Being a Queer Poet Today

Until the January 2025 presidential inauguration, being queer did not feel particularly courageous.

I have spent much of the last ten years or so experimenting with the idea that I might be a trans woman--I don't know if I really am.

I do know that I respond erotically to my own body the way I respond to a woman.

My feet have received much of this auto-cathexis, and it is interesting that when I was a child I was embarrassed by and hated my feet. 

Hating my feet and loving my feet are the same, except that loving my feet is both more fun and more disgraceful.

I suppose I could enjoy another person jonesing on my feet, but it's enough for me to jones on my own feet.

Responding sexually to myself, especially my feet, is my way of being queer.

I wonder if the difference between queer people and straight people is that queer people give much more importance to non-aggressive sexual pleasure.

For straight men, sexuality is supposed to be assertively and aggressively phallic.

For straight women, sexuality is supposed to be meekly and submissively receptive--in some cultures even without pleasure.

Queer men and women both are more about non-aggressive sexual pleasure than straight men and women are supposed to be.

My poetry is largely about my sexual pleasure in myself.

In today's political climate, publishing my self-erotic poetry seems risky.

Also, as a trans woman--a biological male who identifies as a woman who enjoys her sexuality--publishing my poetry on Substack or somewhere feels too assertively and aggressively phallic.

I love writing it, though, because it lets me perform for myself as a drag dancer.

The rightist regime we're under wants me to be ashamed of myself as a self-enjoying sexual being. 

The rightist regime wants me to fear the worst from it--and I do.

But if I'm truly courageous, I love myself anyway.