LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Student CAMP: I Don't Believe in Gender, but I Only Date Women |
by Kristen Minor |
It is with great joy that I announce the beginning of a new academic quarter at my college. This is an enormous relief; I'm afraid that last quarter's "nothing but linguistics courses" schedule turned my brain into a mishmash of information with ridiculously small practical application, including why the plural of "mouse" is "mice", why chimps cannot speak, how to form plurals in Mohawk (the language, not the hairstyle) and, in a high point in my academic career, that the Indo-European word for "smite" sounds an awful lot like the name "Gwen." I suspect that if I wanted to be wealthy I should've done pre-law.
I digress, however. My point is that it is finally spring in New Hampshire. (All together now: Woo!) Living up North gives you a bizarre frame of referencemy classmates and I are wont to break out the shorts and flip flops every time the temperature gets above, say, fifty-five degrees. This is often accompanied by bewildered looks at visitors who insist that anything less than three layers is an open invitation to frostbite in this sort of weather. Wimps. This very week we have gone from sandals back to boots for that one day that it snowed and right back to t shirts again. It's only Tuesday; I can't handle this ambiguity. This upswing in temperature (it got down to the negative twenties here; my mother has lost the right to complain about the weather to me) has allowed my friends and I to engage in one of our favorite activities, sitting outside and talking. (This is occasionally done with a slight amount of belligerencesurely we're not the only people who sit outdoors when it's forty degrees because it's technically spring, thank you very much.) At any rate, I have of late frequently been drinking coffee and talking about Deep Queer Philosophy with my group of friends, the Big Queer Posse of Doom. And no, we don't have anything better to do than think of amusing names for ourselves, as we are officially the largest possible group of queers that can currently assemble on campus where nobody has dated anyone else. (This is true, any other group of five or more and you can play connect the dykes.) These conversations, particularly the three in the morning ones fueled by angst and caffeine, often turn to discussion of theory. Contrary to an enormous amount of evidence, I would like to think that I'm not one to excessively overanalyze things. Be that as it may, it's somewhat staggering to be part of a conversation where someone says, "I don't believe in gender, but I only date women. Also, I believe in vaginas," and have this statement be taken somewhat seriously. Yes, we mocked it mercilessly, but this led to a discussion on what it actually means to believe in gender. I try to be radical and subversive and open minded about gender. Really, I do, but whenever I walk into the LGBTQAXYZOMGWTFBBQ resource center and read the sign on the wall saying "Gender Free Zone" I find myself looking down and thinking "Nope, still a 36 C." I'm either failing at being a gender warrior or am far too sarcastic for my own good. (Both of these options can be true at the same time.) The subject of debate this evening, for example, was about butch and femme in the lesbian community. Even though I'm convinced that younger generations don't put very much stock in butch/femme anymore, it's one of those things, like mullets, that lesbians will forever be obsessed with and be identified with. Tonight we managed to create a sliding scale theoretical model of butch and femme-ness based on hair length, pant and shoe preference, knowledge of power tools, and perkiness. Comparatively speaking it holds up to other models that do not seem to have been created by bored college students. From this I conclude that while I don't hold to butch/femme ideals, they sure are fun to bicker about. Also, I'm not sure if I should ever hold a door open again. Lest the gentle reader think that my gay life consists of imbibing caffeine and arguing, one of the big upcoming social events that I am looking forward to is the night the gay groups are taking over the student-run bar for an evening and turning it into a gay bar. I have no idea what the trustees will think of thissome of them still lament the college going coed in the first placeand it's tempting to send them the email that advertises such bar specials as Fruity Flamer, Ellen DeGingerale, and Siegfried and Roy Rogers. Karaokewhich I'm convinced should be a competitive sport at the Gay Gamesis to be had, presumably after one has knocked back a few of the evening's special, Gayer Than Monkeys on Nitrous. One can only wonder what postmodern queer analysis would say. Kristen Minor, a member of the class of 2004 at Dartmouth College, has started to drink coffee. Yikes. She is now prone to twitching at night and can be reached at kristen@youth-guard.org. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 13, No. 3, April 4, 2003. |