Paradigm Shift

by Morgan Boecher

Last weekend was my first time attending a Pride event of a New-York-City scale. My only other experience was when I was a teenager during the sleepy summer months in Gainesville, Florida. The festival that happened in our downtown plaza was an inspiring effort, with all the Roy G. Biv decorations and dildo raffles, but it never overwhelmed like NYC Pride does.

What overwhelmed me the most, more than the campy getups and the countless people streaming through 5th Avenue, was the comfort of finding queer folks around every corner. It made me feel a little more at home, at least. As a transsexual man with an undeniably feminine physique, I have trouble fitting within the everyday cissexual (non-trans) world. When I go butch, I look lesbian, which gets it all wrong.

However, NYC Pride weekend, subsuming all in delightful queerness, made my gender identity matter a little less. At least when I was walking around the streets being one in the crowd. At other times it mattered more.

Preceding the Sunday parade was the Dyke March, a politically charged protest demanding equal rights, the end of LBTQ violence, and visibility. Considering how cis-male-centric mainstream images of LGBTQ culture are, the Dyke March is a wonderful way for queer women to claim their space. Being someone who does not in any way identify as a dyke, I respectfully stood aside. Giving oppressed groups a chance to their own space is powerful and important. I did get to chat with a friend of mine who participated in the march, though.

Our talk of gendered space led us to ruminate over the displacement of trans people. Cissexual people are often confused about where trans men and women ought and ought not be. The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival is a good example, with their reluctance to allow trans womyn access to the “womyn-born-womyn” space. Anyway, while discussing the gendered barriers of the Dyke March, my friend told me that she met someone there who expressed skepticism about trans men.

“I just don’t understand trans men because I enjoy being a woman so much,” she said.

*Sigh.* Just the same sentiment I met when I came out to some proudly womyn-born-womyn friends of mine. Despite the beautiful mélange of gender and sexual diversity crowding the streets of NYC, trans experiences are still going misunderstood. It’s not that trans men devalue womanhood; it’s just that they don’t identify with it.

The Dyke March is an empowering step toward recognizing a greater range of human experience, but some trans visibility could stretch that recognition even further.

This series of posts from the community is in preparation for Paradigm
Shift’s next event, “The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women”
A Discussion with JESSICA VALENTI, Author & Feministing.com
Founder/Editor on TUES, FEB. 23rd, 7pm, NYC. We want to hear your
stories. View call for submissions- deadline 2/19- Click here!

by Morgan Boecher

Is there such a thing as queer virginity? The argument could be made that virginity is just another convention of the hetero-norm, not unlike how some people view marriage as an inherently heterosexual institution. The idea of virginity is not terribly practical, just as marriage is not necessary for survival. Looking at the traditional meaning of virginity as a gauge for a woman’s “purity,” in conjunction with contemporary rituals such as purity balls, which obviate the fact that virginity is largely about controlling women, it might as well be left out of queer culture.

However, there are plenty of unsavory customs that permeate American society and clash with queer lives. The surest way to subvert them is by giving them new definitions. Many people have appropriated the marriage tradition to work in a queer context. Perhaps virginity can also be reclaimed.

Queer sex is necessarily different from the monogamous, heterosexual affair; therefore it automatically alters the traditional concept of virginity as the state of a woman before she has been penetrated by a penis. Meandering from that construct could lead to a plethora of exciting places.

Before exploring there, though, I would like to find a word other than “non-virgin” to describe the state of after one has had sexual intercourse. Just like how it is detrimental to have one’s political group known as “anti-” something (e.g.: anti-choice, anti-federalists), it doesn’t help those who are proud of their sexual experiences to be called non-virgins. So let me know if you come up with a good alternative.

About queer virginity, though, since it means basically anything but the norm, one sees a great deal of subjectivity come into play. An example may be a 40-year-old lesbian with a husband and children who is yet to have intimate relations with a woman. Virginity may apply to someone who has not had pleasurable, consensual sex before, but who has had the misfortune of experiencing the other kind. Perhaps a transwoman who is yet to receive bottom surgery considers herself a virgin. One case where virginity might not even be relevant is with an asexual person.

Virginity here becomes a unique and personal story for each individual, rather than a sorting method of who is and isn’t “pure.” If the idea of virginity has to stick around, I would say that reclaiming the concept is a step toward a brighter, queerer future.