On: Restrictions

Restrictions

It has been ages since I felt this way. A throbbing lust, a stark stiffness in my arms, hands, thighs.
It’s has been ages since I felt allured, drawn to and interested in someone like her. The muscles. The strength. Her fringe, her smiles.

It was ages ago since I thought I could tame someone like her. Ages upon ages since I saw someone that strong bow their head for me. I am so used to other things now. Smooth and carrying, warm scoldings, soothing strokes against blushing cheeks.

It has also been ages since I felt so scared. Scared of what I might be able to offer. Scared to be perceived as a freak. Scared to be incompatible with someone else. Scared to be declined, brushed off, put out. Scared to be invalid, undesirable.

- Why would you pursue her? she ask.
- Oh, it’s because I think I could break her. Tame her. Otherwise I wouldn’t try.

I am surprised at my own answer. Sometimes I don’t believe the power I subscribe myself. Sometimes I don’t see it myself. Even if I know it.

I think about that other one. The same muscles. Cameo-pants and sweet smiles. Stubbornness. How we weren’t compatible. How the worst thing she could be was dependent.
How she leaned in one day and said: You know, you could decide for me if you wanted…

How I see her in this new person. There is something. A bashfulness and sweetness, something that contradicts butch-aesthetics and swelling triceps.

What you didn’t think you knew about yourself, I shall find it.

That which you think others don’t see. I will see it.

I am writing this to muster up courage. I am writing this to call up on guardian angels of strong crippled, poor, marginalized femmes.

Angie. Mother of a whole house. Sister in deficiency. Hold my hand. Help me walk the Dating ball.
Grandma, voice unheard, you who’s bobby pins I have inherited. They have been places where you would never have gone. Help me gather strength passed down by hard work and sisterhood. How one is dressed one is perceived, how one speaks one is heard. Help me dress the part.

I look back at old writing. I guess I knew something then I have now come to doubt. Or at least I played the part of knowing it. Nonetheless, then I wrote some things that I cant even think now. That I was entitled. I knew of bloodlines of resistance and power. I knew of a strength and confidence that equaled calm desire. I knew I could do it.

My hands at the back of her neck. I long to lock her arms behind her back. I long to tell her to and see her comply without the use of force.

Another club, another town. I speak of how voice and intent is the only thing that matters. That with good communication and strong will anything can be achieved.

Why is it then that I cannot speak now? That I am so convinced I have nothing to offer her. When I know I have everything to offer others.

That club in the other town. She blushes as she asks me. I don’t understand why anyone would blush in relation to me. The promoter of the club, the purple godmother of an empire tells me:

- You know, if you wanted to you could have anyone here now….

It’s as alien as anything. I am so programed to be the one pining and sighing. Not the one acting.

Her smooth skin. How I want to run my nails across it.

The sex-positive nature of things. The shame in admitting one doesn’t think anyone would want you. The lack of power that it gives.

Don’t pity me, obey me.

I have a feeling this is now or never.

That it has little to do with her, even though it has everything to do with her, and more to do with unlocking the notion of myself as an agent subject. Learning by doing.

I must overcome this hump.

We shall dare the leap, mother Angie and I. If I can take on a system of discrimination I can take on the ideas they have created in me.

The shame, the doubt, the anger.

What you think others wont see in you. I will see it

On getting down to the nitty gritty...

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang!

I am sorry but I am getting a bit fed up now. Slightly sick and tired of how incapable people are of seeing what this is really about. The fact that what I do still evoke so many strange feelings. Why is it that there are so many things we handle better than this…
Why is it so hard to respect personal choice, why is it so hard to respect that the consensual choices of others might not be what you like. But, the opportunity for others to make those choices and turn away from lives prescribed to them by gender, class, race, age, size…whatever you would like, is what makes this world worth living in.

I am sorry but we must get personal now. This here world of assumptions of femininity is not big enough for the both of us. I am telling you, dear creators of “open” and “accepting” spaces, do not fuck with me… and beware, cute is a scare!

……

I am in the tackiest of clubs. I have told her to sit up straight to make it is easier to endure the strange feeling of being a zoo animal, little girls don’t come here. Little girls with frames don’t come here. They don’t wear silk blouse. They don’t wear silver crosses. Amongst leather pants and whips hanging from a belt, amongst eyes that measure me as a falsely conscious little girl not yet having found her place at the feet of the patriarchy.

I survive that evening because I cling on to her physically. When they look at us I look at her. There is a fatigue in her eyes the same as mine. A tire of those eyes that invade us, that measure our bodies and what we do.
When she is preoccupied with other things and I roam the vast club on my own I seek the eyes of other Ladies.
A woman with her boi on sofa…the knife slowly caressing hir fingers… She looks at me with that same fatigue, we sigh and I nod at her. I know what it’s like.

That’s when he approaches me. I must confess I didn’t like him that much prior to this either. He is the invasive kind, the exploiting kind, everyone in a space like this are vehicles for lust and that is his lust, he thinks.
I have been waiting for her which I clung to, who I told to sit up straight so that something would be endurable in this place, he looks at me with that icky middle aged man smile.
“Aaaw, little miss…” he says. “How are you?”

I am shocked. I am shocked at how easy he does it. How easy he belittles and ignores me. I am sure he knows what I do. I am sure his partner, who has seen me work stripes into shivering strong backs many a time before, have told him what I do. I am sure he knows that even if I am a girl I am no one’s girl.
I hope my eyes burn with that famous black soot I have been told they have when I tell him that I feel fine although I haven’t been able to play here since I didn’t feel safe.
Yet when I leave I am turned off, furious, hurt and sad. My invisibility was so hard to face. His, the middle aged man’s, part in that so obvious it stung my eyes.

…..

Let’s talk a bit about what he couldn’t cope with. Power. Girls with power. Let’s talk a bit about why the idea of the dominant woman is still scary. What have I done? What are we doing?

I grew up in an environment that respected my femininity, and the power I ascribed to it. I call my upbringing a matriarchy – my mother and her sister, my cousins and me, formed a bond of femininity and power. It stemmed from my grandmother and her sister, from a strong sense of survival and belonging.
I never knew of no patriarchy, I never knew that women were not allowed to have power. I never knew I wasn’t allowed to decide for others if they wanted me to do that.

And I was always just as puzzled when I saw the mindfuck in their eyes. In the eyes of men and women alike, when it didn’t match. When my body didn’t match my mind.

Or that’s not right, I match perfectly find with all my expectations of myself. It’s their expectations that I don’t match.

You see it’s not about exploitation, not about abuse and not about oppression. The way she cooks for me and the man, always a man, peeks in at us and asks me if I shouldn’t do that – as the girlie girl.

I don’t tell him to fuck off. I tell my glorious butch girl to tell the “nice” man that that is not how we do things. And she does because she loves me. She loves me when she squirms under my touch, when she bends her neck for me. And I love her when I do it, I love her the most when she gives all of her to me – I love her the most when we rip that patriarchy up by the roots, when I insert the matriarchy that fed and clothed me into the void that the loss of man-made worlds made in her.

I never understood why this was challenging. I never understood why women, girls, I, couldn’t do this? What prevents me? What would force me to do otherwise?

I am sorry but my mother, the Pentecostal, married, heterosexual mother of two, never taught me any of this. She taught me to hold my head high and give myself with love to others, and they will love me too.

So please, put your assumptions, your false notions of female sexuality and femme identities elsewhere. Please don’t put them in my lap – and mind you, don’t force them down my throat. I don’t really do that shit you see.
Ask the girls who have been mine, butches, femmes, bois and grrls alike what they felt when they were with me. What we did when we shared that love my mother told me to share. How we catered to one another.
Ask the patriarchy if it hurt when we ripped its roots.

…..

I leave that club numb. We agree it was bad night, a really bad night. I give her a quick hug before I get in the cab. I tell her she will pay for dragging me all the way there…. She knows I am more serious about then I look. I giggle as she blushes.
On my way home I write a letter of memories and paths travelled for all the women and men that ever giggled sweetly at me assumed I was nice and humble only because I was cute.

To patriarchy with love, best wishes - little girls of the matriarchy!

On just now...

Alright here I am again, and I have nothing more fabulous crip-femmish to report. But I have realised I shouldn't go around investigating that ambition too much. Rather, I have med the concious choice that whatever I write from now on is by default fabulosly crip-femmian since I have written it.

As I predicted in the previous post I will be deadly poor this spring, it's not fun and I do believe I am quite stressed about it. But I am sure I'll manage... (if I show up on you doorstep hungry and puppy eyed you mustn't refuse to feed me, okay...)
The cough still lingers, which is very tireing and makes me feel odder and odder, I am quite sure it's nothing more than a very slowly developing cold though.

Otherwise, I am quite at piece. However, I have realised a few new and perhaps not so healthy emotional obsession but for once I will not bring them out into the ether, again I think it's best not to investigate that as much.
Certain frustrations are stil growing and the sense that things are still very far away in this city is ever present.

Yesterday though, I attended a great lecture and stayed on to discuss my Pentecoastal upbringing and my intrest on what that environment does to the children and grandchildren of it's inhabitans.
I also bonded extensively with a older man from my course, we talked about all things, crip, political, narrative and access related. So yes, things are happening in this city, however slowly and perhaps not in the areas where I would want them to.

Anyhow, I wasn't supposed to stay long so to speak, I am off to bed to cure this cold off - and worry a bit about my financial under the sheets.

On lovely PAs

I took a walk in the campus park today; I had to go to University to pick up sickly expensive literature on folklore and dress, which I am sure I will sell as soon as I have finished the exam on this part of the course.
Anyhow, I was accompanied to University by my new butchy PA, I call her the butchy PA as to distinguish her from all my other PAs, and she is indeed a butch.

I am actually quite swoon by her; she is gorgeous and has just that right bulky aura around her. Although she has only worked with me for a bit last weekend and then today we have really bonded. I guess I found it so nice to have a PA that would understand all the queer quirks of my constitution that I just rambled.

We spoke a lot about the notion of passing, I showed her pictures of my butchy period in life and called it my butch-fail, she laughed in shock. She said she was a bit bummed by the fact that everybody assumed that she was trans, that being this butch could only mean that she wanted to transition. She spoke about girls freaking out whenever she went in to the ladies room in a restaurant or at the movies, about being referred to as “the boys” when she was out and about with her brother. The awkwardness that manly-men felt around her, not knowing what to say or not…the many heavy taps on her back, the misogynist jokes and laughs.

I felt that I was such a femme with her. Even though I am swoon I do not ‘want’ her, still I could feel my movements growing to be slower and more assertive, I was conscious about my legs and how they looked in my short skirt, my fingers around the locks of my hair, my cleavage, my perfume.

She hung a heavy door back on its hinges for me and changed my light bulbs, I dreamt of a butch valet to open my doors and carry my purses and shopping bags. I dreamt of strong shoulders and glistening blue eyes.

Today I might have had that; although she was still my PA (and I doubt she will be anything but that…) she did all the things that above mentioned butch valet would have done. And as we went walking back to the tube through the autumn colours and crisp winds of the park I couldn’t help but smile. I pondered what other people saw as they saw us. If they saw two girls, if they knew the saw a femme and butch, did they think they saw a man and a woman?

She’s funny, she laughs when I make jokes and apologies ever so sweetly for even the slightest mistakes. Can I clone her?


Just to illustrate, a photo by Catherine Opie from her exhibition “Girlfriends” found in an article on AfterEllen.com

On hijabies and me, crip-femme meets Islamic Fashion....

I am doing a lot of research today, so inspired by the first real good lecture at University on Islamic Fashion. Got hooked on the hijablog, a Norwegian ‘hijabie’ (veil wearing Muslim woman) who lives in London and blog on Islamic Fashion trends all night.
The slightly paradoxical practice of covering up something that is assumed to be alluring and tempting but replacing it with something that stands out even more in a crowd fascinates me a great deal. For the hijablog blogger it is obviously not only a religious statement but also a very clear fashion statement, that involves and industry that cater to Islamic Fashion and magazines, blogs and fashion shows that project what’s new and trendy.

For me this lecture was especially good since it is the first one on this course that clearly deals with identity not only as being part of a certain, religious, context but also as an identity important to the self and expressed through clothing in as many ways as there are hijabies.
The personal relationship between faith and practice is very real to me as I have grown up in a very religious (by religious referring to Christian spirituality, and not necessarily conservatism) context, and ascribe a lot of my identity and my actions to my faith.

The modern hijabies of today speak about the hijab as something very feminine and something that emphasises strength and personality in its bearer. One of the women that took part in the ‘Islamic Fashion’ show in Stockholm in 2008 said this about her vivid use of fabrics and patterns in her hijab.

“When you go out you know people look at you anyway, so why don’t really give them something to look at, in a way I think that is disempowering to many of the prejudices that comes with “Islam”…”

I really felt I could relate to that, very much as a crip-femme. I know people study me, I know people turn too look at me one extra time when I pass by. And I understand that, I would look too. First off I am tiny, my walker is purple, and I am loud. Secondly, I dress smartly. There is again that contrast that I spoke about in the stone femme post.
What did you see, a little girl or a woman? Can you look at the disabled woman’s cleavage; is that a politically correct action?
If you know they’ll look at you, make them look again…

Yesterday I went to interview two girls who I hope will be my new PA’s when I settled in in this city. I choose my meeting attire with the greatest care. Often I am a bit too much then, I wear very short skirts and my favourite flowery tops for example. I choose jewellery with greater care than I would otherwise, and if my complexion is in a stable place (sadly it hasn’t been recently, more on a make-up free femme appearance later in this blog) I wear make up. The only thing that did fail me yesterday was my nail polish, I still haven’t got to buying a remover and now I just re-polish and re-polish and that gives as somewhat tacky look.

So yesterday, I wore:
-A black, short sleeved top with a small flowery pattern, my absolute favourite although it is giving out a little nowadays…
-The shortest skirt I own, a black jeans skirt that reaches mid-tigh, the most.
- Black cotton stockings, perhaps it’s something rural, I don’t wear nylon all that often.
-Black plastic pearl necklace.

Usually I joke about the reason for me wearing that skirt being that I can do that Basic Instinct thing, but I have never pulled it, and with the cotton stockings I doubt there would be much excitement. I do think though, that that skirt is a very sensual if not sexual statement, to show that I am safe about being sensual in the way I dress, and even a bit more than that. That I have control over my sexuality is shown by my choice of that skirt I hope. And since sex and disability is very rarely connected I think it’s important not only to speak about sexuality as a crip but to be confident about it.

Also, I think my choice of attire is again playing with that contrast of my physical appearance and what I project with the way I dress. Being a short tiny woman often makes for me passing as a girl. So I have learnt to dress in a way girls wouldn’t dress, I wear tight fitting blouses, pencil skirts, and again tops that shows a lot of cleavages.
I distance myself in that way from a physically girlie appearance that I haven’t been able to choose myself.
However, there are also times when I choose to enhance that, and in a way the outfit described above is a kind of combined girlie/sensual outfit. In that it mixes ‘girlie things’ such as cotton stockings and flowery patterns with the colour black and the very short skirt.

Dressing in that way for a meeting gives me confidence, it gives me confidence to know that I accept my body and am willing to show it off in a sense. It also gives me confidence to know that I embrace the fact that my body is frail and tiny, but my mind is not.
In a way I think my way of dressing in these meetings is a kind of reverse to what the modern hijabies do, covering up what is assumed to be alluring but in way becoming much more alluring by doing that in a certain way.

In a way I do cover up, by wearing an all black outfit I do project a certain sense of propriety, as does the cotton stockings. The clear cut top is also a very ‘smart’ garment even though it does show a bit cleavage. I choose to cover mostly, but the short skirt draw attentions to my legs, the part of my body that is most obviously disabled.
What I thrive on in wearing these outfits is just that, to dis-empower my disability by clearly drawing attention to it in a way that I choose myself. But also to raise multiple questions in my observer’s mind apart from my disability. Why is she wearing all black? How does she carry herself in that skirt? (The truth is, I don’t ;) )

To express the disabled body as sexual and the disabled person as self assertive and confident in that way is my biggest asset in coming across as what I ultimately am, so much more than the connotations ascribed to the disabled female body, and mind.
These are just very cursory thoughts that came up just after the lecture. I am planning to return to the Islamic Fashion and my on Pentecostal background and its fashion in a later piece. I just need to look through the archives and pick out nice photos for you all before I write.

Below is a picture taken from the hijablog, the models wear fashionable turkish 'high'-hijabs. I love it, I think it's a bit "If Victorian England had been a Muslim culture..."

On this morning....

Good morning Capital, good morning blog. It’s a rather pretty sunshiny day. I am chirpy even though I slept four hours or so. I woke up by the door slamming and Landlady returning from the shops, in a white moment of fear I worried it was eleven o’clock or so. She said it was about twenty minutes past eight. And since then I have been up.

Even though we do disagree about my identity, even more so after discussions on femme and crip that took place yesterday, I really like living with her.
Even more I enjoy that she is (it seems) the only one unable to see my femme identity as a valid identity. I am glad so many glorious brainy femmes cover my back.

The time difference between Stockholm and London made things rather late last night, but so much fun had. And I am delighted to see that the much overdue episode of Fishy Femme Fiction is still coveted. And I’ll take images of close proximity muses with me all over today. I am sure I will be a smiling girl indeed.

In fact I am thinking my martial arts muses need to fight each other at some point. Oh, come on girls! It could be my birthday treat, please? Or for Christmas or New Year’s or whenever, any day is a partying day, right?

I am going back up north on Wednesday. I look forward to seeing my parents and my brother and his family. I long to see those mountains again, to breathe air free from smog. And travel through a country that is my heart, were the roads are my veins and arteries. Those roads are inside my skin now, dirt roads and crackling paving. The house. The strong tall trees that grow around these people for protection that protected me as I grew up.

I long for my father’s language, his storytelling. My mother’s fiery comments and loud laughter. My aunts’ care. Jesus. My grandmothers just steps behind me wherever I go.

I’ll rest when I am home, I might crash for real. I need to read a lot though. I figured I’d do most of it on the bus on Wednesday; four hours should get me far I think. I need to write a lot too. I wonder if I shall bring this laptop or if my parents stationary will do? Am I greedy if I want a tiny computer for my writing? Perhaps not. But I am not rich these days. For Christmas?

I have realised I need to write more cohesively in Swedish as well. As I have said earlier in this blog I have existed mostly in English these days. It’s nice, but of course a bit distancing at times. Even though it’s a language that’s close to heart it is not mine, as such.

I’ll need to work on that “Jesus-piece” for the stage too. That’ll be in Swedish so that will be good. I am thinking it’s well needed. The Pentecostal woman is all you never thought she would be. Indeed. Or more so I am perhaps.

I should get dressed now. I need to ‘femme up’ especially since I am having a meeting with a PA agency this afternoon. Two potential girls for me to interview, I really hope they want to work with me. My personal ass.’s as Kicko would say.

After the meeting I’ll have to sit around at Uni for ever to wait for my lecture. The taxi cards are a bit confining when they run low. I need to get hold of that man today too. Wish me luck.

Watch out for me while I am in you today Capital. I think I might like you now.

On stone-ness...

This post is inspired by Sassafras Lowrey’s post on stone-ness on The Femmes Guide.
The post, in case you’re too lazy to read it, in which case shame on you, is about stone-ness and the identifications of stone butches and femmes. Lowrey discusses the idea that the sexuality of a stone-femme is determined and decided by the link to a stone-butch, and ultimately the sexuality of said butch. That femme's who identify as stone-femmes and/or confess to being attracted mostly by stone-butches in doing so, are portrayed in relation to their butch partners rather than on their own. And reaches the conclusion, that (of course) that is not all there is to it...

In the end of the post there is a question.

How about all of you, do you identify as a stone femme? If yes, how do you define it?

So I thought I’d be a good blogger and answer that, plus it will give some extra time away from my University reading which I really cherish at this point. Lazy schoolgirl as I am.

So, my femme identity. It’s very much built upon force, and the force ascribed to the feminine appearance. This comes from growing up in an environment that very much credited power to femininity and strength to womanhood. In my rural matriarchy the woman was never inferior but seen on her own and valued separately from whomever she chose to part with.
My mother brought me up with a strong sense of dress, she knew that she was no less a woman wearing pants, and I was no less an emancipated young woman wearing skirts. She taught me to bring consciousness into the way I dressed.
To think about how I looked and how others saw me, and she delighted in me playing with that. Having the ruffled skirts collide with a strong sense of power and a sharp mind.

I would say that my femme identity is about contrast in many ways. It’s about a very girlie appearance paired with a demanding power; it’s about enhancing my crippled body and my crooked legs and tiny hands with alluring cleavages and tight fitted skirts. It’s about enhancing what is hot about my own body and what is hot about my mind. It’s about combining my giggling and my fondness for ruffles and flowery tops with those rugged pairs of jeans and that chequered short-sleeved blouse, the three top buttons unbuttoned.

It’s about embracing sexuality, sensuality and strength. But it's also about allowing me to find piece within the fact that my body is frail and weak, that it is petite and in need of shelter from others at times. My femme identity has helped me combined all these things into something that feels good for me, that there is no juxtaposition as such in being strong, girlie, and alluring.

I would call myself a stone femme.
But that doesn’t have anything to do with stone butches, or any butches at all.
I am a stone femme since femme is my major identity, it’s that umbrella under which all my other identities, my rural-hard-working-blue-collar-Pentecostal sense of self, my crip ideas of self, my power and ideas of dominances, my longings to be weak, to crash and be lifted sheltered and comforted, can exist without any problems.

On the latter part of that sentence, I think that that longing to be sheltered and picked up draws me to people with a butch aurora around them. That I know that they are stable and strong enough pick me up not only physically but also mentally.

However, as I have spoken so much about contrast. That sense of power and physical strength within another person also gives me the greatest urge to break that, to know that I am in control of that power and the strength, that it is used to shelter and protect me as I chose.
Furthermore, I thrive on sheltering my partners especially if they are butch-ey, I thrive on that person ‘giving in’ and showing me their own weakness. I long to be that strong sense of ‘home’ and ‘safety’ for another person, I love running my fingers gently over my lovers strong back and tell them that all will be fine.
As much as I long to feeling that persons arms around my own shivering body.

To argue that

‘stone femme’/... / [is a] /..../ sexuality tied exclusively to that of /.../ butch partners /..../,

is not fair.

Not to the femmes who describe their stone femme identity as an attraction to stone butches since it insinuates that the femme is only valid through the butch, and hence marginalizes the femmes and femme as an identity of its own.

Also, it’s not fair to stone femmes as myself. To which the concept stone is not valid in relation to any other person femme, or butch, or whatever, but solely as that centre of me. That place deep inside were I am at rest, where I don’t question myself but accept all that I am. Where all that I am co-exist in every breath that draw.
My ‘stone’ is a cave, a room, within my soul.

A room with a magnificent closet, where linen blouse and massive silver jewellery hangs alongside tulle skirts and tailored power suites, leather gloves and knitted mittens, tops with their sleeves cut off, all my push-up bra’s and my knee-high socks.
Where my heavy perfume and make-up sits next to the Bible and the icons my aunt brought me from Krakow, where there is a place for me to kneel and give praise, where there is a place for me to shout and embrace the fierceness and overthrowing power that my religious conviction is.

It’s a room where I can laugh ‘til I am a wet puddle on the floor. It is a room where I can rest, a room where I can lay down why a sweet soul brings me tea and salty snacks. It’s a place were I kept the secrets people tell me, and the ones I have told them.
It’s a room with a bed where the sheets are never neat, only wet and tangled. It’s a bed where backs are arched and shivering before the hit the mattress. It’s a room where my glitzy nails can make maps on backs, where they pluck gently at the soft hair of slumbering guests.

It’s a room where sun shines in from the window making golden squares on the floor. A room that smells of lavender and sits amongst mountains and fair green shadows. A room that throbs when my heart beats. A shelter, a refuge and the origin of all my dreams.

On internal Sir-ness....

I have always been a really pretty girl. Like a real pretty one. It was what I was dressed up to be growing up, and what I liked being when I was a child. I was smartly dressed in chequered dresses white blouses and patent leather shoes by my mother. I chose tops with roses and tightly fitting jeans when I became older.

Then suddenly, as my body was filled with growth hormones, a jolly mixture of testosterone and steroids and my puberty was put on hold, there was a shift in me. I will not credit it only to the hormones because I believe that is a way too easy escape route, it also had to do with me leaving a context that had very subtly kept me in line.
I was sixteen, I left my village I spread my wings and I shaved my head. I looked at myself in my first ever own bathroom mirror and I said: Look I am a BOY!
I loved my shaved head. I loved what it did to my face and for sometime I did like what the hormones did to my body, it made me bulky, something I had never been and but somehow always felt like.

You see, there had always been a longing for power within me, and I had become skilled at practicing some parts of it. A subtle power of the mind, a power driven by words and tones of voice was already mine. However, this was something else. This was a kind of masculinity that I had never felt. And for a short period of time I thrived on that.

Then, as I have said in an earlier post I became unhappy with the way the hormones made me look, the bulkiness made my arms stiff and I didn’t recognise myself in the mirror. Coming off the hormones I returned to being that rose-top-fitted-jeans kind of girl again. I was home; I had just been out of my own skin a bit.

But as I look back on that period of my life and what I took with me when I came out of that I can really see what I gained. This period, even though I couldn’t see it myself then and I am sure no-one else did, allowed for me to explore a masculinity that had been ascribed to a certain kind of force and power in my culture, and it bred within me secret room where that is stored.

For it’s true, when ever you see me as girlie as I can ever be there is till that notion of a very masculine force within me.
I think it comes out the most obvious if I look at my own taste of music, below is a picture of American Folk singer Tim Eriksen, I just love that man. There is softness in his voice and the way he carries himself that just melts me. I wish I had his voice, in a sense I wish I could be him.



I speak about that a lot, the longing for a somewhat deeper voice. To not be so girlie and frail. To be able to be physically overpowering. I think it comes from a need to be taken seriously, to not be seen as tiny and sweet all the time, an urge to have others see that confidence in me all the time.

I know people say that it’s nothing that I need, that it doesn’t matter how tall you are or what you wear if you handle the world like I handle the world. I am grateful for such compliments, but even if so it’s slightly oversimplifying I think. Of course it is so that I don’t take up as much space in a room naturally as a person who’s taller than me. I need to fight to take that space, and I do that gladly and somewhat on autopilot nowadays. But that is only because I have had to do that, not necessarily that I have wanted to do that all the time.

The Sir in me is sparked by Tim Eriksen’s singing. By lyrics like this:

One bright summers morning as the fields were a-dawning
Bright Phoebus had rose and shun over the lea
I spied a fair maid as homeward was riding….
I stood in amaze and said I, bonny lassie if you’ll only consent and go to Jamestown with me
No other in this world will be mistress of my castle, there none will go clothed more finer than thee
-Lass of Glenshee, adapted by Tim Eriksen.

It is sparked by the whisky-cokes I drink when I am letting my hair down, it’s sparked by seeing butches giving me ‘the look’ when they see my glistening nails and ruffled skirts. (I instantly think “Oh I’ll show you girlie :P”)
It is lit by the limelight, and by grabbing my tits on stage as I speak of my ideas of femme in said limelight.

Even though hormones did fuck me up pretty badly during the time I took them, I think the changes of my physical appearance were important for me to realise this. To allow a certain kind masculinity to flourish, and then tucking it in were only I could see it, was crucial for the way I see myself nowadays.
For the choices I have made and how I speak of my constitution. I wouldn’t go as far as to say there was any kind of transition within in that, even though there were noticeable changes of the way my body looked and what I felt and did during that time.

What has scared me a bit when I look back on that time though is that I wasn’t given a choice as such with this. Of course I could have chosen not to take the hormones but that would have made me sickly short. It scares me that even though I assume what I got was a pretty low dose of testosterone I could still very clearly see and feel its effects. It scares me that no-one told me that this might happen, that my body as I had known it would not be the same during the time I took the hormones.

As it is today I love my female body, I cherish its frailness and the fact that I am petite. Recently, I have come to learn that my boobs are not as small as I always thought though, and I struggle a bit with wrapping my head around how to handle their alluring power ;)
But most of all I cherish my female appearance and my femme-ininity since I am confident that there is always more to me than what meets the eye.

That even though I am still that girl I was when my mother dressed me up in chequered dresses and socks with lace, I know that there has always been, and will continue to be a very feisty ‘man’ within that. One I could only see shadows of growing up, but who I carry with me close to heart these days.

Here am I, the girlie girl. Inside me is Sir.

On cripness, gender and sex.

Haven't written anything here in ages, other writing has been consuming a lot of time, as has plain living.
Weeks ago I had a plan to follow up on cripchick and wheelchairdancer's blog posts on disability and gender, I wrote something but didn't think I did well. Today, as I was reading through old things lying around on my harddrive I realised it might have been okay anyway so here it is.

Following in the footsteps of cripchick and wheelchairdancer I will try my best to write about my take on ’crip’ as an identity, its relation to power and sex.

Firstly, I would like to say that it has taken me a while to find myself as a crip-girl. Honestly, my disability even though it is at times very crippling has not been a major issue for me and not until the last year’s part of my identity as such.

I credit this to my childhood and my ideas of myself growing up. Even if I knew there was something different with me, I was never told that different equalled bad.

Growing up in a very including Christian environment I was often told my disability was a blessing. Later I came to know that was not always the take on disabilities amongst other Christians and certainly not amongst other Pentecostals, as my family was.

Growing up in a Christian environment also meant that the ideas of sex and sexuality were different than others. I often found it puzzling that Pentecostals would devote themselves so physically to God and the Spirit while at church but be afraid to touch subjects that I thought alike, lust and pleasure. It was not rare when I grew up to see women hiss the name ‘Jesus’ between gritted teeth as their bodies shock. And when finding out about the Spirit myself I likened it to an orgasm.

Because I had always been told my disability was a blessing, meaning that God had greater plans for me and brother and had let us live even if it wasn’t possible, I grew up believing strongly, and still do - that all that is good within me comes from God. Hence, the love I felt for both boys and girls wasn’t a trouble.
Finding out I was both a crippled and a bisexual I started to asses myself at a very early age, thinking about what I like and disliked. Linking fantasises desires and wishes together I also discovered I was Dominant. (Will this odd-ness never end?)Again, seeing that it was in me and was a good thing since it sprung from love and also couldn’t exist without a submissive counterpart and a consensus from that person, I accepted it.

As a Dominant-crip-pseudo-lesbian I struggled to find an identity that fit me. Combining the weakness and frailness of my psychical condition with the force of my mind and my ‘sinful’ love for other women.

For a substantial period of time I was on growth-hormones since I was way too short for my age. I am still pretty short but without the hormones would have been even shorter. The hormones, a jolly mixture of steroids and testosterone, sent my body off on a post-adolescences joyride. I bulked up like I had never done before; I was longer frail in appearance even though my body was.
In an attempt to mend the gap between my physical appearance and my mind I went into a period of being a very butch girl. Shaving my head and trying desperately to find out where this rollercoaster was to take me I went from crazy unisex tops and shirts to dresses and back again. All the time feeling uncomfortable in an appearance that I didn’t know.

Getting of the hormones I dropped 8 kg to 38kg for my final 145 cm and finally recognised what I saw in the mirror. I went back to the clothes that I had worn as a girl, I indulged in skirts and flowery tops, flaunted my tits and tried my very best to make my body sexual and owned by me, rather than an asexual object owned by doctors and syringes filled with steroids.

As a crip-girl I believe that is my biggest struggle. To believe that my body can be desired through the eyes of others. That it isn’t something freaky but something hot, mostly because I myself through active choice in my appearance and manners make it so.
I thrive on being raunchy and outspoken about my body and my sexuality, since it breaks a long lived idea of crippled people as asexual, making use of it as I would like. Learning to make it work its best to give me and my lovers the most pleasure and so and so.

Through this process of ‘returning to the roots’ I discovered my last add-on identity so far. I was not only a Dominat-crip-pseudo-lesbian; I was also a ‘femme’.
Putting my ‘invalid’ body on display because I chose to, doing it with the tools of a feminine appearance altered to fit my needs (see crip-chick’s post on altering the tools of femininity, such as clothes, to fit the needs of our bodies) allowing myself, with very little physical force, to Dominate through the mind, and enjoying that, gave me the cornerstones of the subversion that now constitute my femme-identity.

However even though I am a ‘fiercely femme Lady’ according to beloved Sister Hillevi, I find I am rarely viewed as that by people who don’t know me. Again it’s that asexual image of disabled people and certainly disabled women that gets me. Also, my ‘classically feminine attire’ combined with a well expressed Christian faith often boxes me in as a sweet-Christian-girl. Not to say that I am not but there is certainly more to me than meets the eye in that sense.

In order for a discussion to take place around disability, gender and identity society needs to acknowledge disabled persons identities not only as homogenous disabled group but see that all kinds of identities fit within the disabled ‘community’ as well as in the able bodied.
That even though I am a disabled person it is not equal to my disability being the cornerstone of my identity.

My crip-identity as it is today took me years and years to build and it was through my other identities that a sense of subversion of my crippled body arose.
When I call myself a crip today, it gives me a space to joke about the quirks of my body, my spasm, my freakishly tensed muscles, a space where I can promote photos as the one here on the blog where I kiss the chrome on my walker.
Also, it gives me a space where I find strength in a world that is made to fit the able bodied, it gives me a sense of community and support, a renewed sense of what my body needs and strength to acknowledge that these needs are different than my able bodied friend’s.

(Might be brainy, might just be ramblings)

On being crip (sometimes not all that hip)

Recently I have been in the Capital and done things that only the Capital can offer for me. I try to make that place my new home in the future, hence I spread my roots there. Make shops, streets and people mine (in the novel I am writing there is a chapter on how to eat a city - if you are ever moving somewhere let me give it to you, it's very useful.) in doing that I try to get to know my future home.

Hence, I used the subway alot. There's a green line, a red line and a blue line. I know alot about the red line, and close to nothing about the green line, this time I tried the blue line since I was staying with someone who lived along it.

It was dreadful. I hate the blue line with a passion so deep I can feel my fingertips hitting the glossy keys of my keypad somewhat furiously. The blue line was very aesthetic - soothingly bluecolored it made me think of the Swedish childrens book Loranga, Mazarin and Dartanjang where one of the characters dwells in an all blue room.

The falsely soothing blue line had lots of elevators, great you say that the Capital provides means of transportation for it's more vulnerable habitants. Hypocracy I say!
In order for a mean of transportation to be useful it must transport its user. The elvators on the ever so soothin (is it a trick, an act to relief tension build up from travelling in such conditions?) blue line did not.

So I climbed, I don't really mind climbing stairs I do it in the comfort of my own home everyday. I only mind climbing them when I know I shouldn't have to. When there has been an opportuinty to move in a more suitable manner, but that opportuntiy is no more.
It's called climbing a stair in this text cause that is what I actually do. I climb the slippery and dirty stairs of the subway up and down, inside and out. My sweaty plams grip the shiny chrome that a thousand hands have gripped before me.
Some of these might have been crooked as my own, hanging on for dear life on to a shiny piece of metal that reflects their hard working face.
The only difference between abled and disabled bodies is that moving a disabled one is work.

Beside me abled bodies swooshed by. Heels tapping the stairs as light as feathers, hands soaring above the infected chrome.
I study them, they study me. My plaited cotton skirt covered in blue roses, the lace knee-highs making their way down my tensed muscles. The somewhat too transparent t-shirt. (This is the femme part of this text)
They have time to study me since my climbing up the stairs gives them that. I only have time to catch glimpses of them. In these glimpses I must make up my mind about them. Who they are, where they come from, where they are going and why they are going there.

When climbing these stairs I find I am on display. I try to make a room where I feel comfortable being displayed. A perfomance.
I try working my body up the stairs with force, I do not shun my gaze when those patting heels and the eyes of their bearers look at me. The situation make me as overt as I have ever been. There is no way I pass for ablebodied right now and there is indeed nothing I can do about it.

Visability has a price, invisability an even higher one. If making everytime the elevators wont work and climbing is a fact a perfomance is the only way to remain true. Do it!
Remember: it is not the body that cripples a crip but its enviroment.

When I have climbed all the way up. I brush my hands on my skirt, draw a deep breath and enjoy the security of my walker again. (Mind you mountain climbing only works if someone is behind me carrying my walker.)
As always my head is held high, my back is a straight as it can be. I make my way through a crowd that will never known I just perfomed to save my life!

Now is the time when MacGuywer would have made a cableway for himself using an
old gum and his sholaces. Sadly I have none of his skills.
-From my soon to be finished monlouge "Jonathan!" on surving as a crip!

On absolute identies

Recently I performed. It had been a while and truthfully I was nervous about performing a piece so obviously about my struggle with Femme and identity, about the concepts of girhood, womanhood and power.

My audience was blank sheet of paper to me. Mostly middleaged or older, mostly realtives of others who perfomed that same night. I was sure they didn't know much about the identites I "claim", and they didn't know much about me. It was a test, but a healthy one, for the piece and for me.

I had longed to be on stage it had been so very long since I last made a point. Since I last made words into flesh. I am mostly a writer and a director these days. Somehow I see these roles, even though I love them dearly, as passive. I am a bystander, a watcher, a creater of surrondings and ideas which I don't get the chance to embody myself.

I did what I had to do. I wrote the piece entitled "Är det där min kvinnlighet?" ("You call that my womanhood") circling around the ideas what makes a woman rather than a girl.
I spoke about my body, my tits as cupcakes when they were made to fit the woman I was becoming. I spoke about odd bits and pieces wanting to fit all in me. All in the girl and the woman.
I memorized the piece, I pounded it into the walls and swirls of my brain. I took it into my body I accompained it with gestures and movements. I made it into flesh. It was seperat from its text, it was a twin to its text. And I perfromed it.

Not knowing what the audience would make of its raunchy and sexual nature, what they would make of me in my tuell skirt my firey make-up troubled me back stage. But as always, on stage all of that vanishes. I am a vessle. Truly being on stage is a supernatural experience for me.

I realized while standing there, feet held firmly down, head held up, that I took that space. It was mine, time was mine and I could lead it either way I wanted. I was a wizard, a magician of words and bodies, and I loved.

In the audience, right in front of me, were three men dressed as cowboys. They weren't drag-ing or playing with that identity. They were cowboys. It was an absolute identity and they owned it. They knew they were manly men, they knew their manhood was power. I didn't know what to make of them. They smiled when they looked at me, they sniggered.
So I decieded, as I have always done, to focus on them.

I brought them my piece. My raunchy, cripp-femme, power-journey, from girl to woman to a girlie kind of woman. Possesing place and time, turning to them demanding to know:
How about that, is that my feminity?

They were shocked. Squriming in their seats they didn't know what to make of me. I didn't fit their box, I didn't fit their mind. But they smiled, eventually they laughed. In the end they were soft. When I got off stage they YEEEHAA-ed.
Success was mine. The cowboys loved me!

Having wine and left-over cakes with the other performers when it was all over, the cowboys approached me. They wore spurrs making a distinct sound when they moved. Telling us they were coming, taking up space, sound, room. They were daunting, tall and strong. They shook my hand, and they thanked me. Said it was "the best they had ever seen". Then they left swinging their hats they way cowboys do.
(Even though I am a writer- this is the truth.)

Thinking about it now, it's not such a strange thing. My cripp-femme identity is an "absolute thing" to me, close to my heart and something I have put a lot of thought in to in some aspects, and only learned to embodied in others.
The cowboys identity seemed to be much the same. There was a brotherhood between us. A link of understanding between the girl and the manly men.
The sister and her brothers.