Carol Queen - PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality

PoMoSexuals

PoMoSexuals

CHALLENGING ASSUMPTIONS
ABOUT GENDER AND SEXUALITY

edited by Carol Queen and Lawrence Schimel

For Eve Tetzlaff, birthmate and friend.

-L.S.

For Robert, without whom it would just be theory. And in loving memory of James Campbell, Esq.

-C.Q.

CONTENTS

Kate Bornstein

Carol Queen and Lawrence Schimel

1 BEYOND DEFINITIONS

Greta Christina

2 THE POLITIC IDENTITY: QUESTIONING REPUTATIONS

John Weir

Katherine Raymond

D. Travers Scott

3 DON'T FENCE ME IN: BI-/PAN-/OMNI-SEXUALS

Marco Vassi

Carol Queen

Pat Califia

Dorothy Allison

5 HERMAPHRODYKES: GIRLS WILL BE BOYS, DYKES WILL BE FAGS

Laura Antoniou

Jill Nagle

6 GENDER PENDING: DENYING GENDER IMPERATIVES

David Harrison

Riki Anne Wilchins

Michael Thomas Ford

7 TECTONIC SHIFTS: CROSSING CULTURES, MAPPING DESIRES

Lawrence Schimel

David Tuller

Acknowledgments

Almost any book, and the anthology in particular, benefits from the generous advice and support of many people who assist in their individual ways. We are grateful to all those who helped make this project a reality.

Foremost, to our publishers Frederique Delacoste and Felice Newman, for years of pushing at boundaries and for patience above and beyond the call of duty.

To Kate Bornstein, for living boldly and for writing the preface.

To Dorothy Allison and Pat Califia, intellectual godmothers to this project.

To Kim Airs, Susie Bright, Michael Bronski, Jo Eadie, Mike Hernandez, Keith Kahla, Richard Labonte, Michael Lassell, Leah Lillith, William J. Mann, Scott O'Hara, Shar Rednour, Tristan Taornuno, and Dr. Jerry Zientara for moral support, enthusiasm, and advice at various stages.

To Robert Lawrence, for inspirational and supportive acts too numerous to mention.

And of course, to our wonderful contributors, for those words they have written and have yet to write, and for their patience with us and our editorial whims.

QUEER THEORY AND SHOPPING:

DICHOTOMY OR SYMBIONTS?

KATE BORNSTEIN

Don't you just love irony? Especially when the irony involves you as its subject? This preface is a case in point. Here I am writing for this incredibly innovative, challenging, and queerly entertaining transgressive anthology at a point in my life where I seem to be leaving off being queer at all. Uh huh, I'm finally approaching the full stride of my life's girly-girl phase. Never mind I'm scant months away from turning fifty, fact is I'm much more interested in fashion than I am in politics, or even ::gasp:: queer theory. I'd rather have a femme buddy than a butch loverwhat's that about? Maybe it's queerly appropriate after all that I'm writing for this book. I should tell you now: This is my first ever preface, so it may tend to wander. But that's gotta be appropriate for a book about the deconstruction of previously deconstructed sexual and gendered identities, no?

I really like this book, by the way. Honest. I'm not just saying that cuz someone's paying me to say things like that or anything. I like it because it's filled with stories and ideas written by people who are doing the unexpected, even above and beyond the quotient of unexpected acts required for one's queer membership card. But enough about this book for the moment; let's get back to me and why it's me who gets to write this preface.

So, okay, here we go. In a nutshell, I used to be a het guy who did the gender-change thing and became a grrl, a lesbian grrl at that. Then, after my female lover became a guy, I stopped calling myself a lesbian. Being a lesbian had become too complicated. Calling myself a lesbian managed to offend just about everyone, so I began to call myself a dyke. I thought I was really hot stuff because I wrote books about this kind of thing and came out in all sorts of big-time media, but my recent nationally-televised confessed crush on megastar David Duchovny signaled the beginning of the end of any status claims I had on high queerdom. (No, he hasn't called yet; I'm still waiting by the phone. I figure it's because he just got married and doesn't know how to call me without upsetting his wife.) This girly-girl stuff is new to me. It's almost embarrassing. I wanna go shopping, but I'm not. I'm sitting here at my computer trying to preface (is that a verb?) this book that brilliantly exemplifies queer theory, when queer is one of the farthest things from my mind. A good scarf, that's what I'm looking for.

My crush on David Duchovny has made me feel somewhat traitorous to the queer movement... that is, until I read some of what the people in this book were going through. I mean, wow! Now I don't feel so weird. I feel downright normal.

How about you? Ever wonder if you're the only one who doesn't quite fit in one of the sanctioned queer worlds? Like, are you really a lesbian? Are you really a gay man? Maybe you fall outside the "permitted" labels, and maybe you're the only one who knows you do, and so you feel a bit guilty? Well, I've got news for you.You're not guilty, you're simply postmodern. Isn't that neat? If you don't believe me, all you need to do is pick up this book and start reading anywhere. Really. I keep a copy in my bathroom because that's where I do a lot of my wondering. From revelation to analysis, from XX to XY and back again, PoMoSexuals is the literary amusement park we've all been hoping exists someplace. Carol Queen and Lawrence Schimel have found Oz, and they've asked some of Oz's leading citizens to tell us what it's like in the Emerald Kingdom. (Carol Queendom?)

Wait, wait, a preface isn't supposed to be an ad for the book, is it? And even if it is, then what if the book is about how to avoid all the "sup- posed-to's" in life? Would a silly preface fit in? I don't know. Anyway, this book isn't going to need any advertising. My bet is it's going to be on reading lists of queer studies courses all over the world, because it says in plain language and great stories what the heavy-hitting theorists have for years been trying to say in knee-deep academese.Yeah, this book can take care of itself, so let's get back to me.

Growing up in the 1950s, my role models started out with Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn. As a boy, that made me queer. Sure, I went through a period of wanting to be James Dean and even Leonard Nimoy, but I justified those times as my baby butch dyke phase-still pretty queer for a boy. Then when I went through my gender change, I looked for all the strong grrl types like Jodie Foster's Agent Starling and Michelle Forbes' Ensign Ro; that was considered queer by most cultural standards, but quite politically correct within the lesbian community (unless ya took into account that fact that I used to be a guy). Then I recently went trash bleach blonde, and I've come around to modeling myself on characters played by the likes of Mira Sorvino, Lisa Kudrow, Geena Davis, and Patricia Arquette. So now I sort of pass for normal. What a strange feeling that is!