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Also? I love this video.

Labels: bisexuality, homosexuality, marriage, stupid people

Via Immigration Equality:

Rep. Jerrold Nadler plans to reintroduce the Uniting American Families Act on
Feb. 12.

You can make the bill a success by convincing your Representative to support the bill from Day One. Reintroducing the bill with as many cosponsors as possible will show powerful momentum for the rights of gay and lesbian binational couples!

Please call your Representative and ask them to be an original cosponsor of the "Uniting American Families Act of 2009." It’s easy!

**Find out who your U.S. House Representative is.
Go to http://www.congressmerge.com/, enter your address, and you will be provided the name of your U.S. Representative.

**Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202)224-3121 and ask to be connected to your U.S. Representative.

**Tell your representative’s staff:

I am calling to ask Representative ________________ to be an original cosponsor of the Uniting American Families Act of 2009. To cosponsor, he/she must contact Rep. Jerrold Nadler who is the lead sponsor.

The U.S. government discriminates against gay and lesbian binational couples by not allowing us to sponsor our foreign-born life partners for immigration. Because of this, we face the terrible choice of separating from the person we love or leaving our country. As Americans, we should not have to choose between family and country. Please ask Rep. _________________ to cosponsor the Uniting American Families Act of 2009 by reaching out to Rep. Nadler before February 11.

Thanks for asking your member of Congress to celebrate love this Valentine’s Day by cosponsoring UAFA!

Labels: bisexuality, immigration, transgender

'What God has joined together, let no man put assunder.' -- Traditional Protestant Marriage Vows


"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

Labels: bisexuality, marriage

*sigh* I talked to her tonight, to tell her the good news about my upcoming raise (7 percent!), and she said she thought she'd found me a boyfriend. I was all -- but I don't want a boyfriend. *sigh* She means well, but....I've got an Emmy. Don't need a boyfriend. Of course, she doesn't know I've got an Emmy. She wouldn't like that I've got an Emmy. *sigh*

I love my mother and I know she means well. She doesn't want me to be lonely. But, how is she going to deal with an Emmy instead of an Emmett? I don't know. And she's not so pleased about me wanting to move to Atlanta either. But then, I pointed out that I could be moving to another country, and suddenly Atlanta seemed pretty good.

In other news, this post by Thoughtracer has me thinking. Actually, most of her posts get me thinking. She may be my long lost twin. But anyway. . .I share her feeling of not quite fitting in the queer community. In fact, I pretty much have no association with the queer community at the moment, but when I did, I still felt...not quite right.

Despite the fact that I joke that I'm the stereotypical bisexual woman -- fat, non-shaven, burks and a buncha cats -- no one looks at me and thinks "Ayep, she's queer." I'm just a girl, not particularly butch nor femme. Sometimes I wear makeup, usually I don't. Sometimes I wear dresses, mostly I don't. Sometimes I'm more 'queer' than other times, but there's no rainbow stickers on my car, ya know? So, I'd like to be part of the community, but I don't know how.

Thoughtracer says: Not being able to be identified as a member of the group, being “stealth,” being, basically, invisible, really demarcates you from that group, in a certain way. Aside from allowing the “stealth” to claim the privilege that the oppressing, opposing, or other group claims, it also allows the group to which you really belong, the group you’d like to identify with, separate you from its ranks. Can you really be a part of a group without appearing or taking the image of one of its members?

I don't know the answer to that question. I'd like to belong. Goddess knows, my politics and sympathies are firmly in the queer camp. I've been out as bi to my friends for a few years. I haven't ever had a serious girlfriend before, but there have been flirtations and whatnot. And well, the biphobia in certain queer corners is legendary, so it's pretty easy for me to be excluded. And honestly, I feel too uncertain in many situations to be comfortable. So, what am I supposed to do?

I know, of course, that I'm under no obligation to be part of any community. Because sexuality isn't a club you join. And whether or not I get involved has no bearing at all on my orientation. But....my family is not going to react well when everything is out in the open. Having somewhere I can go, people who understand. Well. That'd be nice.

Labels: bisexuality, mothers, parents

In honor of National Coming Out Day (what? You didn't know that was today? Shame on you!), I've decided to come out of the closet. The Anonymous blogger closet, that is. (Like anyone whose read a fraction of this blog is unaware of my bisexuality. Please. So that coming out has been and gone.)

Why? Well, the reason I was anonymous to begin with was because I was working out some stuff and wanted to do it on a blog where no one knew me. So, instead of my Livejournal, I started this little spot. I was wanting to talk about religion and sex and other stuff, without the people who knew me in RL knowing what I was doing. And I was also working for a company that would have fired my ass for blogging something that would make the company look bad. (Gannett is the DEVIL. Gannett is Satan's Handmaiden and is destroying journalism. Corporate media is BAD!!!!!)

Ahem.

Well, I no longer work for the Devil and I've worked through the crap I wanted to work through. Plus, now I have a Civil Service job that affords me lots of protection, so my job is pretty damned safe. I can't go around endorsing or harpooning any political candidates/parties, but other than that? I'm pretty much covered. (But I can still take positions on issues, so we're all good.)

And frankly, I'm going to be 33 next year. If someone has a problem with my faith or my sexuality, they can go fuck themselves. I'm an adult, this is America and you can just deal.

So, why should I stay anonymous? If people give me too much shit, I'll just blow this place up and start a new blog. *shrug* And so, I give you....Moi:



Admittedly, not the best photo I've ever taken and my hair is currently longer, darker and I have new glasses, but....that would be me, in all my glory. Gaze upon me and drool, for I know you want to.

Labels: bisexuality, body acceptance, fat, fun, pagan

Seventeen and strung out on confusion. . .

I've found out what it takes to be a man
And mom and dad will never understand
What's happening to me.

-- Green Day, Coming Clean

In my listing of bisexual celebs, I somehow missed Billie Joe Armstrong. And I don't know how, since 1.) he sings for my favorite band and 2.) he's gorgeous and I.Want.Him. He wrote Coming Clean about realizing he was bisexual, which is pretty apparent to anyone whose gone through it and heard the song. So, add him to the (woefully short) list of publically out bisexual celebs.

So, I'm thinking about sex. Again. I find I do that far, far more than I'm supposed to. Because, ya know, we womens. We never thing about Teh Sex. But more specifically, I'm thinking about sex in context of relationships.

In my perfect world, I'm a happy little slut. No shame, no hangups, no problem finding lovers. A guy or girl catches my eye? I saunter up, flirt a bit, pass out the digits and suggest we go somewhere more private. The sex is always good, the orgasms always intense, the afterglow always beamy. Nice world, huh?

In reality, of course, it is far from a perfect world. I'm got more hangups than there is blog-space to blog about 'em. Shame? Well....I think I'm actually over the shame part. (Yippee!! Score one for therapy. Now, to tackle the 1,999,999,999,999,999 more. . .)And finding lovers? Ha. Yeah. As I said, I'm taking applications, but. . .no takers.

And sex is not always good, is it? Physically, I mean. We all know, emotionally there are more hidden mines than you can imagine. But, you'd think, physically at least, there should be some kind of guaranteed payoff. Orgasm should be a given and they should come easy. I mean, I can make myself cum in 45 seconds, why can't everyone else? (Yeah, I admit. I timed it once. So sue me.)(And granted, it's not /always/ that fast. But come on, what woman can't make herself cum in three minutes or less?) (Or, uh, am I a freak that way?)So, anyway, the lack of guaranteed orgasm or skilled partner is why I'm not a one-night stand kinda girl. I mean, if I'm getting undressed and naked, I want the Happy, ya know?

In a relationship, it's different. Sure, maybe it's not good today. Maybe it's just okay. Maybe you'd really rather just turn over and go back to sleep. But you don't, usually, because you're in a relationship and you care about your partner. And you know that it will be good again, next time. Or later on you can take your time. Or you can agree to try out what you want in the future. There are payoffs, dividends, lots of Happy Happy Joy Joy.

So I'm faced with this problem -- I don't do one-nighters and I'm not in a relationship. And, being human, I'm needing more contact than with my trusty Rabbit. I need the weight of another person, the sound of someone else breathing in the night. Picking up the phone to call someone in the middle of the day to see if they can pick up Chinese food on their way home from work. Someone to share a bottle of wine with, to take vacations with, to do the damned laundry with. I need the physical presense of someone else in my life.

This need is becoming more intense lately. It makes a certain amount of sense, really. I've spent the last six years doing a lot of work on myself, a lot of putting things in order, dealing with some issues that doomed my last relationship. Being a good partner just wasn't possible for me before. I was too depressed, too sick, too impatient and needy. I was too in need of being the center, of having someone to support me and too unwilling to embrace a partner's quirks without judgement. I don't think there's any shame in admitting I would have been a very bad girlfriend. It's just a process of evolution. I know I would have been toxic, and so I didn't date anyone. I didn't draw anyone into my mess, because I knew I had to fix it.

So now, now that I've got my health under control and I've got my career on a stable, non-stressful path. Now that I've wrestled with those issues that kept me slightly ashamed -- of myself and of my partner, no matter how great they really were -- I find myself growing increasingly in need of someone. Not just anyone, of course. I'm certainly not desparate.

I think I have this great life to share. Sure, it's good living it myself, but it would be better if I had someone to go on with me. I've gotten to the point in my life where I can see my strong points and my weaknesses and not hate myself for either. And I think I can do the same for a partner, should I find one.

I used to think, if I fell in love with a woman, it would be near impossible to be open with my family about it. And, truthfully, I'd still be hesitant. But it's not something that truly terrifies me anymore. The fear comes from the thought of losing them. And I fear that, not just because I deeply love them and count on their support, but because losing them would leave me alone. And, until now, I haven't felt that I could truly, honestly survive on my own. I haven't felt, well, like an adult. It felt like I was still stuck in college-kid mode. But now it's different. I had a goal - find a new job that has promotion potential, that allows me to save for retirment, that will let me pay off my student loans. And I found it. On my own, with no help from my family. Did it, embraced it and gods help me, and totally in love with it.

I used to feel that, if my family couldn't love me enough to accept me in all my shades of being, there must be something wrong with me. I spent so very much of my life thinking their must be something very wrong with me, for any number of reasons. Too fat, too weird, too queer, too goth, too depressed, too smart, too angry, whatever. And now, it occurs to me, that there's nothing wrong with me. That if they can't accept me, they're the ones with the problem. And eventually, I think they'd come around. My mother, at least. My dad? Gods, I think it would break my dad's heart and I can't stand that thought. Who knows what my brother and sister-in-law would do. It's a scary thought, my terribly Baptist family finding out. They'd think that I betrayed them somehow, when the truth is they'd be the ones doing the betraying.

Part of me is angry that I even have to consider this. Should I fall in love with a woman, I have to weigh the pros and cons -- to tell the family or not to tell the family, to risk that lose or not. Falling in love shouldn't break your heart and it shouldn't have to be a secret.

Labels: bisexuality, family

I was talking to my bestest friend last night and we were discussing that stupid 'soy makes you gay' article that's been floating around. And I made a joke that the fact I was allergic to milk as a baby and had to be fed soy milk was the cause of my bisexuality. And it occurred to me, it was the first time I'd said the words 'my bisexuality' outloud to another person. I mean, it's not a secret. She has known for ages that I liked girls as well as guys. I just had never said it like that, out loud. My bisexuality. It actually made me pause, the sound of those words outloud. Which I wasn't expecting, since I've been aware of and at peace with my sexuality for a long time. We've talked about girls I've had crushes on, what I found attractive in women before. So, like I said, it's not like she was unaware. And still, saying it outloud was...I don't know the word for it, really.

The first time I was aware I was attracted to women sexually, I was 16. I'd been aware I dug men for years, since I was like 11 or something. But at 16, I was spending the week with my best friend at-the-time, Sera. We had been doing gods only knows what during the day and were getting ready to go to bed. We were sharing her double bed, which we'd done so many times I lost count. Just goofing around, tickling and whatnot. Like we'd done so many times before. At one point, she had me pinned on my back, straddling me, tickling my stomach. And I thought -- gods, I've got to kiss her.

I didn't. I was too afraid by even having the thought. It struck me dumb. It made me go very still. I wanted to kiss her? Where the hell did that come from? And yet, even after I thought about it for a second, tried to rationalize it away as some crazy Devil-inspired thought (hey, I was a good Southern Baptist then), I still really wanted to kiss her. Kiss her and much, much more.

I don't think I slept that night. I remember being very aware of her laying next to me. She had the longest brown hair. And freckles all over her face. Her breathing seemed so loud and I thought for sure she could hear my heart beating, it was so loud. But no. She didn't notice. I must have covered well.

We spent the next few years as best friends, even rooming together at college. I never told her about that night, about how badly I had wanted to reach over and kiss her, run my hands through her hair, count all those freckles. And, eventually, those feelings faded and she was just my best friend, who happened to be in love with the slimest, skeezest man on the planet. But those are details.

I had no words for what I was experiencing then. I freaked out, but eventually I realized I did have a genuine attraction for men. So it must have been, what? A surge of hormones? Mistaking friendship-love with sexual-love? I was only sixteen, what did I know? And I didn't have those feelings for any other women for a long time, so I was able to write it off as a fluke. Then I meet my Ex and fell madly in love with him, so it didn't really matter if I had been or hadn't been.

As I've said before, spending those seven years with the Ex gave me the space and time to really come to grips with the fact that, yes, I did like women too. I don't believe I could have done it if I hadn't had that safety of being in a committed hetero relationship. It wasn't threatening, because I know I wouldn't act on it so long as we were together and, in the foolishness of youth, I believed that would be forever.

I started to entertain fantasies of hooking up with the cute girl in my chemistry class or the punk with two-colored hair who performed the most awesome poems at open mic night. Or you know, both at the same time. I never told my Ex about those, but he used to tease me that I was going to leave him for a woman. Eventually, all of my friends just sorta knew I was bi, i didn't have to tell them. I never had to come out, in a way, because I just sorta evolved into it and I was with a bunch of people who were accepting and didn't make a big deal out of it.

So, when I said, finally "my bisexuality" it sounded stark. Sort of. . .it gave me a chill down my spine. I suppose I still have enough Southern Baptist in me to inspire a fearful reaction, even though I've long given up the trappings of that particular religion. Even though I'm just putting into words something that's no secret. Even though I know the person I was talking too had no issues at all with my sexuality. And I think, if it makes me feel like that now, all these years and years later, there's no way in the world I could have ever said it to myself, to anyone else when I was 16, if I'd managed to understand it.

Because there doesn't seem to be any real guide for coming out bi. If you're gay, well, you've got people in the public eye (now, anyway) who have done it and have been successful. There are books and groups and it's in the social consciousness. But being bi? Most people want to say it's a phase. Or it's a stop on the road to full-gay disclosure.

And if you are bi, are you still bi if you're in a hetero relationship? Do you become gay if you're with someone of your gender? We're invisible, really, since the world likes to label relationships based on the gender of the partners. Which pisses me off, because what happens to all those little girls and boys who are bisexual and don't know how to be that? Whose going to tell them that it's okay? That they're fine like they are, that it's perfectly normal to like people regardless of gender. I really wish someone had been around to tell me, to let me know it was possible.

Labels: bisexuality

That's a question I've been thinking about for awhile now. How transparent do I have to live my life? On one hand, I can be as obtuse as I like since well, it's my life. It's really not anyone else's damned business. And that works, in theory. But the reality is that everyone lives in the world, which means living with other people. And if you want to have a life, to have friends, any semblence of a social life, you've got to decide just how much other people know about you.

There are some things that are obvious about me. I'm clearly white, clearly female, clearly fat, clearly adorable. So those things, I have no control over. Other things, well. Here in the Deep Deep Deep South, everyone assumes I'm also a good Baptist girl, just like them. That I'm not isn't readily apparent. Do I tell them I'm not? Usually, yes. If the conversation comes up, I just tell them I don't go to church anymore. That usually leads to more questions, but I can generally deflect those with a "it's not god that's the problem, it's the church" which generally gets people to launch into a story or 12 of nasty 'Church Folk' they've known and soon they forget all about my not going to church anymore. So, that much is pretty easy. Do I tell them I find the Divine easier to access when I conceive of Her as female? Uh. No. That's likely to get my lynched around here. Or called a witch. Not that I mind that label too much, it's just not accurate and I figure most people around here are confused enough about witchcraft and paganism, I don't need to add to it. But anyway, how much responsiblity do I have to let people know how I really believe?

There are personal safety issues to consider. Most people around here wouldn't do anything but look at me funny and promise to pray for me. But there's always the idiot, drunk redneck who could get some crazy notion in his head to do Something About It. I don't worry too much about work backlash, since I work for Big Company and they know they could get sued for religious discrimination. And most of my friends have at least some idea of how I believe. And yet...is that enough? Actually, most of my friends are pretty cool about it. I've become the de facto go-to girl about /any/ non-Christian religion. (Because, clearly, I know just soooo much about Judiasm. Or Buddhism. Or Islam. Actually, that does kinda irk me. Any non-Christian faith around here just kinda gets lumped in with every other non-Christian faith. *sigh*)

Also, with my sexuality, exactly how out am I supposed to be? This one is harder for me than religion, because frankly I'm more likely to get physically hurt over it. It's truely astonishing how must resistance and bigotry there is around this place to anyone whose not completely Vanilla Hetero. Again, it's the default assumption. People see me and assume, oh, she likes men. Well, yes, actually, I do. But I like women too. And sometimes, I like women more than men. Sometimes, I like men more than women. It's not an easy thing to explain to people and people don't like to be confused.

Some of my friends know I'm bi and some are really pretty damned sure, I just haven't actually said it to them. If I showed up at their house one day with a girlfriend, it would suprise them exactly none. At work? Eh. No. Not really. It's not a secret, exactly, I just haven't ever brought it up. And when I thought about it, someone would come up and make a really awful remark about 'those gay people' and that shut me right up. Which may be cowardly, but I just don't want the extra drama at the office. I call people on the comments, don't misunderstand me, I've just never said they applied to me in particular.

My family? Ha. No. Not going to be telling them anytime soon. Unless I meet a woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, anyway. Then they'll just learn to deal. I think my mother would be...okay, with it. She wouldn't like it, but she's very very good at denial. And she's gotten much better at accepting that I'm an adult and have my own life and she doesn't have any say in it. My father though, I think it would break his heart. And that's a hard thing to deal with. My father and I didn't have a particularly close relationship when I was growing up. I didn't turn out the way he expected his little girl to, I think. I was extremely headstrong, decidedly not girly, hated the very rural life he was living, dove headfirst into all sorts of things that scared him to death and generally did whatever I wanted and didn't care what other people thought about me. On one hand, he's insanely proud of me. On the other, he doesn't know how to handle a daughter who doesn't act like a girl is 'supposed to.'

We're much better now, though. My relationship with both my parents got a hellava lot better when I moved out of the house all those many years ago. Now that my brother has finally given them a grandbaby, things are pretty close to peachy. (Because if they looked at me for a grandchild one more time, I was going to scream. You'd think the fact that I've been telling them since I was 12 that I didn't want children would have given them a clue, but no.)

And yet...and yet I know I can't tell them this. I would, like I said, if I meet the woman o'my dreams. There are limits to how much I'm willing to protect them and sacrificing a good relationship is not one of them. But do they need to know otherwise? If it would cause them pain and cause nothing but drama for the family, is it really worth it to lay all the cards on the table?

Labels: bisexuality, pagan, religion