A discussion about queer



Hi my love

I realized, that people are blind, so incredibly blind. I wrote to a friend about you, in a way that I thought was pretty obvious. You realized that she didn't really know what to say when we were there and I had the impression that she had understood. Today I realized that she has absolutely no idea we're more than friends...
That's starting to get annoying, you know? I don't want to shout out: I'm lesbian. Especially since I don't feel lesbian. But whenever I speak of you, they don't understand what you really mean to me. If I was speaking of a boy the way I speak of you, everybody would understand we're together even if it wasn't true...
I have to find a way to make it more obvious, a way to explain without using the word lesbian (or also explaining why I don't like that word...). I also want to find a proper rainbow pin, that might help.
And in this case, the private is also political. I want them to realize that there's more than boy and girl being together, I want them to open their eyes to all the possibilities that they haven't seen before, I want them to realize that not only boyish girls could be lesbian, I want them to realize that women who love women can be like me.
Everybody's so deep in the heterosexual matrix... when they ask about a boyfriend, an honest answer is "no". But what they actually want to know, is whether I love somebody. And yes I do! That's the discrete kind of discrimination. In their imagination, you and me being more than friends, actually loving each other is not an option. And I hate that! Because I love you and I want them to know.

Don't let the weirdness of today ruin your day.
I love you
Tanja



Hello my sunny window

Now, after reading your mail, I have so many thoughts in no order, probably mixed with feelings, they make me start bubbling without saying anything... So, i'll print your mail and take it with me like a letter and read it outside -the room here chokes- and return :)

I love you
Ada



Hello again my love

I really don't know what to write, because it's such a temptation to get dissappointed on humanity. And so easy to keep being one.

I love you
Ada



Good night Imzadi

I would really like to read your bubbling :)

why to get dissappointed in humanity?

Keep your head high (German saying for hold on :) )
I love you
Tanja



Good morning my wind

You know, the whole queer theory, seems too sophisticated. Terms and more terms. What is queer? Am probably influenced by a frame of mind, but still, why are we digging our own scars? ...probably i don't make sense at all :)
"they don't understand what.."
what do you think they understand? What do you think the together means to them?
"not only boyish girls could be lesbian":
"boyish", what do you mean by that? Just because a particular appearance is associated with (boyish) boys, that doesn't mean that boyish girls are more boys or less girls.
"women who..can be like me": you are a woman, yet no one is like you. Even the "boyish girls" cannot be confined under a term, a label that digests individuality (including sexual desire), especially when that new term is not even creative. (My mum accuses me of being that, that's also why i heard that phrase loud.) What do you mean by "like me"?

You said that people are blind... don't know. They could definitely be, though. Right now, i could happily shun the whole humanity for not seeing what for me is obvious. How can they not be like me/you... or, with sth bitter in the taste, how can i not be like them... And actually, yes! Why not? They are blind. They were easily convinced to believe a god (fear of freedom), to start confessing words about sexual identity to a Priest, report to authorities, even betray, longing for the forbidden apple, then wanting to be priests themselves. And then gods, to define for themselves, yet individuals, found it easier to follow, assumed at convenience (revenge), to make laws to break, excuse their faults in front of friends they don't trust, accept walls around their eyes, learn to laugh with stupid jokes and lecture about the meaning of life... yes, i can not trust humans, why should i?
Am writing bullshit... it's just... i'd really like to know whether the priests, listening to the confessions of the sin of desire, were getting warm... breathing a little bit faster. And when did we start hiding our red cheeks... anyway.

Am not disappointed in humanity. How? Am still alive and i love you.

Have a beautiful day
Missing you
Ada



Hi my love

> You know, the whole queer theory, seems too sophisticated.
hm... well I like sophisticated theories.. kind of :) For me, queer theorie is a good tool to understand why what is so clear to us is so hard to understand for others

> what do you think they understand? What do you think the together means to them?
I think they understand that we are friends, close friends, but nothing more. That's got to do with something that I read in a text and really liked: In the matrix, there are three package solutions if you want affection. First there's friendship. That's a close relationship on a platonic base, without a lot of physical affection. Then there's an affair, if you want sexual contact without too much emotional affection. And if you want both, physical and emotional affection, choose a romatical relationship. But relationships always have a notion of ownership, the two persons belong to each other and can not be physically close to someone else at the same time. And I think this explains pretty well the drawers into which relations between people are usually sorted. Of course, there are much more possibilities, but since the matrix excludes them, they are easily overlooked.
So, since the matrix is so deep in everybody's head, most people will understand our relationship either as friendship, or as a romantical relationship. Actually, in my opinion it's neither. But I'd be happy if they understood at least that it's not only friendship.

You know, knowing about this matrix helps me not being angry with the people for being blind, but understanding why they don't see. And I feel the matrix in myself too. I often feel the urge to put people and their possible relations into those boxes too or even to sort myself into one of them, but I'm aware of it and try to fight it.

>"boyish", what do you mean by that?
There is a cliché of what people imagine lesbians to look like. I don't look like that. I remember, there was a girl at my school, a few years above me. She had short hair, was wearing boyish clothes and behaving not very girlish. I don't know how she percieved herself, because I never spoke to her. But everybody at the school was whispering that she was a lesbian. I don't know what she thought about that either, maybe she was / is, maybe not. And for me, that's not really important. But there's a prejudice that people have in their mind. She looked lesbian to them, I don't. That's also what I meant by women like me. If I looked less female, if I had short hair and didn't wear skirts, I think it would be easier for them to understand that I love you.
I know that those two things, looking boyish and loving women, have nothing at all to do with each other (well, maybe if you look at statistics they do, but we know that statistics say nothing about the individual), but in the minds of most people they are closely linked. And that's what annoys me.
I don't feel lesbian, but I'd be happy if they percieved me as a lesbian at least, and that way also realised that their prejudice of what kind of a person a lesbian is.... is nothing but a stupid prejudice.

All these things make them blind to the simple truth that I love you. And that makes me furious. Because it is a discrimination, a discrimination against you, against me and against our love.
And I think the only way to fight that, is to confront them with the truth as it is for us... But the thing is, that for us it's a simple truth. If I want to explain to them, it becomes complicated...

Also, what I mean by the private is political... the matrix makes people unhappy, because life has much more possibilities than the matrix accepts. But the matrix is not fixed and everlasting, we can try to free ourselves from it. We have already freed ourselves a little. But I also want to open others' eyes. I want them to see that there's so much more to life than what the matrix contains.

And what you said about the priests, etc. ... I don't have any personal experience with people who think like that.
The world has a long history of suppressed sexuality. Children are forbidden to touch themselves and taught that sex is bad and filthy. When they grow up, they will fear sexuality, but at the same time long for it. That longing for what is forbidden cannot be admitted and so is expressed in dirty jokes, looking down on others who don't tie their desires, looking down on the desire itself... and they will teach their children exactly what they were taught.
You know the interesting thing is, that often those people who are the most vicious against gays have hidden homosexual desires that they don't dare confess to themselves and the world... So yes, I'm sure the priests are getting warm, even though they will probably interprete it as disgust.

Maybe I'm completely wrong, maybe I think I know too much about humans. But that's how I explain those things to me.

will be waiting for your answer :)
I love you
Tanja



Hi my love

Haven't finished reading yet..i mean the again and again reading, thinking. You stimulate my mind :)

And is also this idea that came while i was in the study room, sitting on a desk, taking notes on and behind your paged thoughts. To post it. somewhere. Your thoughts and my notes. And you can do the same. And post that... on a wall, on a bench, on a tree... It's fast; pin or tape work faster than stensils or graffity. I want too the world to see that we think and love and.. Mind speeds up; and i question my inner motives and possible consequences on us, but, why to hide an idea? I really think your mind is beautiful (you could say that i find beauty easily, but i don't). And i would like your thoughts to be heard too... the world to be touched by you and respect you as i am and do. And i'd like to see something like that posted on a tree as i walk in the heath..at least it would make my day. anyway.

Also, after your first paragraph, a question came to me and it seems like i would really like to hear you.. what do you think made us different from the others? This question of course mocks itself, a little bit, since it automatically asks what's the difference, and tries to be honest but.. still.

That's for now. Want to continue reading :)
Hungry
Ada



Hi Imzadi

I love your idea! And I've been thinking something similar too... :) I wanted to write a text about exactly these subjects for my website, but whenever I sat in front of the empty document, I could only think about our mails, because there it is explained... I've put our mails together in the webpage that's attached to this mail. What do you think?
In order to pin it somewhere we'd have to shorten it, because now it's several pages long... but we could sort it into subjects and make pages for each subject (like the two subjects relationship or friendship and being lesbian or not)...

As for what makes us different...
I could say it is mostly because of my mum who taught me about philosophy, taught me to look behind appearances which is one of the reasons for which I started reading gender theories that made me sensitive to those issues... but that's not the whole truth.
I think, we are both very sensitive to when we're true to ourselves and when we aren't. We don't care a lot about fitting in. Maybe we just can't fit in the matrix easily and that's why we noticed its boundaries. Maybe we just don't want to fit in.
But nevertheless, we love humanity, and we love life. And now, we love each other. Why we are like that? I have no idea. And I'm not sure if it is important...

Anyhow, take care my rainbow bubble.
I love you
Tanja



Hello my afternoon

I really like everything you sent me. Don't really mind about the picture :) And names are just names, as long as you don't have a problem either. About the pinning somewhere, we could do that too. I really respect the lone walkers, maybe because am one too, and would make me smile if something is somewhere for nobody, for everybody, for you and for me. From and for the stranger. Like a gift on the way, met by "chance", saying a hello that you can even tear down if you don't like. We'll see..not necessarily :)

Need some time to type down some notes..so, back in a while
Yours
Ada



ok. I'm waiting :)

thinking of you
Tanja



Good evening my love

Really liked the text about the matrix.. so, Emotional affection equals friendship and Physical affection can have nothing to do with feeling. That's what they allow. They divided affection (who doesn't need it?)..ok. but then why that much history behind every word? Why the limits around friendship and why thinking in opposites (the one having a minus sign)? They seem to define the famous "one night stand" as the opposite of "noble" friendship. That the one cancels the other, that they can't be both, or that there cannot be any differently. Package solutions..but what exactly is the problem to be solved? Why to sort relations into drawers, from which you are not supposed to escape neither physically nor emotionally. Why to be excluded if you deviate (I really like this word)?

"most people will understand our relationship either as friendship, or as a romantical relationship".. why not "affair"? Cannot find a way to ask what i mean..is like playing in their field, words are their advantage. Anyway "it's not only friendship"..and at the same time is also friendship, which is actually the same, just that someone was comparing recently the double negations with the 'positive' statements, and am not sure what logic would say.
"If I looked less female, if I had short hair and didn't wear skirts, I think it would be easier for them to understand that I love you.".. really like this sentence; speaks so clearly.. even though, don't think it would be much of a difference. They could substitute the 'heterosexual/normal' with the 'lesbian/acceptable', but maybe you would still be under a term.

Sometimes i feel that queer theory fails to be radical, because it speaks a lot about 'they', or about 'I', and not a lot about/to 'You'. Like queer has nothing to do with irrational, with love. Unless not the case, that must have come from pain, the pain of the oppressed. Nevertheless, it is indeed a ground to understand. And can make us feel annoyed especially when our own assumptions are revealed. So... it is so difficult to make a text out of notes :)

"looking boyish and loving women, have nothing at all to do with each other".. hate statistics too. What they say about the individual is included in the errors' section.
Lesbian look. The whole look-subject makes me sick. Am trying to figure out which look says 'leave me alone' but there is always fashion found before me.
They (including me in the sense of humanity) can bubble for hours about how women may want to resemble men, in order to 'ask for power' to decide at least for their bed. Or about the assumptions of the lesbians themselves (am talking about those who accept the term over them, who give up). There can be argued that a woman loving women may be dressed like a man because that's what she assumes women like, i.e. she's also in the matrix. Or maybe, (Freud would be good at it) they actually love men, but were 'not successful' and thus, from an unknown reaction mechanism, exchange roles and... am sure there are other theories too. Is annoying all this theory in their eyes, in the way they look at me, at you, at us, at other people. Their eyes are heavy, and I refuse to think about how I look like, but here comes the question: How do we look like? What do they think of us judging only from the look? What would we think in their place? A mirror would help, but all you see is yourself looking in a mirror (the mirrored reality is really interesting). How else? A picture, especially a 'good' one where we 'look natural', but still, is too still. Then a video while we had no clue.. but we have clue now(and also cctv)..probably there is no sense made. Anyway, rereading myself just noticed that the question was "how do I look like" and not just 'how do I look'. To the first you can answer 'you look like Madonna/a lesbian/a tiger' while to the second you can answer 'you look beautiful/sad/angry/tired/dirty/like Madonna'..that probably goes too far..does it?

Don't really know whether I should carry on bubbling. Want to listen to you. There are some notes left, but can't even make sense myself, so..

How was your day?
I miss you
Ada



Hi Imzadi

Let my reply to your last paragraph first :)
There's one more (big) theorie: inversion. That says that lesbians actually want to be men and that's why they dress like men and love women. Well, none of those theories explains why I love you. And why would we need such a theorie anyhow? I hate those books that say: women are like this. Or: men are like that. They always express it like that's how women are, but actually that's how women are supposed to be, and only because every little girl is confronted with those ideas, most women fit into those desciptions. I feel very clearly that I'm a woman, but I won't let any book tell me what a woman is, what I am supposed to be.
I don't really care a lot about what others think, how they might interpret me. Well, I've never met a professional psychologist who told me all about me, so... :)
But you know, how we can defend ourselves against that kind of interpreting us, a kind of interpreting that also limits and binds the person it explains? By always surprising them, by never fitting into any category, by always again challenging the opinion someone has of us, by simply being who we are.

When I read our discussion again, I became a little uncomfortable at our use of "they". Whom do we mean by that? For me, it's those people who know me, who meet me, whom I talk to. But of course, they are all individuals too, and some of them challenge the matrix too, maybe even in a way that I hardly notice. I will continue to use the word "they" generally, but it doesn't really mean just anybody... well, I guess you understand what I mean.

No, our relationship certainly doesn't fit under the term "affair". First, all those who know me would agree that I'm not the kind of person who has affairs (after all, we're trying to find a word under which others would put our relationship, right?). And then, of course: Affairs don't last. They don't have the intense emotional closeness that we have. Or at least that's what I think the general meaning of the word is...
And also, it should be obvious to everybody whom I told of you that we're emotionally close. What they refuse to see, is that we are also physically close (which is the main criteria for the definition of an affair), that we are both sexual beings...

and now to the first paragraph :)
Yes, the why... why does the matrix exist? That's something that all postmodern theories fail to explain. They are good at analysing everything, but they don't even ask for reasons. And here, my mum would say, we need a historically dialectical (or something like it) analysis... But I can't do it...

So, you heard my thoughts, now I wanna know the rest of your notes :)

I love having this kind of conversation with you. It would be nicer to discuss in person, but this way we have a written protocol which is also not bad... :)

Enjoy the night
I miss you
Tanja

PS: did you also notice that you were thinking more about what you write, now that we'll kind of make it public? When I realized that I was starting to censor myself, I decided that I'll write to you first, what ever comes to my mind, and think about the censoring (if I do it) when I include the text in the website..



Hello my cloudy cat

Hope you enjoy your day

Censoring our own thoughts is really interesting. I don't avoid thinking of it, since is always there. Nevertheless, why this feeling? Am talking to you, but this You doesn't change just because others will read, in the sense that actually the You implies your world, our world, the world..really like playing with the world(s) :)

"And I think the only way to fight that, is to confront them with the truth as it is for us..." , is it realism..? We need to choose a style, because..it will be critisized..am being slightly ironic, but that's how this matrix makes me feel, helpless. But still, ironic. And even if we don't really care about how to express ourselves, there is gonna be a name, another clever term that sorts expression into art or science, realism or romanticism or any other critics' inventions. Trying to imagine whether a poet or a painter stop the rush of inspiration to think: wait a minute, that's expressionism, maybe i should switch to impressionism.. irrelevant
"We have already freed ourselves a little"..have we? as far as am concerned, i doubt. At least i still put an alarm clock to wake me up, not to be late..
"a long history of suppressed sexuality". why
"sex is bad and filthy" why
"That longing for what is forbidden cannot be admitted" why
"looking down on others who don't tie their desires" envy?
"the most vicious against gays" , prefer them than the civilized ones
"I'm sure the priests are getting warm, even though they will probably interprete it as disgust", or even worse, they will feel guilty

These are the notes that make no sense. And indeed they don't :). Because the why is not sure about the question mark anymore, for a question mark is more optimistic, more passionate. anyway. Just don't get all this guilt of error, the fear that we will disappoint the others, that they will lose their smile and when they, hopefully, find it back, we'll be missing..so, let's compromise because we'll miss the smile of our beloved world. Now, that's bullshit

Have you read Albert Camus? Have a greek translation with me. There was a line: If you want to be a philosopher, write novels. And it remind me of you

Dare to dream
Ada



What does being queer mean for me?
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