Opposites Attract?

How cliché, "opposites attract." What do they do after they've attracted each other?


All the time at work, at O'HARE AIRPORT (so I have a pretty good sampling), miserable couples meander by. The women who just walked out of Better Homes knowingly empty their minds over celeb rags, the burly macho men soak up business books...and then pay for their wives' magazines. Sometimes, men will enjoy conversations with me about westerns, history and/or sci-fi - masculine genres. Their wives/girlfriends envy me for not only getting along with their men, but also for having the knowledge they don't*.


Aside from their decisions to fit traditional roles, these men and these women are utter opposites. They aren't genuinely attracted to each other because they actively hide who they are!! And they don't get along precisely because they're opposites, they don't relate to each other. The same fights over and over again: "don't go back to the bathroom, you'll spend another 20 minutes on your hair;" "you never hear anything I say, you're only interested in your fantasy football." Opposite interests, repulsion rather than attraction. These couples rarely share similar projects...they're each other's projects!!

Speaking for myself, I'm generally attracted to people to whom I can relate. I'm androgynous/masculine, and I'm attracted to people who have similar qualities (high femmes can have very big balls/ovaries). As a feminist, a sci-fi nerd, an artist with high appreciation for science, a cuddler, etc. I'm attracted to people who share these qualities.

It makes more sense to me to tackle projects with someone similar than to tackle someone who's my opposite. And much more arousing.





* it is possible, yes, that these women just genuinely aren't interested in those genres. I've been told or overheard too many women say "I wish I could enjoy math/science/sci-fi/history/technology/etc. more, but it scares boys away."

Cinderella Ate My Daughter

The next time you spy a Disney Princess product, check to see if the princesses are making eye contact with each other. They're not! Roy Disney was opposed to bringing together princesses from different movies, so this was a creepy compromise.
I'm not arguing that trivial details like this are manipulating the children of America, but it gives you a good idea of how the higher-ups of child-focused companies function (or not). This is just one anecdote of oddity included in Peggy Orenstein's Cinderella Ate My Daughter, through which she navigates her new parenthood.

It's no conspiracy that the boys' and girls' sections of toy stores are so neatly divided, but it's no accident either. Orenstein did an unbelievable amount of research and found that the decision-makers of toy companies honestly believe that they're just giving kids what they want: pink, feminine, consumer/domestic items for girls and violent, mechanical items for boys. They also are after making the biggest sale, but that's to be expected of anyone. And parents are often dismayed at what their children are offered in the gender-segregated aisles, but see no other option. It's partly the companies themselves and it's partly the parents that divide children along masculine and feminine, but Orenstein's research into children - especially little boys who want to wear mommy's makeup and little tomboys - is the most revealing. I'll leave you to actually read the book to find that out.

As in her previous books, Schoolgirls and Flux, Orenstein articulates how gender divisions in our society impact real people in Cinderella Ate My Daughter. She makes connections through hard-hitting research that seem so obvious upon her articulation. I highly recommend reading any and all of her books!

My only complaint, though, is her description of Sesame Street and the Muppets - and I admit that this is only a personal bias. She investigated the very few regular women characters (Ms. Piggy, Janis, Zoe, Abby, ...?) and the Henson company explained that feminine characters just don't market as well as "masculine" ones. Honestly, I always thought that most of the characters were androgynous. Even as a kid, I thought that Big Bird, Elmo, and most of the monsters were genderless (same for the Toaster and Blanket from Disney's The Brave Little Toaster). Then again, that probably explains a lot about my genderqueer identity...

Queer Qualifiers

When I hung out with the Madison Socialists, a newbie at one of the group meetings asked what qualifies someone as queer. As the most visibly queer person in the group*, I answered that someone who doesn't get straight privilege would be considered queer. Then we all had a big discussion on how privilege doesn't actually benefit anyone.

I'm dating a straight bio-guy and a lot of people expect my identity to change, that I identify as bisexual rather than lesbian now. With people who are easily confused or won't invest much thought into gender/sexuality, I let them think what they will. My gender identity had started shifting years ago and, because of that, "woman-identified-woman" hasn't really applied to me for a while. Lesbian is too small a box for all my fabulous queerdom. And don't even get me started on the binary "bisexual" label. The genders of the people I date impact me so little that it surprised me when that was the first place people went upon this news.

Just look at me! I'm not gonna get straight privilege anytime soon. Heterosexism both disrespects gay relationships and elevates straight relationships for no reason; as a confusing genderqueer, the genders/sexes of the people I date are used as judgement. When I pass for a guy or an "it", it implies the guy I'm dating is gay; when I pass for a woman, it implies that I'm straight. Either he gets a taste of homophobia or my queer identity gets smothered by straight privilege. It's a lose-lose situation.

Last week, I went on a date with an androgynous, straight bio-guy and this table of jerky businessmen was leering and laughing at us. I don't know if they thought we were both lesbians or fags or if their behavior would've changed had they known our "opposite sexes" (so many things wrong with that system!). Aaaww my kitty just curled up in my lap! My point is that being gender-variant, especially with complete strangers who know only how you look, is more likely to stir up shit. And rather than trying to figure out who you are, they're more likely to fit you into the "gay", "straight" or MAYBE "bi" box. WHO CARES?!?



* by no means is this a value system or qualifier, it's just how it was. I was far more likely to get odd looks (at the least) in the street than everyone else in the group, who looked normal. Well...normal for Madison.

Returning to Femininity

EDIT: you may have to click on the pictures for them to show up correctly

Several things have been coinciding lately:
- I've recovered from graduation and from a few difficult friend-break ups
- it's a year since a pretty traumatizing experience in which a boss told me that, by not being feminine, I wasn't working hard enough.
- http://kkriesel.blogspot.com/2010/08/femme-day.html happened
- it's fall
- I finally visited a wonderful friend who reminded me how awesome it is to be fabulous
- a Milwaukee butch veteran acknowledged me as a fellow. That was an honor, even though she was drunk.
- I cleaned out and re-organized all my clothes TWICE
- .....really really really awful shit. No, I won't elaborate.

Because all of these things have happened in the period of a month, this happened:



And this:



And this, too:



While living on campus, I did crazy, dramatic drag all the time! Poofy skirts, swishy dresses, CORSETS, and all manner of wild femininity. And then there were days when I looked like a young Michael Cera going to his 70's-themed 8th grade graduation dance. Because I was in such a safe, cloistered environment, drag was fun and expressive and vulnerable. I tried to carry that over to post-college life but that didn't work so well, especially when that douche-boss equated uncomfortable femininity with hard work...douche. From that incident sprang a year of butchitude. Butchitude...tubular.

Now that I'm getting more comfortable with my adult life (that word isn't so scary anymore!), I'm getting more comfortable with my femininity. And since that really awful shit is happening, dramatic drag is a good distraction. I need distractions now in order to keep a grip on reality and running around looking like this is certainly distracting:

Femme Day

I decided to come in to work on Sunday all femmed out. Headband, makeup, dangly earrings, bra, skirt, hoes and heels. I even freaked myself out:



This was partly as a social experiment...but mostly to keep my coworkers on their toes. And if I made anyone squirm, all the better!



The last time I had dressed all up like this was for my old job, canvassing for WI Environment. As my regular, androgynous/butchy self, people were very rude and mean to me. When I was feminine, people were super-nice...and then my boss reprimanded me for not having "worked this hard" previous days. I absolutely hated the entire experiment. But this time, it was on my terms and my job didn't rely on it.



Yes, I took one of THOSE pictures.
Anyway, normally, straight guys will give me the nod in passing and straight women (excluding the dense middle-aged trophy wives) know better than to gab with me. Sunday, the same kind of guys were giving me dopey grins and the same women tried to gush all over everything with me. In short, people were much nicer...which I appreciate but I don't want any of that crap if I haven't done anything to earn it!



It felt so much better to be back to my abnormal self the next day. I don't get how nearly half the population manages to do that every day.