CW: discussion of sex, arousal, kink, and sexual violence
I just plugged my phone in because otherwise I just know it's going to die while I'm writing this but college is starting again on Wednesday and I wanted to get everything off my chest before I'm too busy to write.
I'm questioning myself again. Sexuality and gender expression.
Sexuality's the main part, really. If you've been following along for awhile, you know I've been using the bisexual label for my sexuality consistently for a little over a year and now I'm looking into why that is. The thing is, I had been cycling through different WLW labels and questioning myself a lot for like...eight months or so before that? And then, when I was wondering if I was a lesbian, I was completely caught off-guard when I caught feelings for a guy...
...who was my co-worker and had more seniority in our workplace than I did. He was also several years older than me, not ancient but old enough that he probably saw me as a kid and it would have made me uncomfortable if he actually hit on me. The age difference was about six years and people keep telling me that's not a lot, but the idea of some 25-year-old hitting on one of my friends or, if I had one, my 19-year-old sister or daughter, makes me see red. Especially since we're at such different places in our lives and I frequently get mistaken for sixteen, even now.
Which reminds me:
Teenagers (ESPECIALLY ones who aren't cis guys) who are above the age of consent, if someone who is in their mid-twenties shows interest in you, run the other way. They're using your legal status as an excuse to feel better about themselves and convince themselves they're not predatory, but they know you are still likely very naïve and inexperienced compared to them and are taking advantage of that innocence - and the fact that you could probably very easily be mistaken for even younger than you actually are - because people their own age see right through their creepy shit and eighteen-year-olds are the only people they can get a date with.
Danny never did that with me and I think he would be just as bothered by the idea of dating a nineteen-year-old girl as I was by the idea of dating him, but I felt like I should say it because I see way too many teen girls being swept up by predatory creeps who are way too old for them, and not just men either - I have an ex who once dated a woman twice her age and the experience really fucked her up.
I hadn't wanted to think much about it at the time, but now it's just weird that I was so convinced I was bi mainly because of a guy that I wouldn't actually have dated and that Roman once told me sounded like a fake crush formed out of internalized lesbophobia.
Which isn't to say that I never notice men outside of that.
A lot of them are celebrities or fictional characters, yes, but I've also had a couple major crushes on guys and I feel like I have the potential to feel that way again. Once when I was in seventh grade, and that guy turned out to be a little asshole - plus, he was over six feet tall, very conventionally attractive, and considered way out of my league. Another time in high school and a little bit in college on a male friend and I'm still not sure what to make of that experience.
Plus I do, shall we say, appreciate men's bodies.
I kind of made friends with an older (like, in her late 50s) butch lesbian who we'll call Jo and I went to her for advice. Jo is the only WLW I know over the age of thirty-five and she has the respect of a lot of young WLW and GNC women who are absolutely awed by the idea of an older butch finding happiness and love and community and raising a small army of adopted kids (GNC and LGBT kids among them!) and even having her own small business.
My mom still thinks I'm a virgin and we've had a shitty relationship since basically forever. Among my aunts, some of them are homophobic and among the ones that aren't, one disowned us which I'm still pissed off about and I've just never gone to any of the others about anything this serious before. With my grandmas, two of them would rather pretend like it's a coincidence that I've never had a boyfriend and have a penchant for menswear and the third is the kind of liberal who thinks that labels don't matter at all and willfully refuses to understand why it's not okay for her to call her female friends her girlfriends. So it's not like there are many older women who I can go to for advice.
Last time I needed a mother figure for anything emotional, I got so freaked out that I ended up going to my teacher of all people. She didn't seem to mind but I'd rather not do that again.
Jo seemed like the only person I could talk to. I think she's used to being put in that position, both by her own daughters and by the young women who so frequently view her as a mentor when we feel alienated by our own families, are made to feel predatory by straight women, are violently fetishized by men, and barely heard anything about LGBT issues in their meager sex education.
I ranted about to Jo about my complicated sexuality for about two hours and she offered some of her own experiences to see if it would help. She says that:
I just plugged my phone in because otherwise I just know it's going to die while I'm writing this but college is starting again on Wednesday and I wanted to get everything off my chest before I'm too busy to write.
I'm questioning myself again. Sexuality and gender expression.
Sexuality's the main part, really. If you've been following along for awhile, you know I've been using the bisexual label for my sexuality consistently for a little over a year and now I'm looking into why that is. The thing is, I had been cycling through different WLW labels and questioning myself a lot for like...eight months or so before that? And then, when I was wondering if I was a lesbian, I was completely caught off-guard when I caught feelings for a guy...
...who was my co-worker and had more seniority in our workplace than I did. He was also several years older than me, not ancient but old enough that he probably saw me as a kid and it would have made me uncomfortable if he actually hit on me. The age difference was about six years and people keep telling me that's not a lot, but the idea of some 25-year-old hitting on one of my friends or, if I had one, my 19-year-old sister or daughter, makes me see red. Especially since we're at such different places in our lives and I frequently get mistaken for sixteen, even now.
Which reminds me:
Teenagers (ESPECIALLY ones who aren't cis guys) who are above the age of consent, if someone who is in their mid-twenties shows interest in you, run the other way. They're using your legal status as an excuse to feel better about themselves and convince themselves they're not predatory, but they know you are still likely very naïve and inexperienced compared to them and are taking advantage of that innocence - and the fact that you could probably very easily be mistaken for even younger than you actually are - because people their own age see right through their creepy shit and eighteen-year-olds are the only people they can get a date with.
Danny never did that with me and I think he would be just as bothered by the idea of dating a nineteen-year-old girl as I was by the idea of dating him, but I felt like I should say it because I see way too many teen girls being swept up by predatory creeps who are way too old for them, and not just men either - I have an ex who once dated a woman twice her age and the experience really fucked her up.
I hadn't wanted to think much about it at the time, but now it's just weird that I was so convinced I was bi mainly because of a guy that I wouldn't actually have dated and that Roman once told me sounded like a fake crush formed out of internalized lesbophobia.
Which isn't to say that I never notice men outside of that.
A lot of them are celebrities or fictional characters, yes, but I've also had a couple major crushes on guys and I feel like I have the potential to feel that way again. Once when I was in seventh grade, and that guy turned out to be a little asshole - plus, he was over six feet tall, very conventionally attractive, and considered way out of my league. Another time in high school and a little bit in college on a male friend and I'm still not sure what to make of that experience.
Plus I do, shall we say, appreciate men's bodies.
I kind of made friends with an older (like, in her late 50s) butch lesbian who we'll call Jo and I went to her for advice. Jo is the only WLW I know over the age of thirty-five and she has the respect of a lot of young WLW and GNC women who are absolutely awed by the idea of an older butch finding happiness and love and community and raising a small army of adopted kids (GNC and LGBT kids among them!) and even having her own small business.
My mom still thinks I'm a virgin and we've had a shitty relationship since basically forever. Among my aunts, some of them are homophobic and among the ones that aren't, one disowned us which I'm still pissed off about and I've just never gone to any of the others about anything this serious before. With my grandmas, two of them would rather pretend like it's a coincidence that I've never had a boyfriend and have a penchant for menswear and the third is the kind of liberal who thinks that labels don't matter at all and willfully refuses to understand why it's not okay for her to call her female friends her girlfriends. So it's not like there are many older women who I can go to for advice.
Last time I needed a mother figure for anything emotional, I got so freaked out that I ended up going to my teacher of all people. She didn't seem to mind but I'd rather not do that again.
Jo seemed like the only person I could talk to. I think she's used to being put in that position, both by her own daughters and by the young women who so frequently view her as a mentor when we feel alienated by our own families, are made to feel predatory by straight women, are violently fetishized by men, and barely heard anything about LGBT issues in their meager sex education.
I ranted about to Jo about my complicated sexuality for about two hours and she offered some of her own experiences to see if it would help. She says that:
- It's actually pretty common for lesbians to get turned on by things like gay male porn because any other kind seems artificial and puts women in painful, degrading positions for the pleasure of straight men
- If devoting my life to women is what I want, I don't have to worry about men
- I seem like someone who is very sensual and appreciates the beauty of human body, which doesn't necessarily equate to actual attraction
- While she never identified as bi, she did date men for a hot second and it wasn't intolerable but it also wasn't anything compared to the soul-melting love and passion she felt once she was with a woman
- I don't need have everything figured out when I'm this young and have my whole life ahead of me
- I'm the only one who can actually determine my own sexuality
And, in my own opinion, there are people who can get aroused by damn near anything. There are people who want to fuck aliens and robots and have weird-ass fetishes like oviposition and vore and think the fish man from The Shape of Water is hot. That doesn't actually say anything about their own sexuality and just because they'd masturbate to certain things doesn't mean they'd do them in real life and as long as it's harmless, i.e. they're not turned on by kids or beating their partner or slavery or anything, it's not necessarily a big deal and it doesn't mean anything about their sexuality.
There's still something that bothers me though, which is that even though I do my best to put my own interests and those of other women first, when it comes to dating and sex I have a hard time saying no to men (I'll discuss it someday) and not putting their pleasure first. Like to the point where I have a hard time telling the difference between my own desire and my need to be desired. Once I basically had a one night stand with a guy who could have passed as Ed Sheeran's brother because he got turned on by seeing me in revealing clothes.
Other times I would get bored and irritated really quickly when talking to men who were interested in me, no matter how nice or attractive they were. Yet I'd still keep talking to them because I didn't want to say no.
Feeling that way is a really common experience for lesbians who haven't yet realized they're lesbians, but it's also a really common experience for women in general. Whenever straight women talk to me about their boyfriends and husbands, I always get the impression that they're putting a lot more effort into the relationship than their men are. My grandma pretends to be interested in my grandpa's boring-ass golf and basketball games (and yes, she has explicitly said she thinks they're boring) but until three years ago he didn't know the difference between knitting and crocheting and he once threw a fit and threatened to leave if she made a dinner that he didn't like. And when my family had a spa day for my new aunt's bachelorette party maybe two and a half weeks ago, all the men ran off within about two seconds of dropping off their wives, as if the nail polish and face masks were poisoned. I've heard similar stories from so many women and it makes me angry that women are so conditioned to accept unhappy relationships and subpar sex from men, and yet so coerced into being with men, that it's often incredibly difficult for us to figure out if we're even attracted to men at all.
My solution to this dilemma, at least for right now, is to decenter men and their feelings from my life completely (unless it's platonic). I switched my Tinder settings so I'm only looking for women, I'm deliberately choosing clothing that straight men find unappealing, and I'm only dating (and, if I feel like it, fucking) women for the foreseeable future. I want to see if this decentering of men, this temporary swearing-off, is something I want to make permanent and something I would be happy with for the rest of my life. If it is, I'm probably a lesbian. If not, then maybe I'll date men. But either way I am tired of men having this huge influence on my life and I'm not wasting my energy on them when I'm not even sure I want to be with them at all.
The reason I'm talking about my sexuality first is that my gender expression is tied to it.
In terms of aesthetics, I'm very fluid between masculinity, femininity, and androgyny. Always have been.
I don't really look like what most people think of when they think of butches, although a lot of my fashion sense is inspired by them and even by men, specifically GBT men.
I actually look pretty feminine right now, I'm wearing women's cut denim shorts and a ribbed patterned tank top with ankle bracelets and gold toenail polish with rose accents. And I don't hate it, it's comfortable and cute.
I do hate the dysphoria and misphoria dressing conventionally feminine sometimes causes in me, between dealing with being perceived as similar to a cishet woman and being read as a woman at all. I also hate how femininity is pushed on me. I hate how any aspect of femininity I perform is perceived as an attempt to compensate for my gender nonconformity, as if that were something ugly and shameful that needed compensating for.
There are times when I deliberately try to look masculine, specifically when I'm trying to flag or when I'm trying to impress a woman. On dates I usually go for either a button-down, sometimes with a tie, or a soft, comfortable, solid-colored V-neck with nice shoes and either dark jeans or khaki shorts, depending on the time of year. Sometimes I switch it up and wear a dress. Add in some leather jewelry and hair gel and I'm good. I love when women call me dapper or handsome...and when they call me beautiful.
When I imagine my wedding, I imagine myself in a button-down shirt, vest, floral tie, khakis with a packer, long elegantly braided hair with flowers or a silk hair bow, sturdy comfortable shoes that are nice but that I can dance in, sturdy leather and silver bracelets, a rose quartz necklace, nail polish, and red lipstick. When I imagine my wedding ring, I don't imagine diamonds - I imagine a silver band with a Celtic lover's knot and a simple but beautiful engraving on the inside. As for my wife? She could be wearing anything. A suit, a dress - I'm more attracted to feminine women, generally, but that preference isn't too extreme.
What I aim for, when attracting women, is androgynous elegance, beauty, chivalry, and class.
When I imagine my wedding, I imagine myself in a button-down shirt, vest, floral tie, khakis with a packer, long elegantly braided hair with flowers or a silk hair bow, sturdy comfortable shoes that are nice but that I can dance in, sturdy leather and silver bracelets, a rose quartz necklace, nail polish, and red lipstick. When I imagine my wedding ring, I don't imagine diamonds - I imagine a silver band with a Celtic lover's knot and a simple but beautiful engraving on the inside. As for my wife? She could be wearing anything. A suit, a dress - I'm more attracted to feminine women, generally, but that preference isn't too extreme.
What I aim for, when attracting women, is androgynous elegance, beauty, chivalry, and class.
Men, on the other hand, don't really feature into my gender expression and if I do ever decide to date a man he'll probably have to be a GNC and/or non-cis bisexual man, specifically because most other men can't handle the idea of a woman being androgynous and gender nonconforming and blatantly refusing to perform gender to cishet standards. Once a cishet guy asked me why I used "male" pronouns if I was a woman who liked men (apparently the idea that I was also nonbinary and liked women hadn't occurred to him, even though he knew about both) and I explained it to him. Really nicely, too, I thought, but he got scared off.
So you'd think I wouldn't be femme, right? After all, how could someone who uses he/him, who wants to pack and go on T, whose presentation is so fluid, who has had such a complicated relationship and so much pain and hurt when it comes to gender, who feels so alienated from the binary, who rarely wears makeup, be femme?
Except that if I end up dating women exclusively femme is probably what I'll be, if I decide to partake in butch/femme culture - and if I'm bi, I'm a tomcat.
Femme isn't defined by looking like a cishet woman and I've met lots of femmes who will deliberately, intentionally fuck with gender roles. The femininity forced on women is about looking presentable for men, restraining ourselves and holding ourselves to higher standards for men, catering to their gaze, making ourselves small and soft and cute.
Femmes - and does, too - turn those notions of femininity on their head by redefining femininity, rejecting anything they don't feel comfortable with, asserting their desires, and performing gender for WOMEN, often but not always for butches, tomcats, stags, and other non-feminine women. Femmes don't do womanhood like straight women do, femmeness is about womanhood completely free of men, and femmes often don't look straight or gender conforming.
I don't agree that bi women inherently taint butch and femme because men aren't inherently any more relevant to their lives than they are to lesbians', but butch and femme are about women exclusively dating women, fucking women, kissing women. It's entirely outside of the boundaries of men, and that's exactly why I would identify with femme but not doe.
Not all does date men, and doeness isn't defined by men, but being a doe can include dating men...it's a feminine identity that can include dating men. As much as I love does, the idea of being simultaneously a feminine woman who dates men, or is even open to dating a man, kind of makes my stomach turn.
Basically, I'm not interested in rejecting femininity entirely, but I'm also not interested in being feminine if that femininity includes the possibility of dating a man. Therefore, either tomcat or femme or just GNC.
Anyway it's 11:40 at night and I haven't done my daily Duolingo lesson yet. I'm learning Italian and brushing up on my Spanish, by the way. And this was...cathartic. Arrivederci è buonanotte.
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