[Cross-posted from Vox.]
A few years ago, the choir I belonged to sang a song with a chorus that goes like this:
(I want a) Big Butch Woman
in a flannel shirt
who drives a pick-up truck
and who smells like dirt
(Perhaps someone else can fill in the next stanza, which has escaped my memory.)
Kinda gives new meaning to the short form "BBW", doesn' t it? 
As
part of our costuming for this song, the women were all required to
wear flannel shirts. This posed a dilemma for me as I had gotten rid of
a couple of flannel shirts in the few years just prior to being
required to have one. Happily,Tessera came to the rescue by swooping down on an outlet store and snagging a
few of the discount yet top-of-the-flannel-line models. I wound up with
a nice soft blue checked number with snap buttons.
The flannel
shirt, solid butch lesbian iconography from way back. And yet – not
flawless "gaydar" material. There are numerous amusing anecdotes of
lesbians travelling north to communities where every woman looks like a
lesbian because she has solid footwear, short hair and the ubiquitous
flannel shirt. Of course, in communities where one's femininity is
deemed of less value than one's ability to dig a truck out of a snow
bank, women may indeed lean towards the butch side of the female gender
spectrum.
Butch.
Femme
Woman.
Where do these concepts intersect?
Why
did I rid myself of my two prized flannel shirts a few years ago? Was I
(am I) afraid of my butchness? Does working in a predominently
heterosexual environment make me eschew the less normative side of my
identity?
I've been out of the gender politics loop for a while
and am now gingerly re-entering the debate, thanks largely to the
provocative and thought-inducing questions asked by New Love. I shall
carefully stick my toe back in and see what happens.
It is a
very common experience for me to be mistaken for a man, usually by
people who aren't paying attention. I have Hummer-sized hips and
proportionately well-endowed bosoms so the people who regularly call me
"sir" in stores and restaurants just aren't paying attention. My
clothing, although sort of androgynous, is cut to show rather than
conceal my shape. I wear some jewelry, but of the subtle variety, not
huge sparkly things. I do wear Bluntstone boots year round and possess
a rather heavy foot-fall. I have two walking speeds – saunter/amble or
stride. I've been told I have nice eyes and an open smile. I have also
been told that I project a very male energy or presence, which I find
so very odd. I'm just "me". I put no effort at all into being one way
or another.
For those who know me in person … I'm open to
debate on how I "present" to the world. I'd be curious to see how far
off my own interpretation is.
What is intriguing to me is the
rigidity of our own notions of "gender". Femininity / femme "means"
roughly the same thing to most people. More male or butch behaviours
and styles are also easily read, by most people in North America. What
room is there for women who remain resolutely female yet project a more
male attitude or presence?
It is my perception that it is more
acceptable for me live out my "tomboy" persona while it is less
acceptable for men who are more feminine to live out in the world in
that place. Even in the gay community, I have seen prissy men
experience some isolation and taunting. From my study of power
politics, way back when, I know that it is acceptable for the less
powerful group to mimick the more powerful group (i.e. women to imitate
men) yet for the more powerful group in society to take on the
characteristics of the less powerful group … this is, literally,
disempowering for that group. Popular subconscious perception would
label this A Bad Choice … there must be something wrong with someone
who would choose to do that.
Of course, our Western notions of
male and female are merely societal constructs. A woman who embraces
her maleness is still a woman, or should be able to be so. A man who
embraces that which is identified as femaleness should be able to do
so. Yet there is so much resistance. I wonder sometimes if the current
wave of butch women transgendering fully to a male identity is really
about our society's inability to make room for a different kind of
woman. I am completely not informed on this issue and am speaking from
the position of a butch woman who sees a generation of butch women
younger than me who are turning to surgery so they will feel more
themselves in the world. I find it sad and a bit frightening, but I'm
looking forward to learning more as I delve deeper into this issue.
As
it turns out, my New Love describes herself as "soft butch" and she
never imagined being with someone who was also on the butch side of the
spectrum. We are having loads of fun with this, debating who is
butchier on a particular day or in a particular circumstance. This is
fun – it isn't a deep heavy debate about our own personal identities.
She doesn't care that I wear more jewelry than her and she thinks it is
funny that most people observing us think that I am "the butch". Maybe
that is just because I'm taller – who knows? Most important, she loves
my soft blue checked flannel shirt with snap buttons. I've realized
that I love it too, and I missed not having it for a while. Now that I
get to wear it most weekends, the world seems back in balance.
[Cross-posted from Vox.]
It gives me sad pause to know that we have reached a point where we
need to define appropriate protocols and responses to violent rampages
that take place in otherwise safe environments. The day after the
Virginia Tech killings, our school, a community college, sent out its
"still in progress" emergency preparedness protocols via e-mail for the
college community. I suppose I should read them, but I haven't. To read
that document would be to internalize the fact that it *could* happen
here. To us.
For some reason, I am put in mind of 9/11, which
was a teaching day for me, a Tuesday. This class was at the very
beginning of my second year in the classroom. The class that day was an
afternoon class and it marked the first time I would be called upon to
teach a purely tech course. I was nervous about this, and feeling a bit
frantic, getting my last minute prep done and reviewing the specifics
that I would cover in the intro class. Previous Love and I were still
together, although nearing the end. Things were rough between us.
Working on my MBA and going to grad school/teaching in Toronto whilst
living outside of the city meant I needed to sleep two or three days
per week in the city, away from home. So, that morning, I was in my
rented room in a nice house in a nice neighbourhood of Toronto, using
dial-up to upload/download information to the school networks and web
sites, and not watching TV. I was tying up the phone line with my
Internet activities but normally this wouldn't matter. At around 10:30
a.m., I got off line to use the phone and realized that someone had
left me a voice mail message. It was Previous Love, telling me in a
shaky voice to turn on my TV. I did. I watched, in disbelief, one of
the towers come down. I had no backstory and no idea what was
happening.
To say it shook me is putting it mildly. I sat on
the edge of the bed in my room, first class details forgotten, and
stared at the TV screen. Soon, what was known of the story emerged.
Shaky video of planes crashing into the towers started to appear. Just
before I left for class, unsourced video of people in the Middle East
celebrating also appeared.
My head was spinning. Our school is
like the United Nations. Our classrooms have all manner of cultures,
languages, value systems and belief systems within them. We are
hundreds of miles away from New York and in no way directly involved.
Therefore, class would go on.
I remember being too numb to get
it together to prepare food at home. I remember sitting in my car in
the McDonald's parking lot across from campus, glued to the radio and
mechanically chewing the non-food I had purchased. I was in two places
at once, vacillating between some odd limbo of shock and wondering "what in hell am I going to do with my class?"
I
got into my office area about 45 minutes before class and I stared for
a while at my now seemingly pointless powerpoints. All the discussion
around me was focussed on only one thing – the morning's tragic events
- and it wasn't helping my concentration. I kept asking myself, "If I were one of these students, what would I need right now?"
As I was pondering this, the information came to me that most of the
campus community was watching the events unfold (and get re-played,
again and again) on the brand spanking new theatre-sized projection
screen in the Student Centre. "Great," I thought. I'll have a class of
deeply traumatized international students who have been watching a jet
plane fly into the World Trade Centre on a screen the size of a house.
Once
in the very quiet classroom, I took a look at the group before me,
glancing up while I set up my laptop. I saw Sikh turbans, a latino or
two, and a Star of David gleaming at me from a necklace about mid-point
in the room. I saw brown-skinned people, Asians and a freckled
white-skinned red head. What they had in common was that they were
looking to me for guidance and leadership over the next three hours we
were scheduled to spend together. What they also had in common was the
fact that they had no experience with each other as classmates as yet.
It was too early in the year for that.
This was supposed to be
an HTML class which, under the circumstances, seemed like a profoundly
trite way to spend time. What to do? What is the appropriate response?
This
is one of those times where I was forced to begin the process of
speaking to a class well before having clearly thought out what the
words were going to be. I actually don't remember what I said. I asked
them if they had spent time in the Student Centre, watching. Some had.
I tried to start some dialogue and discussion and that seemed to go
well. I don't remember it turning into a group therapy session, nor do
I remember tears. I remember seeing fear, shock and uncertainty. The
process of turning the class inward, and getting them to speak to each
other, seemed to be helping. It made the room seem more "safe" and made
our task of learning together more tangible, somehow.
As the
discussion unfolded, haltingly, I remembered an icebreaker that I had
in my desk drawer. I had designed an introductory exercise for an
e-business orientation session but I hadn't actually used it that year
for some reason. Each student would get a photocopied "Bingo" card with
boxes that had bits of information in them. "Has high-speed access @
home" (hey, this was 2001 …) … "has used a library Internet
terminal in the last six months" … "has more than one e-mail address"
… The objective was to circulate throughout the room and collect
names of people for whom the criteria matched. The person with the most
"full" card in a given period of time would "win".
I excused
myself and quickly made some copies of the exercise. It got the
students up on their feet, moving around and talking with each other.
Soon, there was some laughter at some of the crazy bits of information
on the sheet. I gave them 15 minutes, or so I told them, but really I
let it go for 30 minutes. I have no idea if that was the "right" or
"appropriate" thing to do. I was running mostly on instinct at that
point. It certainly did change the energy in the room, in a good way.
Between
hesitation at starting this class, some discussion, making copies, and
then running the exercise, an hour and a half had passed of our three
hour HTML class. However, after the exercise, the students seemed able
to focus on learning a few things actually related to our topic. We got
about an hour's worth of actual teaching/learning in, and people seemed
to leave less stressed than when they arrived. I think that was a good
outcome.
I heard on the radio that a "return to normalcy" as
soon as possible helps people cope with a tragedy like the VT massacre.
This may be true – there is assumed safety in normalcy, I suppose. My
gut instinct is that there is a need to acknowledge that lives have
been changed, lost, damaged. To shift normal routine momentarily to
acknowledge this. I also felt that day a need to re-create or reinforce
a sense of psychological safety in the classroom, to look each person
in the room in the eye and confirm, as far as one can, that this person
isn't going to hurt me today. I don't have a clue how one does that
when one has actually witnessed or been present at tragedy like
Monday's. I expect, at a minimum, it would be harder to reach for and
find the ability to trust in complete strangers.
There are heros in the VT story. I was moved by this account of one of them. Perhaps we'll hear more over the coming weeks.
My thoughts and sympathies to all affected by this terrible event.
[Cross-posted from Vox.]
I don't have a good picture of my lone tattoo. It is on the upper part
of my right arm and, well, being right-handed, it is awkward to try to
do a self-portrait of it. I'm sure I can find someone to help me with
that sometime soon.
In any case, there has been a lot of chat about tattoos in the past few weeks. Deborah
and her partner have just added to their tattoo'dness and are
documenting the process. Through the painful awkward parts, they seem
quite pleased with how things are progressing. Many of the friends of
the offspring of New Love have multiple tattoos – I remember this as
the offspring of Previous Love also were so decorated. These are people
in the age range from about 23 – 32 who have seemingly gigantic and
complex images across their backs, in particular, and their chest and
arms.
Personally, I'm not aiming for that kind of coverage,
although I can foresee myself getting at least two more tattoos. After
Hawaii, I was so taken with the gorgeous geckos there that I considered
getting a gecko on a shoulder blade, but that urge has faded a bit. I'd
like something on a lower leg, I think, at some point.
For me,
the tattooing needs to be connected to something – to some event or to
mark some passage. My lone (lonely?) tattoo is purple, outlined in
black, and is a simple goddess/moon image taken from a pendant that
Previous Love gave me. I put it on my right arm (symbolically, my sword
arm) to help me remember my history as a feminist, as I was about to
enter a world not remotely connected to feminist thought. I thought she
would help me cut through the bullshit, the air pollution and false
assumptions of working in a world based on hierarchy.
There
are several connections with this tattoo and the specific symbolism is
only one. My cousin is another. After my parents died, I journeyed to
England to connect with the half of my family, my father's side, that I
hadn't connected with at all while either my mother or father were
alive. While there, I discovered that I have a close cousin, eight
years younger than me, but with the exact same name (first, middle,
last) as I have. We go by exactly the same nickname, enjoy similar
foods and share a similar sense of humour. We both leave kitchen
cupboard doors part-way open when we are cooking, much to the
irritation of those cooking with us. Within a very short time of
hanging out together, we started finishing each others sentences and
communicating in a way that was almost spooky. (Our partners were a bit
freaked by all this.) To top it off, we are both lesbians. Until I went
to the UK in 1999, I had no idea she existed, nor did she know about
me. Much overseas visiting occurred and, during one of those visits,
Cuz and I decided to get tattoos. One of the differences between us is
that she is left-handed. So she got her tattoo on her upper left arm (a
Celtic knot that we spent hours together researching online) and I got
my goddess.
Another thing that was happening right around the
time I got this tattoo (2001) is that my nine-year relationship with
Previous Love was ending, rather jaggedly and awkwardly – but is there
a non-jagged, non-awkward way to end such things?
So, the
goddess appeared on my skin at a moment of profound confluence, a
juncture of many different change energies. It feels to me that I'll
know when I've reached that kind of intersection again and I trust that
I'll know what kind of mark seems appropriate to record / remember it.
A trip to Hawaii and some beautiful lizards, while profoundly memorable
and moving, just isn't enough for me to make that kind of permanent
record.
I've heard from Previous Love that her tattoo'd
offspring, now in her mid-30's, is regretting the gigantic tattoo of a
stylized aggressive monster strawberry that covers 95% of her back, and
is also regretting the tattoos on her forearms. I wonder about this,
although there is no way to stop a person in their 20's from doing
whatever the heck they want with their bodies. But, we could see this
coming, the future regret. I don't know what to say about this – I
guess through living out one's freedom in youth comes hard-earned and
solid wisdom, but only over time. I'm a risk-taker myself, and I've
made some very bad choices. But my youthful regrets don't appear on my
skin. Behind my eyes, and in my silences, perhaps, from time to time.
I hope PL's offspring finds a way to turn her regrets into wisdom. Most
of us do, eventually.