Queer Baseball Players and Francesca Lia Block

[queerbychoice]

Major League Baseball Player Comes Out as Heterosexual

Hmm. I see the potential for progress to be made.

The Out magazine editor's I'm-not-naming-names-but revelation annoyed me, though. I mean, how many major league baseball players can an Out magazine editor be hanging around with? How hard would it have been for a reporter to follow him around and watch for a major league baseball player to show up? That revelation was playing with fire.

In other news, I read Francesca Lia Block's Weetzie Bat recently to find out why so many people on my friends list grew up obsessed with it. I almost threw it across the room and refused to finish it after the very first page, when the main characters were introduced as being a beautiful skinny blonde popular girl who's dating the best-looking guy in the school, and her boy friend, the best-looking guy in the school. Who wants to read books about popular people? Upon hearing this description of them, I immediately lost all interest in hearing anything about their lives and dismissed them as abhorrent, thoroughly unpleasant people to be around.

The book did get better from there, when I forced myself to keep reading. The book does an excellent job of supporting extremely unconventional family structures and the idea of inventing one's own family structure to suit one's own needs, and I'm sure these revelations about the appeal of hitherto unimagined family structures must have really revolutionized a lot of young readers' lives in a wonderful way. And even the characters managed to become a little less abhorrent. Still, there's something thoroughly plastic and unreal about the whole thing that I definitely don't like at all.

Comments

[experimentego.livejournal.com]

Upon hearing this description of them, I immediately lost all interest in hearing anything about their lives and dismissed them as abhorrent, thoroughly unpleasant people to be around... I'm sure this(sic) revelations must have really revolutionized a lot of young readers' lives in a wonderful way. And even the characters manages to become a little less abhorrent. Still, there's something thoroughly plastic and unreal about the whole thing that I definitely don't like at all.

You've just articulated everything about Lia Block that has slightly kept me from enjoying her works that I have not been able to articulate at all for the longest time.

[24hrheartattack.livejournal.com]

coincidentally, i was looking through old files on my computer today and discovered a very critical letter i had written to francesca lia block and planned to put in my next zine (whenever that gets its act together). i read weetzie bat when i was 12 or 13 and completely fell in love with it and wanted that life so badly. and though now i guess i don't believe in such a perfect existence (and don't really care), at the time i needed those goals to keep my going through a lot of adolescent shit i was dealing with. i still think weetzie bat is a beautifully written book and i would recommend it to other teenage girls looking for heroes. it's her other books (outside of the "dangerous angels" series) that i have real problems with. every one seems to glorify anorexia and self-destruction. it makes me so sad to imagine young girls reading these books and potentially being influenced to adopt really bad habits/lifestyles in the name of drama and beauty.

[twizzledpink.livejournal.com]

i realize this is sort of irrelevant to your post, but i really don't understand 'queer by choice'. i mean, i've liked guys since before as long as i could remember. as soon as liking girls was introduced to me in 7th grade, i've had no problem with checking them out (involuntarily at first. blushing, the whole shmeal.) i've been told by almost all of my lesbian/bi girl friends that bisexuality and lesbianism is not chosen, but maybe realized later on in life. however, when i look back, i've always liked guys. there was never really a time when i've been more attracted to girls than guys. i can't remember if before 7th grade i was attracted to girls or not. i don't choose to like girls because guys suck or because it's a huge 'trend' now. and i'm not just bicurious (least i don't think so). am i bisexual by choice? every gay/bi girl i know has told me that 99.99% of all gay/bi girls have said that their preference has been this way since birth, or since sex hormones started kicking in. what in the world is my sexual preference? and please don't bother telling me that it's ultimately up to me and what not. 'ultimately' is a rare thing. it's not ultimate yet.

thanks for your anticipated help!

-elle

[curare.livejournal.com]

i abhor francesca lia block's childrens books;
i've read weetzie bat and witch baby, and it
seems like the characters are not really given
personality traits, just quirks and physical
characteristics that are somehow supposed to
stand in for real personality.

witchbaby speaks

[jwitchbaby.livejournal.com]

the books are kind of plastic, in a very california way. but there's something addictive about them, something beautiful, a creation of a world that i sometimes dream about but can never quite touch in my waking life.

also i used to identify very closely with witch baby, her loneliness, her unbound love, her drum craziness, her unprotected heart.

the books are very dear to me. try witch baby or missing angel juan. i actually didn't read weetzie bat until i'd rest most of the rest of them.

--witchbaby

[lm.livejournal.com]

I never really got Block. I liked her retold fairy tales, and I like her writing style. But...I dunno. I went into them expecting all this urban fantasy stuff, and it wasn't really there. Her vision of L. A. is this upperclass white vision, which is something I never really saw or appreciated when I was there. The things I love about L. A. are the street performers--the bands set up on sidewalks who have only a beat-up Volkswagon and their instruments to their name, the improv comedians who are just actors waiting for their big break. I like the hope you see there. And Block doesn't really show that. She likes to talk about weird food and boring skinny girls who dream of things I don't give a crap about. It's not that I don't think she can write--I'm just not interested in what she's writing about.

[grecianurn.livejournal.com]

Who wants to read books about popular people?

I'm going to assume you never read Sweet Valley :)

[legolastn.livejournal.com]

I'm sure Gayle will jump in here, but you might want to check out www.queerbychoice.com for some general explanations of what is meant by "Queer by Choice."

every gay/bi girl i know has told me that 99.99% of all gay/bi girls have said that their preference has been this way since birth, or since sex hormones started kicking in.

That's certainly not true. In surveys/polls of same-sex attracted persons, it has always been the case that a much greater percentage of same-sex attracted women perceive that they chose their preference in some way shape or form when compared to same-sex attracted men (who tend to perceive their attraction as inborn). I don't recall any specific numbers, but it's a signficant portion, if not a slim majority in some cases.

Anyways, if you are saying that you are sexually attracted to both guys and girls, it sounds like you are bisexual to me. Perhaps you've heard of the Kinsey scale. Your very basic description of your attractions would seem to place you at about a 1 or 2. The Klein Grid is a more complex way to self-describe sexual orientation that might help to think things through. Might want to look at that. How you perceive that you figured out your attractions is probably the best/only guide to figuring out a "cause," if that's what you are looking for. And what you do about your attractions is up to you.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I did read a couple of them. I soon stopped, though. :)

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

yes, i will come answer this question at greater length soon. i find myself unexpectedly busy at the moment but i'll get to it sometime within the next couple of days.

specific pages on my website that might be of help in the meantime are:
http://www.queerbychoice.com/faq.html
http://www.queerbychoice.com/gayle.html
http://www.queerbychoice.com/experiquotes.html
http://www.queerbychoice.com/recruit.html

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

ok. i think i can manage to write something now.

"i mean, i've liked guys since before as long as i could remember."

me too. well, since puberty.

"as soon as liking girls was introduced to me in 7th grade, i've had no problem with checking them out"

the concept that it was even possible for a girl to like other girls "that way" didn't even occur to me until near the end of my sophomore year in high school. when it did occur to me, it occured to me first on a purely intellectual level: "hey, what if it really is possible for girls to like other girls? i wonder why it wouldn't be? what does it mean to 'like' anybody anyway? even if girls can't 'like' other girls sexually, they mostly seem to have other girls as best friends, so if they really like girls better as best friends and they only like boys better for sex, then why do they always move in with boys instead of moving in with their female best friends and just inviting boys over for occasional sex? shouldn't who you're best friends with be more relevant to who you'd want to live with than physical attraction to some boy's body is? and why does physical attraction feel so soulful and deeply connecting if it's just an animal attraction to a body shape and doesn't correlate to whose mind you actually feel the strongest friendship with?"

these are extremely important questions. very worth thinking about. you can read more of my own thoughts on them here.

"however, when i look back, i've always liked guys. there was never really a time when i've been more attracted to girls than guys."

there isn't any quota for "minimum volume of attraction to girls that you're required to experience in order to be awarded a queerness license." words like "bi" and "gay" and "lesbian" and "straight" are often used by different people to mean quite different things. i've heard some people say, "i consider myself bi because i've been attracted to both genders on occasion, even though 99% of the time at least recently i'm only attracted to this one gender"; but i've heard other people say, "i consider myself lesbian because even though i'm attracted to both genders i'm really more attracted to women." i've also heard some people say "i consider myself a bisexual lesbian" whereas other people say "i'm not a lesbian because i'm bisexual." the different people are defining the terms in different ways, to suit their own purposes. i think that's a good thing. words are tools: people invent them in order to communicate what they want to say about themselves. words constantly take on new meanings over time, because people change the meanings in order to communicate different things. so the question in your mind shouldn't ever be, "am i bisexual or am i straight?" but rather, "what words can i best use to explain to other people that i've always liked guys, and there was never really a time when i've been more attracted to girls than guys, but as soon as liking girls was introduced to me in 7th grade, i've had no problem with checking them out (involuntarily at first. blushing, the whole shmeal)?"

the words you already used are fine. they communicated your experience to me clearly. you don't have to try to reduce it to a one-word label like "bi" or whatever, because sometimes one word just isn't enough to communicate everything you want to say, and that's just fine.

(to be continued)

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

"i don't choose to like girls because guys suck or because it's a huge 'trend' now."

me neither. i chose to like girls because i had a best friend who i loved more than anybody else - platonically, you understand - and then it suddenly occurred to me that maybe the reason she kept insisting to me that she'd never liked any boy ever was that she really liked girls instead, and that if she did like girls and was keeping it secret from me, it made sense that i might be the one she liked. and i hated the idea of hurting her by not returning the feelings, and i hated the idea that sexual attraction could be something so shallow and meaningless and unrelated to love that i could be incapable of feeling it for the person i loved most in the world. so i asked myself: what does the act of having sex actually consist of? what is touching in general really about? why does everybody use hugging and similar forms of touch to express affection to their friends, and experience pleasure at being hugged by friends of the same sex, but draw the line at having sex with those same friends and claim that that form of touch would only be capable of giving them pleasure if they received it from a member of the opposite sex? and why is the line that they draw different in other societies from in our own, like how in much of europe a few centuries ago good friends of the same sex casually kissed each other on the cheek in greeting whenever they met, yet in our own culture if you suggested to george bush and dick cheney that they should greet each other every time they meet by kissing each other on the cheek, they'd frantically proclaim that to be the most disgusting and totally unpleasureable thing they'd ever heard of?

in ancient greece it was taken for granted that all same-sex best friends would have sex with each other to express their affection. heck, barely half a century ago in our very own united states, when teenage girls couldn't ever have sex without suffering lifelong disgrace, it was taken for granted that most teenage boys would "practice" on each other from time to time while they sat around sexually frustrated because teenage girls were so sexually unavailable.

"and i'm not just bicurious (least i don't think so). am i bisexual by choice?"

i don't know. are you? you should choose your own words according to whatever you feel best expresses your experience.

"every gay/bi girl i know has told me that 99.99% of all gay/bi girls have said that their preference has been this way since birth"

there are online surveys here and here which can help give a general sense of the range of opinions/experiences out there. you can even add your own to their data!

"what in the world is my sexual preference? and please don't bother telling me that it's ultimately up to me and what not. 'ultimately' is a rare thing. it's not ultimate yet."

what if i say it's just plain up to you, right now?

what does "sexual preference" consist of? a label for yourself? you certainly have a choice about that. a plan about what genders of people you're willing to have sex with? you certainly have a choice about that too. a desire to behave sexually with certain people? in my experience, when you break down the details of what different kinds of touch mean to you, and why our society claims that some kinds are only pleasureable with members of the opposite sex, you tend to find that these things can be chosen too.

Re:

[twizzledpink.livejournal.com]

thank you both. i 'preciate it.

Re: witchbaby speaks

[fyreharper.livejournal.com]

yay witchbaby!

sure, they're not quite real, but that's part of what makes the books so attractive. I like weird books. I like off-the-wall impossible characters that I can relate to anyway.