(no subject)

I feel like, at 42, I am too old to reparse my gender and sexuality.

When I came out (in 1991), bisexuality was a thing in the San Francisco bay area, but not really on the radar when I went to college in Boston.  And I feel like, at this point, I’m just going to stick with bi. Even if I still don’t know how to translate that into an IRL community, since I am also a suburban mom (definitely a stupid, limiting box, but actually better that messy androgynous druggy in terms of getting a car loan or going through airport security).

The proliferation of genders and sexualities is definitely a generational thing, and I was too steeped in Foucault to not be a little nervous of it.  Like, is it actually making the kids happier? Not fitting into the lesbian community, particularly in Boston, was hard, and I really needed a little mentorship and adult supervision, and maybe a different kind of queer community could have provided that. It was something I saw some of in Berkeley and San Francisco, with the Pacific Center, and LYRIC, and Unitarian Universalist youth groups. But, it’s not really clear to me that that’s what’s going on now on the internet. I also think Tumblr may give an exaggerated impression of how much the micro-fine gradations of gender and sexuality are actually impacting people’s meatspace lives.