strange happenings

a buzzing
a fluttering
a tingling
none of the above
turn it to the left
dials to the right
nothing works
to make this pain go away

stand up
sit down
lie face down
drool on a pillow
pain on the back
stimulate the toe
perfect
perfect test


roll over
we'll explain
tingling
burning
pain in the uterus
vaginal area
your rectrum
this will help all of that

will it
will a machine make me better
will a machine change my life
will it
what will it do

it is hard to tell
from a simple
test

I just don't see how sexuality and power are connected

I am sitting there
just sitting
no not just sitting
because I am never
just sitting

I am sitting and thinking
thinking about articles we read
and womdering if confrontational rhetoric is really something
to slam

I mean I read Malcolm X and
the fucker changed my whole fucking life
so there

So I am sitting and thinking
thinking about the articles we read
"I just don't see how power and sexuality are connected"
I want to smack the person who has said this

But I know it is not the queer feminist
peace loving
thing
to
do...

But I really want to do it anyway
I want to scream
everything
Everything
EVERYTHING
is a manifestation of power

"I just don't see how a gay man and a heterosexual man would have a difference in their power?
The only power I see is the power divide based on gender, male and female."

So I speak
I shouldn't have
but it hits a little fucking close to home
I don't talk about my personal life, I don't put up pictures of people I love and have loved before that have taken the female form,
I could be fired from my job..."

Ahem ahem, "Actually, actually anyone can be fired at any time, we're an at will state...I think of discrimination in the form of performance."
Oh ok, because I speak of one law and have heard it differently stated, I am not only wrong but all of those other performances I talked about previously are discredited?"
really?
Really?
REALLY?

And I just want to cry
want to run away
want to be angry
at people who have made me angry
at people who are privileged
and don't have to see

and I don't have to see racial privilege
but I do
because I know it is there
not because of full blown bouts
of racism
I don't have to see a hate crime
to know that racism exists
(Thanks bobby dylan)

but really I just keep thinking
about bell hooks and her ideas of anger
and how sometimes is productive
and most importantly
it is necessary
and it is healing
and it helps me be me...

"and even in friendly conversation
I get the bell hooks-ian urge
to kill mother-fuckers who say stupid shit to me
all day"
(thanks Staceyann Chin)
because I just want to scream
and cry
because I am a grad student
with other grad students
around and have they never heard of
HETERONORMATIVITY?

"See, sometimes anger’s subtle, stocked in metaphor
full of finesse and dressed in allure
yes, sometimes anger’s subtle, less rage than sad
leaking slow through spigots you didn’t know you had.
and sometimes it’s just
fuck you.
fuck you.
you see, and to me,
That’s poetry too."
(Thanks Alix Olson)

So fuck you,
fuck you
and get angry
get angry that you feel targeted in a system
as having privilege
let it piss you off
so that you change it...

change it
fuck you
change it
fuck you
change it...

this is a work in progress

I have been writing this for awhile and it is extremely important to me but it isn't done, I thought I would post it anyway because I need to...I just have to...I don't have a choice...I will continue to post as I write.

--

I sat there holding my great grandmother's hand, her small frail body seeming to fall in and out of life. We were in her room at my mother's house facing Longs Peak lots and lots of flowers outside her multiple windows. My great grandmother loved roses, especially pink roses and when I was younger I remember one section of her entire back yard being dedicated to the planting of roses. But in the mountains my mother had multiple and variant columbines and what appeared to be wild flowers, the things that would survive in the cool mountain climate.

I turn back to my great grandmother my GG she is lying there on her bed, her breath not coming easy. I can tell she is struggling to take breath into her lungs and push it out again. My sister Liana who is only 13 lies on GG's bed holding her hand not wanting her to be alone. The Hospice nurse has told us that if it was her grandmother she would remove the oxygen that was sustaining GG's life, feel free to give her pain medication liberally, and to just camp out in her bedroom, that it wouldn't be long.

The past days had been a whirlwind and I was surprised I remembered much of anything. My mother calling me Sunday night because GG was really bad and she was scared and wanted me to come home. I did, I left my peaceful sleep to come home. When I first arrived I saw GG, in her pajamas, so small, nothing like the intimidating woman I had known. She was barely breathing, each breath seeming to take longer to come then the last. Her chest rose as though she was gasping for air. My mother told me "I've already dropped her three times I think trying to get her onto the commode." She was determined to try and use that commode, but my mother just knew she couldn't lift her again. My mother left and went upstairs and she told me, "Go sit with her, she doesn't want to be alone."

I was scared. I had never been this close to a dying person I had actually loved so much. She had deteriorated so much it didn't even seem to be her. She was enveloped by her light blue pajamas, being much too large for her body. I sat down beside her the bed squishing because of my weight. This stirred her a bit, she looked at me a slight acknowledgement of my presence beside her and then returned to her deep struggle with breath. I looked at her, her face growing pale, her one eye open, mouth slightly ajar and obviously dry. I rubbed her stomach as I do with many of my kids from the preschool in order to bring them some comfort. I was able to relax her enough for her to drift off to sleep, her morphine and breathing medicine also helped with that.

She laid there, I leaned over and whispered in her ear. "Grandma I love you but it's ok, you can let go." I started to whimper, my eyes welling up with tears. I couldn't help but cry when around her because she had changed so much in such a short time. "Grandma, I promise we'll do your hair and make you look nice when you go. I promise even if I have to roll your hair myself I will." I manage to choke it out through tears. I love her, she has been like a mother to me, to my mother, and to many of the children in her life. I miss who she was, her somewhat angry, pessimistic self that was tinged with moments of joy and happiness. She found joy in watching her grandchildren play everyday and was always smiling about their goofy antics. But I hate that now she is not the woman I love, she is not the woman she once was, she is a simply a mass of human being, just lying, just being. Barely living.

A pastor comes. He was supposed to give her communion but she was too weak to sit up and to elusive to know what was even happening around her. My mother, her mother (my grandmother), sister, and I gather around my GG's bed, the pastor places his hands on her and blesses her. My mom has been reading the Bible, something she never does and does not believe in for herself, but she has been doing it for grandma, to maybe provide her comfort. The pastor continues the blessing, I am so warm, sweating in fact, the prayers he is saying are intense. If he weren't Lutheran and I weren't surround by ethnically Lutheran people it would almost seem to be like a witches chorus. A pagan healing circle, but the words are Christian, and they aren't meant to heal, they are meant to give blessing to pass. I do not want her to heal, her time to heal has come and passed. She managed to heal a few times before and those times I still needed her to be there, I needed her to see me graduate college. I needed to know she was around to make my own life feel safe. And I still loved her but I didn't want to force her to continue a life for mine and my families own selfish reasons.

My mother breaks down crying. Finally, in front of the pastor, my mother cries out, "What am I going to do without you grandma? What am I supposed to do with my life when you go?" My mother's life was going to drastically change when my GG left because she had been devoting so much time and energy to her care. What was my mother going to do? Not only had she been caring for my grandma but she had been receiving a monthly stipend for providing her care. What would my mother do with $600 less per month. Not that my mother was doing it for the money but it needs to be noted that she was worried about what would happen with the money once my grandma was gone. I look to my mother, I have not seen her hysterical like this in years. She is so upset, her breathing heightened, the tears flowing freely. The room is burning up and I feel myself losing breath. My grandmother has lost most consciousness, and I feel myself needing to leave the room, breathe fresh air for a moment. The pastor stays and as I get up to leave he feels the need to ask me questions. Where do I go to school? What do I study? Things that at that moment seemed completely insignificant to me. I don't know anything, I don't care about anything. I don't want to know things. I care about this moment and it is being ruined. I leave the room, I walk outside and stare at the mountains. I do not feel my hands, the hands that had been holding and stroking my grandmother with. I don't want questions, I don't want answers I just want to be. I breathe, I think, I walk back into the house.

So much to write about

Have you ever prayed that somebody would die? Wished and hoped? It sounds morbid, it sounds cruel, but as I watch one of the most important people in my life disintegrate all I can do is hope that death will bring her comfort and a release of all of her terrible pain.

"What is your favorite GG memory?" a friend asks me curiously. GG is my great grandmother and she has been alive so far my entire life. I have to think about this question deeply. She has always been a part of my life, the head of my matriarchal clan, I don't have many memories without her. They are not all my favorite for I recall being a child and getting so angry with her because she was pretty strict. I remember my brother throwing chocolate milk all over her living room wall and running out of the house when she went to get the fly swatter in order to discipline him. I had to calm them both down an convince my brother to come back into the house.

There had been Christmas's and birthdays, I remember her getting out the Christmas dishes, and all of the decorations. She always made me fudge, the real stuff, not the marshmallow fluff you buy in stores. And sour cream sugar cookies, they are still one of my absolute favorite things. Not quite sweet but a delicious taste with every single bite.

We are almost up the mountain and I turn to her. "It has to be going to Disney World. Even though we had to push her in the wheel chair she still sat in the front of all the big rides like Splash Mountain and Space Mountain." I remember back to this time, many of my vacations had involved my great grandmother, including moving back and forth to college at least three times.

But now when I look at her it is easy to see she is not well. The Home Hospice care has begun and with that comes many books about dying and how to prepare for such things. It also comes along with lots of pain management and drugs that supposedly make the transition to death easier for the person experiencing it. So many people are scared of death of what that means but I am not scared. I see that the life she is in now is what is scary. She is not scary but the loss of her physical self scares me because it has made that very real to me. I would rather lose my body in death instead of in life. However when people say things like when I get like that just kill me I feel they must have little compassion for my situation. My GG does not want to be like this but I cannot imagine it is mine or anyone else's responsibility to take her life away. And don't tell me that because it isn't that easy, this situation is not as simple as that. It is not my choice to make for someone else.

A person once so strong and smart and quick. She could cuss like a sailor at times, and always told me "Don't ever let a man tell you what to do!" But she isn't storng and nothing can prepare a person to watch someone die. What do you do when you realize a person you love and admire can no longer feed herself, let alone walk anywhere. She is so tired. All she does is lay back half listening, barely breathing, jut barely hanging on. She is there but not. Always one to be in the conversation she now just listens. Withdrawing from the world, that's what the Hospice book says.

I was explaining my troubles of the day to my mother and my grandmother. Silly maybe, but I had had problems returning something to a store and had been significantly frustrated by this situation. Trying to lighten the mood I was explaining how I talked to two different managers and then two different customer service people on the phone and how I felt little to no help from all of these people. As I was talking my GG just lay there apparently asleep or so I thought. But then out of no where she mumbled something inaudible to me. But my grandma Jane looked at her and said, "I know mom that wasn't right. They should return her pants so that she can have something that fits." She had been listening the whole time to me babble about my stupid pants. I desperately hoped that would not be her last thought before dying.

I wish she would die so that she would not have to live this way for long and although I feel bad admitting that I feel it is the most humane situation. And recently having read "His Dark Materials" trilogy I am convinced that my GG will die and become happy particles of dust which, is everything. She will no longer need to eat homemade ice cream and peaches because she will be homemade ice cream and peaches. Just as she will be mountains, and sunshine, and rain. And for some reason this gives me a lot of comfort because these books have made me hopeful and faithful in a way I have yearned to be for so long. And I feel this hope in me that I can be part of making a world based on love, kindness, truths, and the power of story telling. All because death is no longer about the sinners and the righteous but about the dead being set free to be in the world to feel all the love that there is. And if you are particles you can no longer be in pain.

and how do you explain that you love someone so much that you wish they would die? I am sure to some who have witnessed this process that it makes sense. But is it fair to wish this and still know that I don't feel my time with her has been enough or used as wisely as it could have been? I haven't heard enough stories, I haven't eaten enough fudge, or learned how to make a pie, or kissed her enough, or rubbed her feet and legs because they are tired and old and they are done holding up a once strong and proud body. I haven't spent every night of my life trying to ensure that hers is better or more comfortable. But she wouldn't want that, she would definitely want me to live my life and be happy.

And this is real. It may not be Truth, but this is my everyday. While I may have outlets like work, friends, love, my dog it is there. This death. It is something I wake up in the morning to look at and I wonder when I won't see it anymore? When will it be gone forever, turned into tiny particles all around me? and I worry. What if I find her? Will I be more scared to see a body with what appears to be no soul, or will it be weird to feel her soul no longer in her body but somehow outside of it being released?

And now I feel we are waiting. Reading books about dying. Thinking of what to tell the children in her life. And as I wait I cry because I know eventually the waiting will end and I will be joyful and overwhelmed with sorrow. Until then I wait...

Magnificent failure

I had a class ask me to think about Magnificent Failures. But what is that-what does that mean? I know that for the class it was supposed to be an attempt to grapple with a challenging topic. Maybe it was a hard concept, one that didn't make sense right away-but when returned to gave new insight. I think this was mostly for the undergrads to attempt to wrestle with topics on racism, sexism, homophobia etc that they may never have been exposed to. For me I wrote mainly about being exposed to undergraduates again. I mean it wasn't that long ago since I was one and def not as long ago as teaching them, I felt they would be my ultimate Magnificent Failure. That was all until I hit week seven.

What does is feel like to live most days in pain? I don't really remember because so much of my life I have been dealing with chronic pain. Painful periods, bladder infections, infections here and there and pretty much everywhere. I don't know what it is like to live pain-free only what it is like to cope with and manage pain on a daily basis. It all hit me my sock to the groin that seventh week-everything came to a head and exploded inside my body. I sought the opinions of doctors-their solutions were to run a bunch of tests and give me pain medication.

Pain medication:that might have to be my biggest Magnificent Failure. I don't want to blame it all on my body- I don't think it is my body that did the most failing. Its rough when you see a bunch of doctors and nurses and they all want to know what you're on and when you last took it and you have to spout off at least three different medications for pain. U should have kept a notebook to remember when and what I took-because sometimes a I barely remembered my name let alone the medicine. And the side effects0the worst one was that I just couldn't keep a though in my mind. The medicine and the pain being so debilitating that anytime I would try to keep up with my homework read or write something my eyesight would become fuzzy and I would get dizzy and sick to my stomach.

so I continue: whose truth?

So I continue:

Why are we so invested in Truth-in finding the reality of a situation? Why do we have such a deep desire to get to the root of something and to find out if it is real or not? And in the end isn't about authenticity anyway? If we can believe a performance because it is authentic according to our standards we tend to believe it-whereas if the performance is not authentic or something seems off we may ignore it and not believe it. But according Gómez-Peña we are no longer able to distinguish authentic performances from the "wannabees" and this may pose a significant problem. She says it is a problem because people will be able to fluidly change subject positions without ever reaping the consequences (mainly negative) of being in an "othered" position. Not that one should look to be oppressed or gain some sort of pointage from being in a marginalized position but there are certain consequences certain people (certain bodies face) that those who fluidly transition will never have to experience. So what is lost

I feel I cannot address any of these questions adequately without looking for some help from Thomas King (2005) who discusses the power of storytelling in constructing our notions of truth.

As King (2005) notes, "Stories are wondrous things. And they are dangerous"(9). Stories have power and they construct our world-thus they have the power for both good and evil and everything in between and around. If "the truth about stories is that's all we are," then we have the ability to tell a story of inclusivity, acceptance, recognition of privilege, demolition of power structures etc...or we can tell a different story one that doesn't care about the well-being of other people who are different then we are.

King details an experience he had of giving an "authentic" American Indian performance speaking at a university for their "Indian Awareness Week"(62). There were four Native men speaking. As he says, "I told stories. Stories about broken treaties, residential schools, culturally offensive movies, the appropriation of Native names, symbols, and motifs. And Ishi." At the end of all the speeches two of the other men (spokespeaople from the bureau for Indian Affairs) are paid for their services-the other man, an artist and King, a story teller are not paid. King relates this to the fact that he is instead seen as the entertainment-not the voice of authority. Despite his attire, his markers of his race, his performance is not authentic or truthful enough to warrant payment. He makes it apparent that the telling of stories is not of monetary value.

So he decides to change his performance. King loses the traditional dress "turned in my ribbon shirt, my four strand bone choker, and my beaded belt buckle for a cheap but serviceable suit and a rather nice tie..."(67) -decides to throw facts and numbers into his stories-give them some empirical evidence in order to make his performance more truthful. Instead the reaction from an audience member is that he is "an apple...an Indian is red on the outside but white on the inside"(67). So where does the truth of King's experience lie? Is it in the dress-no then King is simply entertainment, so the solution-do not dress like an Indian-then "not only am I not entertainment, I wasn't an Indian"(68). King is caught in a web of where authentic performance lies and how to perform so that he will be accepted and listened to by a variety of people. Where is the truth? That is my question-and how do we know what it is? King would say the truth lies in storytelling-and I do think he would agree that there are multiple truths-as narratives are understood from different subject positions creating a new truth.

I think this also speaks very much to Gómez-Peña's article of Confessions. In this article it is very evident that some people have constructed their truths about Mexican people in various ways. This piece builds on what people desire, what they would write if no one else could see. Through this essay people are able to give their inside confessions about desire As one person confesses, "I desire badly a Mexican man (120)." Yet another comment is, "I want to be seen as a true advocate of your culture; as righteous and not as a 'white liberal' & to make love to a Latina with a firm body"(123). And another entry, "I wish all Mexicans would be deported!!...And take this bad art with them"(121). These comments are all responses to an art exhibit-and although these people all saw the same things they had very different reactions. Some respond with love, with compassion, others with hate and aggression. My own desire really draws me to the comment about being a white liberal. I wonder how authentic this comment is-or if it was done tongue-in-cheek to kind of reveal how much this type of thinking is in the world. If not and this comment is true-that a person does not want to be seen as a white liberal and then makes a comment about being with a Latina with a "firm body"(123) I question this person and their motives. They would obviously not be committed to the "other" in any sort of respectful and reciprocal way. This is the epitome of white liberalism which pays a lot of lip service to diversity issues and tolerance-without really doing a lot of work or actually trying to change the dominant power structures.

All of these reactions are true-as far as we know. And even if they are all fabricated-made up to enhance the pieces' legitimacy then I think it works. Because all of these reactions even if made up are real thoughts people have-real desires, desires that can be mean, nasty, dirty, compassionate, caring and everything in between. But then again where is the truth? According to Gómez-Peña it might be in art-it might be in people's reactions to art-or it might not exist at all.

Pinter

In my own world currently I am trying to figure out my own truth. Is my pain real-is it true. Do I perform it well-is my performance of woman in pain authentic? Are people buying it? Do they really? Do I? I am suffering with a recurring problem I have-endometriosis. It is when the tissue that grows in your uterus during one's menstrual cycle actually grows outside of the uterus. It can grow on th outside of the uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries-but also the bladder, intestines, really any organ in the general pelvic region. It has hurt so bad for so long even I am questioning my own truth of how much pain I am in. My own truth right now consists of hospital and doctors visits, procedures that require laxatives and saline solution to clean out my entire digestive system. Pain medicines that either do nothing-or make me so out of it that I am dizzy constantly-unable to drive. I cannot do anything-I cannot function as I normally would.

The truth of it is I didn't think it would bother me. But I can't read an article without getting dizzy and sick-it has taken me forever to even think of the words to put on this page. It is an endeavor I will have worked on for multiple days by the time it is finished. And even as I sit here and write I see stars around the screen-in fact I can't look at the screen because I just see a fuzzy haze. I thought I could make it through a simple movie-just sit and watch right? Wrong. Because I had also run an errand that day for my mother-with my girlfriend driving me-I got to the theatre bought my nachos and prepared. But by the time the previews for upcoming movies came on the big screen I felt it. A sharp pain in my lower back on the right side. Despite the fact I had taken every pain medicine allowed me I could not get comfortable and my girlfriend had to reassure me that it was ok to leave. That she wouldn't be upset-and that we would see the film another day.

I am not myself-but I do not even know who or what I am that is not self. I cannot be anything other than self-but this yucky, mucky self is one I do not appreciate. Imagine that all of a sudden everything in your life is changed because you are in too much pain to deal with anything in any sort of real way. And then to be given tiny little pills to supposedly make it all better-and they don't work. Am I being given placebos here? And I do not feel the way I normally feel and I wonder will I always always feel this way? And I know the answer is no-because I have gone through this before and the pain does go away after the surgery. Then do you know what they tell me will help? If I am not made infertile by endometriosis then I should try to get pregnant. Pregnancy is the pain relief plan they have? I am gay-I do not want to carry my own children. I do not want to waste the time and money because as I said before I am probably infertile. Am I a woman if I am infertile? Does it matter if I am a woman or not? My mother says,"In some ways I hope you are infertile because you aren't sure if you want kids anyway and that someone who really wants to be pregnant can be." As if it works out that way-nonetheless if it does I hope this other woman can get pregnant and maybe be my surrogate. That would be justice in a true form right?

But my truth about myself, and my abilities have changed. My desires are different because all I want to do is not feel this aching, this burning, this sharpness, this sickness. I want to wake up and not feel bad. I want to be able to move my body again. I would like to be able to have sex without having to plan it around how badly i hurt at that moment. I would like to not have to plan my life around the pain that I am in. But


I would suggest we stop this never-ending quest to find and uncover the Truth, -the unveiling of the impossible authentic/real performances and instead look for the ways that meaning and truths are constructed between people. This allows their to be multiple possibilities for interpreting situations and issues. And as Jones suggests-it offers us a new way to view authenticity as something that is co-created not something that simply "is." When we allow this multi-vocal approach we allow the possibility of multiple truths. This makes it more possible for us to question the things. But we must be careful not to appropriate these multiple truths and experiences and instead learn to view them ethically and responsibly. I think performance really speaks to this issue that we are not to simply put on a "modernized" and politically correct "freak show," instead we have a responsibility to the people we work with and participate in our research. We also have a responsibility to people not to appropriate their experiences of oppression by fluidly trying to occupy their spaces. This doesn't mean a transperson should not have their surgery or anything like that but that we think about purchasing ethnic jewelery from Target as a way to get a "real" souvenir from another country but is most likely produced in sweat shop conditions by people of that country in harsh conditions. We need to think about choices we make and think of ways we can be more responsible to our fellow humans. We need to


to be continued yet again...

As Corey (2006) notes:

I am not a social dancer, and when I attempt to dance with words like 'truth,' fiction,' 'honesty,' or 'objective,' I clunk and clatter when my feet contact the ground. But 'integrity,' is a word that moves modesty well with me; I am willing assess and discuss moral principles, professional standards, professional standards, reputation, and the willingness to put my name to a tenuous idea"(331).

I use this quote again because when I look at the readings by Gómez-Peña and the lecture by Pinter I am drawn to the notion of truth-multiple truths and capital "T" truths. Whose truth/s do we value and whose truth/s are dismissed as invalid, or dismissed as not being true at all? I think I know some answers but I think it is also necessary to discuss the principle of authenticity when discussing truth. Whose performances are authentic?

As Gómez-Peña (2004) writes:

You may now experience anything you want, become whomever you wish, or purchase whichever cultural, sexual, spiritual, artistic or political experience you desire. You can impersonate other genders or ethnic identities without having to suffer any physical, social, or political repercussions, or be subjected to the rage of the excluded. You don't even need to belong to any 'real' community. And you can do all of this from the solitude of you own home.

If a person in this postmodern world can "be" anything and not have to take a stand what is at stake? Again whose performances are authentic and whose performances are true? Corey quotes Joni L. Jones in his piece:

Performance offers a new authenticity, based on body knowledge, on what audiences and performers share together, on what they mutually construct. As a form of cultural exchange, performance ethnography encourages everyone present to feel themselves as both familiar and strange, to see the truths and the gaps in their cross-cultural embodiments. In this exchange, we find an authenticity that is intuitive, body-centered, and richly ambivalent.

Jones and Gómez-Peña seem to be at slight odds with one another. Although Gómez-Peña is not discussing the possibilities for performance in essence she is discussing the daily performances people can engage in. So does performance up the possibility for body performances or is it problematic in that it encourages people to explore multiple performances of the "other" without ever having to take a stand for the "others" position? I have to think that Jones believes that performance offers the possibility to explore the positions of others-but in a responsible and ethical way-one that implicates the bodies with one another and takes a stake in one another's lives. As she says we have to feel the "cross-cultural embodiments" that require the bodies involved to be invested in each other in order to construct meaning.

This may be a tangent but a necessary one because these articles are discussing the ways that bodies have not been extremely ethically committed to each other and the result is invading Iraq according to Pinter, and making extreme stereotypical judgments about Chicana/os.

to be continued...

Fuck!

Fuck!

Fuck!

It's just as Alix Olson says, "Sometimes it's just Fuck [you!]

I am lying here wedged between a sleeping body a popple and my own brain and yet I feel so alone.

It's amazing how much Pain can make a person feel alone.

"I will tie us together and then everything they do to you they will have to do to me to make you not feel so alone."

I don't want to be going through this-but I know that I have to-It will hopefully be over soon so I can resume making snarky remarks, quick rebuttals, sassy comments and the like. My life is not over-but I definitely do not feel like myself.

I write things that I just do not think I would write. They aren't in MY voice-if I really have one to begin with. I just don't remember it sounding and looking so fuzzy. That's not me that's no what I usually sound like. I sound smarter usually. I sound like I care. I sound like I write with passion and a desire to change the world-not this fuzzy wishy washy bull shit. I write like something bigger than myself matters.

Right now the shooting pain through my uterus is what I feel. That's what I am writing from. That fucking pain that won't go away. It lingers in my back sweeping through my entire body. Mostly my feet-my pain always seems to land itself in my feet after hurting in the local sites of pain. It always seem to find a home embedded in the muscles of my feet-sometimes my shoulders. Then I can walk on my pain feel it anytime I go anywhere.

I dislike the niceties that come along with experiencing pain. No one knows what to do for it. There is nothing anyone can do. There is little I can do and even less that anyone else can do. Anything that makes me more comfortable I generally have to do for myself and it involves taking more drugs which, knock me out, or make me doped up to the point of entering the land of my subconcious, turning the heat up on my heatin pad, taking a bath, or sleeping. Back and foot rubs are the only thing I can't do very well that relieve some o the pain for a while. I appreciate the gesture I just feel bad when I have no concrete answers to give.

And that's the fuck part! There is nothing to be done until I can schedule my surgery. Until then I just pop the pills they tell me to, and work on my lamaze breathing techniques and try not to do anything to make it worse-which can't always be avoided either.

And I wish I could connect the pain to larger issues of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia-but right now I can't. I can only feel only write from that space of only sort of caring about life but mostly care about it being over so I can get on with making those connections to other things. Things in my thesis project, things in my class projects, things in my daily life. But fuck! This is my daily life right now. This is it. Boiled down to the roots of being in the exact moment. I wouldn't mind boiling my internal organs right now get them hot enough they would stop cramping.

And I am going through this because I am a Woman right? Whatever that means. I have a Gynecologist working through a special women's health clinic performing my procedure looking at my lady parts and assessing them. This is all because I have reproductive organs I don't plan on producing anything with. If I don't plan on using them can I just lose them and get all of this shit over with? If I lose them am I no longer a woman-if I don't produce anything with my reproducing organs? I don't think I would mind losing that label if it meant losing the pain. I would give up that title-if I did would it make my parts (previously known as lady parts) hurt less? I would hope so.

Fuck!

I just want it over and done!

Sometimes it really is just Fuck!

Why should I go to the Northwestern Performance Institute this Summer?

I am applying to go to this amazing Performance Institute this summer at Northwestern University and I am so excited and I hav to write this letter about myself and the work I am doing or want to do. And I don't know how to start-so I turn to this Blog as I do with most things performance related to give me some inspiration or at least a jump-start.

Who am I? And Why do I deserve to be invited? I don't know answers both sufficiently and yet completely insufficiently at the same moment in time. I can tell you things I do-things I believe in very strongly-those might give you the best insights into both of those questions.

I am an M.A. student or more likely I perform the identity and role of graduate student on a daily basis. This graduate student also performs critical race consciousness, queerness, gender-rebel, class distortionist, preschool teacher, mother, lover, friend, and a multiplicity of other identities throughout the course of a day.

Why performance studies? There are so many reasons-but here are a few. Number one, I have never met a discipline that resonated so much with me before. I don't understand how someone who cares about social justice, who really cares and feels committed to human beings and is a scholar can not study performance. It is the discipline I see synonomously with social justice-although many other disciplines attempt to do this and succeed to an extent (Women's Studies, African/African American Studies etc) these disciplines privilege identities and to display them as a somewhat fixed and unifying thing. Instead, performance studies places the performance of a multiplicity of intersecting identities, daily negotiations, social justice, critical consciousness, reflexivity, reciprocity, accountability, and stake in a multiple and fractured menagerie to work together to produce analysis. In my mind this just makes a lot of sense. Instead of privileging an identity maybe we should instead think about performing those identities, communicating them to others? I don't know but this is something I am playing around with right now.

I will be going into my second year of M.A. work where I will be proposing my thesis topic in order to begin researching and writing it as well as applying to PhD programs. I am currently hoping to research a queer feminist theatre group that I have seen perform (well I actually saw the youth theatre version and am hoping to actually see them perform soon). I am curious to see how performance becomes a vehicle for social transformation and how a resistive group can both work through performance but also more individually between members of the cast. I think that these interpersonal actions on a daily basis can create smaller level social change for those involved while trying to make an even larger cultural impact on those who they perform for. I am very excited to work on a project that explores ideas of performance, intersectionality, queerness, etc in a theatre setting. I also think this has the potential of being an amazing space for my own reflexive participation-although I do not consider myself a performer I feel that mostly I will benefit from being involved in such a project while possibly being able to offer something (publicity, webhelp etc...)

In performance it helps to be committed and have a stake int he projects we decide to take on and to the peple we are interacting with. In this sense I love many pieces of what this group does and I want to be a part of it in someway anyway and I think their radical voices and stories need to be told as Thomas King says, "So that we may live our lives differently."

So these are the things that I do-sort of, I guess more of what I want to do someday. I do not know who I am or why I deserve to go except that I think it could be very helpful in getting more grounding for my thesis and what direction t take it in. I think this specific summit that is focusing on resistive performances and social justice will very much play into how to focus my work and I am excited to meet and interact with people who are working on similar topics with unique perspectives. In the end I don't deserve to go, I only hope that I will chosen so that I may learn ad grow as an academic and human being.

How am I supposed to forget
when I can't really remember
what happened?

Maybe it felt good
and I liked it
for a while

maybe I was too young
to even know what
liking it
meant

How am I supposed to remember
when all I want to do is forget
what happened?

I learn about bodies
write about bodies
theorize about bodies

and what they know
because they know the things

we want to remember
things we want

to forget

even if we don't want them
bodies remember

how am I supposed to live in a body
that has been hurt so many times
taken advantage of

so many times

and you may not believe me
you may not care

but it isn't about you
that's what you always said

and I was supposed to find healing
supposed to find peace

meditate
meditate on what?
a memory
of what was
what could have been

I was supposed to heal
with those black chains on my wrists
with late night talks
and kisses

but healing has to start within
not with kisses
or hugs
or chains

maybe I don't need saving
anyway


I want to remember what happened
but
I am
Dying
to forget

Estes Park Sings-really sings

Last night I attended a real piece of work-Estes Park Sings Around the World. I always find shows like this a little disturbing because they tend to overly essentialize and mock people from other countries but this my friends was the most terrible...

The performance begins in of course the small Mountain Town of Estes Park-the perfect place that it supposedly is. A straight white couple is sitting in "their living room" when they receive a phone call from their Dolly Parton-esque daughter who is going to be performing on a cruise ship going around the world. I honestly did not know that this was the premise for the show and I have been to some chorale performances etc that actually treat multiculturalism pretty well. They have to pay homage to the culture, sing along with their songs not appropriate them for their own use etc...

I knew this was not going to be pretty when the first "stop" on the tour was Jamaica. A whole bunch of white guys from the Rotary club (the sponsors of the show) dressed in shorts and their nerdy floral print shirts or t-shirts with Jamaica on them sporting Rasta hats with fake dread locks. They then proceeded to sing the song Day-O complete with Jamaica percussion in the background. Personally I do not see how this is much different from a white person painting black face and doing a "minstrel" show. I was mortified. When I said kind of loudly "Oh my goddess this is so racist. This is awful." My friend responded, "What did you expect?" I guess I didn't expect such a blatant form of racism to be pervading my consciousness right at that moment.

I recently read an article about schools' attempts to integrate multicultural education into the curriculum. The author recalled his own school's attempts as a child by having a multiplicity of dinners all themed from a different culture. He distinctly recalled "Taco Night" and how looking back on it was extremely problematic. This dinner was an attempt to learn about "Mexican culture" as though there is only one and that equates everything about it to "tacos." This is really problematic because (and I can't rememer how he phrased it) it essentialize all people of Latin/Spanish/Central American heritage down to Tacos-which, is an Americanized version of all of those cultures. It implies a whole bunch of people eat Tacos, when they probably don't and that this could stand in for their entire cultural being would be like saying some sort of food could stand in as a replacement for all the people in the U.S.A. Ridiculous yes-but people do it and this is exactly what was going on at the EPS concert. All the "Jamaican" people were whittled down to Dreadlocks, Rasta culture minus drugs, and a lazy attitude.

Besides the small town politics of "Oh this is a song this person knows so we need to incorporate it" all of the different or othered countries were extremely mocked. I mean every country and culture was mocked-Japan was whittled down to a bunch of quiet meek Geisha-like girls, Germany a large woman with long blonde braids under a helmet with horns drinking beer, and in Africa a whole bunch of again white guys dressed up in Safari like clothes singing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." There was little respect paid to other cultures, no working with their traditional songs and doing them in a resprectful tone/way that honors them but instead it was all seeming to make fun. And this was my problem-using other cultures, especially "othered" cultures to get laughs is racist and colonialist and this is a problem. And this mockery besides being essentializing also further others these cultures by making them incredibly different from all of us. By portraying all people from Japan as meek little girls and dressing in traditional Kimonos seems to imply that this is what Japanese means. When most of the people currently in Japan dress like Americans and vice versa because of the globalized market economy we have going on. We are not that different looking or acting anymore and people from other countries (at least not all of them) don't walk around all day in their traditional dress. It would be like Americans being portrayed in their church best on stage. And this would imply everyone owns church best, goes to church at all, etc. They don't and as Americans we wouldn't want to be homogenized in this way so we shouldn't do it to others either.

But besides my obvious big critique being the racist/colonialist implications of such a concert and such performances are just so offensive is that not only do the performers think it is ok to put on such a performance but everyone in the audience (for the most part) laughs at them. They all think it is appropriate to laugh at white people pretending and mocking "blackness" and "brownness." But then when a Swedish performance of ABBA comes on stage no one laughs and no one gets it. It isn't funny to people because either they don't think it's funny to see a bunch of white people attempt to dance (at all) and especially dance and sing to ABBA, or they don't think it is that far fetched-at least far fetched enough from reality to be funny. Maybe it was so many of the people there's actual culture it just wasn't funny to them it was their 70's reality, or they just didn't get it because it was mocking whiteness and to them it wasn't funny. Other options here? I don't know what exactly the reason was behind not laughing at this-but meanwhile I am cracking up laughing at this whole mockery of white people. But this was the case with all the things that made fun of white people the audience (white upperclass hets) didn't get, whereas all the stuff making fun of brown or black people caused a huge roar/applause from the audience.

It was so problematic and I guarantee I would have felt this way despite taking my intercultural comm class but in light of all the reading about ethnicity, race, and culture it does give me some new ways to think about all of these things that I saw. New ways to theorize, new reasons to be upset.

I am writing tonight to update my blog for my new academic endeavors. Because I am starting a new quarter I of course have new classes. Thank the goddess I am finished with the Methods sequence of my M.A. program. Although I highly enjoyed and learned a lot from them I am excited to be continuing along in my concentration of Culture and Communication. This quarter I am involved in a lower level grad/undergrad class on Intercultural Communication as well as a rhetoric class on Public Deliberation which is also grad/undergrad but at a highly theoretical and philisophical level to a point that I often find myself going huh? I don't get it. For my Interultural class I have to make an e-portfolio using the program Keep Toolkit, which like my public deliberation class makes me go huh? I wish I could just use this Blog.

Anyway, I am writing because I am finding myself to be deeply challenged by my Intercultural Class, not because of the material but because it is somewhat simplistic and the people in it seem to have no understanding of race, class, gender, sexuality and their intersections. The readings are interesting but we are broken up into small home groups for discussion what seems like pretty much everyday. I do not want to write this to sound completely arrogant, or rude and because I truly care about implementing critical feminist pedagogy but it just doesn't work if the other people in the room are not willing t critically engage the material.

For example today we were discussing bell hook's article, Homeplace: A Site of Resistance and my group members were having a hard time understanding the article because they could not relate to it because they all but one are white privileged het girls. The other grad student who happens to be from Afghanistan and I were trying to explain that resistance works in opposition to the dominant modes of society and that people who are oppressed need a place to regroup after tiring days of being strong, staying tough, and surviving the harsh conditions of life. Now I have no idea what it is like to walk through this life as a person of color but I am completely empathetic to the fact that I do not know and can only try to be as supportive and helpful as I possibly can to people of color. I have seen the devastating effects of racism of someone who is Indian being asked what tribe they are from and their response being "dot not feather" (you idiot mumbled under their breath.) I have seen black students and faculty be racially profiled in the town where I went to college. Of course I do not have a first-hand account-I can never know what it is like to be read as a person of color-to walk through life having people judge me as inferior based on the color of my skin, I don't know what it is like to not have my narrative in the normative forms of media that others who are white are bombarded with on a daily basis. But I don't have to be a person of color to be accountable for my actions, to be empathetic, or to see my privilege, to see my dominance, and the power I have in situations simply because I am white.

While I can never connect on this level I have provided a sense of homeplace for people of color because people of color's situations are not homogenous and not all people of color only feel at home with other people of color. Specifically my ex-girlfriend who is multi-racial was raised in whiteness and feels at home with white people. Although she does share a bond with people of color sometimes it is not always the case. I do not want to be presumptuous but I do know that many times she came to me and not only because we were partners but because we were friends and I was supposedly a person who "got it" that she was able to feel most at home with me. Of course as a queer person I do understand being othered to an extent although completely different but connected. Oppressions are connected, the manifestations of oppressions and inequality are not the same. Although my queerness does not exempt me from my participation in the domination of whiteness I am able to connect through otherness often with people of color.

My largest and most interesting thing that happened was that during class we were introducing ourselves and against my better judgement I came out as queer/lesbian whatever. But we also were discussing the articles and the focused on race, I was trying to be helpful in discussing issues of race since everyone in my group that is an undergrad is a whitey whiterson. They apprently could not connect to the article because they had never had to resist anything and then relayed that this was the case because they were fortunate. As though by their good luck they were born white and hetero and middle class and they had never experienced discrimination based on their female-ness. WTF?!?! They have never resisted and they can't connect and thus understand because they see themselves as so different. So to give an example of homeplace I talked about the Apartment which, I have written about a few times in this Blog. I discussed facing oppressiona nd discrimination based on sexual orientation but even more so for those who do not conform to normative modes of gender presentation. This they could completely understand. It made complete sense. Again..>WTF?!! Now I know this is not performative and Bernadette would chastise me for not being very compassionate to the students in the class but I couldn't believe it. No one else in the group is openly queer and most openly identify as heterosexual so how can there be understanding in relation to queerness and no relation to understanding the same principal but for the concept of race.

I have to think it is somehow fashionable to have gay friends but the stigmas for people of color run so deeply that people do not feel they can find comonality in any way. And maybe it is the histories of both of these groups of people and the guilt (King) people feel for the enslavement and genocide of people of color. And while the gays are discriminated against it is not in the form of making gays slaves or servants. And the truth is that most gay people especially gay men have/make more money then people of color allowing them to blend into mainstream society in the way that a person of color cannot. i don't know but I am so astounded that I could barely speak and knew that I just needed to write.

I know that I need my goal to be to reach people pedagogically to allow for personal experiences and ways of knowing enter the conversation but I have a hard time just letting the conversation flow if no one is willing to think critically about issues. And I shouldn't say no one because the Afghani grad student I know is thinking critically but as she told me after class, "Thank you for saying what you say and the comments you make. Otherwise I am always come off as the angry brown woman and since I am usually the only one in the room I am the only one advocating for this position. So thank you." So she doesn't always speak, which I understand but want to change because her voice needs to be there telling her narrative. Without it the group will truly miss out because it is a voice often shunned and degraded. I am hoping to do my part but I find myself really just searching for more. I know that I have a chance to reach some people in this class but in other ways I just want to be like really-this is my responsibility? but I know that as a member of the dominant and oppressive group that "gets it" it is indeed my responsibility and unfortunately because of my privilege maybe someone will listen to me. Argh...

Performance of Identity and Consumerism

http://liminalities.net/4-1/16thstreet.htm

check it out, it is my qualitative methods professor and one of the doctoral students in my program at DU and it is all about downtown Denver. Is a very interesting read on consumerism culture and identity as performed on the 16th St. Mall.

Shout out to them!

Personal Narrative as Political Praxis...

Dear Performance Studies,

This might be a silly way to start out my concluding remarks about my Performance Ethnography class, however, after many attempts at trying to write about it, this is the only way that makes sense in my brain, my hands, my heart. First of all I would like to thank you. You have done a lot for me in a short amount of time. I'm not exactly sure what I would have done without you, especially in the field of Human Communication Studies.

But I must regress because I feel like you need a little background, a little personal narrative, something that can maybe help you understand where I have been and where I am going, and how I need you to be in my life in order to do the kind of work I want to do. Langellier's () idea of using personal narrative as political praxis to illustrate that personal stories matter in terms of self-definition especially juxtaposed with what Corey () terms the master narrative that conveys ideology of the dominant discourse. Corey tells us that these stories need to be told in order to empower the teller, but also in order to evoke something in the reader or listener and possibly even implicate them into the story. This calls writers/tellers, and listeners/hearers to be accountable for their participation in perpetuating ideologies of domination and asks them to disrupt these normative ideas in some way. This is my story that needs to be told about why I need performance studies in my life in order for me to do the kind of work I want to do.

When I first started the Human Communication program at DU I was extremely nervous. I didn't know how or where I would fit into the space. My background was always in cultural studies and specifically in women's and gender studies and I didn't know if there was room for a person with such progressive and at times radical politics in a discipline like communication studies. During the opening orientation process I was excited to see students interested in queer theory and interesting cultural communication topics, some of the professors seemed to be doing interesting and valuable work but I just didn't know how I would transition.

I'm not a huge fan of "women's studies" in the way it is normally conceived as it tends to place gender and woman at the center of a matrix or the top of an ill-conceived hierarchy as though that is the most important part of a person's identity. I found this to be problematic because I don't feel that gender above race, class, gender or sexuality is more important to understanding one's experiences in the world. I instead believe all identities inform other aspects of identities although they do not always hold the same weight at every moment in someone's life. I believe in a process of intersectional analysis and find that this is most helpful when trying to understand someone's experiences.

I was also resentful of women's studies especially at the graduate level because all of the great things I had learned about activism and giving voice to the voiceless, consciousness raising, and queering were all left behind at the door to the academy I was becoming a part of. Instead everything was replaced with theory especially that of dead white guys. Derrida, Foucault, Freud, Lacan, "the great theorists of the world." I was confused what these guys were saying and why I needed to know it in terms of feminist theory-it just wasn't what I expected. I see now that this did prepare me and provide me with some background theory knowledge that is helpful and useful and if nothing else helpful in that it taught me to "learn to read [theory] better" But I was distraught that all of my passion and dedication to justice and liberation was being eaten away at by theory, and that I was beginning to lose my sense of purpose.

When I first began my course work in communication studies which was not so long ago, I began to see that I was in a minority of people who considered themselves to be feminists, and who had actually read works by feminist and queer scholars. This is not so much a judgment on the other students in my class as much as it is an observation of the differences in our interests and educational backgrounds. I also think I may be the only actual gay person who came in with this specific class, at least I am the only one who has ever talked about it. Instead I am generally in contact with people who are married and have children, or folks with heterosexual boyfriends and girlfriends. I felt sort of alone. Not that it was better where I was before, as I have come to realize that just because people are feminists does not mean they have the same common goals, interests, or personalities. They are just as different as any other group of people. It had been awhile since I had found a place where I felt like I fit.

I was also going through one of the most hellacious times of my life because my female partner of three years and I were going through what can only be described as a divorce. She and I were no longer just girlfriends but we were intimately a part of each other's lives and she had become like a part of my family. I know people have gone through divorces in our cohort, but when societally your love is not really recognized as significant in the first place, it is hard to explain to people what you are going through when significant queer relationships end. I wrote one of my Qualitative Methods One papers about this trying time in my life and my inability to focus on anything else. While I received a certain amount of sympathy I definitely got the impression that I should not write about this again, so I didn't.

I was supposed to write autoethnographic sections about my experience at the preschool, my joys, humors, and frustrations-that is what would be really interesting. But I was frustrated because no one at work knew what I was going through, so I suffered through it alone. The kids became somewhat my release, their unconditional love giving me the strength to keep going, to keep coming into work everyday. There shiny, smily, happy faces made me feel joy I wasn't feeling from many other places and I felt in debt to them for giving me something to do everyday to forget about the pain I was going through. Children respond much better to happiness and joy, than saddness and depression. These were my emotions in the site, not that I was really shocked by the fact that the boys didn't want to eat off a pink and purple place mat. When I would share my progress reports in class about my site I often had to fend off tears and having to excuse and collect myself.

I was also going through a major life shift. I had moved back home after being away for five years because my great-grandmother who had raised me had become extremely ill. I thought I would be coming home to attend her funeral, but the few times I had made the journey from the Midwest home, she never died. I would enter her hospital room and immediately burst out into tears. This was my great grandmother but in many ways she was my mother or at least a mother. She looked so small and frail lying in this medical bed with the adjustable head and foot. My mother who was also raised by my great grandmother began massaging her muscles with a strong menthol scented lotion because of her constant pain. We wanted to get her blood flowing through her body and so we rubbed. In my mind I remembered learning about healing touch in an embodiment movement class from college, I imagine planets circulating around each other and her organs become a solar system that is just a bit stagnant. Her body is not able to go through it's normal rotation on its own any longer, we are there to help with the flow. The next day the hospital found she was ok to go home, and I have always thought it was because of the work of my mother and myself that saved her that time. Although she continues to have issues with her inner ear and often becomes dizzy and in turn has fallen, her heart and lungs continue to be strong. They continue to pump and move involuntarily, despite the fact that she often talks about wanting to die.

Moving home meant moving to the mountains in order to save money by living with my parents. My great-grandmother also lives with us as does my thirteen year old adopted Latina sister. My mother also takes care of my brother's children between three and five days/nights per week. In any given time we have 8 people in our house ranging from one to 93 years old with all ages in between. We are far from a typical nuclear family structure and we are most definitely dysfunctional but I began to settle into living in a new place, settle into my new job. I felt myself getting healthier and stronger and falling in love with living so close to a natural space. I had been so far removed from the land for so long, being next to a clear flowing river had the tendency to lift my spirits. Needless to say my living situation also worked makes it challenging for me to be connected to the place where I am trying to achieve scholastically. I do not have the same stake in the University that others have or that I might wish to have some day. When I would drive down the mountain canyon for class I rarely felt connected to a lot of the material I was reading let alone the people I was in classes with. I wanted to write about my life, my family, my new friends I was making, mountain culture, and bluegrass but I didn't feel that there was room for my stories in "True" scholarly work.

People in my cohort, critical scholars doing work on performance and performativity, race, class, gender and sexuality told me to wait it out that it would get better that I would take classes more oriented toward culture and that I would feel more satisfied. When I started my second quarter classes and had Performance Ethnography, within the first couple of days reading Conquergood I realized that there was something different in this idea of performance studies. It seemed to incorporate feminism, queer theory, personal narrative, commitment to self and other, all adding to the emphasis on social justice work created by performing this type of scholarship.

I fianlly found a place where it was ok to be personal, to talk about my narratives and my life. This class gave me the freedom to explore my own connections to dominant ideologies and my own implication in them. The journal especially gave me a chance to not only make the theoretical connections with my life stories but also gave me the chance to write my own stories through autobiographical performative writing, which Gingrich-Philbrook believes has always connected private life to political sectors. I was finally able to engage in dialog with myself, to really reflect on my own otherness and yet be reflexive in this thought process that I am not always other, but that I am privileged in certain situations and marginalized in others and often times both simultaneously. As Conquergood (1985) writes, "Dialogical performance is a way of having intimate conversations with other people and cultures. Instead of speaking about them, one speaks to and with them…"(178). I felt like this class helped me to know myself better so that I can engage in dialogic performances with others and be more reflexive and accountable.

Although we read no queer female performance scholars' work I felt myself able to connect with those people who wrote about the differences they experience on a daily basis. Fox, Alexander, Calafell, Cory, all used personal experiences with racism, homophobia/heterosexism, classism, and sexism to inform their work and I felt connected to their work because of the dialog around difference created and performed in their pieces. I also feel that queer female voices are needed in this field of study and I look forward to hopefully making some sort of contribution to this type of scholarship by adding my voice to the body of literature in performance studies. In many ways I cannot see myself doing any other sort of work because I don't think I could do the kind of work I want to do in talking about domination, oppression, marginalization, and social justice without engaging in work that has a history of being committed to talking about these things. I feel that this is the only way I can be sane and still do scholarly work and so I am excited to continue learning and growing in this line of inquiry.

Preschool, Pedagogy, Permormance

I am having the hardest time trying to actually physically sit down and write my qualitative methods two paper. I can see it in my mind, visualize it, but I am just so unmotivated, tired from working at the preschool, dealing with parents, kids, teachers, that sitting down to just write up my sites of pedagogical moments has definitely been challenging. I am hoping that by Blogging them-instead of doing "scholarly writing" in word processing, strict school work format that I will allow some of my ideas about performance, critical pedagogy and the preschool to flow freely. I hope to use writing as a tool for analysis in order to think about and interpret my data which, is more about watching phenomenological situations unfold and thinking about them performatively.

--
"You look funny today Miss. Kathryn. In those gray pants and that yellow shirt," a small white blond-haired boy looks up at me and proclaims.

I am slightly taken aback. I thought I looked nice today. I dressed up wore clothes that were different from my normal outfits. I am wearing khaki tan pants and a yellow argyle sweater. My short hair is being held back with bobby pins, and I am wearing similar amounts of make-up that I normally do, which is fairly natural with a little bit of smudged eyeliner and mascara around the outer edges of my eyes. I have on my purple and black watches with witches on the wristband, and other than my double nostril piercing I have on no jewelery. I think I look nice, but not much different than what I usually look like, except that I usually wear dark colors as opposed to lighter pastel shades. His comment stings-just a little. He may only be three, but somehow I assume that my body, is being read as different, as queer, as something that looks funny, not pretty. I begin to think about how early beauty norms which, are socially constructed are ingrained so early on in the minds of children.

Not that he can be totally blamed in the situation. It is my desire to look different to be read as queer in most contexts of my life, not explicitly in the preschool setting however. I often feel that I do not "look gay enough" if this is really possible. I assume that my feminine appearance in most situations buys me a ticket straight to hetero-ville. Although I realize that even this assumption of mine is faulty because many straight women do not conform to typical standards of beauty, even as much as me, a self-identified queer lesbian. I would like to brush it all off to heterosexism, that our culture signifies who looks normal and who who doesn't, and that it is generally assumed that if you look normal you are not considered queer. But in this situation it makes no sense, I am actually looking somewhat normal and yet I am being read as completely queer. I am not even trying. Maybe that is the problem maybe they are not used to seeing me look more normative and for them that seems to queer their perceptions of me.

What is more disturbing, however, is that my appearance, except my dress tend to remain consistently similar. I usually wear jeans, short and long-sleeved t-shirts, sweaters, dress pants, and combinations of all of them. I shower most mornings, blow-dry and straighten my hair in order to get it to spike up ever so alternatively, and I wear makeup fairly consistently. However, when my co-teacher Kristin dresses up and does what she calls "making an effort," the teachers, children, and even the parents all tend to comment about her appearance.

"Miss Kristin, you look so pretty today," the children from the room next door file over one by one to tell her. it is obvious that they have been prompted by our boss, a middle-aged white woman. The older boys who are four and five tend to like Kristin and interact with her somewhat flirtatiously, which, she seems to actually enjoy. Kristin is wearing a bright blue t-shirt with a deep v, her red hair is flowing down her shoulders and has been scrunched with gel. Her pale skin is accented with the pink, white, and brown hues of her makeup. Her black eyeliner is thickly painted on around the outer edge of her eyelids. I agree that she does look nice, but more than anything I think Kristin just looks different than she normally does. But instead of being read as silly or different, her skinny, white, more normative look is deemed pretty by the children. I can never tell if Kristin likes the attention or is embarrassed by the comments they make to her. Later on in the day as Kristin was putting down Star, one of our younger smaller female children, for a nap. Star looked up at Kristin from her position lying down in the crib and in a very loud voice said,"Miss Kistin, you wook pitty t'day." Kristin tried to shrug it off and just said, "Thank you Star," however, Star in her two-year-old demeanor, kept repeating these words over and over until she fell fast asleep. Throughout the day as parents came into the school to pick up their children many of the mothers commented on liking Kristin's hair and her shirt. No one has ever complimented me in this way except one mother told me she enjoyed my sensible footwear.

While this situation may seem to be built on my own insecurities and low self-esteem I think it is significant for iterating how the children, staff, and parents in the preschool view me. I assume they all attribute my appearance to my weirdness and this obscurity is not viewed as something commendable let alone beautiful. Instead the parents see Kristin's normative appearance and compliment it in order to reinforce her appearance as a standard of beauty. I am reminded that sometimes silences and absences speak much louder than the words that are actually uttered. Although this does tend to rub me the wrong way, I am also reminded that it is my choice to not carry out my appearance in a normative way and that for the most part I enjoy what this brings to my life.

I have come to see my body and my look as a huge signifier for who or what I am supposed to be. I put a lot of effort into my appearance, although I am not exactly always sure as to why? I care how I look, but even more importantly I worry about what my look is saying to others. I make sure to trim my hair frequently, color it in somewhat obscure colors, always wear my nose rings and always wear something rainbow, even if just to give myself a little gay cheer throughout the day. I enjoy these aspects of myself, I like that they make me appear different, however, this also illustrates my cognitive dissonance and contention while in the preschool. While I would like to be read as attractive I am not, however I do tend to be read as the authority figure, and the children usually choose me to solve their problems whether it be return a toy to it's rightful owner or provide a hug and a holding after falling and bonking a head. I like my job and I like my position in the preschool, however, I begin to see just how easily white middles class gender norms are performed and encouraged by parents, staff, and children at the preschool. It is because of incidents like this I begin to see an even greater need for implementing critical pedagogy in the preschool classroom. The children must be exposed to some forms of difference if they are to understand and accept difference, and I am hoping that I can be a glimmer of hope in this situation.

Lesbian Utopia...or not so much....

So this past week we have been reading a lot about place and space and how that intersect with national identity, ethnicity, race, class, gender, age, and sexuality. A couple of things I have thought were interesting were the ways in which we tend to de-politicize "homeplaces/homespaces," which I believe are personally some of the most political spaces in their attempts to resist. When I think of homeplace I do so similarly to bell hooks, that "homeplace" is a place of collective resistive space for those who are outsiders, not the normative nuclear white heterosexual patriarchal family structure. One of the greatest places I found my "homespace" was in the presence of my group of queer female friends in a place we deemed "The Apartment."

In my own life I am currently changing what I know to be my "homeplace" but find that it tends to revolve mostly around the people I choose to associate and become involved with. I am currently trying to renegotiate my "homeplace" in a community of mostly straight, white, working-class people. The place I find to be the most resistive to dominant norms is the bluegrass bar where most of my more progressive friends hang out. It tends to attract a somewhat diverse group of people who bond over the mountain atmosphere, music, drinking, and sometimes progressive politics. It is a comfortable place, one where people kick off their shoes and sit in front of a fire place, or kick up their heels on the dance floor to a number of bluegrass bands. While I am currently trying to create a new "homeplace," I find that it is a challenge at times simply because I tend to stick out like a sore thumb. My somewhat alternative look does not necessarily coincide with people's mountain gear, talk of hiking and skiing (which, I do not normally participate it), or the general mountain ambiance and decor in the bar. However, I feel very strongly about asserting my difference and queerness in the space and in the conservative community it is one of the only comfortable places to be "out." The people tend to be accepting and if they weren't I know for a fact a number of friends including the owners of the establishment would make sure to "go to bat" for those of us who are openly queer.

While this is my new experience, I want to focus on my old, prominent space of "homeplace" that was created by a group of mostly queer white womyn. While my girlfriend at the time is of mixed race and considers herself to be brown, she had graduated from the college where we all attended during my stint in "The Apartment" structure and thus, besides her we all identified as white. I choose to focus on this space because it provided me a sense of community built upon similarity of culture. For the most part we also listened to the same r similar music, and when we would gather in the apartment our friends would play their guitars and we would all casually sing along and play instruments to songs about feminism, otherness, and queerness. We bonded in this space and it truly provided me a sense of community, and family especially in regards to the world outside the apartment, which, was often brutal and painful. But it was not a perfect space either. We often had personality and interpersonal problems between members of the groups, we often spent so much time together involved in every activity we would become sick of each other and annoyed. We all varied on the causes we felt strongly about and although we all tended to be progressive politically we often disagreed about issues and ways to enact the politics we believed so strongly in. As any of my friends who will read this blog will probably agree-although "The Apartment" may have been our "homeplace" a place for mainly white, queer people to gather and find a sense of relief and community, it was also always frought with contention, difference of opinions, and different ideas about engaging in political discourse and activism. Thus, the space was political not only because the group retreated there in order to find a sense of community with others whose lives were marked by the institutions of sexism, heterosexism, racism, homophobia, as well as privilege but it was also political because the space was not utopian nor was it always completely comfortable.

"The Apartment" was my friend Gabi's apartment that she eventually came to share with another friend Reese. Gabi's girlfriend also often shared the space-so that it became a space made significant by the fact it was for queer people by queer people. And while woman was not assumed in the essentialist of biological sense of the term the biology of the people that mostly gathered were women. The small, midwestern, private, Christian liberal arts school we all attended was a residential campus and thus, we all except Gabi and Reese lived in dorm rooms and ate dinner in the school's one large dining hall, "The Caf." On campus most of the queer people tended to live in one specific dorm, and ate at one specific end of "The Caf" known as the "moonlight" or "romance" section. Being part of the queer community I too lived and ate int he specific sections. While certain amounts of community were also found in these marginalized spaces it was always in juxtaposition to the larger dominant oppressive ideologies and identities on campus. Although our campus tended to be somewhat open to difference, it was heavily Christian and heavily Lutheran, and we often felt the oppressive affects of the legacy in which our university was explicitly tied to. These affects translated to our everyday lives, through interactions with conservative Christians telling us we were going to hell, although we also happened to have a hugely progressive religion department, and a lot of queer people because of the draw to the music program. While we may have always bee dealing with racism, sexism, and homophobia, religious oppresseion etc in the larger world, our campus's push to try and diversify as well as Christianize put us in a place of "dual citizenship" trying to represent the other while being hated and discriminated against at times.

"The Apartment" was a typical college apartment. Sort of shabby, the kind of thing you expect with a month to month lease, mis matched furniture, a fouton in the living room purchased from Wal-Mart-the only place to shop in our small town. There were usually dishes in the sink, hair stuck in the drain of the shower, a glasses of water strewn about the space. It was located downtown a ways from the college only a block or so away from our local community co-operative market, where we would often purchase food to make dinner with each other. It was the second level right above a restaurant with a large unstable balcony, which looked over the main street of town. The smells and sounds of the restaurant often wafted upstairs and provided us only specific times we could vacuum and burn incense. We probably seemed to be living a mundane existence in comparison to the rowdy undergraduates who would drunkenly stumble passed "The Apartment." Although we did go to the bars occasionally we usually sat above the street on the balcony casually sipping hard cider, wine, and beer, some casually puffing away on cigarettes, music slowly humming through the patio doors and windows. For once we felt above the people that often wanted to do us harm, and harass our very existence, as well as simply enjoy each other's company. "The Apartment" often provided us a safe shelter from the streets where straight white people would maliciously torment my small group of queer non- gender or race conforming friends. More than once either my friends or I had been yelled at as we walked the main street of the town. "Dykes!" or "What are you?" people in the cars passing us would yell. When we could finally get to "The Apartment" we could rest from both the physical and emotional exhaustion of just being in the world and surviving that day.

While we felt ourselves to be inclusive we were often criticized for being exclusive because we were all "lesbians." This usually made us all chuckle, of the eight of us who gathered two were more transgendered female to male, two to three were bisexual and actively dated and slept with both men and women, one did not identify, one believed he was a lesbian trapped in a gay man's body, and two identified primarily as lesbian, and mostly we all identified as queer. In the vein of many queer communities with chosen families we called ourselves, "The Fam" and often referred to our brotherly and sisterly connections with one another. Several times our conversations even turned to the topic of our sexuality and our connections with one another. we often felt that our connections in some ways transcended the fact that we were queer to being simply about connections and personalities however, looking back I laugh at our naievete. I must certainly say that we were friends because we were queer and we were queer because we were friends, it was obvious in our interactions we were connected through identity, politics, and activism. We were not connected by some transcendent form of chemistry or even love but we developed these things with each other because of our positionalities both with each other and in the context of the larger world. Because we felt connected by something greater than identity it often allowed us to justify the exclusion of others. While I am not judgmental that we did this, I do look back on it now and surely think this was a part of what we were doing. Although I loved this group of people we were also exclusive out of our own comfort and safety with each other, which we did not wish everyone to be privvy to. We faced much criticism from the gay men in the larger queer community, as well as other queer women who mainly identified as bisexual who attributed our exclusiveness to the notion that we all identified and performed lesbian identities in a certain homogenous way. Besides assuming that we all identified and performed some version of "lesbian," they also attributed the fact that many of us were vegetarians to our sexual identity, as well as our involvement in activism. This was false for me, as well as others involved in the group because I had been involved in activism long before I interacted exclusively with this group of people, although I did become vegetarian because it seemed to make the most sense after becoming good friends with the group.

And while we connected over our progressive politics, activism, and our acceptance of each other we also heavily disagreed on some things. Conversations about abortion sometimes turned sour when some people in the group would suggest that abortion should be legal no matter what, while others would argue that there should be alternative and better options for women and children. Other sites of contention were transgender rights in the larger GLBT movement and the fact that four of us at some point attended the controversial Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. There were also minor dissonances in dietary decisions. Most of us were vegetarians although not all of us and sometimes there were arguments over the ethical lines of choosing to eat meat and the classist attitudes of vegetarianism and vegetarians. While we varied over some things greatly we also knew that as a general rule it was also one of the only places we could comfortably disagree and be left with at least new and different things to think about. There were also many times when we would sufficiently deny our differences and not bring them up in order to avoid conflict and confrontation and join together simply for company and companionship and the newest available queer film we could get our hands on. So the space was far from perfect. We were not perfect individuals, activists, and citizens and we often disagreed about what this meant anyway, but we were able to find a sense of home in each other and in "The Apartment" with each other. If nothing else it provided us a place to resist dominant norms as well as the outside world.

My "homeplace" in "The Apartment" was a place full of connection, hope and possibility it was not a utopian space. It was a space with differeing opinions, people, genders, sexual orientations, races, personalities, making it almost impossible to generalize about us and for us to agree on anything. However, in its imperfection we were able to create beauty, lasting memories and community and that made every second worthwhile.

WSCA Conference

So I realized I had never really been to an academic conference before this weekend. I had been to the mini Black History Month Conference and the Peace Prize forum at Luther, I went to the Big Gay Conference two years in a row-but it was mostly just party-time and anger inducing. But this weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Western States Communication Association Conference. It was great because most everyone is from the West and thus and the conference itself was in Colorado only an hour away from where I live.

I was able to see some really great presentations on research being done in the field of communication studies (and some not so good too.) Most of the panels, paper presentations I attended were on my favorite aspect of communications: Performance Studies and many of them also focused on the "new queer studies" or the second generation of queer studies which does a lot more with multiple and overlapping productions of identities instead of mainly focusing on sexual orientation and gender presentation. Much of the work I saw was by graduate students many in my own department doing really interesting and progressive work interrogating "others" through interrogating the self. Mostly this gave me some hope for having a career in academia and being able to do good work even as a graduate student.

But what was most helpful were seeing the responses to papers delivered by grad students and professors alike (which happened to be administered by my performance studies professon Dr. Calafell.) Some major themes I saw specifically in regards to performance studies s being accountable to others and to the discipline of performance itself. The most heavily critiqued individuals were those who did not use performance studies scholars in their citations on papers about performance studies. In my mind this is a total disregard for the people that came before who have put their hearts, minds, and souls (through writing, performance etc...)on the line and it is somewhat disrespectful to not include their work.

It calls to mind Bowman's piece on "Killing Dillinger: Mystory" where he critiques those people who may dabble in performance studies but will not take into account the history, the repercussions and more generally what is at stake for performance scholars who engage in the kind of work that uses the self as a site of interrogation. He in fact critiques people who dabble in performance saying they won't even stick around long enough to find out the future of the discipline because they do not have the kind of investment in the work as do those who are strongly committed to the work.

There was also critique about what actually constitutes performance studies work which, is I believe related to the aforementioned point. As Ellis and Bochner say, "Not everyone can do autoethnography let alone do it well," nor ca everyone do performance studies and performative writing/ethnography. Not that I don't think people should not try-they just need to be honest about their work and credit those who came before-including performance scholars, feminists of color, feminists, and queer theorists. It is not performance studies to simply use the "I" first person in the paper-or to incorporate parts of the self into one's paper that is solely based on the work of rhetoric scholars. This lacks the reflexivity that performance studies so eagerly wants to engage with.

Performance is so much more than that. First as I see it, it takes a deep level of commitment to the discipline. This involves several things but one of them means facing rejection, facing the fact that other parts of the larger discipline are going to think performance is a joke and that looking at the self has no credibility. But if one is committed they see the value that this kind of work can do-seeing that it has the potential to not only change the academy but more largely implicates the world to change also. Two it means knowing and crediting those who came before, risked before and have been vulnerable before. I believe this means having a good historical basis for understanding the discipline-understanding how performance originated and paying homage not only lip service to those who have grappled with these issues before. Third it means a deep commitment to the other (Madison, Alcoff). This means being committed to fairly representing the other through our work including intimate others (Ellis) who we are deeply connected to. This means holding ourselves accountable and rising our own integrity in the ways we write about others and take up issues about representing the other in our work. This means not making fun of people even if we disagree with the way in which they handle themselves in certain situations. Performance scholarship should never be used to get back at someone, instead it should be used as a tool to open up dialog. This moves me to my fourth observation about performance. It should always be opening up possibilities for dialog not shutting them down. In this way performance is especially useful as a pedagogical tool. While dealing with controversial subjects performance should seek to hear fro multiple and variant positions and never silence anyone. In this way in my brain I see that performance is directly connected with feminist and queer epistemologies which, desire to uncover marginalized voices while being committed to an invitational dialogic perspective for engaging in conversations about controversies. My fifth observation is that by investing in the other we put ourselves at stake. This means we risk the self, making the self open and vulnerable for people to see and at times criticize. By implicating ourselves we show our commitment to risk for both ourselves and others. In sharing our own personal experiences we invite others to share of themselves and thus, we become vulnerable to one another thus, implicating ourselves in the work making us accountable.

It was good to see the critiques of people's work because it shows that other more advanced scholars want to help those of us who are new to the discipline. They want us to succeed and do things well-they want us to open ourselves up and make us think harder more critically, to stretch ourselves. And they do this while being generally supportive and showing an ethic of care, which is greatly appreciated.

when you read me

"In writing from the heart, we learn how to love, to forgive, to heal, and to move forward"(Norman K. Denzin 334).

How do you read my body.
My tall, slender, white body.
My hips, my stomach, my breasts...
How do you read the eyeliner, the lipstick, the earrings?
the skirt?
Don't lift it up you might be scared by my hairy legs
(no I don't shave them)
Is this the queer part of me?
Is the eyeliner?
Or is it queer because they both exist on the same body

When you see me
do you see those who came before me
walk with me
live in my house and
teach me

When you read me do you see
my great grandmother's hands
do you see that she lives in my house
do you see that I am one of her care-givers
do you hear her bellow in the night
-Kathy-

Do you see my sister?
In all of her adolescent glory?
Her female-ness complicated by her Latina-ness
complicated by her adopted-ness
Our mothers met in jail
and now we are connected forever

Do you see my mother's jail time?
Her name in the paper
My name in the paper
My prom dress in the paper
She stole so that I could have

When you read me do you see
that I grew up
raised mostly by a single mother
and a great-grandmother
Who gave so that I could have
So that I can give now
So that when they bellow
-Kathy-
I can come running

When you see my body
My tall, white, slender, queer, female body
my hips, eyeliner, and breasts
juxtaposed with another female body
a female body that looks like a male body
sometimes brown and sometimes white
sometimes with a tie, long shorts, and mohawk
sometimes but not always
Is that where the queerness lies?
In the juxtaposition?

When you see my body
When you read my body
do you see my skepticism about
myself
do you see my whiteness
I'm sure you do
even if you do not assess it the meanings of privilege
it deserves
but doesn't
do you see the time I read Malcolm X
and realized my own implications
in the systems of racist ideological hegemony
do you see my commitment to unpacking my
knapsack of privilege (Peggy MacIntosh)
do you see my contradiction?
Is this where the queerness lies?
in the contradiction?

When you read my body
do you see the fragments
the parts that don't know anything?
The parts
that question everything
from the eyeliner, the white hips and breasts
the mohawk, the masculine femininity,
the privilege

the juxtaposition

the contradiction

the queerness

Part I: Performing Coming Out as a Queer White Femme Performative Lesbian Bisexual Academic: A Multi-Part Tale

This is the first installment of my coming out queer, white, feminist, femme, lesbian, bisexual-it is a performative piece I am working on-feedback would be great within reason.

Part I.

"But you still like girlclothes?" My mother asks me

I stare out the window of her four-wheel-drive pick-up truck. Tears are streaking down my face. We pass cornfields and farmland on the way to our house and I stare at them wondering what it would be like to be a stalk of corn just blowing in the breeze. I am scrunched up pressed against the passenger-side window as absolutely far away from my mother as is possible in a two passenger truck.

I have just come out to her. "Mom, I'm dating a woman," I manage to say the words. "Her name is Sarah, and we have been having a relationship. I didn't expect it, it just kind of happened." I have the taste of metal in my mouth as I speak, it is dry and I hope that I can just make it through the rest of the conversation.

"But what about Daniel," she asks genuinely confused.

I met Daniel my second week of college and we had been together for about two years. He was my first love and my feelings for him were genuine, just not ideal. My tone is getting somewhat defensive as the tears turn to words of anger. "We have been broken up for awhile now and he knows about Sarah. He isn't happy about the situation but he loves and respects me. You know he wants to get married and have babies, those are things I have always honestly said I did not want."

"I didn't know you were serious," she responds quietly. I see her hopes and dreams for my heteropatriarchal future disappearing before both of our eyes.

The truth of the situation is that while I loved him I didn't want the life of normalcy often situated in heterosexual relationships. He was an amazing man, a feminist, was much tidier than me, and with a knack for doing whatever he could in order to improve my life. However, in the end Daniel was still training to be a high school history teacher so that he could be a football coach and I was worried that one day he would come to me and ask me to make brownies for his team of hungry, hormonal teenage boys. And that thought frightened me to all hell. That was in fact my hell, a life of normativity, marriage, children, houses, and picket fences and that was what I saw as my future if I didn't get out. I don't want to trivialize my relationship with him, or diminish the fact that I truly loved him, I just knew that in order to be truly happy I couldn't be with him.

"Have you always been this way?" She continues the rapid-fire question and answer session.

I feel the tension rising in my voice and choking my throat. Oh goodness-how honest should I be I think to myself? "Well Sarah is not the first woman I have been involved with, although it is the most serious." It was true I had had minor flirtations, a college girl when I went to church camp, a friend in high school, and the ephemeral crushes on girls I saw in coffee shops or restaurants. I had even kissed a woman prior to Sarah, but never anything more, never a more intimate connection emotionally and physically.

I begin to sweat. The metallic taste in my mouth increases. Everyone had assured me that my mother, my feminist of a mother would be fine with my being gay. My best friends since high school had convinced me that my mother would think that this whole thing was no big deal. "She's so supportive of you I really don't think this is going to change any of that." I had in fact convinced myself that she would not think it was a big deal. This was not going the way I had expected.

"So are you a lesbian?" My mother does this thing where she grabs her mouth with her hand and sort of pulls at the sides and the corners while it is covered. She has shared with me on occasion that she does this to keep some words from coming out of her mouth-she in effect silences herself at times. I see she is doing it right now and I become worried-this is not turning out well.

Oh god! Panic ensues, the tension creeps up higher and higher. The one question I didn't want to get into. I mean it's so complicated right? It's not easy to just say yes or no in this case because I believe my sexual identity to be so much more complex than this. But I want to explain this to her in a way that isn't scary, that won't find her completely closed off to my radical thinking. I'm pretty sure with my progressive feminist politics and values she already thinks I am a little bit crazy. I didn't necessarily want her thinking that I had chosen this sexual orientation (although in many senses I believe that I did), I didn't want her to think I could just switch it back from gay to straight, or turn it off altogether. I also didn't think introducing the term "queer" right at that moment was exactly appropriate. Maybe I should have, maybe I should have given her the whole spiel on queerness and performance, in retrospect I probably should have, but I didn't.

"Well no, I am bi-sexual." I shrink sown further into the fuzzy soft interior of the truck. Maybe eventually I will just be sucked into it. Bisexual. BI-sexual, Bye-sexual, Buy-Sexual. ACK! I hate that word, BI-SEXUAL-the fact that it implies that only two sexes exist and that I am equally attracted to both, and that I am just overtly sexual and can't make up my mind-I hate it. Unfortunately I don't know exactly how to explain it any other way. I decide that of terms to use this one was however, the most useful and at least describes my relationships thus far in my life, one significant with a man one significant with a woman.

My mother's eyes grow wide with even more confusion. I can tell she is trying. Trying to listen. I don't think that she hates me, yet anyway...

I try to offer a disclaimer, "I mean I just love people mom, despite their sex." Again, not exactly my feelings but in the context I want to try and help her understand without completely dislocating her from my life. I don't like that this argument seems to imply an attitude of indecision, flittering back and forth between the known and the unknown of sexuality. This concept which is usually called fluidity makes my anxiety rise because it seems to lack introspection and reflexivity and seems to refer to an overt insatiable appetite for sexuality (which is cool too-it just isn't my feeling.)

I mean I know that on a daily basis I want my intimate relationships to be negotiated with people who are QUEER and if those people happen to have vaginas I am going to be even more thrilled-this is not something I am "fluid" about. Who that actual person or people happen to be-that's where I am more open and flexible. I am not sure she is ready to know and understand this yet. I don't know that in this moment I truly understand and know this about myself yet. What do I know I am a crazy fool in love, my first girl-love. I am excited, I am nervous, and honestly I am scared-shitless.

"Is it my fault?" my mother asks timidly. "I known you don't really have any good male role models. I mean my relationships with men haven't exactly been the best. Or is it because you were…you know…"

Oh no! My other place of worry, she blames herself and she blames my lacking relationships with men. She thinks I am this way because of men because men have personally hurt me and violated my body. She thinks I am this way because I was molested as a child and raped as a teenager. She thinks I am this way because of her relationships with men and the fact that she has been personally hurt and violated by them.

I don't know if this is true or not-if this is why I might be queer-I am not ready to rule it out as taboo and politically incorrect as it sounds-I just honestly don't know why I am the way I am. I don't like to think things are quite this simple, that my sexuality is a direct effect of a man or even more generally of masculinity in my culture-I am also not ready to completely dismiss that my sexuality might have a link to the fact that as a social creature I saw my mother's and other women's unhappiness in their boring heteronormative lives, internalized this and decided that I would rather be with women in order to avoid this potential sense of unhappiness I interpreted as being with men. I also cannot say that a piece of me, as anti-essentialist as I am, that somewhere my brain doesn't blame masculinity for having hurt my body and made me feel at times safer around women-I know this is silly, but I believe those men that hurt me were social creatures too. I don't know if I should say these things to my mother-the fact that even I question where my sexuality came from . I don't want to blame anyone especially her, she has enough guilt in her life.

"No" I reply, "It's not your fault and it is not because I was raped either." I am disappointed in myself for not trusting her enough at this moment with my feelings and my story for not giving her everything but censoring what comes out of my mouth so as not to offend her .

I realize it is hard to come out as a queer academic (and I use the term academic loosely as a 21 year old undergraduate.) It is not as easy as simply saying, "Mom, I am a lesbian, or mom I'm gay." In my realm of existence it is so much more complex than that. And maybe it is this hard for everyone because sexuality is such a contradiction for many different reasons, I just know that my knowledge of big words like queer, negotiation, performativity, and contingent all play a significant factor in my realm of understanding my sexuality. I am glad it is complicated and complex-I also know this makes it no easier to explain it to anyone outside of academic discourse.

But how do you approach a "coming-out" that is not really a "coming-out" story in the conventional sense of the phrase.

How do you start a conversation and say mom, "I'm not a lesbian but the romantic relationships I will mostly be persuing from here on out will most likely resemble what we typically think of as a lesbian relationship? The difference will be that I do not wish to be considered normal or normative-even with a female as my object of desire. I do not want to partner up and live in a house with a picket fence in the suburbs. I will not fight for my right to get married because I do not want to marry anyone, EVER. I do not wish to reinforce an institution of the dominant heterosexual, capitalist patriarchy (hooks). I do not want a lesbian wedding or a commitment ceremony. Instead I will do what makes me happy, complete with negotiating queer sexuality on a daily basis possibly through butch and femme encounters, femme drag performativity, sadist and masochist sexual practices, and more generally deciding the kind of person I am going to be with based off their embodied sense of politics." I will never ever make the brownies for a female partner anymore than I would a male. It's not exactly easy to say these things to one's mother.

"But you still like girlclothes right?" My mother asks me sliding the words girl and clothes together into one word.

"Of course" I assure her, "Just because I'm bi-sexual doesn't mean I am a different person," I find myself choking out the words and laughing a little to myself. I picture the most stereotypical looking lesbian imaginable complete with black dyke boots, flannel shirt, and mullet haircut, I then picture this identity on me. I chuckle a little harder.

In this moment I realize how inextricably linked my sexuality and gender presentation have become. In this moment my mother has helped to normalize my sexuality by ensuring that I will in fact continue to be feminine in my appearance. I decide that to be accepted by my family in this moment I probably shouldn't play with my gender appearance too much, despite the fact that I might secretly desire to do so. I will just gave to find other ways to be queer. The message becomes loud and clear-it's ok to be gay (not desirable perhaps) but what is really necessary is that I continue to make sure I look feminine because once that goes everyone is going to talk.

"I just feel like I don't know you anymore. There is a part of you I will just never understand now." My mother says sadly as though I have just offended a best friend-someone who knows you as well or better than you know yourself. It is as though I have offended my mother mostly by not confiding in her sooner, she is hurt that I have held back and not invited her into this part of my life.

I think to myself-you don't know me anymore-because I haven't let her know me, I haven't been honest and I haven't given her my entire story. How could she know me when I am holding back, when I am the one unwilling to be vulnerable, unwilling to share my true experience with coming out, coming out in my own queer white academic feminist femme lesbian bisexual way?

I say nothing but continue to press my body against the door and window of the passenger side of my mother's truck. The arm rest is digging into my side and I continue to cry-quietly this time, almost in complete silence. I stare aimlessly out the window staring at the corn between my tears running down my face. The snow begins to fall and we ride the rest of the way home in silence.