Pet peeve of the day: "LGBT"

So I'm listening to NPR on my way home from work the other day (yes, I'm the "crunchy granola" sort of a Mormon) and a story came on about a group in Los Angeles doing outreach to the Latino community, particularly around the issue of parents supporting their adult gay and lesbian kids when they come out. Overall it was a good story, and I certainly sympathize with the efforts of this group to promote family love and understanding, but I have one issue: I don't think they ever actually said the words "gay" or "lesbian!"

I know — crazy, right?

The reporter, and everyone they interviewed, all seemed to bend over backwards to instead refer to this as an LGBT effort. That wouldn't bother me if this group actually addressed trans issues... but I don't think they do.

Le sigh.

Labels

I'm going to try dictating this blog post from my cellphone. Here goes...

I've been thinking a lot about labels lately -- what we call ourselves, what we call other people, what other people call us -- and it occurred to me that I tend to play kinda fast and loose with the words I use to describe my own situation.

I remember I was young teen when I first found the Renee Richards biography, Second Serve, that talked about her t************ and eventual gender reassignment surgery. (Wow, Android voice recognition censored that last T word. Interesting...)

Anyway, I think it was this book, or another of the very few my library had on the subject, that first helped me put words to the feelings I had inside... where I learned that there is a difference between "transsexual" and "transvestite". (I don't think "transgender" was really in common usage then, if the term had even been coined at all). I knew that I wasn't a transsexual, not exactly anyway -- I didn't want to change myself into a woman (well, most days, anyway). But the literature I read said that that transvestites get some kind of sexual charge out of dressing in women's clothing, and I didn't (more on that in a minute), so that didn't really feel like the right term either.

Now, fast-forward a couple of years.

Over the years while I've been wrestling with my GID, I've wondered exactly what it meant for me and my family. I know I'm not a transsexual. I don't think of myself as a transvestite, at least not in the "gets turned on by women's clothes" sense. (I dress because it's comforting and reaffirms my occasionally feminine feelings). For a long time, when I thought those were the only 2 options, I wasn't really sure what to make of myself: someone who doesn't feel very comfortable in a lot of the traditional male role, but doesn't really want to be a female either; someone who loves his wife and children and wants to stay with them and be a good husband and father, but doesn't want to be a "Ward Cleaver", Father-Knows-Best sort of a dad. These past few months, in reading a lot about this it seems that I fall more into the "squishy middle"... where we now have this neat word, "transgender," which seems to kind of cover a wide range of people -- myself included, I think.

So, that's my gender identity: feminine-leaning male, mildly androgynous... transgendered.

And then there's my sexual orientation, which, it may come as a surprise to some people, is really a totally different subject. Teenage-me used to think they were the same thing, which led to a lot of weird self-searching, because although my gender identity is a bit muddy, my sexuality isn't. I am, always have been, and probably always will be attracted to women -- and one woman in particular, my amazing wife. Sometimes I hear transwomen refer to themselves as "lesbian" because they identify as female, and are attracted to females. Okay, that makes sense. I also know of male to female transwomen that are attracted to men, making them effectively hetero. There also appear to be a growing number of genderqueer folk that you don't really care to be pigeonholed as either male or female, and who are attracted not to a gendered body, but to a person's mind and spirit, be it male or female.

I guess I come back to the point that I've made a few times already on this blog that things are just not as binary as everyone wants them to be. Yes, there are "mens' men." There are "women's women." And then there are all the rest of us.

Hairy

I've got a real love-hate relationship with shaving.

When I was a preteen, I saw my Dad shaving with his electric shaver, and thought it would be neat to have enough peach fuzz to need my own (I was one of those boys that want to be "just like Dad"; whatever gender confusion I may have had was buried pretty deeply at that point). Then I got hit by the "body hair fairy", and I quickly discovered how much of a hassle it can all be.

For starters, I've got a LOT of hair. Arms, legs, chest, back, and of course on my face. Way more hair than any genetic female would ever have, and enough that people notice when I shave it. For my face & legs, that's fine... guys can do that, especially if they're cyclists (I am). But everything else? Arms, chest, back, shoulders, armpits...? When that hair goes missing, people tend to ask questions I'd rather avoid.

So, I shave what I can safely shave in our culture without raising eyebrows. Not the best, but I can live with it for now.

Unfortunately, even for the places I feel free to shave, I have issues. I've always had super sensitive skin, which makes using a blade of any kind tricky — I tend to cut myself, a LOT. Plus, my face gets pretty irritated if I shave on anything approaching a regular basis (like daily). And as if that isn't enough, my hair grows in at a weird angle, so that even the closest, smoothest electric shaver leaves me with a Homer Simpson-style 5 o' clock shadow. Sad face! :(

It's taken me years to figure out how to deal with this. For a while I tried growing a goatee, because it seemed like it would be less of a daily hassle. I was also in a phase of my life when I was trying to deny my feminine side, and I thought having a beard would make my GID feelings weaker, or at the very least easier to ignore. I quickly found that I was wrong in both cases: it took even more effort to keep a goatee neatly trimmed, and after a few days the prickliness would really start to bug me (and my wife, for that matter), so I'd end up shaving it all off, and the feelings would come roaring back.

More often than not, then, I end up being lazy and looking like a less-masculine George Michael, with a day or two's worth of shadow. Yuck.

Honestly, if electrolysis / laser hair removal weren't so expensive and time-consuming, I'd have probably done my face and legs already. Le sigh.

Ah, yes, my legs. I've been shaving them on and off for years. Once, early on in our marriage, my wife commented on how sexy my legs would look if they were shaved. So that night I took the opportunity to shave them... slowly, and with several painful nicks, but I rather liked the results (my girlish feelings were just reawakening after being dormant for most of my college years). I loved their smooth silkiness, and the way my pants fabric felt slipping over them when I walked was absolutely delicious. My sweetheart was surprised when she saw what I'd done the next morning — I think her original comment was just playful and not really serious — but if I remember right, she liked them. (I was riding my bike back and forth a lot to college classes at the time, so my calves were pretty toned). But shaving my legs was so time consuming, not to mention hard for me to explain, so I'd go months or even years without doing anything about them.

Fast-forward to last year. I've spent the last few years exercising on my lunch break at work a couple of times a week, usually just power-walking or some light weight training in the gym in my building. Then I had the brilliant idea to bring my bike to work and leave it in a corner, so I could RIDE on my lunch breaks instead. It's easier on my bad knees, and I can go further and burn more calories in the same amount of time... win-win! Plus, as a serious cyclist, I finally had a justifiable reason to shave my legs on a regular basis... make that win-win-WIN! I've got my own Venus shaver for the job so I don't mess up my wife's blades, and she's come to accept my doing it.

I've kept my legs clean-shaven pretty much constantly since then. Doing maintenance shaves maybe once or twice a week is enough to keep them soft, smooth, and comfy. I still wish there was a better way besides shaving to get my face and legs to where I want them, and wish I could follow suit with the rest of my body, but for right now, this feels like a good compromise between sasquatch and naked mole rat, and makes me feel just a little bit more like myself.