WOMYN Wednesday! [Deadline Tonight!]

[WOMYN magazine is excited to announce that we will be featuring polls from our community in the magazine! We want to hear what you have to say about LGBTQ issues, queer women and Duke! The general goal of WOMYN magazine is to increase the visibility of queer women on this campus.]

The Deadline for submitting to this year's edition of WOMYN magazine is TONIGHT by MIDNIGHT. We're still looking for pieces-artistic submissions, allied support, personal experiences, LGBTQ cultural, political or Duke-related pieces. Email us your submission-as short (1 paragraph) or as long (2 pages) as you'd like-tonight to womynatduke@gmail.com.

Also-keep your eyes on this blog for annoucements about our Release Party for WOMYN, which will be in late October/early November. We're going to release WOMYN with a bang!

This week's WOMYN poll is:

"What is the best thing about being queer?"

Click here to vote!

Feel free to write your name and year (ex. Jane Doe, Trinity '11) if you'd like your response to be quoted in the magazine.

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Our goal these past few months, has been to increase the visiblity of LGBTQ women at Duke, ultimately culminating in a magazine. We don't want the conversations to stop with just one issue of the magazine (future magazine editors, we're looking at you!) or after today when the WOMYN Wednesdays stop. Raise your hand in class when someone implies that all women seek to date men. Create a safe-space in your dormitory if you are a RA. Work to end discrimination in your workplace or academic enviornments. And lastly, keep talking about LGBTQ women's issues on this campus, because that is the most important thing we can ever do-to keep the conversations going.

[Lower right, photo credit: National Coming Out Day logo, created by Keith Haring for the HRC.]

Anonymous Post #7

[Ed. Note: For the sake of formatting, I'm putting this superlong entry in a separate post.]

I’m frequently disgusted by my own arrogance, and little seems more egotistical than the self-masturbatory experience of a blog post. But I finally gave in in response to Summer Puente’s challenge that the boys “step up their game.” Here it goes.

In the last two weeks I’ve been coming to terms with the reality that I’m really, probably, most likely not gay. And that’s a tough fate for me to accept.

Then again, I never have been gay, or at least never commoditized myself as such—other people may have, and I don’t really mind. This has mostly been fine. It was only problematic once, when a guy I was hooking up with sort of vindictively told my girlfriend I was gay. I was shocked, only because I’d never used that referent, or attached it to him. In this context, it felt ugly to me. It was an accusation.

When I came to Duke, something peculiar happened; I started to garner aggressive interest from men. It happened first when I visited as a prospective student, then at a few parties during first semester, and during fraternity rush—by a T.A. for one of my classes, no less. At first, I spurned the would-be trysts, but they were never less than titillating. They inflated my ego in a maladapted way, as it wasn’t something I could actually talk about. Now, my original reason for abstaining straddled between misplaced homophobia and indifference toward the person proffering these potential interactions—a pretty standard model: drunk male in a fraternity with some kind of social cache and a reputation for misogynism and homophobia. If I was going to do this, it wasn’t going to be with a guy quaking in his Sperry Topsiders for fear of being caught, a guy who needed to blackout scapegoats in case he had to explain himself—I was hoping to find a “man.” I understand that this statement is predicated on exhaustively singular notions, but then so is my sexuality; I’m here, I’m “queer”, and I’m going to ask that you try to tolerate my postmodern flippancy for the rest of this post...

The summer before my sophomore year, I was suddenly enamored of an old friend. We discussed feelings of love and reciprocity over cheap vodka sodas. Days before my return to Duke, we kissed. It was good. It was just what I needed: a summer romance to initiate a whole new world of bisexual morphism and male lust that I could apply as I saw fit. I returned to Duke thrilled. I was officially not straight, and suddenly a categorically more fascinating individual. I managed to avoid the phenomenon (and ostensible rite of passage) of “the closet,” by basically exercising my sexuality (to the chagrin of my religious parents), but rarely even considering it in objective terms. So now I’m stoked—I have the capacity for romance, for finally saying “yes,” and for Gay—Fucking—Sex. Yes yes yes. And I’d heard that guys give better head.

So, I did something new recently. I had sex with a real gay. It was good. Sure, the sex act was purely carnal but (I thought) if I could apply my sexuality in dynamic ways, I could certainly cultivate or conjure romantic feelings more in line with the heterosexual archetypes I’d brought to bear in my formal relationships with women in the past. I went past third base. The rumors were true. I topped a few times, let myself be fingered, learned the correct order for oral and anal sex. And then I started going through the motions—willful social conditioning. I started hanging out with more gay men, visited Legends in Raleigh, Stir in Chapel Hill, Ty’s in New York, earning myself free drinks and attention. I would purposefully reference my interest in men among near-strangers just to provoke a reaction. It was fun and prurient. (I’m kind of a jerk sometimes.) I blasted “When My Boy Walks Down the Street” in my room at night, hoping that—oh boy!—one day I might just find ‘the one.’ And then...I got tired. The sex game lost its lusty allure.

Some of my the thrill of “late-nighting” in frat sections was gone, as I was offered more drugs, less sex. I became disgusted with myself, and not as a self-loathing for promiscuity—I can still count my male hookups on one hand—but because I began to objectify men in a way I never would have done with women. And so in response to this fear, I began to redirect my attention back to the “fairer sex.” I went to Shooters. I got kicked out (no, I wasn’t too drunk, that’s just how I dance). It was awful. As quickly as I’d entered, I wanted an escape. My R.A. recently solicited sex with me and—in ways completely unconnected to the person’s looks and personality—I freaked the fuck out. I’m on edge again, and realizing how precarious the mechanisms of sexuality really are, no matter how liberated my discourse might be. Sure, I can interpret or thematize the experiential phenomena in my life as I wish (ahem) but I remain nevertheless subjugated to my own sexual capriciousness, which is becoming frighteningly more material to me the more I think about it...and the more I write about it. Damnit BDU Blog. But no, really: thanks for deigning me this scintillating, pseudo-anonymous diary entry. I really need to visit Chris Purcell soon.

—Eric Fürst.

Rainbow Ch00nage part 1

I am completely addicted to the Internet and spend way too much time clicking links of links of links till I can’t click anymore. I also have a compulsion to find new music because my music library of over 60 gigabytes is like so five minutes ago. As such I have an account on Pandora, Last fm, subscribed to numerous YouTube channels relating to music; also I come through the iTunes music store like I am trying to find the secrets of the universe. As such I have become acquainted with several not big time artists of the queer orientation and/or who appeal to a queer audience. so I have decided to feature them in a multi-part blog post so here are the first three on my list of rainbow ch00nage.

First off there is Cazwell; this old school rapper/hip-hop artist of the homosexual persuasion spins some wicked tunes. he is based in New York City and has been central to the underground dance scene; he has even co-stared with Lady GaGa while she was still just a quirky student at NYU. When I first listened to him I could of sworn he was a British rapper, or from the early 90’s but he , by his own admission part of the old school; which for me is a plus. Most rap and hip hop of current makes me want to cry for their trite puns overtly sexual in nature and mind numbing repetitions nature behooves me greatly. Yet with Cazwell I can listen to his entire album with out the least bit of a complaint. He is also awful sweet and his lyrics are either ridiculously funny or sexual in a way that doesn't make you feel sleazy for listening to it, good music all a round.

Second There is his friend Amanda Leopore, who is the world’s self-proclaimed number one transsexual; the embodiment of fierceness pulled though the glamor of Marilyn Monroe with a fantastical dosing of Jessica rabbit I might say. though music is not here main career focus she as dabbled in music scene with the help and collaborations of others. She has been the cover girl for MAC and other cosmetics companies and has lost count of all the surgeries she has had in the pursuit of fabulousness. Her fame is mostly due to her staple presences in New York night clubs. She is heading Mardi Gras in Australia this year.

Third there is Cameron Carpenter, he doesn't like labels and is firmly in the whatever-sexual category. He would be some geeky/OCD version of a cross between Adam Lambert and Johann Sebastian Bach. He is the only person who I can say shreds hardcore on an organ; seriously this guy is like inhuman with a keyboard. Watching his hands and for the matter, feet, fly adroitly over the bazillion buttons and keys of an organ makes me think that someone needs to have is babies to ensure the fate of humankind. On a side note he sewed one by one , by hand, the sequence on that shirt of his, just for your information.

watch his other video here (embedding was disabled from the site)

one somewhat honorable mention would be the Electric Six’s song I Want to Take You to a Gay Bar that has the best music video in terms of visual sexual entendres, metaphors and/or allusions.

Beyond "Lesbian" Fashion

“Forgive me father for I have sinned
I have broken the commandments of the fashion world
Shaming my LGBT brother, with his muscled body and one-of-a-kind tennis shoes
I am without direction, doomed to think impure thoughts
About what clothes I will buy and wear
A mullet atop my head
A flannel shirt and ill-fitting jeans loosely slung on my body”

When I told my mom I was going to write about lesbian fashion for the Our Lives blog she replied “Lesbian fashion? You’ll really be able to write a whole article about that?” My sweet mother is not exactly immersed in current fashion trends, because if she was she’d know that I could write an entire book about lesbian fashion. In the early 1990s K.D. Lang ushered in the era of “lesbian chic.” After that, a distinct “lesbian” style went mainstream. Now LGBT women are an integral part of the fashion world, whether as models, stylists, or fashion bloggers. Unfortunately certain ideals about beauty still persist. Masculine lesbians, no matter how dapper or handsome they are, still don’t get the same positive attention as glamorous fems. In my articles on fashion I will often focus on female masculinity, because I find masculine women as beautiful and fashionable as feminine women.

If you’ve ever seen me traipsing about campus you know fashion is something I have a passing interest in. My style is trendy though subtly androgynous. Though “keeping” up with richly dressed fellow Dukies is not an endeavor I’m proud of, my love of fashion extends beyond just looking like the typical Longchamp toting Duke girl.
I like to think that my style is guided by myriad sources, from street fashion blogs to magazines to music to different cultures. (Sometimes it's just by what I can find at used stores.)I also can’t forget how indebted I am to my fellow queer women. From them I have learned not to be too literally feminine or impractical in my fashion choices. I also learned not to wear clothing that overpowered me, or clothing that was trendy but unflattering. The desire to look good, whether by wearing clothing intended for men or for women, is a hallmark of “lesbian” fashion.

Short-haired, beautifully androgynous women are presented as the “ideal” face of lesbianism. These are the tombois, hipsters, rocker chicks and power lesbians. It’s no surprise that Ellen DeGeneres makes the cut in addition Kate Moennig, Beth Ditto, K.D. Lang, Jackie Warner, Kim Stoltz (!!!!), Joan Jett, Leisha Hailey and Samantha Ronson, What unites all these women? They wear men’s clothing, often in creative ways. Most have short hair. They wear suits, leather, bright colors, muted colors, ties, fedoras, sports-bras, sneakers, low-slung jeans…If fashion is all about contrast then these women are masters of the contrast between masculine and feminine. No gender expression can be overpowering.

Ever since YSL made the first woman’s suit, androgyny has been a fixture of women’s fashion. The right kind of androgyny is difficult to achieve; so difficult that lesbians have an unfortunate history of fashion mishaps. Lesbians are able to wear just about anything they want, from sensible shoes to skirts to camo cargo shorts, and as a result must choose their clothing with great caution. Men on the other hand must not only avoid wearing dresses, skirts and heels, they also have difficulty finding clothing that uses creative proportions or colors. Jean-Paul Gaultier first presented skirts for men in a show in 2006. Now men in skirts (along with men in tights) are common in fashion shows. Street fashion blogs often feature men in high heels and skirts carrying hangbags previously reserved for women. While the fashion world has become more accepting of men who boldly cross gender-lines in their attire, American cities, and especially Duke’s campus, are much less accepting.

If you’re a tomboy you probably have trouble finding clothing that fits. Men’s clothing hides your body while women’s clothing emphasizes it too much. Many fashion lines are now being crated that fill these needs. If you’re the fashion-conscious tomboy with loads of cash, check-out Made Me Clothing. Unbound Apparel sells gender-neutral t-shirts. Dykes In the City carries a wide range of clothing for masculine and queer women. While in our particular moment in time and place a woman in men's clothes in assumed to be a lesbian, masculine clothing choices were not always tied with queerness in America. Other cultures have different ideas about the relationship between gender expression and sexuality. I've noticed that East Asian culture is more accepting of avant-garde fashion for women and women that crosses gender boundaries. Just around Duke's campus I have seen more Asian women dress in men's clothing than any other ethnic group. On a campus where gender expression is severely limited, these women stand out to me.

If you’ve ever been to www.xxboys.net, watched an Athens Boys Choir video, or seen Lucas Sliveria of the band The Cliks, you know that transmen are a diverse and attractive bunch. One of the most important clothing items for pre-op or no-op transen are chest binders. Fun fact: Taiwan is leading the world in chest binder production. Queer and trans friendly sex shops tend to sell chest binders, and they are easily found online.

Though I don’t have trouble buying my clothes at non-specialty stores I have had problems with getting my hair cut correctly. I stopped going to cheap hair cutters because I would always get a tame, femmed up version of the hair I desired (even when I brought photographic evidence!) Bianca Jimenez was the first hairstylist I had who understood lesbian haircuts. I told her all my business. I even made her a mix CD of post-punk music! Then one day I called the salon and I was told that she had left. Dejected, I bounced around to different salons; even trying out the local Aveda before I finally came across Doo or Dye, unquestionably the only punk-rock hair salon in San Antonio. (Its motto: 110% pure Texas fury!) I’ve become so attuned to the minutiae of my desired hairstyle that I don’t think it matters who cuts my hair, as long as they aren’t hell-bent on femming me up.

I feel like I have it easy because I’ve been out about my sexuality from an early age. I have an intuitive grasp of “lesbian fashion”- to the point where no one has ever accused of being “too femme” or asked me what I was doing at a gay bar. Has anyone felt like they were being ignored in a queer environment because they didn’t look or act queer enough? Do you feel like you dress in a “lesbian” way even if you don’t intend to? Do you not believe you dress in a “lesbian” way, even if you wear jeans, Converse and t-shirts every day? Do you think that the whole concept of “dressing like a lesbian” is ridiculous, outdated and sexist? What stereotypes pertain to how bisexual and queer women dress? Are they radically different? Finally, from your experience how does gender expression differ from culture to culture?

XOXO
Veronica

Do you want to know me? I'd like to know you too.

Everyone… I’m freaking out. I’m terrified, things are changing and I’m swept up in a huge transition. I wanted to make this blog strictly about putting a face to the LGBTQA community, to interview others and to get closer to those I didn’t know.

What I wasn’t exactly anticipating was the questions I’d get in return…or the challenges to identify…to come out. Since my time at Duke, I haven’t put a name to my orientation. I hide safe behind my Ally card while urging others to come out to their parents, their friends, and their professors. I’ve spent a lot of time in heterosexual relationships so I don’t have to deal with questions or confrontation, prejudice or hate.

But then I met Ashe. And everything changed.

If you don’t know Ashe, you NEED to. I’m not gonna tell her story because I haven’t asked her yet. Although I don’t think she’d mind, I’m big on asking permission. So I’ll save that for another time, and just tell my side. She helped me see a ton of the inconsistencies in what I believed in: to push others to tell their parents about their sexuality while I was able to happily avoid mine. I know some people shouldn’t be pushed, some people aren’t ready to be pushed, and some people don’t respond to aggressive pushing, so it’s definitely not something that I would recommend for everyone. But it worked for me.

So on Tuesday night, I came out to my dad.

I still don’t identify with one label because I have this issue with thinking that I’m appropriating a community that isn’t entirely mine yet (Let’s work on that). I know it’ll be a process. I think the term Bisexual gets a lot of grief (which NEEDS to be talked about), and I like the term Queer a lot. Maybe if I let it marinate a little bit I might be able to use that. But I’m not there yet.

I don’t mean to commandeer this blog entry and tell the details of my coming out story because I’ve finally had to really empathize with how intimate and difficult it really is. My conversation with my dad went a lot worse than I expected…but it wasn’t horrible. It ended with a hug and an “I love you” from him, so I’m counting myself incredibly fortunate and hoping that time will help it be less difficult.

It’s hard to put this online. As I’m typing this, I’m doubting my decision to put it online….because I’m scared. But if I dare to collect stories and give peoples names and photos and personal information, then I want to be on the front lines. We need to stand in solidarity and talk about safe sex, and sexual abuse, and relationships, and transgender issues, and adoption, and so many other things.

My name is Summer Puente and I want to stand next to you, not just behind you.