[Tap tap tap.]  Is this thing still on?

Ahem.  Hi, everyone.  Well, it's been over three years since I posted.  I'm open to writing a little more now that I'm getting settled in a new place.  But I confess that I don't even know what people would like to read about.

What's on your mind?

What do you wish you could read about?

What have you been wondering lately?

Yours as ever,
​BW

I've read lots of academic debate about pronoun "go-arounds" (where everyone says his or her preferred pronoun) in meetings, classrooms, etc.  And I get the intellectual arguments on both sides--the most persuasive, to me, being the inclusion of trans people and the destigmatization of announcing one's pronoun.  So my response  to these is personal, not intellectual.  And here it is.

I loathe in-person "pronoun go-arounds."  Why?  Because 99.5% of the time, I am the only person in the room that anyone is wondering about.  There will be 5 or 8 or 10 of us, and I am the sole person whose preferred pronoun cannot be easily predicted from her hairstyle, makeup or lack thereof, or clothing choices.  Yep, I know there are exceptions.  But in the spaces I'm in, there never are.  It's always me and a bunch of cisgender, gender-conforming people, and as they go around saying their (obvious) pronouns aloud, I can feel my cheeks burning.  We're doing this for that person, I can practically hear them thinking.  What will that person say? 

And when it gets to me and I say "she," which is the pronoun I use, I feel like my identity has been reduced.  Boiled down to an essence that, at some fundamental level, does not contain the complications of my gender.  Yeah, I'm a cisgender woman.  But I am gender nonconforming in my appearance, and my "gender identity," such as it is, is expansive--yes, a female version of expansive--but it is most certainly not contained by the simple word "she."  And since I don't get to explain anything else about myself, I hate having to say "she."  It is reductive.  It feels vaguely insulting to be forced to say my pronoun with everyone staring at me, their eyes asking, what are you? 

I know that the idea is to make everyone feel comfortable and to be trans-inclusive, and I get that intellectually, but the reality of my lived experience is different.  It doesn't feel inclusive at all; it underscores the fact that I am the only gender nonconforming person in the room.  

A better alternative, I think, would be to go around and have everyone say whatever they want to about themselves and their needs for the day, including preferred pronouns, accessibility needs, or anything else.  Some people might say, "I'm sight-impaired, so if I don't look at you, know that I'm not being unfriendly."  Others might say, "I'm a little tired today because I was up all night with my kid, but I'm going to try to stay focused."  Some people might just say their names and nothing else.   This approach would not only be trans-inclusive, but disability-inclusive, family-inclusive, and other kinds of inclusive as well.  

Pronoun go-arounds in predominately queer spaces are different.  I don't feel like I'm being singled out; they feel neutral.  I also don't mind pronouns in signature lines in emails, because that's personal to the person sending it; it doesn't demand that anyone else out themselves.  I guess that's the part that really bothers me: being forced to "out" some aspect of myself that I'd rather not be the first thing people know about me.

The most important thing to say about Hannah Gadsby's stand-up Netflix special, "Nanette," is: Go watch it.  Maybe you'll love it, maybe you won't.  You may not agree with all of it, but you will chuckle, and your eyes might even get a touch watery.  The morning after I watched it, I made a list of reactions/realizations.

1. I self-deprecate all the time to make myself more accessible in exactly the ways Gadsby talks about.  And I relate to writers and comedians who do the same thing. I think I saw self-deprecation as our collective way to make ourselves more accessible and palatable to a world in which we are marginalized.  It is a strategy for being heard.  But we don't have to do it.
2. You don’t have to be at the top of a genre to reinvent it. Nor do you have to be at the bottom.  You can do it at any point on the ladder.
3. Being a lesbian and being a gender nonconforming woman both matter, together and separately.  We are subtly encouraged, in a thousand ways, and even in the most "accepting" places, to think that sexual orientation "matters" but gender presentation is not a big deal because it is "just about looks." That is incorrect.  It matters.  It shapes our interactions, our sense of self, how people relate to us, everything.  It matters.  
4. I have been discriminated against and I hate it and I own my stories.  I will tell them.
5. I was raised as if I were straight.  Most of us were, even if our parents loved us more than anything in the world (as mine did, and still do).  Being raised straight can't not affect us and the way we see ourselves in the world.
6. It is hard to let people evolve and change in the stories we tell.  It is easier to stay insular and angry.  One of the places I choked up in Gadsby's special was where she talks about her recent conversations with her mom.  I can relate to that, and to the temptation to hold onto old hurts that seem so immediate it's easy to mistake them for the truth of the present.  But to evolve, we have to let others evolve, too--in the stories we tell about them, and in our own hearts, too.
7. Conflict is okay.  Especially at a political moment when we feel like all we can do is shield ourselves from going completely batshit, we must not be conflict averse. It becomes more important than ever that we reach out, that we try to make connections with those we fear hate us, and with those that, deep down, maybe we hate too. 
8. We are allowed to be angry at people without “giving them power over us.” Anger is allowed to come in flavors and waves. We can reinvent our anger. Anger is a kind of tension, and we are allowed to release it any way we want.  We can take it back, let it rise up again, channel it to make us productive, or use it to make us sad.  We are not obligated to "let go."  Letting go is one way of diffusing tension.  It is not the only way.
9. I can still be surprised and inspired by art. I am almost 40 and lately have been thinking that maybe I am just not moved by things the way I used to be.  In my 20s, the combination of an oldies song and a crush on someone could move me to tears. Not anymore. I even started to wonder if I had lost the capacity to feel deeply.  But I have not.  The threshold might be a little higher, but that is not a bad thing
10. Most importantly, stories hold our cure.  We must tell them.

Like many people, I cried a little when I watched "Nanette."  Not because I have experienced the things Gadsby has experienced--I haven't.  And not because I felt sorry for her--I didn't.  No, I cried because I recognized the important power of Gadsby's story, and because it made me realize the important power of my own.  I cried because of all the times I've used myself as a punchline to make myself more accessible to people.  I cried because I realized I chose my occupation partly because I thought it was one of the few places someone like me would not have to worry about poor treatment.  I cried because this turns out not to be true.  I cried because of the ways I have failed to listen to other people's stories.  I cried because of the ways I have failed to tell my own.

​

I got a grant at work that enabled me to fly out someone I wanted to mentor me for a few days.  I chose someone I like and admire--someone whose work I think is top-notch, and who I've long thought of as a half-friend, half-mentor, even though I only see her for a couple hours about once a year.  For purposes of this entry, let's call her G (random, not her real initial).  

I figured it would be fun.  I figured I'd have a nice time and learn some things from her.  What I did not expect was that spending a short but sustained amount of time with her would be so awesome for so many reasons.  

For one, having another butch in my work department made me hold my head higher somehow.  I am not the only queer person in my workplace, but by my (possibly inaccurate, who knows) observation, I am the only one whose female self-presentation deviates from what we might think of as a feminine gender norm.  For three whole days, I got to not be the most masculine female-identified person in my department.  (Maybe we're tied, but her voice is deeper and G can buy men's clothes off the rack, so I think she wins.)  It is hard to pinpoint why this made me feel so great.  There was one time when we were in the elevator and a feminine woman walked in, and I thought, "In this elevator, at this moment, we are the norm!"  Something about this just felt super good.  I don't know how to describe it except to say that I do not usually feel like a non-strong or a non-valid person, but in that moment, I felt extraordinarily strong and unquestionably valid.   I felt like there was something that I am usually carrying, and for those three days, my arms could rest because I did not have to carry it alone.  

In addition to being the only butch (again, to my knowledge) in my department, I am one of the only people (again, to my knowledge) from what I would consider a working-class background (I'm not first-gen).  G shares a similar background, and there is something about hanging out with another working-class butch in an academic workplace that I absolutely love.  Intersectionality matters, people!   Also, neither of us married to someone whose gender presentation differs that much from our own, either, which is something which, as I've written about before, I feel like I share with almost zero other butches.  

Perhaps these feelings of strength/camaraderie/validation would be tempered if I didn't like G so much.  But I do.  And so does my wife, which rocks because DW isn't enamored of most people (she'll deny this and I'll end up having to take this sentence out, but I swear it's true).  Regardless, I feel like something clicked.  Who knows if G's experience was the same, but by the end we felt like real friends, not just mentor/mentee or work friends.  It made me really happy.  

This feels like the most childish entry ever.  Oh well.  I don't care.  I like my friend.  

Below is a list of lies I've caught me telling myself over the past few months...  and I know I can't be the only butch who occasionally deludes herself, can I?
​

• "I could totally fix that."
• "I'm about that guy's height."
• "I look so much like Rachel Maddow."
• "My shoulders totally fill out this shirt.”
• "SO many straight women want me."
• "This shirt is really different from my other shirt.  I should probably get it."
• "These shoes don't come in a smaller size, but they definitely aren't too big.  They're just... comfortably roomy."

...Anyone else?