Compliments in the strangest places

Working with someone new, who seems like a nice enough guy.  On the way to lunch, out of nowhere, the following occurs:

Colleague: Have you read any of Alison Bechdel's work?

Me: (stunned) Um, yeah..?

C: You look like her.

M: Really? (I can't refuse a well placed compliment, even though being a lean short haired dyke with glasses doesn't make me as good looking as she is).  

C: Yes.  Have you read her work?

M: Um, yeah.  I liked her last graphic novel...  Have you read her stuff?

C: Oh yes! I loved 'Fun Home'.  It was...

He proceeded to wax lyrical about 'Fun Home' and we spend the rest of the day talking about it and other books. A couple of days later we ended up at a comic book store where I bought (political) graphic novels under his guidance.  Turns out he loves the genre (I have really only read Bechdel's work and some of the Maus series) - and his enthusiasm was contagious.  

What I loved was that he compared me to a intelligent (butch?) dyke who he knew and respected.  It wasn't one of those weird "I like The Ellen Show so I am ok with lesbians" conversations. It was about common ground and it wasn't straight common ground.  It was dyke territory.  And I'm so nice when people are on my turf.

Ok, so I admit it.  I am totally susceptible to flattery.  So sue me.

Travel

There has been a break in blogging due to travel.  Admittedly, I went to the USA where they have the internet, but I was also working so didn't get a chance to come back to this corner of the web.

I was a little tentative about my journey, mainly due to both US and Australian security who generally make getting onto a plane more stressful that it already is (21 hours in transit is no picnic).  However, I got off lightly.  Only once was I frisked and even though a few people got pronouns confused, it didn't cause me to be scrutinised and analysed and generally held up.  Even those creepy scanners were fine, as was the retina and fingerprinting at US customs (really, you need all that?).

Suffice to say I arrived in all destinations safe and sound and even in travelling round, gender was not a big deal. Sure, I was in a major US city, but I still thought there might be tangles.  However, the less I freaked out, the less others did.   But when I was called sir I went with it, and if/when they corrected themselves I brushed it off.  It's easier to be self contained away from home, and much easier to be carefree with others perceptions of you. Here I am with friends/colleagues/etc when gender confusion strikes, so I need to take other people into account, and what they think and feel.  Maybe I'm saying travel can allow you to be selfish?  Or maybe it's just about the ability to reinvent yourself.

Day to day

I wonder if I didn’t take into account how I looked at all, how the world would be towards me. If I wasn’t worried about having to fend off other people’s gender confusion, would that make things easier or harder?  I wonder if it’s on me, that I worry and bring that with me?

Meanwhile the kids are still as perplexed and perplexing as ever.  “Isn’t it a dude” was a titbit last week, as well as kids genuinely asking for help calling me ‘sir’.

I have this one school and class that I go to every couple of weeks. There is this girl, she’s 13 or 14 and gets in my face every time and I really have no idea why.  She comes up to me, quite aggressively really and says “Hi Miss!’ several times. She’ll stare at me during class and sometimes point and whisper. She tracks me wherever I go and when I look up, she’s glaring at me. 

But she’s 13 or 14 and I struggle to find it threatening, even though I think that’s what she’s going for.  I am reminded how glad I am, for all the difficulty one faces, that I can move through the world this way.  That I am an adult and the challenges of being a teenager are behind me.  And when I think about it like that, things aren’t so bad.

Youth of today

Today I was up the back of a year 9 class in a school I’m not too familiar with.  About five minutes in, the kids started asked questions of their teacher:

“Miss, who’s that?”

“What’s that?”

“Miss, there’s someone at the back of the class” (today’s youth.  So observant)

And there were a few others I didn’t hear.  Their tone was not polite.  The teacher quietened them down and said:

“Some of you have asked who’s up the back.  This is Ms______ and she’s from ______”

Well.  If the emphasis on the Ms didn’t give away that the kids were asking pronoun related questions, the “WOAH” when she said it sure did.

Awkward.

And a little unpleasant.

I’m temporary amusement and the kids were soon distracted away from me.  While I felt pretty crap about the whole thing, it’s not so uncommon for me to get this reaction when I’m in new schools.  What was even worse was what happened later in the class. 

When talking politics, they thought Bin Laden was from Iraq.  Turns out their education is not only deficient when it comes the breaking down the gender binary.

Moving in packs

I went out to dinner with a dozen women the other night.  Good friends, all dykes.  For a range of reasons we ended up in a pretty suburban restaurant.  It’s well known by locals and the food is pretty good.  We were seated at a big table up the back and had pretty loud conversations for a couple of hours.  The table next to us knows up better than they wanted to.  It was a good night, for the company and the fact that no one kicked me out of the women’s toilets.  Ok, so no one else was there when I was, but I take any evening without being accosted as a win.

The fun came at the end of the evening.  It’s an average sized restaurant and we had to walk the length of it to get out. Twelve women leaving at once is perhaps a little odd, as most tables were of mixed gender.  But it was the five of us that were clearly not so straight that I think drew the attention.  The rest of the group were guilty by association. And they didn’t look so straight to begin with. Needless to say, the place was pretty silent as we left. 

But it felt ok.  It wasn’t an isolating experience, where I had to second guess myself and wonder if I was imagining it, or checking if I was safe.  I was part of a pack.  And it felt pretty awesome.

Public places

A new school year here, and a chance for me to get back into other people’s classrooms and see a bunch of new teachers and new kids.  I work in high schools because that’s where I was trained, but it’s what I prefer.

Primary kids scare me.  They’re little and the world is so black and white and gender is a perfect example.  Short hair you’re a boy, long hair you’re a girl.  And while I don’t work in primary schools, I managed to run into enough kids to make me (and their parents) feel uncomfortable.  Mainly in shopping centres. And then mainly in shopping centre toilets.

Seriously, what are your options when a kid screams ‘ what he doing in the women’s toilets mummy?!?!’  

Answer - not many. I have found the last thing a mother wants is the man/butch lesbian/strange person in the toilets to talk to their kid.  They’re either embarrassed or they’re scared.  Neither ends well.  The mother generally mumbles something to their child and I beat a hasty exit.  But you carry you things with you, more than they do. 

I know it’s about me, so I have a place in it.  But I feel the damage is done when people feel under threat, and the least confrontational thing to do is back away.  Slowly.

Visibility. Again

The question of visibility raises the chestnut of assimilation or separation.  I prefer to be separate.  I like feeling like I’m part of a renegade group who push the boundaries.  I don’t really do it anywhere else but in how I look and who I live with. Apart from that, I work, pay taxes, drive on the right side of the road (which is actually the left side). But in that most obvious sense, I’m a bit on the outer of the mainstream.

My friends, however, are a different story.  Many of my dyke comrades have had kids (five couples so far, with another two in the works) and several have moved to the suburbs.  They send Christmas cards, our email updates about their families.  They appear happy, but it’s not a life I want.  They are straighter than the straight couple next door.  ‘Married’ (four of the five had commitment ceremonies), monogamous, with child/ren and conforming to all of societies expectations.  Except for the bit where they married a man.

I don’t want to disrespect them.  Like I said, they seem happy. But it’s no longer the radicalism that has been the hallmark of the queer community for over fifty years.  Perhaps it’s easy to say now that we have legal rights and don’t get routinely bashed/arrested/shunned for being LGBT. Maybe I am being arrogant and self entitled.  But I look at my married friends and have less and less in common with them.  I have begun to hang out with straight couples without kids and other less traditional queer folk.

The second part of this argument seems to point to the importance currently placed on gay marriage.  Which, really, is a topic for another time.