A shameful admission

Sometimes I feel like an exceedingly weak person, that I couldn’t just suppress who I actually am and further my career by pretending to be a cis woman.

 

Fucked up, isn’t it, the way cissexism turns us upside down?

 

Anyone else?

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Queer books you may not have read: Part Two

I hesitated, a little, over including this one. “Inconceivable!”, you might say – “surely Audre Lorde’s Zami is a classic that needs no introduction?”

 

Well, classic it certainly is – but I’m amazed by the number of LGBTI activists/artists/general people in the UK who haven’t read it. Whether it’s the usual anti-U.S. bias – or the promotion of white voices at the expense of everyone else – or male voices over everyone else – actually, wait, sorry – it’s probably all of those. Not valid excuses, not now, not ever.

 

So, Lorde’s 1982 ‘biomythography’ Zami: A New Spelling of My Name - “Madivine. Friending. Zami. How Carriacou women love each other is legend in Grenada, and so is their strength and their beauty.”  The childhood, adolescence and adulthood of a fiercely talented poet, academic and activist, chronicled in prose as beautiful, sensual and breath-takingly hard-hitting as her poetry. 1940s, 50s, 60s – New York, Connecticut, Mexico – segregation, McCarthyism, civil rights, gay liberation, women’s liberation.

 

 

“Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me, where I loved some invaluable piece of myself apart from her – so different that I had to stretch and grow in order to recognize her. And in that growing, we came to separation, that place where work begins. Another meeting.”

 

What Zami felt like, reading it at 17: a hope for the future, a glimpse into what an artist’s life could be like, the support of someone older, wiser, stronger – a template for art that could be both cutting and sincere, knowing, bitter, mocking – but never apathetic and pseudo-cynical.

 

What Zami feels like, reading at 28: a call for justice movements to celebrate each and every unique part of the people they’re fighting for, an acknowledgement of loss, a hope for love that combines the body and the mind in equal measures, the desire for adventure, the need for self-preservation – a hunger for more, always.

 

Good for: Burnt-out activists, hopeless causes, struggling artists, anyone feeling trapped and alone.

 

Bad for: Those who hate memoir (really?), anyone who objects to a little spirituality/mysticism in their lives.

 

Goes with: Something very strong and very sweet – Vietnamese iced coffee. The burnt smell of hot city pavements. Reading with the taste of your lover still on your tongue.

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Transpose: Literary Edition – Thank you

So, the final tallies are in – and we raised just over £300 for Roz’s American book tour – how amazing is that?

 

Well, Lesbilicious thought it was fairly amazing: “It was wonderful to attend a queer event with such a strong focus on performances by trans and trans-friendly people, and to be reminded that art created by and for our community is varied and valuable. With hints from Lester of more Transpose coming later this year, I’ll very much look forward to the next instalment.” Hell yes. And I’m hoping for some time in August for the next one…

 

Obviously, an enormous thank you. And then another enormous thank you after that. Not just to the performers (though another big hand for Roz Kaveney, Lyman Gamberton, Dr. Carmilla, Elaine O’Neill and Hel Gurney), or to the venue (go buy books at Woolfson & Tay – buy them now!) but to everyone who came, brought friends, promoted the event and generally made it a gorgeous afternoon of art, laughter and sweetness.

 

There are still a few people who need to contact me about items/experiences they won in the auction – info@cnlester.com, if you’d be so kind.

 

Best part of the day? I won a sexy bow tie in the auction. Points all round.

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A funny thing

And by ‘funny’ I mean, well…upsetting, perplexing, frustrating, ridiculous. I’ve touched on it a little before.

 

Despite, or perhaps because of, the androgyny – and certainly because of the whiteness and thinness and non-visable disabilities – I know that I’m often considered beautiful by mainstream standards of beauty. I don’t know it so much in myself (thanks, terrible, terrible bullying) – but I know it from what others tell me.

 

And I know that, in the eyes of so many of the cis people who tell me, it utterly repudiates my being trans. And it is funny, that again and again I’m told that I’m beautiful – by people who won’t use ‘they’, and won’t accept that I’m anything but a woman – because I’m beautiful and therefore a woman, and a woman, and therefore beautiful. One aspect of my physical being is highlighted – my face, perhaps, or, again, being white and thin and able-bodied – and the other aspects of my physical being are ignored, dismissed. Easier to disregard the evidence of your own eyes, and only see what you’re comfortable seeing.

 

What does it say about the way cis society has vilified and othered trans people, that being trans and being beautiful are seen as mutually exclusive?

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Queer books you may not have read: Part One

Is there anything nicer than burdening others with book recommendations? Other than curling up with the books in question and an enormous mug of coffee, obviously. Um – I read a lot – and trying to get other people to read everything I’ve read is kind of a personal goal. Plus, I’d rather blog than do my paperwork – so, onwards to what will hopefully become a sporadic kind of series…

 

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Stone Butch Blues or Kavalier & Clay – quite the opposite, they’re two of my favourite works of fiction. But if all your queer favourites are looking a little dogeared and tired, and you really, really, really can’t stand the thought of starting Fifty Shades of Grey, even as a joke, then maybe you’ll find a few ideas around here.

 

 

” ‘Just think, Vanya, how odd it is, that here you have another person, another person entirely, and his legs are different, and his skin, and his eyes – and he’s completely yours, completely, completely, you can look at, kiss and touch all of him; every little mark on his body, wherever it might be, the little golden hairs that grow on his arms, every little furrow and hollow of the skin that is loved much too much…”

 

Ah, so – Mikhail Kuzmin‘s Wings. Maybe it might look like an odd choice considering what I’ll be blogging about this week – I hope not – but an exquisite novel. Published in 1906, it was really the first piece of serious Russian literature to address same-sex desire in a positive way, and Kuzmin became something of an icon of Russian gay culture (one of the first gay rights groups post-communism was named “Wings” in his honour).

 

What Wings is: a perfectly executed recreation of a dreamy adolescence, a wash of word painting, like listening to Scriabin, an uncomfortably uncritical look at the relationship between a younger man and an older and, therefore, thoroughly typical of its time and genre, a coming out novel, a coming of age novel, an exploration of jealousy, an account of loving someone and accepting their imperfections, a European romance, an upper-middle class bout of navel-gazing, a love letter to fin de siècle art. Gorgeous.

 

Good for: romantics, artists, anyone wanting to remember what it feels like to be young.

 

Bad for: fans of plot.

 

Goes with: Russian tea and krendel, long summer nights, one too many shots of honey vodka.

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A trope I would like to wave goodbye to…

…is the one of academic/philosophical discourses around sex, gender and trans issues being incompatible with an ‘authentic’ experience of living as a trans person and all that that entails – bodily dysphoria, abuse and harassment, the struggle to obtain adequate healthcare etc.

 

Enjoying and critiquing the works of Butler doesn’t mean you can’t have sobbed over just how wrong your body feels. Taking a multidisciplinary approach to trans activism doesn’t mean you haven’t been assaulted in the street. Approaching gender as an historical artifact doesn’t negate yours or anybody else’s gender. You can understand the myth of the binary gender system and still be a man or a woman – or anybody else. It isn’t a struggle between two opposing viewpoints, and shouldn’t be misinterpreted as such. Because someone enjoys and works with the traditional of critical thought on sex and gender isn’t an invitation to assume that their lives have been free of transphobia and dysphoria.

 

Sometimes we have to accept that there is more than ‘either/or’ – because sometimes it’s ‘and’ ‘and’ ‘and’ ‘and’ ‘and’.

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