Jen The Lesbian

“Jen the Lesbian.”  When did my sexuality become my defining characteristic?

“My roommate – no, not the dancer, the lesbian.” “My lesbian coworker.”  “Yeah, I have four bridesmaids – the one in Peacecorps, the vegan, the lesbian, and the normal one.”

L-R : Peacecorps, the lesbian, the groom, the "normal" one, the vegan

This is just a small taste of something I’ve noticed when people talk about me.  And yes, those are all direct quotes I have heard about myself.  So when did my liking women become my ultimate (and usually only) signifier of whom I was? 

I often wonder if people are just too uncreative when having conversations; that putting me in a neat little check box is the easiest and most direct way to describe me.  I think that happens a lot, especially for people with privilege, to describe others by their minority traits.  “No, not that Brittany, the black one,” “you know John, the super gay dude,” “you’ve met Carl, the amputee guy with only one arm.”  Usually the thing that makes a person ‘different’ in someone else’s eyes shines like a big glaring spotlight on them.  But honestly, does a lot of the company I keep know so few lesbians that when they say “The Lesbian” I’m immediately the first person that pops into their mind? 

Find The Homo! 

Labels are bizarre to me.  Lesbian describes me a most of the time, but not all of the time.  I also hate labels and the need to fit into someone’s idea of a tidy checkbox. 

I’m curious how people described me before I came out.  If it wasn’t the rainbows and pictures of boobs and glitter exploding out of my face, what on earth did people say about me when I wasn’t there?  What else defines me?  Or more accurately, what other glaring personality or physical trait about myself did people notice and decide to use to blanket my entire entity with?  I remember my first birthday after my coming out.  I got a rainbow rug, a book on how to date women, a lesbian graphic novel, a rainbow cake, and several other queer presents.  Not that I didn’t like these items – I really did love everything a lot – but it just happened so quickly.  I had come out and a few months later it was the only thing people seemed to notice about me.  

so gay my bookshelf is in rainbow order

I do think that most people have good intentions.  My friends that bought me all of those gay birthday presents?  I honestly think it was a show of support.  And most of the people in my life who refer to me as “the lesbian” are most likely doing it because of the inescapable easiness to label someone superficially without really thinking about it.  I know I’m guilty; we’ve all done it.  It’s easier to look at one big differentiating trait than the thousand small ones that actually make up a person’s identity. 

according to this chart, i also like talking about myself, my friends, chicago, drinking, my girlfriend, and my mom!  

(i'm also slightly uncomfortable at how big the word "bathroom" is on this chart) 

I will be the first to admit my sexuality plays a big role in my life.  I read a lot of lgbtq books, I spend a lot of time being active in my community, I go to queer themed events, and I am proud of my sexuality and community and who I am.  But it isn’t the only thing about me.  In situations where I am described alongside other people – an example being my roommates and I (Sara is the hairstylist, Kelly is the dancer, I am the lesbian) – it almost feels unfair that they are described by traits of skills they have, things they are passionate about and have studied and put time into and are proud of, and I am described by who I like to bang.  And I guess my banging is something I am passionate and proud of, but it’s not a skill.  It’s just something that happens after a few glances across the room, a few okcupid messages, or a few beers.   I am so much more than the people I sleep with.  I am also a writer, a tattoo enthusiast, obsessed with cats to a slightly unhealthy degree, an avid reader, constantly sporting (what I think are) very awesome alternative lifestyle haircuts, a horror movie buff, and so much more.

this photo says a lot about me i think

I suppose it comes down to this – my queer identity doesn’t define me.  It isn’t the only thing about me.  But I will embrace that it is a huge part of my being and the easily accessible projection I put out into the world.  And while I hope that people notice the whole package that makes me into Jen the Human Being, I will use Jen the Lesbian (to the best of my ability) to be a role model and an activist for my community.  In the mean time I hope the rest of me doesn’t get lost in the rainbow.  

The Battle

cue the lights. scene : my room. eating pizza in bed. Kelly is in the shower in the room next to mine. a voice : "oh my god." a moment passes; again : "oh my GOD." 

i stand outside the door. "you okay?" 

door flies open, kelly dripping wet, wrapped in a loose towel. "it's huge." 

i peer around her tentatively; there it is. the biggest centipede of all time. a dark, evil creature decorated with ten thousand legs and a mass of unbelievable proportions.

i gag.

"what do we do?!" ideas are thrown out. vacuum it up. spray it with shave lotion. go get a neighbor. call 911. burn down the house. move out, start over, pretend it never happened, that we never met this beast from hell.

no. this is our house. this is our home. he must go.

we relocate to the kitchen and raid the supplies. armed with wood polish spray and orange cleaning agent, we return to the battle zone. the creature is elusive but we find him under a wash cloth. adrenaline flows and the war begins.

"DIE!" kelly sprays wood cleaning spray with a ferocity only known to those in times of peril. i bring up the back, orange cleaning spray flying like a thousand bullets from the barrel of a gun. our opponent is soaked, he is weak. limply he falls off the lip of the tub and onto the ground.

time for act 2. the monster, damaged and slow, makes his last move towards us. he stumbles drunkly to me and i prepare myself for the final moment. it's now or never.

i bravely throw a paper towel on top of satan himself, raise my new weapon of choice above my head (a motorcycle boot), and time blacks out. kelly informs me i brought the boot down over and over. when i come to, she is telling me "dude, i think it's dead." i stumble backwards and stare at the paper towel, now soaked with the remains of our tormenter. it rests atop him like a body bag.

shaken and exhausted, we realize the war has ended. we have survived. we are victorious.

the style post

I spend a lot of time thinking about sexuality and sexual preference and appearance and how all of these things are linked together.  The queer side of the internet has written approximately 10,000 articles on butch/femme dichotomies, femme invisibility, stereotypes, labels, fashion, and everything in between.  I suppose I felt obliged to contribute my two cents, even if just to get the thoughts out of my head for a moment. 

That's my butt on the left, FYI. 

As a person who has always felt a bit shy and incredibly self conscious, fashion was a way for me to express myself.  Experimenting with clothing and presentation in my younger years was an easy way for me to have an identity and set myself apart from the crowd.  As I got older, playing with my appearance became an outlet for creativity and interest in fashion more than a safety blanket.  And then I came out. 

I feel like nearly every queer person has a story somewhat akin to this.  The moment in life I got my first girlfriend coincided with my pin-up phase of dress - I literally looked like a 1950's housewife every single day.  Vintage dresses, red lips, victory rolls, heels.  I prided myself on the head-to-toe commitment of my look.  During this part of my life, I obsessed over coming out, telling people, dealing with my sexuality, and a thousand other things.  I started going to gay bars and attempted to meet other queer people, to find a community that would maybe assist in this confusing and scary process with me, but instead I was met with a wall of hesitation.  One girl mentioned to my friend, "she's too stylish for the lesbians in this town.  Nobody is going to take her seriously."  What? 

no, really, i frequently wore gloves as part of my wardrobe. 

I linked all of the hesitation back to my apperance.  As my first girlfriend moved away and I was single and still searching for acceptance, I resorted back to an incredibly self-conscious time in my life.  I was lonely and confused and desperate for acceptance, so I did what all new gays do and cut all of my hair off.  I started dressing differently.  Pants came back into my wardrobe, I wore less makeup.  The drastic evolution of my style wasn't necessarily that shocking - it had happened a thousand times before this - but the reasons behind my shift in appearance was the part that was different.  The thing in my life that used to give me liberation and a sense of self was now the thing I was using to fit in and to mask my identity in exchange for validation.  

Over time and building my confidence back up, my style has fallen into a happy balance of "feminine" and "masculine" traits.  I use quotations because the idea that clothing has gender is completely absurd to me, but I don't think we necessarily have the language to appropriately describe certain elements of style otherwise.  Some days I wake up and want a cute dress and bright colors.  Some days I am most comfortable in a bowtie and suspenders.  Some days a giant, baggy t-shirt is the only thing I can handle.  The important part of all of this is that whatever I have on, I feel comfortable in.  

And despite feeling like I have gotten my confidence and expression back to a normal level, there is a queer element to my style and how I project that is off balance.  A part of me where my femme invisibility bothers me, my desire to be recognized in my community is strong, and the part where the patriarchy ruins everything, and gender roles, even in queer communities, sneak up on you.

When I am single, or even when I am just not with my girlfriend (like at work or out with friends), I am most comfortable in presenting in a way that reads "QUEER" fairly easy.  A pomp, a tie, pants, a vest.  I want people to look at me and assume I like the ladies.  I want to see other dykes and queers and have them give me that knowing nod and we will all feel like family and it will be magical.  But when I am with my partners (who usually tend to be more masculine-of-center or androgynous), I like to wear dresses.  I like to look girly and flowy and super feminine.  And in my heart of hearts I know it is because I am holding hands with another girl, which affirms my queerness for me.  I can have on a skirt and lipstick and look "passable" in the straight world but the fact that I running my hands through my girlfriends hair or she has her arm around my waist tells the world I'm a big ol' homo.  I don't need my threads to do it for me. 

Rachel appreciates my lady suit

As much as I complain about gender presentation, I fall into stereotyping just as hard.  I have a coworker who "looks like a lesbian".  What do I mean, exactly?  She has short hair.  She wears v-necks and Chuck Taylors and no makeup.  She rides a bike.  When I started there, I assumed she was a lesbian.  I didn't know anything about her, but when I saw her style, my brain decided.  Put her in a neat little stereotypical box based entirely on presentation and checked it "dyke."  I did that thing that queer people do where I dropped words into conversations, like "girlfriend" and "all inclusive dance party" and names of lesbian bars and waited for her to react and then we could have that special "YAY WE'RE QUEER" moment together.  But she never reacted.  I started to doubt myself.  Eventually, as we became real friends, we talked about her sexuality and the fact that everyone assumes she's gay.  She's not.  She just likes to look the way she looks.  It doesn't bother her, because she is super laid back and awesome, but it got me feeling guilty about the assumption I was making. And I do it all of the time.   But if you put her and I together and took a picture and asked strangers to guess who was straight and who was gay, I know what 99% of people would say.  


So how do we, as a community, get past this?  Or more specifically, how do I get past this?  Why do I let my desperation to be recognized in my community trickle over into my style of dress?  I am equally comfortable in all of my presentations, but how do I balance them out more freely and without concern?  And now do I stop myself from making the same silly judgements I resent others for making so quickly?

A-Camp

I have sat and stared at my screen for a good ten minutes trying to figure out how to explain what A-Camp is.  

A-Camp is a camp for lesbian/queer/trans* identified people hosted by Autostraddle (www.autostraddle.com) held up in the mountains in Angels Oaks, California.  It is several days and nights of workshops, panels, activities, games, shows, performances, drinking, dancing, and being in a safe space.  People come from all over the US (and the world!) to meet others and share feelings and explore. 

You are assigned a cabin and cabin mates, you have counselors.  You partake in color wars and attend educational panels on things like gender, race, kink, non-monogamy, spooning, your period, whiskey, and more.  You craft.  You dress up for a dance on the last night and watch a talent show.  You get drunk at night and make out in the woods.  You experience a closeness and a bond with these other queer people that isn't able to be found in the real world and you never want to leave and you have all the feelings in the entire world. 

A-Camp changed my life. 


A-Camp was the reason I moved to Chicago.  It was the reason I landed comfortably here, bonded to a group of Chicago ladies I had met up on that mountain. 

All these people live in Chicago and I met them all because of Camp!

 I met my best friend, Katie, on my shuttle ride up to my first camp.  

One year later we both moved to this city to be nearer to our community and each other; we currently live a ten minute walk apart.  

Seriously, look how much we love each other.

I have been to camp a total of three times, every time it has been put on since its creation, and I hope to go to the rest of them as long as I live/can afford to go.  Explaining how and why camp is so magical is nearly impossible to do unless you have experienced it.  When convincing my friend Anne Marie to attend camp, the only thing I could say about it was "seriously, it will change your life."  She came to the last camp and now fully agrees with my declaration.  

See!  Look how happy Anne Marie (far right) is to be at Camp!

I wrote a thing about camp after crashing harshly back into reality post A-Camp 3.0 : 

It’s crazy missing something so deeply.  Something I never knew I needed, never knew would become so important to me.  It’s only been a little over a year since I went to my first A-Camp but I can almost single-handedly thank it for changing my life entirely.  Thinking of myself as a minority has always been foreign to me.  I feel lucky; privileged.  I am a cisgendered white girl living in a big city where not many people bat an eye when I kiss my girlfriend on the street.  Not always, but the places I choose to spend my time are fairly gay-centric and young.  But then I am reminded of the things people have said to me, the dirty looks, the uneducated and hurtful questions.  The times parents have pulled their children across the street so they wouldn’t have to explain to them why I look the way I look or why I am holding that girl’s hand.  Times I’ve been told I am going to hell by people I once considered closest to me.  The fact that I can’t talk about my life and the people I fall in love with to my parents as easily as I once could (or for the rest of my family, not at all).  When I go to a wedding, I choose to go solo because I don’t want to freak out my childhood friends’ families, the ones that saw me when I was little and pictured me growing up and marrying the right man.  I forget sometimes that I am a woman and I am queer and I am, in fact, a minority.
 That’s part of the magic of A-camp.  You are on a mountain and you are all queer and you are all different and the same and this sense of community and bonding is immediate and intense and suddenly you aren’t a minority anymore.  You’re just one of these three-hundred people who are all in love and searching for it and confused and happy and lonely and tired and elated.  And you all become one, and to leave and be thrust back into the real world is scary and difficult and overwhelming.
 On that mountain I am brave.  I can approach a person that I think is attractive/interesting/wearing something I want/lonely looking/hilarious and we can talk freely.  On that mountain I can wear a two-piece swimsuit at a pool party and not only do I feel comfortable, I feel sexy in the body that has for so long given me anxiety and concern and terrible feelings.  On that mountain the self-conscious late bloomer I so frequently identify with is replaced by someone who notices girls watching her and takes compliments with grace instead of mistrust and confusion. On that mountain I spoke to people who looked like they had their shit together, who were attractive and cool and untouchable, and found out that they are just as concerned and scared and self-doubting as I am.  And I loved them even more for it. On that mountain I wore a tight red dress and watched people stare at my ass and flirted and flaunted for the first time because it felt empowering and good.  On that mountain I opened up and let people in and spoke my true feelings on a stage into a microphone and it felt safe and humbling.  On that mountain I told the people I admired I loved them and they told me it right back and it felt real and solid and affirming in a way that nothing has ever felt before.
 On that mountain I am My Best Self, the self I wish I had the courage to be all of the time in a world that isn’t made up entirely of interesting fashionable articulate thoughtful compassionate understanding queers.  And the best thing I can take down from that mountain is knowing that My Best Self is somewhere inside of me and outside of me and it exists, and I am thankful for all of it.

It is as close as I can get to explaining how much of myself, my happiness, my awareness, my community, my sanity, my friends, and my life I owe to those moments spent on top of Mount Feelings.  

...and 8 months later...

My goal with this blog was to document my experiences moving to a new city.  I was going to write about the trials and tribulations of moving somewhere new, finding a job, meeting people, making new friends, dating, and figuring out my life.

Eight months later, I did exactly as I usually do, which is nothing.

I suppose "nothing" is harsh.  And completely inaccurate   I have done the opposite of nothing, I have done everything.  In eight months I have managed to find an amazing job, move up in my job, meet a million new people, form insanely tight bonds with new best friends, find a ridiculously supportive queer community, break up with my partner from Milwaukee, date around, meet a new partner, fall in love, throw queer events that people actually attend in masses, do unique and ridiculous events and activities all of the time, learn to appreciate myself, and find a happiness I didn't even know I was capable of achieving.

I didn't document it like I had planned.  I just lived it.

Here are things I have learned about myself since moving to Chicago:

• I deserve happiness; it is not selfish to focus on myself and having my own needs is okay
• I am attractive
• Other people find me attractive
• I am funny (and people frequently tell me they think this)
• I love being in love
• I can throw a pretty good party
• I don't give a fuck anymore and I also give all of the fucks all of the time

Some of these things probably sound egotistical and braggart, but I don't intend them to.  It took many years of self-loathing, fear, confidence issues, and ignoring my own needs to tend to the needs and expectations of others to come to these conclusions.  To feel them and say them out loud is powerful and scary and amazing.  I am, easily, the happiest I have ever been.  I am confident and comfortable and alive in my own body.  It's electrifying and comforting all at the same time. 

And about giving fucks - I have no fucks to give.  As in "I don't care what you think about me."  I am not ashamed or embarrassed or awkward like I used to be.  I am not trying to be "cool."  I am not seeking anyone's approval.  Other's judgements and perceptions of me can fuck right off.  I am comfortable and happy.  But the times I DO give a fuck, it's for a good reason.  It means I care.  I give a fuck about my friends and their happiness, about doing right, about being loving and accepting and creating as much positivity as I can.  

I think it would have been neat to document my process of growth, but I also know for me that such a rigid system won't work for me.  I'm not reliable or motivated in this way, and that's okay.  But I shouldn't abandon my projects entirely either; instead I can modify.  I have learned to know myself and listen to myself in these past months, and that has taught me that I just need to figure out what works for me.  

So I will give this another go.  Instead of my "Queer Girl's Guide," it will be an adaptation of sorts.  A guide to my self exploration in this city I have fallen in love with.  A personal blog, if we're being realistic, but I prefer to make things sound fancy. 

So this is me, world.  New and improved.  Here's to hoping I never stop growing, changing, learning and living, but also find a little time to write about it.