Allison Moon reads Identity and Integrity chapter from her Girl Sex 101 book at #SexCultureExpo
Sex.Culture.Expo! + SHOW! http://www.sexandculture.org/
Speaker: Oh my goodness that just makes me [Inaudible 00:00:03]. No, stop stop, we’ll get a grant I don’t know. Very last last but not least on any level at all we’ve got the wonderful Allison Moon looks like she’s gonna teach us how to have better sex with girls. Let’s do it.
Allison: Hello. This is from my newest book Girl Sex 101, emphasis on the 101 many of you are probably beyond this but it’s always help to get a little refresher. This is from the identity and integrity chapter.
“I’m talking about a little truth-in-packaging here. To be perfectly frank, you don’t quite look like yourself. And if you walk around looking like somebody other than who you are, you could end up getting the wrong job, the wrong friends, who knows what-all. You could end up with somebody else’s life.” This is one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite books Michael Cunningham’s A Home at the End of the World. I read this book right after college when I was living in Los Angeles and miserable about so many things among which were my sex life and gender presentation. I put the book down picked up some scissors tied my long broxyd blond hair into a braid and cut it off. I stood in front of the mirror braid in hand and sighed in relief. Then I marched to my closet grabbed a sports bra, a baggy plaid shirt and then ace bandage, don’t do that. I bound my breast tuck the sock into my underwear put on baggy clothes and went for a walk down Sunset Boulevard. I don’t remember if anyone stared, I didn’t care. I walked with a wild long stride and felt invisible, invincible that’s different. Since that night I refuse to listen to anyone who tries to tell me how I should look. I’ve worn my hair anyway I felt, got the tattoos I wanted, wore clothes that made me sexy and strong whether fem or butch or both or neither. Making those choices changed my life, some people think these things are shallow, I think they’re essential. We present ourselves to the world everyday both in real life and online and people respond to us based on those presentations. So if you have the “wrong” haircut, clothes, friends, and job and so on you may indeed end up living a life you’d not choose for yourself. Why not make some small changes to be as you as possible like masturbation the best way to figure out what you like is by trying a bunch of different things. Step one, self-exploration. These often starts as a solitary intellectual exercise. What would it feel like to wear this leather corset or an emotional one? Oh god, I want to wear that leather corset. This face can last up to a long time sometimes even a lifetime. Popularly we tend to think of people who have a solo exploratory practices and fetishes of some type. But of often that those folks that are nascence of stages of full fledge identity. Step 2, public experimentation when you try your identity in solitude it’s common to one to present it to the world. Sometimes this is in controlled environments, queer clubs among friends, costume parties only, etc. Sometimes it’s in a tiny increments like wearing finger nail polish, a certain kind of underwear etc. Or sometime you’ll come crashing out of the closet like so many drag kings and queens I knew in college. How you do it is up to you. When we present something to the world that we feel is really true for us the stake feel much higher, positive feedback can feel extremely good here and negative feedback can be devastating. What we can do to keep negative feedback from destroying your ego is tying your presentation to an indefatigable truth. It’s that part of you unfuckwithable, it is the part of you that says fuck y’all I’m fabulous. No matter how meek we are in real life we all have that part of us somewhere. It’s your job to find out where that piece is and nurture it. Step 3, identification and integration. Sometimes this kind of experimentation is just a dress up or play but sometimes we strike identity gold when that happens do what gold miners do and follow that vein. Explore the cultural signifiers and identities immediately around that thing you loved and see what else fits. For instance, if you find yourself fascinated by sharp suits, suspenders and tietacks, you may wanna check out Dapper Dandy cultures, steam punk or other things related to high men’s wear and culture around it. If you out on a feather boa and feel luscious maybe you want to checkout Burlesque, Feme culture, drags, stripping or more things wear a boa is a common accessory. Read books by people who have a similar identity you’re curious about. Hang out with other folks who are into on what you into, find or build chat room for people who like what you like. Find events that cater to your kind of thing. Drag culture has this in space so does Trans culture, femme is finding its collective culture and botches is having intense conversation about masculinity, identity, family and fashion. Find your people and make friends. Step 4, know all of this can and will change. When people discover something that really speaks to them most attend to cling it too hard, we can feel threatened and question it or offended if people don’t understand it. We can insist that this is the real me and always has been and always will be forever and ever and ever and maybe it will be but maybe it won’t. There are people who vacillate from straight to gay and back their whole life without ever considering that they maybe by or pan. Some people when they realize there transness will go full to the other end of the gender spectrum without stopping to think what kind or woman or man or person do I want to be? The sad fact is many people treat themselves than worse world ever will. You have to give your self-permission to keep exploring even if something enters your life that feels contradictory to everything else you’ve been before. That’s life and it’s great if you give yourself permission to believe it’s so. And now I will leave you with another quote Mohammad the end of the world “I was not lady like nor was I manly, I was something else altogether, there were so many different ways to be beautiful”. Thank you.
Speaker: Allison Moon, Thank you. Oh my god everyone.