Suicides and Coming Out - part I

It's been a tough couple of months for queer and trans youth and those perceived as queer and trans in the United States, right? Suicide after suicide caused by bullying and harassment has hit the headlines and it seems like the effects of homo-, bi-, and transphobia on our country's young people are finally starting to be noticed.

I'm far from the only one to point out that these suicides are not actually evidence of a new phenomenon, and that issues affecting people with non-normative genders and sexualities often don't received widespread media coverage until they affect white and/or socioeconomically privileged folks. And my friend Rebecca does a far better job than I could of critiquing the most visible response to recent events over at her blog (which I'm also going to go ahead and add to my blogroll). I do want to reiterate her point that perhaps the best way of supporting youth at risk is to listen to them. Listen to them and hear what they're going through, what they need, hear what they want, and respond accordingly. Because I'll tell you a great big secret: youth can, do, and are helping themselves. The best way for adults to help is to support youth-led efforts.

While I don't want to go on at length about this recent spate of suicides, I will acknowledge that it's saddened me: that LGBTQ youth are killing themselves, that they have been killing themselves for as long as I've been alive, and that it took this look for almost anyone outside our community to care or even notice. In the context of a rough couple weeks around issues of sexuality in my own life, I've been starkly reminded of how frequently and deeply challenging it is to be a queer person in a brutally anti-queer and -trans world.

Have you guessed by now that this might not be my most upbeat post?

It has, as I mentioned, been a tough time. If you're reading this you likely know that I struggle with depression, which has the unique ability to make me feel both lethargic and anxious at the same time. I spent a while in August and September sleeping half the day and worrying the rest, without actually accomplishing anything. And it was frustrating. But I'm sorry to say that what jolted me out of my funk was the unexpected and unwanted outing of my girlfriend to her family.

Although I was lucky enough to tell my family that I am queer on my terms (for the most part), I know that being outed is painful, scary, and unsettling, especially when you are not ready to come out, don't identify as queer, or are depending on your family for support. Unfortunately, my girlfriend was in all three situations. Even so, I would have hoped for her to get a better response than her mother asking about her "problem" (i.e. dating me, and whatever her mother implied about her sexuality from the newfound knowledge of our relationship) and whether it was "psychological or physiological."

And that, dear readers, is where I'll leave off for now, with promises of a part II as soon as possible. Sometimes when I'm gathering my thoughts on a difficult matter, I need to take a break to make sure I can get through it, and that's what I'm going to do right now. Goodnight.

thirty-two flavors

i am a poster girl with no poster

i am thirty-two flavors and then some

I am going to indulge in something I haven't done in a very long time, which is to stay up late writing about myself. Worse (better?) yet, I'm going to do it while listening to the one Ani DiFranco song I actually like - still enough, I'm afraid, to win ridicule from both my dyke and straight-man friends. All in all, this is feeling like a very lesbian moment.

I'm feeling tired these days. It's one part activist burnout, and I know there are ways to deal with that, but there's a lot more to this feeling that's crept up on me. Actually, I'm exhausted.

I'm tired of college. I'm tired of staying up late and always having more work to do. I'm tired of organizing events and campaigns and leading meetings and taking too much on. I'm tired of failed attempts at non-hierarchical leadership, of delegating but knowing that I'll end up doing the work anyway, of having to choose between my health, my grades, and my activism. I'm tired of the impossible standards and unceasing competition that have characterized my four years here. I'm tired of not having enough money and too many expenses. I'm tired of not making "me" time, of running around all day but not having time to go for a run, and of the constant back pain I get from this pace of life. I'm tired of being in a place that doesn't facilitate my surviving, much less my thriving.

I'm ready to be done here. I don't care if I don't have a job, I don't care if I'm too broke to pay rent - I'm going to move to California in seven weeks, whether I should or not. It's hard to explain why I need to get out of here so badly without hurting my friends' feelings; the truth is, I do have a few great friends here, and a few more good friends, but I need to move across the country to give myself a fresh start. But I'd be lying if I said it's "just" Harvard that's worn me so ragged.

someday you're going to get hungry
and eat most of the words you just said

It's time for me to start taking lessons from the relationship I've been in for these past two years. I've already moved on in so many ways from that part of my life, but I think it is going to take a very long time for me to really understand why I stayed in something so unhealthy for so long and how I can take the good parts of it with me and move forward. I do genuinely mean good parts - in the midst of an intense, sleepless, sad, tearful time that went on for years, we had some of the tenderest, most loving, and most intimate moments I've ever experienced. I hope for many more times like that in my life, and I am grateful to my ex-partner for all that he gave me, when he was able.

But it was also an ugly time in which I withdrew not only from my friends but also from listening to my own needs in any meaningful way. I was trying to fix not only my depression and failure, as well as my relationship with my parents, but also someone else's depression and deep feelings of failure. I was trying to be everything for another human being: caretaker, therapist, ally, partner, peer, support, and, at the end of the day, lover. It was a mistake so huge I couldn't recognize its magnitude until I was out of the relationship, and his total dependence on me (and, at times, mine on him) made it impossible for us to separate in any way that didn't involve vitriol and violent separation - it's as if we had to kick off from each other in order to re-learn our independence.

In the end, it was abusive. We used each other, I'm sure, and I was verbally harassed and threatened in ways that are simply unacceptable in any kind of relationship. I probably hurt him just as deeply as he hurt me. In some ways, I'm sure we know each other better than anyone else knows either of us - and that's a scary awareness to have, that the person who might know you best in the universe is someone who has used that knowing against you time and time again.

Of course, I talk about this in grand terms. But it is big, to me: my first relationship, and one that lasted more than two long years - the relationship that spanned the worst times of my life and that has defined my college experience. We went through some pretty heavy stuff, so bear with me.

and I would like to state for the record
I did everything that I could do

Part of this relationship (either a very small or a very large part) was my partner's transition. On one hand, his coming out, changing names and pronouns, thinking about and then starting T, rethinking his sexuality, and researching and preparing for top surgery were all minor issues - I completely supported him in each change from the start and had nothing but excitement and some minor jitters about how testosterone might change his personality. I was the ideal partner: I read everything I could about transmasculine identity, joined SOFFA groups, researched the medical science of transition, was supportive and unsurprised as each stage of his transitional process unfolded and he changed his mind over and over again, and celebrated his changing body and self every step of the way. I promised him and myself that I would be the best possible partner that I could, and I think I accomplished that goal on every level but one: I totally forgot about myself.

As in other ways, any sense of an independent self (that is, independent of my partner) became largely subsumed in what was going on with him and us. However, my own sexuality and gender identities and expressions were totally ignored, by both of us, as his gender and then sexuality came into focus. It's taken me until now - months since our breakup - to realize that, as a high femme friend puts it, "my gender is hurting."

What is that hurt all about? What am I feeling?

i'm beyond your peripheral vision

so you might want to move your head

Friends, I don't think I'm a femme. I identify very strongly with queer women's community, largely present as feminine, and find incredible companionship in my femme sisters who also date transmasculine folks. But lately I've been feeling like femme doesn't quite fit.

It's partly my gender expression: I don't wear makeup, and I feel very comfortable in andro-hipster get-up and a sweet pair of kicks (though I also revel in heels and a cocktail dress). The vision of femme I see most commonly has a lot to do with glitter and eyeliner and lace, but I don't really perform my gender that way.

Another part of the mis-match is my severe dis-identification with what I see as a pretty common trend: femmes declaring themselves to be victims or uniquely oppressed because they are not commonly read as queer. Yeah, I look like another preppy white straight girl. Yes, that may put me at risk for unwanted advances or even sexual assault or harassment in some situations where butches and transfolks of all kinds may not be at risk. But honestly, I also have tremendous passing privilege and am safer in many spaces and moments than all kinds of folks who don't look like "women" or "men" are "supposed" to look. I think femmes have a tremendous amount of privilege in a heterosexist society, and the awkward or frustrating moments of not being read as queer are far outweighed by that privilege - in my experience.

Okay, but there's something else going on, too. I feel most comfortable in communities and groups devoted to trans activism and/or questioning or pushing against gender binaries. I'm finding that, on my own, allowed to define my gender in exactly as feminine a way as I'd like to, and with the space and room to question it, I feel like a tomboy. I enjoy wearing pants that are a little bit too big, plaid, hipster glasses, kicks, my hair pulled back. I even thinking binding is kind of fun. Packing's not bad either, and I'd be curious to feel what T is like for myself.

I'm not trans-identified, and I don't feel like a boy or man or want to transition. But I have a gender that is not adequately described by "man" or "woman," a definition of genderqueer that I recently read in a controversial blog post. Given that post and the comments that followed, I'm really wary of labeling myself as genderqueer, and not sure that that's a word that feels like home in the same way that queer does and has. But it's at least heartening to know that there are other ways of being (besides femme) and that, given the freedom to explore my own gender, I'm settling into something that feels scary but genuine. Wherever I end up, I'm so grateful to have good friends and travel companions - one of whom blogs brilliantly and is about to be added to my blogroll - and that I can figure this out at whatever pace, and in whatever way, I choose!

and god help you if you are a pheonix
and you dare to rise up from the ash

So, that's it. I'm coming out as not-femme. I'm still queer. I'm single. I'm learning to love myself. I'm ready to move, and to move on, and doing okay. More later; less of it so self-indulgent. Thanks for reading.