The L Word

I've already posted five times and still haven't yet talked about where my name came from. So briefly, this is a little bit of the thought process that went with it. 

I prefer to be called a dyke over a lesbian. I know most people hate the word dyke because it’s offensive and blah blah, but I prefer it. I will only ever call myself a lesbian in a scenario in which I think that’s the easier word-choice, and I don’t self-identify that way.

Here’s the thing. I like boys.

This guy? Ooh baby. I could stare at him all day long. He’s a Japanese singer and he makes me all sorts of gooey. He’s got this gorgeous song called “girls, be ambitious” and I’m just like, never stop singing to me please. Now, I know he’s really androgynous. So maybe that doesn’t lose me my gold gay star. But I also get pretty hot for, say… Ryan Reynolds.

Oh Ryan. You’re so yummy. I like your smile. Not the fake one you show to the cameras but the real one where all your teeth are showing and people realize you have an awful cross-bite. Look at him! He’s adorable.

And this is why I don’t like being called a lesbian. I’m not one. Let’s be honest with ourselves. No one is 100% gay or straight and I’m definitely not because I’ve totally had some pretty raunchy dreams starring men. And for years, I would write off little boy crushes by saying, well no one is 100%. But I’m kind of sick of that. Everyone invisibilizes bisexuals. Gays and straights alike, and now gender queers because ‘bi conforms to the gender binary and therefore you should be using the term pan.’ The problem that I have with the term pan is a) no one knows what it is and b) it implies an equal attraction to every gender type across the board and that is also not me. I still have a preference to those who present femme because my first love is women. Don’t even get me started on women.

Whoops how’d that get there? What was I saying? Oh yeah…. Women… yeeeeaaaah… *cough* I mean.

But regardless, I’m still a dyke. Because dyke isn’t just about the fact that you are a woman who likes other women. A dyke is a type of woman. She’s got a bigger body set, and probably shorter hair, and definitely knows how to hold her own, and isn’t afraid of saying slightly misogynistic things about women, because she just loves the female form that much. A dyke is a gender presentation and a preference for women. So that’s why I like the term dyke more. Because I can like boys and still be a dyke. Dyke isn't just about the fact that I sleep with women. It's the gender identity that comes with it. Granted, it's still female, but it's not a feminine female. I would argue that a dyke isn't quite butch enough to be called butch either though. A stone butch is a type of dyke, but there's more dykes than that. 

And to all those people who don't like the term dyke, I'm sorry. But unfortunately you can't please everyone.

Creating Allies: It doesn't just mean teaching straight people

I really have to get this off my chest. I'm queer. But sometimes, I really hate queers. And that isn't internalized homophobia talking. Now before anyone jumps the gun, let me explain completely. I have a very valid reason for feeling that way. My best friend is a straight white male. But he's also an amazing ally, always willing to learn, and almost always stands up against homophobia to his friends, also straight white males a lot of the time. Any time I've told him something is offensive, he's corrected his language and then moved on to correct his friends' language. This is the kind of man I would want standing next to me at my wedding, while I'm getting married to the girl of my dreams, because if it weren't for him, I probably wouldn't have had another straight male friend for the rest of my life. He's such an amazing ally that he actually renewed my faith in straight males all together.

Recently he posted a status saying this: "In my opinion, I really think that when LGBT people (or any minority) hate the 'straight white man' or disengage with them, they lose out on a lot of their support or lose out on seeing people as individuals. I get that a lot of people out there hate, but my dad is a straight, Irish man and he is on your side. I certainly see the LGBT (minority) point of view, but let's remember to not discriminate please (keep in mind I know the difference between racism, and discrimination)."

He posted this because another mutual friend, who is also queer, said he was done with straight white men. Now, in my queer female opinion, when LGBT people hate on straight white men and disengage because they are straight white men, they lose out on a lot of support because now you are seeing that person as a stereotype and not as a person. You shut them out, and of course they are gonna shut you out. If you're ever gonna try and make allies, you need to treat every straight white male as an individual and not just assume that by being straight white males, they automatically don't know what they are talking about.

Granted, the point that a straight white male has no right to tell the minority how to feel about their oppression is totally valid, but the problem is when you assume that his claim is automatically wrong because he doesn't have the right to say it. Because I would readily -and have in the past -make the same claim that if you don't dialogue in a smart way with straight white males, and treat them with respect, you're going to burn bridges. So when I see a queer person then, in response, post this: "Can't really tell a minority how to feel about the majority - check your privilege please." and then this:  http://thefeministhub.tumblr.com/post/2850213187/healthy-cultural-paranoia-and-why-it-is-not-reverse
 and then this:  http://wtfwhiteprivilege.tumblr.com/post/15789319530/so-you-think-you-are-a-good-ally
  and then this:  http://sapphrikah.tumblr.com/post/10572480627 , that, to me, is the worst possible thing you could do. Bear in mind these are all by the same person. Within a matter of minutes of each other.

You could have explained to him in a nice way why you didn't think it was okay. You could have left it at "check your privelege please" and it would have been mildly rude but understandable since you -at that point -were right. You could have come out of this with a stronger, smarter ally. Instead, you have guaranteed that you lost a friend. Because you just accused him -and his father- of being a bad ally, and of being ignorant, and of falling into all the pitfalls of a typical straight white guy, because apparently that's all you can see.

But you know what's the kicker? It doesn't matter if he was in the wrong. What matters is how you handle it. Because regardless of whether we want to or not, at any given time we can be seen as the voice of the community. And this straight white guy who plays football has about fifty other straight white guy friends who just saw you, a queer person, react in a very hateful way to a straight white guy bringing up a queer issue. What are all his friends gonna think, except that you don't want straight white guys as allies? 

So it doesn't matter if he was in the wrong. Instead of reacting to it hatefully you could have calmly said, "I'm sorry, but your status as a straight white male means that this post is a little hurtful to me, the minority. As the straight white male, you don't have the right to tell the minority how to feel about their oppression" and that would have been fine. But no. Instead, you took the hot-headed approach, and not only burned a long-standing friend and ally, but potentially a lot more people who would have otherwise been great allies because of this guy. I've met half a dozen people through him this summer alone, and his presence is what allowed me to safely have conversations with them, from time to time, about women's issues and queer issues. He facilitates those conversations, and he has those conversations regardless of whether or not a queer person is there. So all those potential allies that he could have converted now have just been introduced to the angry queer, and all their stereotypes about you have been proven right.

This is why it's so very important to shut up if you can't say it in a nice way, because no matter what we say, no matter who we are, someone is always watching, and you don't want someone's first opinion of queer people to be this. There are so many better ways you could have handled that situation. And if I hadn't been there, in person, you can guarantee that you would have lost an ally permanently just because of how badly you handled that situation. 

I see this happen time and time again. Queer people get so offended so quickly by the things the "straight white males" say that they just shut down right there and don't dialogue about it. If we are gonna teach people how to be allies, then the first step to doing that is to teach queers how to make allies. Because this isn't it. 

Dark Angel (guess I'm late to the party)

I'd heard about Dark Angel when it first came on TV, but it wasn't on my radar at the time. It was pretty cheesy and I'd come in late in the second season so I didn't care much. I always thought about going back and checking it out again, because it has a couple guilty pleasure actors in it for me (Jessica Alba and Jensen Ackles) so I figured I'd watch the pilot, see what's up.

Best. Decision. Ever. Now, I need to watch the whole show before I really establish how I feel about this, but my initial impression is that from a minority standpoint, this show rocks. Granted, one of the black actors has a heavy Jamaican accent, but he's also a strong recurring character so far. And the other black actor is this little bombshell.

She goes by the name Original Cindy and she is a bona-fide lesbian. She likes the ladies. And she's the main character's best friend. And she's black. 

AAAHHH!!! Omg she's freaking gorgeous! Tell me you are excited about this! Why are you not excited about this?

Which brings up a pretty great point. Queer person of color on a major television network and this is apparently not news to anyone. This show is so small and on so few people's radar that no one cares. And worst of all -it was canceled after two seasons. Possibly the best representation of queer sexuality in a show that I have ever seen, and it took watching the show myself to even know it existed. 

Granted, I haven't seen Original Cindy with anyone yet, but a strong plot point of one of the latter episodes is one of O.C.s exes. So, major network show, non-stereotypical queer person of color who actually has established past relationships. Why has no one ever mentioned this chick to me before? Why is it that we assume our queer characters are people like Kurt from Glee (male, white, stereotypical) or Jack from Will & Grace (male, white, stereotypical). Where are the women? Where are the people of color? Well, I'll tell you where. In Dark Angel. Which by the way was canceled.

Also, the main character likes the ladies too.

"DARREN: I’ll have a beer, since you’re buying.

MAX: I wasn’t.

DARREN: How you doing, Max?

ORIGINAL CINDY: You mean until you showed up?

DARREN: You’re not still pissed off?

ORIGINAL CINDY: ’Cause you went out the back door and nailed her girlfriend? Who’d be pissed off about that?"

I've got to get this off my chest...

"Love the sinner hate the sin" is the biggest load of tripe I've ever heard. I'm entirely convinced that Christians convince themselves of this for the sole reason that the deeper truth is too hard for them to hear; Christianity is evil.


Think about it. You are persecuting an entire minority relentlessly -quite often to the point of death -claiming that they have a choice in a biologically-determined factor to explain it to yourselves that they can just fix their problem if they wish hard enough, and then, to try and get around the fact that you just called me an abomination you claim that well, it isn't you. It's your actions. Change your ways and you can be a good person, really! Try taking some of your own medicine. Because that's just awful.


I actually prefer it when people outright say that the Christian God hates the gays because at least they are being honest with themselves about it.


Think about it like this: would you say this of Hitler? You love Hitler, despite the fact that he was a horrible, horrible person? Your own doctrine says that no one sin is worse than any of the others, so by your own logic, you should feel the same "love the sinner hate the sin" to Hitler.


Oh. I see. That's the way it should be, but as a human, you can't. You are flawed and capable of hate, so hate Hitler despite your policy to love everyone. But God loves Hitler, because God is perfect and without fault.


So, by your own admission, and by your own logic, you really do hate gay people because they're awful nasty sinners. If you genuinely feel that it's a sin, it is by your own decree the only possible feeling you can have on the subject. No one sin is worse than any of the others. I've actually heard people use this to say that gayness is therefore only as bad as lying. But that also means that it's as bad as murdering millions of people, so don't give me that claptrap.


And if you are a Christian gay struggling to try and match the two, you're deluding yourself. One, there's hardly anything on the Bible about your gay to begin with, and the stuff that they do claim is anti-gay was either introduced in the last 60 years or is one interpretation, so really, you could just as easily make the totally reasonable claim that your God doesn't view human love as sinful in any manner.


Don't believe me? Maybe you should do your research, because it can be argued that Jesus himself did in fact say something about homosexuality. He was for it. The story of the centurion? The Greek word the centurion uses, that we translate as servant, actually more or less meant gay lover (the word is pais, and if you want to learn more about how this story is totally gay, you can read a very thorough explanation at www.wouldjesusdiscriminate.org). You really want to tell me that Christianity isn't evil? Because that sounds like a deliberate mistranslation, seeing as how Jesus said that centurion had more faith than the children of Abraham. What, can't accept that a gay pagan can have more faith than you?


In my personal opinion, anyone who says love the sinner hate the sin is not a true believer. Because you, my friend, don't have an astute understanding of your own scripture. In five minutes, I can find three different basic logic arguments for why you are wrong, with scriptural evidence backing up every single one of those points. Now, I generally don't like to, because it's not my religion and I know what the Bible had to say about Satan knowing the Bible too, but really, Satan is a concept, so that's a cyclical argument, seeing as how I could say the same thing about you with more evidence seeing as how you're the hypocrite who believes that God hates the act of homosexuality without hating the perpetrator.


I can get along with a lot of Christians. They're good, well-meaning people. But the faith they try to follow is inherently evil. And if you have a problem with that claim, I want you to think real careful about it, because you, not me, is the one claiming you can "love the sinner, hate the sin" (I'll spell it out for you. In this metaphor, your sin is believing in Jesus. I think Christianity is evil, but I have no problem with you as a person. Just your faith.)


Sounds absurd, right? Well no shit. Open your eyes. You cannot love the sinner and hate the sin if their sin is who they are.




Disclaimer: I don't actually think Christianity is evil. I'm using hyperbole to make a point.

After trying to be subjective on the subject, I've come to the conclusion that conservative Christians are masochists.

So, Chik-fil-A has been all over the news lately. If you haven't seen it, then it's kind of a miracle you stumbled on my little blog first (which not gonna lie I created and then promptly forgot about).

The thing is, I wasn't gonna say anything. Anywhere. It's stupid. It's really, really stupid. It's a goddamn fast food chain and you're throwing a fit like we beat the pope, tied him to a tree, and let him bleed out. What I'm saying is, I haven't even heard evangelical Christians get this up in arms about their savior Jesus Christ, so the fact that they are so very excited about supporting Chik-fil-A is obnoxious for so many reasons I don't even want to bother, but if you're gonna be so very ignorant of your own ignorance. Well. At that point, you're just asking for it. I'm not normally a sadist, but if you're gonna be such a desperate masochist, I'll give you what you want.

1. You say that you are being attacked for your religion. What about all that attacking you did on Muslims for their religion?

1b. If you want to argue that in that case, it's different, because the Muslims are responsible for 9/11 etc, then why are you using the same argument to defend the workers at Chik-fil-A? "Oh, it's fine if you have a problem with the CEO but don't take it out on the innocent workers who did nothing" Really? Because I remember a certain innocent group of Muslims who got a lot of hate sent their way for things they didn't do. They just wanted to open a community center in New York but nooo. We have to punish them for things they had no relation to out of ignorant fear.

2. It isn't even about his personal stance. He is allowed to have a personal stance. He gave money to anti-gay groups. Money he earned from that franchise. Knowing full well that was what he was supporting. Why are we politicizing a fast-food company? Because he politicized it to begin with.

3. That whole thing about how we shouldn't be getting upset because of a sandwich? That's not what you were saying when Oreo released a rainbow-happy pride cookie.

4. I heard someone say the liberals were being hypocritical by not accepting religious diversity but trying to push orientation diversity. See every single point I've made so far about how very ironic that statement is to make.

5. Why are you saying this should be a stance that Mitt Romney should have an opinion on? He's the presidential candidate, not Ronald McDonald.

6. All of those fatty sandwiches that you're eating to try and support this hateful franchise... Are you just eating those or donating them to poor people? Because I'm really very sure Jesus didn't have a stance on gays. Or marriage, for that matter. But he did have a stance on helping widows and the poor, so why don't you go do that instead.

7. In fact, you actually standing out there in protest makes you look much, much worse. You're supporting a fast food organization because they said something very hateful about a large group of other people, by actively protesting. Protesting, in this sense, goes against every one of your core religious teachings. You fail so much right now.

7A. Judge not lest ye be judged, in case you were wondering what those core tenants are. Also, love thy neighbor, treat your body like a temple, and when you pray, do it quietly and privately otherwise you look like a hypocrite for beating your chest loudly (tearing your clothes but I'm paraphrasing obviously). Some men say an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say turn the other cheek. I could really keep going, but if I as a queer witch have to preach to you about your own beliefs then you are really, really doing it wrong.

8. I honestly can't get over the fact that this is a freaking fast food chain. There's no good reason to go out and actively support a fast food chain. The food is so processed as to actually be detrimental to your health, the price is hiked up a ridiculous amount, the workers are paid the bare minimum, and in general, they are just awful awful places. Suppose he'd instead said something like, "creationism is real" and ppl laughed in their face and they lost business for a while... would you go out and protest then?

9. Gay marriage. Why does everyone on the earth have a stance on gay marriage. Of all the things, this is the hot-button topic of our day? There's a whole other can of worms I could crack open about how, yes, your god did have plenty to say about marriage, and very little of it was monogamous, but I'm not going to because honestly, I think both parties are at fault in this. It's just marriage, and it has a lot more subtle impacts than people think. But I'd rather know I can't be fired from my job because of my orientation than know I can marry the person I love.

Quit. Making. A big deal. Out of a little problem.