Report Back from San Francisco's Sodomy - I mean - Pride Week

Dear readers: this has been a week of being in full body contact with the queer community of San Francisco during our sodomite celebrations. If you are my mom, dad, or grandma, please stop reading here.

Also, I'm sorry I'm having to post everything in tiny chunks, since I last blogged Blogger has started to super-suck for its unpaid members. You can't post more than a few paragraphs at a time.

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Thursday, June 26th, 2003:
The Day the US Supreme Court Fell On Its Knees Before the Country's Sodomites

I spent part of that celebrated day at my (FTM top) lover's pot dealer's house, where she (a butch top) asked me:

Q. “What’s so great about being a femme bottom?”

I couldn't answer very well at that moment, for marijuana-related reasons, but I thought and wrote about it in the ensuing days of encounters with other femme bottoms whose opinions I respect.

A. Becoming transcendental shimmering egoless light under the touch of a good, understanding top, who takes pleasure in your pleasure.

A. Getting to choose to be vulnerable on your own safe/ sane/ consensual terms, a relief when every day on the streets you are forced to act strong on the terms of a misogynist, hostile, aggressive bio-male-centered world.

A. Being admired for qualities like tolerance and femininity that make you a second-class citizen in the patriarchy.

A. If/ when you are a service bottom: the challenge/ delight of succeeding in pleasing someone, maybe healing the absent/ disapproving/ detached father (and mother!) wounds so many of us carry.

A. If/ when you are a stone bottom: the challenge/ delight of taking whatever is dished out to you: releasing a negotiated amount of control of your circumstances that you are forced to try to completely control all day, maybe healing the exhaustion and burnout that comes with being perceived as a public target all the time.

A. Submitting to someone else’s will under controlled circumstances exposes you to certain health risks, but it is mentally therapeutic. Even tops seem to have to bottom to something for mental health—usually god, liquor, or some other controlled substance. Oh, and for all you tops reading this: that “we do all the work” crap doesn’t sound so valiant when you look at our parallel complaint-- “we get all the infections.”
So why play with power and boundaries in sex at all? Because it leads to good processing (and transcendance?) of the world's underlying invisible structures that disempower dykes. Plus, it's just fun.

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Saturday late, after the dyke march, notes from a great conversation with M. about transsensuality versus transfetishism:

On transsensuality:

We bonded over being bi-femme-bottoms who like living around/ discussing trans identity, grey-area complexities of masculine and feminine mixtures, women’s issues and lives and histories in male-shaped life/bodies. We are both afraid of being seen as FTM-fetishizers, but are constantly getting involved with FTMs, and so we are starting to come out as transsensual. This is a quality/quantifier of our attractions, not a requirement for admittance to our bedrooms. We decided we'd probably be in straight relationships if we hadn;t come to the SF Bay Area. But in the SF Bay Area, when not with FTMs, we tend to get involved with other dykes, femme and butch, not bio-men. We are distrustful of the het privilege temporarily conferred on the streets to a femme dyke with an FTM partner, because we know it can backfire violently in a heartbeat. We seek friendships in and act in solidarity with the FTM transgender community. But in the privacy of our own company we examine our own motives.

On the problem with the FTM fetish:

There is an FTM fetish that is the attraction to (or shallow obsession with) the ideal of the formerly-female having a physical male shape and attitude. That fetishism can be alienating and unsupportive to the realities of FTMs (who don’t attain or retain the ideal body/ attitude 24-7), and frightening to butches (who see femmes with FTM fetishes and have body issues triggered by it).

On femmes who leave their butch lovers for not being butch enough, or for having aromatherapy candles instead of beer bottles on their coffee table:

Femmes with the FTM fetish aren’t usually prepared to stick around for the hard real issues of having a woman-shaped history (or current woman-shaped life) with a male-shaped body. They can be drawn to the joys of girlsex in private with the benefit of straight privilege on the streets, and then flee when all
the complicated mixtures and imperfections within the glamour come to the surface. These femmes mostly haven’t yet had intimate, nonsexual, supportive, friendship-based relationships with people who have transitioned FTM. But they probably will, and then the fetish will turn into understanding and a more
finely-honed taste in partnership material (i.e. not just based on appearance, or interior decorating choices).

On FTM sexuality surprises:

Confession: I once was involved with an older FTM who had a heinously old-school lesbian separatist music collection. It was almost enough to end the fling when he put some boring 70’s sisterhood-is-powerful folk on the tape deck. Not to impress me. These were his people. He was singing along. And let me tell you, those 70’s sexphobic lesbian separatist types can unearth some pretty weird sexual pleasure paths when they start dropping T (testosterone). You femmie FTM-fetishizers better put on your seatbelts before you get on that wagon. Hello, strangulation fantasies! And another thing: T can give (very) high blood pressure, which makes sex impossible. It’s like watching a dog chase its tail: they take the
T, get horny, and then feel like a balloon about to pop and are too nauseated to stand up, let alone mouth-kiss. All these issues and more can be yours along with your FTM fetish! In my opinion it’s worth it if you can love the person beyond their physical appearance and health negotiations.

On hot FTM-on-FTM action / FTMs rejecting femmes because “Girls are too complicated”:

It’s true, someone experiencing a testosterone high isn’t really good at verbal processing. Sometimes girls (or girl-like-creatures) are too complicated for people buzzing around on a testosterone cloud, feeling like fucking or fighting all the time. This state of affairs can look like a good time to some butches, like being FTM-identified gives you a license to act like a 14-year-old boy, a most prized license to people who often spent their 14th year terrified someone would beat them up for acting like a boy. Like their 14-year-old boy counterparts, having a “girls not allowed space” is powerful good fun. For some it’s even a long-term preference-- the faggy-boy FTM identity we’re seeing so often now. Sexual pleasure paths are a personal matter: I can’t say I want to waste my time trying to turn out someone who prefers boys (or boy-energy). I try to filter my jealousy over certain hot FTMs who only like other boys into a healthy admiration for their stigmatized and hence brave choices. Anyway, lust is ultimately an urge that is only concerned with itself, so jealous arguing over someone else's body as though it were property to be negotiated is a selfish act independent of the urge to make an individual (you or anyone else) truly happy.

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Friday night at the Sexcapades -- a carnival of perversion for dykes and FTMs (and the stray well-behaved bio-boy):

My femme bottom friend M. and I working at the masturbation booth to our voyeurs:
“We’re sodomizing ourselves in honor of the supreme court ruling yesterday.”
We provided details of the ruling as we bounced away on the air mattress, surrounded by purple x-mas lights.

One lanky butch from out of town:
“I’ve never come standing up before, thank you.”

At the coat check line, the tired old running joke:
"Mine's the black leather jacket."

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Saturday night marching with the sex worker contingent in the dyke march:

I'm not a sex worker, but people paid to see me Friday night, so M. invited me to join her in the sexiest
contingent at the march. It felt so great to run into ex-girlfriends with my contingent of femme dykes proudly displaying our dominion over our explicit sexual dyke bodies.

Our Chants:

Sodomy, sodomy, rah rah rah!

Yaaay- hos!

Whose streets? Whores’ streets!

1-2-3-4- I’m a dyke and I’m a whore
5-6-7-8- not all working girls are straight
(or: “working girls are never straight,” as one woman commented to herself)

2-4-6-8 I get paid to masturbate

Our Signs:

A graphic of a stiletto heel wreathed by the words “San Francisco Sex Workin' Dykes Got Pride" (text in attractive big black scratchy-font print on white), with purple feathers glued to the sides of the white foamcore which was glued to a flat short wood stake. Since I work at a queer rights organization, I felt completely honest carrying this sign, because the back read:

"We’re here, we’re queer, we get paid for it."

This may have been one of the best ever protest signs, and I am a discriminating customer in the
activist signage department. Read my blog on signage here - written during the anti-war protests in the spring.

Some of Our Stickers:

(We gave these out freely. Black text on bright neon sticker paper.)

Boobs not Bombs (--the most popular)

US Out of My Underwear! Support Sex Workers' Rights! (--and)

SFPD Out of My Underwear!

Feminists Fuck Better (--and)

Dyke Feminist Sex Workers Fuck Better

I’m not a whore but my girlfriend is (--the most popular for straight couples-- the boy would take one and then the girl would read it and say "Hey, I need one too.")

Sex worker rights = women’s rights = human rights

Dykes and sex workers UNITE: our bodies, our rights!

Support Your Local Lesbian Sex Worker: Ask me how! (--I think I gave this one to a grinning Jewelle Gomez.)

Some of Our Pins:

(These were also free to all takers.)

Dyke Whore

A cute little pin-up girl image

A cute little dominatrix image

M’s sign from the bombshells-not-bombs contingent in various peace marches:

Easy on your eyes- hard on your empire.

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Saturday night: continuing the notes from my conversation with M. on transfetishism versus transsensuality

On “Butch Flight”:

Susie Bright coined this phrase for butches running away from their female bodies into the decision to transition F to M. Of course, it trivializes the real and painstaking decisionmaking process people go through. But there are dilettente FTMs, people who aren't transitioning in any direction, and who ten years ago would have been happy identifying as butch.

These same butches sometimes choose to start identifying as FTM without actually a) passing as men, b) trying to pass as men, c) wanting to pass as men, d) taking hormones, or e) even considering hormones (never mind surgery).

These butches may or may not be FTM in a long-term transitional sense, they may be 3rd gender, intersexed, and/or simply lacking a better term than FTM for what they are. They may not be transitioning in any direction whatsoever but see that calling themselves FTM will help get them play (with girls and/or boys). Other motives for taking on the FTM moniker in the absence of transitioning gender can include trendiness, wanting to act in solidarity with an oppressed minority (being a political FTM but living a butch dyke life, the way so many women are political lesbians while living a straight woman’s life), actually liking being in FTM spaces (in the tradition of femme fag-hags, there are butch FTM-hags), and liking the way femmes flock to FTM spaces like so many grandmothers picking over the tomatoes at a market.

Probably the two main motives for identifying FTM without being in transition from F to M come down to sex and friendship. If we are going to be a sex-positive community, we need to be happy that people are exploring their sexual boundaries, and (if we prefer butches to FTMs) contain our anxiety about the scarcity of butches. OK, I have found myself needing to contain my anxiety about the scarcity of butches. Specifically good butch tops. It’s hard to watch a good butch top dematerialize into the faggy orgies going on in the back rooms of the FTM community, sometimes never to return, but I can always just pocket those thoughts and turn them into positive sexual fantasy fodder. And as for friendship— in general this community needs to be more supportive and friendship-based. Building a movement through extended families of ex-lovers is not exactly a sustainable long-term plan for revolution that we want to pass on to our replacements. They are filtering even now into the queer bars out of the pre-teen gender mochepit and they are looking to their elders for values systems to follow. Do we really want to teach sex first, friendship second?

I’m not saying don’t have sex with these juicy youngsters, I’m just saying that we have to model respectful behavior towards eachother’s ever-changing identities that we impose on the 3-dimensional sexual animal we each carry in our core. Let whoever call her/him/hirself whatever, and ask respectful questions about what you don’t understand about her/his/hir choices.

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The Slackerstalker Shimmy Down Market Street in the Pride March Sunday:

Yes I marched, without expecting to. I was hanging out among the contingents about to depart, where a wonderful (Lebanese) femme friend was playing finger cymbals, so I was shimmying along, when the (Egyptian) contingent leader (also a friend) needed someone to hold the "Strong Middle Eastern Queer Women" sign, and I was the only female nearby without something to carry.

Which is how I ended up marching with the South West Asia North Afican Bay Area Queers (SWANABAQ)--- still wearing my sex worker rights stickers and little slutty black leather outfit from the night before. So, I was a middle eastern sex worker for a day… I told a friend this in the neighboring South East Asian contingent, and he made the "rock on" hand gesture and said "the more the merrier!"

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Sunday night at the girl rock-n-roll movie “Prey for Rock and Roll” at the Castro:

Gina Gershon, the star of the movie, was there answering questions and fending off brazen offers from the local dykes.

On picking out the hottie for the movie's lezzie sex scene: “I saw her picture and said- please god let her be able to act.”

Gina was very sassy, even talking back to Linda Perry (of 4 Non Blondes, former band also of Cheri Lovedog, the writer/ protagonist of the movie) who was asking about the research she had to do for the sex scene: "Shut the fuck up Linda."

Cheri's only instruction to Gina for the sex scene, apparently, was, "this isn't making love. There's no candles, flowers, soft music. You are fucking her." And then when the scene rolled around, Cheri was nowhere to be found, so Gina just had to figure it out for herself. I'm not saying this movie is perfect, but that sex scene is completely realistic. Rock on, Gina! Oh, and she does her own singing in the movie. And the band that came together for the movie is going on tour in support of the movie, so watch out for Gina Gershon on your local punk dive stages, America!

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More notes from Femmebottomville after this last week’s festivities:

I know Shar wrote the book on this stuff, but remedial femmes like me might need some even more basic pointers:

-- Use two different tissues to correct your mascara and to blot your lipstick.

-- Remember how last time I wrote about doing your nails and then fixing your hair? Don't do your nails right before flossing either. Ew.

-- Never run on yellow. If you are a femme bottom, you are either barefoot or ridiculously shod and shouldn’t be playing deer-in-the-headlights at crosswalks. If you are late to an appointment, you should still strike a relaxed pose and wait for the green. Your date may be somewhere down the street watching, and s/he doesn’t need to see you falling ass over teakettle.

-- I’ve (re)discovered that a lot of femme-chasers like a little something to hold on to. Don’t diet for attention— diet to look good to yourself. Looking at yourself should turn you on. It’s the surest way to attract people turned on by who you are. I thought I’d gotten over those issues, but I have been watching a lot of Buffy this past year and one starts to wish one could fit into those little
gauzey slip-thin numbers she wears to such great effect…

-- Bring an oven mitt if you ever anticipate marathon use of your Hitachi Magic Wand. That little motor gets pretty hot.

-- I highly recommend wearing lace-up leather arm cuffs with slippery nylon laces that are always coming undone as a way to test-drive potential personal knot-tiers.

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