Those 3 Games (Het, Queer, Fem)
Those 3 Games: Fem, Queer and Het.
Every hard transition in life sets you in front, or rather right into the muddled middle of a number of tough decisions, or only one, that soon turn out to be decisions already made in secret, no matter if by destiny, the deep unconscious powers of one’s life or hard limitations and obstacles -- or institutions, projects and persons one finds oneself bound to without any second or third option for now or longer. Or the rest of one’s life.
Such a case is of special interests if the very ideology, doctrine, ethics organically related to such a decision and bifurcation of paths is not at all in accordance with the mainstream, not even the basic consensus of the scene, or the fabric of related scenes, one is moving in.
I have always been deeply moved by the cynical banker becoming a new born Christian overnight. Or the nun becoming a skilled dominatrix, or the hard boiled Oxford scientist leaving the West for a transformation into a Yogi.
Of course there are also the dark cases, such as an artist and cityscape painter of minor talent, homeless man, ex-soldier, fan of Wagner turning into the world’s worst ever dictator and mass killer.
My case is by far not that dramatic, but it is of interest nonetheless.
I just found out that there are certain games one can simply not play at the same time, in one season of life. And as I am absolutely willing and eager to play at least one in grand style, even more so as signs point at me being also gifted in it, against all expectations I had, or anyone had, about my person so far, I have to say good bye to the others, or for sure one other.
Let’s call those 3 games feminism, queer life and heterosexual romance.
I claim that 2 of them can maybe live side by side, if one of them is the dominant one, but for sure not all three. Or one would need to forge a whole new learning system, or build a whole new generous rich and wide house, or palace, where all 3 could cooperate and support each other.
For my time, place, life I do not see how.
My funny situation is this: I used to pass as a feminist, a so called strong, smart, ambitious, aggressive, leftist, intellectual, single woman, moving in academia and performance art, in 2 fields where any woman of some talent and ambition is expected to be a feminist with an imperial pre-determination that borders on all priests being expected to believe in baby Jesus.
Yet I had basically no, or very few, friends. Men disliked me for my aggressive feminism and women did not at all buy my act.
With solid reasons. For I have never been a feminist, just a lonely, sad, bitter woman. Or rather a sad, lonely, bitter brain in a fat, nerdy, sexless body. That is all.
I have been obese. I still am, but less so. I suffered from all the lack of vitality, all the exclusions and self-exclusions an obese woman can possibly suffer under. Any claim to feminism was just a lame escape. For women did not like my fat body either, they were just trained to show lame and largely hypocritical pity with the fellow loser.
And then came queer, my coming out as a genderfluid person having male, female and non-binary traits in my neuro, my psycho, my physical, my social and my sexual personality.
Did feminism help with that? Not that I would know of. For obviously they are incompatible just like Dawkins and US Fundamentalism.
Feminism claims that anyone born with a vagina must identify with the global transhistorical collective of born losers, slaves, saints, victims by the name of “woman”. To say that one has “male traits” which leads to a strong resonance with a lot of “typical male” qualities in men leads to an outcry of feminist rage that there are no “male traits”, for any single trait one could possibly like in men can just as well be found by woman, in women, or claimed by them.
To which I respond with my usual reference to material, physical, biological, real nature I am far more fond of than of any Zeitgeist ideology some mediocre persons of whatever gender can build their short-lived public careers on, and say: take smell.
I love the smell of some men. I do not like the typical smell of women. And yes, there is a difference. I could pass a smell test anytime, and would at any time be able to tell the leather/vanilla/wood etc. smell of a man from the smell of a woman I associate with vinegar and metal.
Now what, sister? Am I an essentialist fascist for claiming that smell is a thing, a deep thing, that cannot be re-programmed by your ideology just because you say so?
I could name a lot of other things where queers and feminist simply cannot agree. They are like one fanatic religion and one new emergent field of experimental cults that simply cannot cooperate in harmony. Feminism is like islam, a closely knit system of fanatic doctrines one has to swallow whole to have a comfy life within the walls of that fortress. While queer is a healthy No to all binary doctrines, all fortresses, all timid identities that are only made of the glue of victim cult, us-against-them-mentality and the unhappy support one self-defined loser owes to the other in a life without joy, glamour or liberty.
To me all mainstream feminism is by now nothing but a sad palace of pure resentment. The new born spinster’s grand revenge. A church I was born into, locked in as a matter of inherited deception, and need to leave behind by all means.
So I settled in queer land with next to no close ties to Feminism or any enforced solidarity of women against men. I kept all my old female friends who are themselves not so keen on feminism. One is a romantic and a writer, the other an expert in astrology, the other a bi sexual film maker from Bulgaria, having just like me an idea of being a gay soul in a female body, also into karmic rebirths and other hermetic wisdoms I have adopted to connect them to my queer life style.
So far I have not made anything of that conversion public, not in any site but this blog. Still I can see that all women who still uphold the mythology of poor women being always fucked over by evil men and their evil systems, women who live a single life or only hang out with outer women of that denomination, keep a distance from me. A significant distance. In the meantime I lost weight and found a person, a very strange person, an enchanted boy, who looked at me as if I were beautiful.
As what, I wonder? As woman, as unique person, as unfinished childlike larva just like him, or as another psychically gifted androgynous person, just like him, only in reverse?
Whatever it was, it started or rather accelerated and enhanced a feedback loop that made me more beautiful, in my own eyes, his eyes, the eyes of others.
And here I stand now, on the other end of life’s spectrum. Men like me, men flirt with me, men want to protect me, help me, keep me in their life, have a conversation with me … men treat me well.
And women cast a bitter, jealous glance at me and walk away. Or make snappy remarks. Or let me feel the full weight of their bitchy jealousy when it comes to our struggle for the one boychild moon calf we are all crazy about.
He is so easily besieged by women taking themselves for being strong while in fact they are just abusive, finding his trigger points, he is so sad, weak, needy, easy to influence. Easy to be locked in ugly stuffy households.
They offer a flat, or some legal advice, and soon they sit on his back, being dragged along, for there is an ox in that boy, loving him some ridiculous weight to drag with him.
In rushes strange old and new me, clearly the far better alternative. I have a house and I can think in legal terms any time, but it is all still so unfinished.
It will be a long hard struggle. A struggle women have always fought, the struggle for a man they want, a man they have a perfect hand for, and he for them. So they will not settle for any lame “female solidarity” ethics or “no harm rule” when it comes to driving inferior suiters away.
Yes, it is tough, but it is older, more powerful and more sacred than any modern ideology bringing food to the bitter tables of verbose resentment.
So whish me luck on my late crusade to re-invent grand heterosexual love, romance, if not marriage for muddled, strange queer old me.
Or call me a bloody traitor and adopt me as your favourite hate object.
If I add my sweet boy ox’s broad back to my own my rather fragile shoulders will be strong enough to be burdened by your misguided hate.