idyke

have you done this yet?

Mon, 09 May 2011 13:46:16 +0100

Call, fax and/or email the South African Government and demand that they openly speak out and take action against the increasing violence towards LGBT people in South Africa. The contacts of the officials to contact are below;

His Excellency Jacob Zuma

President of the Republic of South Africa

Tel: +27 12 300 5200

Fax: +27 12 323 8246

Email:delsey@po.gov.za

His Excellency Kgalema Petrus Motlanthe

Deputy President of the Republic of South Africa

Tel: +27 12 300 0501/+27 21 464 2128

Fax: +27 12 323 3114

Email:malebo@po.gov.za

Mr. Jeffrey Thamsanqa Radebe

Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development

Tel: +27 12 357 8212/8217

Fax: +27 12 315 1749

Email:minprivatesec@justice.gov.za

Mr. Nathi Mthethwa

Minister of Police

Tel: +27 12 393 2810/2811

Fax: +27 12 939 2812

Gen. Bheki Cele

National Commissioner of Police

Tel: +27 12 393 2874

Fax: +27 12 393 1530

Email:mbathan@saps.gov.za

Lesbian Potluck for the Soul

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 13:27:35 +0100

So I hit middle age and the experience left me feeling no less queer and no less passionate about queer rights. Human rights.

I think more about society, perhaps because I understand it better these days – or perhaps simply because I give less of a damn about being accepted by it. Ever idealistic, I wish everyone on the fringes of society would actually stand together and form another one. Not a replacement society, just a cooler, more alternative, less gold digging and cruel one than the mainstream one we all buy into now. Humanity’s as flawed as it’s beautiful though and we’ve got ourselves well deluded that we live democratically anyway. Utopia is only a dream.

Pffft.

What can one do? Vote with conscience, live with compassion and exude a whole lot of respect. Choose a new family when yours disowns you, cherish your friends, challenge your politicians. Never, ever deny any part of who and what you are, unless your life is in danger (this rule doesn’t apply to the martyr types). Avoid apathy and don’t be complacent.

Love yourself … it’s the surest path towards loving the rest of humanity.

Question everything. Learn from your mistakes.

But don’t recite Oriah Mountain Dreamer at me, I beg of you.

You grow older, it’s all to easy to look back at the scars and wounds and feel exhausted, but (to continue in my chicken-soupy vein) aluta continua - and that means all of us.

Lots of love,

The butchest, loneliest dyke in the Eastern Cape

ButchLab Butch Symposium 2: Butch Stereotypes, Cliches & Misconceptions

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 12:04:53 +0100

Symposium #2, March 2011: Butch Stereotypes, Cliches, and Misconceptions: What do people think “butch” means? What are the stereotypes around being butch? What do people assume is true about you [or the masculine of center folks in your life], but actually isn’t? What image or concept do you constantly have to correct or fight against? How do you feel about these misconceptions? How do you deal with them? Do you respond to these stereotypes or cliches? How?

I missed the 2 March deadline on this, due to work, but thought I'd respond anyway.

"Everything you've heard more than once is a cliche."

The older, more entrenched stereotypes are things like:

a butch just wants to be a man
a butch wants a penis
a butch is too ugly to be a pretty woman and get herself a nice man
butches fix cars and stuff
butches always pack
butches should have femme partners
butches should display masculine chivalrous behaviour

Those old stereotypes haven't disappeared, any more than sexism has. If I'm in the mood, I respond to most of the above with, "Good god! You think I'd trade my vagina, female orgasms and lesbian sex for a penis?!" My partner is more feminine than me, but then, so's Anne Widdicombe ... As for who fixes what and the "chivalry" of opening car doors as so on; bullshit. Gender/sex equality is what I'd like, thank you very much. Butch, femme or whatever and whoever, can behave however they want to. Oh yeah - I'm not anywhere near ugly either.

On to the more modern and/or postmodern butch stereotypes, which I'm basing on butch presence online:

Butches are masculine

No I'm not. I'm a feminist and by global common consent, my sex is labelled "female." Gender, as a concept, seems like an idiotic one - why does it even require a binary definition? I personally could do without gender. My sex is female, I am a woman, this is me and this is what I look like and I am happy with it. Why do clothes have to be labelled and divided into male and female? It happens, not as some terrible establishment plot, but initially, because it just makes things simpler to find. I guess butch for me is more about the strut and the style than anything else.

Me want to fuck, me want woman.
Me want pritty dresses.

Those kind of basic needs. Me, I shop in areas called "male" and areas called "female" and well, I just don't give a shit.

Radical masculinity is fashionable

Fine, everyone's free to do what they wanna (OK, a very small and wealthy elite across this planet of ours are, actually) and it doesn't impact on me. But I will not get all excited about my alleged masculinity until women get better treatment by society, employers etc.

A strapon is now a butch cock and something butches like to have sucked and sometimes pierced

Whatever floats your boat ... the clitoris and the penis have the exact same root and all foetuses start as female, so genitalia aren't even as different as we label them. I have a clit (yay!), I ejaculate (more yay!). For me, a strapon is an optional extra and one I enjoy lots, but I don't bond with/to it the way many butches seem to. On a feminist note, I'm also not about to join in the general worship of The Penis.

Butches are mostly into BDSM

Tried it a little and got so very bored while spanking a lover once ... it just isn't my thing. IIt might have worked out better if I could have paddled her and read a book at the same time. I worry about the percentage of people, regardless of their sexuality, who seem to have suffered childhood abuse and then get into BDSM as adults. I worry about it, but I don't know any statistics, so I'm not attacking anyone at all with my concern.

Kenneth Cole is a favoured designer

He should feel very honoured. Why aren't BDSM butches more into Hugo Boss though? He did design the uniforms of the SS, after all. I'm kidding, I'm kidding!

I like Diesel and Converse and True Religion and David Tlale and Hugo Boss and Vertigo and Mooks and Skrikvirniks and ... there goes another butch stereotype btw, my femme-ish girlfriend probably doesn't know any designers' names at all.

Butches are dapper (or want to be)

And very gorgeous they look too. I'm more of your ageing grunge/skater style of a butch. Think ripped jeans and sneakers as basics and then a variety of styles of shirts, from scruffy to very smart indeed. Add silver jewellery, closely cropped greying hair and four tats and that's me.

Chivalry is in

Not for me, because I think it locks feminism out, by definition. It's cool if the physically stronger one carries more suitcases than her girlfriend though. I recommend a regular sweaty session of *censored* to determine superior strength.

Um, I was kidding there too, I promise.

Male chauvinist pig-ism is "ironic"

Nope, it's misogyny.

Stereotypes, cliches and misconceptions are part of every human being's life - they're not always negative.

dear queer, i love you ...

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 13:43:06 +0100

because illogical societal stigmas make families forget sometimes, that they love their children and parents and siblings and so on, we queers generally fear coming out, with a dread a lot of people don’t seem to appreciate. in fact, before the terror, it’s society that has caused the fact that we need to come out at all.

we shouldn’t have to.

but we do – or we lurk, fearful in closets not of our own construction.

i was very, extremely (a lot!) touched by a letter roxy wrote, from the viewpoint of the mother of a queer child. it shows a level of love and understanding and basic human compassion that actually, we should all be exercising. it’s the basis of most religions and the better philosophies and part of what allegedly raises us above animals ffs … that letter should get printed out and sent to the world.

now roxy ain’t the mother of a queer child, at least, not right now, i think her “weasels” are a little young to be deciding that. she is, however, both a queer and a mother. She has her own coming out journey and it’s an interesting one. (btw she and her genderqueer lover are happily polyamorous bdsm freaks, so if you go clicking around her blog indiscriminately, i won’t be responsible for any orgasms and/or conniptions you might enjoy/suffer). ;p

i don’t have a huge amount to say on this topic that hasn’t already been said … just … people manage to love murderers … please don’t draw the line at queers?

please.

[desmond tutu and his god have no issue with us, so why should you?]

How do you solve a problem like sex & gender?

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 12:05:59 +0100

“the milk and sugar are over there sir,” says the woman in the coffee shop.
“can you pull your car forward please mama?” says the guy at the petrol station.

(“mama” isn’t just saying that my gender’s been read as female, it’s also saying i’m old enough to be a mother)

those two interactions took place within minutes of each other and i responded the same to both i.e. i didn’t contribute anything gender-related at all. there were times in my twenties, when if a guy called me sir, i’d respond my calling him ma’am. deadpan, straight faced too. now? i just don’t care.

the queer community often feels fragmented to me. there’s a group wanting gender transcended, the demolition of the binary and the introduction of a fluid approach. and there are those who want to transition instead of transcend and those who just want their biological gender affirmed – those people tend to say that the binary is an irrelevant societal construct – but then they define it and cling to it. i’m not saying that’s wrong, i just don’t understand the logic.

and we all talk, think, shout about gender – but nothing much is said about sex. not sex the act, sex as in male/female. if sex is what you are biologically, frankly it needs challenging too. south africa has a higher-than-global rate of intersex births – are we going to keep forcing all those people to one end or the other of the binary? do we need no sex-categories, or a whole lot more? or just a sliding scale? surely caster semenya is merely the tip of the metaphorical iceberg? are society and its sports teams ever going to allow for more than the binary? or less, even?

why is humanity so very willing to accept new technology, but so fiercely averse to society’s own evolution?

my vote goes to defining the biological sex purely biologically – baby smith has a vagina. baby jones has a penis. baby cooper has a vagina and undescended testes. whatever – but without adding “male” or female” to it. then the babies could grow up, wear whatever the fuck they felt like – and get equal pay for whatever job they did. if the penises consistently beat the vaginas at running, they could create separate leagues, but then what about intersexed people? and the whole binary would probably happen all over again..but at least it would give some respite from gender inequality?

nope, i’ve just talked myself round in a complete circle of historical gender formation.

so what’s the answer?

Butch Symposium the first ...

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 12:03:22 +0100

Call for submissions for bloggers & writers: The first Symposium (Sinclair Sexsmith)

I am planning to launch the new project’s monthly Symposium with the site’s launch on November 15th, and I need your help. I’m looking for writers who have something to say about butch identity, who are wiling to post their thoughts on their own blog (or email them in, if they don’t have a blog) and link back to the Symposium in exchange for the promotion within this project. Here’s the topic for the first Symposium:

Symposium #1, November 2010: What is butch? How do you define butch? What do you love about it? What does it mean to you? (The project is now over at www.butchlab.com)

I am a butch woman, a butch lesbian, a butch dyke – so my interpretation of butch stems directly from that. Beyond that though, butch is an adjective I use to describe the way I look, the way I walk. For me it’s about style, not gender. It’s the hipster jeans, the sneakers, the wallet chain, the watch, the heavy silver rings, the fact that I wear men’s clothing but refuse to accept masculinity and femininity as my gender labels. It’s my reclaiming of stuff that society says is just for boys and men. It’s liberation. It’s boxer shorts and bras.

A pause here to reassure sensitive folks that I am only speaking for myself and only about my own private perception and expression.

My masculine traits and appearance are seen as masculine, because that’s society’s definition, not mine. My voice is deep – so was Marlene Dietrich’s … er … OK so maybe she was butch. I walk loose-limbed like a man, not with the supposedly femme hip-sway. It’s just the way I walk, it’s comfortable and often it tells potential muggers that I am not afraid. It’s important for me to feel safe on the streets – my comfortable shoes, sneakers, boots are all practical in case I have to run.

Female and woman are terms I can claim for my sex, biologically. I don’t give much of a shit about gender – mine or anybody else’s. My sex matters a lot to my sexuality though.

What do I love about butch? Well, I’d look and be who and what I am whether there was a word to describe it or not, but the fact that the word “butch” exists has some lovely consequences. To quote that ole politically incorrect thing, “chicks dig it.” I’m a “type” for some women (yay!). “My handsome butch dyke,” she says and I fairly strut about like … something that struts about in a particularly pleased way. Ahem. It gives me cohorts too, a tribe, a family within my queer family. Women to talk about clothes with, for example. There’s solidarity when the world rejects me, when kids on streets mock me, when people mutter that clearly I really want to be a man. It also means, simply and profoundly, that I have given myself permission to dress how the hell I want, to be me.

The things I love about butch give butch meaning to me – but of course there are some negatives too. “What are you? A man or a fucking woman?” from some twelve year old on the streets of the UK. “Obviously you’re the man in the relationship,” from a friend in South Africa. Assumptions, insults, general fuckwittery. Times when people start to get violent about it … but then the courage needed to still be oneself adds such positive meaning to anyone’s life too, right?

Language is shorthand for thought. Butch is a proud, strong word. It doesn’t beat anyone else up, it’s just one of many, many aspects of who I am. And who I am is alright.

Ellen and Kate - Dyke Ambassadors

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 12:51:07 +0100

I've decided to stop being quite such a gloomy sod and count some blessings for a change. Good things I've thought of recently as far as the dyke community goes, are Ellen Degeneres' seemingly never-ending and meteoric rise to fame – her own talk show, judge on American Idols, Cover Girl contract – and this is the woman who got married to a woman in a dress, while wearing a suit. Then there's Kate Clinton. OK she's not overly well-known in South Africa, but in 2006 she celebrated her 25th year in the comedy industry – and for a very out, proud and political “stylish butch” to make it in showbiz for so long – something, somewhere must be going right. So Ellen and Kate are currently my two … not role models, I am in no danger of fame, but signs of good things for dykes. They're ambassadors, I guess.

They do it in two completely different ways too. No, not that “it” - pull your minds out of your pants please. The ambassador bit. Kate Clinton is unfailingly out and very loud and proud indeed – possibly as a result of this, her appeal's more limited to the dyke community than Ellen's is. Ellen is everybody's. Her high-profile and good looking femme girlfriends have possibly helped broaden her appeal there – because actually she and Clinton both have a similar wide-grin positive kind of an approach to things.

The fact remains, Ellen never denies being gay and when it matters, (like Prop 8 issues) she talks about it, it's just not her entire “schtick.”

As for Kate, she's something of an elderdyke now and perhaps Rachel Maddow owes a little of her current success to the trails that Kate blazed, back in the proverbial day. She's there behind Ellen too, in that line of brave lesbians who started off doing standup.

New Queer Day

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 17:28:22 +0100

2010 has just emerged, foetus-like from the bloody hips of 2009 and surely South Africa is thinking about things beyond soccer? And us queers, where are we?

Well, I'm guessing most of us are still in closets. Iconic lesbian website After Ellen's round up of lesbians who came out in 2009 includes a whole one South African i.e. Melanie Lowe. Whether or not you like her music, if you're one of those fabled and privileged queers with plenty of disposable income, please go buy at least one of her CD's, for the simple reason that she bothered to come out. She's also very approachable on Facebook, so do me a favour and go say thank you to her.

For as long as I can remember, Celluloid Closet (Hollywood) tales have been echoed locally, by rumours of queer Springbok rugby players, actors, singers and the like, who stay in their closets for reasons like – it'd hurt their career if they came out and (I'm sick of this one) their sexuality is nobody's business but their own. Inconvenience. Loss of income.

Considering that we queers are still very much a minority under threat; that they want to execute us for homosexuality in Uganda, murder us for being gay in South African townships, or just rape us to cure us, that the Media sparks from time to time with stories of first world schoolchildren and soldiers being battered to death for being queer; there is no possible way that we can separate the queer individual from the queer political just yet. If we do, we have to seriously sweep our consciences under the metaphorical carpet, ignoring all of those victims and all the ones that never get any media attention at all.

We desperately need out celebrities, not so that we have plenty of nice, queer-focused entertainment (though there's less than nothing wrong with that), but because we're a society full of media whores and fame junkies and we need representatives to tell the world (sigh) that it's OK to be gay. It's shocking that the message we need to get across is that damn basic, that we are still, in 2010, screaming for acceptance.

Like it or not, as queers, we're linked to every single other queer out there, not purely for the fact that we have a common sexuality, but because we have a common enemy too – homophobia. And if you ever get confused by whether something's homophobic or whether it's perfectly acceptable, remove the word gay, queer, faggot or whatever from the concept and try it out with “black” or “Jewish” or something instead. As South Africans (ex-purveyors of apartheid), we ought to have incredibly fine and sensitive methods of detecting intolerance. And we really ought to be intensely careful about eradicating it.

If any of my regular readers have got this far – thanks! I'm surprised you bothered; I seem to have been saying the same damn thing as a queer columnist for a whole decade now – is any of it ever going to change? Are we ever going to get enough people out of enough closets, so that homophobia, be it political and violent or “merely” personal, subtle attrition, ever stops? I'm beginning to feel like a complete parody – some sort of robotic lesbian feminist with a scratchy recorded message.

To every queer who ever came out, in any way at all, thank you.
To every queer activist, thank you.
To every non-queer person who stood up for us, thank you.
To all of our non-queer friends and relatives who have ever taken strain on our behalf, thank you.

{words:ulla kelly
photo:GLK}

Have yourself a lesbo little xmas ...

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:42:16 +0100

“Madonna, Lover, and Son” by Becki Jayne Harrelson, 1996. Oil on canvas, 80 x 68 inches. www.beckijayne.com

So, besides yelling, "Ho, ho, ho!" at your exes, what are you doing to dyke the halls and have yourself a lesbo little Christmas? If you're lucky, you have some form of well-adjusted family and can integrate into the general Christmas spirit without feeling the need to make it too queer - it's not always that way though, is it? For some, Christmas ends up being one of those times when you're forced to remember rejections by various family members, social occasions that don't welcome you and all the other joys of being out. An article in the Advocate claimed that, "80% of lesbian adults felt more stress around the holidays, compared with 64% of heterosexual women. And while 51% of lesbians said they tend to feel more depressed around the holidays, only 36% of straight women did." That kind of thing tends to drive one screeching into the safety of the queer ghetto - so here's a virtual guide to some stuff online that'll remind you that Christmas isn't just for heterosexuals.

Jeanette Winterson; my favourite doesn't-solely-define-herself-as-a-lesbo author extraordinaire, did a lovely retelling of the nativity story, in The Lion, the Unicorn and Me. She's also done some very pro-Christmas opinion pieces that you might enjoy - you'll find them here and here.

If you're in the mood for some amateur writing, this play's a fast read and also lesbian and Christmas themed. There's also The Lesbian Stick: A Christmas Story.

After Ellen's Naughty But Nice List for 2009 just might make you smile too. They also have a list of lesbian Christmas songs. You can also take a trip back in time and get some Venus Envy songs - I'll Be a Homo for Christmas, Lesbians We Have Heard on High, Rhonda the Lesbo Reindeer and so forth.

South Africa's very own homegrown queer online bookstore offers you a novel with a Christmas theme, called A Deeper Love.

The holiday season is, at least, the time when gay clubs and bars go all out to entertain, so if you live in or near a major city, you don't need to get too lonesome - it might even be a good time to find your very own Christmas Carol - or whatever her name is.

If your approach to the festering season is more of the Grinch variety, it's the perfect time to unleash diatribes about that patriarchal and oppressive Father Christmas stuff and demand stronger roles for women in the Nativity Play. Oh wait ...

Stalking Robert Hamblin

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:51:04 +0100

For the first and possibly last time in my life, I bought a copy of Rooi Rose (for any non South African readers, it’s an Afrikaans women’s magazine and although it’s come a long way since apartheid days, it’s still one of those magazines that one thinks of as safely mainstream i.e. hardly relevant to me, as part of the LGBTQI spectrum). I bought it for the story about Robert Hamblin, the artist formerly known as Adele Hamblin; photographer extraordinaire.

Robert’s physical transition from female to male has been documented with joyful publicity, all over the place and cyberspace too. He’s been on TV, radio, been interviewed in De Kat - and so it goes on. In his own career, he’s never been far from the limelight either, enjoying top jobs and exhibitions at places like JAG. He’s also been forthright and eloquent online, on both queer and transgender forums. If you have a look at his own art, you’ll find plenty of examples of his exploration and conclusions too.

Despite the general mutters in various quarters of the old school gay camp (pun intended), biphobia and transphobia is untenably unacceptable in any circle and circumstances, but perhaps especially so within the queer community. Some gay people want “queer” to simply refer to those of us who are pureblood same-sex types (Harry Potter reference intended), whereas what it is for, is to act as an umbrella term for anyone who doesn’t fall into the hetero “norm” and who, most likely, needs protection from the phobic majority. Some people think that trans people have no place on “our” spectrum, because after all, trans people are sometimes (gasp!) heterosexual. Heterophobia, as fun as it might be from time to time, is actually as untenably unacceptable as all the other phobias.

LGBTQI - Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex - which is the one of the currently available acronyms I like the most, puts Robert Hamblin right there in my community and I am very proud to have him there. As a transgendered man, with a history of attempted heterosexuality and many years’ experience on planet Lesbian, definitely counts as Queer to me, in addition to Transgender - just because he’s ... you know ... extraordinary. As a man married to a woman, there’s no reason why society shouldn’t accept his qualifications as Heterosexual too.

Dividing society into smaller and smaller ghettoes is not only destructively divisive and elitist, it’s foolish too. What our fight for human rights is supposed to be about, after all, is being human. We don’t need to secede and form smaller clubs for same-sex sexualities, we need to expand the acronym yet further and carry on categorising everything until everything is simply an item on a list and not a freakish separatist phenomenon.

LGBTQIH! I would like to arrogantly, publicly and formally welcome heterosexuals to my postmodern, label-schizoid community. Instead of assuming that heterosexuals are in some kind of army waiting to kill me, I am going to assume that they are just a different sort of human - yet another example of diversity.

I would also like to thank Mr Hamblin for having the guts to put his transition on show (he cannot be accused of publicity-mongering, he had a highly successful career and profile prior to his Robertification) which, by default, challenges everybody’s perceptions of gender, sexuality and humanity.

As a butch dyke, I have about as much in common with Robert as I ever had with any other good looking man i.e. similar taste in stylish clothes and image consciousness. I am not a man, there’s a lot I don’t understand, but I do understand very well what it is like to be shunned sometimes, treated like shit at others and also, mainly, what it’s like when most of the world wishes you would just sit down, shut up and fit in. I have huge respect for him for not doing so.

At the end of the proverbial day, all Robert Hamblin is, is a human being, trying to be the best he can be. It’s what all of us aspire to. It is also heroic in many ways, to be brave enough to defy convention and stand up to be counted. It gives terrified teenagers someone to respect and understand, it gives all of us the example, the possibility that not only heterosexuals and queer people pretending to be heterosexual are able to succeed within current society. He has yet another wonderful thing we all want - happiness. I’m not suggesting we nominate him for sainthood, what I am saying is that we should be very proud of him. We also owe him a debt of gratitude for joining South Africa’s miniscule core of out LGBTQI(+H) public figures. The more community members we have in the public domain, the better our chances of acceptance and the stronger our hopes for a day when revealing one’s gender or sexuality holds no more terrors than telling people your favourite colour.

On behalf of the newly inaugurated LGBTQIH (open for more membership, vowels and consonants today) all I really want to say to Robert is, thank you!