Retcon

Retcon
1. (original meaning) Adding information to the back story of a fictional character or world, without invalidating that which had gone before.
- Urban Dictonary

A few months ago we took out a subscription to Lovefilm Instant, which among other things has given me dangerously unfettered access to Buffy episodes. I have been indulging in a fit of nostalgia and watching the entire thing, all 7 series, from start to finish.

Watching the early seasons of Buffy is like looking back at my own teenage years. The main characters are supposed to be mere months younger that me; the clothing, hair, technology and mannerisms are all those of my own generation.

As I was watching the first season, I couldn't help paying extra attention to the character of Willow, who as anyone familiar with the series will know, later becomes/realises she is a lesbian. For those who are not familiar, teen-Willow has a crush on a boy, slightly-older-teen-Willow has a relationship with a boy, but early-20s Willow has two successive relationships with women. I don't know - I haven't read up on it - whether this was always something that Joss Whedon intended, or whether it developed as the seasons went on.

When I look back at my own high school years, there are some things that stick out glaringly as signs that I was gay and didn't know it. The way I blushed and stuttered when speaking to girls. The way I couldn't quite 'get' crushing on the usual cute boy celebrities and had to pretend as best I could. The way I craved "intense friendships" with girls and didn't quite know what that meant.

As I watch these early seasons, I can't help looking for the same signs in Willow... and imagining them, where I can. Imagining in her unknowing proto-lesbian character my own proto-lesbian self.

It's surprisingly therapeutic to overlay the past with the future, to see in earlier events the shadow of later events that the players in those events could not even imagine.
 

Countdown to a (Same-Sex) Wedding #3

2 Weeks to Go

Erm, well. I meant to make that a weekly thing, and then 4 weeks mysteriously evaporated. I really don't know where the time goes. Where it concerns time remaining at my current school, I'm satisfied that "away" is where it is going. The wedding, on the other hand, is racing up unimaginably fast!

Today I want to talk briefly about homophobia.

I have to be honest, I've rarely encountered vitriolic homophobia directed at me as an individual. The only incident I can think of is when a random man messaged me on facebook with one of those "I saw your profile and would love to get to know you better" spams. I - being a bit bored and reckless that day - replied indicating my reason for being disinterested. I got a very vile flame in return from this person, the contents of which I won't repeat. Suffice to say, it was not nice, but it didn't offend me because the source was already a figure of fun to my mind (as is anyone who sends similar messages to strangers).

I do see a lot of homophobia not directed at me personally. Read any comment thread on any article relating to LGBTI anything and you'll see it in plenty.

That kind of homophobia is easy to identify, and while addressing it comes up against the brick wall of insecurity, stupidity and intractability, it's at least an honest reaction. Idiots that rant about "poofters" - spare me! - or tiresomely bible-thump are at least being straight with everyone (excuse the pun).

The sort of homophobia I find truly offensive and difficult to deal with is that coming from people who are in denial about their own feelings and beliefs. The ones who start sentences with "I have lots of gay friends, but..." or "I'm not homophobic, but..." or even "I'm in favour of gay marriage, but..." and finish the sentence with a statement about the necessity of restricting gay rights in some particular area.

Sorry, but no.

If you believe that a person's sexual choices should in any way restrict their rights as a person or a citizen you are, to some degree, homophobic.

Now, I know people don't want to hear this, because the people at whom it is aimed are often nice, sensible, generally thoughtful people who would never in a million years class themselves with the "burn all the fags" brigade. And neither would I - different kettles of fish entirely. But still, uncategorically, afraid of the changes that full LGBTI equality would bring. And if you're afraid of full LGBTI equality, you're homophobic.

I've lately been sad to see this kind of homophobia coming out in a truly unexpected place: namely, the Society for Creative Anachronism, the worldwide medieval re-enactment group of which I am a member. Some people whom I previously/otherwise liked and respected have shown a homophobic side I did not expect to see, and I've found this revelation so distressing that I've left my membership fee unpaid this year and have dropped out of active society life for the time being. I've felt hurt and angry that people I looked up to or thought well of have let me down.

The issue revolves around the way in which the society selects its Kings and Princes, and their consort Queens and Princesses. This is done through 'heavy' fighting - full-speed, full-armour fighting with padded rattan swords as weapons. It's hard, fast and potentially dangerous, and while there are many female fighters, species dimorphism ensures that it's extremely rare for women to win fights at all, let alone hotly contested Crown and Coronet tourneys. It's happened literally a handful of times in the history of the society. The winner is almost invariably a male fighter, and he becomes King / Prince, with his wife/girlfriend/willing female friend as Queen / Princess. All entrants in these tourneys must be fighting for someone who will be their co-ruler - it's a requirement of entry that you are 'inspired' by someone.

Currently, SCA Society Law states that you can only be inspired by someone of the opposite gender. No exceptions. This law has been problematic for some time, and there is an ex-SCA group in the UK who split off from us over precisely this issue. Lately the problem of 'inspirational equality' has become a raging thorn in the side of the SCA both in Europe and worldwide.

This has opened the door to some seriously regrettable views being aired by people who should otherwise know MUCH better. Their objections don't stand up to criticism, and they all boil down to the same thing: 'gays are fine but I don't want them parading around in full view on my Kingdom's throne'.

The first and most easily dealt with argument is, "it's not period". Well, homosexuality was very much period, folks. And as for same-sex co-rulers, there are plenty of documented same-sex co-rulerships. While these people were often parent-child pairs or sibling pairs, some were unrelated joint rulers, and unless we have a time machine we can't say for certain what they were doing behind the scenes. I've never seen heterosexual crown couples snogging on the throne, so if having two men or two women up there really worries you then pretend they're cousins and be done with it.

Besides... we have female fighters. We have black rulers with white subjects. Almost all of us wear garb made from machine-woven commercial fabrics (some of which are even synthetic *gasp*). Machine stitching won't get you thrown out, nor will drinking cola from your charity store 70s glass goblet. We drive to site, and no one will tell you off for using a torch to make sure you don't fall in the moat after dark. Our royalty keeps court on flat-packable wooden thrones in everything from fields to ruins to 1970s scout halls. No one moans that their pastry was made from machine-ground flour, or cooked in an electric oven. We're the Society for Creative Anachronism, not the Society for Constrictive Absolutism. Same-sex rulers are far less anachronistic than swords wrapped with frickin' duct tape.

The second that usually comes out is "if we have two men or two women on the throne then the opposite sex will have no one to look up to/be encouraged to emulate.". This argument particularly pisses me off. The rulers of any particular SCA group are only up there because (almost always) the guy won a fight. Sure, that's a feat, but it's no more than that either. The pair might both be outstanding SCA practitioners, authentic to a tee, involved on every level and skilled in multiple crafts; or they might be a fighting-is-all-I-do guy and his I-only-own-one-piece-of-garb other half. The point is that, no matter how skilled or unskilled they may be, they are only up there because of one skill practised by one half of the couple. King / Prince is a meritocratic role only in the arena of fighting; and Queen / Princess is not meritocratic at all, merely luck/being the right person for the best fighter at the time.

If you're looking for a role model to emulate or someone to look up to and think "if I work really hard that could be me", the Crown is the wrong place to look (unless you're a male heavy fighter, in which case, carry on). The people on the throne, no matter how good they are at whatever multitude of skills they employ, didn't get there by virtue of the majority of them. If you're not part of a couple where the guy is a highly skilled heavy fighter, then being on the throne is completely out of your reach. So the argument that people need sexual dimorphism on the throne to inspire them to new heights of creativity and authenticity is bollocks. Our truly meritocratic awards - the peerages and other orders - are the place to look for role models. The rulers are figureheads to provide pomp and circumstance at events, not the best players we have to offer. I see no reason why two women or two men couldn't provide the pomp to all and sundry.

(The above also opens up another rather tricky arena, that of sexual equality in the SCA; that women are all but barred from participating in the meritocratic selection of rulers, due to their relative strength, is another thorn in the SCA's side. And the arguments against other forms of selection are equally specious. *sigh*).

At the end of the day, what people are really saying is "I want to see traditional marriage reflected on the throne because that's The Way It Was and when I play I'm trying to get AWAY from the modern world and all its trappings, not have it shoved in my face here too." (this is a paraphrase of an actual statement by an SCA member on the Facebook page). If you regard gay visibility as less desirable / uncomfortably modern, then no doubt about it, you're homophobic. If you'd make a rule for same-sex coupled players that you wouldn't make for black players or disabled players, you're homophobic.

Like the gay marriage debate in real life, none of the genuine arguments against Inspirational Equality stand up. The opposition to both  is based on peoples' fear, ignorance, distaste or religious beliefs. Frankly, in this or any other day and age... that's not good enough. It's time to take homophobia out of the SCA statutes, for good.

Lesbian

A few people have privately pinged me about the fact that my info, both here and elsewhere, now says 'lesbian' instead of 'bisexual'.

A lot of pondering went into that change. I identified as bisexual for eleven years (secretly for the first ten years) so it is a label that I had come to find comfortable. However, the more I thought about it the more inaccurate and inadequate it became. Similarly, although I used to feel ambivalent about the exotic, othering 'lesbian' label, it had become familiar and I was ready to accept it. Identifying as bisexual felt wrong, while the lesbian label felt right.

The kinds of questions I'm being asked about this are: Have you changed from a bisexual to a lesbian? Or were you a lesbian all along? If so, what about that 10-year string of heterosexual relationships?

They're good questions, and I have been trying to answer them myself. It's difficult to consider one's own past objectively, but I have tried to be at least critical of my experience so that I can answer accurately.

It's true that until this year I believed I was attracted to men as well as women. I was convinced of this despite all available evidence, that being that my relationships with men routinely sucked and were devoid of physical and emotional satisfaction. (Yes, I do mean all of them. Sorry, any exes reading this, but them's the breaks. And really, if you're smart enough to read this blog you must have realised just how badly matched we were). I persisted with the pursuit of a safe, respectable heterosexual relationship despite proving to myself time and time again that they just didn't work for me. There were other issues at play in some of my poor partner choices - emotional baggage not related to my sexuality - but normalcy was part of it. I didn't want to rock the boat, so I kept on trying, one disaster after another.

I don't think I was ever truly bisexual. The frequency and potency of my attraction to women has been largely unchanged since my childhood (even when I thought I was just desiring a close friendship) and it has blossomed since I accepted that this is the only way for me. Without the red herring of "needing" a normal heterosexual relationship I can't imagine why I ever wanted one in the first place!

I'm wearing the 'lesbian' label with pride and joy today, where once it used to both frighten and tantalise. And I am very, very happy to own that element of myself. It feels like coming home.

Faith, equality and deception

Yesterday I had my first ever English parents' night. 28 parent interviews at 5-minute intervals. It was a long night, but mostly positive, and with some insights and breakthroughs that have put me on rather a high.

However, the process got me thinking a lot about what one tells others about oneself. The parents told me (probably unconsciously) many little facts about themselves and their family life during the interviews. I shared the occasional relevant thing about myself as well, but I found myself constantly on guard about what I felt I should not reveal.

I'm "out" at work to the staff - they all know that I have a girlfriend, and so far as most of them know, I'm only into girls. No one has a problem with it, and although I get a little bit of excess curiosity from the older staff members, generally it passes without comment (or with only friendly comments). I have not talked about my faith at work, and I deliberately choose not to wear pentacles/trees of life etc around my neck. Lesbian they can probably deal with, lesbian witch might be too much.

But, I would never have hesitated to wear a cross or a St Christopher...

I am careful not to out myself to the parents, either as a lesbian or as a pagan. On my class ethnicities list, two sets of parents identified as 'no religion' and one as Hindu, and the remainder are equally divided between Christian and Muslim. About half of the Christian kids are from white English families and I suspect they are not devout (I'm trying to remember a quote from Pratchett and Gaiman's "Good Omens" - when they avoid going to church, CofE is the church to which they steadfastly avoid going). But regardless, they felt it important enough to enter on their childrens' enrolment records. I do know that one family is serious enough that their child is not allowed to be read anything involving witches, ghosts or anything "dark".

I have no idea how many of the class parents hold homophobic views... and just about everyone seems to be wary of, if not actively antipathetic towards, pagans. Legally, they're not allowed to mind that someone of an alternative religion or sexuality is teaching their children. Morally, they're allowed to think what they want as long as they keep it to themselves. But it's very, very murky ground. It only takes one parent making a fuss, and there are so many things that parents can fuss about when it comes to teachers. A parent objecting to my faith or sexuality would never have to mention either in order to make my job a living hell.

So I keep silent, and it feels dishonest. But what price honesty?

And yet, every day in class, when the children aren't around to listen, I talk cheerfully to my headscarfed, Muslim teaching assistant about my lesbian relationship. She knows all about E and has shown not one iota of disapproval or concern. What she thinks privately I have no idea, but she is comfortable with the idea enough to ask how E is and discuss my weekends with her and ask about her son. I was wary the first time I mentioned E to her, not knowing what the reaction might be, but feeling that as I work so closely with her it would be a strain to hold back. I'm glad I did tell her, as it's been a very healthy demonstration of the fact that mere faith does not define most people.

So I hide my true self from the parents of the kids in my class. They could all be like my TA - cool with it regardless of their own beliefs. But it only takes one who isn't.

I would never hesitate to wear a cross. I would never hesitate to mention a male partner.

Equality in the law is nearly there. Equality in the community is patchy. I just want to be my whole self.

Bisexuality, Again...

Usual disclaimer: this is about sex, sexuality and the philosophies thereof. It may contain details. Do not read if you're squeamish about any of the above.

About 11 days ago, when the events began to kick off that led to me becoming involved with my darling girl E, I had a moment of sheer panic. What if all those bitchy naysayers about bisexuality had been right? What if I was just looking for attention or trying to be special? What if I found myself in an intimate situation with a girl and realised that I was in fact not really attracted to women that way at all? I believed I was bisexual and had gone as far as kissing and that felt fine, but for a moment I wondered whether it really was all in my head.

Thankfully the panic was over quickly and turned out to be entirely unfounded. Not only was it great, but it was far, far better than anything I'd ever experienced with a man. That is not to insult the men I've had relationships with - well, not to insult the few of them who actually had decent skills - but being with a girl felt right in a way that heterosexual relations have never done for me.

While potentially triggering another round of 'what is my sexuality, exactly?', this also opened my eyes to the very real difference between heterosexuality / homosexuality and bisexuality. I simply cannot imagine only being attracted to a single sex. I may have spent 20 years of my life being unknowingly bisexual and another 10 largely pretending I wasn't, but it was there in my mind... there to the core. To me the 'either or' mindset is so familiar, natural and comfortable. I had a stark moment of realisation that most people are genuinely only interested in one gender, one way or another. It struck me just how weird that was to me, and equally just how weird bisexuality must seem to those who don't experience it.

The long-awaited confirmation that this really truly is who I am forced me to confront the fact that this is something that most people are not. A very strange moment. A defining moment of identity that was really very meaningful and special, and I don't want it to be eclipsed by the general squeeing over-excitement that currently fills my days.

I am bisexual. Naturally, fundamentally, from birth to death, to the core. This is part of who I am.


And I am proud that I am finally whole.


Welcome to Christine :)

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I have had a stinker of a cold for the past two weeks - the sort that starts with a sore throat and then disappears, leaving you thinking that you've beaten it, only to come back with a sore throat followed by the sneezles followed by a cough followed by being an icky mucus monster (my current point in the proceedings, yay). The joys of working with small children, I guess: they catch everything and pass it all on to their hapless teachers.

The blissed-out realisations of my last post morphed into a blinking confusion and turmoil over the past week, and that too has now settled. It concerns sexuality yet again, so stop reading here if you're sick of hearing about it ;)

I've always believed that sexuality is not static, and that people can move up and down the spectrum throughout their lives. This may be partly due to social pressures and conformity having kept them from finding themselves or coming out (witness the number of middle-aged women who 'become' lesbians after ending marriages they entered into in their late teens or early 20s) but I believe it's also true of people who are very sure of themselves. At different times, we may expand or narrow the range of people we find attractive.

In the past couple of weeks I've become aware of a very definite shift in myself, towards the lesbian end of the scale.

This is not to say that I'm not still able to be attracted to men, nor that I would say 'never' to being with a man again (and indeed there are one or two from my past who I think I would never say no to, provided we were both single!). But when I think about long-term relationships and marriage and kids and all that, I feel vaguely panicked when there's a hypothetical man in the picture, whereas when I put a hypothetical woman in the picture, I feel both relaxed and elated.

I used to dream about this from time to time before I was out, but of course back in Australia marriage to a woman was impossible and arranging to have a family with one was fiendishly difficult, whereas here in the UK both are so mainstream that they barely rate an eyebrow flicker in anyone. That's a dream I can live over here.

I went into a bit of an identification flap this week, not sure whether I was really bisexual, or was actually a lesbian who had gone through bisexuality on her way out of the closet. After going round and round a million times in my head and seeking advice from a forum of friendly bi & les women, I've found that the only sensible answer is "I'm me, doing what I do, whatever that is".

So I'm not going to start slapping new labels on myself tonight, but I am going to be true to how I'm feeling right now, and that's all about looking to a future where I have a girlfriend, and maybe one day a wife.

You have no idea how good it sounds to say that.

Being Bi

A couple of weeks ago, in the throes of election angst, I got into a spat with an acquaintance about whether sexuality is a choice or a predetermined part of one's nature. The context was a meme that was going around that highlights the absurdity of anti-gay marriage sentiments, and in the course of the argument she tried to tell me that my parents' unhappy marriage is the reason why I have chosen bisexuality as an adult.

Surprisingly, for me, I didn't blow my stack and rain down eloquent fire upon her head; just calmly pointed out the fallacies in her assumptions. But it's got me thinking a lot about my experience of growing up bisexual.

I was a very sheltered child, and had very little access to (or interest in) popular culture. I didn't listen to the radio; my TV intake was carefully monitored and approved; my mother read no magazines; and while our house was full of books, those that were not children's books were limited to sci fi, fantasy and old-school whodunnits. In a pre-internet world I simply had no access to anything beyond a vanilla, heteronormative world-view.

Around the ages of 5-7, kids go through a first stage of having "boyfriends" and "girlfriends" as they begin to mimic adult relationships. I had a "boyfriend" during this phase, because I was a girl. But I can also distinctly remember becoming emotionally attached to female friends. If they had been boys, these attachments would have been crushes.

Boy-girl relations broke off for a while after that, as my year group passed through the "boy / girl germs" stage. Around age 10 they picked up again and began to look like real relationships on the upswing towards puberty. Here, again, I knew when I was crushing on a particular boy, but couldn't explain the way I became attached to other girls. There was no sexual or particularly physical element at this age (no more than there was with the boys!), just an overwhelming desire for closeness. I would become enamoured of the way a particular girl looked, spoke, moved, thought; and I'd want to hold on to that somehow.

Sometime around this age I learned about homosexuality. One of my aunts was openly lesbian and my family were accepting of the fact. I was never given any negative or judgemental attitudes about homosexuality, and certainly never remember being bothered by it. I knew I was attracted to boys, so I never considered applying the label to myself.

As I progressed through my (still extremely sheltered) high school years, the boy-crushes and girl-crushes continued apace. I was very shy, anxious and socially inept, and often longed to get close to female friends but had no idea how to manage it. I was occasionally accused of being a lesbian, partly because I didn't have the social skills to attract boys and thus didn't date; and partly because I would often blush and stutter when talking to girls whom, had I known it, I found attractive.

It wasn't until I finally hit university that I learned about bisexuality. Between the liberal-minded university environment, access to my own TV and the advent of the internet, I became aware of the fact that people could 'swing both ways'. Unfortunately, I was also exposed to someone - I don't remember who, or where, or why - opining that girls who came out as bi were just looking for attention. How I wish I'd never heard that!

I can quite clearly remember the moment when I realised that the label 'bisexual' was mine. I was 19. It was the day after I'd had an explicit dream about my then-best-friend, who I had been close to since high school; and it was around the same time as I'd had an overwhelming urge to work a lesbian character into a book I was writing, and write a sex scene for her. I was lying there in bed puzzling over these two facts, when it hit me.

OH. 


DUH.


"I'm bisexual".

Unfortunately for the me of the next 10 years, I decided right away that no-one could ever know. Firstly, I thought I'd be accused of attention-seeking and drama (I felt the same way about asking for help with persistent depression; keeping my head down and my mouth shut was a common theme for me). Secondly, I wanted A Husband And Kids, and I "knew" that allowing myself to become involved with a girl would mean giving those things up for ever.

So I buried the knowledge deep. The crushes didn't go away, but now I actively pretended that they were just "intense friendships". I remember one class in third year in which I had two crushes - "Jolly Tammy" and "Dainty Diana", I called them - and wondering how I could change the chatty in-class friendships into something stronger and closer. I couldn't accept or acknowledge my desire to be with girls, but I couldn't stop the feelings.

This was the status quo throughout my 20s. Crushes, male and female, came and went. I had a few relationships with men (mostly unsatisfying and/or unpleasant), and a few long stretches without. I considered listing myself as bisexual on dating sites; I occasionally described myself as "bi-curious", "slightly more towards the bi end of the scale" or "bi but not actively so" to people I only knew on the internet. But I was far, far too scared of the consequences to ever own up to it in my real life. Or so I thought.

Late last year I made a new friend, who shares many of my opinions and values, and whom I respect a great deal. And she announced her bisexuality on her blog. This began a watershed for me. Another friend whom I'd met at the same time was a young woman I found intoxicating. I really, really wanted to be with her. I had not enquired about her sexuality, and she had a boyfriend besides. But between those two elements, something snapped. It took several months to work up the courage, but I came out. First to the friend who is also bi, secondly to my brother, then here on my blog, and then slowly to friends and family as it became relevant or necessary.

(It's not entirely relevant to the story, but... the intoxicating young lady read my blog, and it turned out that she is bi too [and thought I knew!] and a week after I came out I spent an evening kissing her... it was a brief interlude as I left for London at the end of that week, but it still sparkles in my mind as one of the most breathtaking experiences of my life).

Of everyone I've told about my bisexuality, only one person has had an "aha, I thought so!" reaction. He too is bi, and had picked up, to my delight, the blushing-at-girls thing. I spent so many years disclaiming that as "I just blush when I laugh!" and it was funny and wonderful to find that someone had pegged its true cause.

So here I am, a lifelong bisexual woman who is finally comfortable in her own skin. I've got friends who are fine with my sexuality (having shed those who are not), I have a boyfriend who is also bisexual, and I've got enough confidence to know that my family can like it or lump it and I'll be fine (so far they've been fine or neutral, thank goodness).

When it comes to the question of sexuality being a choice... no. If a sheltered 5-year-old can unknowingly identify as bisexual, then any adult who claims it's a lifestyle decision can go jump in a lake, with my compliments. It's not. It never has been, and it never will be.

Not Hiding.

Warning: Very Serious Personal Revelations Ahead. May Not Be Comfortable Reading For Some.

One of my goals for this year is to live a 100% authentic life. I no longer care to hide and suppress elements of my personality just because others may not understand or approve.

Being open about my faith was one of these things. People have to accept that I am a Christian (whether they like it or not) or get out of my way, period. I've discovered a few people who think I'm a nut, but mostly people have been supportive and appreciative about it. I've got so comfortable about it now that I can drop the words "and on Sunday after church" or whatever into a sentence without self-consciousness.

There is another thing I want to be open and unselfconscious about, and unfortunately in many peoples' minds it will be completely incompatible with the aforementioned Christian faith. I don't believe it is, but revealing it may mean that some of my strongest Christian friends will pull away.

Still, I'm not hiding any more. Come what may, the friends that accept me for all of who I am are the ones that truly matter.

Which is why I'm putting out there the fact that I am bisexual. I first realised I was when I was 19, but that was an "oh duh" moment; the attraction to women as well as men had been there for as long as I could remember.

I have told only a handful of people this fact, and only in the past year. But I'm really tired of people not knowing. And I'm really tired of believing that I have to keep it a secret because I don't want to rock the boat, or put people off, or because having kids was my ultimate goal and that's so much harder in a girl-girl relationship.

Enough hiding. I am who I am. Wherever it takes me and whatever it means.

Ironically, I suspect that in the balance of things the majority will be more tolerant of my sexuality than my faith . . . *sigh* What a strange postmodern world this is!