queerness | Theo Kane

December 30, 2024

Assigned F(aggot) at Birth

I hold a book "written" by Erica Kane called Having It All. — Erica Kane truly had it all. Including her own book! Yes, this may be a photoshop of me and the book, but the book is real. All My Children commissioned a marketing promo stunt book by a fictional character.

I arrived nameless as the doctor put a pink bow on my head: a diluted scarlet letter F.

My parents believed with their whole hearts that I’d be a boy. No reason. No shadow penis on an ultrasound. Only faith in my father’s chromosome-carrying sperm.⁽¹⁾

I imagine, on that snowy evening, when a nurse asked them for my name, they both blinked, and my mother continued watching Remington Steele.

My father abhors being wrong, especially when a woman (girl) tells him so. But perhaps he clocked my birth as a half-win, proof of his virility against his ex-wife’s divorce petition stating his infertility.

Perhaps he considered my moments-old self the test run for his future baby boy. A lady from his Missouri Synod Lutheran Church wrote that exact sentiment in my baby shower card, and I read it 35+ years later.⁽²⁾

This left naming me up to my mother.⁽³⁾

Names are powerful. They speak to destiny. Continue reading “Assigned F(aggot) at Birth”

April 7, 2023

This Barbie is a Trans Nonbinary Person.

Life in smooth plastic. It’s fantastic!

As a child, I had an army of Barbies. Not a modest country’s army. Like US military spending army. I got Barbies for every birthday and holiday. I had my mom’s old Barbies. I accumulated more Barbies from neighbors whose teenagers didn’t want them anymore, and plenty of garage sale finds. My maternal grandma made me a Barbie birthday cake where the cake was Barbie’s dress, and in the middle of the cake stood Barbie.¹

My Barbies had an ice cream parlor (garage sale find), a horse stable (stolen from my younger brother), and an off-brand Barbie home (Christmas gift from the JCPenny catalog).² I’d decorate their home with craft supplies and random things I found. Those little plastic pizza separators in personal Pizza Hut pizzas I’d earned in book reading contests made great Barbie stools.

Barbie could be anything. Barbie was in charge. Barbie served ice cream. Barbie rode horses and raised rabbits like me. Barbie went on dates with other Barbies. Barbies spent a lot of time obsessed with fashion. Barbie was an astronaut. Barbie was a supermodel. Barbie gossiped. Barbie fought, despite a largely unbendable body except for Figure Skating Barbie. Barbie was also friends with all the other Barbies, Kens, and even the lone Skipper.

Barbie was a storytelling and fashion vehicle. I could act out my little stories, and in between, Barbie could wear the loud neon fashions of the 1980s and 90s with too many ridiculous heels that mine mostly forwent. Continue reading “This Barbie is a Trans Nonbinary Person.”

September 26, 2022

The Dearth of Working-Class Queer Novels

Books on their side with page texturing showing - dark green shaded

A gap in our reality and imaginations remains and disadvantages the realities for many queer people.

For many decades, queer people in the US flocked to NYC and San Francisco as a refuge against homophobia and transphobia. As a teen in the 1990s, my best friend would tell me about her NYC dreams. They were important, safe places for us, and queer narratives are full of dreams of those two cities. I relocated from rural Oregon to Seattle for my safety and security. In my hometown, the first openly queer and trans city councilor recently resigned due to racism, transphobia, and homophobia. (They were also the first person of color on the city council.)

But 30 years later, US-based LGBTQ+ stories stay confined to major cities and center on white cis gay men and lesbians who are either comfortably middle class or upper class. The Will & Grace NYC-based characters were lawyers, interior designers, and actors who lived in multi-million dollar condos. In the current re-imagining of The L Word: Generation Q, even broke characters always bounce back with robust family and friend support, and many are still incredibly wealthy: wearing designer clothing, flying private planes, buying a nightclub on a whim, hiding away in vacation mansions, etc., in Los Angeles. Very few break this mold, like P-Valley and (I believe, but haven’t watched myself) the recent reboot of Queer as Folk.

The political realities of LGBTQ+ people and class

It’s not surprising that, after 2016, the New York Times couldn’t find a single queer person in rural or “red” America. LGBTQ+ political issues were for the “coastal elites.” Clearly, every queer person had escaped or would escape these terrible places!

US class statistics show more working-class and low-income LGBTQ+ people than not. Continue reading “The Dearth of Working-Class Queer Novels”

May 22, 2022

The Girly Perfection of Flawless Polished Nails

Greco Roman statue that is chipped on the face

How I painted my fingernails like a man

I hated painting my nails. While I zealously painted my toenails for decades, I hated painted fingernails. They always chipped, and I’d pick at the remaining polish and destroy my nails as layers peeled away like onion skins. I couldn’t stop myself from picking them apart.

Until my late 20s, I was too poor and cheap to get professional manicures. But even when I did (not often), I’d dread the walk over to the neat little racks showing off what brands and colors the salon offered to pick mine.

My nails have always grown quickly and are strong and thick. Every keyboard bares indents from my nails, water carving through stone to form a river over time. While they eventually break, my nails stand against the wear and tear I’ve put them through, like ranching, gardening, and washing dishes. I’ve never had gels or professionally applied length because I could have natural long ones. Mostly, I’d look down at my nails one day, and they’d be very long again. Or I’d break an index fingernail, and suddenly keyboarding was catawampus. Or a cis woman would notice my hands, exclaim at how very long my nails were, and share how disappointingly brittle hers are.

But polish? Every chip made me feel like a failure. Like a little bomb telling me I did something wrong. I just had them done; they should be flawless like a woman in an advertisement with her flowing hair, lush makeup, and buttery hands with flawless nails.

Intellectually, I know no one’s nails are flawless, even if fresh from a manicure.

Every little chip felt like another flake of failure at being feminine, at being a woman. Continue reading “The Girly Perfection of Flawless Polished Nails”

February 18, 2022

I Hate Coming Out; I Am Out.

Rainbow pride flag with they/them in front of it. Photo is by Katie Rainbow on UnSplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/90bg59HzXxE?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditShareLink

In my novel, my main character is outed by his sister to the rest of their family at their father’s funeral. It’s not that the MC’s completely closeted when the novel starts: his friends know, his one sister and young nephew know, and of course, the people he dates also know. Additionally, I outed him and all my other fictional main characters on Twitter, so we’re always future-proof on my writing.

The novel is not a coming-out story for many reasons, including how I’m tired of them personally. But my biggest reason is that I hate coming out. I hate coming out, almost as much as I hate the misrepresentation of my identity. Continue reading “I Hate Coming Out; I Am Out.”

February 21, 2021December 30, 2021

The Value of a Story

Transgressing the story I’d told myself about my own queer stories.

In between my college courses, student groups, and work in the early 00s, I wrote a lot of fanfiction. Fanfiction is the writing of stories about characters from one’s favorite media, and it can be found across the internet for any and every type of media — movies, TV, books, celebrities culture, etc., — or fandom that you can think of. Fanfiction sculpted me as a writer, perhaps more than a fancy Creative Writing degree.

I wrote about Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, the X-Men, Stargate: Atlantis, Grey’s Anatomy, and a whole host of media properties I loved. Writing is about practice. Fanfiction gave me a lot of practice.

While not every fanfiction author seeks to better their craft, that was part of my desire. I got to play with characters and worlds that were not my own, but as a queer person, I also got to transgress them.

My fanfiction was a lot of queer romance. It had a lot of sex. It reflected my own experiences in dating and romance, and sorry for the TMI, but in my book, getting naked together on the first date has never been ruled out because it was the first date like so much media plays out. Whether Meredith and Cristina had shower sex at Seattle Grace or Angel and Wesley joined the mile-high club (under special necro-tempered glass!), my fandoms were my playgrounds.

Even today, there aren’t a ton of queer characters on TV, my primary fanfiction outlet. But there were fewer in the early 00s, especially on network TV or programs. And even the softest kiss — fit for a Disney Princess between two queer characters — gets labeled “for adults” and put in a bucket marked “for queers only, so there is no market.”

As someone with a 15 years+ marketing career, I could spend many words debunking that notion.

But for me, the damage hit internally. For me, it was being told that the only place I’d ever have an audience would be the secret corners of the internet, writing based on a fandom, under a pen name, and I’d never make a cent off it. Continue reading “The Value of a Story”