Profile: “I Have Many Names”
I have many names.
My preferred third-person pronouns change before your eyes. None of them are right, so none of them are wrong. Just employ whichever you decide on with respect, and it’s all good.
I identify as a great number of things to a great many people at any given time. Painted in broad strokes, “Black, proletariat, polyamorous, pansexual, genderqueer, butch, switch, (inner-faggot included!)” seems to hit the main highlights.
I get hot for your consent; rosy-cheeked, intellectual perverts; cougars who pin you with piercing eyes; strong, fat queers who trill gentility and daring; the smell of your sex; bois and gyrls sitting by my boots singing, “The Rainbow Connection” in falsetto; switches; femmes who coo in butch ears and cradle butch hearts; sparkly tranny-fags and sissies; that bulge in your pants; spikes in leather; rhymesayers; tow-headed blond butches who have no problems taking orders; outlaws with ethics; garters; Daddies with firm hands and strong fingers; respect; peacemakers; sweaty activists; Southern femmes who drawl; negotiation; punk rockers with knives in their boots; rivulets of blood; soldier poets for the People; seers, witches, sages, mystics, and Shaolin Monks; shape-shifters, pixies, and yetis; conversations about what turns you on; fidgety geeks in jeans and tennis shoes; your rising laughter; soft things; unapologetic sluts; the sunrise; stone people who brave sex and are okay with however they decide to play it.
It’s great when people have the self-awareness to periodically think about their own behaviors, wants, needs, and expectations and figure out where they learned them and occasionally re-evaluate, re-test, and reconsider their beliefs in light of what they have learned along the way.
I want people to understand that fundamentally we are all more alike than unalike. We all are carbon-based life forms made of atoms. We breathe, sleep, and puke on our caregivers. We cry. Neither your perfect gender nor the holdings of your bank account mean anything to me. Until humans find a way to come together that does not necessitate exclusion of others based on the arbitrary or sometimes the hereditary, until enforcement of rigid and often unattainable goals and roles by mercenary means is finally seen as an unnecessary and damaging thing to the types of social order where EVERYONE can win, there will always be people like me who walk among you harboring the refugees of misunderstood.
Category: profiles 7 comments »
December 17th, 2007 at 9:42 am |
[…] special I would like you to meet. It is with great respect and appreciation that I bring you the first profile. posted on December 17, 2007 in […]
December 17th, 2007 at 11:10 am |
A fabulous start to a fabulous new initiative in a fabulous project!
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December 17th, 2007 at 5:36 pm |
What a wonderful site! Thank you so much for doing this. It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever heard anybody say what I’ve been thinking about for a long time.
Really brave too.
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December 17th, 2007 at 8:44 pm |
Kim — you just made my day. Thank you so much for this comment. Please stick around!
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December 18th, 2007 at 9:14 am |
This is awesome. I love what you’re doing here. People need spaces like this to be able to voice themsleves, free themsleves, liberate themselves, hear each other, and feel each other’s existence. In a world where dirty looks, gossip, the religious right, verbal hate, and all sorts of chaotic expression of anger happens…it’s nice to find comfort in the photos and words of people who are rising to the occassion of stomping out the boxes society likes to put us in.
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December 18th, 2007 at 7:55 pm |
Jen! Yes! Thank you! Please stick around — it is so inspiring to hear your words.
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January 23rd, 2008 at 11:56 am |
Woah – I knew you had some beauty and wisdom in you, but DAMN… wasn’t expecting to get blown away this morning. Your words resonate more than you can know :)
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