1.  i was never as inspired in this space as i was in my previous iteration.

2.  i’ve been hella busy.

so, i’m moving out.  and back into my old space.  whoever might have been reading this, please follow me (back) to my new/old home.  i’m really happy about my life right now.  i wish you all so much joy you have no idea ;)

i’m surfacing from my haze of thesis-writing because i just cannot resist an outpouring of mushy prose about the flowers.  tonight as i walked out of the T station the scent of crabapple blossoms hit my nose and i almost swooned.  to me that scent epitomizes spring.  where i grew up we had six gorgeous crabapple trees that had been left when the land was cleared of brush, so they dotted a small field.  the grass would turn bright green, and the trees would leaf out, and then the flowers would pop out pale pink from little red buds.  the contrast between the green leaves, the red/pink buds, and the pink/white flowers is one of the most beautiful things in the world.  and unlike the unsubtle bradford pear, or even the lovely cherry, crabapples are fully leafed when they bloom, so each perfect flower is set in a backdrop of green.  also, on top of being beautiful, they also smell delightful.  another thing they have over the pear and the cherry…

and did i mention the daffodils?  another absolute favorite…there are certain people who will read this who will laugh at this point, thinking ‘what flower isn’t her favorite?’  and it’s true.  because after the daffodil, and the violet, is the lily-of-the-valley, which is my birthmonth flower and another favorite.  and the dogwood, just opening now and still an alien grey-white-green before the flowers fully bloom.  forsythia, golden-yellow shining through the bare sticks in the woods.  magnolia trees, ripe and lush and fleshy and improbable in this harsh northern clime.

lilacs!  budding and blooming already!  too early, i know, but the first time i bury my face in a lilac flower and breathe in always feels like a miracle.  rows of orderly tulips, standing straightly erect like soldiers.  hyacinths.  squat but bright and oh so sweet-smelling.  i resent hyacinths for being so low to the ground.  i have to get right down and often dirty to get a proper sniff, and i think i have made many a passerby look twice with my flower-smelling antics.  i get very excited when i see hyacinths in a planter that’s easily nose-accessible.

did i mention the flowers?  oh i did?  well don’t forget the lovely lovely leaves, popping out in a gold-green-wet haze over the bare bark of the trees.  every day they get bigger and greener, and it’s such a joy to know that in a month or two they will be big and deep green and leathery and they will blow in the wind and reveal a silvery underbelly.  and the bright green grass waking up after the freeze of winter.

i could now segue into the elusive culinary delights of spring…asparagus, rhubarb, pea shoots, local lettuce…but i have a thesis to write.  thus ends my purple prose for the time being.  (extra credit if you can tell me how the phrase ‘purple prose’ is related to ‘the white way of delight’)

i am so excited for the roses…

This is my last semester of grad school.  That fact feels completely monumental to me.  Aside from the difficulty (always) I’m having actually doing my work, and the paralysis around applying for jobs that will soon turn into a crisis, I’m doing okay.  I am trying to have a solid optimism about the future.

And did anyone notice that the weather is out of control beautiful here in boston?  Like unbelieveably amazing.  I am happy to have a front porch that gets beautiful sunlight.  I took a nap out there the other day, though I had to wrap my head in a blanket to make sure the sun didn’t fry me.

Although it’s the perfect day for a road trip, I am going to buckle down and try to get some work done.

And someday I will put up a blogroll and be a real blogger in this space, which has felt sort of just-moved-into since I, well, moved here.  Sigh.  Oh yeah.  Someday I will return to regularly commenting on other people’s blogs also.  Would you believe that I logged into my reader today and there were over 600 posts?  Crikey.  Another thing to clean up and organize.

But in the meantime, happy spring everyone!  There are crocuses blooming in the dooryard!

the conference was amazing.  there were so many hot beautiful amazing queers there, it nearly broke my head.  i’ve never been around that many queers at once before.  it was really powerful.  and the workshops were very interesting as well — i attended some focused on trans issues, which are near and dear to my heart, and others focused on youth programming.  but the most mind-expanding were the workshops that were part of the sexual liberation track, which was new this year.

for me, the point of the sexual liberation track (besides sexual liberation of course) was that our movement is less and less strong as we separate and sublimate the sexual aspect of our revolution.  pretending that we as a queer community care about marriage instead of sex is deeply damaging for us.  we try not to talk about it because it is one of the key criticisms that conservative opponents level at us when explaining why it is okay to ban books from school libraries.  but the root of being gay is that we want to sleep with people who are not the people who society has deemed acceptable.  from the get-go, we are having non-normative sex, and that is what sets us apart.  you can contort yourself to say that ‘not all couples have sex at the center of their relationship’ and you’re right (poor souls) but that’s not the point.  the point is that sex is the center, or the supposed center, of ALL couple relationships, gay or straight.

and if sex is the center of relationships, the fact that no one is comfortable talking about it is kind of a big deal.

i remember reading in older books about the gay rights movement that back in the 70s, people talked about sexual liberation as something that was for straight people too.  it was something that was going to be achieved someday, with the end result of being able to fuck who you want.

within reason of course.  between consenting adults.

but the subtext, or one of the many subtexts, is that repression leads to pathology.  pathology leads to non-consensual encounters, whether between older and younger people (such as the terrible pedophilia cases in the catholic church and elsewhere), sexual abuse within families, or rape between people of any gender/sexual orientation.  sexual liberation was supposed to set us free from that by bringing sex back into our culture as something to be owned and talked about instead of hidden in plain view where we can all see what’s going on but to talk about it is social suicide.

i’ve noticed — as my politics got more sexual, and i began claiming my desire openly, a certain subset of erstwhile friends fell away.  they were replaced (thank goodness) by radical kinky poly queer people.  hm, surprising?  not really.  i think that’s where the real groundbreaking work is being done right now.  it’s in that community that people are being empowered to name their desire, to negotiate consensual, explicit sex with people for whom honesty and mutual respect are a priority.

think about how fucked up sexual dynamics are.  dwell for a moment on the trope of the man buying a girl dinner and expecting sex as payment.  how much better would it be if they could negotiate a scene where the man buys dinner for the girl and she goes home with him, or maybe he even pays her — but they started out by talking about that fantasy and she was into it and enthusiastic about playing her part.

isn’t that healthier?  in the negotiated scene, they can both participate fully.  they each have safewords to use if they feel uncomfortable with how things are going.

i don’t mean to go on and on about this, but my larger point is that i think our movement is stuck, and will continue to fail to make real progress toward substantive change, if we don’t incorporate the principle of sexual liberation back into our politics and our activism.  we might even be able to bridge gaps between different communities more easily if we were comprehensively addressing things like government control of bodies, which affects trans and queer people as well as people with disabilities as well as ‘welfare moms’ and people of colour.

and so to bed.

2. Which is worse, failing or never trying? ohfercrysake.

3. If life is so short, why do we do so many things we don’t like and like so many things we don’t do? because we are rarely that clear in the moment.  or someone important asks us to, and that relationship is more important that what we like or don’t like.  or some other crappy reason.

4. When it’s all said and done, will you have said more than you’ve done? probably not.  i am a very good listener.

5. What is the one thing you’d most like to change about the world? less greed and insecurity.

6. If happiness was the national currency, what kind of work would make you rich? fighting for marginalized peoples’ life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

7. Are you doing what you believe in, or are you settling for what you are doing? I am doing what i believe in, in all aspects of my life, perhaps for the very first time.

8. If the average human life span was 40 years, how would you live your life differently? i wouldn’t, now, but ten years ago i would have made vastly different choices.

9. To what degree have you actually controlled the course your life has taken? i have controlled most of it, but with very limited information and circumscribed options.

10. Are you more worried about doing things right, or doing the right things? i worry about doing the right things.  doing things right is immaterial to me, unless i think they are the right things, and then i do my best with a healthy dose of understanding that mistakes happen.

11. You’re having lunch with three people you respect and admire. They all start criticizing a close friend of yours, not knowing she is your friend. The criticism is distasteful and unjustified. What do you do? stop respecting and admiring them, and leave as soon as possible after defending my friend.

12. If you could offer a newborn child only one piece of advice, what would it be? don’t listen to the bullshit they tell you.  you are a beautiful, wonderful, unique, amazing person and you deserve to be loved and respected no matter what, every single day, even before you can talk and defend yourself.

13. Would you break the law to save a loved one? of course.  i would break the law to save someone i hate.  frankly i would break the law just to break the law…

14. Have you ever seen insanity where you later saw creativity? nope.

15. What’s something you know you do differently than most people?
i love very idiosyncratically and thoroughly.

16. How come the things that make you happy don’t make everyone happy?
i have no idea.

17. What one thing have you not done that you really want to do? What’s holding you back? sex outside.  lack of opportunity and willing partner.

18. Are you holding onto something you need to let go of?
yeah, at least an inch of my hair.

19. If you had to move to a state or country besides the one you currently live in, where would you move and why?
i can’t answer this question.  maybe seattle.  or san francisco.  or london.  or new york.  i would move for work, but i don’t have any yet so this question is sort of moot.  i’d like to stay where i am for now…

20. Do you push the elevator button more than once? Do you really believe it makes the elevator faster? no — unless!  it doesn’t light up.

21. Would you rather be a worried genius or a joyful simpleton?
neither.  i’d rather be myself, which is definitely both and more besides.

22. Why are you, you?
because of my fucked up childhood, according to my therapist.  plus that is not proper grammar.  i am myself because of my obsession with good spelling and grammar — good grammar of course being subject to my own rules.

23. Have you been the kind of friend you want as a friend?
sometimes.  i am always there in the end.

24. Which is worse, when a good friend moves away, or losing touch with a good friend who lives right near you? really the worst thing is realizing that a friend you thought was a good friend really isn’t.  it doesn’t matter where they live.

25. What are you most grateful for?
if i were to feel gratitude for something, it would be that i am here on earth experiencing my life, which is sometimes horrible and difficult and strange but most of the time fills me with a crazy kind of joy.

26. Would you rather lose all of your old memories, or never be able to make new ones? i’d rather lose my memories.  sometimes the weight of them oppresses me.

27. Is is possible to know the truth without challenging it first? who says there is any truth?

28. Has your greatest fear ever come true? honestly?  yes.  more than once.  and somehow life kept on, and things kept going, and it turned out to be bearable after all.  it doesn’t have to break you.

29. Do you remember that time 5 years ago when you were extremely upset? Does it really matter now?
all those things mattered.

30. What is your happiest childhood memory? What makes it so special?
i don’t have one.  my childhood was not particularly happy, but there were good moments.  they all blend together, making singling one out difficult.  the happiest day of my life was the day i graduated undergrad, but that might be topped by my upcoming grad school graduation…

31. At what time in your recent past have you felt most passionate and alive?
every single day.

32. If not now, then when?
right now, dumbass.  i’m sick and fucking tired of waiting.  actually, how about yesterday?

33. If you haven’t achieved it yet, what do you have to lose?
nothing, or everything, or somewhere in between.  just do it already.

34. Have you ever been with someone, said nothing, and walked away feeling like you just had the best conversation ever? this question makes no sense.

35. Why do religions that support love cause so many wars?
because they are lying about supporting love.  and if you read the fine print, most of them openly admit that.

36. Is it possible to know, without a doubt, what is good and what is evil? first you would have to have a perfect definition of good and evil, which everyone agreed on…of course not.

37. If you just won a million dollars, would you quit your job? i don’t have a job right now.  if i won a million dollars, i would pay off my student loans, pay for my goddaughter, godson, and nephew’s college educations, and invest the rest in transgender advocacy organizations.  then i would fuck around and live on not very much and live my dream of being downwardly mobile.

38. Would you rather have less work to do, or more work you actually enjoy doing?
i would rather have work that paid my bills.

39. Do you feel like you’ve lived this day a hundred times before?
this is a dumb question.

40. When was the last time you marched into the dark with only the soft glow of an idea you strongly believed in? i don’t do that kind of thing, it’s daft.

41. If you knew that everyone you know was going to die tomorrow, who would you visit today? i wouldn’t.

42. Would you be willing to reduce your life expectancy by 10 years to become extremely attractive or famous? nope.

43. What is the difference between being alive and truly living?
i don’t know.  i do both.

44. When is it time to stop calculating risk and rewards, and just go ahead and do what you know is right?
when your back is up against the wall, and the compromise that is asked of you is too great.
45. If we learn from our mistakes, why are we always so afraid to make a mistake?
because you can learn from them, but you often can’t get back what you lost.

46. What would you do differently if you knew nobody would judge you?
not too much, i work on this every day.  just being myself.

47. When was the last time you noticed the sound of your own breathing? walking home tonight.

48. What do you love? Have any of your recent actions openly expressed this love?
i love lots of things.  and yes, my actions have expressed this.

49. In 5 years from now, will you remember what you did yesterday? What about the day before that? Or the day before that? very likely.  i obsessively archive my life in my head.  sometimes i’m wrong, but i won’t know that unless i’m comparing notes with someone else who was also there.  and that’s rare.

50. Decisions are being made right now. The question is: Are you making them for yourself, or are you letting others make them for you? i am making my decisions by myself.  when i don’t, my life is very different.

I am aware that even writing this down may be inviting the same controversy all over again, but I have had several personal encounters with this attitude, and it makes me feel sort of awful.  So as we go forward, I want to make something clear:  my insistence on there being some sort of relationship between butch and transgender is backed up by the fact that I personally know people who consider themselves BOTH butch AND trans.  End of story.  Whatever and whoever you are, you can’t deny those people their experience.

So.  I recently corresponded with someone who answered an ad on the w4w section of craigslist that was placed specifically looking for a butch — saying nothing about FtMs — who nevertheless claimed that “butch is a lesbian identity” and he ‘never identified as a lesbian’.

Fair enough.  I don’t want to dispute with him how he identifies.  However.

He responded to an ad in the w4w section seeking a butch.  If, as he claims, he never identified either as a lesbian or as butch, then a) what was he doing there and b) why on earth did he respond?

If I identify as a queer femme, why on earth would I want to date people who explicitly reject the queer female community, brandishing the word ‘lesbian’ (in all of its negative connotations, and none of the positive ones) around and applying it to butches, who traditionally were rejected by the ‘lesbian’ community in the first place?  Witness Mary Daly (may she rest in peace) and her very narrow ideas of what it means to be a woman, or female, and who gets to be a part of a women’s movement.  She was radically exclusive — a trait I don’t necessarily disagree with, to a point — I have my moments of lesbian separatism myself — but she represented a movement that rejected both butches and femmes as tools/victims/representatives of the patriarchy.  And there is still a lot of butch-phobia out there folks, just cruise the ads on craigslist for a bit to reconfirm that in your mind.

So, to be rejected from the trans community and labeled ‘lesbian’ is a little much, eh butches?  you must wonder who wants you.

Well, I want you.  All of you.  You can come be part of my community.  And I don’t care if you identify as a lesbian or a radical queer or an academic or straight or gay or wtf.  And I’m not interested in making nice with trans men who assume that they can date queer femmes who date butches, unless they are prepared to accept the transgender butches out there as family.

Because guess what boys?  If you answer ads from femmes who want butches, you are going to massively insult our intelligence by then informing us condescendingly that ‘butch is a lesbian identity’.  First of all, get your history sorted.  Read some books about butches.  Many butches adopted that label in prior decades because they didn’t yet have the language or resources that people have today around gender and transitioning, and that’s how they talked about being trans.  If you did your homework, you would find that many ‘butches’ lived as men full time, or most of the time, for some part of their lives.  How lesbian is that?

I’m going to stop here because this will quickly degenerate into incoherence.  I think my point is made.  How can you expect me to respect your identity if you can’t respect mine?  I absolutely recognize and hold up for praise the many trans men and transmaculine folk that are super respectful and inclusive of all their butch kindred.  This is a rant, as I said, about a few individuals who I feel are personally disrespecting me and the people I love.

That is all, to use Tina’s worthy phrase.