As many young teens do, I struggled to find an identity for myself, and being known as The Lesbian provided not only a script to reference and follow in social situations, but a painless way of ignoring the sexual politics of high school that I so desperately wanted to avoid. So for a while, I was fine with the rigid definition of “lesbian.” However, in time I grew weary of having only one sense of identity. I am not only queer. I am a musician, I am a woman, I am a writer. I want people to see these parts of me before they see my dating habits. I became restless.

Further complicating things, after I went to college, it turned out I wasn’t as much of a lesbian as I’d thought after all. I met a wonderful guy a week into my first collegiate semester, had an identity crisis, and had to come out all over again, this time as bisexual. My foundation was shaken, but it was worth it – the man I’m dating is funny and endearing and driven, and when we are together I am happy.

I admit that my new identity as a “straight” woman has, in a sense, freed me from needing to think about many queer issues on a daily basis. Do I hold my boyfriend’s hand in public? Well, yes, of course I do. No one thinks twice about that. And neither do I. It is a testament to the pervasive nature of heteronormativity that I have so easily let myself slip into the role of passive observer when it comes to queer politics, instead of active participant. Things like public perception and marriage laws no longer directly affect my relationship. Without the constant reminder of my inadequacy, I’ve become soft. And I feel guilty.

Part of this is a problem with the movement itself. When I attend queer activism events now, and tell people that I have a boyfriend but am bisexual, many of the dykes look at me as though I’m faking it. Perhaps my implicit endorsement of heterosexual relationships makes me something of a threat to them – I don’t know. I think they assume that because I’m dating a man now, I cannot possibly understand their plight, and I in turn am put off by the suggestion that I do not belong, when the overarching goal of the queer movement is that everyone should belong.

The truth is, I still feel like a lesbian even though I’m dating a man – a quality that confuses and angers many people, queer and straight alike. My straight friends wonder why I make it a point to tell people about my sexual history. If I can pass as straight now, they ask, why don’t I? On the flipside, queers look at me as though I’ve betrayed them by finding someone who makes me happy. They say I can no longer call myself queer because I’ve chosen to date a guy.

In a conflicted way, I almost think that the queer groups themselves are part of the problem. When you choose to make your sexual identity the core of your personality – when it’s your job, your art, your social circle – what room is left for any other sense of definition? How can you let other people see you as anything besides gay?

Maybe my personal experience has clouded my judgment – I know many people who find great value in queer-oriented activities and social groups. But I’m no longer one of them: I’ve expanded my identity to include other things, and in doing so I have almost left this one behind. I like to think it’s because I’ve become “post-queer.”

But the truth is, that’s just vanity.

I went to the Brooklyn Flea with my friends today. I got overwhelmed by the cool stuff and didn’t buy anything, but I did take some pictures and drink Hibiscus tea. Summer’s looking up.

I’ve had people tell me that if there’s ever any time to live a nomadic life, it’s when you’re in college — but I still can’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that this isn’t what’s best for me. I’m the kind of person who likes routine. I want to put down roots. I want to stack my books on a shelf and not have to worry about packing them up 8 months down the line.

I keep reminding myself that if I can put up with this for one more year — one more year – then the reward is that I will finally have my own place to live and my own part of the city. But that doesn’t really make the unease go away, the feeling I have that if you don’t have a place to go home to, you’re really just drifting in the wind.

NYU Local‘s 2009-2010 Editors (and friends) (via Nicole He)

Conflicted by this, I decided to seek advice from the twitterverse, where more of my journalism friends spend their time. I posted a status update asking whether people though it was worth it for me to fork over the money. And CivilBeat responded to me, saying, “Definitely don’t go without life’s necessities!”

Okay. Wait a minute. Life’s necessities? Can we examine that statement for a bit?

As a college student, I live out of state for nearly 9 months a year, so even though I’m incredibly interested in what goes on in Hawaii, I don’t keep up with its news every single day. Currently, I check the Advertiser and Star Bulletin websites about once a week. I also have a limited income. To put it frankly, $20 could probably feed me for a week. I already pay a phone bill, electricity, internet, and a storage bill – can I really afford to pay another monthly bill, for a service that, while valuable, I may not use every day? Given the choice between Netflix ($15 a month for entertainment) and Civil Beat ($20 a month for civic discourse), which one do you think the average college student would pick?

Is this one of life’s necessities?

Civil Beat has just launched, and I don’t know enough about it to make broad, sweeping judgments about its worth. But I know enough to be a little worried. As a journalist I desperately want – even need — this project to be successful, but I think I can speak for the majority of Hawaii’s out-of-state college students when I say that I’m not sure this is worth my money. Yet the discourse of Civil Beat will suffer if we are not involved. We’re going to be moving back home in 3 or 4 years, and we’re going to be affected by the same government decisions and job market factors that affect everyone else currently in the state – but I’m not sure our voices are going to be heard in this civic square.

This isn’t just about college students. This is about low-income families living in the Kalihi housing projects. This is about recent immigrants from Asia who need information about their new home. This is about race and class lines. So I worry, because I know there are more people out there like me, who can’t decide if $20 is worth what they’re going to get in return. I can get my Hawaii news for free on other websites.

I’ve read a few of the comments threads on Civil Beat, and the discourse that’s happening there is tremendously involved, intelligent, and insightful — but I still worry. How can a website act as a true “civic square” if it only represents the views and comments of the people who are willing to pay for a privilege?

I’ve decided to try out Civil Beat for a 15 days, while the fee is reduced, and in 2 weeks I’ll try to answer that question — is this one of life’s necessities? And can this site represent my home accurately with a paywall in place? I’ll let you know what I find later.

In your typical superhero movie, no one would have batted an eyelash at the violent acts the main characters committed. The kind of killing that Hit-Girl does in Kick-Ass is almost comically tame compared to a movie like, I don’t know, The Punisher, which features stone-cold murders and a couple of brutal fight scenes. But because these are “real people,” in Kick-Ass, acting out the superhero fantasy in “real life,” the audience sees the violence as truly disturbing.

It is precisely this factor that makes me like this movie so much.

Kick-Ass is not, in any way, your typical superhero movie. It’s saying something, in an uncomfortable way. We cringe at the violent acts that Hit-Girl commits — which in turn begs the following question: why are we okay with similar violence in a movie like Crank or Spiderman or The Incredible Hulk, but not okay with what Hit-Girl does?

Kick-Ass simultaneously mocks and imitates the thing it’s trying to critique. It’s a satire of a satire. In some ways, it’s a superhero movie, but it also calls into question the moral ambiguity that many superhero movies present. The decisions are always made in fights — even when the Bad Guys and Good Guys are clearly delineated, they still have to duke it out with their fists. And we, the audience, accept this violence. We go along for the ride. Here is a movie that questions that tendency.

I also admire the fact that Hit-Girl was a female character who kills just as well as the bad boys, without it needing to be sexual. (Although many people have pointed out that it was her father, her literal patriarch, who molded her into a killing machine — which is indeed creepy.)

And let’s face it: nobody would be decrying Hit-Girl’s violent acts were it not for the fact that the character is an 11-year-old girl. If this were an 11-year-old boy? Nobody would care. We have already seen 11-year-old boys do worse things on the silver screen.

These are pretty brief thoughts.

Anyway, I hereby declare myself a member of the Women’s Ass-Kicking Committee.

(Image via Marvel)

I wasn’t really sure whether I liked the movie Kick-Ass when I saw it. I’m still mulling that over, but either way: Hit-Girl is awesome.

Dear creepy men of the world: I do not want to be your girlfriend. When I act cold, it is not because I’m being coy. It’s because I’m not interested. I do not have to talk to you, accept your friend request, respond to the comments you leave on my blog, be nice, or listen politely to your solicitations. You are not entitled to any part of my attention. It doesn’t matter if you’re a homeless man in Washington Square Park or a fellow student. You’re creepy, and I don’t like you. Leave me alone.”

This is something I jotted down in a notebook a while back, in response to something that recurs in my life with alarming frequency: I attract creepy men. It doesn’t really matter where — on Twitter, on Facebook, in person. They are there. They often approach me first with an innocuous question, which I answer, because I generally try to be a polite person. It goes downhill from there. They ask overly personal questions (asking my opinion on abortion is NOT an appropriate way to introduce yourself; nor is asking me about my religion), try to solicit me for a date, and generally expect me to be OK with entertaining them and engaging in long drawn-out conversations, because I’m a girl in public so of course it follows that I must want to talk to EVERYONE. I’ve been approached by strange guys 4 or 5 times in the past 2 months. I’m getting really sick of it.

I’m aware that the line between friendly and overly friendly is a rather fine one. So at what point does conversation become intrusive and creepy? I can’t say exactly — often, I just get a bad vibe. A skeevy, dirty, can’t-wash-it-off-with-soap, you-make-me-uncomfortable vibe. At that point, I usually cut off contact. And that’s where it gets tricky. A lot of people would say that I’m being unnecessarily mean by ignoring people or taking steps to block them from contacting me. Sometimes, I feel strangely guilty at cutting off contact, even when it’s clear that the other person makes me incredibly uncomfortable.

I only recently realized — decided, even — that I don’t HAVE to feel guilty about ignoring someone who makes me feel weird. I have the right to a safe environment. I have the right to ignore. Is this mean? Perhaps. But I think it’s equally as mean to argue that I should continue to interact with people who make me uncomfortable just for the sake of politeness. So I’m just not going to put up with it anymore. I’m not going to accept your friend request. I am going to block you on Twitter. When you decide to sit in the chair behind me and pull strands of my hair out as I try to eat a meal with a friend, I am going to turn around and yell at you to get the fuck away from me. I don’t care about politeness. You crossed a line.

All that said, I’ve had plenty of perfectly reasonable exchanges with strangers, most of them with nice, intelligent people in the media industry, and all of those have been rather enjoyable/informative. So it’s not as though I’m a paranoid person or hate talking to strangers. I just wish those strangers weren’t guys who think I’m going to talk to them endlessly about extremely personal subjects when we don’t really know each other at all.

WHY does this even EXIST?