Be gay no crimes

Hello friends!

I haven’t written in such a long time, but I’ve been short on both time and inspiration (sad). I went through a really productive poetry-writing phase as well during lockdown, but the gradual lifting of restrictions away from the news has put paid to most of my depression-fuelled fits of furious verse. My friends are probably very relieved. But in all seriousness, I am a lot happier in 2021 than I was in 2020. Sometimes you have to leave the media cycle behind for your own sake. I’m less aware of what’s going on, but thankfully escaped the plughole of doom that I would swirl down every morning.

No, this time my inspiration came from somewhere else. I have a new person in my life. I’ve been writing this blog for so long I think it’s seen me end three relationships and carry not a few flirtations! You all know way more about me than you ever needed to but yes, finally, the occasion is here, I officially have a girlfriend (of four months now), and it was a bit of a wild at the start when neither of us knew where we were headed, but we actually seem to have settled down into something that is really sweet and lovely and wholesome. Had the whole informing-the-parents thing (I’ve never sat them down for a chat or anything, assuming I looked queer enough, but apparently I threw them off the scent when I got a boyfriend). But I did it very casually. So casually, in fact, and Dad took it so nonchalantly, I was fairly sure he hadn’t heard. We have had other conversations since, mainly about the way Dad speaks about Certain Issues where we know he isn’t prejudiced but people around him don’t – who’s listening? Could his friends approach him? Why does he think certain things are a ‘joke’/punchline etc. (and not just relating to LGBTQ+ issues either, and some conversations came up last year too around BLM). So, some good has definitely come out of my whole BEING GAY thing, because he does go away and think about things, even if he initially gets defensive. I am no believer in the ‘old dog new tricks’ thing – no. Everyone can learn. Btw, I am not gay, I am bi/pan. And probably nonbinary (I’m working through that currently). But Dad said during one of our discussions, ‘Well, I didn’t know she was gay!’ I said, ‘I’m not gay,’ which Mum told me later REALLY confused him hahaha. My mum was like ‘It’s a spectrum, Ian!’ Luckily my mum is a goddamned LEGEND in that department.

Anyway, so it was about this, and changes in my lifetime, and in culture, and history. I went to the beach with my girlfriend a few weeks ago and it was super romantic and at one point I asked her, “Do you mind if I hold your hand?” She was like, “No?? Why?” nonplussed. I said, because if we do, we will be obviously gay, and we might get unwanted attention and people being dicks. She said, “Really? Have you had that before?” I said yes. She was BRILLIANTLY amazed – and she said she’s never experienced homophobia.

Just take a minute to let that sink in.

There are seven years between us – I left sixth form as she started school. Those seven formative years, such a short time, the time when I was tormented mercilessly for being gay, when ‘gay’ was a ubiquitous insult, when everyone was closeted, when even other gays bullied the more-obviously-gays so fingers weren’t pointed at them … The complete lack of any formal education acknowledging even the EXISTENCE of anyone who wasn’t cis/straight, never mind anything useful like sex education. To her time at school, when she was open from her early teens, when she’s never even heard anyone describe anything as ‘so gay.’ A different world!! Blew my mind.

I have gone, in the space of five years, to snogging a girl in a club and getting a heavy tap on the shoulder and being asked to leave because ‘You can’t do that shit in here’, to being able to walk hand-in-hand down a dank cobbled street off the river with my girlfriend, kissing her goodbye (quite a few times) down said street, with three clubs and three pubs on it and men standing outside and smoking and the lighting dim and nobody said a word and I felt … safe.

Last weekend we had a romantic day in Knaresborough. We walked down the river and hired a boat from a huge muscle man, who asked us where we’d come from, said to my girlfriend “I like your trousers, mate,” and then helped us into a boat with, “Have a lovely time, ladies.” We’ve been out for several romantic dinners and every time, I am SO thrilled with the total lack of reaction. Everyone treats us (so far) EXACTLY THE SAME. I can’t tell you how incredible this feels. To be out in the open and it be … nothing!!

We were having, ya know, a fun time together on Saturday night, and when I got up, I looked down at my copy of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness that is lying, half-finished, on my bedroom floor. I was filled with sadness for her, but then thought how vindicated, how passionately furiously delighted she would be at the way we are able to live our lives, here and now.

We are living for all of them.

Thank every person in the world who has helped in every way, big or small, global or to your friends and neighbours, for us to be normal and accepted. There is still a lot of work to do, even here, and this is probably not something I should be ‘counting my blessings’ on, but because of how much society has changed towards LGBTQ+ even in my lifetime I think I will always have some awe in the back of my mind.

I hope everyone now grows up like my girlfriend, who, if it’s mentioned, will give you a funny look and ask ‘Why?’ Because while she knows about the past, that’s just it. It’s in the past.

Yours happily,

Georgie

In Other News

A LONG time ago now, but I went to the pub with KatherineWithWords (But First, Coffee) and she has the most glorious rich brown waist-length hair, and she was winding it absent-mindedly around her hands. Admiringly, I said, “Your hair is so beautiful.”

“Oh, thank you!” she said, her eyes going wide. “I dropped chilli con carne in it before I left!”

Bidentity

Evening, all.

I don’t have a rant to go on today. I just want to talk about something. Writing it out helps me as much, if not more, than anyone who may choose to read it.

What I’m going to talk about is bisexuality and identity.

I have friends who I talk to about this all the time. And I have other friends who I barely mention it to (or who don’t even know, through my own omission and their assumptions in a heteronormative world). This isn’t anything against those friends – for me, more than anything, is it’s a very personal thing, when you think about it, to mention your sexuality – and I’m really not the kind of person to just be like ‘HI I’M BI’. Generally, if it comes up at all it’s in passing, because it’s relevant to something else we’re talking about.

I’m going to get personal now, and tell you about (sigh) my ‘journey’ (ew).

I always felt weird as a teenager. My friends had crushes on the hot male history and science teachers. The only teachers I had crushes on were female ones. This added a LOT of fire to my already-extremely-awkward personality. I got bullied for being gay. And the thing was – I wasn’t sure! Maybe I WAS gay – because I certainly didn’t like any boys. But I didn’t feel any pull of attraction, like that, towards anyone at all really, for a long time. So I was stuck in a ‘maybe I am gay’ rut, and at school, gay was the worst insult. So I felt pretty horrible about the whole thing. My parents thought I was gay too, and my dad constantly made jokes about it – which was their way of telling me that a) they already knew so I didn’t have to do the whole coming-out thing because they knew how horribly embarrassing I would find that and so I would probably never say it, and b) letting me know that was absolutely fine. Personally, I’d go about it in a different way, but their hearts were very much in the right place.

In my later teen years, we have a whole crash of views coming in. I’ve got my parents who are fine with it, and being gay is spoken about openly and without prejudice in my house; half of my mum’s cousins are gay and as a little kid we’d go and see Chris and his boyfriend. Cool. But school was a whole different ball game, and at that age your parents are almost out-of-focus compared to the social pressure and even hate you get from peers. But another worm in the can was my religious experiences. As a teenager, I identified as a Christian (still do) and the few friends I had were also Christian. As a group, we were greatly influenced by more conservative Christianity, and we started attending a club-like ‘church’ on a Friday night involving disco lights and speaking in tongues and wild dancing and solemn heartfelt prayer with raised hands, and fainting people in spiritual communion, and a lot, a LOT, of highly questionable messages. Things like how, at fourteen or fifteen, we should be thinking about getting married, looking for the person we would marry, and making ourselves into the sort of person they’d like to marry. Girls were virtuous ‘God’s daughters’, all sweetness and light and housewifely and child-bearing and holy, and men were strong and it was their job to take care of girls, but with that came control over them. Girls were told to dress modestly to put across the sort of personality that would make a good and modest wife. Did I mention we were fifteen. Yeah.

So I was battling a lot out – general teen weirdness, social pressure, my interpretation of my own faith, my friends’ faith, a belief that if I was gay I’d be facing this sort of bullying my whole life and it would never be ok no matter what my parents said. A mess.

Well, I went to college and didn’t think much of it there, just felt a sort of release from it because I was with different people and things were a bit more mature. And then I went to university and didn’t think much of it there, either, I’ll be honest, until I was in second year and found a guy I fancied. Wow, a guy! And someone I fancied! He was so gay. But we seemed to want to fuck each other, put bluntly (which we didn’t, because of a different avenue of religious questioning which we shall put aside here). It didn’t work out, anyway, and I’m pretty sure he’s at least bi too.

Then we hit third year of uni. And I’m not really sure what happened over the previous two years but I guess just exposure – exposure to ‘gay is ok’! Exposure to bromance, girls kissing in clubs, an openness about sexuality in general I hadn’t seen before in my small-town Christian life. The earth-shaking revelation that feminism has been for me, and the open embrace true feminism offers to everybody. And somewhere in there, although I can’t pinpoint the exact moment, the realisation that being gay and being a Christian are not mutually exclusive and we have a God of love. Love is love. OK. Doing well!

So, third year. New year new me. I grew in confidence. I was happy with who I was. I had amazing friends. I loved my course, my uni, my friends, my life. I started a new accepting church. And as far as I remember, my sexuality wasn’t bothering me at all.

Then a comet hit me in the form of a new girl on our course. Our interaction was in all truth pretty brief, but I can credit this girl with a lot. She was openly, confidently, sexily gay. She was the best flirt I’ve ever met and she was relentless, and when I was with her I found myself being much more flirtatious and witty than my usual standards. And she made it clear she found me attractive and she asked me on a date and she asked me (a lot) to have sex with her. Stuff went wrong because it wasn’t the right time. I make a rule to avoid regrets in life, but if I was to have one, I honestly wish it had gone better with her and that we’d both been more mature about it. But, we moved on, became good friends. But that small thing I had with her blossomed and, as silly as it sounds, that was my true realisation moment. OK. I am a bisexual.

Over the course of that year I came to terms with myself. I started being more open about it with my friends (well, getting off with girls in clubs will tend to do the talking for you). I did get a boyfriend, who was a Christian, but before we’d gone anywhere I told him, because if he hadn’t been ok with it, I would have finished it before it started.

But the time I spent with that guy was my first love, which does funny things to your brain, and it was an unhealthy relationship on top of that and significantly stifled who I really was. So I may have taken a backward step there.

But then I came out of that, and I was ready. I was me. I got myself back. And I LIKED GIRLS.

Over the last couple of years my feelings towards women have intensified and I don’t know whether that’s my sexual feelings in my maturity genuinely getting stronger, or just that I’ve become more open and accepting of who I am.

I told my current, amazing, boyfriend, that after that ex I said I was ‘done with guys’. He took it quite personally as evidence of my man-hating feminism. I didn’t really get chance to explain that that wasn’t it; I just emotionally connect better with women because I understand them, and I wanted a relationship with someone who wasn’t stifled by the toxic masculinity endemic to our culture – someone with emotional eloquence, which women tend to be better at than men (tend! No blanket rules! Purely because of our socialisation). And I wanted to explore my sexuality and my identity. It was far, far more than ever being ‘done with guys’ because they hurt me. It had nothing to do with that. I just wanted to open up my other side to myself.

As it happens, I met him, fell in love, and life took its course, as it does.

I’m also incredibly blessed with my group of Christian best friends from school, who stayed my ultimate bezzies, and who all went away and had the same love-is-love, feminist awakening I had, so we’ve supported each other and become closer than ever and have such a wholesome dynamic as a group and as individual friendships I cannot sing these girls’ praises high enough. I love them with all my heart. If you’re reading, girls, you are LIFE, thank you xxxx

And one of them had a bisexual awakening too, and so we’ve become a sort of support group for each other, us two yammering away about our queer little feelings surrounded by the warmth and true ally-ship of our oldest mates. It’s the best. So that’s helped, too, with confidence and openness.

The back story has gone on longer than intended but it helps me to iron out how I got here.

Because now all that’s bothering me is that nobody seems to know. Bi erasure is a thing. Both me and my bi bestie are with guys. People assume we’re straight all the time. She’s married so that will always happen to her. And I’d like to marry this guy, so it’ll probably always happen to me too.

But it’s something that I now see as so intrinsic to who I am, how I see the world, that I feel a sort of desperation in it, a weird urge to just yell it at random moments, or bring up things in conversation. I literally imagine being able to tell people in an unplanned scenario. I joked with Bi Bestie (she’ll love that as a nickname… not) about feeling so invisible I might get a badge. As it happens, after that skype I really did google ‘bisexual badges’ and they are a thing, and now I own two. And a gay pride one. Yessss.

It’s a hard feeling to describe because you feel like it shouldn’t matter, in this day and age, but it just cuts having people make assumptions about you. And although our sexuality doesn’t define us, for me I do feel it’s an important part of who I am, and it just gets ignored, unacknowledged, unnoticed. And there’s no real socially acceptable time to just yell ‘HEY I’M BI’. You don’t really see bi people on tv, or read about them in YA lit. You might see the struggles of a gay person on tv, but I’ve never seen the rather different struggle of being bi, and all the confusion and frustration and feeling of being invisible that that brings. And when I have brought it up, I’ve heard things like ‘I don’t get it. Like, I get being straight. And I guess I get being gay. But not… both?’

Something I also struggle with is FOMO – I’ll never know (I mean, if all goes according to plan with my amazing boyfriend, who I love, respect and adore, and would never swap for anything) firstly what it’s like to have a girlfriend, but more importantly to go about the world with my identity on show, saying yeah here look is my girlfriend, I am queer, I am visible, I am part of this community, just…. Being. Being all of myself.

And how lucky and blessed are we to live in this age where we have the freedom (here, at least), to go about the world like that?

I just wanted to explain how it’s something that affects me all the time, and I think about it a hell of a lot, and I sometimes just need to talk about it. Thank God for my amazing friends and boyfriend. Thank God for my amazing accepting validating church. I’ve never had anything but positivity about my sexuality from people of faith since that short-lived stint in the rock n roll Christian conservatives club in my teens.

If you are Christian and queer, may I suggest the Christians for LGBT+ facebook page as one of the warmest and most affirming religious spaces I’ve ever come across.

And now you all know me better than you ever wanted to, and it’s way past my bedtime, I’m ringing off. Love you all. Thanks for being here. And being queer.

Yours bisexually

Georgie

 

In Other News, I punched a guy

A pal – my Bi Bestie, in fact – insisted on going clubbing for her 25th even though we are too old for those shenanigans now.

Five minutes into our first club and one of my pals got a very thorough groping.

Five minutes after that, he came back and got me.

But this time he’d picked on the wrong lass. He made to dart away as I turned but I was too quick for him. I punched him so hard in the head he nearly fell over. Despite what he’d just done, I still had to fight the urge to laugh because he’d just been punched in the head by a woman a foot shorter than him and nearly fell over, but the funniest thing was the pure surprise on his face. No anger. Just utter astonishment.

His dickhead mates set him back on his feet and he came back over to me, holding his hand up. “High five yeah, all good yeah?” he said, expecting the response he’s no doubt had countless times from women he’s assaulted, who are afraid of taking it further and want to de-escalate the situation. Again, wrong lass.

“I’m not high-fiving you, you’re fucking disgusting, if you ever do that again I will fucking deck you,” I yelled, aware that in the noise of the club my anger was more important than what I actually said.

Now he looked furious and I thought he was going to punch me in the face. I dared him to, and one of his mates slung an arm in front of his chest.

At this point, the bouncer arrived, assessed the sight of a small girl yelling at a large man, asked no questions, and threw him bodily from the club.

Result.

 

Strength is all shapes and minds

I’m starting to learn what it is to be me.

At the age of 24, starting.

I feel happier in myself than I’ve ever done. Not like happy all the time, that’s not it. I get really down sometimes. This year has kinda sucked in a lot of ways. It’s been the most stressed I’ve ever felt. I got my heart broken. I have not made many friends. I spend most of my time staring at the same four walls. My course, biodiversity and conservation, makes me incredibly depressed about the state of the planet and the idiocy of humanity. I hate the city I live in, it’s a concrete rubbish dump.

BUT APART FROM THAT.

What I mean is I think I know myself better. I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks. In fact ‘very few fucks to give’ has become my motto. Not in an unkind way, I still go out of my way to help people – that’s another thing I like about myself is I am much better at talking to people and if I see a gap I can fill, I will do. I value kindness and I am very lucky to have that in abundance in my life. And you give what you get. Make the world a nicer place by living in it.

Having said that, I have a very low tolerance for bullshit, and I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive. Girl at work hungry, I cooked her a big meal to share with her family. Kind! Guy on my course sent a text round the whole course which is majority girls, asking if anyone could sew something up for him. I sent a text back asking if all his fingers were broken. Bullshit! See. Both is good. Call both.

I feel a more stronger identity now. I will confidently identify as bi which has taken a loooong time. I will also happily call myself punk now. I am a bi punk Christian feminist scientist and, I won’t lie, that makes me feel a tiny bit badass. And I am generally more confident – a couple of years ago I’d never have said that to that guy about sewing haha.

This is because of people I have around me, in large part. Over the last five years particularly I’ve met people who make me feel like I can be me, and me is good and loved and appreciated, and those are the kinds of people you need in your life. And because they are so wholesome I hope I make them feel good and loved in return. That’s you. Yes YOU. A cycle of appreciation. ❤ ❤ ❤ I love you and to the ones I haven’t seen in a while, I miss you.

And I feel good in my body. This isn’t to be underrated. Sometimes the things that influence us with how we feel in our body aren’t always healthy, and if something is inevitable you have to be able to disassociate from it to a certain extent. But I was thinking the other day, I came in from a run and I was hot and sweaty and I could feel it in my thighs and I was like this is great, look what my body can do, I feel powerful and energetic and proud of my body – it is to do with feeling powerful, I guess a sort of fitness – I’m not particularly strong so I can’t fully explain it – but I was revelling in feeling alive and happy with this temple I inhabit. Which I haven’t always been. But I think I feel as satisfied with it as I ever will.

I’ve joined a facebook community called Women of Impact and if you are a woman – and every woman has an impact, let me tell you – you should join it because it’s the most wholesome inspiring place, just full of women lifting other women up and praising them and encouraging them and it is amazing. And it has given me a little more confidence that, in this stupid world we inhabit, change will come.

This probably sounded really self-obsessed but it’s meant to make you think about how you feel about yourself, and how you change the world by being in it. You will probably never know how many people’s lives you’ve changed for the better just by being there, whether it was once for ten minutes at a bus stop or it’s a decades-old friendship. You are powerful, you are cool, you are YOU and no-one else and no-one has any right to make you feel less or like you don’t belong. Every day we all kick ass at something.

Well this got longer than I thought so I will leave it there. You are strong, important, kind and loved. You kick ass. Thanks for being there, for me, for someone, for everyone.

Yours strongly

Georgie.

 

In Other News

Well I am grossly obsessed with the X-files – to the point that I frequently dream about it – and I’m going through them all again and I like to guess which storyline it is (I watch them on an app which may or may not be legitimate and it has no information, just a thumbnail).

I’m sitting on my bed, door open, there’s a workman in the next room grouting the bathtub, and I’ve got my headphones in.

I opened an episode and within the first few seconds I got it.

“Exsanguination,” I muttered gleefully. Out loud.

And then I remembered the workman about four feet away, with absolutely no context to that, poor bloke.

I was watching ‘X-Files: the truth about season two’ documentary on Youtube and there was a bit on it that genuinely brought tears of laughter to my eyes, although I can’t really explain why. Dean Haglund who plays Langly, one of the Lone Gunmen, said, “All the little aliens are done by little girls. From a dance school. Believe it or not. They wear these big foam rubber heads. They tried to use boys but they tend to punch each other in the foam rubber heads and like break them and stuff. Whereas little girls”  (and at this point he does an impression of a little girl) “are just happy to sit around with big alien heads on them.” Why is this so funny? Man imagine being a little girl with all your wee pals just sitting in some green room somewhere in your giant fuckin alien heads.

Boy with pink hair

Hey all ❤

Today I was going round Lidl and there was a mum with a baby and a boy about three or four in her trolley. As I passed, the little boy literally yelled ‘MUMMY THERE IS A BOY WITH PINK HAIR’.

Now look. I realise it’s a very small child but … You’d say SOMETHING, wouldn’t you? Even if it was just ‘Shh’ – or one of the countless things my mum would have said to Baby Me like ‘Don’t shout in the supermarket’, ‘It’s rude to point at strangers’ etc. But she said literally nothing. Like Not. A. Word. Instead they followed me up and down two aisles with the boy continuing to stare at me, intermittently shouting ‘Boy! Pink hair! How did the boy get pink hair?’ while his mum completely ignored him. It was pretty embarrassing.

I KNOW before you go on a rant about mum-shaming – I don’t know what she’s thinking about, what sort of morning she’s had, anything going on in her life. I’m not, honestly, but I reckon you ought to talk to your kid. He’s bored. The comments are after all addressed to his mum. But also I’d have used this as a little lesson for the kid. Something along the lines of

SHE’S NOT A BOY.

Like, as if she didn’t even say that???!!!! I think that’s so rude?! Haha.

A child CAN grasp very simple concepts like:

• Girls can have short hair
• Boys can have long hair
• Anyone can have whatever hair colour they want when they get older
• It’s rude to shout, stare, and point at strangers

Maybe leave the gender-is-not-binary topic till he’s a tiny bit older, seeing as you’ve clearly already started on a binary path, but for real though how can you just let your kid follow a woman round a shop yelling BOY WITH PINK HAIR and remain completely silent? Odd. Very odd.

Also sad because obviously the bigger picture here is that gender and gender roles and expectations are clearly already drilled with military precision into this little kiddo which is disappointing because in my Ideal Universe ™ we’re well on our way past that shit and only very old people say things like ‘I mean… rather, ahem, masculine, but a nice person, and we don’t talk about certain things’ and everyone rolls their eyes.

Watched a great video yesterday about how ingrained these processes are even at an early age – a class of schoolchildren were asked to draw a firefighter, a surgeon, and a fighter pilot; seventy-five of the drawings were of men, and five were of women. But as everyone knows…. ‘There’s no need for feminism any more! You’re equal!’ Um well no. Because women don’t even occur to children for certain roles and how is that anything other than blatant sexism in social culture?

Down with the patriarchy!!

Yours very boyishly, apparently,

Georgie

In Other News, Better!!

Convo with my landlady at the weekend and I’d had two pints and no lunch, so was a little bit more emosh and expansive than I normally would have been.

She informed me that her daughter, living abroad, previously assumed straight, now has a girlfriend! And she said, “I don’t mind, I’m just really happy that she’s happy! My only concern is starting up a relationship when she knows she has to come back to the UK soon… I don’t want her to get hurt. But I don’t care who it’s with. I know the church doesn’t all agree but I don’t think it matters.”

I loved her very much as she was saying this because I imagine it was really quite a shock for her, so I gave her a big hug and felt almost teary. I was really delighted for her daughter! I was like, “I’m really, really happy for her! And for you!”

She told me a bit  about the girlfriend, and then said that both of her daughters decided they were bi at the same time so had each other to talk to (more shock!!) I was honestly just weirdly overjoyed for her daughter(s) haha. And she was looking at me and I was stuffing pizza into my face at the time in a slightly tipsy way but I suddenly just seized the opportunity and went “Me too, by the way.” She laughed and said “I thought so somehow,” which I found quite funny.

I mean, then she made it weird by saying she’d heard women make much more considerate lovers and I choked, but still, she was trying.

And then yesterday in the kitchen she said, “How’s that – the person you’re seeing? I’m sorry, I just realised I’d assumed it was a boy,” which warmed the cockles of my cold heart once more and see, the world is making progress and we all need more cute people like her in our lives.