(Re)claiming Public Spaces

All public spaces are assumed, or assigned, to be hetero spaces. They were never meant to be for queers. Buses, parks, streets, subways, cinemas, shopping malls... are all for heteros only. Queers are redirected to present in alleyways, the dark hidden corners of the city.

Queer individuals are not supposed to publicly display their affections to each other in this hetero-sexist city. Their actions of love will scare and piss off the self-elevated majority, the normals.

Now how sad is this? When can we end the exile journey of the queers?

From Labels to Possibly Happier Life

I do not want to put a label on you, because it's not nice nor politically correct nor I actually want to categorize you. However I encountered many others who are not happy with their biological sex and their gender and their identity, yet they do not recognize they might be trans rather than gay or lesbian.

From living in Shanghai and browsing through the local forums, I know some people are oppressed from being able to live how they want, and liberating themselves from the wrong body. But of course, people, even participants themselves, are not realizing that they can be happier. At the moment they would simply follow what society wants them to be, living unhappy lives and suppressing their desires.

I have not been to your country, and I can confidentially guesstimate that Korea is not very forward in its LGBT development. I mean, the LGBT history was like blank as a piece of white paper. There are Harisu who seems to succeeded, a gay and a MTF celeb who chose to end their lives (which is really sad), a lesbian tried for the parliament, gay movies here and there, plus a queer cult fest. The rest of people's lives remains untold and unseen, depict the fact that passionated and interesting stories might had happened beneath our eyes.

Now I am wondering if all of this got stirred up because I live in Canada, where LGBT moments are more developed, and I was in a different mind set involving the definitions of being gay and being trans? I really hate to put labels on others, and I believe as long as an individual is happy, one's identity does not matter. Yet... I sincerely want you to be able to live the life you want, rather than placing yourself inside the box, or closet rather.

Labels and Complications

I'm not ready to identify as a woman yet. The word woman sounds too serious. Plus the stigma that involves behind it - with many others contributing their ideals regarding one being a "woman" in today's patriarchal society. Being girl seems easier, as most people understand the term as a kid/juvenile, which put less responsibility on one. But many still have certain expectations. Lots of rules too. What to do and what not to do. How to react and how not to react. Is being female wrong after all? Maybe we all are not meant to be born and live. And suffer through all these patriarchal crap.

Actually I don't know how to describe myself in one single word. My self identification will be a bunch of words put together in an ultra complex paragraph that will put you to sleep. I'm a person who loves to analyze and breakdown things into categories and compartmentalize them into bits and pieces. But I find the issue of one's gender identity, sexuality identity, and sexual orientation are very complex to dig for an absolute answer. Also to me they are similar to the nature of water - let it flow and see where it brings you. At various stages of life it's highly possible that one would want to identify oneself differently.

Stereotyping is no good, although we all like to summarize people into labels. Labels do help you to identify each other fast, avoiding the later messiness of figuring out the person you are into are not exactly what you wanted/expected. Making people change according to your expectations is not really feasible. Adjustments might happen due to the great love, but definitely not entirely modifying the person into someone that purely lives in your fantasy.

I'm contradicting myself here again. So are labels good or what? I believe titles are good until they get to a certain degree where the one-worded descriptions bring you more complications rather than help. Labels do give people a sense of security and comfort as they feel they belong to a specific group after all. Remember all those teenage years when you tried to fit in? That's exactly what I mean. No one would want to be left alone by themselves and be outcasts.

Don't judge me by how I look

While standing on crowded buses every morning to get to work and every evening to get home, I often think about how other bus passengers perceive me. What would they think of me (if they care to look)? What words would they use to describe me: tall, not-attractive, small eyes, lezzie-looking-but-not-T(butch)-nor-P(femme)-so-possibly-H(versatile)?

I know the above happen because I personally do watch people on how they act and react. I would guess if people are rich/poor (or they just dress that way), if they have some sort of fashion senses (of course according to my standards, hah), or what they are like. But this restricts solely by how they dress themselves.

However after some time of just watching people, now I've bumped the seemed-simple observation to another level - are people really like what they dress like?