Figuring It Out: Web Event 1

Trigger warning: sexual assault

In Neil Gaiman’s The Doll House, women are cats. Women are a lot of things in this graphic novel: protagonists, foils, stupid, smart, slut-shamed, and presented as tropes. Amongst the same old nonsense, though, Gaiman uses metonymy to describe women, while I, reading the book, was also using something to symbolize something about myself, also a woman.

Throughout The Doll House, Gaiman has a lot of people “playing” with women. The book is scattered with references to women as things that someone can play with; toying with them like playing with a cat. The women are props in his book to play out a larger story, and within the big, sweeping narrative of dreaming and waking, the women are played with even more. They are made into sex objects to be manipulated with like they are as inhuman as cats (pausing only to make the connection between “pussies” and “cats”). When serial killers in Part V of the novel meet and talk about their experiences, one goes on about starting off with “pussies” and cutting off their heads—a description that could easily reference cats or vulvas.

Gaiman draws on symbolism to make his novel more detailed on the micro-level. It fleshes out dialogue and character interaction with a running pun that references patriarchal oppression and modern day conflict. Gaiman, the author, uses symbolism in his writing. I, a student, signal sometimes explicit details about myself.

My nickname is Mouse, but I’m hiding behind the opposite. I have adopted “Cat” as my username, not a name that I go by. This username stands in for me because part of myself is (maybe) queerness, something I signify in a lot of ways, but not yet quite so explicitly to my parents.

When I first came to Bryn Mawr, I identified as straight. Within the first month, I was questioning that. In a classic move, I broke up with my boyfriend over winter break and then refused to tell anyone what exactly was going on. Mostly, I read all of the “hip” (read: queer) blogs that upperclassmen kept telling me to read. Essentially, I spent most of December reading Effing Dykes and Autostraddle and becoming more and more convinced that gentlemen were not the only people I was attracted to.

Back at Bryn Mawr second semester, I tried doing things a bit differently. I cut my hair short again, for one thing. I did not do it because I wanted to “look queer,” but that actually did a lot to help me out in that department.  I acted differently around the people who had heard me say that I was straight and the people who had not. Around people I had never met, I started referencing queer websites and dropping in references to crafts I had seen on Autostraddle or articles about cute ladies that I had read. I was ambiguous about my sexuality, nodding when someone else chimed in with an opinion, but talking about how cute I thought Zoe Saldana was right before I actually told people about my (maybe) queerness. I started dressing more and more like the pretty people on the internet, employing strategic amounts of red lipstick, rectangular glasses, and mussed cropped hair to try to drive the point home. Somehow, in the face of it all, most of my good friends managed to “respect [my] straightness (as long as it lasted),” but there were signs, and they noticed.

At home in the Midwest, the (maybe) queerness is definitely toned down. But, what is read as queer at Bryn Mawr actually signals something else in my corner of Middle America (my parents are not just desperately grasping at straws). The aforementioned red lipstick that I use to try to convey some sort of hip, femme, queer style is taken by my family to be an emulation of my grandmothers’ chic makeup and the glasses are just me being too lazy to put my contacts Eventually, I will tell “the guys” that cardigans are just my twist on queer layering techniques, and my parents will find out that my interest in J. Crew catalogs has a lot more with me admiring Jenna Lyons than wanting to summer in Nantucket. For now, though, I am very much in, and not even my (maybe) queerness has drawn eyebrows.

In the college town I live in when I spend time in the Heartland, I am not visibly queer. My lack of both flannel and sports skills lands me in the “straight” categorization at home (Wilchins, 26). The way I like to “do queer” is a lot more subtle to a Midwestern eye (which maybe has something to do with the resources I am drawing on) because I fall on the more femme side of the spectrum. If anyone in my family or high school friend group thinks I am queer, it is probably because I talked about feminism and, in their minds, feminists are equated with lesbians (Even though that is still not my identity). They do not label me as queer because I am not so visible that I cannot hide (Wilchins, 14).

Now, I’m (maybe) queer and trying to figure a few things out. I am considering acquiring some flannel and also trying to hide the constant blushing when I’m around all of the cute Mawrtyrs. My (maybe) queerness is still not very mimetic around most people, and it is still something that sounds new and fun to say out loud. I am still trying to signal queerness with presentation, but now that I am saying it (at Bryn Mawr, anyway), and not having to face the idea of denying it, there have been a lot more queer signals. Like asking out girls. But, also, more dressing like the hip kids on the Internet (blazers! Birkenstocks! Oh my!), and trying to figure out what and when I am going to tell my parents.

Right now, I do not have a lot of political problems. I probably will when I grow up and ask for more concrete things (like permanent employment), but I have missed a lot of horrible things. (Halberstam, 2). If I turn out to not just be (maybe) queer, but very queer, I simply will not have had to deal with a lot of things. Right now, I am at Bryn Mawr, and that provides a nice bubble to the outside world, which does not know about this part of my identity.

The anti-self-portrait that I made for class did not talk about this bit of my identity because I was scared and did not want to talk about it. Instead, I talked about where I was from and how the places I had grown up in had shaped me as a person in ways that most people probably would not expect given their expectations of those locations. Now, I am voyaging off into the world of “queer space,” and that is quite a lot more confusing and scary, but is also a heck of a lot more fun.

Works Cited

Gaiman, Neil. The Doll's House. The Sandman, Volume 2. DC Comics: 1999. Print.

Halberstam, Jack. “Queer Temporality and Postmodern Geographies.” In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York, New York University Press: 2005.  1-21. Print.

Wilchins, Riki. Queer Theory, Gender Theory. Los Angeles, Alyson Books: 2004.