Thursday, August 23, 2007

TMI: Queer Kids, No?

(said to the tune of the Arcade Fire's No Cars Go)
Ok that is probably the worst title of one of these posts ever but I couldn't think of a better one, and I think it fits with the topic of tonight so I'll let it ride. Anyway I really hate how "important" I make this little things and how involved they are. Just to get in the right mood to write this I have to sit in a certain place, turn the lights down to a certain level, get moderately tipsy (and usually watch Ugly Betty but I've already seen tonight's like three times.) But these are one of those important things I need to do for my own sanity and also for you, beloved yet mythic reader, to get to know me a little better and understand in a small way, how I tick; I think that's what I really want more than anything with my friends and people who are important to me, for them to know me truly.
Ok here we go. I first thought of this topic yesterday when I was checking my bookmarks and saw that I had bookmarked a Youtube channel. It was the channel for Chris Crocker and I think I saved it some time ago because I thought he was gorgeous and also transgendered, and of course that's my one trick/seeming obsession. So I watched a few of his videos and, I don't know, I was sort of annoyed and irritated. I'm not sure if it's his personality or style or whatever but I was thinking I was "over" and never really comfortable with the "faggy" ultra femme big city fully self assured hipster style gay guy. I don't know why but...I think that's what I'm going to try to figure out here. I'm not sure if it's because at times it seems to be a caricature, or the appropriation of black women's slang (you know what I'm talking about) but I've never felt too comfortable with it. Perhaps because I feel it is kind of a stereotype of the "flaming queer" that "mainstream" America disapproves of and so in a way that image , that image of the promiscuous drug fueled club lifestyle, is a hindrance to equality and tolerance, but that can't be everything. Maybe it's just the lisp, I have no idea where it comes from. ( And about Chris, apparently he lives in a really small town in the South, and is not just a flamboyant Big City queer. It's all in this article, which really made me take a second look at him and sort of marvel. I couldn't even imagine how it hard it must be to be that out in such a small and conservative community, when I at times freak out and I live in L.A.)
Looking back at my childhood, because everything that's fucked up about anyone can be found when they were kids, but I remember (and I feel like I've told this before) my very first crush or person I was drawn to was Julia Roberts when she had almost a bowl cut and was wearing a jean jacket, so maybe I've always been drawn to the androgyne, or the pretty femme boy. Maybe it was because I spent a few years growing up, in the religious background of my mom and the avoidance of any outward sign of being different or feminine. Even know, when my mom is tolearting me being a girl after I came out to her she still sort of freaked out at the thought I may date a boy, so I guess her bias has seeped into my mind. I know in my mind I've always been femme but I feared letting that show. But everytime I've been in a gay club or whatever, at least before, there was always the idea that I was aggressive and dominant in terms of who would hit on me, which is the opposite of me sexually and so I felt jealous that I couldn't be tiny/tanorexic and obviously femme (though times change.) Maybe it was the fear of being thought of as different that affects me, though that is such a ludicrous notion now. Maybe it was because at the time I felt some pleasure in being the queer kid and I wanted to be the only one, as if my sexuality made me cooler, but only if no one else possessed it. Or maybe it's because they have such good skin and their makeup is better than mine. Once I've gotten to know them they've been good people but that initial recalcitrance, my perception of a party life I guess is hard to overcome. But I don't know I think it's how they may self identify, like if they self identify as a gay man then there's a bit of distance but once they identify themselves as transgendered then I'm far more likely to like them no matter what. Maybe it's because t that point there is more of a shared connection that I don't necessarily feel with gay guys, which I've never really thought of myself as. And I'm, in the stage where gay guys are really not into me because I wear dresses and have breasts and exude none of the masculinity in which they desire. I've never been so comfrotable with guys making out, though I'm not comfortable with most pda, perhaps because each act of love is an act of rebellion, but gay porn never did it for mem though that could be because I couldn't picture myself in that fantasy. I don't think I'm a self hating queer, as I've told so many people real lesbians, the kind who don't make out in bars or whatever just to satisfy their need for attention or to turn on guys, but real ones, have on the whole been the best people I know, but then I think about transsexuality and what I want. I would love if I was able to go completely stealth and be universally thought of as having ovaries, instead of in the slightly ambiguous place where I am pre surgeries. And maybe my transsexuality is an excuse or an actual repression of thoughts of being a boy who likes boys, an attempt to fit into where society says I should fit, in it's own very twisted way. But then I think of my rhetoric of wanting to break down gender and advance a more fluid notion of it, but I in some way am supporting the thousands year old and predominant binary system. Am I betraying the idea of LGBT pride by being what I am? I guess wanting a to be in a relationship with a guy makes me a conformist, that my wanting a vagina makes me a slave to the system; if I could go out with a little bit of stubble and still wear a dress and not give a fuck about reaction then I'd probably be freer than I believe I am, but I want that acceptance of "fitting in" and conforming to some idea of gender norms. And maybe that's why those flamboyant bois cause such turmoil within me; the fact that they can live so free within themselves and obvious that they don't fit into what society wants gendered or sexually and they don't care, that I'm just jealous. I know I'm going to hate this in the morning because I got drunker than I had planned and so my thoughts have muddled and this exercise failed. But, did you understand any of this? I'll see if I can recap; the femme bois who are prettier than me I don't think I like because maybe I have self hating issues, they hold back the cause of equality, I'm jealous or I am secretly all about a heteronormative society. But I'm still confused because I'm not sure how me possibly being "in love" with Hubby and wanting to marry her ties into that.
Ugh, that sucked. And I was so happy with how all my posts turned out today.

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