I Wear Pigtails Like A Good Girl

I wear my pigtails because I've always had "bad hair."  Every woman on the Dominican side of my family put in their long, labourious hours trying to tame my hair, or explain it at the beauty parlor.   Sometimes straightened without my permission, my hair was out of my own control for so long.  Now that I manage it myself, I want all my difficult and unruly curls intact so every person who ever reinforced that “bad hair” label can be mesmerized.  I wear my pigtails to show off how good my "bad hair" is.

  

I wear my pigtails because my sister used to say I looked so cute in them that I could get away with murder.  If my looks could kill, you would surely need a medic.  Apparently women are all vixens, sirens, and temptresses, and "jail bait" when they're too young to consent.  I was devastated when I turned 14 because I knew I wasn't a "nymphet" anymore.  I had only ever learned about my sexuality in terms of male pleasure and believed that Lolita was the pinnacle of girlhood.  I was on a date with an older man recently and he called me "dangerous" when I teased him.  But logically and realistically, he was the dangerous one.  Bigger than me, stronger than me, more credible than me in a court of law if he decided to take by force, because his tits weren't hanging out.  So to reclaim my role as a baby femme fatale from the legal side of 17, to murder you sweetly and to call attention from the blood on my hands, I wear pigtails like a good girl.

 

  

I wear my pigtails because I'm not quite sure how to be femme and I feel like a little girl who snuck into Mommy's make-up and jewelry.  If I have to revert back to childhood to feel feminine, I may as well be a spoiled princess this time around, like my rough childhood never allowed.  I'm not really a femme; I'm playing dress up like a naughty, pouty, foot-stamping Babygirl who needs discipline and a nice, firm tug on her hair.   I wear pigtails like a good girl so you have something to grab when you’re teaching me how to be good.

I wear my pigtails because I’m already big.  Every part of my body stands out and takes up space: big voice, big lips, big tits, big stomach, big arms, big thighs.  There’s no need to try and make my big hair seem quiet and small.  Women are constantly being told that there is no room for big, loud women here, but the more space I occupy, the better!  I demand to be seen and heard.  I wear pigtails to do myself some good.

 

The Problem with Pretty

I got hit on in Spanish yesterday.  This is nothing unusual; I tend to attract older, Spanish-speaking men as I walk through the city, minding my own business.  It was this particular man’s phrasing that stood out to me. 

“Estás muy linda,” he called out to me when I walked past him, which translates to “you are very pretty” but, which implies that this statement is not always true, that my prettiness is temporary, short-term, fleeting. 

My inner drag queen started to amuse herself with the thought “He must’ve meant ‘eres’ (the permanent version of ‘estás’) because I am ALWAYS pretty.”

But here’s the problem with pretty:

I spent so many years of my life truly believing that I am not pretty.  It didn’t matter very much to me because I always knew that at least I am smart and funny and I care about other people, so I stopped putting beauty on a pedestal.  I simply accepted that it was not an adjective that many people would use to describe me.  I didn’t realize that, although I said that I didn’t care about something as superficial as physical appearance, I was, in fact, selling myself short and filling my head with this idea that I deserved less than what I wanted.  And worse: less than what I needed.

I figured that since I wasn’t pretty, I should not turn down offers from the handful of people who were deluded enough to believe that I was and I felt I owed it to myself, and them, to be with them, even if they did make me feel awful about myself in other ways.  Sometimes that didn’t even manifest in other ways at all.  My first boyfriend praised my tits but told me on our first date that I should lose a few pounds.  And I stayed with him for nearly a month after that!

That’s what insecure people do: we stay in abusive or otherwise unhealthy relationships longer than we should because we have trouble realizing that we have options.

Unfortunately, we live in a society that is constructed on beauty worship- which I would be more or less okay with, except that it is one idea of beauty.  One nearly-impossible-to-achieve standard of beauty.

Take my breasts for example and how that boyfriend I mentioned was under the same mistaken impression that most people are under: tits should be big and waists should be small.  For the most part, it does not work like that.  Of course there are always rather thin people with rather large breasts, and vice versa, but usually, the body is naturally proportioned to support that abundant tit-meat you’re carting around.  

But if your breasts are “too small,” you must be anorexic or “under-developed,” and you undoubtedly wish you had a bigger rack.  If you happen to have that large chest that everyone is supposedly dying for, but also happen to be fat, you must be “too fat” and could stand to lose some damn weight- and you are obligated to hear that sentiment expressed by anyone and everyone.  And forget it if you’re a man.  If you’re a man and you have (big) breasts, you are either “not a real man” because gender is entirely dependent on secondary sex characteristics (SARCASM!!) or you have man-boobs brought on by too many cheeseburgers and not enough exercise.  No one is allowed to be content.

And I honestly wish that the presence, absence, and/or relative size of breasts were the only areas in which beauty is scrutinized, but we all know better.

And it isn’t as if those precious few who actually fulfill the criteria can even enjoy their adjective much.  There are all kinds of counter-attacks for the “beautiful people.”  We accuse them of not having substance, of being obsessed with their looks, of being stuck up, of being mean, of being self-absorbed.

We objectify them.

We pick them apart, making fun of their “imperfections” until we are no better than the masses who called us ugly.

We call the beautiful women who don’t want to fuck us “bitches.”

And the worst of all, we say that women who have the audacity to embrace this beauty that we worship, by wearing the revealing outfits the fashion industry convinces them they need, are all “asking for it” when they are raped.

We are conditioned to think that being pretty is the most important thing in life.  More important than being intelligent, or being compassionate, or being independent, or any other thing that a human being is capable of- so we all break our backs trying to look beautiful, forgetting that we already are, and forgetting that external beauty does not measure human worth.

Asking for the Moon

Last night I had a dream that my father was talking smack about gender equality.  You probably don’t know my father, but this is very realistic.  He was arguing with another man about how bitchy feminists are, how cold and unforgiving they are… when they fight for basic human rights.   

In my dream, I started arguing with him, defending that fight- much like I do with him in real life.  After listening to me for a few minutes, he responded with what he must have considered a very poignant misquoted line from Now, Voyager*:

"I gave you the moon, why can’t you be happy with the stars?"

What my dream-father meant, of course, and what dream-me actually understood (because I was unconscious) is “men have given you so much, so many things, why can’t you be happy with what you have? Why are you asking for more?”  

My response to him went something like this:

"Because we want the moon.  Because the moon shouldn’t even be yours to give, you stupid asshole.  Because having the moon is a basic human right. And how can you say that you gave it to me and then ask me to be happy with less anyway?!"

I stand by those words even now that I’m awake.  I’m actually really proud of myself for being able to make such an articulate argument while I was unconscious.  Now, if only I could transfer that awesomeness to these final papers I still need to write...  

Maybe I was able to think so clearly in my dream because it is an argument that I constantly have to reiterate when I’m awake.  It is an argument that so many of us, suffering from all different kinds of oppressions, have to make all the time.  Asking to be treated like a human being is not asking for too much.  And, as nonsensical and contradictory as what my dream-father said was, it perfectly encapsulates the kind of bullshit that we often encounter.  

Because the 14-year-old girl in me likes to stare at fan manips of James McAvoy with sloths and prevent 21-year-old me from actually getting work done, I am a very passionate Tumblr girl.  I recently got into an argument about race and gender with a sexist, transphobic, racist asshole on Tumblr, like you do, in which I had to defend my major and career path in addition to my role as a woman of colour.  In the same post, he told me “you already have your equality” and, at the same time mind you, accused me of wasting the opportunity I’ve been given with my college education by studying about injustices rather than studying to be a scientist because too many women “complain about the lack of females in scientific subjects, and with this decide to study feminism to ascertain why, rather than actually break the chain and enter these fields themselves, thereby contributing to the trend that they oppose.”

I mean, it’s a valid observation; not enough people are trying to be the change that they seek.  I will grant him that.  However, I must take his criticism with a grain of salt because a) I have been through his blog and he is an asshole and b) he said all this and still claimed that I “already have [my] equality.”  Furthermore, I don't think he understands that women are socialized to pursue careers that do not focus on math and science.  We are encouraged to do other things because the misconception is that women are not as good as men in these fields.  This, of course, leads to stereotype threat and the internalization of that harmful belief that women are actually not good enough, and then women do not try to become scientists.  And the few that do are so clearly entering a man's world that, more often than not, they begin to feel intimidated by the majority. Additionally, I don’t think it’s fair to charge some people with that kind of responsibility while others just walk around, pursuing whatever profession they desire without having to worry about how it reflects their whole gender or race or sexual orientation, etc.  So I said this:

"What I am majoring in/plan to do with my life is not the issue.  The issue is that no matter what I do, I will be held up as an example of what my entire group as a whole is capable of in a way that men never have to worry about- unless they are not white or straight or cis or neurotypical or able-bodied or from a middle-class background because that’s the whole point here; when you have privilege, you do not experience marginalization and therefore do not understand the imbalance.

And I don’t understand how you can tell me that I already have equality and reinforce the fact that I clearly don’t, and NOT even realize it. If there was true equality, as you suggest there is, I would not have to tailor my career path to fill that gap because, by definition, there would be no gap."

What faux-allies and most people with privilege see when they look at us, the oppressed, fighting for our basic human rights, is a group of people asking for more than they need.  They think our demands are outrageous and blame us for our own dissatisfaction.  They expect us to be content with the crumbs offered, to sit here repeating to ourselves *“Let’s not ask for the moon, we have the stars” (the actual quote from Now, Voyager).

So, let me make this really simple and easy to understand; if you have the moon, a.k.a. privilege, you don’t get to tell other people not to ask for it, a.k.a. equality. 

The Worst Mistake

“Whats the useless skin around the vagina called?... A woman.”

Isn’t that a hilarious joke?!  No?  You didn’t think that was funny?  You thought it was offensive and sexist and subscribes to the harmful misconception that everyone with a vagina is a woman (and, similarly, people without vaginas are not women)?  Yeah, I didn’t think it was funny either.  I was even less inclined to find it amusing given the circumstances under which I found this joke.

Before I explain those circumstances, I think we should pause and focus on the word “joke.”  These are definitions of the word as found on dictionary.com:

1. something said or done to provoke laughter or cause amusement, as a witticism, a short and amusing anecdote, or a prankish act: He tells very funny jokes. She played a joke on him. 

2. something that is amusing or ridiculous, especially because of being ludicrously inadequate or a sham; a thing, situation, or person laughed at rather than taken seriously; farce: Their pretense of generosity is a joke. An officer with no ability to command is a joke.
 

3. a matter that need not be taken very seriously; trifling matter: The loss was no joke.
 

4. something that does not present the expected challenge; something very easy: The test was a joke for the whole class.

My personal favourite is number 3 because it is clearly not applicable in this situation.  This joke and where it stems from is hardly “a trifling matter” and we cannot pretend that it is.  We have not reached a point of gender equality where we can look back at it and laugh, and even if we did reach that point, there’s not a hell of a lot there to laugh about.  Telling a woman to get back in the kitchen or to go make a sandwich isn’t funny.  It’s not that we’re too sensitive; it’s that we’re too oppressed.  We are still the victims of institutionalized discrimination that prevents us from equal rights, earning equal pay, getting respect, and being taken seriously in general.  This brings me to that aforementioned circumstance and how I happened upon the "hilarious joke" I opened with.  

Acquiring 1,445 likes in 8 hours, this cartoon was posted on Facebook by a certain group, accompanied by the caption “Worst mistake in history”

Come again?  The “worst mistake in history” you say?  I hope you’ll understand why I’m not particularly amused by this kind of joke.  And I hope that in that understanding you DO NOT chalk it up to me being “too sensitive” or not having “a sense of humour” or some other bullshit that is meant to justify this kind of blatant misogyny.  It is hardly an issue of not taking a joke; it’s more an issue of recognizing the thinly veiled message of the disgruntled, privileged male who is grossly misinformed in his opinion that women currently wield too much power, and being fed up with it.

Usually, when I get upset I say something.  (It’s this wonderful ability I’ve had ever since I learned how to talk.)   So, I said something.  

“this is not just a joke.  this is extremely sexist and extremely harmful.  where the fuck does anyone get off expressing discomfort because a group of people (a group which, incidentally, makes up roughly 50% of the globe) learned to speak, a.k.a. voice their opinions, feelings, complaints?!  how dare anyone present this as a problem and how dare they label that ‘problem’ as ‘the worst mistake in history?!’
this isn’t just a cartoon and I will not relax becuz it’s just a joke.  anyone who is saying that is so thoroughly embedded in the misogynistic perception of the world and our culture that they don’t realize how ultimately harmful and inherently pernicious this cartoon is.”     

My comment got 10 likes before it was removed when I disliked the group.  In retrospect, I think I should not have disliked the group because now the majority of the comments look like this:

 

These are just some of the comments you can find on this picture.  For the record, I didn’t block out their names because these assholes don’t deserve anonymity.  Don't try to placate me with the standard "they're just jerks on the internet."  It's true that they are jerks on the internet, but it can hardly be reduced to that.  And to Chris Favuzza: Seriously?  It’s a “bitch fit” to be offended when everything about this cartoon, comment section, culture, mentality is a personal threat to our dignity.  This kind of thing plays no small role in how women are treated in the professional world, not to mention the dating world, the domicile, the medical world, the education system, and the legal system.  Where do you get off thanking those who displayed what you would call “a sense of humour” but what I call “complacency?”  And I'm not personally attacking all the women who found this funny; I am, however, pissed the fuck off at the culture which allows this kind of thing to go on and then tells me to "shut the fuck up" about my anger.

But since everyone is so quick to cry about how a lack of humour is causing all these “uptight” women to get all bent out of shape and hysterical about a simple joke, let’s focus on that for a second.  Fuck Sam Phillips and his truly original request for a sandwich, let’s look at what Tremayne Craigg has to say:

You probably would just laugh, Tremayne, but I would argue that that has more to do with your relative position of power than with your genuine good nature.  It’s not the same when a joke is made about a man’s worth in society as when the joke is made about women.  And, personally, I don’t think it’s nice to do that to men either but that’s just because I happen to be an egalitarian.  You see, Tremayne and people of his gender have the luxury of moving on.  And I really didn’t appreciate being reduced to a “sensitive bitch” because I was offended by a) the cartoon, b) the caption “worst mistake in history,” and c) the asshole comments telling me to lighten up, calling me useless, demanding that I go make a sandwich, explaining that I require a dick shoved in my mouth, and reiterating that I need to get over myself.

This is an issue we do not address nearly enough in this country, and it isn’t going anywhere.  It’s not just a fucking joke to be laughed at, and then disregarded; it’s a fucking tragedy and it is suffocating us.  What harm could it do to stand by and let that suffocation occur?  Well, it might prove to be the worst mistake in history.

Funny Girls and Double Standards

Soooooooo I just saw Bridesmaids.  I know I’m mad late on this but I was too busy to catch it this summer.  And by “too busy” I mean I was watching my new favourite achievement in the positive enforcement of gay characters in films, X-Men: First Class- which my poverty-stricken ass coughed up the price of admission for on three different occasions.  (McFassy fourever!!)  Before I say anything about Bridesmaids, I have to say that I enjoyed the film.  However, from the poster and the things I was hearing about it all summer, I thought it was going to take place within the bridal suite in the hours before the wedding and it would just be a bunch of really crass ladies in gorgeous dresses proving that female comedians can be just as funny as their male counterparts.  I was really excited to see that.

What it ended up being, of course, was much sillier and zanier and conformed more to rom-com conventions than I expected it to.  I was still pleasantly surprised by what I saw; I was just a little disappointed.  But more than anything, I am disappointed in what I’ve been reading people say about the movie. 

It’s not that I’m a feminist.  First of all, I don’t consider myself a feminist.  Secondly, I don’t think you need to be a feminist to see that there is a total fucking double standard in the way women are allowed to behave in public/media.  It pisses me off to see people crying about the gross bathroom scene in Bridesmaids, which takes up a lot of space on the imdb boards.  Personally, it’s not my cup of tea; I’m not one for shit and vomit humour but I was glad that it was in the movie.  It didn’t feel gratuitous or unnecessary to me; it felt like a natural part of the story’s progression.   

I’m rewatching Knocked Up right now as I write this and it’s a movie I love a lot but it puts me in an awkward place.  Minus all the pot-smoking and sexism, I relate more to Seth Rogen’s character than I do to Katherine Heigl’s.  I’m pretty chill and conventionally unattractive and I say inappropriate things.  Most importantly, I have a sense of humour.  But there’s no room in Hollywood for women to be funny if they’re not supermodels too.  And a lot of the time, when these gorgeous women do get to be funny, they are usually either the straight-man (pretty gendered terminology there, no?) or the joke is at their expense.

The great thing about that food poisoning scene in Bridesmaids, in my opinion, was seeing women do those vile bodily functions without men around to deem them disgusting, as in Not Another Teen Movie or The Change-Up.  If a man shits or pukes in a comedy, it’s hilarious; when a woman does it, it is only considered hilarious if there is a man present to say how gross it is.  You would never get a woman crapping in the middle of the street in a bridal gown as the entire joke in a man’s comedy.  The joke in that scenario would be whatever insultingly amusing line the man would say about such a thing.    

There is a part of me that gets so giddy whenever Leslie Mann straddles a toilet.  Even when the movies are as horribly offensive (on a multitude of levels) as The Change-Up, I find it kind of liberating to see women getting just as nasty as the boys do; because we can.  We can be just as good at disgusting and we can also be just as good at clever as any man in the industry but women are rarely given the chance.  I think the first time that ever registered for me was seeing Emma Stone in Superbad.  Yes, she is the “love interest” and remains pretty limited in that role, but the first time we see her, she’s making dick jokes with Jonah Hill- and keeping up!  THAT WAS ME IN HIGH SCHOOL!  There are so many girls that I know who do that yet so few of them on the screen. 

Then again, women are usually only ever seen keeping up with the men.  When I was in school, the class clowns were always boys.  A guy would fart loudly in the middle of class and it would be funny.  It would be his joke for our benefit.  I don’t ever remember a girl doing that.  And I’ve overheard so many conversations about how my male classmate’s balls smelled and felt but I cannot recall a single time when a female classmate discussed the smell of her vagina just as proudly.  Girls are always expected to be ladylike.  And the thing about guys getting so turned off when a woman says “suck my dick,” like, honestly, if you don’t want to hear that then don’t continue to make your penis the center of the universe.  Don’t perpetuate the idea that a penis is a symbol of strength and power and fuel the need for women to prove themselves on your level because it is the only level you understand.  Also, try not being so disgusted at the thought of women having penises, because some women do have them and it isn’t disgusting or unladylike at all.

Speaking of female anatomy, both conventional and unconventional perceptions of it, I think one of the most refreshing things about Bridesmaids was Maya Rudolph’s monologue about how she and Rose Byrne’s character got their assholes bleached.  That was beautiful.  It’s not that I thought it was particularly funny (although I was in stitches at the time because Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig bounce off each other brilliantly), it was that the lines were said so earnestly and that we weren’t supposed to recoil in horror or anything because there was more to the scene than just the picture they were painting.  So it would be dishonest to say that I didn’t feel like this film was kind of ground-breaking.  I know it was ultimately directed by a man but since it was written by two women and the cast was mostly made up of female talent, it is hard to say that it was not a positive achievement for women filmmakers, women comedians, and women in the media in general.

What I will say to critique this film is that the main character was straight, skinny, blonde, white, and middle-class.  All of the women in the film were most of those things, if not all.  They were also neuro-typical, able-bodied, cis gendered, and, though religion was never discussed, I’m sure none of them suffered from religious persecution of any kind.  So while it is amusing to watch Kristen Wiig and her cohorts get in and out of these situations, she is still a straight, skinny blonde woman who has problems like weird roommates and an awful fuck-buddy.  You might argue that she’s poor and say that that creates some problems for her, especially after she gets fired, but I’m pretty sure that never affects her the way it would affect someone who doesn’t have a mother with a… what the fuck was that? a three-bedroom house?!  Does her measly paycheck of over three times more than I make in two weeks stop her from buying any of the things she buys in this film (the expensive bridesmaid dress, the plane ticket to Vegas) or from owning a car(and getting it fixed)?  And yes, I understand that it’s Hollywood so of course she has a never-ending supply of cash to make things happen, but still.  If your character is struggling financially, show her giving something up to balance it out, don’t just show her complaining about how much things cost and then buying them anyway.

And why was the entire plot of this movie about how competitive women are?  The whole movie hinged on the fact that Kristen Wiig and Rose Byrne are each trying to establish themselves as the best companion and go to such catty lengths to do so.  One of the worst scenes in my opinion was when they were trying to out-do each other with the engagement party speeches.  It’s not that the premise of the scene was not funny or that the writing/performances was/were weak; it’s that the whole thing went on for too long.  I think it would have been more effective if they had just made it Wiig, Byrne, Wiig, Byrne instead of dragging it out like they did because a) how is Maya Rudolph NOT going to fucking notice there’s something up at that point?! and b) it ruined the flow of the movie. 

As ground-breaking as it was, the whole movie was about how women are obsessed with social status and will be total bitches to attain it.  AND THEN!!!!!, when they feel too threatened by the competition, they waste no time calling that competition a lesbian… as an insult.  Any shred of positive, let alone neutral, imagery this movie promoted towards homosexuality- and it takes more than a brief drunken kiss between two women during an action-packed moment in the film when seven other things are happening at once, though I did appreciate the fact that it never turned into a pornographic male fantasy- burns to a crisp when Kristen Wiig calls Rose Byrne a lesbian for stealing her best friend.  While we’re at it, I’d like to say that I’m glad the Melissa McCarthy character wasn’t a lesbian because oh my god, what a stereotypical dyke she would be!  And she was totally my favourite character and performance by the way, from her first scene, talking about the dolphin.

Basically, the problem with women in comedy is that they have to be smoking hot or their looks become the joke.  Even Melissa McCarthy flirting with her real life husband Ben Falcone is presented as unappealing.  And the sex they have during the end credits… I just don’t know.  I’m fat and I don’t require a fucking 3-foot sub when I have sex.  Like, I get it, they were trying to show us the weirdest, nastiest sex they could come up with but I’m not entirely sure why they felt it was necessary to make that happen between two fat people or why the weird, nasty sex between them had to include food.  There are just so many things, sooooo many things, they could have done for that scene and they just didn’t.  And yes, I laughed my ass off during the whole thing.

I hope I’m not alone in this, but I think that certain roles and topics should not be off limits for women just because we are women.  And I don’t think that it’s right to call it “forced” or “awkward” when women are being funny, like so many people on imdb did.  I’m not trying to tell people that what they don’t find amusing is actually really hilarious; that’s not my place.  What I am saying is that we need to reevaluate the way we look at women and comedy and the double standards we, as a society, support.    

A Real Drag

In my first blog post I decided to kick things off with a nice fat acceptance, HAES message that I hoped would make me and everyone who read it a little more comfortable with MY body.  (And yours too. Relax.  I’m not a TOTAL bitch.)  However, I don’t expect every post to be about that because, as the subtitle of my blog explains, I have other issues to address.  Issues like this one:

I am queer.  Hold your applause and/or Bibles back for a second; I’m not done.  I am a bisexual woman.  (We exist, I promise.  Our male counterparts do as well.) But more than that, I am a bisexual woman who calls herself a drag queen. 

Say whaaaaaat?! 

Yes. Yes I do.

You see, I’m not trans.  (My girlfriend says I'm “gender fucked” and this actually seems appropriate.) Despite my whole weight-related insecurity complex, I am satisfied with my body and identify with the gender that I was assigned- for the most part.  Every once in a while I wish that I were a gay man.  I do not identify as one, I just occasionally wish that I did- there’s a difference.  Sometimes I feel like it would be so much easier to do what I’m doing if I were a man, at least there would be a name for it. Instead I find myself inventing terminology like “criss-cross-dresser,” a word which may have existed before it first escaped my lips but which I had never heard until then.  

A criss-cross-dresser: like Victor/Victoria, only less androgynous in my case.  

I have always loved and admired drag queens and drag culture.  Even in my über youth (it sounds pretentious to say “in my youth” when I’m 20 years old) I was obsessed with the gayest, campiest movies known to man.  When I was little, Valley of the Dolls and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? were among my favourite films.  I wanted to be those ridiculously gaudy, over-dramatic, utterly fabulous monsters. I still do. I want glitter and feathers and loud colours!  I want to be a shimmering tower of confidence, creativity, and charisma.  I WANT TO BE BETTE MIDLER!!!! 

But I’m not Bette Midler.  I can’t be because my sexuality gets in the way.  Now, I don’t care about any positive things people have to say about inclusiveness in the LGBTQ community; I feel out of place at Gay Pride Parades.  Do you know how hard it is to be a bisexual woman and a drag queen at the same damn time?  Say what you will about Lady Gaga (I think we all have a problem with SOME ignorant and offensive thing she’s done, said, sang, worn, danced in/on) but she is making my gender identity issue just a little bit easier for me to define to other people.  I mean, it’s not particularly easy to go to a Pride Parade with two separate agendas:

1. represent bisexuality
2. be a drag queen

It’s frustrating!

I go into it trying to normalize my sexuality because no one believes it’s real.  Bisexual women are often treated like straight girls who fuck other girls for male attention.  That’s not okay.  And then bisexual men are treated like gay men with one foot still in the closet who don’t want to admit to being gay so they’re playing it safe by being bi.  That’s not okay either.  None of this shit is okay!  Yes, straight girls make out with other women for attention sometimes and yes, sometimes gay men are too afraid to come out at first but Jesus fucking Christ, whose fault is that?!  I might be a huge fan of blaming society but… society anyone?  Is there anyone here who cares to disagree with the plain truth that society is so damn homophobic some most times that you can’t really blame someone for being nervous about coming out?  Similarly, will anyone attempt to deny the fact that men impose their fantasies of getting with two women at once or of watching two women going at it so much that maybe straight girls have gotten it into their heads that it’s the only way to land them?

Hey society, stop fucking up!  It would make my bisexual life a lot easier.  Thanks. 

That’s on the one side.  On the other side we have my gender identity.  When I’m not promoting the idea that my sexual orientation a) exists and b) is not the devil in my pants (which sounds kind of awesome actually), I am trying to pass myself off as a subversive, gender-bending female impersonator. Whenever I get into my draggy persona, I assemble my outfit as a man who is pretending to be a woman might.  I do everything bigger and fiercer and adopt this confidence I don’t normally have, and pray that no one catches me faking it.  It disrupts the illusion, you know?  A drag queen knows she’s the shit.  But you know what?  It’s hard to be subversive when you’re a girl wearing make-up and a dress.  There’s not a lot to work with there.  

I guess what I’m saying is, it makes me mad when I watch fabulous cross-dressers like Tim Curry in Rocky Horror or Divine or any-damn-body in To Wong Foo and I want to express my gender the way they do in these performances because it feels so right to me and I just can’t because I know it wouldn’t come out right.  I don’t know what it’s like to be a man in heels and I never will.