Comments on: Queering my mirror

By: Susan

Susan — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:09:23 +0000

I just found this (linked through from Fatshionista) and it resonated with me very deeply.

Thank you for this post!

By: Kaia

Kaia — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:49:09 +0000

A very late comment -

Thank you for writing this. I also felt like a failure as a girl, because I didn’t “get” why you would crush on smelly, annoying boys. When I came out, at age 20, it was such a relief. It made me realise that there was, in fact, nothing wrong with me.

As a queer woman – every time I try to nail down my sexual orientation to something more specific I meet somebody who defies thae rule I’ve just come up with – I struggled a lot when I dated a transgendered man. He passed 100% of the time, and I felt like a big portion of my identity was suddenly taken away from me. Admittedly a lot of it had to do with him often emphasising that I was straight now, simply because he felt that anything else would invalidate HIS identity as a male.

Yes, it was messy. Sexual orientation and gender identity are fluid things, hard to pinpoint and hard to compromise on. We were together for five years, and while this wasn’t the reason we broke up, I have to say that I felt much more free once I could call myself queer again.

It’s fascinating to read about you being able to be in a straight relationship, and still identify as queer. It makes me very happy!

By: Paradise

Paradise — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:03:33 +0000

I really loved this article. I was just discussing the beauty game and how it relates to sexuality the other night, so this is especially relevant to me today.
I personally, identify as a lesbian, but that doesn’t mean I expect everyone else or anyone else to choose any of the black and white options on the sexuality spectrum. I think our insistence on dividing people into the three categories of gay, bi, or straight just adds to the discrimination. I think queer is a good term, and it has never bothered me whatsoever that people use it, just like I don’t look down on people who identify as bi. I think it’s silly and sad that non-straight people have a tendency to perpetuate the same standards and prejudices that straight society forces us into.
At any rate, all that aside, what I really came here to discuss was the idea of finding a mirror of yourself in someone else. Being a lesbian has made it easier, for me at least, to put some distance between myself and the heterosexual ideal of beauty. I see it in society and I see it in my straight friends, especially the women, and I find it frustrating.
While my preference for women allows me to be largely detached from the standards straight men adhere to, I am not immune to it. Being young and thin makes me generically attractive to men, and I find myself often getting forced into the game. When I was in high school, I was taught to believe in the idea that I was naturally unattractive and imperfect, and that I should somehow strive to be an unattainable image of perfection. I learned to seek out the “flaws” in my body and to hate them passionately, to disregard myself as unattractive and even ugly.
Being attracted to women makes it easier to see myself positively. If I can look at another woman’s body, see her for all that she is, and find her beautiful in spite of all her imperfections, then it becomes much easier to start seeing myself with the same eyes. Not through the male perpetuated perspective, but through the softer, more realistic eyes of the women who have been forced to play the beauty game and have come out tired and disenchanted by the whole rat race.
There’s a woman I’ve been seeing for the past few months, and she is beautiful. Maybe not the type that gets whistled at. Maybe not the type who is objectified every time she leaves the house. Maybe not the type that catches the eyes of men everywhere she goes. But she is a beautiful woman, and anyone who is really looking can see that.
One of the things that gets through to me most is that she –and other women– sees me as beautiful. What a concept! I look at myself and see what I’ve been conditioned to see. I see the patches of fat, the muscles that could be toned, the persistent hair that grows too well in the wrong places, the parts of me that are not symmetrical, so on and so forth. I see the imperfections, the glaring faults. But she sees beauty, and because of that I am starting to see beauty in myself through her. Through her eyes I am learning to appreciate my own beauty, to see myself the same way I see her and all women– as beautiful in their own way. Beautiful because the imperfections make us real, make us much more than the than we are when we chase after the beauty ideal.
This is getting much longer than I intended. My apologies to anyone with the patience to read my rambling. In short, I say embrace your own beauty. Whether you fit into society’s idea of “too fat” or “too skinny” or “sexy” or “ugly” or whatever.
Be happy. Love yourself. Love your body. We’re all more beautiful than most of us can see.

By: daphne

daphne — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:36:59 +0000

CarrieP, I guess I would understand your point a little more if I saw in this post and the comment thread(s) that followed discussion of oppression, or if folks were claiming to have the same experience as those who are gay (or not gay but in a same-sex relationship). I really didn’t see that here. I saw a lot of people talking about how different it was from being either straight OR gay.

I really do hear you on saying that it stings. That’s why I try so fucking hard not to encroach upon queer spaces (because although I’ve had the experience of being correctly read as queer, I these days “pass” and don’t experience oppression at all for my sexuality), and why I mostly lurk in FA spaces because I’m a smaller fattie, and only just now (having gained a fair amount of weight due to chronic pain in the last few months). I really truly don’t know what it’s like to be a bigger fattie, and I only barely the experience of being gay (having only been in one relationship with a woman, and that in a *very* accepting environment). I don’t have the same experiences.

But I have MY experiences, and sometimes I have them in common with other women. Other queer women.

By: CarrieP

CarrieP — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:15:38 +0000

Anyone else see the parallels between this controversy and the inbetweenie debate?

I think it just stings when you’re a clear member of a group that’s oppressed based on appearance (meaning big fatties or people dating others of the same sex) and someone who is able to ‘pass’ jumps in and claims to have the same experiences as you. It doesn’t make that person wrong and it doesn’t mean that you’re the only oppressed one, but boy does it sting.

By: volcanista

volcanista — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:02:19 +0000

Right! It’s nasty and presumptuous! And I haven’t experienced it personally, because… well, the women never liked me back, and I do lean a bit more straight, so I very much have that privilege. I like the word “bisexual” for myself, but I could also see myself deciding the word “queer” was a better fit, and I wouldn’t want someone to deny me that — even though I have NOT faced oppression. I mean, I’ve had people challenge me that I can’t really be bi if i haven’t dated a woman, and that has sucked. I can’t have those feelings if they haven’t brought me suffering?

By: Sweet Machine

Sweet Machine — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:52:43 +0000

Being lucky enough to escape the discrimination does not delete your identity, though it might change your experience of it. True. Also, you have no fucking idea if the people speaking up in this thread have experienced oppression or not. You see me walking down the street with a dude, and that tells you exactly nothing about my history.

By: volcanista

volcanista — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:45:19 +0000

Wait wait, if you’re bi and in a relationship with a woman, then you can call yourself queer, but if you’re in a relationship with a man, calling yourself queer erases the experience of “real” queer people? So you’re only allowed to name your identity in the moments when you look the part?

Valerie, some people find a lot of benefit in labeling themselves. Others do not like to do so. There’s room for both.

“Queer” is not only a signifier of having experienced oppression. It’s also a label of self-identity, and that identity has components besides the experience of discrimination. Being lucky enough to escape the discrimination does not delete your identity, though it might change your experience of it.

By: fillyjonk

fillyjonk — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:53:11 +0000

One more and you’re out, spiritseal. You’re clearly not engaging in rational argument, since nobody here can tell what the fuck you think your point is; I’ve seen no common thread between your comments except the desire to police other women’s identities.

By: daphne

daphne — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:04:33 +0000

I like this assumption that all the women here who have identified as queer (or bisexual, or whatever their flavor of not-straight may be) but in LTRs with men could never possibly have loved or had relationships or been sexual with other women. Having attractions to women is normal? Maybe (though I have plenty of straight female friends to prove otherwise – friends who may be able to find women beautiful but have no interest in sex with them). Actually acting on – or just wanting to act on, depending on your circumstances – those attractions is what makes a woman something other than straight.

I do get what spiritseal is saying – with respect to the fact that queer women in relationships with women didn’t really seem to find a place in this thread. Considering this blog doesn’t talk about queer issues and sexuality often, that is a shame. But you know, I think we (queer women involved with men) were drawn to this thread because here’s some community – something we don’t get as we feel misplaced in a straight world and not invited to the gay community (the latter of which I think is understandable, to an extent). I don’t know why the “chorus” is a bad thing. Hey, a space to be me! Yes! Because I’m not about to encroach upon explicitly gay spaces. I’m not gay (even when I was with a woman I wasn’t). But I’m put into a heterosexual box, and that’s not me either.

This was not a “gay space,” spiritseal, and thus we spoke up. You’ll notice not one woman in a relationship with a man called herself “gay” or “lesbian” (though I know at least one or two lesbians who do occasionally sleep with men). Maybe you were invading a space by telling us what we can and can’t be.