When I first came out as trans and as a lesbian, I was deeply involved in my church, they were like a second family to me. When I first tried writing about my feelings after going to church for the first time after coming out, this is what I wrote. I previously read this at the 2014 May A-Camp Staff Reading.
Bisexual Awareness Week: We See Each Other, And That’s Something
The first ever Bisexual Awareness Week ends today. In the last seven days, groups have released illuminating reports about the bisexual community, bisexuality hashtags have popped up on twitter, and people have hosted and attended events around the U.S. Bi people made connections and shared their stories. Robyn Ochs released a new book on bisexual menthat I can’t wait to read. It’s awesome to see so much activity and learn about all the bisexual people who are doing amazing work.
Calluses and Cow Sheds: How I Found My Queerness in Rural America
I found my queerness in rural America. In the whirring of the female operated Massey Ferguson tractor, in the big brown boots that farm life let me wear.
I learned to lick a vagina balanced on the 2 ½ foot wide bed of my trailer with the collective rumble of 43 female goats ruminating grass just outside.
That year I spent a lot of time watching the goats and cows eat grass. Mostly because I found their single-minded focus incredibly comforting. Also because our fences were shoddy and I had to figure out how they were constantly escaping. I was learning to care for animals like I was learning to listen to myself: in silent and slow observation.
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As a high school junior, I was chosen to take part in Smith College’s Women of Distinction program, an initiative designed to attract academically high-achieving students of color to the prestigious liberal arts college. During my long weekend at Smith, I attended a lecture on the formation of black racial identity, and first came across the concept of nigrescence: the psychological process of becoming black, or assimilating blackness into one’s identity and self-conception. By the end of the lecture, I had a page full of hastily scrawled notes. This, I knew, was the thing I’d been longing for, and felt incomplete and sketched without.
Sober in the City: An Atheist Walks into AA
I’m an atheist, so it’s pretty ironic that my epic celebration of Easter Sunday 2008 is what ultimately landed me in an AA meeting. On that fateful Sunday, my biological mother (I was adopted because she was a crack addict — a shit show of a story that I will save for later) came into the city to take me out for drunk brunch, an activity that seemed to be the only thing we could bond over because being sober while listening to her justify her abusive behavior was soul-crushing. We started off with the usual: bottomless mimosas. This turned into an afternoon of bar hopping. After she went home, my partner and I invited friends over to our apartment and we continued to drink… until around 8am-ISH.
She Asked If She Still Made Me Nervous
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I met a girl who scares me. She’s scared me since I first sat next to her on a cloudy April afternoon, too nervous to say anything. But she doesn’t know that she scares me. And I’ve met plenty of girls before. I asked her what she was doing, told her I wanted to drive to the ocean.
She said, “I want to run away too.”
I told her I had a few dollars to my name, barely any traceable debt. Then I imagined the two of us, windows rolled down, the soundtrack to a new life. Her vulnerable, without knowing she is being anything other than herself. Me, watching her, my body quivering at every glance my way. I imagined the burnt cigarettes in our mouths, the stories we would tell, hands waving in the wind, feet on the dashboard, bare legs in the sun. I imagined the stops we would make, the people we would be, and I fell in love with her. But I’ve met plenty of girls before and I’ve only kissed her once.
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The first lie I remember telling was to my grandmother over the phone, when I was maybe eight. Our cat had given birth to six kittens, I said. We didn’t even have a cat. She believed me, and when I passed the phone back to my mother, scolded her for being irresponsible enough not to spay it. My mother thought it was cute, I think. I wish I could remember why I did…
Drinking My Way Through Texas: A Beer Diary of Sorts
All through college I thought I didn’t like beer. I drank whiskey on ice like a champ, but beer made me gassy and I thought it tasted bad. Occasionally I’d drink whatever pisswater the party hosts put in the keg, but if given a choice I stuck with cider or liquor. When I moved to Nicaragua last year, I was constantly bombarded with Toña and Victoria, the two national beers. Over the course of a…
Admitting That You’re Home: A Photo Diary
I’m on the floor watching Punky Brewster. Punky lives in Chicago, Illinois, with her dog Brandon and her foster dad, Henry. “Me and J.W. used to live in Chicago,” she says from behind me.
I can’t believe anyone I know has ever lived anywhere but here.
She tells me that after the Depression, lots of poor people moved up to Chicago in the 1940s to work in factories because there wasn’t any work…
Learning to Use Chopsticks: Coming Out as Korean-American
At 27, I came out as Korean-American. I was always Korean, of course. I checked the “Asian” box when filling out a form. My ethnicity was written on my face in the shape of my eyes and my small flat nose. But until a few years ago, it wasn’t an identity I felt connected to. There were many identities that came first — poet, bisexual, queer, feminist, activist, organizer, fattie, vegan. Being…
The Ersatz Emancipation of Femininity: On Being a Bulimic, Brown Lesbian
To be a woman in the Western world is to live under the hold of normative femininity — the surreptitious web of supposed truths about the correct attitudes and appearances of womanhood. They are cruel and demanding lies built on misogyny and the contempt of women and their potential. To be a woman in the Western world is to understand that your worth stems from the ability to be thin, passive,…
It Appears I Have Joined A Masturbation Cult
Last Wednesday I walked into an event space in SoHo, sweaty, tired, a liiitle bit tipsy (perhaps explaining the sweaty fatigue), halfway expecting to run away screaming with my pants down. Literally.
I was at a TurnON event run by the people at OneTaste, who help people engage with their inner sexy and to be present, honest, and orgasmic in every corner of their life. They also teach people how…
Sweating in Sweatpants: A Brunchventure
Hold onto your eggs, we’re getting ready for Autostraddle’s International Brunch Weekend 8/23-24! Find a brunch meetup in your city or create your own by heading over to our events page. You can also load up on all things brunch by watching this space. From playlists to recommendations to personal essays, we’re writing all about the brunch experience. Get excited! BRUNCH.
Pretty much the only…
Nothing Is Off Limits: How Queer Brunch Raised This Queer Feminist Fagette
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At 16 I was a rage-filled, loud-mouthed, angry queer feminist. I was over the butch-femme dynamic in the lesbian community, and the casual misogyny I found among gay men was no longer a thing I was willing to overlook. I felt as if I had no real place in the LGBTQ community at a time when I needed a community more than ever. I was always being told I was a little…
Eight Ways I’ve Been Made to Feel About My Asian Eyes
1.I’m 15 and for the first time in my life, a teacher calls me out on sleeping in class when I’ve been awake the whole time. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened earlier, because kids have made fun of my eyes since preschool. Times are a-changing I guess. I’m the only Asian in my class, one of three in my entire high school, and people bring it up all the time for the rest of the year. I get it. It’s…
