Sometimes you feel like you are on the run. Against capture. On charges of insanity, madness, acuity, maybe conceit, hubris certainly, or just sheer intelligence which most people don't have the forbearance, the patience, the training, the exposure maybe, to withstand.

Dear Menses

Dear Menses, thank you for visiting me, I had been trying to forget you these last couple of months and just when I thought I had discharged you for good, you suddenly pay me a visit. Please don’t be mysterious: I have no time to play games like that. We are not getting any younger.

They say there are only two sexes: male and female. Then the more you know, the less you know about the sexes. Some say it is bio-chemical; some say it’s just genital: you either have gonads or clits. Then others say it’s chromosomal, you are either XY or XXY. And then there’s hormonal: it’s about the amount of estrogens or progesterones in your system that you either have the temper of a man or a woman. I once thought it’s political, and so I liked to tell people my chosen sex is lesbian, dyke, and that’s not female okay? And then these days when my menses just left me or at least took a leave of absence without a by-your-leave, I started growing a mustache.

You guys out there, tell me: Is it a triumph of science or of politics?



Why I Don't Like Going to Parties

Do heterosexual women care about discussing sexual inequality between men and women? Do they care about analyzing the oppression that one woman in their midst undergoes and sees well? Why must I go with men-identified women when I can have better company. By all means I prefer going and partying with women-only groups. That includes lesbians and trans, no bisexuals. Why?

Because in this company the conditions that ruin me and the party are not there. The things that I have to put up with when with heterosexuals do not exist! I know it's crazy, but you see, without guys around I don't have to be constantly on my guard, twist this way and that and betray myself just to keep away from trouble.

In heterosexual settings there will always be a guy who will speak to me as though to a giant mold, like I'm not a human being but a cat on its paw. There will always be a guy who will insult me directly or indirectly, even when I mean to be pleasant to him and speak to him but not in sexual terms. To refuse to flirt with a man doesn't mean I am being unpleasant or overbearing. For me it's just the better way to make a better time of it.

In heterosexual parties, there will always be guys who devour our space that we can't even talk among ourselves. Of course we can speak up to them and ask them not to interrupt us, and sure they will shut up, then we can go on talking. And then this man arrives, and he is cool. He doesn't address us, he just sits right next to us and starts to sing or drum his fingers on the table or drag the chair against the floor, and moves up and down the aisle and yells or stretches himself up or calls a girlfriend or gets himself called by a girlfriend and so on. In other words, there will always be this guy who cannot take it if we do not pay any attention to him.

In these weird heterosexual settings, there will always be people who would look at me like I am some animal from the zoo; who will stare at me as I kiss another woman, to see how I do it, or how I eye the woman, as though I would salivate, like I were some porn spectacle. Worse, there will be guys who would want to participate, guys who would carry on like they could brush bodies with me and be thanked for it!

In these mixed parties, being as I am, lesbian and feminist, there will always be men, and women too, who would go to me and tell me kindly to watch my manners; that as a lesbian I take myself too seriously or make myself too visible, too masculine, too offensively stereotypical; or that for a lesbian I look or act too feminine, or show too much skin, and that I make the heterosexuals uncomfortable.

There will always be people who would tell me that for a feminist I am too aggressive, that I am so quiet, so without humor, too rude, too victimhood, too violent, all the stupid accusations. In short, in these mixed groups, there will always be people “in the norm” who say to me very nicely and very sincerely how necessary it is for lesbian not-in-the-norm Me to always include them in my universe: to always think of them in my words and actions that they may not feel offended, harassed, excluded, alienated, and threatened; that they will be pleased, too!

These “normal” good heterosexual people will always tell me to please hush up hold my tongue; that it is better to leave what I want said unsaid, to leave my questions and demands unasked, because they already know them, and understand them, understand them better than I do, because they know me and understand me. In other words, because I'm a lesbian I'm supposed to have a limited understanding of the universe, even of the lesbian universe that I know, that I live, which they did not live! They know better and they understand better even if they have only reflected about my questions and complaints since two hours ago, because being myself, I do not really go to every party and gathering asking questions and making demands, knowing that I have been invited to their parties and gatherings to be entertained, not to be offended or displeased and have reasons to complain!

But how can I. In these mixed-group parties, there will always be a stuffed guy who will not leave me alone, some rotten brat that I too will have to look after, the poor dear, or I will be in trouble. Some guy who will threaten and harass me if I take no notice of him.

And in these same mixed parties, there will be nice guys, too. Cool guys who do not yell and maybe do not drink, but who will be the ones to reprimand me ever so kindly. Nice guys who do not turn violent but who will violate my being me just the same, with their gentlest words and priestly demeanor. Under these conditions even my close pals do not come to my side to defend me but withdraw because they themselves are not far from thinking that I really am impossible: I belong to another planet, another race, because, for God's sake, when am I ever going to start thinking about other people's rights to exist, too? When am I ever to start thinking that they have feelings, too, that they are legitimate, too???

And in these mixed parties there would be friends who are themselves not just lesbophobes but also sexists and racists and bigots who froth in the mouth and that ruins my day just by arriving and seeing them, more so when they come near me and start broadcasting. Braggarts and bigots who just at the sight of me with my women or lesbian friends will turn in the head and provoke me with their jokes and their sniggers, that i may turn on them so that they may have reason to insult me and drag me out of the territory. Guys who will go mad if I don't reply to them or if I reply to them unkindly if they talk to me as though to a hole. Guys who will freak out if I ignore them or if I don't look at them when I am having an interesting discussion with my friends. Guys who can't stand the look of lesbian Me, guys who can't tolerate it if I don't lower my eyes, or if I don't smile, when I speak to them; guys who can't abide it if I don't leave the party at the moment they want me to leave.

So I can only go to non-hetero parties, where I can quietly entertain myself, and lower my guard, knowing that with women and lesbians and trans like me, I don't have to worry about how I will survive the night with my spirit in tact, just be myself and enjoy myself, because I know that those around me will not speak to me as "to a woman" or "to a homo" or "to a lesbo". In this company, no one will speak to me so as to put me in "my proper place" because I am not behaving myself. I can dance for as long as I like without a guy saying I jumped at him, and I can dress myself up anyway I like, or disappear behind a door.

Then I can be as I am and be touched by those I allow to touch me, or touch someone I like, or kiss and be kissed or go to bed with anyone I like or who likes me.

(lifted and translated from a french text, with thanks to aude of gendertrouble.com)

Do not double-blade me

Farisha is confused. I told her do not double blade me i hate bisexuals and want them dead. Her eyes stopped dead in their sockets. She had said to me she got married because to her surprise a boy liked her. She heard I and Berkis are getting along and setting up a lesbian organisation and wanted to join. Take me in, I’m double-blade, she said. The way she put it, you would think she’s a slasher two-way and had to be applauded twice for it. I spat the bi word and hissed at her face like I saw double-traitor and she froze afraid. Like I was some lunatic she does not know the name of.

I know her from way back, some 15 years ago, maybe more. I was with Mimi. I was to design a health survey for an intervention they were going to do at Takut-Takut, the slum area in downtown Jolo right by the Mosque. The same Mosque GMA wanted to step into, which the Muslim community opposed, which angered the Bishops-Ulama-Conference bigwigs, which made many a Catholic priest not forgive, and so on and so forth. It’s about one edifice in the entire town that still stands big and tall amidst all the garbage surrounding it, but when it rains the waters can go neck-deep everyone had to navigate by rubber boat to go by.

It was a much happier time when we all first got together in 1996. Maybe 1997. Mimi was facilitating the syeyring sessions and we each one of us had been asked to bring something, an object, a picture, whatever that would stand as metaphor of our self. I am a tree, Faring had said. Storm-ravaged, but I am still here. I am this dry twig, Olive Makayug, so-called because she was thin like a reed, said, showing a picture of a leafless branch with a tiny green on its end. Olive  Matambuk, because she was fat, showed us a picture of a refrigerator. I am this because I only keep fresh things. Rotten things – my husband’s unfaithfulness, the way she used to beat me, all the ugly things I had to put up with before – I throw away. I keep only the good things.

Mimi cued me later. Shi, did you notice? The two of us we both chose flowers? Maybe we are no longer the sore thumbs we used to be? She chose Sunflower, because she likes bright happy things, she said, face always sunward. I chose a wild rose for its thorns because I wound those who get close to me, I had said. But what surprised us was Tina. Whom we thought had a terribly low self-esteem. Because there was talk she was a family abuse case, progressive present tense. But Tina showed us a picture of a shampoo girl, long black hair wavy behind her. Malingkat ha, malingkat. She kept on saying. She’s beautiful, she’s beautiful, isn’t she. I want to be like this, I am like this, beautiful. We all were stunned into uneasy silence. Then Sheena spoke up and showed us a rock rough and sharp. Lord, that girl. I am a rock! Mimi enthused. A tomboy, is she?

Now back in Jolo I could not find Sheena. Who was that girl who said she was a rock? I asked Berkis. Berkis could not remember. Now she cannot sleep without Valium. I blame Mimi. She was the one who first gave her the prescription. Medical practitioners’ quick-fix, I accuse. I cannot recall Berkis’ metaphor. I brought a poster of Kurt Cobain, she now tells me. Which I must have rejected then as noisy music punk rock star. And a suicide case at that. I was a relapsed Catholic. Hated drug addicts. Suicide cases more so.

You used to be pretty, Shi, Berkis now tells me. And sweet. I thought she was going to say I used to be so self-righteous. But it is she who has become so conservative. A recidivist Islamist, I tell her, but the phrase escapes her. Now she refuses to read, refuses to hold pen and paper, refuses to use a computer. Interchanges "kung" with "kong", also "ask" with "us". Every other day she threatens to go back to the Bangsa Moro rebolusyon, kill an American soldier, kidnap a thieving colleague, bomb a peace conference.

It was so much better when people did not have school learning, they did not know how to steal, she argues, for the nth time. Her educated friends, she says, now tell her: If you don’t change your ways and forget about principles, Berkis, you will die from hunger. So now she is under her friends’ employ and calls them names -- baisan, kawatan, gahaman and so on.

So what happened to that girl who said she is a rock? I ask Berkis.
Which one, Shi? Hindi ko ba maalala.
Your Valium-addled brain, I say.
Farisha remembers. That was Sheena. The two of them used to go out together.
Yes, Sheena. The tomboy.
She got married.
She got married?
Yes. And died a year after. She haemorrhaged to death.

I can’t recall if they said the baby was a girl or a boy, and whether it lived or died.