Let me be clear: I did not, initially, intend to have a blog that had anything to do with the fact that I am a lesbian. After all, my lesbian perspective is woven throughout the fabric of me, all the many other aspects of me, and ALL of whom rebel against any categorization or pigeon hole that anyone might want to stuff me into.
Lesbian in a box.
I can see the indexing, taxonomy issues now….is a lesbian a sub-category of sexuality, under homosexuality, or is it a sub category of female, woman, same-sex love? Or is it a first-order category unto itself? Is it an issue of gender, sex, environment, culture, politics, biology, stress in the womb, the size of a pinky finger? How many earnest gender-politico-sexual university courses can be wrung, strung out of everything lesbian?
You would not pick me out as a lesbian. Not by my house, not by my clothes, not by my car, my library, my dog, my speech pattern. If you saw me, you’d register female first, some wild guess about ethnicity –in which you would always be wrong–some wild guess about age, and you’d be wrong about that too.
I am invisible as a lesbian. Except for when I’m not.
Living in the largest city in Canada affords me a certain freedom that many other lesbians don’t have even in North America. I can walk down the street holding hands with a woman if I choose to, and sometimes I do.
Other times, I wear little buttons, only noticeable if you really look and I will wear them going to Holt’s or out and about the city to shop or walk around: the little button that says, “I prefer girls” or the one that has two stick girls on it with the names, “Eve + Eve”. Watching people read the button and the dawn of recognition and the looking they try not to do, I am sorry to say, amuses me. Catching people as they grapple with their habit of stereotyping is my teeny, tiny seditious political act.
When I think about being visibly lesbian, apart from the obvious of rainbow flags on everything and T-shirt declarations and girls hanging off each other, my default starting point? It’s all about the hair. After all, hair is political and something we immediately notice and use to slot each other into those categories we hold in our mind.
I’m convinced that in hair stylist school, there is that catalogue of easy-to-care for dyke haircuts, #1 – 8 around the Western world, and Philippines, and each year some little cabal sits around debating the styles to reach consensus for the community. My hair style is not in that catalogue.
Other indicators? Me and my crew look to eyeglasses. Or shoes. Cool women, with an edge. Noticeable if you can see.
Sometimes people know that there’s something going on, but don’t know what they know.
Like the time my nephew was trying to figure out what it was that was going on between me and a woman I had introduced him to. She and I had just started to see each other. My nephew, always happy to see me, eyed this woman carefully. He was quieter than usual. I gave him his time.
Then he came over to the couch, and climbed up on me, throwing his arms around me neck, his eyebrows knitted together as he searched for words to describe what he was feeling and blurted out, “You….. you….. you two smell like carrots!”
I wanted to laugh: he was clearly trying to figure out this sense of togetherness we had this woman and me, this feeling between us, and could not find the words.
“Yes we do,” I said. The three of us hugged and he was content with the answer.
Or another time, at the butcher shop with a woman I was seeing who’s hair colour and height was similar to my own. We were choosing items for dinner. The butcher looked us over and smiled.
“Sisters?” he asked.
The woman with me looked at me wondering, I suppose, if the guy used his eyes to see and how I would respond. I smiled at her.
Then I smiled at him. “No,” I said, adding, “closer than that.”
He looked a bit puzzled. ”Twins?” he asked.
I smiled as he handed me the package of meat, raising my right eyebrow slightly, and said, “Nope. Closer than that.”
I linked my arm through hers, leaving him with his eyebrows knitted together trying to figure it out.
Those are little acts. Not as good as some of the comedy that’s out there. Some of us are funny lesbians. Always welcome if we make people laugh. Slip our “see, we’re just like you!” into the stories of babies, and diapers and parents. (Do NOT get me started on the night I went to see a batch of lesbian comedians and to a one, their comedy was about babies and mothering.)
The bigger acts are about addressing antiquated, discriminatory laws. And that’s important.
And yet, when I think about this equality in the eyes of the law I am not sure which gets my dander up more: equality as a woman, or as a lesbian, because let’s face it, there is still discrimination against women: we still make 71 cents for every dollar that men make (in Canada); we are NOT represented in the power brokering, decision-making systems in the world and we remain economically, politically, judicially, educationally and sexually disadvantaged the world over. And yes, amongst those women the world over, lesbians are in that mix.
And I wonder if things get better for women, does that translate into being better for lesbians? I want to say yes, but there are mad voices out there, shrill, unreasonable and hateful.
And it is at this point that I realize that my lesbian self does have a perspective, thoughts and stories, a bit of prose, and of course some poems, because what lesbian doesn’t read lesbian poetry?? That’s what I’ll be writing about once or twice a week.
No comments:
Post a Comment