Vice and heteronormativity

[raven]

I just caught a passing glimpse of myself in a full-length mirror. Barefoot. Jeans that are torn to shreds at the ends and don't fit particularly well. "Bleeding Heart" t-shirt from Threadless. Little female-symbol ear studs. No bra. I'm listening to Ani DiFranco and I'm reading an article - the article - by Carol Hanisch.

D'you know, boys and girls and non-aligned, I think I might be queer.

Um, yes. I've also, today, been trying to read something that isn't the bloody history of philosophy from Descartes to Kant - aaargh, I do not like this paper, I only did it as a prequisite for the Mind paper (which I adore, so there is that), I really should have done Plato's Republic instead - and am planning to move on with some swiftness to political theory. At the moment I have three topics that I know I want to read about: Rawls' theory of justice, luck egalitarianism, and feminism in general. As I never stop complaining about, there is no specific politics paper for feminism. There are two arguments for why this is the case. Firstly, it is argued, no other specific political position/ideology/philosophy/whatever-we're-calling-it-today has a paper of its own.

To which I say, except Marx and Marxism (paper 217). Oh, Marx, they say, he's extraordinarily influential, blah blah, so one humourless male German philosopher is clearly much more influential than, oh, half the world's population raising issues of political importance not only to themselves but to everyone. I happily concede that Marx is extraordinarily inflential. I do not concede that the oppression and the political exploits of my entire gender are less so. Oxford, you fail at convincing self-justification.

The other argument is this: feminism, they say, shouldn't have a paper of its own because it should be covered as part of all the existing topics. There is scope for feminist analysis everywhere, they say. Which is all very well and very noble, but where was my topic on gendered notions of aesthetics, mmm? Why didn't I get a topic on unexamined liberalism and the influence of gender in international relations? Does gender matter when we study the way we conceive our own consciousness? Why don't I know about that? And so on, and so on, etc. It's a very nice idea, and it entirely fails to work.

Going back to political theory, there, at least, I should not complain. My political theory tutor is very definitely made of awesome; he let me read pretty much whatever I wanted, and did, indeed, actively pursue feminist analysis in all topics. Which is why I'm spending some of today reading Elizabeth Anderson on Dworkin and the luck egalitarians. I seem to remember telling mi_guida about this: if you're on the - or indeed a - university network, it's on JSTOR, here: "What is the point of equality?" Fifty-plus pages of her taking Dworkin apart point by point. It's a joy.

(I also need to read a few more things on liberal feminism that, more than just being interesting and a good addition to my own corpus of feminist reading, are also things I can write about in an exam. This is proving particularly difficult. Have read chunks of Susan Moller Okin (urrrgh) and Catharine MacKinnon and am now faintly bored, as a lot of my reading for this topic was done for the compusory heterosexuality essay, which while great fun, isn't something that will ever come up in an Oxford Finals paper. Siiigh. The return to heteronormative liberal feminism, etc., I am bored.)

Speaking of compulsory heterosexuality, I was talking to Maria last night at quite some length - it was a conversation that started out very sensibly, with how are you and I hope you haven't been carried away by the storm, and quickly segued into rampant silliness involving hats and pie and square dancing and Embarrassing Crushes of Our Teenage Years, and it was nice, through the silliness, to be very, I don't know, out. This is something I notice a lot when talking to queer women, just in general conversation; there's this whole wonderful freedom to say, yes, women are sexually attractive, and to proceed under the assumption that whoever you're speaking to agrees with you on this point. Which is not significant now - obviously, when you start with a sample of women who are queer, this is a conclusion they are all likely to have come to - but it makes me wonder in passing how much I missed out on. Because this sort of conversation - the silly, cheerful, ooh, Katee Sackhoff is pretty sort of conversation - is the sort of conversation that girls seem to start having when they're about eleven, correct me if I'm wrong. I remember it becoming a feature when I started secondary school, at least; even in a girls' school (or perhaps more so, in a girls' school) people talked about boys.

(Can you hear the teenage syntax there? You can't even talk about this without regressing a little bit.)

And of course, I didn't want to talk about boys, or at least not exclusively, so when I was having this very cheerful conversation yesterday evening, it was silly, yes, but it made me wonder, why have I not been having this sort of conversation for the last ten years of my life? And the answer is obvious and depressing: girls' schools, like everywhere else, are dens of vice and heteronormativity. And even beyond that, I think when I started meeting people who were emphatically not straight, both at school and later, they were emphatically not straight in a way that doesn't resonate with me. I'm not a lesbian, or at least not in my own understanding. I'm not really bisexual either, although I hang on to the term occasionally - because, as I heard a self-professed bisexual explain to me once, it sort of implies that "men are great, because of Y", and "women are great, because of X", and there are specific reasons for attraction to both (and it is both; there's very much a binary gender paradigm here), and that doesn't ring any bells for me. I'm queer. I like people. Mostly, I like women. (Er, mostly.) But that's entirely contingent, I think; perhaps if I'd lived in a different environment, met different people, I'd have been mostly attracted to men, because I can't in all honesty tell the difference between genders. In any case, a low-key notion of sexuality, I think. "Queer" is usually enough of a term for me; I've heard "omnisexual" and "pansexual" bandied about, which is all very well, but let's face it, they're remarkably silly words. One strikes me as kind of melodramatic, and the other sounds like sexual attraction limited to half-man-half-goat creatures with a taste for the flute. Neither of which I am especially keen to endorse. Hurrah for queer.

Um. Back to history of philosophy from Descartes to Kant, neither of which figure especially highly in the theory of identity politics, siiigh. Tell me what you think, people of the flist. What are your experiences of growing up queer? And is it different, as I think it must be, to come to queerness in adulthood? And what about straight people who don't understand heteronormativity either? Etc., etc. I'm interested to know.

Comments

[steerpikelet.livejournal.com]

You are a big gay and I claim my five pounds.

[hathy-col.livejournal.com]

I am sometimes really very, very worried I only like women out of a sort of "FUCK YOU HIGH SCHOOL" reaction. I have very strong memories of my teacher telling us as a class very firmly that calling each other 'gay' was bad because - wait for this - the Catholic Church doesn't believe in that. It's bloody horrible growing up being anything other than Completely Heterosexual, because with the most liberal parents and schooling in the world, there's going to be a huge great world of media and expectations against you. It's a horrible time at the best of times, and you either have to lie or be outrageously confident and brave and willing not to take bullshit. I went for the latter route, obviously, but it was unpleasant.

The world is, I am increasingly realising, completely focussed, as it has been since the nobility realised that instead of decimating themsevles via private war it was much funnier just to oppress the rest of us on the white, male, top 10% of the world and whatever their values happen to be. That happens to be hetereonormativity right now; it might change, I suppose. Doubt it, in my lifetime, even though I will fight for it. The majority of the world don't really understand and just file anything like that under the sort of 'ignore with me pre-concieved expectations'. When I explain, freely, that yes I am sort of doing the Accepted Thing and getting hitched to a man but actually I rather prefer women they just look at me funny. Which aggravates me a bit, to be honest, but then I've had abuse from all sides of the spectrum about it so I don't know why I bother any more.

Oh dear. This is a very strange ramble. I'm going to shut up now and get on with Cross-Border Lords and other dull topics.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

You were outrageously confident and brave and willing not to take bullshit. It's one of the things I've always liked about you. You came out to me without knowing how I'd react, I remember.

Nowadays I'm inclined to think it's not the rest of the world's business, whom you choose to sleep with, unless you make it so, but like you say, that doesn't stop the abuse.

[original-hell.livejournal.com]

I worry sometimes that I only like women in order to prove myself as a weirdo, or something. And I'm currently in what I consider could be a long-term, and certainly is a monogamous, heterosexual relationship, myself. I've had a lot of people assume I was gay this past year, basically since I cut my hair, and then I've had others (supposedly with gaydar) tell me I'm totally straight. I think our attractions can fluctuate. I think it's okay to be with whoever you happen to want to be with, without worrying too much about what dangly bits they have. I find it odd that other people don't think that way.
*hug*
x

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

ooh, Katee Sackhoff is pretty

Katee Sackhoff makes straight girls a little gay and gay boys a little straight. Trufax.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*fervent nodding* yesyes. very much so.

[stupidore.livejournal.com]

I did a hideous module one time which was actually called 'Modern Philosophy: from Descartes to Kant' and which involved nine hours of lectures specifically on Kant of which not one made sense.
It was quite nice reading Descartes and the first couple of meditations and Fable of the Bees is always good fun though.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Descartes' first couple of meditations are lovely. Kant MAKES NO SENSE. TO ANYONE.

[outintherain.livejournal.com]

"One strikes me as kind of melodramatic, and the other sounds like sexual attraction limited to half-man-half-goat creatures with a taste for the flute. Neither of which I am especially keen to endorse."

I wish I wasn't feeling entirely too slow witted to adequately respond to this today, but the above statement resonated with me particularly because I've been studying concepts of gender and sexuality, and the tagging of these concepts a lot lately (no, I never do any reading for my own degree...) and what particularly frustrates/amuses (my reaction alternates here) me is the need to go around tagging every possible sexual preference and behaviour, every method of gender identifying.. or not. I've long been bemused by mankind's need to categorise absolutely everything, but it's even gotten to the stage where the LGBT society at my Uni are going to end up being an 8 letter acronym!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I've often wondered exactly how large the backlash would be if all LGBT societies retagged themselves "queer". I mean, it's accurate in the vast majority of cases. Maybe "queer and questioning" would cover it?

[mi-guida.livejournal.com]

Yay, Dworkin bashing! Thank you :)

For all I went to an all girls school, it wasn't that hetero-normative... I don't remember teachers expressing views one way or the other, except one of our PE teachers who was a lesbian and very enthusiastically told us all this. No one had a problem with it, and a few girls were out in sixth form, which only caused any problems in the boarding house - boys weren't allowed in the bedrooms, only the common rooms after school... but if the straight girls couldn't have their boyfriends in their rooms, should the lesbians within the school be allowed in each others rooms, oh dear - eventually they just decided to ignore the issue, and no one seemed to mind.

It's struck me since being at Oxford that my views on sexuality during secondary school were much like my views on religion - everyone could fancy who they wanted (and believe what they wanted) and what was the fuss? They're all just people... why distinguish on grounds of gender?

Being hideously bookish and not really getting the hang of the concept of fancying anyone until quite late on (except for a couple of absolutely classic and cringeworthy schoolgirl crushes), I never noticed that maybe my views weren't the same as everyone else's until I came to Oxford and realised that actually, maybe people didn't actually fancy people and not pay much attention to gender.

I'm about to start rambling in circles I think, so I will leave that there at least until I clear my thoughts a bit...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! Enjoy!

And thank you, that's interesting to learn, and sounds very different from my all girls' experience, which was sadly not very encouragin in this regard. I hear you on people paying attention to gender; I mean, intellectually I know it happens, but I can't get my head round quite how.

[sir-rosealot.livejournal.com]

Like the sound of the earrings- I have pro-choice ones (they're little coathangers) but I don't really wear jewellery much... I should wear them more.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

They're rather lovely! I got them from Camden about a year ago.

Coathangers! *snerk*

[apotropaios.livejournal.com]

"This is something I notice a lot when talking to queer women, just in general conversation; there's this whole wonderful freedom to say, yes, women are sexually attractive, and to proceed under the assumption that whoever you're speaking to agrees with you on this point."

I think you're slightly underestimating the abilities of the earthbound heterosexual to deal with the concept of gender spectrums. I really hope you've never felt uncomfortable discussing anything while I've been around anyway.

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

She's not talking about all heterosexuals. She's talking about a specific experience as a queer girl in largely-het teenage female company. If it's not about you, there's no need to make it so.

The fact of it is that even if said het girls are the nicest and most understanding in the world, there's still little automatic space in their company to share squee over pretty women and queer-oriented chat without having to back up and explain things from scratch every so often, and it's nice to have that space. Which is something you don't have to think about, good for you. But I get the feeling you didn't really read the context for the bit you quoted, or you wouldn't have felt attacked by it.

[vampire-kitten.livejournal.com]

I want a word that says "I like fucking consenting adults, but beyond that I'm not picky"

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I rather like "awesome" in this instance. :)

dens of vice perrhaps...

[mrkgnao.livejournal.com]

I was shipped off an an all-girl's convent school for the latter part of my education - apparently two year groups below me were banging each other senseless in the changing rooms while I was hiding in my locker tortured by deviant desires. But then I have recently decided I am Old Skool and therefore, should I ever break free of the cosy heteronormative paradigm in which I am currently comfortably ensconsed, headed for a well of loneliness :)

And, yes, you're write omnisexual, pansexual (and I think I ran across postmodern sexual once - what the fuck is that all about, you fancy people ambiguously while refering to others?) are silly silly words. Ominsexual is my favourite - in the silly, not in the 'I would actually use this' sense. I keep imagining self on a hilltop with a beard and a big hammer crying into the storm: "I am OMNISEXUAL!!!"

Re: dens of vice perrhaps...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Omnisexual! Oh, lord, such a delightfully silly word. It also sounds like you'd have sex with everything rather than everyone, which misses the point slightly, I think.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

I was always queer, growing up - in an all-encompassing, reject-the-dominant-paradigm interpretation of the word queer. So I rejected my peers, and I rejected peer and adult expectations of me, over and over again. (Sometimes I think this is why my adult sexuality is so focussed on "forbidden things".) I couldn't talk about girls with them, but neither could I talk about the Rocky Horror Picture Show (without immense eye-rolling) or Velvet Goldmine or Bowie or Wilde or anything else that I loved.

I was very lucky to fall in with a bunch of queers and drama-types in sixth form, because they were Queer Like Me and then I started to morph into the fabulous person you see before you (ok, you don't, but you know what i mean) today.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I think I did that with fandom, to some extent. I had it as my wee subsersive thing inside my head, so I was able to reject a lot of what happened at school. In the same way, I credit fandom with shaping me into me. Is it just the catalyst for queerness (in your sense), I wonder? Because I didn't identify that way before, and I certainly have done ever since.

(And, oh, Velvet Goldmine! I squeed about it on the internet and RPed with thieving_gypsy and it was the best thing EVER.)

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

#1: I love this post, especially all of this:

This is something I notice a lot when talking to queer women, just in general conversation; there's this whole wonderful freedom to say, yes, women are sexually attractive, and to proceed under the assumption that whoever you're speaking to agrees with you on this point.... even in a girls' school (or perhaps more so, in a girls' school) people talked about boys.... And of course, I didn't want to talk about boys, or at least not exclusively, so when I was having this very cheerful conversation yesterday evening, it was silly, yes, but it made me wonder, why have I not been having this sort of conversation for the last ten years of my life?

YES. THIS.

#2: Ohhhh boy, this is a big topic, isn't it? Well. I grew up in a very liberal place, in a very liberal family (unknowingly, with a bisexual sister), and in high school fully half of my social group was composed of bisexual women.

And I was never, ever out. And still am not out, to anyone but queer sister (and the internets).

And the thing is, the thing is-- for me it was all about heteronormativity. Now I'm not out simply because I have trouble finding a way to Announce it; but in high school and earlier, I wasn't out because I wasn't out to myself. Because although I knew queer people and was very pro-gay rights, it had never occurred to me that I could be queer. Heterosexuality is just assumed about you, and so I assumed it about myself. Why? Because I had never been outright unambiguously sexually attracted to a woman. DESPITE THE FACT that I had also never been outright unambiguously sexually attracted to a man. I know, BRILLIANT. But I guess I felt (I never thought about it) that unless I experienced some very clear-cut deviation from the norm, I had to be the norm.

This is also all despite the fact that I spent my formative years obsessively reading queer lit on the sly--and not just about gay men, either. I was reading stories about gay men and gay women for the same reasons, and with the same emotional response. This is actually one of the reasons I object to people explaining away female slash fans as "women getting off on two men having sex." Uh, no. For me reading slash, like reading queer lit, was never about sexual gratification. It was about being queer and responding subconsciously to the portrayal of being queer.

--All of which is a roundabout way of saying that I'm not 100% comfortable with identifying as a lesbian or as bi, for a variety of reasons, but I too am quite happy to identify as "queer" (or "not-straight" when that's more relevant to the conversation). Because I think "queer" serves the necessary purpose of uniting all us deviants. :) Anyone who's had a non-mainstream experience; anyone who had to sit through years and years of secondary school where all the other little girls gossiped about their crushes on little boys and invited you to join in, and you either had to lie or simply not participate; anyone who's ever felt out in the cold. Part of my difficulty in coming out to myself was certainly the ambiguity of my situation, the confusion over what "counts" as attraction (sexual, physical, aesthetic, romantic, emotional, intellectual), the feeling that if I couldn't make a positive statement I shouldn't make one at all; but the other, very big part of my difficulty was that it's hard to be different. It's hard not to lie when they ask you which boy you like. It's hard to be alone with that. And I think that subconsciously, all those years when I had crushes on girls but didn't recognize them as such, I was saying to myself, You are out of the mainstream in almost EVERY OTHER WAY POSSIBLE. Why this, too? Why can't you relate to the majority on just this one thing? Why can't one thing be easy and simple?

So that's why I say fuck heteronormativity. And yay for queerness, as a term and as a community.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

You are out of the mainstream in almost EVERY OTHER WAY POSSIBLE.

Uh, to clarify: in general I have a lot of inherent social privilege, so I don't mean that I belong to a lot of other oppressed and/or minority groups besides women and atheists. I mean that being queer and liking people of my own gender is--besides being potentially a political gesture--also a non-mainstream way of relating to the world. And I've always been out of the mainstream in the way I relate emotionally/intellectually/psychologically to the world.

[osymandias.livejournal.com]

Doesn't Pan play the Pan pipes, rather than the flute?

(Also, do I get a prize for the most shallow response to this post?)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Pan flute, specifically; the pair of sentences scan better without the repeated word, I think, so I looked up synonyms on Wikipedia because I am JUST THAT COOL.

(Nope, steerpikelet wins that! *g*)

[such_heights]

Yeah, that kind of girls school environment was horrible. I hated having to lie and fend off questions about who I had crushes on and if I'd kissed people - the latter particularly, actually, because there's that awful pressure when you're about 14 to kiss people and go on dates and start getting that kind of experience, and I felt enough out of the loop as it was without also having to lie about that because your first kiss is sitting right across the room from you and probably wouldn't appreciate you bringing that up in front of everyone.

And cheers for that JSTOR link (oh, JSTOR, love of my life), that looks interesting stuff!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Urgh, yes. I used to worry so much I was abnormal at school. Nowadays, I know that I was. :)

It's a fab article, I do hope you get something out of it.

And, um, question. Would I be wrong in thinking you have an RL-journal as well?

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

Why are you so PREJUDICED against humourless male German philosophers, Iona. Why must you OPPRESS them so.

*slinks off to quietly go nuts on own*
missyoumissyoumissyou

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

BECAUSE THEY'RE ALL WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING.

missyooooooou. cannot wait for Thurs.

[soupytwist.livejournal.com]

Oh GOD is Katee Sackhoff pretty.

Uh, yeah. I love this post; I kept going "absolutely, absolutely" a lot. I think a lot of people use "bi" as a stop-gap kind of thing... I know I'm not the only one who doesn't want to get into the entire conversation about where exactly I fall on the gayness scale and how much is about gender blah blah blah every single time, and as much as I love 'queer' and think it's a lot more accurate (at least for me) than 'bi', people still generally get confused by it. Bi, at least among generally smart and socially-aware people, mostly cuts down how much of that explanation you have to give, and I like having the option to do that, to bring up the queerness in a shorthand form which, if it's not actually 100% perfectly accurate, does get the gist of it over.

Needless to state, I entirely agree that having a community of queer women is one of the best things ever - having room for ambiguity and discussion of whatever the hell aspect of queer life you'd like without worrying about it is pretty much priceless.

And I find it really interesting to hear your perspective about girls'-only schooling; I've had multiple friends tell me that the people at their girls-only school were generally more boy-obsessed and heterocentric than they think would have otherwise been the case (one also said she thought she was less able to deal well with men), and none say that their school experience made them less aware of gender or less constrained by it. Would you say that's fair? Cause I find that fascinating.

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

Is it too smart-arsed to say I felt less constrained by my sex (school was v big on Strong Admirable Women, At Least Our Sort Of Women) but at least as much by gender? Because ok, I don't have direct comparison to mixed secondary schools, but my school was very heteronormative - both in the sense of having to prove that just because you were in a single-sex environment you weren't gay or anything, and in the sense of the role models we were presented with being very definitely straight, feminine etc.

I kind of miss directly being told that Women Could Do Anything, but not the nuances of that, or the fact that it had to be (i'm sure some people in mixed schools had really positive experiences, but it doesn't seem to be the norm) in a single-sex environment.

[tmpe5t.livejournal.com]

Growing up non-binarily gendered in the 80s was fun, in the same way that being hit repeatedly until you fall down is fun. Exactly like that in fact...

Sexuality? Don't ask its too complicated, depends on the person. I have been known to state that gay, straight and bi don't exist, because it assumes either too many sexes, or not enough. I blame Enid Blyton... I thoroughly identified with George out of the Famous five as a kid. If she could be a boy, then a boy could be a girl, right?

No wonder my parents went mental... :D

[tmpe5t.livejournal.com]

Replying to your own posts doh, etc, but i forgot to say - MArx: Product of his time, a symptom rather than a cause, bit like the Beatles. If it hadn't been him, it would have been someone else...

[forthwritten.livejournal.com]

Hmm - I sort of outed myself in my sixthform by getting off with another member of the sixthform and by Monday the entire LVIth knew. The girl in question then didn't talk to me for six months and it was kind of weird and claustrophobic having the "I think ___ is hot" with her.

But yes, my school felt very heteronormative, we were aware we were sexualised as Catholic schoolgirls and we were aware that straight men (and all outsiders really) were going to make some very odd assumptions about us.

I don't like the term 'bisexual' because it implies that binary system. I've been using 'persuadable' in an only half-joking manner.

p.s. icon is of Queen's Drive. We weren't responsible, alas.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, Catholic school! I've heard not-good stories about queer girls in that environment, yes. Would it have been easier, do you think, in a non-denominational school?

Icon LOVE. Seriously. Wow.

[foreverdirt.livejournal.com]

This is something I notice a lot when talking to queer women, just in general conversation; there's this whole wonderful freedom to say, yes, women are sexually attractive, and to proceed under the assumption that whoever you're speaking to agrees with you on this point.

*pines*

YES.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Yooou. Why are you so FAR AWAY?

[nevermindirah.livejournal.com]

I don't know if we've met before, but hi! I dig your fic, so here I am.

I questioned and came out when I was 20, halfway through college. Growing up I liked boys too, and somehow I just never noticed that I also liked girls. There were no openly queer girls for me to like. Honestly, I'm grateful that I wasn't consciously queer as a teenager, because I grew up in the South very close to one of the big scary leaders of the religious Right, and I was miserable enough in high school without having to be a target of that kind of hate.

Coming out wasn't exactly easy for me -- I questioned in the fall of '04, and I took that election and all its awful marriage amendments really hard. But I've always been confident in the fact that homophobic people are wrong, and that it should be the goal of all people of conscience to be allies. It's a perspective I'm grateful for, because when I encounter homophobia it hurts but it doesn't cut me to the core. And I built a fantastic community in college of fellow queer kids with whom to talk politics and cute people!

A big YES to your commentary on queer/bisexual/omnisexual/etc. My preferred term is queer: I like how it covers many bases at once and doesn't imply any specification about who I might like or sleep with. But since moving from college to DC I've had to mostly use the word bisexual, because average people at least have some concept of what that is, even when it's binary and slutty and wrong, and I quickly got tired of explaining queer theory in bars. Sigh.

My dad doesn't get the concept of bisexual but he's supportive of me "as long as I'm happy". My mom thinks I'm making it up -- she thinks I'm trying to be trendy and edgy, like risking one's basic civil rights is exotically sexy or something. I suspect the fact that I spent my teenage years talking to her about boys is a massive factor in her not believing that I feel the same way about girls. I'm giving her ten years to come to a place of acceptance. Fingers crossed!

*is answering comments insanely late*

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Hi! Pleased to meet you, and thank you for telling me about your experiences. I have to admit I'd never thought of the varying effects of your environment on how quickly or slowly you come to be conscious of queerness - I've got a bad habit of assuming everyone lives in surroundings that are, if not entirely free of homophobia, at least broadly liberal. I don't know how clear it is from this post, but I'm British and at a liberal Oxford college - actually, in the matter of queer rights, all Oxford colleges tend to be good - and thus, being out is not a big problem for me once I'm away from my family. Kudos to you for community-building - it's so valuable, this type of support.

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

I always assumed that there were at least twice as many definitions of what bisexual means as there were bisexuals, covering the whole spectrum from fancying men and women for completely different reasons to fancying people regardless of gender.

Personally I've spent far too long trying to be bi, because of the whole liking hanging out with blokes while really fancying women thing, although I'm not going to give up on going to bi events for pretty much the same reason.

And the whole heteronormativity thing sucks big time, especially when it causes the rest of the world to completely misunderstand why me and whichever of my male friends want to spend time together (obviously we talk about girls -- and cars and electrical equipment, etc, etc -- but I don't thing the straight world believes us).

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

And that heteronormativity thing can be a pain regardless! I'm just discovering the joy of having male friends - I've tended to hang out with women, mostly - and it not being sexual, at all. Boys are people too! This is something the world needs to learn.

[sunlightdances.livejournal.com]

I can't in all honesty tell the difference between genders.

Oh, same! Same!

I suddenly realised I was attracted to women when I was walking up some stairs at college, and couldn't take my eyes off someone's rather lovely bottom. I think my brain went like this: "That woman's really attractive. Hmm. I'm actually attracted to quite a lot of women. WAIT A MINUTE! There's a word for that! I'm bisexual! Oh wow, I just realised." Every other time I just thought it was a one-off, or something friendly, and so on.

There wasn't some specific reason I didn't realise. My sister's gay, so it's totally fine inside our family; it just.. didn't occur to me. So I didn't identify as bisexual until I was seventeen, and then called myself pansexual. Now have the same association with goats and so forth, and have realised that Queer is a much more friendly and all-encompassing term.

I went a bit overboard in terms of thinking that people were probably secretly oppressing me, and probably annoyed people at university quite a lot. It was just a shock to realise that what I felt was normal and natural was something so alien to them, and I was having to try to answer questions like, "Which gender do you prefer?" I couldn't even begin to get into the answer of, "Well, people with no specific gender, or those who transition, are equally attractive," because they had no concepts of those things.

And then I met my darling scarlett_savage and we talked about attractive people, and how we didn't particularly identify with either gender, and slash, and LJ. And then we clung to each other, and nearly had an affair out of the sheer passion of "Oh thank god I've found someone else in RL who believes these things." (I do have a massive crush on her anyway, and she on me, but it would be disastrous. We stick to being mostly-platonic soul mates. Despite both being atheists and not actually believing in souls.)

Oh, and not specifically being feminine - that caused problems too. No, I don't fake tan, wear make-up, try to lose weight, shave various bits of body hair, remember to wear a bra on most occasions, etc. etc. Of course, this was when I had to wear a skirt for a year, so it didn't entirely work, but - there was a real struggle from people to understand. ('People' = 'my flatmates'.) "No, I don't need three hours to get ready. Yes, I like looking at women. No, not at those orange, big-breasted, pouty women on Nuts, Zoo and FHM. No, I don't fancy you."

Now being queer is just another facet of my personality, and I don't feel the need to shout about it, as I did when I was seventeen. Possibly because I mostly interact with people on my f-list, who are queer or queer-friendly. When I get back to uni, look out. ;)