The Slap Heard ‘Round the Country

I don’t think I’m gangsta enough to survive in Polk County, Florida. This suburb may sound vaguely familiar to some of you. This is where Victoria “Tori” Lindsey got beat down a few weeks ago. You might remember, six girls took turns hitting her while two guys stood at the door as lookouts. Oh and did I mention that they taped it and wanted to post this ass-beating on youtube?

Back in my day (be quiet, I know my day ended like yesterday), it would go down like this. A girl would talk shit about another girl or group of girl one of three ways: in a note, on the phone, or on aim. This of course always got back to the other girl, and the result would either be girl B talking about girl A, girl B confronting girl A and in very rare cases, girl B physically fighting girl A. What would not happen is a gang of girls attacking one other girl… and then taping it … and the trying to put that trash on the internet for everyone to watch.

The attack was described as “animalistic”. To be clear, the fight was like none I’ve ever seen. The girls took turns attacking Lindsey in an attempt to make it fair. As ride-or-die as they were to beat Lindsey’ s ass they were very careful not to knock into the china cabinet. The beat Lindsey for 30 minutes – thirty minutes! That’s a long time to be doing anything. I didn’t know that teenagers even had attention spans that long.

I will say, they were committed to getting their message across. If I’ve learned anything from this it’s that you can’t call girls “sluts” on myspace or you just might get your ass beat. Worse than Ike beat Tina, ok that was wrong, but they did beat her down pretty bad.

And then they weren’t even worried about being charged. They joked about missing cheerleading practice and not going to the beach. I mean, really? You knock a girl unconscious (twice) and continue to beat her, you don’t let her leave until you’re done beating her, you catch the whole thing on film and don’t expect anything to happen? Cheerleaders are tough like that?

According to CNN, the ladies (should I even call them that) will be charged as adults and face life time sentences. Yeah, that means you’re missing cheerleading practice. And prom. And graduation. Oh and guess what, the rest of your life. And for what, because some chick called you a slut. Wow. And Lindsey is left with blurry vision and she can’t hear out of one of her ears.

I don’t really understand why anyone is so surprised that girls would resort to violence. It’s not new and it’s not uncommon. Don’t believe me? Do a search on youtube. Yeah, it’s a craze of sorts. Now the reasons why one would want to tape and post a fight, well aside from gaining some street cred, I don’t really know. I don’t know that men find fighting sexy. I don’t think you’ll be getting additional acceptances to college because you can stomp another chick into the ground. And it won’t get your ass into heaven. So who do we blame for this (hey it is the American way)? Is this their parents’ fault? Should these girls have been spanked when they were younger? Maybe they didn’t get enough attention. Or maybe they were just really bored.

Ya’ll spend too much time worrying about gangstas and thugs and we really need to be worrying about these cheerleaders. I know I am.

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The invisible queer woman!

Recently, I got out of one of those "unofficial" kinds of relationships. For the past six months or so, I'd been going back and forth with this woman who was in another relationship and yet, she told me, would rather be with me. Still there were a bunch of other complications, like the real fact that there were other people she'd rather be with, too, and not in the sense of setting up a polyamorous sort of deal where we'd be honest with each other and upfront and all that practical and necessary stuff. It was more like every time I turned around when we were out together, she'd be hooking up with someone else, and occasionally even a friend of mine. My begrudged and broken heart notwithstanding, I found it really difficult being in this pseudo-relationship without actually being able to answer in the affirmative whenever anyone asked if she was my girlfriend, and not just because I really wanted to say she was (there, I admit it!). Rather, as a feminine-presenting woman, my sexuality is often made invisible when I'm single.

I've struggled with this for some time, even going so far as to try to attempt to genderfuck, but what ends up happening is that a) I feel ridiculous and uncomfortable, like I'm acting out a part and b) well, I kind of look like a feminine woman trying unsuccessfully to genderfuck. Furthermore I feel like this totally negates the entire reasoning behind genderfucking; namely, that in playing with gender roles, we interrogate their limitations and why they exist in the first place. Interestingly, in the queer community I currently belong to (downtown Toronto), genderfucking and androgyny have become the standard to which queer women are expected to measure up. Thus it's not surprising that those who don't fit the paradigm (i.e. me) feel like this supposedly supportive community that is so rich in and tolerant of diversity might not be all it's cracked up to be.

I find it very interesting that our gender presentation and our sexuality are so inextricable, and I wonder why that is. Historically, this isn't really new in communities of women who sleep with women. This isn't the first time that the ways we express our gender have been used as "evidence" of our sexual behaviour. For instance, I think it's important to note the history of butch/femme identities, which supposedly denoted what kinds of sexual practices a woman might be into. However, many butches and femmes have argued that their outward identities had less to do with sexual roles than simply finding comfort in one's own skin. So why, then, if that's where our history lies, are we homogenizing a queer identity?

Something in me wants to cry out, perhaps naively, "This isn't supposed to be happening amongst queers!! Aren't we all about self-definition and a radical dismantling of the rigidity of sex and gender?!" Still, in the Toronto scene, it seems there is a pretty small margin of people who fit into what a queer woman is "supposed" to look like. Recently I attended a workshop on queerness and body image. While I was expecting a discussion that largely focussed on body type in terms of size, I was necessarily reminded of my white privilege when the discussion turned to racialized bodies. Many of the participants were people of colour who began to articulate the concern that for them, Church Street (the downtown strip that used to be known as the gay village, though increasingly less so), and other queer enclaves in the city are actually pretty inhospitable environments. Someone mentioned that while we homos like to believe we are inclusive and progressive by virtue of our sexual marginalization, our communities are by no means immune to the many other forms of oppression out there (ie. racism, ableism, etc.). One of the participants spoke about how this racism is often hidden under the guise of "preference"; he said he couldn't even count the number of times someone he was hitting on had responded, "Sorry dude, I'm just not into Asians".

There is absolutely a problem of representation and a lack of a sense of inclusion in these spaces, especially considering that this is a community that rallies around the word "diversity" as a way of getting the hetero world to acknowledge and accept us. There is evidence of this everywhere. How often do we see queer characters of size, of colour, and/or with disabilities in television and movies? How often do we see these people having any kind of sexuality at all, for that matter? Sexuality is sort of a tricky thing to be unified by. We aren't understanding of marginalization overall by virtue of our sexualities, as much as I'd like to believe that's possible. So I'm rolling up the sleeves on my girly shirt, because we've got a lot more work to do.

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Female envy

We're all aware of the competition that women are capable of feeling between each other. Her ass is cuter. How does she keep her hair so flat? So what if she doesn't need to wear makeup. I like wearing it. Why does she giggle like that? Could she flirt a little more? And the famous…what does he see in her anyway? And here's the best part…EVERY woman has done it and will continue to do it. Some actions are rooted in more superficial issues than others, but still true for all. We need to stop trying to act like we don’t do these kinds of things because denial usually just makes the problem worse.

Sure, some of us are much better at keeping our inner she-bitch hidden and sometimes we can overcome it for periods of time. Some of the effective ways to avoid such loss of our selves to the whims of the societally-imposed she-bitch are by not reading popular magazines, not watching popular TV shows, not hanging out in popular places, and not being around popular[ly defined] people. At least then you know you are hanging out with real people; people that, even when you have those urges to give the evil eye or spill your drink on her new pants (even if they were 2 bucks from the thrift store they still look cuter on her than they would on you), you know that it is an unfounded urge produced by society's subliminal evil forces and not of your own doing.

Now multiply that by 13. Awesome. That's how I feel walking through the streets here in Mexico. It's something I've accepted and now have a much easier time dealing with. It's that... women here have a hard time liking me for who I am. I'm different. I'm exotic (i.e. over 5'3'', blonde, light eyes, and wear flip flops regularly). They don't know who I am. Men notice me because of this, and only this, and it causes a lot of women to not want to be mi mejor amiga. The intimidation that I unwillingly represent not only causes nervousness but often, blatant glares. We're talking in restaurants, in bars, at work, at baby showers, in the supermarket, the taco stand on the corner, and especially walking down the street. And then they notice: I speak Spanish? Phew, forget it. Not only am I a gringa, but I can employ their language, too, and communicate with other people. I am officially the enemy.

If I am honest with myself, I can admit that I only have one real Mexican female friend. I definitely have other good acquaintances who know I'm not Satan's gringa messenger. Maybe we just haven't moved past the role of just conocidas, but it's still disheartening to be fully aware that my lack of a real female Mexican social circle is due to basically…the color of my skin and hair.

One time I went to an internet cafe and the person I'm dating nudged me to look up. The guy working there was oblivious to his open mouth and googley eyes as I walked in. Now… I know how to work it – but this kind of reaction? I can't take credit for it. But the kicker was what the girl sitting next to him, who we then figured out was his girlfriend, said: "Hey…hey…I'm right here! No ya know what? Go ahead. Just look. It's not like you see one of those every day". Wait for it…wait for it…annnnd….she sends a glare right at me!!! Awesome. Another amiga to add to the list.

It's a weird dynamic I got goin' on here. The truth is, I absolutely love living here. I love the people, the culture, the food, the music, the relaxed lifestyle, the passion in the people. But even after a year of living here, I still get really irritated by the reaction I receive, both from men and women, when I'm walking in the street. Like I've mentioned in other posts, it's not a major city and that has a lot to do with the specific experience I'm having, but I don't like that I feel more comfortable walking down the street holding my partner's hand because at least then the men can't whistle and the women know I'm no longer competition. Trust me, the novelty of being "different and exciting" wears off a lot faster than you think. And even faster if your Irish roots scream stereotypical "gringa".

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