Coming Out: further postponement – now with reruns!

This weekend, I worked a little under thirty hours, if you count Friday evening, which I do, because it’s supposed to be time off. Thirty hours, at a job that I 80% hate.

This week, I’m following up on that joy by “coming out” to my mother about some bad experiences I’ve previously kept secret– eventually. It’ll hopefully put an end to all the conversations that are just “your social anxiety and depression have no cause, so stop it!” so it’s going to be a good thing– eventually. I’ll probably post the letter I’m giving her, as soon as we both stop crying, so I guess I’ll see you next week. Eventually.

I’m feeling guilty about failing so spectacularly to re-commit to the blog, immediately after swearing to do that very thing, but, uh, life’s been rough. I’m thinking a lot, and writing a little, and things will follow. I’m not sure what form those Things will take, but they’ll certainly be interesting.

In the mean time, I’m going to be reposting some of those posts tagged “critique,” especially the ones that start tying different movies together, because, darn it, that’s the blogging that I want to be doing!

They’re my favourites of what Gender Goggles has on offer, so I hope you enjoy them!

Quick hit: I WON!

YES! I am totally going to Australia!!

Thank you SO much to everyone who voted for me!

There’s no news on the site yet but I’ve gotten the email and I’m setting stuff up with them to get a profile about me on the site, and to word out details. So, this August, I’m going with my dad on this 12-day tour from Sydney to Brisbane! I’ll take lots of photos, and do my best to blog while I’m gone!

Yes, it’s true– I haven’t forgotten you, dear, sweet blog, or the promises I made to… actually update. I’m still coughing my guts up every day, but posts are coming.

…including posts about AUSTRALIA! Woo!

Shameless begging: send me to Australia!

I’m crazy excited: I’m one of ten finalists to win a trip to Australia! Now I just need people to vote for me so I can win! Voting ends TONIGHT, at midnight CST– mere hours away!

The backstory: I am a huge fan of travelling and as such enjoy maintaining a profile at www.whereivebeen.com (a facebook app that has expanded into its own site.) Recently they had a contest to win a trip to Australia, and every photo you uploaded entered you into the drawing one more time. I uploaded… a lot of photos. Now, they have selected ten finalists to compete for the grand prize, and I’m one of them!

The grand prize winner is going to be determined by a vote; polling began Wednesday night. I think I have a very real shot at this, but, well, I need to get people to vote for me! The trip I’m competing for is this one, and I’d really like to go!

To vote for me, you need an account at whereivebeen.com . It’s a fairly simple process to connect a facebook account to the site and create a profile that way, but you can also create a profile just for whereivebeen.com if you prefer. It’s free, and they don’t send any spam; I’ve been using the site for a while.

Once you have an account, you’ll have to go to the main page. Underneath the flash-animated map there is a blue box with the words “Their fate is in your hands!” You should be able to find my picture and name in the box, and click on me to vote for me. I’ve got red hair and am wearing a green scarf in front of a green background, and, of course, my name is Laura. If you have any questions, email me! Seriously. I’ll help.

It costs no money and very little time, and it would mean a great deal to me if I won. Please pass this along as much as you can, as well.

Thanks in advance!

Coming Out: the prelude

So, I have a big long depress-o-thon of a post in the works, in which I do a lot of soul searching and decide a few things, but I wanted to let you in on the decisions sooner rather than later. Namely:

1. I need to re-commit to this blog. I was taking a break because the work wasn’t seeming worthwhile, but I’ve come to the conclusion that Gender Goggles does still deserve high priority in my life.

2. I need to do so on my own terms. It needs to be a safe space for me, which means I’ll be “coming out” about a number of biographical details that have been weighing on me as I increasingly sanitize my posts to remove references to my life.

3. I need to do it right. Publishing every day was great, but it made it impossible for me to write the posts I am most proud of. Instead, I’ll be writing every day, and publishing when I’m sure I’ve got something good.

4. I need you to vote for me so I can win a trip to Australia!!!

Yes, this is actually what prompted all the soul-searching. You see, I am one of ten semi-finalists to win a trip to Australia, and the winner is going to be determined by an online vote. The polls are only open from Wednesday to this Sunday (11:59 CST). Four days to mobilize people on my behalf! Clearly, it was time to call on the Inter Webs for help! But I was entered under my full name, and I don’t use that here. Dilemma!

Well, dilemma resolved: My name is Laura Gauch, and I would like you to go to this site, sign up (for free! no spam!) and vote to send me to Australia.

I was going to do this anyway. I’ve been whining to Crowfoot about wanting to use my name for months. I’ve just been a lot more scared of things lately (which you will get to read all about soon) and my last name is a bit distinctive. I was nervous. I needed some outside reason to push me to follow through on my desire. And, well, here it is! I feel sleazy, but also hugely relieved. And a whole lot of other things too, which, like I said, forthcoming depress-o-thon. I just wanted the “woo Australia!” stuff to be in an upbeat post of its own.

More details of the contest:

On being a woman walking at night.

I had a blissful few hours at my favourite coffeeshop/restaurant/cafe this evening. I read a really gripping book before and during my meal, then got a lot of really productive writing done afterwards, while drinking my favourite chai tea. It was a happy little bubble and a huge contrast to how I felt after I left.

The very first thing I noticed when I left the cafe was that the bars immediately next door had spilled crowds of drunken men (and women) into the street. Oops. I forgot it was midnight– it was only seven when I left my apartment! I fished my key out of my purse and put it in my pocket, and then I straightened up, looked straight ahead, put on my “I am invincible” swagger, and walked briskly in the direction of the parking lot. This involved considerable pain, as I took a bad fall earlier today, and have a sore ankle on one leg and a sore knee on the other, but I didn’t want to look vulnerable.

After I made it past the bars, I had to cross the street to get to the parking lot. The asshole who ruined my previous evening at this cafe was standing at the corner, playing his guitar angrily, immediately next to the “push to cross” button for pedestrians. I didn’t want to go near him and face his heckling, so I didn’t push the button, and just ran across when there was a suitable gap.

The parking lot was very full; I’d had to park way on the other end when I arrived. I clutched my keys in my pocket. My car key is a large-ish plastic rectangle with a metal key part that flips out like a switchblade, and this has always been a great comfort to me. I hold it like I would a knife, my finger teasing the “blade” of the key in and out and in and out, hoping that if anyone threatened me I could bluff them into thinking I really had a knife just from the metallic “swish!” noise it makes when it flips out.

Halfway through the parking lot, I reached the entrance where the cars drove in, and had to stand aside for a series of men driving in. I had to watch them to make sure they didn’t hit me, and they had to watch me for the same reason, but I studiously ignored the faces they made and the words they mouthed. I had a brief moment of terror when I thought one of them had slowed down to follow me to my car, but then he turned into another area of the lot.

The first thing I did when I got to my car was check the back seat to make sure it was empty. Then I got in and locked the door right away. Then I buckled, turned on the car, etc, and drove back to my apartment.

At my apartment, I had left my porch light on, knowing that otherwise I would be overwhelmed by the stress of convincing my finicky door lock to open for me. After about thirty seconds, my brain always starts whispering to me, “if this was a movie, you’d be dead by now.”

Inside my apartment, all my lights were on, because I left them that way on purpose. Same reason as the porch light. I take stock of the empty room, then do up two of my locks. (The third involves pushing the door out a little more to get the deadbolt to line up, and it makes the apartment very drafty, though it’s also the most solid lock so sometimes I do it up anyway.)

So now I’m back home, uneventfully. It was still, overall, a completely pleasant night out. Certainly, a pretty normal one. It’s just that when I’m making plans to go out by myself, I always have to balance the fun of whatever I’m going to do with what it’d going to be like to come home again. There are a lot of things that just aren’t worth it for me, especially if I have to walk more than a block.

I saw a man walking down the sidewalk while reading something on his phone, tonight. Not a care in the world.

I want to live in a world where I can do that, too.

Why Blog?

I’m not a very prolific writer, as you’ve been able to tell. Writing, while one of the earliest things I remember loving (apart from horses), continues to be a challenge for me. I write slowly, the words rarely flow, and I spend a good deal of time just staring at the page. Because of how it’s challenging and sometimes exhausting, I find myself often wondering why I’m blogging at all. But each time I come to this point, I end up with some faith that, in time, writing will get easier.

As well, when I’m not trying to write for a blog, I’m reading one. I read them a lot! Why do I keep reading them? Really, when I’m not working or socializing, I’m reading blogs (yes my life is exciting and full of action and adventure ). And I don’t socialize a lot, being hermit-ish from way back. So, basically, I’m saying that I find blogs and blogging to be really addictive. It’s not really that surprising that a Gemini would find blogs addictive; there is always new content and it’s always at least somewhat mentally stimulating.

But there’s more to why blogs are addictive, I think. For myself there is definitely a search for community. As I’ve spent most of my life with this nagging feeling of isolation, going to blogs written by people who see the world as I do can be a tremendous relief. I long for feminist community, preferably lesbian separatist radical feminist community! (even though I’m mostly just a part-time separatist; I want my lesbian community but I want my male best friend and his partner to live across the street so we can visit!)

Is it common, this search for community? Certainly with feminists, I think it is. How often have I read someone’s comment describing how happy they are to have found other feminists and to not feel alone, or crazy? I think this a part of how the internet can be a means of consciousness raising as well. We have these vague, feminist feelings, we seek out feminists online (or come across them by accident), and we read what everyone has to say. Sometimes we’ll disagree, and sometimes we’ll have “aha!” moments. Other times the information will just sit there, percolating in our consciousnesses until it solidifies much later into a solid understanding of feminist theory. Of course, sometimes blogging is blatantly consciousness-raising where feminists will ask what our experiences are like, or discuss their own experiences that do not seem to be widely spoken of, much like eloriane did just recently. And of course, blogging can be a means of activism, whether in challenging the sexism that we encounter daily, or in calling other feminists to write letters, or as a means of networking to gather for actual protests. As a means of reaching a great number of people, the internet is unparalleled. Should a protest go viral, literally millions of people could read about it and participate. Has that happened? Maybe somewhat? I remember during the March for Women’s Lives on Washington that a lot of people were organizing and hearing about it online.

And, finally and personally, reading and writing blogs can also be a way of ignoring my life, instead of living it. I had said earlier that I wanted to foment a rebellion, but I can’t even get my shit together to get my Master’s! At the same time, I’ve made real-life friends via blogging, and have learned an immense amount, and feel less alone. I know now that I have a tribe to which I belong. It’s just that my tribe is scattered to the winds, rather than living in the same locale. So I continue to blog and to read blogs because I know that others are out there, like I was years ago, feeling profoundly isolated in my feminism (despite the nearness of loved ones), and if we can continue to reach out we can end up coming together.

Seen

World recognizing benefit of Canada as a nice but boring nation:

Country has the soundest and safest banking system and is now being considered a model on which new financial regulations will be based.

c/o The Vancouver Sun this morning.

Heh, I love my country, yanno? (flawed thing that it is) So does Ian MacDonald, even though he calls us “boring.” But then, there is that old Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times.” Maybe boring ain’t so bad! :-p

A little help from my friends?

One of the hardest parts of being one of those crazy lesbian feminist sometimes is remembering that I am, in fact, being one of those crazy lesbian feminists. I never have any problem being myself online, but I have lived in hostile environments in meatspace for so long that the suppression of myself becomes not just second nature, but first nature, so that if I spend too much time without the internet, it leaves me scratching my head wondering if I made a mistake about the whole “gay” thing.

It feels wrong that my identity, my basic sense of self, can go away, let alone that it does. It leaves me wondering even after I’ve returned to myself (i.e., the internet) if its impermanence is a sign of its incorrectness.

It’s not an identity crisis that lasts long, because then I just go, “Sure, I’m a straight girl, who is totally repulsed by penises and flat, manly chests. Worst straight girl ever.”

There are ways in which I am also the Worst Lesbian Ever (mostly just to do with the fact that I’ve dated more guys than girls, though if you took out the gay guys it would be even) but I am at least a lesbian. It’s part of my identity, and it’s not changing.

It just takes so much energy to remember that I am a lesbian, and a feminist, and to refuse to accept the eleventy-bajillion messages I get every day telling me that I am wrong and abnormal, and it’s so often just not safe enough to do anything but hide it, that sometimes… I forget.

I hate this, and I want it to stop. It is unacceptable to me that I find myself acquiescing to the patriarchy in almost every aspect of my external life. I need to be someplace where I can remember to be me.

Which is why I need a little help from my friends! I might be transferring schools in the future, away from my small-town conservative school of Young Republicans, and I’m trying to get a feel for what places might make me happier, and freer to be myself. So! If you know what it’s like to be at any of the following schools (which I have applied to), and especially if you know what it’s like to be one of those crazy lesbian feminists on campus, please tell me what your experience has been like!

• University of Texas – Austin
• UNC – Chapel Hill
• Columbia
• Carleton College
• NYU
• University of Vermont

Please just let me know in the comments, or if you have a lot to say (or it’s private), email me! My address is eloriane (at) gmail (dot) com, and I am looking forward to hearing you!

Blaah owwww aughh fuck meee uurgh: an overshare!

Actually, no, totally don’t. I don’t want to move any body part below my collarbone or above my knees.

Yesterday I made the following comment at But I’d Rather Have a Bowl of Foxtrot:

I have so say, “not being aware of my period” might be the only period-related problem I haven’t had. Although I sometimes find it’s weird that I don’t miss my period at all, like there’s this disconnect… I don’t miss my period at all.

Clearly, I was tempting fate. Today it became clear that last night, perhaps even at the same time that I was writing my comment!, I failed to take my birth control pill. I’m actually a little amazed that it took this long for the agony to set in; usually it starts within an hour. There are not enough vowels in the world to express my agony.

I am now stretched out on my couch, glaring at my now-torturous jeans and underwear on the floor next to me (I would have thrown them, but it would have jostled my oh-so-delicate organs) and wondering if I need to take my bra off, too. I took the pill, and some advil, and while I will probably make it through the day without vomiting from the pain (and even, most likely, without bleeding!) right now, I am miserable.

(Warning: I am about to talk about my anatomy. People who know me in real life may want to avert their eyes.)

The first thing that happens is this really sharp pain that feels like a piano wire is stretched between my navel and my clit. Any time I move at all, it stretches or jostles that wire of pain, and my whole abdomen feels sliced up. Then the general ache sets in, dulling but not replacing that highly specific twinge. Before I took birth control, the “general ache” would really be just that exact same extreme sensitivity, but everywhere, generally causing me to throw up (which, oh, is agony! All those muscles clenching! Unbearable!). Nowadays, it’s just very, very unpleasant. Nearly my entire body is sensitive, from my breasts to my thighs.

And now, I shall overshare the one thing I have never overshared before, even with my gynecologist. Look away! It’s about my butt! No, seriously, you might not want to read this.

I also get really atrocious diarrhea. Which feels like throwing up (the clenching!) but it goes on forever. It sets in even before that general ache and attacks at random intervals throughout my torture.

Like all my other symptoms, this is just PMS– it disappears after the first 24 hours, leaving me with nothing more unpleasant than a bizarrely sore clitoris and a hilariously raised libido for the rest of my period-week (which, by the way, would be worthy of a whole post’s worth of complaints if everything else wasn’t so much worse) but it is unbearable to me that it happens at all.

It makes the whole process so filthy and uncomfortable, and impossible to talk about. The few places where feminists are trying to break the menstruation taboo are, half the time, uncomfortably period-positive for me– I have nothing nice to say, ever, about this process, and I don’t like the idea that I have to “embrace” menstruation or else I’m just a puppet of the patriarchy, and no, it’s not better if I call it my “moon time.”

Okay, that sounds a little harsh– forgive me, I’m PMSing. I definitely think it’s true that the patriarchy encourages us to hate our periods simply because they’re some crazy gross woman-thing, and many women would be able to have neutral or pleasant relationships with their periods were it not for said patriarchy, but it’s also true that my period is 100% hell and menstruation is never going to be fun for everyone, no matter how much patriarchy we smash. It’s problematic that society has a hate-on for periods, and maybe 80% of that hate (or whatever) stems from truly objectionable “eww women are gross” thinking, which should be fought. But that other 20% comes from the ways that periods are, well, gross and unpleasant sometimes. Mine definitely is. But I’ve often found articles discussing periods in which the tone seemed to be that periods weren’t gross and unpleasant, which meant that the post defeated its own purpose– it sought to break down the taboo around menstruation and let women talk about their experiences, and yet made me and my experiences feel totally unwelcome.

The fact that all of my problems are in the pre-menstruation stage only complicates things more! I agree 100% with, for example, this feminism 101 post from Shakesville, which says the following:

Let’s put this shit to bed right now: Women don’t lose their minds when they have period-related irritability. It doesn’t lower their ability to reason; it lowers their patience and, hence, tolerance for bullshit. If an issue comes up a lot during “that time of the month,” that doesn’t mean she only cares about it once a month; it means she’s bothered by it all the time and lacks the capacity, once a month, to shove it down and bury it beneath six gulps of willful silence.

That’s true. The things I throw the huge fits about while PMSing are things that bother me all the time. But I also get low-level annoyed with a lot of things that I don’t mind, or even enjoy, when not PMSing, and I am not shy about it.  It’s not that insanity is an actual symptom of PMS, but that my other symptoms totally overwhelm even my ability to be civil, so I say a lot of things that I don’t necessarily mean. I have cried over pluperfect subjunctives while PMSing. I do care about proper parallelism! I just, um, don’t usually care that much. And while I definitely don’t think people should ignore what I say under those circumstances, I do think they need to check with me again a few days later to more accurately gauge the degree of annoyance. And yet, that feels… unfeminist. “Don’t mind me, I’m just PMSing! You can ignore this conversation because I’m just a crazy woman made crazy by her crazy woman-hormones!” How do we fight the truly stupid cultural perception as PMS as totally crazy-making while still having room for stories, like mine, in which that is a problem? I mean, it happened when I broke my hand, too; discomfort makes any person irritable. But I’m not always sure that there’s space for me to say, in period conversations, that I am in discomfort, and it does make me irritable, even about things that I don’t really care about, without coming across as some kind of patriarchy-loving troll.

But talking about it anywhere else would be laughable– I mean, if it’s unbearably “grooossss” to talk about a perfectly natural shedding of one’s uterine lining in non-feminist spheres, how much more unbearably gross is the same thing plus poop?

I feel like I should have specific examples, but I don’t, because, (1) I just want to have a general meta-conversation, not call out individuals, (2) I am kind of lazy, and (3) OH GOD THE PMS. I just want to say that we, the feminist blogosphere, need to be careful when we fight this taboo. It’s not acceptable to say that periods are gross and terrible because eww, they come from women’s vaginas. But we need to leave the space for people to say that their periods are gross and terrible because eww, poop everywhere.

Because man, my period is gross and terrible! If I believed in the gods, I’d promise not to make even vaguely wistful comments about my period days, but since I don’t, I’m just going to chant my new mantra: “$60 a month is not too much to pay.”

Yeah, that’s how much I spend on my Lybrel. After insurance. It is worth every cent. And when we talk about periods, we need to hear from women who love theirs, and women, like me, who want nothing more than for it to all go away.

Quick Hit: What’s Your Gender?

Hello My name is

eloriane

I am

aggressive, ally, beautiful, brother, butch-liking, butch-loving, celibate, chapstick lesbian, chubby, cunt, etc., fabulous, fangirl, fat, female, feminist, femme-ish, friend of Dorothy, gay, geek, gender abolitionist, gender liberationist, gender pirate, hairy, harpy, introvert, lady, lezbean, liberal, Ms., me, open, out, outspoken, passing woman, privileged, pro-choice, progressive, queer, redhead, sapphist, student, survivor, teh gay, tomboy femme, woman-loving

Who are you?

—

Thanks go to Genderkid (here) for introducing me to this.

I don’t have too much trouble marking the little box marked F on all the forms in my meatspace life (a privilege that spares me many headaches!), but I still appreciate the chance to express the bigger picture of who I am. I love the fact that with alphabetical sorting, all the concepts get mixed together, “queer” right next to “readhead,” without artificial weight added to certain terms. Sure, I’m queer, and that’s a big deal, I guess, but I invest a lot more energy into my readheaded identity– I pay good money quite often to dye my hair red, whereas I just am queer.

Plus, there’s the totally bizarre “hairy, harpy, introvert, lady” sequence. Yup, I’m a hairy harpy and an introverted lady! Sometimes I’m even a lady unironically. 

I found it interesting what words I couldn’t bring myself to check. For example, “homosexual” is not on that list, although I have “chapstick lesbian,”fabulous,” “friend of Dorothy,” “gay, “lezbean,”  ”out,” “queer,” “sapphist,” “teh gay,” and “woman-loving.” It’s because I’ll use all those words to describe myself, but I never call myself homosexual. It’s weirdly clinical to me. It’s just not who I am. “Lesbian” is also, notably, missing. I feel like I’m reclaiming this word more than I’m claiming it, because for some reason saying it all seriously, lesbian, sounds like some man leering at me, lesbian, or the narrator of some nature documentary, lezzzbian. When I’m actually talking about myself, I’m much more light-hearted, there’s a smile to it, like lezbean, or “teh gay.”

I’ve also marked myself down as a “brother,” because I’m a Brother in a co-ed fraternity, and it’s an important, life-long commitment to me. I didn’t mark daughter or sister, despite being these things to my family, because they aren’t chosen relationships, and somehow that makes them feel more like part of my life than part of my identity.

I also marked “passing woman.” I’m not sure why, but claiming outright, woman!, or even more scarily, cisgendered woman!, felt disingenuous. I’m femme-ish (as noted above!) and I enjoy it, but I’m keenly aware of all the ways that my femininity is a performed thing. It’s a performance I enjoy, one that makes me happy, but I’m not sure it’s part of my identity.

This Hit is turning out to be not so Quick, so I am going to call it a day. The main point stands, though: this is a fun way to reject the gender binary. Please, in the comments, let us know– who are you?