On Westboro Baptist, Religion, & Heterosexism

Where to begin? I was going to make a video out of this material, but I figured I would be more eloquent if I wrote it down. And hopefully more people view this than my YouTube videos (lolz).

You’ve heard of how horrific Westboro Baptist is. You probably saw that interview with Russell Brand. They’re messed up, right? 

We have to remind ourselves that Westboro Baptist is, yes, horrific, but an extreme example of horrificness. They are not alone in their views. You can be heterosexist and be much more subtle about it, and when Westboro speaks [some] people toss their shit in the air and scream because they can’t handle such extremist views, when actually, that same extremist view is filtered down and dissipated onto, like, all of us. From the time we’re born we’re taught being straight is right. It’s normal, that’s why it’s lawful.

Here’s your friendly reminder that heterosexism and its effects come in a ridiculous array of forms. I am emphasizing the effects because most people would not agree that it is necessarily heterosexist for a countless amount of people to glare at my girlfriend and I holding hands or kissing in public. A glance is not necessarily heterosexist. But it can not be separated from heterosexism. Heterosexism is a belief. It can be acted upon in any number of ways, from subtle (mean looks) to extreme (Westboro. I’m not saying they’re THE MOST heterosexist thing ever, but hopefully you get the point).

As far as subtle goes, I’ve heard my whole life that “homosexuals” need “praying for.” Okay. Let’s take a step back for a second. Is it the 1950s? Do we really have to use “a homosexual” to define people? How often do people come out and say “I’m a homosexual”? “A homosexual.” As if it is the dirtiest, most condemning disease you could contract. Can we just drop “homosexual” as a noun? Shit.

I digress. So why do we need praying for? We don’t. I first kissed a girl when I was about 6 years old (that’s a different story) and I didn’t start realizing I had feelings for girls until I was about 12 and I was falling in love with my best friend. This is because society screamed silently at me, endlessly, to make me believe that IT’S ADAM AND EVE, NOT ADAM AND STEVE! Straight is the way, damn it!

Recently my parents have taken to buying my brother’s girlfriend nice things and treating her like a daughter. My cousin just got married to his girlfriend and more family attended their wedding than we even have. My other cousin who’s a year younger than me just got engaged today and is moving into a house with his girlfriend. My other cousin is keeping his and his girlfriend’s new baby from his family until they get “their shots updated.” Imagine those situations with a gay couple and how outsiders would view them. Meanwhile, my girlfriend has always been “Tianna’s friend” and nothing more. And it shouldn’t be that way.

I have had the amazing opportunity to attend a college with a lesbian chaplain, and as a co-president of our Queer Student Union I hosted a Religious & Queer Identities Panel at our school. That chaplain said, “Your sexual orientation is not a sin.” At the same panel, a religion professor said, “Anyone who says ‘love the sinner hate the sin’ is just trying to excuse their bigotry.” The same professor also said that you should not be ashamed for cutting ties with people who preach “love the sinner, hate the sin.” These women’s words will stay nestled in my heart forever, because I know what they said is true, and for once I had someone voice that truth back to me. If theists knew their religious texts so well, they would know that your sexual orientation is not a sin. I have distanced myself without shame from people who ridiculously believe that I need prayed for by a god I don’t even believe in.

Which leads me to my next point. As an atheist, I am torn between anger and laughter when someone says I am going to hell or that they are praying for me. In case you haven’t noticed, atheists do not believe in the concept of hell. So, yeah, empty threat there. Also, why are you praying for me? Why? Look at your life, look at your choices. I don’t need you to pray for me. I would not ask for that. I do not need it. It makes me sick to think about. Stop it. Stop it right now. I am a queer atheist. I am a queer atheist. I am a queer atheist and I don’t need your shit.

Lastly, stop being creepy. Stop prying into my life and worrying about what I do in bed. Would you even know if I “act on my homosexuality” without me telling you? Are you imagining me in various lesbian sex positions at all hours of the day? What is your fascination with queer people? Stop praying for me. Just stop. And start realizing the effect heterosexism has on not just society, but on you as an individual.

semester 3, done

how do you stop
when there's so much to see
how do you sleep
when there's so much to do
how can you break
the second hand
and act like you've got more important
things on your plate?

i don't see time like a bird
or a train
or cups of coffee
or smiles or laughter
or themes or years
or anything
but time
the ticking of the clock,
the ringing of the alarm,
and the times i open my mouth to sing.
maybe i'm more sentimental than i thought.

the semester is over tomorrow
and i think i might start counting time in sleep.

the future

i am writing this on 3:35 am november 23rd, 2012. it is thanksgiving break, and we are home from college. you are sleeping hundreds of miles away and i am laying on my back with my laptop propped up on my legs. safari tells me that my tumblr and facebook and vegan recipe and goodreads and musiciansfriends tabs are waiting for my attention. just now i was trying to get some sleep, but then i thought of your warm body behind my back and i had to write this down.

i doubt these will be complete thoughts, but they will be thoughts nonetheless.

we are sophomores in college. i only chose to go to our school thanks to a desperate last minute search on collegeboard.com. ours turned out to be not too far from my house, in an area familiar to me, and they had a good english program. they accepted me past their application deadline, and i almost peed myself with excitement.

and then we started talking on facebook and i thought "this is one cute lesbian and i am scared i may have feelings for her some day." but you know that. you know all of that. you know how i knew before you came out to me and you knew how i fell for you because we've talked about it a dozen times already.

we've been dating for over a year, and our future is not too far away. and when i say the future, i mean the "real world." that scary faceless entity that i've feared for as long as i can remember. and that "real world" is barely 3 years away. whether we choose to go to grad school or not, wherever we choose to live, whatever we choose to spend our lives doing, it's all so close. decisions are zooming toward us like it's no biggie. and though i doubt i'll get over my fear of death any time soon, i think i'm starting to get over my fear of the future.

in college, we take turns buying groceries and cooking and washing dishes and doing laundry and making the bed (ok, that's mainly you) and taking the trash out (pfft mainly me) and other chores. we both get lazy sometimes but we push each other to get the hell out of bed and do our work. and it seems meaningless, all of our school work, because when you're there i don't know why i'm writing about jane austen when i could be telling you some little story about my childhood. and yes, women's studies is relevant, but if i'm not sharing it with you, what's the point? but there's not time to share everything about our homework, and it makes me sad that so much of our time being together at college is spent doing... well, college things. but when we're not at college, we're 7 hours apart and it hurts.

but you know what? fuck that pain. because i have you, and that forces me to realize that we have a chance in our crazy futures. i have you, and we've already made decisions that could take years for other people. i have you, and i have made decisions that i could not have come to without you.

we will get an apartment in some city that has a lot of gay people. and we will try out a lesbian bar and laugh if there's any shanes or alices or helenas. we will look for tumblr meetups in the city and meet all the weird foodie bloggers and doctor who nerds and liam hemsworth lovers and i'll laugh and go "yshisha marryyyyy" and you'll crack up and we'll get weird looks. and then we'll leave and try to find vegan cupcakes but there won't be any so we'll go back to our apartment and plan our own vegan bakery. and then we'll open it and get rich from all the vegans who desperately wanted more cupcakes in their lives.

and every day we'll wake up and i'll be sprawled out with my left leg on top of your stomach and your arm pressed up against the wall - oh, wait, no, it won't be that way, because we'll have a real bed and not a mini college twin mattress with egg crate foam that slips off every so often. it will be a king sized bed, set up in the middle of a room that could be a closet or a master bedroom and i probably wouldn't notice because you'd be there. we'd have 3 cats. one of them would be calico and two would be black cats from the shelter, because black cats are cheaper on black friday and we'd be jumping on that as soon as possible. and we'll have a framed map of middle earth on the wall and an endless supply of candles.

and i will dye and cut your hair and you will rub my feet and read me to sleep and i'll clean our room and it won't be perfect, but i won't care. i will love you until i lose my ability to love, and then some.

and when you get home from work, i'll smile and say "baaaaby" until you come over and lay on top of me and we smile and roll around and hug until we're smiled and rolled out and we will just kiss because words will be too overwhelming. i will rub your belly and be glad to see you and we will be making our own living and our relatives will visit us with advice and we might take it or we might laugh it off. and we will have published books and go on book tours and play concerts in the local bookstore sometimes and we will have comfortable furniture

and an exorbitant amount of gay books.

and the rest is up to you.

i can't wait to live the future with you.

Stereotype

I cut my hair

so now girls know.

I’ve left my lair

and come out, so

I let them stare-

confused, although

it matches me.

My head is free.

‘Short, long?’- it’s wrong.

Butch/femme: pick one!

Do I belong?

It could be fun

with locks so long.

My girlfriend’s won;

she’s label free.

Could that be me?

Fandom friendship reflections: bitter working on better.

Last night I was lying in bed, attempting to explain to Katie my experiences at Terminus, a 2008 Harry Potter convention in Chicago. It was marvelous and exquisite. There is a reason I’ve written about Terminus extensively. My friend at the time, Liz, told me not to get too sad when it ended. I was like, “okay.” And then I got really depressed when it ended. And not just an, “I miss my friends a lot” kind of way, but in a, “my friends all hate me because now they don’t talk to me since the convention is over and it wasn’t real friendship anyway and fuck them we’re over.”

Four years ago, I’m finally getting over that feeling.

As I was explaining to Katie the awkward Terminus hallway heart-to-hearts, meet-ups, concerts, and drama, I realized that I was talking about a different person. Certainly not me. Certainly not even the four-years-ago me, but a different person entirely. But I can’t tell whether I’ve grown up since then. I think I’ve just grown… on.

I was part of (what I thought was) a very tight knit group of six friends for the first time in my life in 2008. I had gotten over my best friend of 5 years who I was in love with, I was still dealing with my sister and dad moving out and refusing contact with my mom and I, and I was a depressed high school freshman. So I met these people through the Internet who I thought were going to be my life. They were so much like me, they had so much passion for Harry Potter, and I could be myself around them - on screen and, it turned out, off. 

I was immersed in this group of friends for what seems like most of my life. I was the messenger in the “he likes him, but does he like him back” and I was in the middle of the “don’t tell them, you’re the only one that can know”. I was the backstabber, I was the liar, I was the sweet girl, I was the trustworthy young’un, I was the playful redhead, I was the only one that kept in touch with all of them at the same time.

Because none of them cared about each other like I cared about them all. And it took me way too long to realize that.

Four years later, I am only loosely friends with two of them. One of those relationships is merely because we live in the same area. The other is because she and I started out as best friends before the other ones came into play, so there will always be something special between us. 

I’ve bitch-blogged countless times about how I don’t believe friendship to be the “oh! You’re in town? Let me visit you!” kind of ordeal. I don’t see friendship as the talk-to-you-every-other-year guy or the  ”oh girl you so pretty”-on-my-photo-comments girl. They’re acquaintances. And acquaintances I’m not that fond of having. I’d rather refer to them as “some girl” or “stranger”.

I’ve accepted that some people find me really ridiculous for this. But I have to do it for myself, I have to. I can’t keep thinking of past conventions and meet-ups as divine or OMGSOKOOLIMISSITSOMUCH!!! I have to just think of them as normal, regular people who fuck up and ignore each other, just like they did, and do, to me. They don’t think about me anymore. If they did, they’d get in touch. And I won’t do that for them, because I’ve tried. There’s only so many times you can be like, “Hey, let’s hang out/catch up” before you stop fucking trying.

It’s strange to think back on Terminus and realize those friends are now just another name on Facebook. Here’s to you, past. And here’s to a brighter future, one with real friends who will stay, regardless of geographical convenience or potential drama. 

“Remember when Zach said this and everything was fucked up from there?” “Who is Zach?” is supposed to be funny. I’m supposed to laugh at something I cherished, but I won’t. And 99% of people I know would suggest that I laugh rather than sulk, but I just can’t make myself smile when I think about the awfully dramatic conventions I’ve gone to. Because I was happy then, and now I see what I was missing that caused me to be happy - perception.

I think it’s just miraculous how something so dear to me destroyed my mind, my world view, so much.

I just want new.

I am so proud of myself.

Last week I did sort of a “trial week” of makeup. You might’ve noticed from the pictures of me kissy-facing the camera and wearing eyeliner.

Well, let me give some backstory. When I was in sixth grade, I would have done anything to be labeled feminine. I tried pretty hard, but not hard enough. People who I used to be friends with passed me mean notes in class saying, “hey dyke!” and, “you’re a loner”. Comments from 99% of my class consisted of, “you look like a man” and “does your face hurt? no? well it’s hurting me.”

So I started trying to be feminine and work myself to pretty. I started plucking my eyebrows when I was 11, plucked them so thin you could hardly tell they were there. Then I drew over them in an attempt to make them look perfectly arched and defined. Then came the eyeliner - thicker every day. Within a year I was using up one stick of retractable eyeliner every 10 days. I never wore much lip gloss or lipstick, but if you’re friends with me on facebook, you might be able to catch a glimpse of how heavy my eyeliner used to get. It was ridiculous.

In ninth grade I would skip lunch and spend the entire period in the bathroom, fixing my makeup and waiting until I could go back in the halls, convinced I wasn’t pretty enough to socialize. Between sixth grade and twelfth grade, not one day went by that I didn’t wear makeup - at the very least eyeliner. It may not seem like a big deal, but I specifically remember having a “makeover party” with my friend Danielle. 

“Do you want purple eyeliner?” she asked.

“Well, I would, but I already wear black,” I replied as if her question was absurd.

“Yeah, you’re right. It’s like, our base look.”

“Yeah, it is.”

Danielle and I believed that our BASE LOOK was an inch of eyeliner surrounding each eye in any direction. Base. Look. We couldn’t even imagine there being bare skin underneath it. In that case, we would be - gasp - ugly!

I was at a photography class downtown when I was about 14 or 15 and I remember a pretty, natural-faced girl leaning across the table and telling me, “You should get rid of that makeup. It kills your eyes.”

“No, it’s just my face,” I replied, totally offended. I vowed to myself to never take it off. I thought it made me pretty, even though I was not oblivious to the fact that still I wasn’t making friends.

In 10th grade I uploaded a makeup-less facebook picture with the caption, “I apologize in advance.” Friends commented telling me I was pretty even without eyeliner, but I didn’t believe it. I scoffed and returned to makeup the next morning. 

I stayed with a friend in California for several weeks in 2009 and, when leaving, on the drive to the LAX airport I realized I’d forgotten my makeup bag at my friend’s house. I was panicking, wringing my hands and hoping I’d be able to find makeup at the airport. It was an obsession. I knew how my makeup looked around my eyes without needing a mirror. I knew it was terrible, I knew my zits would show soon enough and my friends would see me as the ugly, manly sixth-grader I was inside.

We stayed in LA that night before our red eye flight in the morning and I found a Sephora on Hollywood Boulevard. I bought a $5 three inch eyeliner pencil (I hated the pencil kind, anyway) and prayed that my other friend who I was flying to Baltimore with would take me to a beauty store ASAP so I could get the rest of my essentials. I couldn’t wait for my California friend to send my makeup bag. Nope.

As soon as I got to Baltimore I demanded to go to a Sally Beauty’s Supply where I bought concealer and tweezers. Concealer and tweezers. For the one week I’d be there.

In twelfth grade, I started to realize I was being ridiculous. Petroleum oil around my eyes was not making me more beautiful. I tried uploading a youtube video without makeup, declaring to the Internet that I was going to stop wearing it. I cringed the whole time I edited it and played it back. I was back to eyeliner the next morning.

I’ve had one or two more spurts of “let’s try to go au natural!” in which I usually take a couple pictures, call it a day, and go back to makeup the next day. I started wearing even more, actually - lipstick and lipgloss and lipliner and lipeverythingyoucouldeverythinkof.

In my freshman year of college, I met some absolutely amazing people, my girlfriend Katie being the one closest to my heart. She never wore makeup, and yet she was radiantly gorgeous. My friends Olivia and Carina absolutely never wore makeup, and yet there I was with my makeup mask day in and day out. So I just stopped. One weekend in November, I just let the eyeliner fade with every shower. I couldn’t find any vegan makeup removers at the time, so it was easy to let it fade and see my face coming through, see my hazel eyes, so tiny without the black circles.

I didn’t wear makeup all through December, and so I decided I would do “No Makeup 2012”. I didn’t necessarily believe that I would not wear any makeup ever, but just that I was going to stop with the 24/7 eyeliner (I never ever took it off before bed). Now the most I do is chapstick and rare lipshine stuff. 

But I did it. Seeing my friends so naturally pretty and seeing so many girls around campus not bothering with makeup, I felt stupid wearing as much makeup as I did. So I left my makeup bag alone, although I’d still carry it around out of habit. And I went makeup free from December to today.

Last week I did a ~trial run~, where it was almost the opposite of what I used to do during my days of makeup obsession, where I’d attempt au natural. I tried to wear makeup. I’d forgotten how to even apply eyeliner when I used to be able to do it without a mirror. I felt like a drag queen. I felt pretty, but no prettier than I did than the last 10 months without makeup. I did it for a week, and I am so much more comfortable without it.

I can rub my eyes and not have smeared dirty hands, I can have conversations with people and not think, “what does my face look like? Is it decent?” 

I just don’t give a fuck anymore. My face is my face with or without being dolled up. And I am so proud of myself for being able to go back and forth without worry. 

You can still be beautiful, sexy, pretty, lovely, gorgeous, you can be YOU - without makeup.

taking sides

you and i
are on different sides
you try
to make your feet rhyme with mine
from all the way over there
every time i think about it
i just
wonder
why

you make friends and i don't

but then i remember that you don't

really like your friends anyway

and if there's one thing i've learned 

in these past few years

it's 

when you complain about someone 

you can't expect the listener

to like the someone