsex in the two most common positions (man on top, woman on top) and oral sex/manual (digital?) sex [fingering, etc.] aren't on the list because they came up in sex ed. So did masturbation.

And those were all private fantasies that I didn't discuss with anyone until at least a year after having them.

So... was I just a really inventive young teen, or did I somehow osmose ideas about these "horribly degrading things" from the world around me? And from where? I was a pretty sheltered kid. Hung out with guys, but I was the first one to awaken to sexual feelings, as far as I know. Certainly I was the one to initiate discussions about sex and sexuality, periods, STDs, etc. Which we had, often. Usually at my prompting. And it was never weird, after the initial shyness. I didn't watch or seek out porn or erotic images. (Stories, but those came after all the above-mentioned fantasies.)

So, where did they come from? I'd like to think that I went "oh, there are THESE parts on people... and THESE are the toys that are out there. I know that I like the feelings when I touch myself HERE and HERE... if I put THOSE parts by/in THESE spots, I'll feel pleasure. And I'm feeling pleasure just thinking about it." Not that explicitly, but you know what I mean.

I mean, was I just some mini-revolutionary who just had no ideas about the "societal pressures" being put on me to not talk about/think about these things? Or a mini-patriarchy-fucker who just had no ideas about the "societal pressures" being put on me TO talk about/think about these things?

I dunno.

Antiprincess posed an intriguing question...

2006-11-16T16:10:00.000-05:00

I guess that’s the real meat of the discussion – does being wildly sexually adventurous, pushing sexual boundaries in many different directions, being as they say “polymorphously perverse”, transgress - or uphold - or transcend power?

The full post is here.

Here's my answer:

You know, I always find the porn arguments interesting, because in my partnership, I have always been the one watching the porn. The BF? He dislikes it (with varying degrees of intensity, depending on the quality of the porn). We both tend to find what we see (since I don't go out looking for it actively) pretty run-of-the-mill.

So I always find the perspective that he would force me to do things because of porn very... weird. First of all, while the positions sometimes look cool, we both agree that there's just no way it would be physically possible for us; secondly, the ones that are, we had tried long before I started watching porn.

From that perspective, I think that breaking out of the idea that sex is run-of-the-mill is important.

I've never watched pornography with DP, or read erotica containing it, but I was - quite independently - fantasizing about it no more than a year after I started masturbating. Not by men, but by a woman with toys. Men came into it later.

I think that maybe there is something to the idea that people are and can be influenced by ideas-not-their-own, and that some people will absorb certain cultural messages with those ideas. ("Hot sluts beg for cum on their face!" turns into "Men will like me if I let them cum on my face," etc.)

BUT, I think the solution to that is to teach self-esteem and sexual education early in life, both to boys and girls. If we teach girls how to distinguish the things they want from the things they think they should want, that goes far further than destroying the porn industry ever would. Same goes for boys. If we teach frank discussion, without all the silly giggly embarrassed-ness that tends to surround sex, I think the problem would shrink dramatically.

So I think that pushing sexual boundaries is awesome, in general. I think there are people that can't do it, out of fear or out of shame, and relieving them of that fear and shame should be our goal.

And I don't think it exactly meshes onto the idea of "power" that is usually meant in these conversations. A mentor has "power" over her protegée, but only in that experience is generally seen as a more powerful position than naivete. But she isn't wielding her power against the protegée; she's... donating it, sharing it.

And if the protegée takes that power and uses it to push and test her boundaries until she finds her comfort zone, then, well, success is achieved, and both the mentor and her protegée should, ideally, be joyful about it.

And I think that we're all both roles to everyone, or should be. That's why sharing experiences is important. To learn about others as students, and teach others about ourselves as mentors.

To me, anyway.

Feminists on sports?

2006-10-16T17:59:00.000-04:00

Does anyone know offhand if there are any feminists that have specifically dealt with issues relating to sports (and I don't mean necessarily the female athletes themselves getting paid less, less airtime, less sport options, but more... an actual analysis of what makes up sports)?

I think I'm phrasing myself badly, and I'm going to hit Google after dinner. But if anyone has links at hand or articles in mind, I'd love to see 'em.

Edit: Specifically, women participating in boxing. Yay in feminist books or nay? A little of both, I imagine, though it does seem to be skewed towards yay. What about other violent sports? Mixed-gender teams? Anyone?

Plato also enters into this somewhere. And yes, I have a point, it's just getting to it that I'm having the trouble with.

You Sound Like A MAN

2006-08-31T12:33:00.000-04:00

Here's that post that I kept promising to make...

You Sound Like A MAN

Really? Do I? Let's test your ability to identify real men - and real women - simply by the words coming out of their mouth.

Disclaimer: I have pulled these quotes from various sources. I've tried to keep away from quotes that might be easily identified ("I have a dream..."), but there's always the chance that you'll be able to say, "Hey! That's Bruce Willis!" or something like that.

These quotes, by the by, are all from cisgendered people - at least, as far as I know. Some are quotes from those I know personally; some are things I've found online. There's going to be variation, from personal to formal. I've tried to make sure there are between 50-100 words in each clip in order for you, gentle reader, to best determine the person's gender.

No webcheating!

aaaand....

BEGIN!

------

1. I'm not going to do a massive update of my life and how it's changed since my last post because that positively reeks of effort. That's not a road this LJer is going to be taking anytime soon. No sir! Instead I invite you, the reader, to figure out what's changed in the past nine months. By the way, you'll note that nine months and change is just long enough a span of time for me to have had a child and sold it on the black market for a tidy profit. Just saying.

2. In the run-up to Australian Prime Minister Howard's re-election, the Times noted that he had "made the alliance with Washington a key element of his tenure." The Times was hopeful that Australia would be as pathetic as Spain, noting that "with al-Qaida threatening reprisals for the country's support of the United States in Iraq — a war that most Australians opposed — is Australia poised to become the next Spain? Will it become the next country to abandon President Bush?"

3. What is physical attraction then, if not "how much I want to have sex with this person"? Maybe aesthetics? Yes, but looking at someone beautiful without considering the elements that make them human reduces them to a walking magazine ad - a beautiful object. And if you don't KNOW the other elements that make them more than a beautiful object (their compassion, their sparkling personality, their cutting wit, whatever), then you ARE reducing them to object status. Objectification.

4. I think there are more Black films being made now. The last time they were making this number of films was during the Black exploitation era. The challenge is how do you navigate this world where we're still relegated to those three ghettos. You don't see movies about Sojourner Truth or Matthew Henson or Black science fiction or a Black thriller. The studios say, We're not buying that. They say, do you have something with drugs or a rapper, something we can put Nelly in?

5. These are the sorts of books where I decide on one word over another based on which has a funnier sound in the mouth -- and let me tell you, it's a whole lot easier to scare people or make them cry than to make them laugh continually. These were the hardest books to write of the seventeen. That said, I think humour is a vital part of what makes us human and should be in everything. You can't have constant tension, constant horror, constant drama -- it's too emotional for the reader and a real drain on the writer as well. There has to be a release of tension.

6. I was born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1962 and moved to the United States in 1966. I grew up in the States and returned to Canada at age thirteen, moving to Toronto with my family. I have four sisters. I worked as an electrician for five years.

I work as a counselor with the Developmentaly Hadicapped now as well as write. I share five cats with Tanya Huff and a chihuahua she says is only mine. I make origami as a hobby and love reading books on English geography. My favorite toy is my riding lawnmower, and my favorite playmate is my God-daughter Holly.

7. To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?

8. It was pretty close...the man pulled me back though.

I got Craig and his girlfriend to come to my church picnic which was cool, but also a little awkward. I’m a Mennonite, but I have no way of telling Craig..."As cute as I find it, nuzzling your girlfriend is probably not the thing to do when in a church service."

I'm also on a hunt for whatever has been causing me breathing problems in my house. Every morning for the last week has been me waking up gasping with a lingering tightness in my chest that dissipates during the day.

9. Sometimes while I'm struggling to finish a book there are moments of fear and doubt. But that is true of thin books too. There are days where you hate everything you've done and days where it's the most brilliant thing you've done. I see it as part of the writing process. So far I'm still very enthused by the series and I will wrap it up in six books, so it won't last forever. It will be a massive story for certain. But with the cast I have and the direction I'm taking, it needs to be massive.

10. It came about in part because I had a real desire to de-mystify India. The India of the British Raj, of Maharajaz and beautiful Princesses surrounded by abject poverty just does not exist anymore. I wanted to make a film about contemporary, middle-class India, with all its vulnerabilities, foibles and the incredible, extremely dramatic battle that is waged daily between the forces of tradition and the desire for an independent, individual voice.

-----

So? What do you think? Stats will be in a seperate post, maybe on Monday.

Bisexuality and Mothers

2006-08-08T11:06:00.000-04:00

I've been lazy about collecting quotes for my big planned "You Sound Like a Man" post, so instead I will write about my bisexuality.

I know that there are people out there that are biphobic. In the gay community, in the straight community. After all, we're the bringers-of-disease, we're going to run off with a straight person and get married, we're promiscuous sluts that will cheat on you at the drop of a hat. If I were straight, I could give up 99.999999% of men and you'd never have to worry; if I were gay, 99.999999% of other women... but somehow, it eludes me - that capability to give up on 100% of all women and 99.999999% of all men (or vice versa).

I mean, it's just not possible.

...I know, intellectually, that people that believe this are out there. (One of the TO queer magazines recently had an article about it.) I'm pissed that it's out there, but - in some ways, selfishly - thankful that it's never really touched my life.

I figured out that I liked girls when I was about twelve. (I blame Sailor Moon.) Boys came shortly afterwards, and kinky after that (13, 14-ish). I had a pretty supportive online community that was made up mostly of other lesbian and bisexual girls, so there wasn't a lot of shaming going on. Overall, I was pretty comfortable with who I was, there.

I started coming out to friends around the same time - maybe a few months after figuring it out myself. I was prompted by two things: one, another friend coming out as bisexual, and two, having a massive crush on my best friend. My school friends were all supportive, too. In fact, I prompted a third friend of ours to come out (at least to me and the original comer-outer; I'm not sure if she ever told anyone else).

My best friend gently turned me down. (In fact, all through high school, best-friends-I-wanted-to-date was the norm. One was straight, one was bisexual but not interested in me at the right time [I was about a year too late], and one - the only guy - I dated for almost two years.)

I think the worst reaction that I got was a boy who went wide-eyed and pretended to back away from me in fear. I made fun of him, he figured out he was being an idiot, and that was pretty much the end of that. No other negative reactions, no slurs, no injury.

Family came next, in my mind: dad first, because I was always closer to dad. (It helped that my parents were divorced; dad got to shirk a lot of the nastier parts of being a parent, and so got a lot more of the affection. Even beyond that, though, we've always gotten along better.) This was a lot scarier than coming out to friends. Friends, you could always make more of; I only had my one dad. (Well, and my stepfather.)

He took it remarkably well, overall. Said, "Well, I've never been attracted to men, so I can't really tell you what it's like... but I still love you" (this was more in response to my fear, not 'I love you even though'.) He mentioned, briefly, that it might be a phase, but he didn't think it was likely.

Well, score. One parent out of three down (I didn't - don't - really care what my stepmother thinks.)

My mother... well, she was harder. I think at one point she must have found my love letter to my best friend, because she would bring it up at inappropriate times - say, in front of my extremely conservative grandmother ("why do you want to do a romantic horoscope? Is it for you and X?") or telling my sister that I was a lesbian.

This pissed me off a lot. Because it wasn't true. She was making assumptions about my sexuality without coming and talking to me about them. My mother - who had always been quite informative about sex - was suddenly being uncommunicative and talking about me behind my back, or throwing my words - words which she should have never seen, if she hadn't been snooping - in my face.

So I shut down. To this day, I haven't told my mother the truth; I've simply denied any untruths she utters, rather than correcting them. ("Your sister is a lesbian." "No, I'm not." Not: "Actually, I'm bisexual.") I figured - if she wants to know, really know, she'll ask.

This was compounded when - remember that boy that I mentioned earlier? The one I dated in high school (and first year university)? Well, he's bisexual too. And, after we broke up, he briefly dated a couple of guys. I mentioned this in passing to my sister - in front of my mother. "Are you saying he's gay?" "Well, he's bisexual."

Well, she nearly had kittens. For about a week afterward, in conversation, in e-mail - she told me he couldn't be bisexual, not if he hadn't had sex with boys.

Two things to note here: my mother was a virgin when she first married, and she was a sex-ed teacher for a while.

So I tried to point out to her the absolute ludicrousness of this position. We argued it in circles, round and round. No, she insisted: you had to have had sex with someone of the same sex to claim lesbianism/gayness or bisexuality. Despite the fact that straights didn't have to "prove" their sexuality.

She was especially angry that I'd told my sister that my ex was bi. After all, my sister was "only fifteen".

Not that I was 12 when I figured it out or anything. Not that my sex life - despite the fact that all my sexual experiences with girls have been less interesting than those with boys, and yet I still want to fuck girls - has confirmed what I knew at 12, 13, 14. I mean, it would be awful if my sister got the idea that being bisexual was normal, OK, good - maybe at a time when she would need to know that.

My sister knows, now. My mother? I'm probably going to wait until I'm officially moved out of her house, because I couldn't stand the heartache of passing her every day in the hall, or calling her for a pick-up, and hearing the underlying refrain of badwrongsinfulshamefulterribleawfulhorriblehowcouldyoubethisway?

It's the only real incidence of biphobia I've experienced - and it comes from my mother.

A little bit more about me.

2006-08-04T18:00:00.000-04:00

Since people are taking the time to come on over and take a look at this, I figured I'd let you all know a bit more about me.

I am a suburban white girl that just finished four years of university at the University of Waterloo, and I'm going back to school next year for a post-graduate diploma from Humber College. I have a degree in English with a minor in Psychology (primarily focused on sexuality, abnormal psychology/clinical psychology, and social psychology).

I am also bisexual, kinky, atheist, and female (although I don't really think of myself as a girl/woman). Dating a guy, currently, though anyone who talks to me for five minutes knows I'm bi.

So in some arenas, quite privileged; in others, not so much (although, to be perfectly honest, I seem to have personally sidestepped a lot of the shit that others seem to catch in the bisexual-kinky-atheist-female arenas, thankfully).

In terms of feminism and what I know about it... aside from one philosophy course on "Gender Issues", I have little formal learning in the area. At the time of the class (in first year), I most closely identified with "i-Feminism", although nowadays it doesn't cover what I believe. I'm closer to the sex-positive, socialist feminist ideas. (To be perfectly honest, I prefer the term egalitarian, simply because of the fact that oppressions feed into one another; therefore, bringing people to an equal place is my goal.)

Politically, as a Canadian, I fall somewhere between the Liberals and the NDP. I think all our political parties need to look harder at what's going on with our Indian (First Nations) communities, and at what's going on with our minorities in general - despite the fact that it seems otherwise on the surface, Canada still has a problem with economically promoting (or at least supporting) White Anglo men, whereas (for example) Iraqi men are making about 63% of the average income, and some of the women (especially in our Indian (South Asian) communities) are making even less. And, of course, women across the board are still not economic competitors with men, save in select few circumstances (Iraqi women, I believe some of the East Asian groups).

I am a perennial worrywart.

I thought for a while that I was trans, but I have come to the conclusion (for now, anyway) that I am mentally "not"/androgynous (inasmuch as I can be, anyway). I'd be the sort of person that would gleefully buy pills that let you change physical sex for a certain amount of time.

I like to think that my parents were pretty good about not forcing gender roles on me - I wore blue and black (still love them), played with trucks and robots, was a monkey at the jungle bars, loved plays and musicals, and excelled at most of the arts in school. (I pissed my mother off once by telling her I hate math and science. No one ever told me girls were bad at it or that I shouldn't like it; in fact, all my science and math teachers save three were female (out of twenty-two). I just hate both subjects, with some specific category exceptions.) Nothing in my past strikes me as particularly forcing one way or another.

I love reading, so if anyone out there has recommendations for books I should be reading - well, hand 'em out; I can't promise I'll get to them any time soon, but I'll keep it on my list!

I'm also a roleplayer (in the non-kinky sense).

I think that's pretty well everything that people might want to know. So. If it's not, ask; I'm generally open about myself.

Next post: either my one major (ongoing) experience of queer oppression - from my mother; or a "test" based on antiprincess' recent question: what, exactly, does a man write like? or a woman? or a genderfluid person, or a trans man or woman? And can you tell, just based on reading?

I'm gonna collect up a few quotes - I figure fifteen or so - and it'll be a game of "spot the man"...

First Posts, Necessary Evils

2006-08-03T11:41:00.000-04:00

Hey all. This is my first post, put here because, well, I don't want this to look like some abandoned blog (which I hope it won't become, but my track record... well).

Mostly, this will be me writing about feminism stuff, mostly that I read about on the three blogs to the right (more will be added as I start branching out).

...ta!