Sharing Dealings

Very recently a lot of my friends got to know about my (bi)sexuality. It's one thing that I'm quite open about it, I've never really made an effort to hide it, but I came out formally to my friends only a few months ago. I did believe that they would be more supportive of me, considering they've known me for about 4 years now, and they never came across as non-accepting in any form of conversation or interaction.

I came to know that they had made many sarcastic comments, and asked other friends of mine (girls) of I had been flirting with them, with a smug smile on their faces. This was absolutely unexpected, coming from the liberal background that we all did come from. It struck me at that point of time, that the loss I felt was in fact, absolutely nothing when it came to acceptance of homosexuality. There are so many more people on this planet who have to deal with so much more, ranging from expulsion from the workplace and disownment by the family to shock therapy and isolation. How would one deal with this? How do we explain us to the straight and so called liberal community?

So let's say that right now, the "normal" thing to be is heterosexual. Now imagine a society, a culture, where the "normal" thing to be is homosexual. How would we treat them? Would we be equally compassionate? I'm tempted to ask these "friends" of mine, why they never had issues with me when supposedly did not know. The second I said "I'm bisexual" in a game of truth and dare, the tables really spun around. If those are the ground on which people decide who is a friend and who isn't, I'd like to ask them if they actually know what a friend is. So is it worth explaining us to them, or should we just ignore them? Would that make us less approachable to them? Would that increase the distance between them and us?

And ironically, the song in the background goes;


"Release yourself - it's a big sky.
Reveal yourself, it's a big sky.
We love, we leave. We take, we give.
Release yourself - it's a big sky."

In Last Week's Group....Marriage!

We talked alot about marriage: what it means, what it can be, what it should be, what it could be, where it's headed, and if it's for the Queer community.

Thoughts? Comments? Here's where to discuss it.

Human Rights Campaign

Check it out here. They have the most up to date information for the LGBT community in the US, and information about current law etc.

New York just voted down same-sex marriage. Boo.

The Thailand Gurl Scene

Hi Gurls,

As some of you know I'm getting ready to head back into the wide, wide, world again, this time to Thailand. It'll be my second trip there, and while it is a very gay friendly place, it's a very strange place for a gurl like me, who, in my mother's words for me since birth, "is the most agressively feminine creature she ever came across". Basically, I, like many of you, don't fit the nice butch/femme kinds of labels, being not quite femme, and not butch either.

Enter Thailand.

Well. It was a big lezzie culture shock for me. Big. There, you see, everyone is "this" or "that". You're either a "tom", their term for something past butch and closer to transgendered, or a "dee", their term for something like a 1950's pin up girl.

Just read for yourselves...

Susan Hawthorne: feminist, lesbian, activist, poet

Some of us from WHaQ had the good fortune of attending Susan Hawthorne's lecture on biodiversity and feminism yesterday. It opened up alot of new ideas in my mind, I've been positively buzzing (and no, gurls, it wasn't just the beer I had) ever since, and spinning all kinds of web like thoughts around in my head ever since.

I want more out of life, gurls. More living, more enthusiasm, more action. It was really beautiful to see another woman, older and definitely wiser, who's gotten to have just that through her work and writings.

Check her out :)

Afterellen

First, i'd like to bring this site to attention

http://www.afterellen.com/

its a must-see site, imho.

In relation to the most recent post, here's an article on music videos. Gay moments in music videos, to be specific.

And also, some of us were talking about 'gay' clothing. This is an article on movies and style - how one's sense of style is influenced by the characters you see.

I loved this post from La Chola. Not the least because it brought back memories of sitting in high school Geography, watching Aerosmith's Crying and obtaining a giant girl crush on Alicia Silverstone.

Alicia in Aerosmith's Cryin'

So a LOT of friends had a real hard time reconciling the fact that I really dug the epitome of sexist nastiness: Hard rock/heavy metal bands. I mean, what could possibly get more misogynistic than “She’s my Cherry Pie” or “Girls Girls Girls”?

[...] the only place I could ever see women expressing sexuality at all was in the videos I was not supposed to be watching–the only place where even *imagining* making love to a woman was possible was at concerts where women “explored” their sexuality by showing their tits (because that’s what rock girls did.) more

I started thinking about all those spaces in the world that are not meant to empower women, but do so anyway. In high school, I never went around calling myself a feminist. I don't think I even spent a whole lot of time pondering gender at all. That came much later, and it caught fire like wild brush. But in high school, I was too busy finding space for my brown self in all that aggressive white. I was too busy answering questions like, "Why do women in your country get sold when they are married?" (They don't) or "Should I call you Native American?" (I am not Native American). "Isn't Indian offensive?" (Not when you are an actual Indian.)

And then this struck my heart.

Do I really care about “the movement” or do I care about the lonely and depressed queer girls out in the middle of Religious Town U.S.A? Lonely and depressed queer girls, forget the above paragraphs and pay special attention to the paragraph below. There are alternatives out there. There are spaces where your presence is not only honored but desperately needed.

Do I care about "the movement"? These past two years, I have tripped over "the movement" and gotten trampled on by its need, its voracious self-destruction. I find myself listening to those "lonely and depressed queer girls in the middle of..", wide-eyed, my palms tingling painfully. How did I get here? Being part of their stories, their lives, their movement. It's easy to want out. I have no answers to give. I only have questions. I have meaningless suppositions that make little difference to anyone's lived realities. When I do wrong, I wreck the world. When I do good, I move a pebble out of the way.

Something in my heart clenches every time I find these connections in the most random, most unexpected places. Despite all the many differences, there are threads that bind that we cannot see. It is gratifying to know.

Smell and Being Gay

We brought this up in last week's group session and discussed it with lots of zeal and zest. I found a little article about the study, just now so I thought I'd share it. Interesting, no?

I've always said, it's the way women smell that makes me love them. Here's physiological proof!

Julia Serano

Quote of the Day:

"Some women have a penis, some men don’t and the rest of the world is just going to have to get the fuck over it." — Julia Serano, Trans Activist (from clip below)

Very Cool.

The Word Shall Set You Free

"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind." Rudyard Kipling

Words, be it spoken or written, have the power to transform our world and the world of those who come in contact with it. Words are the most powerful weapon that we have. Some of us take pride in the fact that we know many languages. But, language is at its best only when used to inspire others to find the best in themselves.

All positive emotions like love, laughter, heroism, friendship, and every emotion we feel as human beings can be inspired by words. Negative emotions like fear, anger, and hatred can also be invoked by words.

One verse in the bible that has inspired me a lot is John 1.1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Actually what the apostle (John) meant to say was that all the verses in the Bible are from God and it should be obeyed without question. For a rationalist like me, the verse shows the power of words.

We all know that more blood has been shed in the name of religion than for any other cause. What provoked the bloodshed? The words in the religious books whose meaning was transferred wrongly or the words of the author taken as from God and believed and followed blindly.

So dear friends we have the most powerful weapon with us let us go forth and conquer the world.
Here is the link to my favourite song, Words from Boyzone