Fembot

The Future of Fembot

2012-11-08T23:10:00.000-08:00

old meme is old

I hate to be so wishy-washy, but I honestly don't know what direction Fembot is going in. If you're wondering why I haven't been posting as much, then we're in the same boat. It's not like things aren't happening in the world. It's not like there's a dearth of problems or scandals or cute animals, and I don't anticipate the awkward misery well of my personal life going dry in the near future. (Though I have to admit things are doing okay: I'm employed, in school, and considering getting a turtle who will permit me to massage his wrinkly little neck.) I could make the excuse that I'm insanely busy, what with being a grad student and working part-time, but that would be a lie because in terms of boi-hours spent on productive things, I'm less busy than I've been since...well, ever, honestly.

But the interest isn't there, and I'm just kind of sick of all of it. I hate this format and my shitty design; I hate the news cycle and the static of pointless & limitless debate swarming around it; and I'm frying my brain (and going into sickening debt) to spend my energy on other kinds of analysis for a grade. It's sort of a bummer, really, because there are a lot of things happening right now that could possibly be of interest to Fembot readers, things having to do with gender & sexuality, things having to do with sex and kink, things regarding my transition and mental health, long rants about how generally obnoxious, homogenous, and unintelligent creative writing grad students are (quelle surprise), etc.

There's a lot, but I can tell that I'm sorta burned out. I feel overexposed, and saturated to my limit with (my mostly inept management of) the internet, politics, ecumenical unhappiness, and having an attention-span so desiccated by Tumblr and Netflix that I can't focus long enough to write a short post about taking a break, but for legit this time, people. There's also the unshakeable feeling that I am becoming obsolete. In terms of grasping technology, I've usually been able to bring myself up to about average if I have a genius to walk me through the process of, for example, downloading music. But things are changing so quickly, and the presentiment of becoming an anachronism before my time is making me sort of internet-agoraphobic. Small children pity my inability to use even the simplest iPhone games, and the elderly have welcomed me among their fold as a conquering champion, able to update a Facebook status with one hand.

Whatever is causing this fatigue and self-consciousness, it's taken a toll. I'm not saying there won't be updates from time to time, but my internet addiction has ironically made it more difficult for me to curate Fembot. Could be that it's just hir time, though, you know? We had a good run. Everything comes to an end. I just feel empty, you know?

The Daily Mail Roundup: Maybe it's time for a nap

2012-10-25T11:26:00.001-07:00

YES

I give pink wedding dresses a pass, but that's easy for me to say because I'm not allowed to get married.

Maybe "defying" animal rights activists is the best she can do right now, but I feel like Gaga isn't giving it her all.

I don't think anyone is going to see this, anyway, but January Jones would be a much better Grace Kelly than Nicole Kidman. I mean, come on.

Everything Katy Perry wears is horrifying.

This one's a pretty serious contender for most pointless article of 2012.

At first glance, I thought Dustin Hoffman and his son were holding hands and I was all, This is what America's all about, folks. I was quickly disillusioned.

Rihanna IS Tumblr.

If Idris Elba was James Bond I'd actually have a reason to see one of those movies.

Street Harassment Redux

2012-10-17T11:27:00.000-07:00

As a runner, as a person with a visibly disabled sibling, as a person read by everyone as either female or a fag, street harassment has always impacted me (as it does most people who aren't white or male). Admittedly, living in Davis, CA, for a few years during college made me soft; living there, I didn't have to think about street harassment very much. It's the kind of town where you can walk around at night by yourself in a short skirt and feel safe, for the most part. Of course, my experience is limited by my ability and my whiteness, among other things: I can only speak for my own personal experience with street harassment.

Last night, my sister and I had a very long discussion about street harassment. Both of us have recently moved from small college towns to huge urban areas. Neither of us have ever lived in a city before -- we literally grew up on a farm. Being n00bs to the metropolis, we're still building up our respective street harassment calluses. It may be a process that's never really complete, but at least we can vent to one another about it. We can commiserate on a lot, but it's curious to see how our treatment has changed since I "looked" like a straight woman. I guess it's curious to see how similar it remains, too.

Most of the static I get these days has to do with being visibly queer, with being a faggot or a dyke, with needing a penis to turn me back into "a real woman" (HAWHAWHAW IF ONLY THEY KNEW). My sister's follows the more stereotypical pattern of attractive-woman-walks-down-the-street-in-a-skirt-that-dirty-slut-how-dare-she. This isn't to say that street harassment has anything to do with how attractive your harasser finds you, or that your vulnerability to it always corresponds to what you're wearing, but I think assholes would find it easier to explain away my sister's harassment as "compliments," and she is certainly no stranger to victim-blamers who say that, well, maybe she shouldn't have been looking that easy in the first place.

All of this isn't to say that she hasn't dealt with some unambiguously bloodcurdling shit. Still, dudebros are surprisingly creative in defense of rape culture. I once had to humiliate a dude for grabbing my friend's ass, and his argument was that it was okay because "it wasn't sexual." I regret not physically assaulting him so I could argue that it was okay because "it wasn't violent."

this is why i want to join an ass-kicking collective/affinity group so bad

My sister and I also discussed how frequently street harassment bleeds over from public spaces to more intimate settings. For example, I'm dealing with a neighbor in my complex who gets his jollies, it seems, from intimidating me: from following me closely when I come home at night, from watching me from his window and then opening his door at the same time I'm trying to get into mine to ask me how I'm doing (?), from laughing when I tell him to leave me alone and then continuing to shadow me, from loudly running behind me but stopping abruptly when I turn around, as if he's been "caught." A good friend of mine was stalked by her roommate's ex-boyfriend, and it got so bad that she had to change all of her numbers, file a restraining order, and move to the other side of town for her own safety. Not only do men have the street, we were frustrated to acknowledge, but they can intrude on you where you live if they want to, and with limited repercussions.

I am deeply privileged to admit that for the first time in my life, I am always scared to walk home from the bus stop at night. I'm scared to go across the street to the liquor store for juice after dark. I'm scared to wear anything even remotely revealing, and have been doing more to try to pass than I would ever be motivated to be otherwise, simply because I don't want people to see me as a target. I have pepper spray and lots of unmitigated aggression to protect myself, but that's about it. I've never felt more vulnerable.

Sticky Valentine's Kink Awakening: "I am not my body, or how I choose to destroy it."

2012-10-10T11:33:00.003-07:00

Guest blogger Sticky Valentine was gracious enough to share with Fembot bout her personal relationship with kink. I am proud to publish her words here, and I recommend that everyone with an interest in kink, BDSM, and self-injury take a few minutes to read this!

There's a scene in the film Secretary where the protagonist, Lee, is interrupted by her boss (whom she has also begun to develop a D/s relationship with) as she is about to engage in SI. Their exchange is as follows:

Why do you cut yourself, Lee?
I don't know

Is it that sometimes the pain inside has to come to the surface, and when you see evidence of the pain inside you finally know you're really here? Then when you watch the wound heal it's comforting, isn't it?

I...that's a way to put it.

I'm going to tell you something. Are you ready to listen? Yes. Are you listening? You will never, ever cut yourself again. Do you understand? Have I made that perfectly clear? You're over that now. It's in the past.
Yes. Never again.

Okay. Now, you know what I want you to do? I want you to leave work early. You're a big girl. A grown woman. Your mother doesn't need to pick you up every day. I want you to take a nice walk home, in the fresh air, because you require relief. Because you won't be doing that anymore, will you?

No, sir.

When I first saw this film years ago I was a freshman in college and had little interest in or understanding of BDSM and no personal experience with SI. Nonetheless, this scene really stuck a chord. I remember the hollow sinking feeling in my stomach as I watched it. My eyes teared up and I felt a profound and confusing sense of identification with this character who was nothing like me, or so I thought. Turns out it resonated deeply with parts of myself that I wouldn't discover for several years...
I'm a white middle class able-bodied cisgendered heteroflexible woman. I'm also kinky. I've identfied as a sub for several years, and recently I'm beginning to identify as somewhat of a masochist. Even more recently I realized I have some sadistic impulses as well, but I'm not sure about switching. And whatever - these things are fluid so I try not to get too hung up on rigid labels. Kink is just as complex as queer.

When I first started to realize that I was into submission, it brought on a pretty major identity crisis. As a radical feminist, it took a great deal of introspection and soul searching to reconcile my submissive and feminist identities. While BDSM is gaining more acceptance in feminist and queer circles, it still tends to be denigrated as inherently oppressive by mainstream feminism. I also found I wasn't able to talk about the subject with many of the people in the various radical circles I organize in, which tend to have an under-developed understanding of queer and sexual politics and identities.

At first my new found submissiveness seemed to contradict my personal identity as well as my political identity. In my normal daily life I'm confident and assertive - some might even say dominant. I hide my weakness and insecurities and I feel the need to always be in control, especially of myself. It's exhausting, and I've come to realize that I want a space where I can give that up and hand the reins to someone else. I want a space where I can allow myself to be vulnerable and dependent. Embracing and indulging in my submissive desires had provided me with this space.
I also engage in self-injury. In many ways I fall far outside the stereotype of elf-injurers. While SI tends to be associated with teenagers, my SI behavior didn't start until I was in my late 20's. I had what might be considered a quintessentially "normal" childhood and adolescence (though I think the sad truth is the level of privilege and support and general wonderfulness that I experienced for most of my life is actually quite abnormal when compared to others on a global or national scale). I don't have any major past trauma or history of abuse. While I've certainly struggled and continue to struggle with body image issues, I've never had an eating disorder, and in my mid 20's I had a bit of an existential crisis and rebirth and emerged with a healthy self-confidence that may border on narcissism. I really do love my body. Seriously. So why would I want to hurt or scar it? And (how) does my SI behavior relate to my interest in BDSM? The answer to that is tremendously complex and it's something I'm only just beginning to explore, but I'm going to do my best to articulate some of these nascent ideas here...
For one thing, I have a darkness. That's what I call it, anyway. There is no name for it that I can think of, at least not in English. I won’t attempt to explain that darkness fully here because it’s complicated and amorphous and I am only just beginning to understand it myself, but it’s a bit like a wild animal thrashing in a cage, and a bit like the slow deep burn of wood to ash. For much of my life I've tried to repress it and to hide it, but it motivates pretty much everything I do. I first started to consciously realize that pain or suffering or whatever was something I needed - a part of my darkness - a few years ago. Ever since I was a child I have been fascinated by dark things. I was part of a program for "gifted" (which more or less translated to privileged) kids starting in elementary school and we'd do yearly research projects on a topic of our choosing. While other students were studying the US presidents or manatees or whatever, I was exploring the holocaust, the colonization and destruction of the Mayan civilization, the genocide of Native Americans, and the AIDS crisis. This is partly because I have always been a humanitarian and activist at heart and I knew these issues were important and wanted to learn from them. But it was also because I have some morbid fascination with pain and suffering, and studying these things allowed me to somehow experience other people's pain and suffering in a kind of voyeuristic, vicarious way. Throughout my life I have found ways to do this - to cultivate these dark feelings - sometimes through others and sometimes by creating it for myself.
A few years ago I started having panic attacks brought on by mounting pressures in my personal and professional life. Without going into details, I'll just say that I'd been repressing things for a long time, and when I suddenly started to realize this and deal with everything I'd been holding back all at once, it was (and still is) incredibly overwhelming. Sometimes on a bad day I freak out and get into this state where l'm outrageously sad or angry or both, to the point where I feel like I'm going to burst. Literally. My breathing becomes difficult and I end up hyperventilating or sobbing uncontrollably. It's pretty much the worst feeling in the world, and when it happens I feel totally trapped in it - like it's never going to end. During one of these episodes a few years back, I was trying to calm myself down and realized that without being conscious of it I had started to dig my fingernails into my wrist. Immediately and almost instinctually, my breathing slowed and I felt more in control. A few weeks later when I had another panic attack, I remembered this and this time I did it intentionally - dug my nails into my skin to regain the sense of clarity and stability that seems forever lost when I have one of these episodes.
Eventually this turned into a pattern. I still have panic attacks from time to time, and I still fight the urge to hurt myself when I do, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. I've found other activities that give me a similar feeling of release and control - I have a good cry and allow myself to forget that I have neighbors and scream and wail, or punch my pillows and mattress until I've exhausted myself, or take my anger out on someone who deserves it like the asshole who pinched my ass as I walked past him a few weeks ago (by the time I was done yelling at him he looked like he was about to cry - doesn't get much more cathartic than that!). But on a bad day, when these alternative strategies are not enough to quiet my sadness and rage, I turn to the only foolproof strategy I know - I pinch and scratch my skin until the pain drowns out everything else. I have half-moon scars on my wrists, forearms and highs, some so faded they are nearly invisible and some fresh and dark.
My SI behavior and it's physical manifestations are deeply embarrassing and not something I want to draw attention to. This is not a "cry for help" - it's a way of trying to help myself. The physical pain diverts attention form emotional and psychological pain. It gives me something to focus on and provides a release. It makes me feel something other than mental anguish. Most importantly, it helps me regain a sense of control. And while this behavior has been a coping mechanism for dealing with very difficult and painful things, it's also made me realize that I have some rather self-destructive tendencies that exist regardless of what I am going through in my life. Beyond the utilitarian purpose it serves, there's another reason I find satisfaction in SI - I like the pain. It's part of that darkness that has always been there and that seems so intrinsic to my nature and my very self.
So I've spent a lot of time thinking about this need for pain and self-destruction, and I realized that in the context of the right D/s relationship with the right person, I could potentially experience the freedom and release that comes from that pain in a way that feels more controlled and safe and healthy; in a way that will make me happy and fulfilled as opposed to helping me barely keep my head above water. My submissive desires - my wanting to be controlled and vulnerable and exposed, to be made to beg and plead and suffer before I receive my reward - all of this is related to those same feelings I experienced as a child and have experienced throughout my life. While I very much want someone to create these feelings in me, I know it needs to be someone who can make me feel this way while at the same time assuring me that I am respected and cared for - from someone who sees it as an act of love. If you're not familiar with or interested in D/s, I imagine this might sound kind of crazy. Our cultural norms surrounding romance and intimate relationships quite clearly dictate, "thou shalt not hurt those that thou loves." But I'm beginning to realize that for me, pain and love may actually go hand in hand.
Unlike the slow and painful process of discovering that I'm a sub, the realization that I'm also a masochist came suddenly and all at once. I recently met a man who is warm, funny, supportive and kind. He's also a dominant and a bit of a sadist. In getting to know one another we found that we share many interests, both kink and vanilla. I've told him about my self-injuring and he's responded with concern, but also acceptance and support, and we've discussed the relationship between my SI and my interest in BDSM. During a recent conversation, suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere he said that he imagined I'd be beautiful when I cry. I instantly knew that this was something I wanted - something I crave. I'd never really considered pain to be connected to my submissive desires, but this statement made me realize that I was intensely turned on by the idea of being hurt by someone else. But there's more to it than that. Here's the thing - I hate crying in front of other people. I hate it because nothing makes me feel more vulnerable, and being vulnerable is perhaps my greatest fear. But in the right context, it is also what I want most. So when this person said he wanted to see me at my most vulnerable, and that he would not only accept me in this state but find beauty in it, it was a transformative experience.
In working through all of this, I was continually reminded of that scene in Secretary - it's stayed with me over the years and I've often thought about it in relation to my sub identity and my SI behavior. My feelings on the scene are mixed. The film is a piece of Hollywood fiction, so of course its narrative is reductive and lacks the nuance and complexity that characterizes the real life experiences of those who engage in BDSM and/or SI. I doubt that many self-injurerers would simply quit cold turkey when commanded to do so - in fact I find that notion rather obnoxious and potentially harmful, as it's far more likely to result in shame and secrecy around one's SI behavior than in stopping it. Additionally, the reasons that people engage in SI are far more diverse than the simplistic explanation offered by Lee's boss, which she passively accepts as an accurate depiction of her own experience. But while everyone who engages in SI does so for different and very complex reasons, I think that for many of us it boils down to two things: release and control.
My own SI behavior provides relief from emotional and psychological pain and allows me to maintain a sense of control when it feels like everything is going off the rails. But like I said earlier, being the one and only person who is responsible for maintaining that control (and providing that release) is exhausting and overwhelming, and so there was something comforting about this scene as well. I remember the palpable feeling of relief that Lee experiences when she is commanded never to cut herself again. The agonizing and exhausting need to control and contain had been taken out of her hands, and she no longer had to carry that weight and responsibility all by herself. When I heard those words, "I bet you'd be beautiful when you cry, I experienced the same sense of relief.
He gets my darkness because he has it, too, albeit in a different and I hope complimentary way. It goes much deeper and is far more complex than this, but the bottom line is that he desires to inflict pain and I desire to have pain inflicted upon me. While we agree that's it's wonderful to find another person who understands and embraces these desires, we both struggle with them as well. While we've accepted our sadist/masochistic tendencies, neither of us are entirely comfortable with them. He doesn't fully understand where his sadistic impulses come from, and sometimes it's hard for him to reconcile them with the rest of his sweet and thoughtful personality. And while I've made peace between my feminism and my submission, this masochism stuff is relatively new and still freaks me out from time to time. I sometimes question whether the need to give/receive pain is some intrinsic part of myself or some deviant aberration, whether there is something "wrong" with me and whether these desires are "healthy." But the more I reflect on these things, the more I feel at peace with all of it. I still get tripped up from time to time, but in general I believe that I'm a pretty happy and healthy person in spite of (or perhaps because of) my darkness and all that comes along with it, including my affinity for pain, my interest in BDSM and my SI behaviors.
I recognize that SI and even BDSM can be dangerous and harmful, and I take steps to make sure that I stay safe. I place a high priority on communication and trust in BDSM play. I make sure that I articulate my needs, desires, and boundaries clearly and don't play with anyone who doesn't demonstrate that they understand and respect them (and me). I am actively working to improve the issues in my life that contribute to my panic attacks and self-injury. I see a therapist, which has been helpful in understanding why I have these feelings and what I can do to change them. Outside of therapy, I devote time to self-reflection and self-care. I try to be reflexive in monitoring my SI behavior and the emotions and experiences that contribute to it. This is obviously not the case for everyone, but for me the benefits of indulging my masochistic desires and occasionally my SI urges far outweigh the costs. And while my proclivity toward masochism and SI are certainly significant parts of my self, they do not define me. To quote rock n' roll, "I am not my body, or how I choose to destroy it."

The Daily Mail Roundup: Souls and Junk

2012-10-08T09:55:00.002-07:00

The Kaiser will devour what's left of your soul, J-Lo.
When my sister told me that Arnie's autobiography was named Total Recall, I laughed hysterically until I shit my pants and she held me while I wept because that's awesome.
This outfit isn't inappropriate for a fifteen-year-old, but it is ugly.
Gaga's got a lot wrong with her, but I absolutely cringe to see her - or anyone - mocked for their body size. I sort of envision her snapping under the pressure, Britney-style, and coming away from it all not giving a flying fuck what people think. Her career would stabilize, and I think it would make her happier. Another way to revive her image would be if she just dropped a deuce onstage instead of doing all that blood stuff. Because that's shocking.
Also, is she starting to morph into Lana Del Rey?
Twenty years ago, would anyone have ever thought that Matthew "What I like about high school girls" McConaughey would fall into the Christian Bale school of extreme acting?
When Kristen Stewart finally realizes she's gay for me, her life will be a lot better than it's been lately. Just sayin.
What do you think Big Ang thinks about in those dark, lonely moments right before she falls asleep?
Can you ship a couple so hard it kills you?
I have one word for you, Justin Bieber: junkified.

Brainstorm re: the ugliness of this blog

2012-10-07T16:09:00.002-07:00

I should announce that there is a contest and whoever designs an actually pretty blog format will be the hysterically happy recipient of one (1) of the following:

Two (2) handies at any time and place you choose. [Expiration date: one month from end of contest, so you can't hold them over my head. Also, I don't take direction so keep your commentary to yourself]
Three (3) hugs if any length and intensity that you can stomach. I don't think I smell bad, but I dont' think I smell amazing, either, so, you know, caveat emptor.
One (1) dinner made from ingredients taken entirely from the Walgreens a block away from my apartment and/or the liquor store across the street. These may be chosen by you, but I'm already forecasting booze and lollipops for desert.

I hope somebody wins because then my blog doesn't have to be a hideous garbage nightmare. So, yeah, inundate me with your proposals and comments but don't hurt my feelings just because I can't design for shit.

On Passing As Cis & Heterosexual

2012-10-01T21:07:00.001-07:00

So I had a nightmare last night that someone implied that I was straight.

This dream person said it in a joking way, and of course in every joke is a little kernel of truth. Or perhaps they were only trying to be passive aggressive and make me feel bad. I don't know what their motivation was.

They got the message across, in any case. The anxiety this assertion caused me, this accusation that I was straight and trying to hide it from people, was enough to make this dreamlet the centerpiece of a tableaux of my nightly worry-wartlings. It's funny, since this dream was the inverse of the sorts of sexuality anxieties I had as a teenager.

Being defensive of my sexuality, which in my case is linked pretty closely with my gender (however and whatever that may be), is something that ebbs and flows depending upon the kinds of people I'm dating. That is, I more or less don't feel like I have to prove my queerness if I am dating a queer person or people. It's sort of the same principle as someone who's queer on the downlow: dating a cis person of the "opposite" gender is a good way to throw people off your scent, so to speak. (What do you call a beard for secretly straight people? A goatee?) For some reason, I feel like I have to worker harder to demonstrate that I am not straight, as if that's something that needs demonstrating.

Maybe it's because I feel uncomfortable with the cis- & hetero-passing privilege that comes from, for example, dating a cis guy. My ability to pass, which for means being read as being of ambiguous gender at this point in time, is pretty limited (especially because my binder is being a total dick right now); it only becomes more so if I am viewed as romantically involved with a cis man. Half of all of this has to do with my issues with codependency -- but it also has to do with how we are defined by our sexual/romantic partners.

Note: I understand that "passing" is a complex term. When I talk about "passing" as my own gender, I mostly mean not being singled out for it.

Part of this discomfort is from being read the wrong way, I imagine; part of it, though, is the discomfort that comes from recognizing one's own privilege, especially when it is put into contrast with others' lack thereof. That's my own thing to deal with, and of course the fact that I feel conflicted about recognition is indicative of my own entitlement. Which isn't to say that I want to be recognized as queer, or even as female, most of the time. This is for safety reasons: I've only just moved to Oakland and I'm still adjusting to living not only in an urban area, but in an urban area in which going a day or two without being hollered at on the street is uncommon.

I guess I just wish I could have my cake and eat it, too. I mean, if I'm gonna get yelled at and get dirty glances for looking like a "dyke" or a "faggot" when I'm walking down the street by myself, I wish people wouldn't assume that I'm straight if I'm making out with what appears to be a cis dude. It's a small thing but, yeah.

/this has been a post

Happy Monday, Daily Mail Readers!!!!

2012-10-01T08:51:00.000-07:00

The older I get, the more I appreciate Xtina for her "fuck you" attitude. It's refreshing as hell. Still, I'm p bored of her derivative new video.
"Hey Girl, you're actually my mom so it would be more appropriate for me to say, Hey Mom."
Side boob has always been shorthand for vengeance
So, this model appears to be in black face? Classy as usual, Gaultier. Also, thematically this concept is really boring and shitty.
Body shaming sucks but if you're going to do it, do it right: "more portlier?" Wevs, Stephen Moyer, you're Vampire Bill.
Yeah, yeah, we get it, Stanley Tucci, you're straight.

aint that the truth

Isn't it funny how the world works? [TW: for eating disorders, transphobia/cissexism, misogyny]

2012-09-27T20:10:00.002-07:00

One of my first conscious interactions with a trans* person involved me being a cissexist shit. This person identified as male when I met them, and I found the time to come down from my mountaintop of importance to personally disagree with their identity. Feminist Fembot, who was the kind of shithead who read Steinem (and, indeed, everything I got my hands on, it seems) completely uncritically, really and truly thought this person could come to terms with what I saw as their femaleness once they "got over" what I had diagnosed as a severe case of internalized misogyny.

Dr. Fembot, Asshole Extraordinaire.

"If you could just recognize how beautiful it is to be a woman," I said to them. "What if you imagined vaginal penetration as vaginal envelopment, instead? You know, something positive, empowering?" Cissexist, reductionist bullshit like that. I'm not proud to admit it now, but I was one of those people, however well-meant I was at the time; a person so hypocritical, ignorant, unimaginative, and intrusive that I thought it was acceptable to make myself the authority on someone else's very essence.

Isn't it funny how the world works? At that time, I genuinely believed I knew more about this person's body than they did, and that any self-loathing and dysphoria that they had could be explained away with second-wave sound bytes and undergrad casuistry. If you read Fembot with any regularity, you'll know I strive to be anything but that kind of person these days.

Isn't it funny how the world works? Now I relate more to that trans* person than I do with the Fembot who challenged them. The me of the time took for granted that she was going to work through her eating disorder as a straight woman, however uncomfortable those identities felt to her. It's been almost four years since that conversation, and while I consider myself much improved (and in my better moments, think of myself as being in recovery), it's days like today that remind me that I'm still stuck in the blood & gristle machine of disordered eating, depression, and dysphoria. And I've been trying to avoid all that body-positivity stuff, especially the stuff targeted towards womyn, because as a result it just doesn't work for me. It feels unnatural, and it always has, to try to base my self-acceptance on loving myself as a woman. Because I'm not one. It makes about as much sense as trying to work through your addiction to cigarettes by trying to realize your true elephant-ness, or whatever. That made sense, right? Right.

***Epilogue***

I went to the doctor last week and of course my medical history came up, and with it comes the questions about how I'm doing vis a vis the bulimia. The way doctors handle it tends to be gendered, which I find very interesting. Dude doctors, for instance, are always very stern and sort of detached when it comes up, probably because talking about eating disorders and Feelings is foreign and makes them uncomfortable. Lady doctors, on the other hand, tend to laugh at everything I say. I mean, yeah, when I've just used my devastating wit to crack a self-aggrandizing joke, laughter is obviously appropriate. But it's kind of weird to giggle when I say something like, "Yes, I'm eating," or "No, I don't want to kill myself." I mean, I don't hold it against them, or anything; I get stage fright myself. It's just, isn't it funny how the world works?

When I have the privilege to have this peachy fucking insurance through my school and have a doctor, my ED tends to get swallowed up into discussions about all my other health problems anyway. This means that after the preliminaries ("HEY DO YOU BARF UP YOUR DIN-DIN?"), my doctor establishes that my weight is stable and we move on to bigger, better things, like the uselessness of giving a slut like me the HPV shot. While I think I have as much of a handle on my ED as I'm going to get without purging my life of all stressors, responsibilities, financial obligations, and goals for a relaxing, 9-month stint in a tropical inpatient facility, I do kind of wish that they would be more thorough in their examination. Just because I'm not underweight, for example, doesn't mean I don't have a problem.

And that's what it always comes down to, by the way: maintaining my weight. As long as I don't weigh too little, it's all good. You haven't lost weight recently? NO FURTHER QUESTIONS, YER HONOR. I guess I should be grateful for the privacy, if not the implications of this kind of care. Whatever. I get care, and that's a lot more than most people have.

For lack of substance, The Daily Mail Roundup

2012-09-21T11:22:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm a grad student doing important grad studenty things, like absorb the adulation of my professors and colleagues, I'm having a harder time putting shit together for Fembot. Not that I don't have some creative irons in the fire (we're biding our time until we can get some kind of dastardly duo action going with Friction and Falsewood).

Is this a Liz Taylor biopic, or a Liza Minnelli retrospective? Either way, my panties are just soaking.

i luv u, lilo

This is definitely the cutest product-placement/ad for Scientology I've ever seen.
Paris Hilton issues apology for being a buttmouf. What self-respecting gay would accept it? Coincidentally, Rich Juzwiak over at Gawker did not.
I also don't wash my face in the morning, which is why I hear all the time that Salma Hayek and I could be twins.
The Duchess needs a makeover. End of story.
It's only "awkward" because of Shia's combover. ALSO: curious to see how Lars von Trier treats female sexuality and addiction in his newest movie, Nymphomania. With a title like that, I'm guessing it's going to be sensitive and thought-provoking.
Rumor has it that Anne Hathaway hated having to cut her hair for Les Mis, but I'm one of those people who thinks everyone on earth should have a pixie, so.

Queer, Genderqueer, and Trans* Hotties. Just Because.

2012-09-18T11:21:00.004-07:00

fuckyeahcutetranschicks

fuckyeahmtfs

shakedownworldwide

grrlyman

thank you, olympics

and the inimitable james darling

Eating disorders ARE addictions

2012-09-10T10:06:00.004-07:00

Which is why I wish they wouldn't put "clean and sober" in quotations in articles like these. The more we emphasize that EDs are addictions, like alcoholism or drug dependency, the more people will begin to understand that they are not gender/race/class/age/ability-specific. In my experience, using terms like "clean and sober" and "in recovery," for eating disorders either confuses people or prompts them to correct you. Because you can't be addicted to food, they tell you. They are experts on food because they eat it every day.

Nature Is Satan's Church: Antichrist (Spoilers)

2012-09-07T13:34:00.001-07:00

Willem Dafoe has the inimitable ability to combine sweet with sinister; you never know what he's going to do next, which makes him kind of a weird figure for a movie like Lars von Trier's Antichrist. Dafoe is a master at the nuanced, the unbalanced, the two-faced. But in this movie, his potential violence is more or less consistent, can more or less be relied upon to be a consequence rather than a catalyst. It's all very dependable, paternal, masculine. He is sort of the straight man of Antichrist, which is a nice departure for him. How's this for consistent: even with his cock spurting bloody semen, and with what looks like a miniature millstone hand-drilled through the flesh of his left ankle, he remains condescending, as if he is still in control of the situation.

It would make sense that a man this smarmy would appoint himself as stand-in for his suicidal wife's therapist, that against her wishes he would craft a treatment plan forcing her to "face" her inexplicable fears. Like teaching a child to swim by throwing her into the ocean, it will be traumatic but it may also be successful. If it isn't, though...well, not a lot of people would stick to their guns when their wife is upset enough to circumcise herself with a pair of rusty scissors.

modern love

I tried so hard to keep my womynist critique out of this, but when the word "gynocide" appears in a movie, let alone features prominently, you have no choice but to let your inner WMS major have her say. There's also the womyn's symbol in the title of the actual movie, so.

Gainsbourg, who plays the nameless, psychotic wife to Dafoe's nameless, mansplainer husband, fuck in the forest surrounding their creepy secluded cabin. As they fuck, the alabaster arms of womyn (presumably, the victims of past sexist violence) extend languorously from the labyrinthine roots surrounding them. These ghosts appear again in the epilogue when Dafoe is hiking on his mutilated leg back to civilization: an army of pale, gray-clad figures moving silently up and down the hillside. It seems probable enough that you could mistakenly cast only white people as main characters in your movie. After all, it's done in American cinema all the time, as a matter of course. But casting dozens of only white womyn for these ghosts could only be done intentionally. Maybe von Trier was concerned with maintaining his color scheme, a monochrome of virginal white and pitch black interrupted only occasionally by muddy blood, or the yellow of a rain slicker.

But back to the violence, how it is predictable with Dafoe's character but so very crazy and scary with Gainsbourg's. Her character is not only white but wealthy, or at least well-off enough that a dope-ass house, swanky hospitalization and in-patient care, and an admittedly decrepit cabin in the Twilight-esque forest wilderness do not pose any financial concerns of which the viewer is made aware. So we have here this psychotic, wealthy, nymphomaniac, skinny white lady who is unpredictable, a very familiar figure in film and literature. You've seen this before, from The Yellow Wallpaper to Keira Knightly in the execrable "A Dangerous Method" (if you can't convince me that Michael Fassbender spanking you is hot as all fuck, then you should stay away from theater forever, Knightley #truth). I doubt the exclusion of womyn of color in Antichrist was for consciously racist reasons - is it ever, asks the white person who is not part of a "legit" hate group? Does intent matter? YES IT DOES! - but even if their exclusion is not for "aesthetic" reasons, including womyn of color would threaten Gainsbourg's singularity. We note, of course, the blurring of all faces besides those of Dafoe, Gainsbourg, and their child, like the editor used to work on Cops and got a little trigger-happy.

Mental illness is intensely isolating, as we see with Gainsbourg's character. But this isolation is just a defense mechanism against external sources of isolation, from malaise born of a culture tolerating and celebrating gendered violence and misogyny. Which is why, to be quite honest, claiming power through the racist erasure of womyn who aren't white, and thereby creating a hierarchy of femininity and womynness with with white womyn at the top, is the only coping mechanism of Gainsbourg's character that I take issue with from an ethical standpoint. Did Dafoe deserve to have his dick broken with a block of wood? Probably not. But what do you expect when you take a grieving Mama WASP in to the woods, call her thesis "glib," and then try to mansplain her sadness away? #victimblaming101

I liked Antichrist as much as you can like something so evil and haunting, but for me it's kind of just White Feminism: The Movie. For better or for worse, Gainsbourg's character represents all the problems that white supremacy poses to womyn's movements. It's hard to see past that to a very disturbed lady dealing with the guilt of her son's death alongside the exhaustion of a lifetime of objectification, infantilization, and of being held up to standards of motherhood and femininity that none of us can ever meet.

I hate to be so unequivocal about this. I somehow doubt that Gainsbourg's purpose is to be a feminist cipher, but von Trier has the power to make you doubt your perceptions of reality as well as of, well, everything else. Maybe that's the point. I encourage you to read real reviews and watch the movie yourself and discuss it with your friends over non-alcoholic beverages with your tool box locked tightly shut. After that, you can watch this and cry yourself to sleep.

Have I been MIA? Yeah, I have.

2012-09-04T13:15:00.000-07:00

If you have noticed and missed me, you get a gold star. If you haven't and were fine either way, you can also have one of these imaginary gold stars. I don't choose favorites among my children.

A few small updates on my personal life, since it's why I've been so remiss:

I just got my financial aid refund this very morning and now that I have money feel so very energized and relieved. Gone are the days when I was a one boi coal-to-diamond rectal factory about $$$. I'll have to stress out about something else now. Until I'm broke again, anyway.
Funnily enough, the very first person I met during grad orientation at Mills College was the only out trans* womyn on campus (from what I gathered, she was a former student turned lecturer or administrator of some sort?). She introduced herself to me - I think because we were the only two people in our row - and was very talkative and friendly. After she told me she was trans* (I imagine I looked queer enough to be safe), I asked her opinion about the school's policy regarding admission of trans* folx, and particularly trans* womyn. She was, after all, the only out trans* womyn at Mills, although she assured me there were very likely those who were stealth. The school has a policy and a practice, she told me, the practice being, if you identify as a womyn, you may attend this womyn's only school. I didn't have the time to ask her many more questions, but found it very heartening to hear how welcomed she felt in the Mills community. Still, if the policy remains unchanged and there is only one out trans* feminine person on campus, it is obvious that there is still a huge discrepancy between trans* folks DFAB and trans* folks DMAB, let alone between cis and trans* folks.
Malcolm In The Middle on Netflix. Can't stop. Won't stop.
Hunting for a job. Have had almost zero callbacks from literally millions of emails, calls, and resume/CV submissions. I've begun to think that there is a picture of a clown hidden somewhere in the .PDF of my resume, because that's the only reason why anyone would refuse to hire someone of my caliber and beauty.

On Trans*misogyny and Womyn's Colleges [TW for obvious reasons]

2012-08-22T20:57:00.000-07:00

Next week, I finally start grad school. I'm nervous. I shouldn't be, though, because everyone tells me - these are mostly cis and straight folx, but queer people, too - that I will fit right in at Mills College (subtext: BC UR A LESBIAN. Even tho I'm not a lesbian.) The point being that because I am queer and "feminist" and not that into bras or shaving my pits, I am well-suited for a private school known as a safe place for LGBT folx. It occurs to me that most secular womyn's colleges are probably considered LGBT-friendly, but "LGBT-friendly" can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. Practically speaking, it can mean jack fucking shit to others.

For example, when I was applying to my MFA program last year, I was obliged to bubble in my "sex" (synonymous with gender in this situation, as is the wont of most official paperwork) as either "male" or "female." In the days when people applied to schools with actual pen and paper, I suppose it would have been possible to just ignore these bubbles until someone put a gun to your head to fill them out. If you want to move forward to the next page of your online application, however, you have to pick one. This meant if I wanted to apply, I had to bite the bullet and bubble. Because I was designated female at birth, I chose "female." I also chose "female" because Mills College is a womyn's school. Graduate students may be "either" male or female, but had I been applying to be an undergraduate, selecting male would have made me ineligible.

It wasn't a very big bullet to bite, mind you. Among obligations, bubbling in "female" when it isn't true isn't all that bad. I do it all the time on paperwork at the DMV or when I sign up for a membership card at a hardware store (I think it's funny that Ace Hardware can tell what kind of home improvement discounts I want because rumor has it, I have a cunt). But of course it made me think of trans* womyn, DMAB genderqueer folx, and other people who were not asked before their gender was given to them as "male" who identify otherwise. Which is to say, had I been designated male at birth, this all would have been a different story.

From what I can tell, Mills College admissions policies for GSM folx are unclear at best and majorly discriminatory at worst. A 2011 op-ed written by an anonymous student in the school paper, The Campanil, stated that "There is no official admissions policy that articulates whether or not trans students are welcome." In a 2009 article, however, an admissions counselor is quoted saying that "the official Mills policy accepts female-to-male transgendered students, but they don’t accept male-to-female students."

Ah. There it is.

(This same advisor also came up with this gem: "'We do admit transgendered students as long as upon graduation they still have the genitalia of a woman,' Battle said." For the fuck of shit.)

Being asked to identify as female when I am not female bothers me, and on my bad days, can even be upsetting. It's not the end of my world, though. I understand that it may be very triggering for other people, but luckily for me, it isn't. I am not a trans* man, and cannot even comfortably identify as trans*masculine; neither have I chosen to pursue more "traditional" methods of transition, like top surgery and hormone therapy (at least for now). To institutions like school administrations and the government, my own personal body, despite my objections, is categorized as female. More importantly, it is read that way, which means I wouldn't be looked at twice on a campus famous for its dykes.

For trans* womyn wanting to apply to a womyn's only college, however, it's the same old story of trans* misogyny and hatred. From the above article by the anonymous student,

"...[T]ranswomen applicants are required to provide government-issued “proof” of their gender. To my knowledge there is no other population who is required to provide this sort of documentation upon applying to Mills College. Though this is not an official policy, it is an unofficial policy that plays out in a distinct pattern."

While this writer takes the Mills College administration, as well as the campus in general, to task for its transphobia, I get the feeling that trans* womyn and DMAB folx get the brunt of the cis scum hatred in question - if they even have access to campus, that is. Even as I am tentatively introducing myself to my professors and other students with a more androgynous name than the one my parents gave me, and even as I explore genderfucking and transition, I don't fear for a second that my position as a student at this school could be in jeopardy because I am not womyn enough. Actual womyn, however, are not even permitted to attend, because someone they don't know has an opinion about what's between their legs. What else is new?

I have yet to actually attend a class, so I suppose Fembot is going to hear more as my opinions develop. I'm looking for queer organizations on campus that want to not only challenge transphobia, but want to prioritize fighting trans*misogyny (which is often complicated by race, class, ability, and other factors) on campus and in general. Will I find it? I'm not sure. Will there be people there who want to organize one with me? Probably.

And please don't get me wrong: the constellation of privileges I enjoy put me in the very privileged position of being able to say, I want to make a queer student org on the campus of my private college. I'm trying to appreciate that. I also know that if there aren't womyn on the transgender spectrum even on our isolated campus, bois like me aren't going to accomplish much more than a circlejerk of feelings. I guess it's as good a time as any to have a privilege check moment: because of the many systematic oppressions faced by marginalized people, many trans* and queer folx are not in positions to drown themselves in debt for a MFA in baloney at a private school in the Oakland Hills. Unlike me. Just sayin'.

In the meantime, I would ask my cis homies, queer and straight, to think about how it would feel to have to put your gender on the table when you're trying to get into college. While it seems as if recent criticism of Mills' admissions policies may be engendering change, I'll need to do some more investigation to find out of this is the case.

And of course, if you know something that I don't, comment or PM me! at hdavis@mills.edu. DO IT.

Fuck

2012-08-22T07:45:00.003-07:00

Androgyny & Queerness in Tomboy, Pariah [spoiler alert]

2012-08-16T11:17:00.003-07:00

It's summertime and I'm between jobs, so that means I've been watching a lot of movies. Tomboy has been on my to-do list since it came out, but I finally got the chance to watch it b/c Netflix, yo. It's about a boyish girl who is mistaken for a boy when she moves to a new neighborhood. Instead of correcting the local kids when they "misgender" her, she plays jazz with it and introduces herself as Mickael. Hilarity ensues, etc.

livin the dream

I don't necessarily want to write a review of this movie, though I recommend seeing any contemplative exploration of gender as tenderly shot as this one. It's not quite a "coming of age," but rather something of a vignette about a little boi trying to figure out hir shit. Queer cinema, certainly, but lacking the sort of "gay agenda" that would make it aggressively, or obviously, so. Pariah, which admittedly I saw pretty recently, comes to mind as an example of this. This isn't a good thing or a bad thing; the French Tomboy just seems like it's more directionless than Pariah, which is an American movie about an almost-adult whose sexual orientation, rather than her gender, is at the center of the conflict (though funnily enough, the two would most certainly be grouped together under the "Gay & Lesbian" heading of Netflix's categorization system).

Tomboy is also about a white European child in the suburbs, whereas Pariah is about an American teenager of color in The Big City. While the protagonists of both movies appear to have their economic/social classes in common, one of Pariah's main focuses is money and class and how it affects queer folx of color. I feel the influence of class in Tomboy, but it is nowhere near as overt as in Pariah. At any rate, I think there's a lot lost in translation, culturally speaking, with Tomboy because it's foreign, though despite being American, Pariah is just as foreign to me in many ways.

amurikuh fuck yeah

Although it crossed my mind to write a review for the critically acclaimed Pariah - it gave me a lot to think about w/r/t/ (butch) queer friendship and love, race and racism, class and classism, queer and str8 communities and families - it's also something I ultimately decided not to do because I don't think I could do it justice, for a variety of reasons. I do recommend reading one of the million pieces about it that came out around the time it was new and hot and relevant, though. Racialicious is a great place to start, IMHO.

Race, class, and geographical location aside, one of the reasons I left Pariah mostly alone is that I relate much more to Mickael in Tomboy than I do to Alike in Pariah. Alike comes out as a lesbian to her parents after struggling with guilt for liking girls and going behind her parents' back to dress butch and hang out at queer nightclubs with her homo friends. She is assaulted by her homophobic mother when she comes out, and more or less forced to leave home. On a lot of levels, that isn't my story. Mickael's comes closer to it, though I wonder what hir trajectory will be, and what the similarities and differences would be when Mickael gets to Alike's age.

While Mickael eventually develops a tweeny romance with a girl, Lisa, presenting as a (_being a_) boy precedes any questions about her sexuality. And I get that. It even seems like she is going along with Lisa's advances (gendered precocity vs. sexual precocity) because she is a boy and Lisa is a girl and that is how Things are. And I get that, too #heteronormativity

Which is why I wanna use Tomboy as a jumping-off point for talking about androgyny. Because it is Mickael's androgynous body that allows hir to pass, unquestioned, as a boy. Questions of her sexuality will arise later if and when, as her body matures, she is read as female (as Alike is). Alike is what most people see as a masculine womyn; based off of Mickael's gender presentation, zie lives hir life unquestioned as a boy until hir mother outs hir. What does it mean to be androgynous? In a sense, hir androgyny gives Mickael the sexual heteronormative privilege that Alike cannot have because she does not pass as male, nor does she want to. Androgyny permits Mickael to let people make their own assumptions about her gender; she speaks very little, letting it speak for itself, and her playmates decide zie is a boy without a second glance.

Why does thinness/lack of body fat facilitate mainstream understandings of androgyny? Mickael has not yet developed breasts or other secondary sexual characteristics in Tomboy, making passing in regular clothes - or even topless - extremely easy. The only real modifications she must make to her appearance is adding a makeshift packer (cutely enough, phallus-shaped green Play-Doh) when she and her friends go swimming. Androgyny's conflation with prepubescence is deep and rarely challenged, but hanging pendant over Tomboy is the knowledge that at some point in the near future, Mickael's breasts will grow and hir hips will widen. Very soon, hir lack of male secondary sexual characteristics will mark hir as female. Sure enough, we are male until proven otherwise; when we are born, it is a lack of a penis that distinguishes us from the "standard" human. If Mickael's mother had not outed hir near the end of the movie, hir body may have done so soon enough, as hir mother is well aware.

Poverty and class in the USA being racialized and gendered as they are, what does it mean to be, or want to be, androgynous when thinness is connected as it is to class and economic resources? I have never been to Europe because $$, and I certainly wasn't raised there, so I can't speak to the social climate in which Mikhael and hir friends are growing up. As far as I know, there is no "obesity epidemic" in France, although I imagine food deserts in urban spaces are a reality there just as they are here. How would this movie be different if Mickael had breasts and found the need to bind? You'll get a lot of "tips" on passing in FtM and trans*masculine internet spaces, but in practice you will find that as long as your hair is short and your chest kept to a dull roar, attitude is one of the most important factors for whether or not you're read as male. Men do not have perfectly flat chests; not all men walk a certain way, or have a certain hair style. The challenges of puberty and body fat, while considerable for Mickael, may not have turned out to be insurmountable if zie had wanted to pass, or be read as, male for the rest of hir life. Zie certainly had the ingenuity to do so, with a little elbow grease.

Masculinity can be fat. So can femininity. Why not androgyny, as most people understand it? Because it is supposed to be a gender at a developing stage? A fetal gender, you might say? What would a fully-realized, queer androgyny have to look like to "pass?" Is such a thing possible in hetero- and cis-normative terms? What would it feel like? What is fat androgyny in the public consciousness that isn't male castration, the eunuchs of a long time past? I haven't worked asexuality into this whole thing (I apologize; it's overlooked enough as it is, but it's not something I know much about), but what would androgyny look like if it wasn't associated with asexuality, which is seen by society at large as a myth, or a pathology?

I'll close with some feelings, because those are one of the few things I can approach somewhat honestly: seeing Mickael navigate hir body as a boy and feeling the vicarious thrill as zie removes hir shirt in public and passes completely is powerful. What a feeling. It is astonishing and triumphant and terrifying. It is precarious and burdensome. It is one I haven't felt enough. Interestingly enough, the movie ends with Mickael introducing hirself to Lisa as Laure, hir birth name. We do not know if zie is going to a girl now, a boy later, a butch teen girl or still a tomboy or what. There is no closure of identity, as it were. How very queer.

The Daily Mail Roundup: Tebow needs to eat a bag of dicks, and other famous last meals

2012-08-15T02:53:00.000-07:00

As a person with a really unhealthy relationship with food, I find this fascinating.
Kate Beckinsale's dress is doing it for me in a big way. Still, probably won't see the Total Recall remake because I have morals. Also, these Louboutins: speechless.
Didn't think I'd ever see "sexy" phone pics this boring. If you are going to be a mistress, you must invest in at least one negligee.
When I heard from a very reliable and very gay source that Nicki stuffs her booty, I was beyond consoling. It was a dark time for me.
The Biebs' hair is SO sick. Jealz.

I hope Tim Tebow has some sort of medical problem making him ineligible not only for football but for expressing opinions about my body, too. "Sorry, Mr. Tebow, but it's the only choice we have: we must put you to sleep."
Fuck the haters, Alexa, your romper is adorable.
I ship I ship I ship I ship I ship <3<3<3<3

A thought about The Dark Knight Rises [spoiler alert]

2012-08-07T19:03:00.005-07:00

At a certain point in the newest Batman installation, Selina Kyle (alias Pussy Galore) is put into the men's prison because she is such a badass. The logic being that since she has broken out of a womyn's prison before, the next more secure facility is a men's prison (?). Where do they put men who break out of men's facilities, I wonder? What is the next gender in the hierarchy of the gendered moneydungeons of the state?

Anyway, the impression the audience is supposed to get is: Wow, Cat Woman is so exceptionally tough she had to be put in a men's prison. That this is an exceptional case, because she is an exceptional person, and this is emphasized by the fact that they never put womyn in men's prisons.

Except they do. All the time.

free cece

If there's one thing tougher to weed through than sexual attraction, it's how we talk about it [TW: for trans*misogyny, cissexism, Cathy Brennan]

2012-08-05T22:00:00.004-07:00

Ok, so, I wanna word this carefully. Because the distinction between what individuals find attractive can makes discussions about gender expression and non-cis identities really difficult.

piderman confuzd 2

To illustrate this, I could link to a zillion icky internet arguments enflamed by the likes of Cathy Brennan and other "feminist" cis womyn, insisting that acknowledging trans* womyn as womyn - and particularly, AMAB folx as lesbians if they identify as the same - is the same as forcing (implicitly cis, in their eyes) lesbians to have sex with men. Or something.

Because a womyn who is attracted to womyn can only be a lesbian if radscum like Brennan says so. Any attempt to do otherwise on her part is tantamount to misogyny against "real" lesbians. Or something. If you want more info on this topic (if you're a womyn on the trans* spectrum, or AMAB/DMAB, you are probably already well aware of this shit), you should check out this post and the ensuing discussions on Queer Feminism. [Spoiler: Avory eloquently takes on some prolific & vicious transphobic radscum. Must be Tuesday.]

Trans*misogyny and effemiphobia are among the many reasons why it's hard for a lot of people to relate to feminism, or social justice, or whatever cis-centric, femme-phobic movement you're talking about. In any case, I don't recommend looking into this "womyn-born-womyn" stuff on a full stomach. Even when I still identified as cis, I saw it for what it was: simplistic, hateful, panicked tantrums thrown by sex-essentialist assholes.

Apparently, there is only ONE female experience, and only people who were a) born with a certain type of vagina and b) proclaimed a "girl" while still juicy from amniotic fluid (ew), know what it is.

Anyway, that shit aint even the point of this post, although it's all something you should be pissed about. I am not a womyn, and not femme, and am not an authority on those experiences; funnily enough, though, I would likely have no problem accessing a womyn's shelter or a radscum-hosted "womyn born womyn" event because I am estrogen-dominant and be-cootered. Actual womyn, or femme folks, or DMAB non-binary folx, or anyone who doesn't look like "a real womyn" to people like Cathy Brennan, can be, and regularly are, rejected from these spaces. [Lest I blow a gasket from impotent rage, I won't describe too much Tumblr discussions about non-binary trans* folx, femme or otherwise, and their "validity" as trans* by binary trans* folx. It's a jungle out there, bitches]

Soooooo.......

What I want here and now is a little discussion about gender expression(*) and attraction. Talking about the types of genders and gender expressions to which one is attracted can be really difficult, and here's why: by saying that you are attracted to one element of gender more than others kind of implies that you are not attracted to other genders and gender expressions. Which in an of itself is just fine. But people have the tendencies to conflate their perceptions of others with the others' actual gender identities, sexualities, and/or anatomies; they also have a tendency to adhere to hetero and cis-centric standards of what it means to be "butch" or "femme," "feminine" or "masculine," "man" or "womyn." And that is a problem.

I bring all this up because - I admit it! - I kinda sorta have a "type." While I'm not exactly embarrassed to say it, I also don't want it to become a rule, a certainty, a fundament. Gettin comfortable with what is and isn't aint genderfuck. Still, it is clear to me, and has been very clear to me for most of my adult life, one gender expression over any others has the boi-moistening effect I live for: masculinity. I like me some butchness.

urrr

urrrr

unfff

*cold shower*

Butch. That means womyn, men, non-binary folx, trans* folx, cis folx, IDGAF. If you bring the butch, I will show up to awkwardly look down at my shoes and silently practice asking you if I can please buy you a drank and then not do it and go home to blog about how alone I am. The end.

The fact that I know what I'm attracted to is a tool that I have developed over time. Coincidentally, I have a hunch that if there were more positive or neutral depictions of butch womyn in popular culture, I would have figured out how my Bits feel about them a lot sooner. Starting out with that "omg what is my sexshul orientation" baloney a few years ago, I'd initially assumed that because I had felt attracted to certain womyn, that meant I was attracted to all womyn. And that all womyn are femme and feminine. Rookie mistakes. Needless to say, it was a revelation to realize that, if forced to choose between Ellen and Portia, I'd pick Ellen every time. Don't get me wrong - Portia is a lovely womyn, and a former cast member of Arrested Development, to boot. But you see my point.

As tools go, knowing who I want to make out with is great! And it should be useful when it comes to dating, especially online dating. Being able to articulate what you are looking for is one way of narrowing down your options, and if you are trying to draw certain people to your profile, using words like "butch," "boi," and "stud," are a lot more direct (and are going to get you laid a lot sooner, I've found) than writing an essay on gender and Butler and my thesis and blah blah.

Nevertheless, I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means when I express a negative statement such as, "I'm not usually attracted to femme people" over a positive one like, "Dat butch person is foine." (Which isn't to say that I'm not ever attracted to femme people. On the infrequent occasion that I'm crushing hardcore on some lady, I become this geeky retro boi who wants to give her my coat when it rains and watch her apply lipstick and pay for her food and shit. When it happens, I'm like "WTF when did George Clooney take over my body?") Can I, as a person who does not quite identity as femme (although I've been thinking about what the application of fem might mean for a person like me for the last lil bit), say that in a way that is, for lack of a better term, not oppressive?

How it can be expressed (if it even can) in a way that reconciles that my sexual preference and personal taste are nobody's nevermind but my own? How do I classify and understand my perceptions and assumptions about other people in a way that is nice & friendly & not shitty?

I don't know if I made this clear enough. The post ended up being a lot longer than I'd anticipated, and I feel like it's all twisted and confused. But yeah. Wanna talk about it?

*Because I am not made of free time, I'm just gonna condense the vast universe of gender and gender expression in the word "gender" for the purposes of this post.

I'm on vacation and don't feel like posting

2012-08-03T11:40:00.003-07:00

deal with it, bitches

Kink Awakenings: RoninLioness & Chivalry

2012-07-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

Mere hours after I posted about kink awakenings, a friend who goes by MyPrincesLioness on FetLife sent me an amazing response on how zie came to realize zie was kinky. It's been a busy weekend, so I'm just getting to putting it up this morning, but it's worth your while to read and ponder and enjoy. I'm proud and excited to reproduce it here, and if you're a FetLife member, you should check out hir profile!

I think I realized I was interested in pain when I was a kid. I was a nerd, and a tomboy, so a lot of kids were interested in beating the crap out of me or trying to humiliate me and tear me down. I was always really shy and scared and rarely fought back, so it only encouraged them. However, it made me feel really tough and strong to take a physical or emotional beating. Usually people are too gentle on me, and it makes me feel weak. When I am treated more roughly, I feel like I can take on any sort of adversity. So, I started doing martial training with people who were much bigger than me. I would never win fights against them, but after a fight, I felt like a badass. I could take hits that many thought would be too hard for someone like me.

I started having sadomasochistic sex when I was a teenager, and I actually was a top at first, however I did not enjoy topping as much as I enjoy bottoming now. I had a lot of pent-up aggression, so I tried to get my more submissive partners to turn on me and fight me back by being really hard on them. Of course, that never happened. And I wasn't truly a top, I was only doing it to please my partners.

I never really bottomed until after a "friend" raped me (real rape, not roleplay). After that, I had a lot of vanilla sex, but I kept having flashbacks, or I would drift off into my own little world and not really feel the sex. I had a switch partner a little after that, and I mentioned my more masochistic fantasies to him. He said we should give it a try, and I noticed that whenever he would hurt me, I would not get flashbacks. I was more focused on what was going on at the time, rather than in the past. It brought my awareness to the fact that I was with my partner, not the guy who raped me. Ever since then, I have greatly preferred sex where I feel some sort of pain, since it makes me feel tough, and I don't get flashbacks anymore.

I realized I was a submissive a lot later, since masochism and submission are not exactly the same. It actually had a lot to do with my distaste for traditional sex roles, and my thoughts on chivalry. I liked the idea of chivalry, but I didn't like the sex roles. I also didn't like that I was supposed to be the object in a heterosexual relationship, and a male partner was supposed to be the gallant one.

I was at an SCA event, when my partner at the time insisted on being chivalrous toward me, even when I made it very clear that I was uncomfortable with that. I thought a lot about why I felt this way, since I received a lot of scorn from SCA members when I refused these advances. I realized that I wanted to be the one who is chivalrous toward my partner, no matter their sex or gender expression. I wanted to be gallant and strong, not beautiful.

My former master/lord once told me that he liked the lioness type. He liked being served, being told that he was beautiful, having epic quests done in his name, all by a strong, intelligent, and aggressive female. It was wonderful to meet a male who was okay with my chivalrous overtures. So, when he collared me, we said that I was his knight. I made a very big deal of serving him, in small ways like opening doors for him, protecting him from any mud or splashes by cars on the street, writing long letters and singing to him about his beauty, going on errands for him, and making myself more physically and emotionally able to fight for him (by weight training, eating well, and getting full treatment for the eating disorder). I also served him in more significant ways, like rescuing him a few times when he needed to be rescued (not a common thing, though, he is pretty independent). This was my real awakening to my submissive side. I realized it made me feel like I was more capable when I served a good, beautiful, inspiring lord. People treat ciswomen submissives like weak little flowers that need protecting, but I found submission and masochism to be what made me strong and stable.

Anyway, since he and I broke up, I am looking to do this again. I feel a little unstable now that I am a ronin, but hopefully I will have another lord soon. Even still, I am trying to find ways of using my masochism and desire to serve without having a lord so that I can be a better knight (a weak ronin makes a terrible knight). It is going a little easier than I thought, to be honest.

Kink Awakenings: What was your "aha" moment?

2012-07-26T14:18:00.000-07:00

cuteness

A friend and I have been discussing kink & BDSM in our own personal lives, and how media - and in particular film - has influenced it. For me and this friend, the movie Secretary was an "aha" moment for our personal relationships with ~~Christ~~ kink. I like "'aha' moment" as an expression because Oprah uses it, like, all the time, and (at least in my brain, anyway) it has the effect of normalizing what is actually a very normal and natural part of many people's lives but what is nonetheless considered bizarre, perverse, or unhealthy: kink. Which is why I'm curious about what your kink/BDSM "aha" moment was. Was there a movie or book that made you realize you weren't vanilla? Was it a single moment, or was it more gradual? Write that fucker down and then send it on over to Fembot. Do tell!

Anyway, this topic has taken me to a lot of interesting places. For instance, when it comes to contemporary cinema dealing with kink, Secretary (2002) is a pretty big name. This is not only because both of the main actors involved are, or have since become, big names in Hollywood (swooning at Maggie Gyllenhaal; James Spader is in my Top 10 Movie Bufus), but because the film more or less successfully crammed a study of the extra-normal, or deviant, sexuality into the romcom template. I mean, corporeal punishment aside, it is a pretty typical movie, which is a significant reason why I find it so appealing. Secretary is romantic, it's sweet, it has an orgiastically optimistic Happy Ending, and it (mostly) upholds traditional gender stereotypes #missionaccomplished

The film aside, the short story on which Secretary is based (and Mary Gaitskill's body of work in general), has been important for me, too. While I have my feelers out for people's media-influenced kink awakenings, I have been trying to come up with examples of sexual "deviancy" (ie, kink/BDSM) in movies - Blue Velvet? 9 1/2 weeks? Salò (shudder)? Atame! Atame!? Looking over these, it occurs to me that very few of them, if any, exhibit existence of and respect for consent like Secretary.

Which isn’t to say that that Secretary is perfect, but at the very least with that movie you're getting a sexual relationship between two consenting adults who also happen to be sadomasochists (we could argue about consent w/r/t Lee’s position as an employee of E. Edward Grey, and I would be willing to have it, but it’s not like she is relying on this job to pay the rent, either. It’s more of a therapeutic thing because she’s all fucked up by Feelings. Which isn't to say that work harassment can only happen to people relying on their paycheck, etc).

I guess I feel comfortable being critical of Secretary and its shortcomings because I think it's amazing in a lot of other ways. But I can also be comfortable with it because of some of its shortcomings, like its whiteness & its heteronormativity, privilege me personally: because I either embody them or have a high tolerance for them. It's unfortunate that portraying a consensual relationship between two kinky adults has to be "amazing," but, you know, kyriarchy.

So for the sake of argument, let's just say that the erasure of consent doesn't complicate what it means to engage in kink in the movies (other than Secretary) that I listed above. Let's just say that you can still call what people are doing "BDSM" when only the dominant party has agency or has previously consented to participate; you have to admit, at the very least, that that is how BDSM is understood in ~~our~~ the culture with which I'm familiar.

So yeah, devil's advocate: Even if we accept these as movies about kink, most of the ones I've mentioned, as well as other “mainstream” kink movies that I can think of off the top of my head, are extremely homogenous. They are about white/light-skinned cis men dominating cis womyn. These characters tend to be, at minimum, middle-class and not physically disabled (don’t want to wade into mental illness & disability in a discussion about kink because fuck that noise). I’m limited here not only by the fact that my working knowledge of cinema is pretty basic - like anyone who hasn’t studied film - but also by my own understanding of kink culture, kink as a film genre (?), and the Westernized/heteronormative understandings of sexuality that have been ingrained in me (us) since I was born.

And yet, if you're basing your opinions on these kinds of films, what kink is, as well as what passes for consent, seem like they're very much up in the air. For example, I’ve been chastised in the past for being a philistine and a bad feminist because of my feelings about Pedro Almodovar, which are this: I hate that motherfucker. The idea I'm failing to grasp being, this writer/director is pro-womyn because he is a gay cis man who makes movies about them and is close to his mother, or whatever. I myself was under this impression until I made the mistake a few years back of watching several of his films in a row, with the end result being his misogyny was magnified into crystal clarity. Apparently, Atame! Atame! (known in English as "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!") is (according to Wikipedia lol) a movie about BDSM, when I would argue that it's more accurate to say that it's a movie about Stockholm Syndrome AKA patriarchy. Because a dude stalking, kidnapping, sexually harassing and violently assaulting a womyn (who is coded as morally inferior/subjectively suspect because of her drug addiction, as well as of her history as a sex worker), isn’t kink, even if – for some incomprehensible reason – the womyn “realizes” at the end of the movie that she has fallen for her abductor. That’s some Greek mythology shit, right there.

i don't care how cute antonio is

[Yeah, I'm derailing my own stupid post, but give me a chance to shit on Almodovar and I'll take it.]

Anyway, if you look at your classic kink movies - or perhaps those movies that would come to the average filmgoer's mind if you prompted them with 'BDSM' - you get a lot of heteronormativity, misogyny, classism, white supremacy, and other icky things. (Any examples of why I'm wrong, or leads to movies I haven't heard of or seen, would be much appreciated, btw.)

So my invitation to write to me about your kink awakening still stands - but if you also want to discuss the difference between lived kink and depictions of it in mainstream media/culture, I wouldn't turn that away, either. I have so many questions, and so many things to learn. Enlighten me!

The Daily Mail Roundup: Because Fuck Substance

2012-07-23T14:44:00.000-07:00

I should be doing pertinent stuff but whatever it's my life so I'm going to do a Daily Mail Roundup since I am a lazy fucker and spent the whole weekend being pampered by my mommy.

This shit is death-defying.
I have a hard time enjoying bathing suits, even in theory, because I look weird in them, but, you know, this was kinda fun.
Despite not liking them, and rarely wearing them, I covet Amerika-themed bathing suits with the fierceness of Dick Cheney trying to rub one out.
I like that Demi Lovato's "side-boob" is inappropriate at that kids' awards shit but having Mike Tyson present a few years ago is totally fine.
Mila Kunis' dress is fierce as fuck.

i mean, look. seriously

Industry rule #4080: God isn't real because otherwise I would look as fly as Jamie Bell.
Omg J Biebz has found her people.

The Science of Sleep

2012-07-18T10:47:00.001-07:00

Even though I have them just about every night, and even though they are often gruesome and strange, I think it's inaccurate to call them nightmares. If I'm not waking up in a cold sweat, trembling and afraid I've pissed myself or whatever, and if I can still sleep at night, I guess they're bad dreams rather than nightmares. Maybe I've just gotten used to them. I've been on the 'Zac for a few years now, and before that was on a variety of SSRIs and anti-psychotics. Over the last decade or so, I've found that they have all affected me differently, but the increase of bizarre and disturbing dreams when I'm on them has always been consistent. I'm sure my (medicated) mentally chill homies can identify.

I think the most interesting thing about dreams is that no one thinks anyone else's dreams are interesting. Your own, of course, are a different story, and why shouldn't they be? People have formative dreams dictating (or predicting?) their psychic/subconscious topography, dreams that they remember their entire lives; people are stalked by a particular dream, or sign within a dream, for years on end with no resolution. I'm not up on the science of sleep & dreams, being but a poor layboi, but they obviously seem sort of important, psychologically speaking. Seeing as how mine are influenced, to one degree or another, by my psychiatric medications, then, I sometimes wonder how much weight I should put on the stuff my brain does when I'm sleeping (which is something I do a lot of the time, coincidentally). I wonder what the long-term effects of interfering with your "sleep architecture" would be, if any exist. Since I don't have more than one brain/life to do experiments with, I guess I'll never know. I suppose it's a nice excuse to be eccentric. Maybe I'll become a Manic Pixie Dream Boi and start giving a fuck about what men like John Mayer or Zach Braff do with their life. [outdated pop cultural references are outdated. fuck you.]

At the risk of being the d-bag who thinks they can "interpret" their own dreams (assuming dreams can be interpreted, assuming they mean anything, assuming that this meaning can mean anything to the dreamer), mine are anxiety-oriented. My favorite anxieties, the betes noirs of the internet in my head, tend to revolve around body image (lol) and my family. I just don't understand why regular dreams about losing all my teeth and then dying in an explosion of blood & feces, or of coming out to my dad again and again and again, haven't had more of a toll on me, emotionally. I suppose it's better than the unmedicated, but batshiat insane, alternative.