Tag Archives: lgbt

Introversion vs extraversion

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Posted by maxporter on August 23, 2011 – 11:58 PM
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A central part of many people’s personalities is whether they are an introvert or an extrovert. Over the years, I’ve found that my self-definition has shifted somewhat. That leads me to ask: am I an introvert or extrovert because I’m deaf and queer, or is it just the way I am?

For the longest time, I considered myself to be an introvert. But looking back, that was simply by default, not necessarily because I was naturally inclined to be an introvert. Because I was born deaf in a hearing world, I had to learn from an early age to entertain myself. Introverted activities like reading books were much more reliable than trying to keep up with my peers in a world where hearing kids were so thoughtless about communication. Since I had a way to entertain myself, I cared less about fitting in. So, for a lot of reasons, being an introvert was a good thing for me.

I carried those skills with me when I realized that I was queer. It gave me the confidence to come out at a young age: I already knew who I was and that I could rely on myself. I wasn’t really worried about the repercussions of coming out – and believe me, I faced a lot, including the prospect of being disowned – because I already didn’t fit in mainstream society.

Interestingly, I find that I’m more interested in extraverted things since I’ve come out. It sounds really trite, but I’ve gained a new perspective on life because I was able to more fully reveal aspects of myself that had previously been buried. Now that I’m more able to express myself, I’m able to form genuine connections with more people. That has led me to a lot of extraverted interests.

I have no idea if it’s just the way I am or if my deafness and queerness somehow influenced this aspect of my personality. These days, I honestly cannot pinpoint myself as either an introvert or an extrovert – I’m somewhere in between. I love to socialize, but in a world where people can be real assholes about communication, having the means to entertain myself is a really valuable skill. In the end, though I don’t really care what formed my personality – what matters is that I’m pretty content with it.

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The Internet as a Mirror: Pt. 1

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Posted by maxporter on June 17, 2011 – 6:04 PM
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As the Internet has become more prominent in mainstream culture, I’ve noticed that more and more people are offering up critiques of the Internet. And, perhaps most strikingly, more and more people are taking those ideas to heart.

One critique in particular has caught my attention: the idea that one creates an artificial identity online that then subsumes his or her physical identity. The reasoning is that the Internet is a sort of an escapist fantasyland in which there are unlimited ways to fool other people. A similar vein of thinking is that one creates a delusional parallel life on the Internet and then becomes consumed by it.

In a lot of ways, this isn’t exactly a new idea – I am reminded of when I was a child and the adults around me were warning me about the creepy people on the newfangled AOL chat rooms. When I became older, people began to warn me instead of “men pretending to be women” on the Internet.

Basically, the premise behind many of these critiques is the assumption that the offline identity is more ‘true,’ or more authentic, than the online identity. I think that this is a problematic assumption. Yes, people pretend to be others online, but sometimes, online identity differs from offline identity because there is no way to express yourself offline. Therefore, online identity may actually be a more accurate representation of one’s true self.

What strikes me about the critiques of online identities is the fear of fluid identities that underlies them. Again, this is nothing new. Queer people, for example, have faced these issues for a long time: You are born one way, and you stay that way all your life. Others determine your identity instead of allowing you to articulate your own identity.

This is a very black-and-white view of identity. Sometimes, especially when we are young, it is difficult to overcome these teachings from heterosexual society: if following the norm is the way to a good life, how could you possibly deviate from that norm? Being queer, therefore, is a big no-no.

This is where, for me at least, the Internet comes in. I grew up queer in one of the most conservative areas of this country. In a lot of high schools, there is a group of misfits that sits together in the cafeteria – for me, the Internet was like an extension of that group, but even more accepting than that. On the Internet, I could be honest about who I truly desired and I could talk about my non-normative plans for the future. It was a way for me to form my identity in a safe space when I lived in an area where I didn’t feel safe being myself. Instead of worrying about coming out and then later taking it back, articulating my identity online gave me the courage to come out to people in meatspace.

Another positive benefit of the Internet is the fact that it connects people who would otherwise never have met. For instance, I found role models online – most people that I spoke to were in their mid twenties who initially assumed that I was the same age. When they learned that I was still in high school, they would offer me advice for surviving my teenage years. Because I lived an area where I knew no queer adults and because the queer community is all too often age-segregated, the Internet was a valuable way for me to reach out to my elders.

In addition, having grown up in a homogenous area, being online has allowed me to connect with people from other cultures and countries. I’m not saying that the Internet is the most diverse place or that it’s colorblind – it certainly can echo the oppressive norms of society. Nonetheless, I think that the fact that I can talk with people halfway around the world is truly amazing.

The Internet has gradually evolved into a less-anonymous space – think, for example, of the prevalence of social networking sites that use your real name – but I have observed teenagers using the anonymous spaces to articulate their identities and to connect with others. I am happy for them – if nobody knows your real name when you express your authentic self online, it is harder for the mean kids in your school to go on a smear campaign against you.

I admit that there are problems with the Internet. But it is not as simple as unilaterally condemning the trolls and sock puppets; there are more nuanced questions that we can ask about anonymity online. Above all, we have to keep in mind that anonymity brings benefits as well as problems.

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Non-moralizing alternatives to gay bars

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Posted by maxporter on May 25, 2011 – 12:42 PM
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I feel that, in my recent entry about gay bars, I wrote with a more moralizing tone than I intended. I don’t know about you guys, but I definitely get put off by health educators who sound as if they are preaching, especially when it comes to queer issues. Since I grew up in Utah, a highly moralistic state that constantly tries to codify Mormon ethics into law, I grew up being told to not do this, to not do that – “Don’t wear that gay-friendly shirt in public,” “Don’t take your same-sex date to prom,” “Don’t hold hands with your boyfriend in class.”1

That’s the primary problem that I have with public health services: sometimes they feel as if they are overly moralizing. A lot of public health posters in my university had a very similar tone to what I experienced in health class in Utah: they told us what to not do because of some vague consequence. After growing up queer and being told how to live my life by straight people, I was tired of it all and I explored things for myself.

Then, later on, I never went to any smoking cessation services or anything like that2 because I was concerned that I would find more of the same moralizing tone and people would yell at us for being stupid enough to smoke. The one time that I went to an AA meeting, it was highly disturbing because it was very Jesus-centric and highly moralizing in a manner that I found uncomfortable because Jesus has been used against me as a justification for why it’s bad to be gay. I don’t think that I’m alone here – I think it’s hard for queer people in general to find nonjudgmental support in terms of substance issues. We’ve been judged enough for being gay; we don’t need to be judged even more for being addicted to substances.

So, returning to the issue of gay bars. I’m going to state that I definitely believe that human beings need a pressure release. Once, Ronald Reagan responded to criticisms that older generations used martinis as a crutch by saying, “why not be a generation that doesn’t need a crutch?” This sentiment is very familiar to me – many people in my community said similar things. Well, frankly, I think it’s complete bullcrap. I personally feel that life is inherently stressful. To alleviate that stress, sometimes we need substances. It’s not a sign of a moral weakness – it is simply a realistic acknowledgement of what human nature actually is like. For many people, gay bars function as a pressure release.

The thing is, I strongly feel that we need more alternatives to alcohol as a means of relieving stress. Realistic alternatives – if people can get rid of all of their stress through, for example, yoga alone? Great! More power to them! But it is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Conversely, alcohol is not a one-size-fits all solution either. That’s one reason that I believe that we need to legalize and socially accept more varieties of drugs rather than only sanctioning one of the most dangerous drugs for recreational use.3

I’m not a fan of alcohol. But, like I said, we all need a pressure release, so if alcohol works for you and you aren’t addicted to it, I’m not going to judge you. And like I said in my previous entry, I enjoy gay bars. We’ve fought long and hard struggles for the right to have gay bars; I’m not about to say that we can’t enjoy them.

I do find it disturbing, though, when one of the most important aspects of our community revolves around such a dangerous drug. When I read the cold, hard facts about alcohol and then go to the gay bar and see young men and women thinking that fun can only be found in a drug that is so dangerous, it doesn’t sit well with me. It’s highly addictive, its social impact is very negative, it is the only drug from which withdrawal causes death, etc. But what can I do about that without sounding like a moralistic prick?

Because we all need to have fun in a community-centric space, I believe that the community desperately needs alternatives to alcohol-centric social activities. Queer sober spaces are a lot of fun, and we need more of them, but I definitely feel that we need even more alternatives. If it were up to me, I would start a gay cannabis coffee shop. Unfortunately, this country places a drug that is less harmful and addicting than alcohol on a Schedule I (equivalent to heroin) classification. God, irony fucking sucks, doesn’t it?

That, however, doesn’t solve the issue of social spaces for queer youth. As much as I love pot, I definitely think that it, and other drugs, are suitable for people who are 18+. I was lucky in that I had a lot of options in high school compared to most queer youth, so I’ll have to come back to that and describe what it was like for me.

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  1. I did all of those, of course. [↩]
  2. I was lucky in that I was able to quit cigarettes on my own. [↩]
  3. Other reasons: It would help restore order to nations that export drugs, it would reduce the corrosive effects of the black market upon urban communities, and it would reduce the staggeringly high number of prisoners – the US incarcerates people for simply possessing drugs. [↩]
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Gay Bars

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Posted by maxporter on May 22, 2011 – 1:52 AM
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Now that I am over 21 years old, I’ve found that there’s a strong emphasis upon gay bars as a central facet of gay life. And that bothers me.

To an extent, alcohol is everywhere in popular culture; there’s no escaping it. Think about how many people go to the bar for happy hour after work, for example. And think about how common it is to just pour a bottle of wine for guests without thinking about it. In a sense, it’s not just a ‘gay’ issue; it’s a straight issue. For a lot of people, alcohol is an essential ingredient to socialization.

However, I think that the cultural emphasis upon alcohol is magnified in LGBT culture: for a lot of 21+ LGBT people, bars are a primary means of socialization. Because straight culture is the ‘default’ culture, straight people have all these options to choose from when they want to socialize, and they don’t have to worry about others reacting in horror when they hold hands while walking their dogs in the park or whatever. In contrast, gay people have precious few options for socializing or expressing themselves. Therefore, in a lot of areas, gay bars are one of the very few places where 21+ gay people can relax and just be themselves.

I rarely talk about alcohol in real life – I’m not going to be a debbie downer at a party.1 But it’s my blog, so I do feel that it needs to be said that the inherently harmful qualities of alcohol means that, if gay bars are the only way people can socialize with each other rather than simply being another activity on their menu of possible outings, there’s a problem.

Another problem with the emphasis upon gay bars is the fact that bars are 21+ in the US. Where does that leave youth? If going to gay bars is a marker of gay culture, that means waiting for years before you’re allowed to “really” participate in the scene. How unfair is that?

And then there’s the issue of paying exorbitant amounts of money to have fun. Actually, as much as I love the densely populated East coast cities, this is one problem that I have with them: sometimes it feels like there’s precious few activities to do for free. A lot of times, I felt like I had a false choice: spend a lot of money having fun, or stay at home. That’s pretty screwed up, in my opinion.

Gay bars are not bad in and of themselves. Even though I don’t enjoy drinking, I go to them because they are a lot of fun. And it is important to have enough personal freedoms that we can choose to go to a gay bar if we want to. But we do need more options for socialization.

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  1. Basically, I firmly believe that many people are misled to believe that alcohol is a ‘safe’ drug, but it absolutely is not. There are much safer drugs out there than alcohol: less addictive, less physically damaging, less psychologically damaging. [↩]
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Learning Foreign Languages

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Posted by maxporter on May 18, 2011 – 12:02 AM
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For years, I’ve been wanting to learn a different language – preferably Spanish, because I live in an area with a large population of Spanish-speakers. I’d like to be able to read the local newspapers and to speak with my neighbors to understand everything that is going on in my larger community. Also, I want to work with at-risk LGBT youth, and, given where I live, I think it’s utterly naive to expect that all of them will feel comfortable talking to social workers in English. However, I’ve run into problems whenever I’ve tried to learn another spoken language.

Because I’ve always been mainstreamed, my teachers have approached the matter from a Hearing-centric perspective. To them, speaking and listening are among the most important aspects of learning a language, if not the most important. Of course, I completely disagree – after all, I didn’t need to hear to learn English.

I began to learn English when somebody gave me a book and I quickly devoured it. That book led to another, and another, and another, until I was reading at 8th grade level in 4th grade and college level in 8th grade. The fact that my parents used manual communication rather than straight-up oralism also helped, but I definitely am grateful for books. That’s why I don’t understand why on Earth hearing people put so much emphasis on speaking and listening exercises – why not just let us read and write? As a result, I became bitter for many years and thought of spoken languages as “Hearing people languages” until I realized that it’s illogical of me to not think of English in the same manner. That’s another post for another day, though.

Classrooms, in my opinion, also tend to be very sterile environments filled with stupid games. I would be a lot happier with a more immersive experience. For example, I learned ASL by going to Deaf camp and fending for myself. At first, I knew very basic signs like “thank you” and “please.” Staff members who knew manual communication translated for me during the first year. Then, after eight years of going to that camp every summer, I could carry on more complicated conversations in ASL.1 When all is said and done, I don’t care what this piece of grammar is called; I don’t care about the boot drawing that illustrates how to conjugate verbs; I don’t want to practice the most incredibly awkward conversations in the world. I just want to be thrown into the language and figure things out on my own.2

Sadly, queer issues got in way during the only time that I’ve ever come close to a language learning experience that would have been close to what I wanted. I took a Spanish course at the community college in my home state, and our teacher was a native Spanish speaker who had immigrated from a Spanish-speaking country – I forget which one. She was very big on contextualizing the language within the various Spanish-speaking cultures and wanted to work towards an English-free classroom.

I really liked the class and was looking forward to finishing it. But then, one day, my Spanish instructor was teaching us about pronouns. She pointed at everybody in the room and said either “el” or “ella.” Well, she pointed at me and said “ella” – at that point, I was an androgynous femmy twink. Then the entire class turned around to scrutinize me. All I could do was stammer. It didn’t matter that she was wrong when she read me as female; I was still too scared to go back to Spanish class because my home state is super homophobic and is extremely hostile towards androgynous people. I dropped out of the course with no explanation.3

Lately, I’ve been thinking about trying again. It’s true that I’ve run into a lot of problems in the past and that language education in the US is, in my opinion, awful. But that’s become a poor excuse for me to keep deferring my goals. When all is said and done, I want to learn Spanish for the reasons that I mentioned. I know I’ll probably have a terrible accent, but I’ve come to peace with that. As long as I can communicate with others without inadvertently saying something completely different, I’m okay with having an accent – I have one in English, too. What’s more important to me at this stage is learning how to read the local Latino paper and carrying on basic conversations with my neighbors; I can always improve my spoken Spanish later.

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  1. The problem is that I haven’t really communicated in ASL since I was 15, save for one year in 2009, so I’ve forgotten it. I’m confident that, if I had stayed immersed in the Deaf community, I would have continued to improve my grasp of the language. [↩]
  2. Incidentally, this applies to English, too – in fifth grade, we learned how to diagram sentences. I hated it. To this day, I couldn’t be arsed to tell you the difference between the subject and the object. All I care about is the fact that I know how to make sentences sound right; I don’t want to split hairs with terminology. [↩]
  3. Looking back, I could probably have handled the situation a lot better, but it was a really difficult summer for me in a lot of respects. [↩]
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On Belonging and Scapegoating

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Posted by maxporter on May 12, 2011 – 11:28 PM
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In my previous entry, I mostly talked about the positives of urban life. Well, let me tell you: I have some problems with urban life.

Philadelphia Gayborhood street signPersonally, one of the biggest problem with cities is that they sometimes feel like the only place where some minorities can be accepted. When I was a teenager, I fantasized about moving to the city as an adult. I have a theory that this is common among LGBTQ teens in particular: people don’t feel like they can build a safe and loving community in their intolerant home towns, so they dream about joining a pre-existing community in a big city. It got me through high school, but now its unfairness doesn’t exactly sit well with me.

I’m glad I was able to experience living in cities, but the problem is that it’s not the right choice for everyone. Some people would genuinely prefer to live in a three bedroom house and run an organic farm than deal with the daily grind of living in a city. But if living in a rural area also means giving up certain civil liberties, it’s understandable that people sometimes feel like they have no choice. That’s why I say it’s not fair to expect every single minority in the US to live in a city. Plus, even though I’m okay with living in a city, I have family and friends in the reddest of red states. Even though I live in a city, I’m not willing to feel like I’ve been exiled from my home.

Another problem that I have with cities is that they can be bubbles. Maybe I just had bad luck with the people that I met, but a lot of city folk that I met would talk about things like Constance McMillen being prevented from bringing her girlfriend to prom as if it is only something that could happen in the boonies. (Many city folk didn’t even bother to distinguish between locales – if it happened outside of the city, it didn’t particularly matter where it took place because, to city folk, everything outside of a city is the same: trees and roads.) They would then talk about how glad it makes them to live in a diverse and accepting city. Well, I think it’s hypocritical to praise cities too much because cities can be super intolerant places too. For example, during this past year, at least one trans woman was killed and another trans woman was beat very brutally with a glass bottle in the gayborhood, which would probably have surprised my overly optimistic/naive teenage self who thought that cities accepted all queer folk.

The more that I think about it, though, the more I think that this isn’t a problem unique to cities. I’ve met many small town folks who also tend to think that bad things only happen elsewhere. They blame all of society’s ills on the ugly side of cities. Some people from small towns don’t appreciate all the complexities of city life and think of all cities as being the exact same: buildings and people. They complain about cities being cold and unfriendly, but in most cases, the problem is that the small town person did not take the time to learn the etiquette that governs the city and simply expected everyone to behave just like people back home. Whether it comes from a small town person or a city person, superiority complexities bother me in general.

The problem is, if people scapegoat one type of area, it creates the illusion that nothing bad ever happens in their home. That, in turn, makes them feel good about living in complacency rather than actually fixing the problems at home. For me, that’s not enough: we have to solve problems in cities and in small towns instead of just thinking that bad stuff only happens in one place or another.

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Wild Zero

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Posted by maxporter on April 7, 2011 – 12:02 AM
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Since things have been busy lately, it’s been a little while since my last post. I always feel a little unsure as to what to say when it’s been a while, and I just became a mod of fydeafies.tumblr.com,1 so I am having some stage fright.

I guess I will start by talking about a movie that I recently rewatched: Wild Zero.

Movie poster for Wild Zero. A trio of musicians dressed in leather stand in front of an abstract portrayal of zombies.

As you can already see, this is an amazing movie.

I’m not going to lie – I love the movie. It’s pure trashy fun at its finest. Basically, it is about the coolest band saving the world from alien zombies. Actually, there is an excellent (and spoiler-filled) summary of what Wild Zero is all about here. I recommend that you go read it right now because Chris Sims is hilarious and does a great job of explaining why I love it.

However, although Chris Sims covered many of the most essential parts of the movie, he did not do justice in his discussion of the character named Tobio. For example, he forgot to include the fact that Tobio and the main character, Ace, end up in a relationship by the end of the movie. So I’m gonna talk about her in this entry. Spoilers follow, of course.

Darth Vader stands with his arm outstreteched, just as he is about to tell Luke Skywalker that he is his father. On the bottom of the image, the text says SPOILER ALERT.

Fair warning.

I’m going to start out by saying that Tobio is a trans woman. When I think about the portrayal of Tobio, I honestly have very mixed feelings. Keeping in mind that I’m not a trans woman, I think it is important to talk about Tobio because trans people are such a marginalized minority in society.

On one hand, Wild Zero’s portrayal of a trans woman is super-positive in some aspects. Most notably, after Ace discovers that she is trans and freaks out, Ace’s mentor / spirit guide, Guitar Wolf, reminds him that he fell in love with this woman and that love “has no nationalities, borders, or genders!”

Guitar Wolf says, "Love has no borders, nationalities, or genders!"

Ace accepts this advice, then goes to rescue her from the alien zombies. A bunch of stuff happens, then Ace proclaims his love for Tobio.

Ace says: "I swear by my leather jacket and by rock'n'roll..."
Ace says, "I love you"

However, there are many negative aspects to Tobio’s character that trouble me.

For starters, she is what Julia Serano calls a “deceptive transsexual,” which is a negative portrayal of trans women in media:

“Even though “deceivers” successfully pass as women, and are often played by female actors (with the notable exception of Jaye Davidson as Dil), these characters are … positioned as “fake” women, and their secret trans status is revealed in a dramatic “moment of truth”. At the moment of exposure, the “deceiver’s” appearance (her femaleness) is reduced to mere illusion, and her secret (her maleness) becomes the real identity.”
-Julia Serano2

Tobio fits this trope perfectly: The audience is not aware of the fact that she is trans until she rips off her clothes in the middle of the movie.

Speaking of, yes, she does rip off her clothes. Actually, it is implied that Tobio is somewhat of a nymphomaniac. When Tobio and Ace find themselves in an abandoned building, surrounded by zombies on all sides, Ace’s first priority is to find a weapon so that they can fend off the zombies. Not Tobio – she immediately gets undressed and tries to initiate sex.
I found this scene to be very insulting. One of the many negative stereotypes about trans people, particularly trans women, is that transitioning is a way to fulfill some sort of sexual fantasy. Think, for example, of Buffalo Bill in Silence of Lambs, who cuts up women to wear their skin after having been denied access to resources to transition.3 Also, gender roles come into play: men are supposed to be sex-driven, and women are expected to be the opposite. If a trans woman is “really” a man, the result is that she is portrayed as a hypersexual woman.
So, portraying Tobio as a hypersexual being who wants to get it on even in a near-death situation is, to me, another example of the insulting trope that trans women are sex-driven.

Despite the fact that Tobio’s portrayal is flawed, one thing that really stands out for me is that Ace came to accept Tobio fully. He fell in love with her and learned to embrace all aspects of her. I don’t know how Japan feels about trans women, but as an American viewer, I am immersed in a society that televises “man or woman?” contests on sleazy television shows, accepts “trans panic” as a legitimate defense for murdering an innocent woman, etc. I sometimes feel so overwhelmed by negative portrayals of trans people or portrayals of trans people being murdered (eg, Boys Don’t Cry) that it was a welcome change to see a happy ending in which a cisgender person overcame his initial transphobia to accept his trans lover.

Ace, voice-over, says "And me, from now on, I'll be with Tobio."

When all is said and done, I feel that Tobio is a better portrayal of a trans woman than many others. But, as I discussed in Finding Personal Meaning in Art, minorities sometimes have to settle for breadcrumbs. The real question is: is the relatively positive portrayal of Tobio enough, or are we settling for breadcrumbs? That’s an open question, and I leave it to you to answer that.

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  1. Check out my intro post here, btw. [↩]
  2. You can read the full essay, Skirtchasers, on Julia Serano’s website here. [↩]
  3. I’ll be honest – I have actually not seen Silence of the Lambs yet, but I hear that Buffalo Bill is actually not intended to be a trans woman. Nonetheless, I’m using this example because Buffalo Bill has dominated the perception of trans women in popular culture. [↩]
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