So we went to the Hearst Museum of Anthropology in Berkeley today…
(visiting a friend of the family who’s studying there), and the museum store had these bracelets that looked like ordinary dark brown leather wrap bracelets (albeit well-made ones), so I took a look… but no! they were made of some kind of leaf + clay!
They lay flat beautifully, and they were less than a centimeter wide, so they don’t overwhelm my tiny frame… and I always swore I was never going to be the kind of queer to go all surfer-chic all of a sudden… but… I really want one. And they’re $25, so… yeah. Maybe I’m a *little* butch.
And maybe I should look into less expensive vegan “leather” bracelets elsewhere… but these were just so beautifully understated. Everything else either looks deliberately sloppy or has studs all over it. I don’t know… can any vegan/vegan-aware fashion/menswear/dykewear people out there point me at something like this for less than $25?
Today my partner picked me up after class, and she told me she nearly didn’t recognize me at the bus stop for a second because she thought I was a dude.
And she didn’t cotton on that it was me until she saw that I was fussing with my Blackberry.
I’ve been operating on the assumption that I get read as a woman all the time. Split-second confusion is actually really close to what I’m going for, so woooooo!
microaggressions:
“I don’t mind that you don’t shave, but some of the parents and definitely the school administrator won’t like it. You should probably cover your legs.”
—My employer to me, a 25 year-old cis woman wearing a skirt with leggings that stopped mid-calf at the daycare where I work. Made me feel ashamed, angry that I felt ashamed when I knew I shouldn’t, attacked, singled out.
Really, employer? You’re really going to argue that at a *school*, you can only leave your legs uncovered if they’re hairless? It’s a *school*, not a waxing parlor. Makes me wonder if people who employ accountants will expect the same of me… oh well, I’ll stock up on cotton slacks and short-sleeve button-downs. And those shoes you can wear sockless that everyone calls “mocs”, even though I think that’s a ridiculous name.
genderpivot
iragray:
/ˈjendərˈpivət/ (noun):
a term i coined to describe the intersection of genderfluid and bigender identities in which one of the genders remains stagnant while the second gender fluctuates without a predestined path.
Oooooh. That sounds a little like me. I’m not sure it actually is me, but I like it.
(via fyeahgenderqueers)
genderqueer:
Submission from dustondust:
22, queer, genderqueer, poet, art historian, womanist
This is awkward, because it’s lovely that the submitter is aware enough of feminism’s issues with race to want to ID as a womanist, but I think Renee of Womanist Musings covered this a while ago — “womanist” is a label coined by women of color to describe women of color who felt alienated by mainstream white feminists because of the movement’s issues with racism. It’s appropriative to claim it for yourself as a white person, especially since “anti-racist feminist” probably works just as well for what the submitter is trying to say.
Today, a couple of the queer girls in my class and I were talking after class, and somehow one of them brought up a list of various subtypes of queer women (gold star/lipstick/chapstick lesbian, butch, femme, stud femme, yadda yadda) and we started talking about which ones we were. Somehow we got around to “dyke”, and another of them looked at me and said “yeah, you’re not a dyke, you’re a fruit cup.”
I LOVE IT.
And then I told them about the femme dandy, and the one who brought up the list said she could totally see me as a dandy, with a flower in my buttonhole and everything. And then later, that she couldn’t see me doing the Hulk thing, I was just too much of a dandy!
VALIDATION. IT’S WHAT’S FOR DINNER.
