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lesbian-ed · 7 years

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🌸Hi, a few years ago when I was 16 (19 now)I was forced out to my friends by this homophobic girl, and I came out as bi (still in the closet to my family), I'm no longer friends with any of them, but I can't figure out what label I should have, I really want to just know who I am. I said to them I was bi, but I've never felt right with that label. I read about comp het and it makes so much sense to me, but I still don't know. 1/5

🌸I feel, like, attracted to male celebs, but only when they’re in films or tv, and watching interviews of them ruins it?, and whenever I’m around guys I get these thoughts I can’t control about kissing them and sleeping with them and I feel rlly self conscious, I said this to a friend who said it’s a crush, but I get it with people I don’t like at all 2/?

🌸 And sometimes I have a phase where I feel like I could date a guy and marry him and have kids and be happy but it feels like I’m imagining a perfect version of me that actually im not like at all? And as well I can only imagine myself with a young guy, once I think about a 30 yr old or older I don’t want it anymore, but the perfect fantasy seems so appealing idk 3/?

🌸I feel different about girls but I don’t know I’m catholic and I feel like it’s always been other people are gay and that’s ok but not me? And I don’t know whether I feel no attraction to girls or I’m pushing it down bc when I see girls kiss on tv I literally have started crying and I saw a lesbian couple in public once and I got butterflies and also Ive found myself changing pronouns in songs in my head without realising but I’ve never had close to a crush on anyone especially not a girl 4/5

🌸Ive never even met a gay girl except for one pan girl at school but she was really weird and rude so I don’t know what it’s supposed to be like to like someone? writing this all down it makes it sound like I’m definitely a lesbian but that scares me so much bc ill never have a normal life and I can’t shake this feeling that actually I do want to be with a guy but I’m trying to be interesting or I’m faking this or something. Pls tell me your thoughts on this 5/5

Oh, anon. This literally all feels as if my younger self came into my ask box just now to ask for advice.

I understand your pain, I really do, I went through so many of the same thought processes you’re describing now. It’s good that you’re aware of compulsory heterosexuality, since I believe that will make sorting your feelings easier. Still, I recommend you look through our tag (if you haven’t already) to read more thoughts on this. It’ll help.

I obviously can’t tell you what your sexuality is for you, that’s your own journey to make, but this sounds so much like my own experience that I’m pretty sure what the answer is already.

Anon, let me tell you a story, I went to a catholic school and while my parents are pretty liberal and not that religious (in fact, my dad’s an atheist) I was also raised with the idea that ok, there were gay people out there, and I didn’t care what other people did with their lives! But honestly that was kind of weird and I couldn’t be like them, because they weren’t normal, like I should be. I was bullied a lot as a kid, because I was weird and ugly and way too shy and easy to pick on, so I grew up with this idea that whatever else happened, I had to stop being like that, I had to be beautiful and normal and acceptable. And that of course included a perfect fantasy of marrying the man of my dreams after he fell in love with men when I suddenly grew up to be the most beautiful woman there was, and having kids, and holding down a successful job that I was happy doing and having lots of money and well, just having the most perfect life. How could I not want that? Ever since I was old enough to walk, society fed me the idea that this was my ideal endgame, how could we ALL not dream about that at some point?

I used to be obsessed with those stories where the “ugly” girl suddenly turns beautiful and the Nice Perfect Popular Boy finally notices her and they get together, those stories were my dream life. As a kid and young teen I’d fantasize about them constantly, I’d make up characters that would always end up fulfilling those same tropes. It was the way to prove to all those who ever called me ugly or belittled me because I was nerdy that “see? I got the happy ending” so when I was twelve, and suddenly all the girls were having crushes on boys I felt nothing for, while I started noticing seemingly out of the blue just how incredibly beautiful so many girls my age and older were, I got veeery scared. I couldn’t like girls like that, I wasn’t like that, I was already weird and had no friends, so how could I ever hope to find a girl who liked girls who’d like me? And if I did, everyone already hated me, so how would I bear it? The stares and the insults and the danger we’d face if people saw us together on the street? So I pushed that attraction down as far as I could, I convinced myself I was actually just too inmature to start thinking about crushes and all that stuff, and obviously when I was mature enough and the time came, I’d like boys, because that’s what Normal Girls did right? And I had to be normal.

In my school’s equivalent of US’ eighth grade, a new boy came to our class, he was pretty, and friendly, and most importantly, blonde! and he was the school sports star! It felt like every movie-like fantasy I ever had come to life. Every girl was in love with him, so one time I had a dream where we were dating. I woke up being absolutely ecstatic, that must have meant I had a crush right? I liked a boy? I was definitely straight?

I never actually began feeling nervous around this boy, or looking at him any more than usual until I had this dream and decided that meant I was in love. I told a friend eventually because I was excited about being in love and the fantasy I had created for myself about our perfect relationship (which did involve us kissing and having sex, and I never actually felt turned on about it but I did imagine it a lot because it meant we were In Love, so those fantasies happen even if you don’t actually like like the person in question, dw!), and isn’t that what you do when you like someone? Gossip about it with your friends? She told some of my bullies and the dude found out, so he started laughing at me in the middle of the class and calling me ugly and saying he was traumatized at the mere idea of me liking him.

And I… felt nothing. I was angry of course, and sad, but it was just the same anger and sadness I felt when some random I didn’t like made fun of me, it wasn’t even like what I felt when former friends said nasty stuff about me. And I wanted to be heartbroken I wanted to wallow in the misery and the drama of it, but I just wasn’t, it was the same “well this shit sucks and I’m angry about it but it happens everyday so wyd?” There was no deeper feeling there, not even any special resentment, there was nothing. I never felt anything ever again when I looked at this boy.

Now, sometime later, the same boy starts dating a girl from our class, and it was around the same time that I was coming to terms with the fact that the latent attraction I had started to feel for women when I was younger had never actually gone away but rather had grown. Things were purely about sexual attraction for me at that point, not romantic feelings. I hadn’t actually been in love with a girl either by that point. Because even tho I was accepting my sexual attraction to women, I still had the idea in my mind that ideally I would end up with a boy, because when so much of my hopes for the future relied of me being beautiful and a man falling in love with me forever and ever so that I could have a normal future, letting go of that dream took a while. I called myself bisexual for a while, only to realize very little later that it didn’t actually fit me. When I did, it was hard, because I had to re-come out again to my mom and the two friends I had told, and that really scared me, because I felt like some fake, like what I felt was not actually real. I put it off, and my friends & mom were accepting but they also were like “you’re just confused about your sexuality!!/this is just a phase!!” so that fed into my insecurities. Even when I realized I was sexually into women only, I still hadn’t fallen in love with one, so that made things more confusing for me (I hadn’t fallen for any boy other than the one I mentioned earlier and one I met on a vacation that thought I liked for like a week because he had a pretty voice and was pretty androgynous lmao, but again, no heartbreak when he went away)

Eventually, (funnily enough through fandoms and f/f ships and fics that depicted them in loving relationships, And I cried when I read about girls kissing too, at first I thought it was because I was a Good Straight Ally, but I was just a lesbian lmao) I realized that I could also be happy in a relationship with a woman, that it was not only a possible future for me, but one that I wanted, one that felt right, one in which I wouldn’t be the beautiful, perfect, feminine, smart, succesful career woman I had dreamed of as a kid, but in which I’d be me, with all my quirks and faults, with another woman with her own quirks and faults who’d love me for who I am, because that was possible! It was possible to be happy like that!. When I realized this, that me liking girls romantically and sexually, and exclusively girls was okay, it felt like a veil was lifted from my eyes. Suddenly, all the feelings and attraction I had thought I had felt for boys paled in comparison to the intensity of what I felt for women, I learned what actual sexual desire was like, I yearned for a future with a real me in it with a real woman by my side, instead of the fake ideal I’d wanted to be when I was younger. It was around that time I fell in love for the first time.

Remember how I mentioned the boy I used to “like” got a girlfriend? Well, guess who I fell for? Me and her were assigned seats together one year in high school, and I got to know her through the first term, every time liking her more and more, until one day, she just walks into class, and I think she did something different with her hair? Whatever it was, seeing her felt like someone punching the breath out of me, it felt like watching literal perfection embodied. And I was gone, I was just so so sooo gone. I felt sparks when we sat next to each other, I couldn’t stop smiling like a fool whenever I looked at her, she’d say something nice to me and it felt like my soul was flying out of my body. And of course it was idealized, it was a crush on a girl I didn’t know that well, but the feelings I had, I had for her, for her actual personality, her actual sweetness, her actual kindness, even her actual rashness sometimes, not the fantasy I had made up of her that I projected onto her like I did when I “liked” her boyfriend. I liked her as a person. Plus the intensity of both crushes was just so fucking different. When I liked her, I cried when we were apart and at the thought of her with her dumbass idiot boyfriend, I listened to a love song and could relate to it for the first time. I understood finally why people would write poetry and songs and do all sorts of crazy things for this feeling.

Tldr: I also fantasized about the ideal boy and I was never able to allow myself to feel anything for a girl because of how much I had repressed my sexuality due to fear of backlash until I was able to recognize that yes, liking women was OK and then all my repressed feelings came pouring out like a tsunami.

If that sounds like something you can kind of relate to, then that’s your answer anon. However, it might not be, or maybe you don’t know if it is yet. That’s alright! Sexuality can be complicated and it can take a long time to figure it out. You’re not on a deadline here, you don’t have to stress about it.

As for the normal part, yeah being a lesbian in this society sucks a lot. And I still get terrified of the idea that I will not be “normal” and that I can never be happy. Even if I know deep in my heart that I can never be happy with a man, sometimes I wonder if it’d be worth it to spare me the pain. The answer? Hell no, I’ve got one life, one, what’s the point of wasting it on loveless unfulfilled relationships when I could try to go for someone I’ll actually be happy with? There’ll be pain, of course there will be, I live in a small town and I’ve only just started meeting other lesbians & bi girls offline this year because I’ve gone to university, and I’ve only ever actually started talking to and becoming actual friends with the ones I knew online this year too because I was so terrified before! All of them tell me about their hurt, and how lesbophobia affects them a lot, and yet I see them talking about how much they love their girlfriends/wives (I don’t have that because I’m an awkward potato but I’m trying) and also other lesbians, and it gives me hope, because I can be just like them, finding genuine happiness amidst the pain.

I hope this answer helps you.

Mod M :D

#anonymous #answered asks #advice #lesbophobia #positivity #lesbian positivity #mod m #original #mod m gets personal lmao #compulsory heterosexuality

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vileart · 7 years

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Babel Dramaturgy: Colby Quinn @ Edfringe 2017

LOUD // IN BABEL

by COLBY QUINN

dir. Anastasia Bruce-Jones

12:55pm 14th - 19th August

TheSpace@NiddrySt (Upper), Niddry Street, EH1 1TH

It is 2057 and the world’s population has reached 10 billion. To prevent unsanctioned births, British law states that no male and female can be alone together in a private place. In an abandoned house, on the edge of town, Thomas and Isla break away from the rest of the party...

An abandoned house on the outskirts of Bristol. A group of young, would-be revolutionaries break in to start fires and drink liquid steel. The party quickly becomes raucous.

Upstairs, Thomas finds an old bedroom, dusty but with shafts of

evening light filtering in, and prepares a surprise for his girlfriend, Isla; their first proper date, alone. A heart-warming love story begins; two young people held apart by a law which unjustly assumes the sexuality of heterosexual relationships finally live out the most intimate and fragile of human interactions – they discover what is like to be alone with the person you love.

As they talk – about the city, about university, about their families and, seemingly constantly, about the way their lives have been affected by the new law – they are able to begin revealing the depth of their feelings for each other.

But romantic excitement turns to recklessness for Thomas as they steel themselves with alcohol. The political becomes entangled with the private once again, as Thomas’s frustration and revolutionary fury build, fuelled by the discovery of a box of photographs which tell a story of a similarly persecuted couple. Thomas’s idea of rebellion, sexual intercourse, in a world where even a father and daughter can’t be alone together, isn’t Isla’s.

WHAT WAS THE INSPIRATION FOR THIS PERFORMANCE?

I really like one night stands. There's something really exciting about being in such an intimate situation with someone you hardly know. But I don't like having sex on one night stands. It's just a line I draw. Some people have a real issue with that.It seems to me that every time I've found myself in a situation where a guy - and I say 'guy' because it always has been guys, girls in my experience haven't been this way - has pushed the boundaries of consent, and I've told them to stop and explained to them that they were beginning to do something that was non-consensual, it's always ended up being me who comforts them. Me who comforts them? What the hell?

Because I guess it is upsetting, thinking that if the person you're on a one-night-stand with wasn't outspoken, or sober enough, or aware enough of exactly what it is she wants (or doesn't want), you could easily have ended up raping them. But I think we can agree that it's a hell of a lot more upsetting to have it the other way round.I had that image in my head for a few weeks - the victim comforting the person who has pushed their boundaries - and LOUD // in Babel emerged out of that.

IS PERFORMANCE STILL A GOOD SPACE FOR THE PUBLIC DISCUSSION OF IDEAS?

Well, in this case, I'm not really sure that's the question we need to be asking.I went through school with absolutely no discussion of consent at all - this is nothing against my school, it's a good place that really cares about it's students, but it's not in the curriculum and - worse - it's just not in people's minds. There's no culture of talking about consent. The only formal education I've ever had about consent was a half-hearted two hour

workshop at the start of my time at University, run by students who had barely more experience than I did. Sure, I had a few afternoons in school when I was taught how to put a condom on a cucumber. Frankly, these days, that's worse than not good enough.The only place I ever see ideas of consent and - even more rarely - the difficult case of rape happening within a loving and consensual relationship being discussed is in performance and the very fringes of the media, in edgy, low-budget dramas and YouTube documentaries.As a writer and director, performance is the way I express my ideas. It's the medium through which I naturally filter and express my experiences. I guess that makes me lucky, because performance is one of the few places which *allows*, and more importantly, validates discussion of consent. Performance is absolutely necessary as a space for the public discussion of ideas.The question we need to be asking, though, is why is performance so necessary? Why is performance the only place I can be sure of being heard when I say that I have taught myself through experience how to prevent my own rape?

HOW DID YOU BECOME INTERESTED IN MAKING PERFORMANCE?

I think it was when I saw Trevor White play

Hotspur in Gregory Doran's 'Henry IV: Part I' and I realised that really great performances are about saying something totally new.In White's portrayal, Hostpur was an autistic man, wholly dedicated to his ideals, on fire with passion, leaping across the stage (I swear, four feet high sometimes) and compelling the audience with every ancient word he spoke. He never said a single thing that hasn't been said a hundred times before but it was electric and modern and totally fresh.

IS THERE ANY PARTICULAR APPROACH TO THE MAKING OF THE SHOW?

Not exactly a particular 'approach' - we're not going to rehearse everything in complete darkness or with our hands tied behind our backs or eating only rice and beans - I don't believe in directing gimmicks. But as with rehearsing any show, there are going to be unique challenges that require unique solutions.For example, Isla and Thomas (the characters in LOUD // in Babel) get drunk through the course of the show. Given that their particular level of drunkenness leads to both of them losing a degree of control and doing things that they probably wouldn't do if they were sober, it's important for Toby and Beth (our actors) to feel that particular level of drunkenness and how it affects their decisions as characters.

So we're going to do a rehearsal where we run the show and they actually drink the amount of alcohol the characters are drinking - in real time. And I'll record that and then we'll watch it through the next day. But the recording is sort of secondary, it'll help with slight physical things, but no-one wants to watch actors pretending to be absolutely smashed, so it's not really about that. It's more to feel how that lack of control works on the characters; makes them quieter or bolder or gives them that little voice at the back of the head that whispers 'this is bad, this is really bad'.Instead of a particular approach, it'll be exercises like this. What I focus on is getting the actors' heads fully inside the psyche of their character, thinking and feeling as they do. After that, things come naturally.

DOES THE SHOW FIT WITH YOUR USUAL PRODUCTIONS?

Not exactly, but then it's been a pretty crazy range so far. I've directed 'Love's Labour's Lost' (a quirky Shakespeare comedy) set in modern-day Cambridge, 'The Duchess of Malfi' (a revenge tragedy) using physical theatre and 'set' (if you can call it setting) inside the subconscious dreaming mind of society itself, 'Birdsong' (Faulks' WW1 romance) in a pretty faithful way and I'm currently writing a short-film about two student film-makers who think they're Arthur Rimbaud. There's no real pattern here.What I think is important to me is that audiences feel a connection - some significance to what is happening on stage, whether that's because they've been through similar things themselves or conversely because they are being made to feel something totally new. It's that sense of connection that will keep people coming to the theatre, keep young people interested, and prevent the 'dying out' of theatre that the arts world at the moment is so afraid of.

WHAT DO YOU HOPE THAT THE AUDIENCE WILL EXPERIENCE?

Emotion. It's as simple as that.What I find interesting is that when you go to the theatre or the cinema, you know that what you're seeing is not real. And yet, you feel it more strongly than reality. I've had people tell me they love me for the first time and felt far less emotion than when Jack and Rose kiss on the prow of the Titanic. It's a sort of condensation of reality.People go because they want to feel something, and that's exactly what I plan to deliver.

WHAT STRATEGIES DID YOU CONSIDER TOWARDS SHAPING THIS AUDIENCE EXPERIENCE?

We've got a lot of cool ideas about this; we're planning to give some audience members t-shirts which, without revealing anything about the twists of the play, have quite an important role in a big reveal.We're also using people's voices within the play itself, so we need some volunteers to read some sections of writing for us. So, if you want to actually be in an Edinburgh show, come to us!

LOUD // in Babel, an original piece of dystopia from Colby Quinn, is a powerful insight into the dangers of a voice going unheard. Through the funny, touching and fast-paced dialogue of the two would-be lovers, the play challenges our perceptions of freedom of speech, consent and the implications of silencing a voice.

LOUD // in Babel is structured around a new and very different concept, which poses multiple problems for both the characters and the audience to grapple with. The unique concept of the play frames the issues of the present, focusing on a hypothetical future which amplifies the fears of today without parodying them or using already well-worn Orwellian tropes overtly.

The play challenges the audience by placing them inside a space which is controlled by laws which have a fundamental impact on the way the characters have lived their lives and understand communication.

Through the play, the audience realise their own comparative freedom, the delicate balance of the private and the political and the terrifying consequences of this balance being upset. The play itself strikes an unsettling and deeply affecting balance between romantic comedy and political drama, which drives the pace and creates a Nick Payne-esque emotional struggle.

This rejection of standardised genre expectations holds the audience to account for their own problematic expectations of romantic relationships in theatre and western culture more broadly and reflects the darkly ambiguous position created by voicelessness within the play. The theme of voicelessness itself creates an intriguing crux in a form which is built around dialogue, asking questions about the existence and position of free speech, which are reminiscent of Sam Steiner.

The production uses simple technical effects to create powerful images, building to an exciting technical reveal at the end. The play builds around difficult ambiguities, which come to their climax in the question of sexual consent in a loving, consensual relationship. It is a play which will spark conversations and debate among audience-members, something that lies at the heart of Fringe theatre.

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