The Opposite of Temporary
Jan. 16th, 2020 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elisem(This is an essay which was first posted on Twitter earlier today. I have reformatted from tweet-sized bites to actual paragraphs, added one clarifying word, corrected one misspelling and the names of two women I thank in the final paragraph, and fixed a punctuation bobble. Thank you for reading.)
I’m going to try explaining a thing. It’s a thing that involves a lot of people telling me that I don’t exist or that I am not what I say I am or what I think I am, so this is fraught territory.
Back when I came out forty-some years ago, there were plenty of people ready to tell me that bisexuals don’t exist. They said we were just closeted, straights experimenting, too cowardly to come out, or too frivolous and sex-obsessed to make a choice and settle down. They said our orientation was temporary, not really anywhere people could stay and make a home.
It made bisexuality sound like a bus station, with everybody heading for some other realer place. And some people did actually say they were bisexual when they were afraid to come out as gay, and then they later assumed that all bisexuals must be like they were, and became huge biphobes with extra sanctimony sauce on top.
Back then, I particularly resented those people who said that bisexuals had no integrity, when the truth was that they themselves had no integrity while they were using our label as a disguise, or a shield, or a conveyance to get them from straight to gay.I felt like they had borrowed our apartment to use as a party house, left it strewn with beer bottles and vomit, and then kept talking about what a dump that place was and how obviously nobody would or could live there unless there was something wrong with them.
So for 40-some years I’ve gotten told that my sexuality didn’t really exist, or if it did, it was just temporary. Liminal. A doorway instead of a room. Something people pass through on their way to somewhere else, a real place, a legitimate place, a place that exists properly.
I got told this by Gay & Lesbian Community Action Council services when I called in crisis. The answer was basically “we don’t have anything for you; call back when you get a real orientation.”
I think of that call when I pass the street where that phone booth was. That was one of several points in my life where I almost didn’t make it through. It’s probably really lucky that I got angry instead, and decided that I was going to live and thrive, if only to spite those people on the other end of the phone.
Sometimes anger helps. Sometimes anger will give you enough traction to make it through whatever lousy situation you’re in, whether that situation involves self-harm or other people telling you that you don’t exist.
Anger often has some collateral damage, though. It’s usually not a precision tool.
Anyway, I came out as bisexual 40-some years ago, and these days people telling me I don’t exist are more likely to get laughed at than yelled at, but they’re still at it, some of them. People who say my sexuality is a liminal state, something (real) people pass through. A phase.
I only came out as non-binary within the last decade. I knew since I was a little kid that I was something other than what people told me I was, but I had no words for it. “Genderqueer” and “non-binary” only made it to my vocabulary recently. I’m still figuring out my words. But pretty much immediately I discovered there were people ready to tell me I didn’t exist again. That my gender was, at best, a liminal state. Something real people pass through on their way to legitimate destinations, real places.
I also found out I could still get angry. And the anger was stronger for there having been so many years when I did not have words that even remotely described my gender, the me-ness that I lived inside, and - yes - sometimes hid for my own safety.
And sometimes that anger still has collateral damage. When I read something suggesting my gender is one of the liminal ones, something people pass through on their way to someplace else, I still flash on those moments in the phone booth, being told the helpline was not for me. Being told that they were only interested in saving the lives of genuinely gay or lesbian people. Being told they didn’t have time to waste on me, goodbye.
It really is kind of a wonder that I’m here, now, so many years later.
So I don’t know whether somebody saying my gender is liminal or transitional or temporary or fake or whatever is a micro-aggression or what. Denying my existence feels a little bigger than micro, but whatevs.
And I can’t promise not to get angry about it.
Actually, at this point I probably can promise that I WILL get angry.
But I do also promise to work to try to limit some of the collateral damage when I express that anger. Even though I am so, so tired. But I am going to try to point my anger at the things being expressed, and not at the people expressing them.
Can’t promise I won’t mess up. I probably will. But it’s exercise I’ve decided is worth me trying.
Just... please know, if only for the length of time reading these tweets, that my anger (and sometime fear and sometimes despair) at being told I’m temporary is partly because I almost WAS temporary, and I am not going back to feeling that way again.
And sometimes I am going to react very badly to a piece of writing or other art because it gets into that territory for me.
Doesn’t mean it’s bad art. It might be great art. But my relationship with it will probably be complicated and rather intense. And this is one of the reasons why I don’t review books any more.
What does this all boil down to? Maybe… ask me what I think of the whole thing 40 years from now? Dunno if I’ll make it that far, but I might.
These days I’m all about not being temporary.
— finis —
P.S. Part of the reason I am still here is because of the encouragement and kindness of Rachel Pollack and Roz Kaveney among other excellent women. Love to you all, and thanks. 💕

I’m going to try explaining a thing. It’s a thing that involves a lot of people telling me that I don’t exist or that I am not what I say I am or what I think I am, so this is fraught territory.
Back when I came out forty-some years ago, there were plenty of people ready to tell me that bisexuals don’t exist. They said we were just closeted, straights experimenting, too cowardly to come out, or too frivolous and sex-obsessed to make a choice and settle down. They said our orientation was temporary, not really anywhere people could stay and make a home.
It made bisexuality sound like a bus station, with everybody heading for some other realer place. And some people did actually say they were bisexual when they were afraid to come out as gay, and then they later assumed that all bisexuals must be like they were, and became huge biphobes with extra sanctimony sauce on top.
Back then, I particularly resented those people who said that bisexuals had no integrity, when the truth was that they themselves had no integrity while they were using our label as a disguise, or a shield, or a conveyance to get them from straight to gay.I felt like they had borrowed our apartment to use as a party house, left it strewn with beer bottles and vomit, and then kept talking about what a dump that place was and how obviously nobody would or could live there unless there was something wrong with them.
So for 40-some years I’ve gotten told that my sexuality didn’t really exist, or if it did, it was just temporary. Liminal. A doorway instead of a room. Something people pass through on their way to somewhere else, a real place, a legitimate place, a place that exists properly.
I got told this by Gay & Lesbian Community Action Council services when I called in crisis. The answer was basically “we don’t have anything for you; call back when you get a real orientation.”
I think of that call when I pass the street where that phone booth was. That was one of several points in my life where I almost didn’t make it through. It’s probably really lucky that I got angry instead, and decided that I was going to live and thrive, if only to spite those people on the other end of the phone.
Sometimes anger helps. Sometimes anger will give you enough traction to make it through whatever lousy situation you’re in, whether that situation involves self-harm or other people telling you that you don’t exist.
Anger often has some collateral damage, though. It’s usually not a precision tool.
Anyway, I came out as bisexual 40-some years ago, and these days people telling me I don’t exist are more likely to get laughed at than yelled at, but they’re still at it, some of them. People who say my sexuality is a liminal state, something (real) people pass through. A phase.
I only came out as non-binary within the last decade. I knew since I was a little kid that I was something other than what people told me I was, but I had no words for it. “Genderqueer” and “non-binary” only made it to my vocabulary recently. I’m still figuring out my words. But pretty much immediately I discovered there were people ready to tell me I didn’t exist again. That my gender was, at best, a liminal state. Something real people pass through on their way to legitimate destinations, real places.
I also found out I could still get angry. And the anger was stronger for there having been so many years when I did not have words that even remotely described my gender, the me-ness that I lived inside, and - yes - sometimes hid for my own safety.
And sometimes that anger still has collateral damage. When I read something suggesting my gender is one of the liminal ones, something people pass through on their way to someplace else, I still flash on those moments in the phone booth, being told the helpline was not for me. Being told that they were only interested in saving the lives of genuinely gay or lesbian people. Being told they didn’t have time to waste on me, goodbye.
It really is kind of a wonder that I’m here, now, so many years later.
So I don’t know whether somebody saying my gender is liminal or transitional or temporary or fake or whatever is a micro-aggression or what. Denying my existence feels a little bigger than micro, but whatevs.
And I can’t promise not to get angry about it.
Actually, at this point I probably can promise that I WILL get angry.
But I do also promise to work to try to limit some of the collateral damage when I express that anger. Even though I am so, so tired. But I am going to try to point my anger at the things being expressed, and not at the people expressing them.
Can’t promise I won’t mess up. I probably will. But it’s exercise I’ve decided is worth me trying.
Just... please know, if only for the length of time reading these tweets, that my anger (and sometime fear and sometimes despair) at being told I’m temporary is partly because I almost WAS temporary, and I am not going back to feeling that way again.
And sometimes I am going to react very badly to a piece of writing or other art because it gets into that territory for me.
Doesn’t mean it’s bad art. It might be great art. But my relationship with it will probably be complicated and rather intense. And this is one of the reasons why I don’t review books any more.
What does this all boil down to? Maybe… ask me what I think of the whole thing 40 years from now? Dunno if I’ll make it that far, but I might.
These days I’m all about not being temporary.
— finis —
P.S. Part of the reason I am still here is because of the encouragement and kindness of Rachel Pollack and Roz Kaveney among other excellent women. Love to you all, and thanks. 💕

no subject
Date: 2020-01-17 05:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-17 10:05 am (UTC)Because one doesn't really dwell on the threshold. From one perspective, there is just the one side of the door and the other side of the door, and a narrow strip of raised flooring that one moves across -- not a living space at all. From another perspective, it's like the shift of view that lets one perceive parallel fey realms in some stories; the world of one-side-or-the-other splits open and there are entire other worlds in the space between them, with far more than enough space for comfortable permanence.
(Which is sort of like what
no subject
Date: 2020-01-17 10:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-17 01:25 pm (UTC)People don't know what to do with them being not-temporary, though.
(And Elise, thank you for putting that over here: it was an excellent commentary on Twitter, but I am glad it also has a cohesive space where people can comment easily.)
no subject
Date: 2020-01-17 05:48 am (UTC)*hugs*
The thing the just-a-phase people don't understand is that you can live in a liminal space. You can live inside and, not or. You can thrive on both sides of a door.
It is important to me to do so, also.
Anyway, I'm glad you weren't temporary. I suspect I wouldn't have known you if you were.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-17 07:04 am (UTC)Here and listening.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-17 09:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-17 10:22 am (UTC)But then you went and used the word liminal about it! And I love liminality. I love the taste of the word, I love being between two things, I love thresholds and gateways. One of my facorites of the pendants I bought from you is, "But it's youre doorway, didn't you know?" But there, you've found an application of the word I don't want applied to me. For some reason, this entertains me, and mentally I feel like I'm poking at it like a crystal suncatcher hanging in the light, so it swings and casts rainbows everywhere.
I don't know where I was going with that.
Anyway, bi solidarity, and bi-genderqueer solidarity.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-17 07:04 pm (UTC)I used the word liminal here (which is generally a thing I passionately love too!) with the rest of a quote from a story, and it was in context of that quote plus some things in the rest of the story that its use there bugged the piss out of me. I can give you the line* I'm quoting:
"In the Applied Constructive Gender briefing, they told us that there have always been liminal genders, places that people passed through on their way to somewhere else."
What came out of my reactions was, among other things, this essay.
*I can no longer give the link to the story itself, because the person who wrote it asked that it be taken down, which it has.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-17 11:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-17 01:18 pm (UTC)Also, possibly useful metaphor: phase in the physics sense of solid/liquid/gas/plasma, in which *everything* is a phase. In hat metaphor, some people do go through phase changes, but there's no preferred direction, physically or figuratively. Ice can melt to water, or sublimate to gas, and water can evaporate or boil, or freeze into ice; gas can condense out as a liquid or a solid. (And lightning can turn bits of the atmosphere it travels through into a plasma.)
Using that metaphor, for some people being either straight or gay might look like a phase, before they later come to be/realize they are bisexual, or lesbian or gay when they had believed themselves to be straight.
(I'm writing this after tea, but before breakfast; it may evaporate later in the day.)
no subject
Date: 2020-01-17 05:21 pm (UTC)I'm sorry that you ever got caught in such a bind, and hope that you never do again. I don't know what help I could be in the future, but I'll try if you need something.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-17 05:55 pm (UTC)For whatever values of "here" are where you are.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-17 06:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-17 07:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-17 10:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-17 07:29 pm (UTC)I'm glad you're here.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-18 12:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-18 05:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-18 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-19 02:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-21 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-23 10:08 pm (UTC)Yay for liminality!
Date: 2020-07-16 04:45 pm (UTC)Yes, the words are so important. The ones I encountered around the gender space I wanted to occupy were "joke", "fake", "fraud", "freak", and "pervert" -- which put me off for a long time. Finally encountering "genderqueer" and "nonbinary", and having a non-pejorative name for something some people have felt for approximately forever, pointed me in the direction of where my space was, and eventually gave voice to feelings I had long suppressed. And, following on from that, inspired me to start naming things that didn't appear to have names if there weren't any that fit. (I characterize my own sexuality as "omnidemisexual", for instance. And am prone to using "morpho-" and "episio-" to identify gendered assumptions based on someone's body or crotch shape.)
Another big difference I think characterizing and isolating folks like us gets summed up in the word "stealth". Non-liminal genders and sexualities often come with hiding in plain sight as an option. But instead of a closet, for me it's a prison. I can think I have broken out for a while sometimes, but eventually someone or something ("men's" and "women's" anything, anyone?) will stuff me right back in that cell. I often don't feel like there's any way I can just go around in public and be recognized as my own self.
And those who believe liminal spaces are things one passes through are doing so oblivious to the value these spaces have in nature. The shoreline, the intertidal zone, the forest canopy, the swamps, the surface of the open ocean, the hours between darkness and day, the boiling sulfurous waters around geothermal vents -- all are home to creatures that make these places their home, thrive in them, and could live nowhere else. They partake of all aspects of their respective environments while not being of any of them. And that is much like how my gender and sexuality feel to me.
Also, so many of the places in the world that are considered sacred are also liminal. Perhaps because their being boundary spaces aligns with their being boundaries between the mundane and the divine, however one might choose to interpret that. But also perhaps because these are all places where the variety and fecundity of life is most obvious: so many of them are nurseries and cradles of far more living things than inhabit them. It is the creatures that live on the boundaries that expand those boundaries and create new places for other creatures to live and grow. And even the places of worship we construct often capture these aspects of being liminal.
Rejoice, as you do, in your liminality. Honor those others who inhabit these challenging spaces with you. Assert your presence. Thriving in our space helps others who are looking for it find it, and know that it can be a home.
Subscribing to you now. I always enjoy learning from fellow travelers.