Seeking quotes from queer women who partner with trans women and/or cis men

As a bisexual femme-identified trans woman, I have long been interested in (and concerned by) how the borders of queer women’s communities are policed - where certain people, actions and ways of being are seen as legitimately queer while others are not.

In my own community, I have found two different recurring complaints along these lines that I wish to chronicle for an essay I am working on:

1) despite the fact that T is supposedly included in LGBT, many queer women find that when they are dating/partnered to a trans woman, their queer credentials suddenly become questioned or are seen as suspect in a way that is not the case when queer women date/partner with trans men.

2) despite the fact that B is supposedly included in LGBT, many queer women find that when they are dating/partnered to a cis man, their queer credentials suddenly become questioned or are seen as suspect in a way that is not the case when queer women date/partner with trans men.

(*see further notes of clarification below)

If you have any personal anecdotes/experiences/stories that speak to either of these two scenarios, I would greatly appreciate it if you could share your quotes with me.

For each scenario that you wish to share, please write a brief paragraph or two describing your experiences (btw, you may submit more than one scenario/paragraph). Depending on how many quotes I receive, I hope to 1) compile all the quotes into a single blog post that will appear on my blog (http://juliaserano.blogspot.com), and 2) potentially excerpt your quote in my future writings (e.g., in my next my book and/or articles that appear elsewhere).

For those interested, please send your quotes to me at: hi at juliaserano dot com. I can assure you that YOUR NAME AND CONTACT INFO WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED OR SHARED WITH ANYONE. Please paste the text into the body of the email (no attachments please). In the email, please also include a statement along the following lines: “I certify that all of the provided information is true to the best of my knowledge, and I give Julia Serano permission to post these quotes on her website and to allow her to excerpt them in her future writings.”

Feel free to include any other contextual information that you feel is necessary to accurately convey what happened. Also, keep in mind that other people may eventually be reading these quotes, so be sure to omit any unimportant info that you feel might place your (or anyone else’s) anonymity in jeopardy (e.g., where you live or work, people’s names, etc.). Also, I will not be editing these quotes at all (except possibly for length), so you might want to double-check for spelling mistakes and typos.

For the record, this work is not the part of any kind of “research project.” I am approaching this subject as both a queer/bi/trans activist and as a journalist who wants to chronicle what is deemed “queer” (or “not queer”) within contemporary queer women’s communities.

Feel free to cross-post this request on any LGBTQ-focused websites/blogs/email lists at your discretion. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to email me at the email address mentioned above.

Thanks in advance!
-julia

P.S., for the record, I am *not* claiming or insinuating that queer women who date/partner with trans men do not receive any flak within queer women’s communities for their partner choices. I am merely saying that their partner choices tend to be significantly more accepted in queer women’s circles than queer women who partner with trans women or cis men.

P.S.S., I also want to clarify that I am certainly *not* by any means insinuating that dating a trans woman = dating a cis man. Trans women are women, and cis men are men. I am interested in both of these cases, not because they are equivalent, but because they reveal ways in which B and T inclusion in queer women’s communities is highly conditional.

P.S.S.S., finally, I want to stress that when I say “queer women,” I am talking about people who navigate their way through the world as women (whether cis or trans), and who are queer-identified in some way (e.g., lesbian, bisexual, dyke, pansexual, queer, polysexual, and potentially many other queer identities not explicitly listed here).