it's hard to get enough of a distance from these topics - queer communities and aesthetic codes, feminism and blogging - to write about them clearly. some people (ie henry jenkins, margaret meade) incorporate(d) their personal participation in a given situation into their ability to report on it.....

but i don't feel like i have the background to present these issues the way they should be. i want to talk about how the valuing of an andro/butch/masculine dyke identity has ended up shutting out femmes..but it's hard to enough distance to feel like i'm not tearing apart my own identity. i know that we can have this community and be inclusive. i just need to find a way of describing how to get there.

dreaming big?

in reading becki ross’ description of the LOOT organization and lifestyle in toronto in the 70s, i found myself stirring uneasily in recognition. the descriptors are so very familiar – flannel shirts, jeans, workboots, an overtly politicized outlook and a focus on queer women’s spaces…the descriptions of the exclusivity of the community also ring true – the way that bisexual women, women of colour, punk dykes, femmes, trans women, working class lesbians and sex workers all felt uneasy or flat-out uncomfortable in this dynamic…

i find myself making a comparison point by point, and cringing a little with identification. the way that class differences are erased by an undiscussed front of lack of resources, despite my relatively middle-class background and the fact that this is shared with many of my friends.

i feel like there are changes, though. solidarity with and acceptance of sex workers could be one example in my particular community – or the way that ‘queer’ has replaced ‘lesbian’ as an identity for many women, facilitating in theory the acceptance of queer women who date men. punk kids are much more prevalent in my scene, and though i see queers of colour at a lot of events and have a few friends who are queers of colour i don’t know that they feel particularly comfortable at every event, and know that there is a strong queer & trans community of colour that overlaps a lot with the white queer community…this is a difficult subject for me to write about because though i am conscious of this scene and of the predominating whiteness of many social situations i am in, i worry about the tokenizing implications of saying ‘i wish more poc would come to our parties’ when i don’t feel comfortable with infringing on the queer of colour community- especially since i want to respect the strength of that community…and feel like i would be intruding upon it.

then there’s the issue of femmes and femme visibility – since developing a very close friendship with someone who has a very strong femme identity, i’ve become much more aware of the politics of gender expression in this community, and though i feel like there is a wide degree of acceptance for dressing up, people who are femme have consistently expressed to me the fact that they feel invisible in social and flirting situations, and the standard for attractiveness in our community has strongly androgynous/masculine overtones among queer women…

trans acceptance, on the other hand, as increased greatly, at least in my immediate community, but also, i feel, in the larger queer community of the city.

i'm trying to write an essay on this and my thoughts won't come together. i keep getting sidetracked by little details that bring me to an extremely personal space, and remove all objectivity.