Things are finally calming down here. Today while she was leaving Grace, who is transferring, made the following statement:
" This is weird, I've never felt so attached to a place before."
Mission accomplished.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Monday, December 12, 2011
About that...
Northern Michigan’s 15th Annual Drag Show
Approximately one thousand five hundred people filed into the Vandament Area last Friday night to attend Northern Michigan’s University’s fifteen annual drag show. The show featured several drag queens, one gender queer individual. I found the whole night to be entertaining and fascinating. Social deviation from the culturally created gender binary is refreshing and in a lot of ways absolutely hilarious. I believe that the drag show is meant to be kind of freeing for the audience and in that way it marks a transition for me.
For the sake of not diving face first into my own personal story of sexuality development I will only state the facts. Fact One: Last year I was” in the closet.” Every year at the show, drag queen Joey Black tries to identify all the queers in the audience by requesting that everyone who is comfortable clap and cheer when she shouts out the sexual preference one might identify with. One year ago for someone like me this was a horrific, yet eye opening experience. Last year I was so upset that I didn’t have the balls, or in this case the ovaries to identify myself as a queer person I almost cried. Coming to the realization that I wasn’t nearly as accepting of myself as I am to the rest of the LGBT community made me want to change, it woke me up, it scared me out of being afraid. I’ve recognized that this was a major step towards letting my sexuality become just another part of my wholeness and overall identity.
Fact Two: I’ve been working on developing through my experiences accepting myself. This year I attended the drag show with my girlfriend Robin and friends from the Student Finance Committee. In my mind the time had come, at last in some sort of full circle moment I was going to identify myself as queer without any hesitation at all, finally in this room of 1500, I was symbolically accepting myself. Joey black takes the stage; nervousness hits me, a good type of nervousness, but nervousness all the same. Taking the microphone in a gloved hand, she shouts out for a response from the gay men in the audience, then all the straight men, the straight women and then the lesbians. Crushed, I almost shout out with the lesbians just to complete my symbolic circle.In addition to my hesitation Robin's hand slipped into mine pulling downward before I might even think about putting it up.Robin hates the word lesbian. She laughs sheepishly at me. I explain my hesitation to her as if convincing myself that I don't really need my full circle moment. What about me and my simply queer identity?
Fact Three: Even awesomely inspiring drag queens make mistakes, but the gender queer saves us all. After a couple more glorious acts Midwest Gender Queer takes the stage. I’m skeptical of this performer. Jack was identified to the SFC as drag king. When asked specifically if Jack was a drag king or a gender queer Outlook said that Jack was in fact a drag king and that gender queer was incorrect. Though the title gender queer confused me to the point of true curiosity, not much about the title mattered when it came to performance. Jack, though less experienced than the drag queens seemed to care just as much about the message that a performance sent to the audience. Less trained in entertainment Jack wasn't received nearly as well as the queens and at times was far more difficult to watch. Jack was the performer though that thoughtfully added to Joey Black’s spectrum of sexuality and in doing so allowed me to come full circle with my own transition out of the fearful stage of my sexuality development. Jack asked the audience for a cheer, if they defined themselves as bi-sexual, pan-sexual, Trans, or with the generalization of queer. This allowed me and quite a few others to feel for a moment a sense of pride. As I’ve learned more about the development of sexuality spectrum I have realized that it may be hard to ever stop adding to it. Even with the age and experience differences I thought there was a lot to be learned from the entire cast of the drag show.
Approximately one thousand five hundred people filed into the Vandament Area last Friday night to attend Northern Michigan’s University’s fifteen annual drag show. The show featured several drag queens, one gender queer individual. I found the whole night to be entertaining and fascinating. Social deviation from the culturally created gender binary is refreshing and in a lot of ways absolutely hilarious. I believe that the drag show is meant to be kind of freeing for the audience and in that way it marks a transition for me.
For the sake of not diving face first into my own personal story of sexuality development I will only state the facts. Fact One: Last year I was” in the closet.” Every year at the show, drag queen Joey Black tries to identify all the queers in the audience by requesting that everyone who is comfortable clap and cheer when she shouts out the sexual preference one might identify with. One year ago for someone like me this was a horrific, yet eye opening experience. Last year I was so upset that I didn’t have the balls, or in this case the ovaries to identify myself as a queer person I almost cried. Coming to the realization that I wasn’t nearly as accepting of myself as I am to the rest of the LGBT community made me want to change, it woke me up, it scared me out of being afraid. I’ve recognized that this was a major step towards letting my sexuality become just another part of my wholeness and overall identity.
Fact Two: I’ve been working on developing through my experiences accepting myself. This year I attended the drag show with my girlfriend Robin and friends from the Student Finance Committee. In my mind the time had come, at last in some sort of full circle moment I was going to identify myself as queer without any hesitation at all, finally in this room of 1500, I was symbolically accepting myself. Joey black takes the stage; nervousness hits me, a good type of nervousness, but nervousness all the same. Taking the microphone in a gloved hand, she shouts out for a response from the gay men in the audience, then all the straight men, the straight women and then the lesbians. Crushed, I almost shout out with the lesbians just to complete my symbolic circle.In addition to my hesitation Robin's hand slipped into mine pulling downward before I might even think about putting it up.Robin hates the word lesbian. She laughs sheepishly at me. I explain my hesitation to her as if convincing myself that I don't really need my full circle moment. What about me and my simply queer identity?
Fact Three: Even awesomely inspiring drag queens make mistakes, but the gender queer saves us all. After a couple more glorious acts Midwest Gender Queer takes the stage. I’m skeptical of this performer. Jack was identified to the SFC as drag king. When asked specifically if Jack was a drag king or a gender queer Outlook said that Jack was in fact a drag king and that gender queer was incorrect. Though the title gender queer confused me to the point of true curiosity, not much about the title mattered when it came to performance. Jack, though less experienced than the drag queens seemed to care just as much about the message that a performance sent to the audience. Less trained in entertainment Jack wasn't received nearly as well as the queens and at times was far more difficult to watch. Jack was the performer though that thoughtfully added to Joey Black’s spectrum of sexuality and in doing so allowed me to come full circle with my own transition out of the fearful stage of my sexuality development. Jack asked the audience for a cheer, if they defined themselves as bi-sexual, pan-sexual, Trans, or with the generalization of queer. This allowed me and quite a few others to feel for a moment a sense of pride. As I’ve learned more about the development of sexuality spectrum I have realized that it may be hard to ever stop adding to it. Even with the age and experience differences I thought there was a lot to be learned from the entire cast of the drag show.
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