DU Women's Conference Presentation

I have presented this, so if you are interested in "borrowing" my ideas then u need to site me. Kathryn Hobson, 2009 Women's Conference, University of Denver.


Femme Drag Performance

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 heart?
that I can do nothing without thinking about her
that I am nothing without her
that I hear her bellow in the night
-Kathy-
even though she is long gone

When you read me do you see
that I live in a constant state of pain
that my ovaries and uterus will be removed
is this too much information for you?
is this where the queerness lies?
in the fact that “biologically” I will
no longer be female?

but no matter what happens to my parts
I will always be
Femme
a femme
in drag
a femme
in everyday drag
a femme dressed in everyday drag
looking like a girl
and yet desiring other girls
Is this where the queerness lies?

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 receive
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
the beginnings
the endings
that go on
that never begin and never end
--

“Hey Jill, How do I look — I have a presentation tomorrow?”

“You look good, you look like Bette Porter. If I could just relate all of your outfits to L Word characters I think we would do much better when you ask me this question.”

“Ok well Bette Porter’s good, but what about the shoes are the shoes good?”

“The shoes are fine baby.”

“And my hair, how does my hair look-is it too red?”

“No, you look good Kathryn.”

“But does my body speak? Does it tell a story? I want to tell a story with my body? I want to tell a story with no beginning and no ending a story that goes on even when we’ve left? I want to tell a story without constraints without limits – a story that speaks to people. I want my body to speak. Does it speak baby?”

“Oh yeah it speaks. A little too much maybe.”

“Haha very funny. And I can’t do it-I can’t do it all-I can’t write and say everything, some things will be left out and lost-how can I write a story when I can’t tell it all?”

“You’ll know what to write and you’ll know what to say. You just have to tell it, that’s all you can do.”

“One more question though-this is the important one… Do I look gay? Do I look gay enough? Do you think they’ll know I’m gay?”
--
I wake up in the morning and I put on my gender and sexuality identity. Everything I do in the morning while habitual is done with intent. The eyeliner I put on my top lid, lining it with careful precision, the grey ankle boots I place on my feet-they are intentional choices. How am I going to put on my white, femme, lesbian self today? You see I need my eyeliner and boots in this crazy world we live in because for a femme lesbian they are both my resistance and my protection. They are my defense against the world. They are my resistance and my empowerment. I live in a world where I need my eyeliner and my boots because they are my survival. You see they are my resistance, my armor against being called a dyke and queer (and not in that good way.) I wear them to encounter all the many places where I feel resistance — resistance to my queer positionality, my queer body. I have had to put them on, from all the times I have had to wear them. I wear them to work, sometimes at home, when I go out, and when I enter the classroom.

Although the classroom as a microcosm of the academy, is supposed to be a safe space it isn’t always, in fact sometimes it is downright painful. Sometimes I need them in the academy more than I need them in a straight bar, my small homophobic town, or anyplace I go holding hands with a member of my same sex.
“I do not see the connection between gender, sexuality, and power,” a colleague once says during a heated debate around queer theory. Ouch, I think, in that moment my life, my history, my narrative has been erased, made insignificant. I do not have my boots on today and I am made vulnerable, again singled out, the only out student in the classroom.
I walk through my life with the benefit of “looking” straight as if straightness were something possible to decipher. My body is read as a straight body because it is a supposed gender normative straight body. Some people call this “cis gendered” my biology matches up with my gender identity. But I find this a much too limited term because I am more than feminine, which matches my “biological parts” soon to be removed (and then what I ask?) But I camp up my femininity, I consciously put it on-it doesn’t just match, it’s my choice to put on this feminine appearance everyday. I call it femme drag because it’s important to note how our bodily performances create our identities and present ourselves to others. And this doesn’t involve false eyelashes or corisettes (all the time), but femme drag is the way I negotiate my gender and sexuality everyday. It is my way of subverting a dominant normative, white, hetero patriarchal paradigm.

And this is a privileged negotiation, not only born out of privilege but creating privilege as well. I have white skin, which, normalizes my entire performance of white femininity-femme lesbian or not. And I am able to perform this white femininity because of a certain level of class privilege that I have. I can buy the stuff to make me look and perform femininity quite well. I have to make conscious choices to do my hair myself and not shave my legs in order to subvert some of the normative patriarchal assumptions of femininity-however, these are things most people won’t ever know unless I tell them. My race and class produce my lesbian femme body in a certain way so that without the consciousness I bring to my gender/sexuality performance I walk around with straight, white, middle-class, heterosexual privilege.

But I’m a lesbian. A dyke, a muff muncher, a lezzy, a queer.

And isn’t that just a little bit radical? Maybe I am laughing at my own joke here but isn’t it a little bit queer to perform femininity and do it for the purpose, no not the purpose the desire of other women-preferably those already lesbian (but that’s always negotiable.) And what about performing it for women who don’t look like women at all? Basically I say eff the patriarchy the system that tells me my eyeliner and my boots can’t be my resistance that these things normalize instead of queer me.

Usually I am QBA: queer by association.

I will be with my girlfriend Jill and we’ll be out at a restaurant and the waiter will come and say “What would you like Ma’am” and I’ll say my order and the waiter turns, “And for you sir?” She laughs a bit and begins to order-her voice is a dead give-away that no matter how she looks, she is not a sir. “Oh my gosh I am so sorry,” the waiter says obviously embarrassed. He has obviously made the connection, this masculine person is a woman (most likely a lesbian) so I am guessing this feminine person is also a lesbian, and oh my gosh they are on a date. “It’s fine it happens all the time.” And it does happen all the time and we pretty much laugh it off-laugh away some of the hurt it has caused for both of us the hurt she feels existing as an outwardly non-gender normative person and the pain I feel for her in that situation. But there is also pain in knowing that I wasn’t read as a lesbian until my partner was. Personal pain, selfish pain, possibly even narcissistic pain.

But my queerness…I want it to stand on it’s own.

My femme drag performance is enough to cast me in the role of lesbian, of queer, of gender norm defying queer.

Because everything I do is with intention.
This outfit
This eyeliner
These shoes
This hair
This femme identity
Is my subversive performance
Because I can wear this, I can do this
I can perform this identity

And yet I can desire women.

And isn’t that just a little bit queer?

There is No Paradise

Trouble in Paradise
"There is no Paradise, Kathryn,"she replied
but there's still trouble

So much trouble
I cry for everyone's trouble
so much more than my own
my own life seems small and insignificant
in comparison

One friend's abortion
is another friend's choice to keep her unplanned pregnancy
Trouble in Paradise

One colleagues abuse
is another woman's divorce
Trouble in Paradise

pain
women
sexuality
all different all similar
Trouble in Paradise

The loss of a father
grandfathers
an uncle
my own great-grandmother
Trouble in paradise

pain
women
sexuality
loss
loss
loss
Trouble in Paradise

Sacrificing one thing for another
cat for dog
heart for work
sanity for money
Trouble in Paradise

I weep for those
who are different
from me
going through
different things
as I cry for myself
when I am overextended
by choice
but not by choice
I cry for our shared pain
and for pain I may
never
ever
know

pain
women
sexuality
loss
choice

Trouble in Paradise
"There is no Paradise, Kathryn," she replied

Forgiveness-how possible probable is it?

Precursor: This may seem like it is only in relationship to romantic love but I write it as a way to demonstrate my queer relationships with say my father, my mother, my friends, my high school experience, those who have sexually assaulted me-there are several to whom this post refers. But it also has to do with romantic love-are things easier because they are easy?
--
I have been thinking about forgiveness and I heard this song by edie carey called bonfire or something and in it she sings that snow and weather can put out any fire - like there is always reconcilliation after pain and fighting.

I do not believe in the sort of forgiveness propogated by the church that you need to forgive in order to absolve oneself and to give oneself peace. Sometimes I think that there are some things that cannot be forgiven some traumas that one cannot absolve themselves even as a victim or survivor as some people say.

But I am wondering how easy is it to forgive? How can we let go of things that hurt us so badly and what about the people that hurt us. Especially without closure when bandaids have been ripped off without the proper precautions of making sure the wound was properly healed. I'm sure this has larger implications in the world but I don't want to think about them now. I just think sometimes we hurt others and others hurt us and how do we forgive when there is so much pain and hurt. Layers upon layers of hurting constant hurting that may be abuse but may be even deeper than abuse what if that is the way we are as a human the way we have learned to be?

And can we ever go back to the way things were? Obviously not but what if we could? Before we realized how much hurt we were enduring and creating? Would my dad never have talked to reporters, would my mother have never taken money that wasn't hers? How do we really lean to trust after someone has broken that-killed it to an extent.


I believe in letting go and living in the moment but isn't that moment always shaped by our past our history our social positioning our culture and our physiology. And what do we have to give up to move on, our expectations, our friends, family even? What do we give up in ourselves in order to forgive especially when we can never forget?
--
So I edited out the other lyrics to that song because they were the wrong ones-if anyone knows where to find the right ones or if it is a different song let me know. The song I am talking about actually refers to a bonfire being able to melt the cold of winter. I take this as a metaphor for winter being hearts made cold through pain and bonfires easing the pain with forgiveness. By pouring flames onto the snow the ice can be melted.

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...