Tales from Gender Zero...part 2

Tales from gender zero part 2

Whatever was I talking about? Oh yes, predetermined roles within the lesbian and greater community as defined by biological gender- or worse, the perceived gender cast upon you from the eyes of the many….

Not to say I do not enjoy role play, or try on new identity styles to see what projects the part I am OK sharing with you. But I am who I am….
Not to say I do not have baggage, I do. Some I keep carefully put away to examine and every so often say ‘yep, that’s mine!’ like a dog who will come back to a place she has buried a bone and check on it.
Some of it has passed into peaceful reminders of hard work over the years. I have spent long nights examining and evaluating, in my search for personal growth.
But no one is wound or baggage free…

Identity.
I keep asking myself how we decide who we are. I’ve noticed that aspects of my identity change over time, according to the friends I have. My core self is still the same, but my surface self is mutable, much the way style, fashion and hair are mutable.
I keep noticing that women I meet do a fair amount of posturing, display of a synthesized self that is some sort of display of their ‘wares’ those things we are taught defines us as good people and valuable potential partners. Their income, lifestyle, their look. Women are taught to market themselves to potential partners, to emphasize some things and downplay others. I’ve never lived as a man, not really so I don’t know- do men do that too? Sell their wares to a person who is looking to buy…as a partner.

What about those secret traits we hide that don’t fit what the rules say? The butch woman who is petrified of spiders, loves to bake cookies, and wants to bear children. The femme who wears a strap on and dominates her lover. More so, those secrets that mean we are not ‘ideal’ as ‘perfect partners’.

How many of us who wear our less than ideal truths where others can see simply get overlooked in the pursuit of perfection and that everlasting perfect partner fit?

Life leaves patterns of scars imbedded into the flesh and mind. But the spirit rises free above all trappings.

Who do we decide to become?

When I entered the gender reassignment program so long ago, and jumped through all the hoops I came across a snag in the process. The program at that time demanded a good fit into the traditional male role…and I was not traditional.
Punk rock beauty girl with the andro eyes and black smiths arms, my long hair and pretty face was held in question as the seriousness of my male identity.
Wasn’t I ‘just a butch dyke?’ Huh?
Wait a minute….then why do my butch friend insist I’m femme?

This pick one or the other, the be butch or be femme thing follows me everywhere and makes me just a little confused and crazy.
Like I said, my butch friends insisted I was femme. The transgender program asked me if I simply was a butch lesbian. Dualities. One or the other.
Do I have to pick one or the other? Male or Female? Butch or Femme?
Why?
I’m not that simple.

Pause. The hum of the needle, ink scripted into flesh, tribal fusion designs in my skin. Metal, ink, and transformation. Growth and the journey marked in pain, pride and decorations.
Now I am not so “femme” or at least not so stereotypical anything but punk hippy goth rocker alternative with the voice of an angel.

I was puzzled enough to ask them why they decided I was femme…and fresh meat for the group as well..
“You are pretty” they said. “If you are butch you need to cut that hair off. Get the Kohl out of your eyes, and wear baggy clothes.” “Well, your forward enough and you have the walk down, but no one will buy it…you are too pretty.” “Wear men’s clothes.” (I am) “No, wear real men’s cloths, you know, more…regular.” (you mean more boring? like business casual for men…please I have better taste than that)
“Look its simple,. You are just a femme. Butch women want you, you look like arm candy, you’d make a great wife. Man I would love to see you spread out on my pillow! I bet you taste pretty good…and Christ, you can cook anything! Quit fighting it and you’ll be happy.”

“If you are so butch, why do you have tattoo’s with flowers in them?” (if I am so femme, why do I have ink of dragons and tribal and since when do flowers or dragons in your ink define your sexuality, your gender identity{s}, or anything besides how you want to decorate yourself) “You are what you look like. Wanna go grab coffee?”

“I’ll make you happy baby. You won’t need to work, we can have a big house, you can have pets, and we’ll go out on the town. I bet you wash up real fine….”

“It is what it is. You don’t fit. You are not butch. You’re just a rough femme, kind of a street femme or a biker femme. Be happy butch women like you.”

One butch kindly let me know that sitting and looking pretty would be appropriate for me at a women’s event where we were all pitching in setting up event gear. She meant well….

So, what exactly is defined by the labels butch/femme? What does it mean to be femme? Butch? Is it just an identity assigned by visual assessment? Is it all and only about how you look? Isn’t it just an extension of the gender we are assigned by the look of our external genitalia? It’s about looking like something, isn’t it?

I don’t think so. Not entirely- just like gender is not entirely about what parts you have. Isn’t your choice to self identify as butch ore femme the mirror you choose to project that part of yourself you are safe showing? So, if it is an identity far beyond the surface, why then is the surface even considered?

Is there any inside self who wants a dashing odd lover with complexity, intelligence, a little kink and allot of self? … nail polish is still a disaster, and yes I have heels…on my feet, towards the back where my ankles end.

But the butch women who look at me like I’m some new dish just waiting to be served up for the taste and compare show…. And the femmes who tell me “Wow, you’re a hot dancer but I like short hair.” In a lover, do you just look for the right look? I know about preference and the chemistry connection that the eyes bring… but when chemistry fades what sustains your relationship.

What…you just break up and try again?

OK. I like some of them too, butch women…we make great pals. I like some femmes too. I can even shop with them, I have an eye for what looks good on anyone but me when I’m dragged to the mall. I also like gay men, straight women, rebels, dogs, cats, sushi, birds, watching paramecium’s, beaches, Zen koans, the moon, movies and really good coffee. But what I miss is a woman who is herself, above and beyond all other things. A woman who can go without roles and rules other than those she crafts for herself. Balance, depth, complexity with the awareness and openness to choose to see both herself and those others she wishes to care about as who they are.
Not as who they look to be.

Damn, maybe I do have it all wrong. Maybe I’m a looking for a man. A gay man. That’s it, I’m an alien gay leather boy in a female body! Great- that makes life complex.

About that time I stopped admitting I could cook anything I could taste. It helped a little. I also didn’t admit often that I loved flowers, planting them, smelling them, getting them as well as giving them. Once I hiked out in the hills to get the seeds of a particular tiny wild flower and bring them back to my yard. Now my femme friends thought this was interesting and possibly romantic (if the flowers bloomed) but far too sweaty and dirty to get involved with. My butch friends thought it was weird.
The ones who were just themselves?
Well a hike in the hills was good no matter what your gender, orientation or role affiliation was…..

I love hikes in the hills. I love them best with intelligent and complex conversation. I do like to talk, and I admit, I like to be listened to and respected (not patronized). I like to teach sometimes but more than that I like to discuss.

More than what your favorite show on TV is.

Or than listing what you ate and the calorie counts and oh how you wish you could just take a pill to loose weight. Lots of us want a magic pill that fixes weight, cures depression, balances our checkbook, gives us our dreams.

Traveling through this world, a beautiful long haired butch with an angel’s voice, I have met many people, loved a few of them. For some time the roles of butch and femme seemed to change, to diminish- it was no longer so important to self define and restrict yourself to these roles. I could be the magical prince with femme long hair and butch hands. And then time changes and the world moves on, and the roles evolve and come round in another variation. Just as styles of clothes recycle themselves, the styles of identity seem to as well.

Adventuring forth in search for a place where I could be the long haired leather girl prince alien with the butch hands and the angel’s voice, I found entrance into the dark worlds, the worlds of kink and passion, of roles and play laid out only for a night a scene or an agreement.
Heaven felt like home felt like forever in the arms of the night in the dark of the dungeon. There, my strong arms and intensity did not conflict with my looks. I was the pretty, long haired butch Dom gender queer. I was welcomed in the dark embrace of the forever night of S&M/B&D.
I miss that.
The playgrounds are far away, and I crave the company of someone who cares for me as well as the company of friends who accept me.

Did you know whippoorwills migrate through my area? As a child I read about some of the American mythology surrounding them. They say, when you hear a whippoorwill call, they are calling for a soul. They sing for the soul of someone who will die soon, or who has just died. They bear that soul away to where it needs to go.

For several nights, a flock of night birds have come over my house an hour or so after full dark. The sweetly call ‘whip-poor-WILL, whip-poor-WILL”… peeping sweet cries for almost an hour above my house.

Do I have no soul for them to bear away to sacred ground? Or does part of me die tonight? Perhaps it is the part that cares about dualities of perspective. Perhaps I become a modern day Berdache tonight.

And I am alone. Alone and not too lonely, but still looking and wondering who what where when how if will I may I mother night please grant me…
Love…..
Acceptance….
And the story……continues

I am not complaining about being alone. I am not. I have… a partner. I am complaining about being lonely in my solitude, and disconnected self from the self of the couple, or the society.

I was with a young lover for a brief time. A sweet little pillow princess with big eyes and a big heart. We had good times at first, she was at first comfortable with my self identity. But as commitment progressed I noticed a sad and terrible thing. As commitment progressed, the value of my self decreased. I saw the ugly head rearing of the social roles we are trained with…again.

She grew up watching her mother and father sort out very restrictive roles, and came out as a lesbian in a backwoods, throwback to the dark ages sort of town where women divided up who they were in patterns similar to the Christian marriages of the Bible belt. Drinking, monster truck bashes, beaten’ on your woman, and ten kids per family. High school education was maybe equal to a third grade education out here.

Are we what we learn to be? Or do we have the power, choice and strength to choose to become far beyond…

Commitment opened up an ugly can of worms. Where once I was that dashing and magical lover, I now became a possession to display for friends. Commitment equaled ownership, and cheating equaled…looking, a hug, a private conversation.
Power.
It was all about power.
The power to have control over life choices, over money, over your lover. The power to prevent your lover from leaving, or from looking, or from anything that could shake your foundation.
My young lover put away her skirts, and put on a scowl. She bought men’s business casuals and told me “I can support us both, you won’t need to work.” My raised eyebrow did not help the situation, so she frowned and said, “Your work interferes with our time together. So does your school. I make more money than you do. Quit it.” (quit what? I asked) “School and work! You have no time for us. This house is a mess, and I’d like to come home from work, sit down and have a nice meal with you sometime. I work all day so I deserve my rewards when I get home.” Deserve, what an interesting word, with it’s implication that I owe her this comfort, that I deny her this comfort by not providing my end of the unsaid gender based deal- the quiet house, cigar, slippers, home cooked meal, sex and all the rest, like her mom did for her dad. (I work all day too…) “Yah, but your work is different. We don’t need that.”
On and on. Power, dominion. Stepping into a role that connected back to butch femme dichotomies of 30 years ago, back to when we were all trying on the hats and costumes of man and wife to fit into a society that wasn’t really happy with us.

I did love her. I didn’t love her enough to quit work, or rather I wasn’t foolish enough to quit work, isolate, obey and permit the abuse of power to continue.

I left because once again, the pressure to conform to roles that mimics Midwestern, ‘leave it to beaver’ gender divisions reared it head. My young lover talked about how femme she was, and yes, in bed she was a pillow princess. But socialized in this world she was taught to value traits that are harshly stereotypically male. To control the choices in a relationship, to make the bulk of the big decisions. To make the income, and with that income to have power. To have the right to expect devoted, undying rapt attention to her every word, every need. It is wonderful to possess someone so completely that their every breath is tuned to your needs. A ‘wife’ is a delightful possession to have.

Think of it, someone who devoutly listens to your bad day at work, cooks you breakfast lunch and dinner, hands you coffee as you go out the door, always lets you decide where to go on weekends, couldn’t bother her pretty little head with the hard stuff like deciding what restaurant to eat at. Always ready to jump into bed, complementing you endlessly on your lovemaking abilities…

Yes, that was what my little pillow princess wanted. I understand. It’s hard to be a working, struggling lesbian. It’s nice to have the rapt devotion a mother will give her new born, to have your needs completely attended to.

This last weekend she called to chat. I don’t mind friendships with exes. It’s a good way to create community ties. Much of what draws us together is friendship, which is left after the heat of passion flares and burns out.

She called to tell me that she was willing to ‘take me back’, to tell me she loved me, wanted to marry me, wanted me to be her wife. She called to tell me that my job and career interfered with our relationship, and if I gave them up she would support me. We could try it again, if I gave up my job, my personal goals and focused instead on working on a relationship and keeping a comfortable home.

She told me she realized, after talking to other women that she was butch, and that I needed to accept that I was femme. That ‘it’ would have worked out between us, if only I had been willing to put in the work, and accept my place in the order of relationships.

I am so tired.
The whippoorwills are calling.

You know, after all these years I am beginning to wonder if I need to cast off my butch self and embrace being a femme.

After all, I am pretty, edging on beautiful. I have long sleek hair, the voice of an angel and the eyes of a lioness. My career which pays for my life alone, my entertainment, my cars and my house is obviously just a hobby, and my strap on packing nasty Dom self who can make you come until you pass out is obviously some sort of cover for a soft, gentle femme who wants to lay back and be done…

The crazy thing is, I am none of those things and all of those things. Male and female. Gentle, harsh. Dom, kinky and sweet. Pretty and hideous. Wise, and stupid. Dark….and light.

I keep wondering. With all the bad boys in the movies with long hair and an evil smile, why can’t I embrace my masculinity, my androgyny and keep my hair, keep my normal weight, and dress in my bad boy leather Dom clothes and be taken for what I feel I am? Can I be seen with depth?

I wish oh I wish for a lovely woman, a little alternative girl to accept me for what I am, love me for who I am, and not expect me to be anyone else would want to date me, fall in love with me, and spend her life with me.

Will the story continue? I do not know. I have been partnered yet single and solitary within for along time. Do I love? I don’t know. Can I be loved? I don’t know. Do I stay or must I go- or rather, do I stay and do I grow?
I am….
Many people. I am you, and me, mother and father, sister and brother.
I live everywhere. I am everyone…
Sometimes……..