He then proceeded to inform me that he “has a test for this.”  He asked me if I would “co-habitate with, and/or have my primary romantic relationship with a woman.”   I said I would.  It was the truth.  But I didn’t feel good about having passed his test.

I politely explained to him that it’s offensive to make yourself the authority on someone else’s identity.  “Has anyone asked you to pass a test to prove you’re straight?” I asked him.  He chuckled as if caught in the act.

If you haven’t check out Shiri Eisner’s phenomenal monosexual privilege checklist you will definitely want to do so.  I have privilege.  We all do.  But this list helped me tremendously to recognize some of the ways in which, as a bi/pan sexual, I do not have the privilege mono-sexuals do.

Privilege #2 from Shiri’s list:

Monosexual Privilege #2 – When disclosing my sexual identity to others, they believe me, without my having to prove it.

Folks who are gay or straight can mostly take for granted that if they reveal their sexual orientation, others will believe them.

The second bad reaction hurt more.  It was from a reader of my blog who I don’t even know (and I’ve gotten several more like it, since).  It hurt because she too identified as pansexual.  She’s identified this way a lot longer than I have.  She’s probably been asked to pass a “bisexual test” countless times.  And yet, she feels deeply offended and hurt by my choice to identify as “queer.”  She seems to feel if I inhabit queer spaces, either in person (gay bars) or in less literal ways, it is somehow insensitive to others who have suffered more than I as a result of minority stress (my terminology, not hers).  She spoke about my privilege as a person in a heterosexual relationship, and felt queer spaces should be reserved for those who are actively suffering as a result of being read as queer.

Everyone has privilege.  Some have way more than others.  I have a lot.  In my opinion, the thing to do with privilege is be aware of it and to fight hard and openly for equality.  I don’t believe our privilege should be ignored, nor should it be used against us as a weapon.  To me, needing to have been abused, degraded, or discriminated “enough” to claim a certain identity or be accepted as part of a certain group or movement is a dangerous slippery slope, as well as alienating to potential allies.  Being denied a right to queer identity or queer spaces is actually the opposite of privilege.  Why is someone else’s route to queerness or pansexuality more valid than mine?

Monosexual Privilege #13 – I feel welcome at appropriate services or events that are segregated by sexual identity (such as “general” i.e. straight clinics, gay community centers, lesbian-only events, etc.) 

Now if I was going around on my blog complaining about how bad I have it, with absolutely no regard for the fact that as a white, cis-gendered female, married to a male, I escape brutal realities so many others don’t, that would be obnoxious.  But I don’t.  In fact, I am focusing my career on providing affirming mental health services for sexual and gender “minorities.”  But I do speak on my blog about invisibility, and the intersection between invisibility and privilege, among many, many other things.  In addition to a lot of privilege, I also experience feeling erased as a queer who isn’t obviously queer in the way folks expect.

 I have a friend whose parents were born in Mexico.  She was born there as well, but her ancestors immigrated there from Europe.  She is racially white, but identifies as Latina.  People often feel offended that she identifies this way.  They feel it is offensive to those folks who are “real” Latinas (i.e. identified easily as Latina on a daily basis and suffer discrimination for it).  She feels folks assume that she is wealthy and her immigration experience was smooth because of how she looks.  She feels invisible.  Who gets to decide if she is “Latina enough?”

I feel very strongly that we have to be able to claim our own identities and have them respected.  In my opinion, my friend who identifies as Latina has thought hard about her privilege, is aware of it, understands that other Latinas have had different experiences, and is open to dialogue about that.  But ultimately, I can’t decide whose identity is valid, they must.

My reader made the point that anyone can call themselves anything to the point where identity labels lose all meaning.  Of course.  We can claim identities that have no relevance to us to the point of absurdity.  But most people don’t.  Why would they?  Identity is so fundamental to our internal lives as well as our interpersonal lives.  I would argue the vast, vast majority of us are authentically trying to understand ourselves and our place in the world.

And consider the alternative – someone else gets to decide what our identity is.  Why should someone else, pansexual or not, be policing me and deciding I’m not queer enough to go to gay bars or call myself queer on the internet.  Let me be clear.  If she, or anyone else, wants to dialogue about why they do or don’t identify as queer, I’m open to that.  I might even learn something.  Hell, I might even start doing things differently.  But that would be my decision.

Monosexual Privilege #3 – “I can feel sure that upon disclosing my sexual identity, people accept that it’s my real/actual sexual identity (rather than anything other than I said). 

I would argue kicking people out of movement working toward equality is bad policy all around.  What if the 99% told Warren Buffet to stop arguing their cause because he’s rich?  What if men were told they couldn’t be feminists?  What if free folks hadn’t become abolitionists?  At one time the government decided how much racial minority blood made someone a person of color.  If we can’t determine our own identity, we are at the mercy of others whose motivations may range from benign but ignorance, to openly hostile.  It’s bad enough for majority groups to try to impose identities or negate identities of marginalized groups.  Far more tragic, in my mind, is when we “sexual minorities” do that to each other.

Those of us choosing to question hetero-normativity and gender binarism have to allow each other the space to do so in our own ways.  My reader continues to repeat that there is no “us and them,” queer and not queer, that it’s more nuanced than that.  Yes, precisely.  But for me, that’s what queer is.  Queer is a stance that says “it’s more nuanced than that.”

Yes, on one level there is no us and them, but on another very human level grouping ourselves by identity is profoundly human and in some ways necessary for survival.  Why not be happy when someone feels drawn to and wants to identify with a group to which you belong rather than try to argue the group doesn’t even exist, negating and denying that person’s experience, and possibly your own as well?

Monosexual Privilege #14 – If I’m cisgender, I am accepted and celebrated as part of “queer” space or movement.  If I’m an ally, I am applauded for my support of the queer movement.

If there is one single mark I leave on the world, I want it to be that labels are not singularly good or bad.  They are both.  We can’t have identity without labels.  As human beings we are utterly dependent on language and desperate to feel seen, known, and understood by others.  Without labels, we can’t do that.  But those same labels confine us in ways that can cloud us to our true identities and pit us against each other as well.  That’s why I believe we have to constantly expand our notions of identity, while respecting existing labels.

Getting rid of labels may sound nice, but in practice it would leave us literally speechless and quite alone.  With all due respect, I’d like to ask that person who feels tormented by my queer identification if others who are more “deserving” of labels have to give them up, or just me?

#9  I never have to worry about successfully passing as a member of my sexual identity group or as a member of my community.

 I’ve included these excerpts from the monosexual privilege list, not to prove that I am “minority enough” or “queer enough,” but to show the ways in which discrimination can come from members of the same group, in addition to those who identify differently.  Not only do I have to prove to folks who are not pansexual that I’m queer, but I feel as though I’m being asked to prove I’m worthy to someone who is.  That makes me sad.  Very sad.

 I personally am drawn to the labels queer and pansexual because they are so expansive.  For me, pansexual is a sexual orientation that doesn’t make gender a central aspect of desire.  I understand that for many who identify as bisexual they feel the same way about that term, and I would never question that.  For me, being queer is a questioning perspective that strives at the same time to respect and value people’s chosen identities, while also making space for ever-expanding and more nuanced visions of identity.  We can create space between gay and straight, for example, without denying gay and straight identity to those who claim it.

Queer is a way of being in the world.  Being pansexual is part of being queer for me, but so is being a feminist, so is being in an egalitarian marriage, so is struggling internally with how marriage to a man affords me tremendous privilege, but also invisibility.  I believe I was already queer before I was fully aware of my same-sex attraction, when I was a strong ally and advocate for equality.  Am I “queer enough?”  Was I then?

 #8  When seen with a partner I’m dating, I can be certain to be recognized as a member of my sexual identity group.

My reader feels strongly that how much I’ve struggled makes me who I am, rather than, well… who I am.  I don’t think we can play that way and build a powerful movement to ensure equal rights for “sexual minorities” and gender variant folks anywhere on those spectrums.

I’ve never claimed to know or understand the experiences of those who have had to live openly as sexual minorities.  In fact, I go out of my way to recognize that I don’t know that.  But I don’t think that negates my experience or makes me less entitled to identify as queer.  In fact, I would argue there are no specific identity factors that should matter in determining who is queer.

Queer is a way of being in the world, and it is open to anyone.  I say, the more the merrier and the better for us all!  If everyone was queer (in the widest sense) I think the world would be a much better place.  That’s what queer means to me.  I can’t decide who else out there is queer.  But I damn well think that I should be the one to decide if I am.

Copyright 2012/2013 Undercoverinthesuburbs.com, All Rights Reserved.

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View from Table Mountain, Cape Town, South Africa

In some ways this post is a follow-up to Where’s My Parachute:  Lessons in Love and Loss, my mini-autobiography.

In college, a female mentor introduced me to Sark and her classic book Succulent Wild Woman.  If you’ve never had the pleasure, Sark’s work is like a playful, engaging little kick-in-the-ass that feels like a soft pillow enticing you into a lazy, afternoon nap.  Sark inspires you to envision a more expansive life and take the risks to get there.

Some of my favorite gems that I go back to again and again from SWW:

-”Traveling Alone for Women.”  Sark inspired many trips small and large for me, including a month-long, cross-country road trip by myself where I struck up conversations with strangers of all kinds.

-”Marrying Yourself.”  This is brilliant stuff, folks.  Everyone should marry themselves, everyone.  Go out there and “become the person you want to find!”

- “Investigating the Dark Places with a Flashlight.”  Sark is all about facing our demons head on, with plenty of naps and treats in between, of course.

-”Importance of Being Crabby.”  Duh.

-”Radical Self-Acceptance.”  In college, I actually put little post-it notes all over my dorm room that said “permission” in keeping with Sark’s advice to “fly permission flags.”

-”Importance of Vibrators.”  I will never forget how Sark describes getting her first vibrator as a teen on Easter morning.  She bounds downstairs exclaiming joyfully, “Happy, Happy Easter!” after using it for the first time.  I often think Happy, Happy Easter to myself after a particularly satisfying time…

It’s incredible how life sends you something, and then brings you back to it again and again  offering a fresh perspective each time.  When I first read Sark, I was doing very hard emotional work.  Sark helped me take myself less seriously, give myself breaks, and accept myself where I was.  Part of that was accepting I was really far from being emotionally ready for serious intimacy, including sexual intimacy.

At the time, Sark’s advice about learning to be alone, taking emotional risks, and facing dark feelings felt so on target, but other things were very foreign back then.  Sark talks about “living juicy,” “succulence,” and “sexual blossoming.”  She has another book entitled, “Eat Mangoes Naked.”  Looking back, what Sark was getting at was eroticism – taking hold of erotic energy and utilizing it to live a richer, more vibrant life.  I was so far from “eating mangoes naked,” the best I could hope for at the time was protecting myself from further emotional harm.

In 2005, I traveled around southern Africa with a close friend of mine.  It was one of the three most important experiences of my life.  I had met Seth only two months prior.  I was allowing myself to take risks with intimacy that I hadn’t before.  The friend I was travelling with kept looking at me like I was someone different she’d never seen, as I spoke about Seth and my feelings for him.  Looking back, it was a time of succulence for me, one of the first I had ever allowed myself.

I spent a lot of time on my own during that trip; reflecting on my mother’s death just a few months prior, grieving, but also exploring my feelings for Seth, realizing I was in love with him, and considering what that meant for me.  I remember walking across Table Mountain in Capetown, looking out over the stunning coast and shimmering ocean.  That was my ocean, the one I’d learned to walk next to, but at the opposite end of the world.  At that moment, the sun felt like it was shining on parts of me I hadn’t even known existed.  While my mother’s cancer kept me closed off and hidden, her death left me raw, exposed, with a lot of open spaces ready to be filled.

This week I found myself eating mangoes naked with a lovely, witty, sexy woman from Cape Town.  I had a little chuckle to myself, for Sark, for how far I’ve come, and for the way we grow in circles, revisiting the places we’ve been so we can see the view from where we are back to where we were.    That day, I again found myself somewhere I never could have imagined I could get.  ”Living Juicy,” as Sark would say.

By this point I really know what “Eat Mangoes Naked” is all about.   The woman I was on my Africa trip was no longer terrified of love and loss, but the woman I am today is more than that, she is a real Succulent, Wild Woman.  The risks I am taking now feel easy and playful instead of like walking through a title wave.   I let all the big questions of identity and relationship negotiation melt away this week into the simplicity of brushing up against a stranger on a rooftop, an instant connection, and a lingering sense that this was what supposed to happen, for both of us.

My new friend is back in Cape Town now.  Saying goodbye is hard, but it also teaches us to embrace the present.  So I am left with the feeling of being amazed by life, and truly, almost painfully grateful.  Grateful above all else for the simplicity.  After the soul-searching, the over-thinking, the wading through other people’s fears and projections, this experience has been beautifully ordinary.  Not ordinary in a bad way.  Ordinary in a way that tells you in your gut that you knew who you were all along, and that new experiences don’t have to change the old ones, just deepen them.

As I sit here alone, picturing her in her apartment on the slope of Table Mountain, overlooking that same sparkling ocean I once did, I think about the incredible journeys life takes us on if we let it.  If we drown out all the noise, turn off the tv, ignore the naysayers, don’t let other people’s fear turn us off to our own internal compass…  If we don’t play by other people’s rules but allow ourselves to make our own, the ones we really need, life will take us exactly where we need to go.

I know there are many of you out there who feel like you can’t live your fullest, most succulent life right now for a variety of reasons.  The path may be long, can be slow, and I assure you there will be pain along the way.  But don’t let anyone tell you you can’t.  Don’t let anyone tell you you have to stop, that you are getting too old, too wild, too outside the lines.  Keep expanding, keep growing.  Eat mangoes naked.  Find people who will do so with you and let you go when you need to do so alone.  Why do we do anything other than let the ones we love live fully and succulently?  If someone loves you, ask them to set you free.  But you have to set yourself free as well!

Seth and I talked a lot this week about feeling like we should feel bad.  Feeling bad about not feeling bad. We have real fears, of course, but the ones that came from outside of us, we are letting go.   From here on out we steer our own ship.  We are accountable only to each other.  Never could I have imagined this depth of connection when I first marveled at having an intimate partner.  There is little more powerful in terms of an act of love than setting someone free, and little more exalting than having that person stay anyway, though the door is open and the whole world is spread out before him.   There is great power in watching your partner grow and live fully, putting your fears aside, and being happy for him.  The “poly” folks call this compersion.   I think Sark would call it succulence.

Yours in grateful exploration,

Lyla

P.S. – Breasts seriously rock.

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There's way more to talk about than these guys!

A follow-up to my “Sex Talk” Way Outside the Box post, originally appears here at elephantjournal.com.

1. Monogamy is just one way of doing things, it’s not inherently better or healthier. Make sure you make a choice about how to structure your relationships instead of defaulting to heteronormativity or compulsory monogamy.

2. Gay and straight are over-simplified terms. Most people are somewhere in between, orientation can change—and some folks don’t even identify as male or female.

3.  It’s okay to have casual sex if you feel clear and comfortable about wanting to. If you make a mistake, you will just learn from it.

4. Slut shaming is never okay, whether coming from you, or directed toward you. There is nothing inherently wrong with having sex, enjoying sex, talking about sex, etc.

5. No sex should be emotionally damaging.

6. Consent is the one thing you must have in any intimate encounter. There is no gray area here—and it is never too late to say no.

7. Consent is more than the absence of a “no.” Consent means everyone involved is clearheaded enough to make a choice, obviously comfortable and wanting to move forward. Consent is actively saying yes, either with words or actions.

8. Spend a lot of time thinking about and experimenting with your attraction to people of different genders.  Don’t feel the need to “pick a camp” and stick with it.  Sexual orientation is fluid and hard to determine in a culture that views it so dichotomously.

9. Kink can add a whole other dimension to sexual experience and may be something you want to try.

10. The Kink motto “safe, sane, and consensual” really applies to all sex.

11. Kink/BDSM are normal, healthy modes of sexual and erotic expression.

12. Sex should never hurt unless pain is a specific goal and purposeful. Don’t let anyone tell you pain is necessary to endure to have sex, the first time—or any time.

13. When penetration is part of a sexual encounter, foreplay should be varied and last until both people are certain they are ready for penetration.

14. Lubrication is only the beginning of arousal in females, and not a sign of readiness for vaginal penetration.

15. In general, you should be getting oral sex if you are giving it, unless you truly prefer not to. Sex should be reciprocal.

16. Penetration is only one of many, many ways to have sex and you can still have great sex without it.

17. Pulling out is a very bad birth control method.

18. Condoms are also a pretty bad birth control method.

19. Hormonal birth control can fuck you up in a lot of ways doctors won’t tell you about.

20. Prior to vaginal or anal penetration, practice on yourself first. Use astroglide or another water-based lubricant, start with small dildos and work up to larger.

21. Learn to make yourself come so you know what you like before being with a partner.

22. Masturbation is normal, healthy, fun, relaxing, and something you can do both within and outside the context of a variety of types of relationships, both with and without partners present.

23. Partners cannot read your mind, you will need to tell them what you like and don’t like, and they will need to tell you.

24. There is nothing wrong with looking at porn. I encourage you to encounter a variety of erotic material, including mainstream porn, feminist and other porn, erotic writing and your own written and imagined fantasies.

25. When you do look at porn, understand the vast majority is very unrealistic on many levels, and getting too used to getting aroused from porn can have negative consequences for partnered sex. All things in moderation.

26. Fantasies are never wrong no matter the content, including about someone other than the person you are with, and yes, even during sex.

27. Sex with more than one person at a time can be fun and something you might want to try. Safer sex practices are of utmost importance here.

28. Anal play can be pleasurable for both men and women, gay and straight.

29. Taking on roles you wouldn’t in other contexts, like being dominated or dominating can be fun and shouldn’t be seen as un-feminist or unhealthy if consensual.

30. Safer sex can be fun and sexy. Creativity is key.

31. You should feel completely at ease asking a partner to get STI tested before sex,but remember, unless they are monogamous with you, their status will go back to unknown right after that test.

32. There is no 100% safe sex. Preventing fluid exchange is the safest way to play.

33. There are some STI’s like HPV that there is little way to protect from and no test for (in men). Having said that, there are financial interests invested in making us more frightened about HPV than may be necessary. Always evaluate medical information from all sides. You will need to decide if you will view HPV as a normally occurring virus to live with or something you want to avoid.

34. Don’t let anyone tell you you can age out of your sex life, but realize your sexual experiences will change during different life stages.

35. Before having penetrative sex with an opposite sex partner, be sure you have thought through the consequences of pregnancy and are prepared to address pregnancy if it should occur, even if you are using lots of birth control.

36.  No birth control method is 100%. A 1-2% failure rate is very high. You have no idea how easy it is to be one in one hundred.

37. Having multiple sexual partners can be fulfilling, empowering, fun, help you learn about yourselves and what you like, and sustain you if you ever end up attempting to maintain a monogamous, long-term relationship.

38. Try lots of sex toys, but wash frequently and share with caution.

39. Sexual exploration with roleplay, sensation play, toys, additional partners, etc., can be good ways to keep sexual excitement in a long-term relationship, but require good, honest communication.  Sex will feel different and take more work after the limerence “honeymoon” phase of a relationship.

40. In general, if you aren’t comfortable talking about it, you shouldn’t be comfortable doing it.  Great sex requires great communication.

Copyright 2013, undercoverinthesuburbs.com, All Rights Reserved.

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Two year old art work brought home from school this week - colors of the bisexual flag in a queer triangle formation - hmmmm?

Early sign of bisexuality on my son’s part, or mom with queer on the brain?  You decide…

Bi Pride Flag

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After working his ass off to land a job in “big law,” my husband left his firm after less than two years.  He explained to a dumbfounded male partner that he felt he could not avail himself of the options open to female employees to improve work/family balance.  The partner merely agreed that as a male, doing so would make it impossible to have a future at the firm.

Our infant twins were around six months old when Seth concluded that in order to be the involved, egalitarian dad we both wanted him to be, he was going to have to “lean out” of his career, and “lean in” at home.  This Times piece suggests men must “lean in” at home in order for women to be able to take Sheryl Sandberg’s now famous advice to “lean in” at work.  Indeed, Seth needed to make changes to his career so that mine could continue.

Seth and I were both angered and shocked at the workplace barriers that existed for him.  Taking a 70% schedule, as many of the successful women in his office had, would have meant career suicide.  Instead, he made the choice to leave “big law” all together, in favor of a job where he would still work extremely hard, but have more control over his hours.  Along with this came a massive pay cut of almost 1/2 his salary.

As Rampell point out in the Times piece, parental leave options are dreadful in the US.  But if those options that are available are, either systemically, or culturally, not options for men, that essentially forces women to “lean out” of the work world, while preventing men from “leaning in” at home.

Continue Reading HERE at RoleReboot.org.

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If Unwrapping Identity is as Simple as Inventing a New Flavor of Ice Cream, Maybe Being Queer is Just Being Human?

-Also appears here at elephantjournal.org.  Check it out!

–In 1980, Adrienne Rich wrote possibly the most important queer feminist text in human history, Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.  Today, I bring you my own thoughts on compulsory heterosexuality, compulsory monogamy, gendered and vanilla existence, all through the lens of… ice cream.  

—For anyone who might be wondering (especially those who remember this), no I was not high when I wrote this post, just hungry.

Every time I think I’ve stepped completely outside the box, I find there is another box. My life is like one of those Russian nesting dolls—open me up and there’s another one inside. But in my case, instead of getting smaller and smaller, I get queerer and queerer.

When it comes to sex and gender, our world is like an ice cream shop that only sells two flavors—with maybe a third special flavor available on certain days of the week. As a lover of frozen treats, I have to say, that’s pretty lame!

Imagine if ice cream only came in chocolate and vanilla. Strawberry would seem pretty damn novel—even radical! Strawberry might seem so radical, it could never occur to anyone to do something crazy like mix flavors together, add nuts, chocolate bits or (god help me) cookie dough! How empty our lives would be without cookie dough! And the saddest part—we would have no idea what we were missing!

I’ve always been outside the box. It’s not like I only knew about chocolate and vanilla. At 20 years old I was hanging out at something called a “Queer Kiss-In.” I just wasn’t kissing anyone. Why not? Because there were other boxes I was still inside.

Strawberry. I got it. I got the strawberry, but I didn’t get the cookie dough. I was outside the straight box, but I was still inside the monosexual box. I hadn’t reached pansexual yet, and wouldn’t for years. There was no way for me to imagine cookie dough back then.

Why do I meet so many other women who didn’t realize they liked women until later in life?  You see, many of us were never offered that flavor. When we looked down into the display case of life we didn’t see queer as an option. Even me, who thought I was pretty damn radical, marrying a feminist man in a partnership ceremony, wearing a brown dress, keeping my name… I thought I was at the wheel, but I was still caught up in compulsory monogamy and heterosexuality. I questioned the gender expectations traditionally ascribed to “marriage,” but there were so many other things I didn’t question.

Strawberry was my big fat feminist, egalitarian wedding. Cookie Dough is separating marriage from monogamy. I know, I know, I need some dessert.

Seriously though, it’s really hard to see something in yourself that you’ve never seen anywhere else, and that no one recognizes in you. In the last couple of months I’ve had several friends I perceived as straight or lesbian tell me they are much closer to bi, as well as friends I perceived as cis-gender tell me they aren’t. The more I talk to people about my identity, the more I’m able to truly see them, and perhaps, the more they are able to truly see them. I’m left wondering if the LGBTQIAPK, etc. folks that we see out there are only tip of the iceberg.

What’s different about queer people who somehow manage to recognize queer in themselves and live it? Are their skins thicker, are they smarter, luckier, were they simply in the right place at the right time, or are they gayer, kinkier, or more gender flexible than the rest of us? I can’t say.

All I know is how incredibly fine the line is between me and your garden variety heterosexual, vanilla, monogamous suburban mom. If so many of us ladies are, or were, just a couple neuron-firings away from recognizing our queer, than how many more are out there like us whose queer neurons just haven’t fired yet?

Why does one mom stay closeted her whole life, even to herself, while another is tormented by her same-sex desire which she never reveals to anyone?  Why does one woman have a secret affair with a woman, ultimately coming to view herself as a lesbian, while another has a full -blown, long-term relationship with a female, but still identifies as straight. What separates the woman who comes out to her husband and friends and has discreet relationships with women, from the one who leaves her marriage and never looks at a man again?

In my humble opinion, very little.

I say that because I could be any of them. I could have landed anywhere on that spectrum. I still could.  Had I never had pregnancy and birth hormones coursing through my veins and experienced the head-trash of becoming a mother in our society (see here for my manifesto on motherhood and coming out), would I have gotten so in touch with my queerness? Easily not.

I once heard a talk by a woman who is an expert in the field of transgender identity. She stated, with regret, “We’re losing a whole generation of butch lesbians.”  Her implication was that many of the women who would have identified as butch lesbians in the past are now transitioning to male. Why would this be? Current technology and visibility of transpeople means—you guessed it—more flavors. It seems the butch lesbians of the past were all about strawberry, but they hadn’t yet sampled the cookie dough.

It all comes back to the ice cream. If we look down into that case and all we see is straight, all we see is monogamous, vanilla, traditionally gendered, and paired off in dyads, then there’s nothing else to sample. There are so many flavors we all have yet to discover! Everyone has another box to get out of. We all have unexplored aspects of our identity, and for most of us, more unexplored than explored.

I never saw a woman love a woman in a way that wasn’t platonic until I was 18. When I acted flagrantly queer in high school, nobody ever noticed. I’m not saying they ignored or rejected it—see that would be a form of recognition, albeit painful. I’m saying they simply didn’t see it—like a color-blind person looking at a pattern and only seeing certain parts—they were queer-blind. Their brains were not wired to see queerness. They had neurons firing to straight girls acting very, very friendly with their best friends. Groan.

When I was a senior in high school, I won an award for writing. It wasn’t a surprise. I’d been getting praised for my writing my whole life. But what if I hadn’t? What if no one ever noticed my writing? What if no one around me even knew what writing was? What if my teachers paid way more attention to other talents I had and ignored my writing skills? Would I be writing this right now?

Amazing how parts of us can get hidden so far inside us that we don’t even know they are there, while the things that get validated, groomed, praised, and noticed tend to be the ones we cultivate. That my friends, is why I have a husband and a blog where I write about being queer, but not a girlfriend. And that too is why I wasn’t kissing anyone at the “Queer Kiss-In.”

It wasn’t that I wanted to kiss someone but didn’t. I don’t think I even had access to those feelings. I don’t believe it’s because they weren’t there—I think I just didn’t know where to look for them. I didn’t even know to look for them. By then, I’d had my straight parts reinforced up the wazoo, and my gay parts not at all. Remember Eve, my “sixteen year-old lesbian alter ego?” She’d already been sent into hiding by that point.

This is what compulsory heterosexuality is. It’s not big brother knocking on our doors and telling us “You are going to be straight, vanilla, marry, and be monogamous, and that’s just the way is it, young lady!”

It’s much more subtle, and much more pervasive than that. It’s everywhere. It’s in everything we see, but most of all, it’s in the many, many things we don’t see. It’s in everything we are told about ourselves, and it’s in the silence of the things that are clearly in us that not one ever sees.

So what is fluidity then?

I’m beginning to wonder if it’s not so much that queer feelings suddenly appear where there weren’t any. I wonder if it’s more like we are, for a variety of reasons, able to see more. It’s like we get treatment for our queer-blindness, and suddenly we can see twice as much. It’s like walking into an ice cream store, and instead of three flavors, there are six, and then sixteen, and then sixty. What if those ice cream shops were everywhere? What if we could all see all the possibilities?

I wonder if we would conclude that fluidity is simply seeing more and more of what already is, and queer is just another word for human?

Copyright 2013, undercoverinthesuburbs.com, All Rights Reserved.

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Our daughters deserve to know about the rabbit!

I recently read this post on the wonderful Raising My Rainbow blog.  In it, “C.J.’s mom” talks about how she assumed her husband would be the one to talk to their boys about sex, until it became clear her gender variant son might be gay.  (Let me pause here to say that C.J.’s mom is one of my mommy and blogger heroes, and despite using her post as a jumping off point into the far reaches of my radical brain, I have nothing but utmost respect for her).

I think many of us approach the idea of talking to our kids about sex by following cultural scripts we don’t give much thought to.  If we stop and ask ourselves why, however, we may realize these scripts are not at all the best way to raise empowered, feminist children.  Why does a same-sex parent give the sex talk?  What message does that send?  Why a “sex talk” at all?  And what should be said in the talk?

I know some of you think you have many years before you answer these questions, but the truth is, we have to start when our children are learning to talk by teaching them the proper names for body parts in a casual,  natural non-shaming way.  I tell my two year-old daughter during diaper changes “I need to wipe your vulva.”  This is the very beginnings of her sex education, and my son’s as well.

So why “sex talks?”

Recently, a group of friends at a dinner party went around a talked about whether we had had a “sex talk.”  Turns out not a single person at the table had had one.  We were all basically “self-taught.”  So the fact that many folks who are parents now are thinking about and planning “sex talks” is admirable and important.

But is the “sex talk” enough?

In my opinion, if I’m planning a “sex talk” with a kid, I’ve already missed an opportunity.

“Sex talks” send the following messages:

-Sex is unusual, different, and distinct from daily interactions and can be neatly separated out from the rest of life and put into a box the size of a conversation.

-Sex elicits awkwardness and anxiety.

-Sex is only talked about with members of the same gender.

-Sex is not something people in couples talk about with their partners present.

The truth is sex is everywhere.  It’s everywhere because is saturates our culture and media, but it is also everywhere because it permeates our lives as humans in very natural ways.  Everything we do, all our interactions have sensual, erotic, romantic, and kinky elements.  The idea that we can take all that is non-platonic and shove it into a neat little monogamous, monosexual compartment isn’t accurate, and I don’t think it’s what we truly want to be teaching our kids.

Once at a sleepover in high school with a bunch of girls, a friend of mine announced that an older girl we all knew had had “oral sex.”  I distinctly remember that none of us knew what that was.  We knew what blow jobs were, of course.  OF COURSE.  It seemed most of the girls in our class were giving blow jobs regularly.  But I didn’t know a single girl in high school who knew that a girl could receive oral sex (let alone from another girl!).  As this girl described what her friend had told her about the “oral sex,” the girls squealed with displeasure at the thought of someone licking their private areas, and were perplexed that this older girl had reported being “eaten out” was “better than sex.”

Turns out being eaten out IS sex!  Our daughters need to know that.  They need to know that sex is supposed to feel good, and yes, that includes for girls.  Sex isn’t something you do to get into the popular group or get a boy’s attention.  Sex doesn’t even have to involve natal males.  No matter what, sex is always for you!

I relay this story to highlight what we are doing by not arming our daughters with specific, in-depth sexual knowledge.  These girls were still having sex.  They were having sex in ways that were pleasing to boys.  They didn’t even understand that their pleasure was something to consider.  They didn’t know they could have had sex with girls instead.  They didn’t have any options because they had learned a very limited sexual script.

You can be sure no daughter of mine will be going around giving blow jobs not even knowing cunnilingus exists!   Look, we may all hope our daughters aren’t giving blow jobs in high school, but the fact is many of them will.  I may not be able to control the what and when of my kids’ sexual encounters, but I can absolutely control what level of knowledge they go into those experiences with.  I want my boy and my girl to understand that a sexual encounter should be mutually pleasurable.  If they are not comfortable, emotionally or physically, I want them to hear my fucking-annoying voice ringing in their ears, saying, “Does it feel good!?”

On that note, as early as high school, despite my own complete lack of experience, I picked up somewhere that sex wasn’t supposed to hurt.  I’m almost sure I picked this up from some feminist reading I had done for fun.  This was before high school kids did web searches.  I remember arguing with other girls about this.  The common wisdom seemed to be the “first time” hurts horribly and the best approach is just “get it over with.”

It’s not enough to tell our kids to wear condoms.  We need to describe to them in detail how long it takes for a woman to be lubricated enough for penetration, what types of things are likely to facilitate that, and what kind of lube to use if you need a bit of help.  We need to buy our daughters dildos and tell them to practice on themselves so they know what penetration should feel like, whether by a penis, strap-on, etc.  If there’s going to be discomfort, they should be in complete control and able to push their limits as they see fit.  I still tell adults all the time that sex shouldn’t hurt, ever.  (Unless the pain is the point, in a kink/BDSM context).  And yes, we need to tell our kids about that too!

In college, I had this reputation for being a kind of amateur sex therapist.  It was ironic because I still had essentially no experience whatsoever.  But I knew things.  In many cases more than people who’d actually had sex!  One of my signature interventions was bringing women to downtown Chicago to buy their first dildo or vibrator.  I remember this one woman didn’t even know what a dildo was – 21 years old!  What?  Over my dead body my kids will go off to college not knowing what a dildo is!

I think many folks still believe talking to kids about sex will make them do it.  If we don’t talk to our kids about sex, frequently and repeatedly, and in detail, (and this includes parents of all genders with kids of all genders), they are still going to learn about sex.  They will learn about it from:

-Very intense, frequent exposure to pornography that bears little resemblance to actual sex.

-Other misinformed or under-informed kids.

-Other kids who have an agenda and are not invested in presenting balanced, egalitarian viewpoints.

-Adults who are not sex-positive and may even be shaming.

-Television, movies, and books, the vast majority of which present a hetero-normative, monogamous, gender-traditional, sex-shameful cultural script, often involving sexy vampire teens biting each other’s necks.

Get in there now!  Don’t wait!  Talk about sex at the dinner table, in the car, in front of the tv, during homework, on weekends, on weekdays, with relatives, friends, and any other time.  If you have a partner, model for your kids talking about sex with a partner by talking to your partner about sex in front of them.  Talk about every aspect of sex, sexuality, sexual orientation, romance, love, eroticism, sensuality, touch, friendship, emotional intimacy, kink, monogamy, non-monogamy, safe sex, flirting, sexual fluidity and anything and everything else.

A “Sex Talk” takes sex out of life and puts it in some kind of alternate universe where our kids don’t live and we don’t live.  Show your kids through example the rich spectrum of sexuality and sensuality present in all aspects of our lives.

Copyright 2013, undercoverinthesuburbs.com, All Rights Reserved.

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My big, fat, feminist wedding.

While I continue to work on my treatise on gay marriage (and why it’s really all about gender, and not gayness or marriage), I thought I would post this poem I wrote for my partnership ceremony in honor of the marriage equality battle being waged this week.  It, as well as most of our ceremony, was meant to highlight our desire to create a conscious, feminist, non-hetero-normative union, rather than a marriage in the traditional sense.

Even back then, before we really knew just how queer our union really was, I think we felt like we were getting away with something, even above and beyond our extreme unease at getting married when so many others couldn’t.  Thinking now about bisexuals getting just highlights the absurdity of making marriage dependent on gender.   Anyway… more on that soon.

************************************************************************************************

Picture a crisp fall day, autumn leaves drifting to the ground, our Unitarian minister read the poem because I couldn’t do it without crying.

Love is not something for them, it is something for us.

Love is not a prize for being liked and following the crowd,

Love is the gift of courage, when we feel different and alone.

Love is not exclusive, for people who live and believe a certain way,

Love has taught us to proudly live life our way.

Love is not for perfect people, from perfect families,

Love is for us, from our families.

Love is a chance to get it right, or get it more right than we have before.

Love gently challenges us to be more boldly ourselves,

While proving to us that we’ve been okay all along.

Love shouts out loud that we are worth fighting for,

Silencing the whispers from our insides that we are not.

Love is the imprint we leave on the skin of the earth

Our footprints glazed in the sands of our lovers’ heart.

Love is the one thing, the only thing, that will not disappear,

Our love will hang in the fall wind, persuading the leaves in their

groundward dance,

long after the light of this life is lost to the stars.

Marriage should be for everyone.

Copyright 2007, Reprinted here 2013, undercoverinthesuburbs.com, All Rights Reserved.

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Working Dads Risk Damaging Their Child’s Prospects

Working Dads Are Healthier, Study Finds

Working Dads: Don’t Feel Guilty

The 10 Commandments For Working Fatherhood

5 Comments To Avoid Saying To A Working Dad

The Myth Of The Rich, Selfish Working Dad

Have you seen these headlines? No? That’s because they don’t exist. Links to the real headlines appear at the end of this piece. They, and the millions like them, are actually about working moms. Working moms are without a doubt the most picked apart, analyzed, written about, advised, talked down to, talked up to, monitored, and micro-managed group in society. And when working moms speak about being working moms, we listen, and then we attack.

This article is not meant to weigh in on any of these debates. Rather, this article asks the critical question: Would we say that to dads?

If the topic du jour sounds absurd when the word “Dad” is substituted for “Mom,” we need to take a step back and ask ourselves if our energy is being well utilized. Instead of answering and re-answering the age-old questions about working moms—Are they harming their kids? Are they helping them? Are they too selfish, too rich, and spoiled, too frazzled, pulled in too many directions?—let’s ask a different question. A critical question.

Why aren’t we talking about dads?

Click here to read the rest!!

Then check out these additional ridiculous headlines, gathered and re-gendered by reader Mark.  Thanks Mark!

Runner Dads: A running dad’s guide to jogging with the stroller

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2013 Lyla Cicero

Also appeared in elephantjournal – check it out!  This post is dedicated to MF.

The following is an internal dialogue between me, Lyla (“grown-up,” married, mother of two), and my gay, teenage alter-ego. We’ll call her “Eve since,” as you will see, she spends a lot of time focused on, shall we say, forbidden fruit.

Lyla: There has to be a way to keep up with the laundry without doing some every single day!

Eve: Girls.

Lyla: Aw, my little boy asked a question, that must be a developmental milestone.

Eve: Girls.

Lyla: Seth is my soul mate, best friend, and life-long companion.

Eve: Girls.

Lyla: How do I know if my kids are adjusting well to pre-school?

Eve: Girls… and sex.

Lyla: Dental Insurance?

Eve: How do you pick out a strap-on?

Lyla: I can’t believe this, I didn’t think we had dental insurance, but we do! What a relief!

Eve: Dates… we should be going on them. With girls!

Lyla: I should probably talk to my therapist about this.

Eve: OMG.

Lyla: …And bring it up in our couples sessions as well.

Eve: Fuck that.

Lyla: Mmmm, red heads.

Eve: Mmmm, red heads.

Eve: I like that girl from Glee… Marley.

Lyla: Ummmm… I think she’s a little young for me!

Lyla: Aw, my Sethy looks hot in that t-shirt.

Eve: I am SO over penises.

Lyla: I’m so glad I set up that phone date and came out to that friend from college I haven’t talked to in years.

Eve: Put that thing down, you’re embarrassing me! Talking on the phone is so 1998.

Lyla: Perhaps I can meet some like-minded, queer women through the feminist blogs I enjoy.

Eve: OkCupid. Screename — EasyEvie69.

Lyla: I’ve learned a lot about sexual fluidity and polyamory this year, and I feel like my views of sex and gender are becoming more and more expansive.

Eve: I like pussy.

Lyla: I’d love to meet more people who can envision more than straight and gay, male and female — who understand that sexual orientation and gender are continuums, spectrums, if you will, not dichotomies.

Eve: OMG, spend five minutes in high school. Your peers are so 1998.

Lyla: I’m sick of feeling closeted. None of the other moms really know me.

Eve: It gets better.

Lyla: I’m just stupefied by the degree of monosexism I’m experiencing, even from the gay community. It’s so disappointing.

Eve: Girls. Kissing them… and playing with their hair.  And pussy. Licking it.

Lyla: Seth’s freckles… aorrrrrw.

Eve: Boobies.

Lyla: Okay, what’s the right way to come out to a colleague?

Eve: Tell them, just tell them all! How about “I’m pansexual, bitches! I’m here, and I’m queer. Deal with it!”

Lyla here again.

I don’t mean to imply that I’m a straight person and a lesbian all rolled into one, because that’s exactly not so. I’m pansexual. I’m attracted to men and women and other people too. The truth is, Lyla likes girls, and Eve, if she really admits it, likes boys.

Trouble is, while Lyla is a 35 year-old woman, Eve never got to the chance to grow up. She’s been suspended somewhere, perpetually 16, perpetually waiting for her turn, and now that she’s got it, she’s coming out in full force.

Lyla’s been attracted to men and fully aware of that for years. I’ve been there, done that, had those crushes and first times, done the internet dating thing and met my husband.

Eve isn’t just the part of me that likes girls, she’s the part of me that wants a do-over. I feel like I’m having a second adolescence and this one’s way better.

The idea that I have a do-over, and this time never involve men, that’s kind of empowering! This time I look better, I feel better, I know who I am, and after years of therapy, building an authentic, meaningful life, and growing two humans in my body, I’m not fixin’ to take shit from anyone. And on top of all that… boobies.

You see Eve and her generation, they don’t have all the hang-ups some folks my age do. They are comfortable with in-betweens, gray areas, and spectrums. They are way less like to ask her to “choose” or to “prove-it,” like bisexual folks my age often are.  Eve’s ready to leap out of the closet because the truth is, her world is a lot safer.  Back in the day we just kept our mouths shut until we weren’t confused about our sexuality anymore (for me that was less than two years ago).

These kids proudly espouse whatever label fits them in the moment, because they understand fluidity, and they are comfortable with sexual unknowns.  Surf through Tumblr.com sometime if you don’t believe me.

Eve, she’s pretty convincing, and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to fend her off for long.  I’m older than her, and bigger (albeit slower). I can keep her at bay if I choose to, but nothing is going to keep all the other thousands of Eves quiet. They are like a tidal wave barreling toward existing gender norms, breaking down dichotomies, questioning monogamy, discovering kink through means other than 50 Shades of Grey, and living outside the binary.

There’s a part of me that is so envious of these kids – that wishes I could grow up again and be part of this tidal wave. And then I wonder if maybe I can. Maybe it’s never really too late. Maybe a second adolescence is possible (if not, advisable?) Maybe there’s a way to give Lyla her dental insurance, get the laundry done, keep the hubby, not traumatize the kids, and still be out and proud and part of something bigger.

So this is for the grown-ups.

-For all you queer moms trapped out there somewhere in the suburbs.

-For all the adults balancing not only kids, work, and marriage, but other partners on the side.

-For those gender variant folks who look on with envy as teens do the impossible, and fantasize in vain about the transitions you never had.

-For the amazing transgender folks in their forties, fifties, and sixties who are coming out and changing their lives, and to their very brave spouses and partners riding out that journey with them.

-For the men who have sex with men.

-For the kinksters, the ones who are out there at sex clubs, and the ones who are most alive at their laptops, hanging out on Fetlife.com.

-To the couples in mixed orientation marriages, who know the truth, that a gay person and a straight person can have an awesome marriage.

-For the fluid folks who’ve changed, changed back and then changed again.

-For the parents of gender variant and queer kids who are working everyday to make a space that never existed when we were coming up.

For all the grown-ups out there — undercover in the suburbs. We’re not done. We’ve only just begun. Finding yourself doesn’t end when you graduate college, when your first child is born, or even at retirement.

So let’s get out there in whatever ways we can. We’re here and we’re queer in the widest possible sense. I don’t know about you, but I’m not missing this party.  Let’s not make the world wait until we die to get better. So wherever you are, however far in the closet, consider coming out another inch, another foot, or breaking that door down all together.

The more of us they see, the less of us they can ignore.  LGBTQIAPK etc, etc, etc.  So find your own Eve. Maybe she’s a part of you that never got a voice, or maybe she’s your daughter, your neighbor, a kid you mentor, or a student you teach.

Eve and her friends are coming, ready or not. Let’s take their hands and together claim the post-patriarchal, fluid, sex-positive, gender-creative future we crave.

Copyright 2013, undercoverinthesuburbs.com, All Rights Reserved.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2013 Lyla Cicero