queerbychoice | Survey

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Survey

1. Describe the last shoe you wore:
Cheap black slip-on size 9 men's dress shoe, fitted with not one but two arch support inserts taped inside, one on top of the other, to accommodate my plantar fasciitis. Worn simultaneously with matching shoe on other foot, also with two arch support inserts taped inside it.

2. Where do you live? Why do you live there?
I live in a formerly unincorporated area on the outskirts of Sacramento, which was incorporated less than a year ago into a brand new city which is named Rancho Cordova, but which does not look like a city at all because there are vacant lots full of brown weeds everywhere and rows upon rows of bright orange "Public Storage" garages. It's also right next door to the Superfund site known as Mather Air force Base. The property prices are low for good reason. My most favorite part of living here is that it is a very racially mixed neighborhood (by which I mean actually mixed, not a euphemism for "everybody who lives here is black" but rather that a wide variety of races actually coexist relatively peaceably here) that does not have as high of violence levels that the more urban racially mixed neighborhoods have. My least favorite part of living here is that there are no bookstores for miles around. I live here because it's less than a ten-minute drive from where I work, and the low rent enables me to live beneath my means and collect a large savings account.

3. Describe your hair. What reason did you choose your current hairstyle?
My hair is the style that it grows in if I do nothing to it other than wash it fairly regularly. It is necessary for me to continue to wash it fairly regularly because that is the only way to keep its severe dandruff at all under control. But it is not necessary for me to cut my hair or brush my hair or dye my hair or curl or straighten or do anything else to my hair. Just to wash it. So that's what I do.

4. What is your opinion on body
modifications (tattoos/piercings/branding/amputation/implants/etc.)?
I find it very strange that so many people seem to hold the simultaneous opinions that cutting is pathetic when it is called cutting, but that if you rename it "scarification" or piercing or branding or whatever then it's really cool. I've been told that the difference is that piercing/branding/scarification is motivated by the desire to achieve a certain look rather than by the desire to feel pain. Really, how is it better to injure oneself for the sake of appearance than for the sake of sensation? I don't see how. I think people's opinions are too shaped by the opinions of those around them.

5. What are your spiritual beliefs?
I don't believe in any supernatural phenomena.

6. Do you have any interesting scars?
I have a cat scratch scar on my right little finger from when I was eight years old, scars on my right palm and both knees from falling down on my apartment's asphalt parking lot in December 2001, and a surgical scar on my left breast from last August when the doctor insisted that my cyst there really needed to be removed to make sure it wasn't a tumor.

7. Tell me about your most interesting aunt or uncle:
My great-uncle Robert is dead now, but he was my favorite relative on my mother's side of the family. He was my grandmother's younger brother and their parents had both died rather young, before my great-uncle Robert was old enough to live on his own, so he lived with my grandmother and grandfather and their children when my mother was a kid. My mother likes to tell a story of how one day, my great-uncle Robert came home and announced to everyone that he'd met the most amazingly beautiful woman in the entire world at a party that night and was madly in love with her. Since he'd previously been engaged to (and then dumped by) a woman who had looked like a world-class supermodel, everyone was very eager to meet this amazing new woman who was even more beautiful than the previous one. When my great-uncle Robert finally brought her home to meet them, they were very surprised to find out that she had one-inch-long hair and extremely out-of-style clothes and weighed 300 pounds. She was my great-aunt Joyce, who still has the exact same haircut and everything 40 years later, and they got married and lived happily ever after, and their daughter is only a little over two years older than me. I think my great-uncle Robert was my favorite relative partly because he had a daughter my age, and also partly because he was so obviously thrilled with his life and his family and he always greeted everyone exuberantly and told jokes all the time and always made me feel he was delighted to see me. He died a few years ago - he had a heart attack and he went to the hospital for it and they were going to operate, but then he had another heart attack right on the operating table and they couldn't save him.

8. How many grandparents do you have, and do you know them?
I have two living grandparents (the maternal ones). I previously had three grandparents who ever met me or knew of my existence. My paternal grandmother divorced my paternal grandfather when my father was ten years old, because my paternal grandfather had been physically abusive, and no one ever spoke to my paternal grandfather ever again, so even though he lived to be over 80 and only died this past November, he never knew that I existed at all.

9. What, if anything, do you wear on your feet when in your home?
Shoes. I wouldn't, but my feet hurt if they don't get arch support.

10. Do you secretly hate some of your friends but are too nice to reject them?
That's not niceness; that's dishonesty. And no, I don't. I tell people if I don't like them.

11. If you had to be blind or deaf, which would you choose?
Deaf, but I won't get the choice. Late-onset glaucoma is absolutely rampant in my maternal grandmother's line of the family (her and nearly all her siblings), and my mother also has macular degeneration, so the odds are rather high that I will go blind. The only deafness in my family is clearly environmentally caused (my maternal grandfather worked at a naval shipyard), so I am unlikely to go deaf.

12. When's the last time you went on a date?
August. With Mikie, who's now on the other side of the planet from me, living in Spain.

13. Person you most wish you hadn't made out with?
None of them. All four of them were necessary at the time.

14. Who is the person you can count on the most?
Probably Mikie, for most things.

15. If you could date any celebrity, past or present, time and age are not a factor?
You're expecting me to say David Bowie, but you're wrong. I wouldn't actually want to date David Bowie at all; he's too heterosexual, too likely to be infected with STDs, and is already monogamously married to somebody else. I'd much rather fantasize about David Bowie, and converse with him occasionally but not enough to shatter my fantasies. As for who I'd like to actually date . . . does anyone know if Adrienne Rich is available?

16. Do you have gay family members?
Only myself.

17. Describe yourself as a child in one word.
Adored.

18. Imagine you could gain total memory from any single year in your life. What year would it be?
1992. The year I turned queer.

19. If you found out for certain there is a Heaven AND Hell, how would you change your life, or would you even change it at all?
I'd have to add God to the list of high-ranking people whose power, like George W. Bush's, desperately needs to be critiqued.

20. Let's say you get in the way-back machine and you're able to witness any one time in your family's history. What do you want to see?
I want to see my parents dating each other.

21. If you could make, absolutely, one thing come true for a friend, what would it be and who?
I would give Mikie a new and better lover to replace me.

22. Out of all your friends, who is the most comfortable with their sexuality?
Sean. And the most uncomfortable one is Mikie.

21. What word would you like to convince people to stop using?
"Panties."

22. If you were to determine what amount of contact you could have with your parents and how much you would see them, what would it be?
I've already determined it. I'm happy with the once every few months arrangement.

23. What would you do if you were to find out you were adopted?
Be very surprised indeed, because my parents are not normally dishonest.

24. If you are, or were, in a relationship, what would you do if you discovered you and your partner had conceived a child? How do you think that this might change your relationship as a couple?
I have never had a partner for whom having a child anytime soon would not be catastrophic, and I would not consider it ethical to force parenthood onto them, so I would abort it. If I had a partner who didn't care at all one way or the other, I would probably have the kid, but I'm not positive. As to how the relationship would change, I don't really think I can speculate at all accurately when it's never happened to me.

25. If you could prevent your future child from inheriting one habit from yourself, what would you choose?
I will wish my theoretical future child great housekeeping skills.

26. If, because of intolerance you were going to miss a chance of promotion at your work, would you lie about your religious beliefs?
No. I've never mentioned my (lack of) religious beliefs to anyone at work, but I certainly wouldn't lie about them.

27. How well do you think others know you?
Very very very extremely well.

28. Do you feel you are still in touch with today's youth, or do you feel you've aged?
Um. First of all, there's the question of whether I'm in touch with my own generation, to which the answer is a resounding "no." Then there's the question of whether I'm any less in touch with the currently-teenaged generation, to which the answer is . . . I dunno, but not much if at all. But that doesn't make me very in touch with them either.

29. What are your best and worst personality traits?
Mikie once said that my stubbornness/determination is both what ey likes most and what ey hates most about me. That seems like a reasonable answer to me.

30. What's your pet peeve?
People who imagine it's any less offensive, evil, and painful to be around them when they insult or abuse themselves than if they insulted or abused others.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I find it very strange that so many people seem to hold the simultaneous opinons that cutting is pathetic when it is called cutting, but that if you rename it "scarification" or piercing or branding or whatever then it's really cool.

Word.

Adrienne Rich was a real find for me when I was a baby dyke. The first big inspirational lesbian writer for me. Ultimately I end up with some qualms about much of her poetry, but only because it goes a bit too much to the didactic for me. But I love many of the personal and interpersonal poems, and some of the political ones, and almost all the essays.

I think she may be getting a little frail these days, though, as far as your celebrity fantasies.

I'm not that big a fan of her poetry either, actually - just her essays. But I always like practically everybody's prose better than their poetry, because I just like prose better than I like poetry.

Unfortunately I have already had the experience of being hopelessly in love with someone who was past the point of having much interest in sex. I should know better than to repeat it, but really I'll probably have to relearn it a few more times.

regarding #21: I hate that word too! In fact, it is my very least favorite word in the English language, and I hate it so much I can't even bring myself to write it down. It just sends shivers of disgust down my spine...

Yes! We should form a coalition to abolish the word from the language. We could call it "The Coalition to Abolish the Word that We Really Don't Want to Have to Bring Ourselves to Even Specify."

I'm sure everyone would know what we were talking about. I mean, what other word could be so awful?

heh, as someone who doesn't speak English as her native language, i find nothing offensive about the word at all, all though i've heard several people complain about it. really, if you could explain to me the context in which this word becomes offensive, and one more of life's mysteries would be solved!

eline

It's offensive because it's a word used only for female underpants and not male underpants which uses a suffix ("-y" or plural "-ies") thats commonly associated with diminutive nicknames for children rather than dignified respectful treatment of adults. It's like the difference between calling people Bill and John and Mike and Frank (common names for adult men) versus calling them Billy and Johnny and Mikie and Frankie (hardly anyone over ten years old is called these names, and when an adult does want to be addressed this way, it's usually because they're specifically striving to be perceived more like children or women instead of like adult men), or the difference in calling dogs "doggies" instead of "dogs." Adults who are speaking baby talk to small children will often start calling all dogs "doggies" and cats "kitties" and presents "pressies," but if an adult keeps adding -y and -ies to the end of all their nouns when speaking to another adult, then either the adult using these words routinely talks like a five-year-old, or else they're insulting the adult they're speaking to by speaking to them as if they're five years old. I've never heard anyone ever call a man's underpants "panties," and if a person calls female underpants "panties" when they would never call male underpants that, they're implying that women are inherently like five-year-olds whereas men are always dignified adults.

www.manties.com (http://www.manties.com)

Yes, I've seen that site. It doesn't count in my mind as "men's underpants" though, because they're clearly aiming to copy women's, and not to sell it to so-called "real men."

I have no idea what you mean by "so-called 'real men'", but I'm pretty sure that humans with penises are the target market for that site. I can't imagine why women would want them...

I mean "real men" in the sense in which that word is used when men are accusing other men of not being "real men." I mean "real men" in the gender-role sense of the term.

Well, I've never pretended to understand that use of the term.

It's not officially offensive, in the sense of "shit" or "fuck" or "pussy". It just turns my stomach - a purely personal reaction.

I can't say exactly what it is, but I think in part I'm turned off by the fact that's a diminuitive form of the word "pant". Diminuitives in general connote that which is young, small, or frilly, so the word conjures up images (for me) of very young girls (like, 5 or 6) in faux-sexy satin and lace underclothes. And I find that image pretty gross.

Or maybe I just hate it because it's the word my mother used, and I always was embarrassed by the way she'd discuss my underclothes in public, as if I were a sexless being, so I associate it with that shame.

My mother never uses the word panties, and I still hate it, so it must not be that. My mother used "underpants" or "underwear," and "underwear" is my preferred term. I actually thought maybe people who grew up with less mothers who used the word "panties" might be less likely to hate the word. Apparently not.

I think there is a difference between self-mutilating and say, getting your ears pierced. For one, mutilation is about expressing an inner pain and turmoil physically in an attempt to reduce or rid oneself of it. It's also about self-hatred, much like eating disorders are. Most self-injurers would stop what they were doing if they knew other ways to handle their feelings; I don't really know anyone who feels a compulsion to color their hair or pierce their belly button or whatever. As far as those who want to amputate their own perfectly healthy limbs, as someone who plans to have her career in psychology,they need professional help. I think the medical industry has gone to far when they're exploiting people's mental problems for monetary gain. ( I really don't see how someone thinks they should have been born without a leg or an arm..but I digress).

Hmm, from what I've seen on LiveJournal, it seems to me like an awful lot of people fele a compulsion to color their hair or pierce their belly button - I see them saying that they have to desperately try to restrain their urge to get more piercings and tattoos all the time because they're afraid they'll run out of skin to be able to fit more tattoos on. And I've also heard some self-mutilators say that they don't see why people want them to stop cutting, because they feel it helps them and they want to keep doing it. So I think that although there may be a general trend toward having different feelings about the two activities, the lines are rather blurry, and it's also difficult to ascertain how much of the division is just due to the fact that society pressures cutters to feel guilty whereas it tells piercers they're doing something cool.

I like that this survey can ask questions like "If you are, or were, in a relationship, what would you do if you discovered you and your partner had conceived a child?" but also not avoid the important issues, like "Tell me about your shoes."

I'm eager to read the answers to the "if you discovered you and your partner had conceived a child" question from people who are in same-sex relationships. "I'd call the Guiness Book of World Records . . ."

I agree with #21. Panties is a pedophile word. And #30 was profound.

This is the first LJ survey I found worthwhile. I must ask: Where did you get it? Or did you make up the questions yourself?

#30 - Yes, profound. That response is one I'd do well to keep in mind for my own personal conduct.

#25 - You could wish those skills on folks in your friends list, too. :)

#19 - Haha, great, I loved that one! I'm sure I've said something similar (http://www.livejournal.com/users/datagrok/7726.html#myconversation) in less precise words. :)

Wow, that was quite a coredump. Yay atheism!

I actually, er, "harvested" this survey by scrolling through the recent entries in

thesurveyplace and

surveysluts and cutting and pasting only the more interesting questions from each survey. The ones I hadn't already answered over 500 times yet. This is often how I get my surveys.

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awesome.

Re: awesome.