I'm a Kitty: Heterosexual Influence

Forget everything you know about biology and let me tell you a tale.

Imagine growing up and thinking, knowing, that you're a dog. Everyone around you is a dog. You do dog things and imagine your doggy future. Then you start to notice that there's something else but continue to maintain your dog identity.

Eventually it strikes you: “I'm a cat.” Maybe I was half cat and half dog, but nope, “I'm a kitty.” Then the realization comes that you are a cat among dogs. Do the other dogs know? After a while the hidden cat emerges to tell the dog friends. Some of them leave, some of them tell the cat it's a dog or SHOULD be a dog. Really mean, closed minded dogs will chase you, barking, up a tree. Some of them say that they have other cat friends and it's cool. Then you continue your life under your newfound feline identity.

However, you must come to grips with your former dog lifestyle. All of the feelings you had for dogs. You might question your ability to love. If you were wrong then you might be wrong now. Because you were raised a dog you did dog things-you may even have barked at a few cats. You used to do dog things, now you do cat things and view the world from a kitty perspective.

Now sometimes you still look at other dogs and wonder. What your life would have been like, what your life still could be like if you could go back. Still think occasionally of those doggy dreams. The sadest thing is that there are more dogs than cats. Being a cat is lonely. And it's a dog eat dog world out there so there is not always much love for the pointy eared and soft pawed.

Muhammad and Moshe both start with M

I get a lot of mails and stuff about Judaism. Many of them have a decidedly anti-arab feel to them. And there's that whole mess with Israel. When my Rabbi asked me about Israel I told him I wasn't sure. For me it represents a lot of hate and violence. It's all nice and dandy to talk about our homeland, our people returning Eretz Yisrael, but bombs fly into Sderot almost everyday. Yes, efforts are being made on both sides to come together, but the hate and violence are overwhelming.

Here's the thing though, until recently (in terms of the past 6,000 years) the Jews and the Muslims were pretty much best friends. In Spain for example, under Arab rulership, the Jews, Muslims and whatever Christians were cool enough, prospered and had a golden age of cultural blending and bunny feelings. And afterward, when the Christians kicked all of the cool people out of Spain, Jews and Muslims lived in other lands together and supported each other.

WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED????? If both sides (yeah, us too) could just pull our heads out of our asses suck it up and tell the radical nutjobs (who are such a small fraction of all the good people on both sides) to fuck off, the world would be so close to a utopia I'd have to go on a killing spree every other month just to keep people from being sensitized to misery.

So I will praise Allah and know that he is my Adonai. And I will support my Muslim brothers and sisters (not just because I find arab women attractive) just as I'd support any Jew (or queer kid, or african american, or disenfranchised individual). Because I know beyond any shred of doubt that Muhammad and Moshe are kicked back, enjoying a drink together in olam haba, the world to come.

Fitting In

This one is a long one:

As we struggle to be more normative, we often fall victim to the sin of leaving folks behind. As a moderately asexual lesbian who loves micro-agression as if it were softball, I'd like to address polyamory and maybe its influences and interactions with my aforementioned asexuality.

Back in the day, impoverished black people struggled to emulate white behavior, proving they could "fit in." Today many queer (which I use as an umbrella term denoting community active, conscientious peoples usually occupying the GLBTQAAI etc. sphere) try to "fit in" by getting married, having babies and constructing middle class picket prison fences. If this is the passion, chase it down and own it as your own, but is it the passion or is it the norm? So today we bridge the gap by having "committed, monogamous, one-on-one relationships."

I am NOT the polyamory master--I'm not really an amory master of any kind. I can say that, although it ended poorly (so often we neglect the "sane" part of "Safe, Sane and Consentual"), I think the time I dated a straight identified couple was one of the best relationships of my life.

Long before the touting of homosexual penguins, we used to hear about how this or that animal "mated for life." SWEET MOSES, why was that espoused as the epitome of relationship? And why are we always so proud if animals conform to our standards and norms? As member to a species that is actively destroying this glorious kingdom o' G-d, I'm not sure that human is the model we should be following. What about all of the whore species that have multiple, not lasting, partners?

Maybe just because I don't feel the specific click with males, does not have to signify that I don't want strong manly arms to hug me if I'm scared. And what if my best female friend is "into the cock" but still wants to be logistically and emotionally committed to me? And what if living together makes the rape of renting a livable expense?!! Is my sin so great?

As a late bloomer who for a long time question celibacy as a life choice, I was most pressured into sex by my friends. Teased sometimes, but most often in conversation I became a meaningless, non-participant because I did not belong to--what became to me, the secret club.

And even as I fought to "fit in" I knew that if I'd had sex finally, I would still be regulated away because it was with a girl instead of a guy.

My next relationship would be one-on-one which was difficult because I'm in the habit of being emotionally despondent and this time there was not an extra party to pick up my slack. And as long as we timed our freak outs to not correspond, there use to be two people with different life experiences to take care of you and help any problem that came up. Even with a girlfriend, I feel lonely.

"Did you have sex with them?"

FOR THE SAKE of polyamorous and asexual education, the answer is no. However, I consistently felt myself to be participatory in the broader scale of sex-life. Post-coital cuddle puddles are inclusive domain.

My brain has some sort of episode when I'm asked that question. My very core screams "THAT'S NOT THE POINT!" Much like as a modern, liberal, reform Jew, I feel that proving every minute, fantastical point in the biblical narratives is counterproductive to the point of their tellings.

Why does sex have to be the be-all, end-all of relationship definition? Why do we need relationship definition? If I, as a lesbian am happy with my boyfriend and girlfriend in tow--does it really matter?

They first attracted me by being two of the too few people who didn't degrade me for my v-card status but still encouraged potential, healthy sexual development. Am I asexual? If we can actually grip sexuality as a continuum, then sometimes, yes, that term is an appropriate descriptor of how I feel. I'm also a lesbian who is open to logistical relationships with boys and please try to picture the shit I took for that within our 'community'. I might have well sold my soul to Fred Phelps the shit I took.

Do I want to get married and have a picket fence? Quite a lot sometimes (see I'm a Kitty). Occasionally, I even picture some sort of baby monster in it. But in the end what I need is to not feel pressured about how I use ore don't use this body-temple and to not feel pressured about whom I love as long as I am happy and safe.