"We Hope You Persist"...

Okay, so I have been sitting on this post for a while...really, since Friday. And I really wanted to write something then, from the raw, vulnerable, angry, enraged, and otherwise pissed off part of me. But... I am glad I waited.

So, I am sure you all are wondering what could have possibly happened to Behr to put him in that uncomfortable spot of rampant emotion?


Well, let's see.

I was at work for one of the monthly staff meetings. And I was getting ready to go into the washroom. And even though I identify as male on my own time, at work, I am very much that little "F" on my passport and ID.

So here I was, walking up into the washroom, and there was this woman who instantly delegated herself to the role of "gender defender". She proceeded to march right on up into the bathroom after me....hot on my heels to begin pounding on the stall door all the while retorting rather loudly, "You're in the wrong bathroom. Hello, this IS the ladies room. Hello???"

And as she pounded away, I thought to myself, "Not again!! Didn't I just go through this shit only a few months ago?" And I sat there, being inundated with a bazillion and one responses to her insistence.

I think in those few milliseconds, I ran the gambit from rude to polite to just plain nasty.

I heard the words leave my mouth, and I was shocked.

In the calmest voice I think I have EVER possessed, I retorted, "Oh really, well thanks for making sure I made it to the right place."


I don't know where this calm response came from.

Inside I was RAGING. I was also somewhat dying inside. After all, this was the one place the world had yet to and I had hoped would never step into with their bullshit.

I mean, my employer works very hard to enforce a zero tolerance policy of homophobia in the workplace. And yet here was this person being so blatantly insensative to queer identity.

Yeah, it can be argued whether or not this truly was an act of homophobia...but when you think about it....really what else could it be? I mean here is someone reacting quite poorly to how I as a queer person, as a person who looks, thinks, acts, and lives as a male in the majourity of aspects of my life, and when that very fact of that is brought up and questioned, when my sex is questioned...over something so insignificant as a fucking washroom. Yes, that is homophobia.

I would love to say that I was easily able to let this go by Friday evening. And sadly, I can't.

You see, this kinda shit happens to me all the gawd damned time. And every time, it gets harder and harder....rather than the other way around.

One would think that after getting this for much of my life as a queer, I would toughen up. I would learn to ignore it.


But how can I when I am repeatedly stripped of my dignity in the stalls of a ladies washroom?


Okay, so I am sure many of you think, "Oh Behr, there is an easy EASY solution....you identify as male, therefore use the guys room."

Oh, if only it were that easy.

Using the guys room has it's own myriad of problems. I am not safe there either. When guys realize that I am not one of the members of their "bio-male" priveledge, they tend to make rude comments, and otherwise make it ABUNDANTLY clear that I do not belong.

So, when I am stripped of dignity in the ladies room, made to feel like a freak in guys room, just where the fuck do I go?

I mean, I was detained at Uwajimaya (an Asian food market) here in Seattle for supposedly going into the ladies room, and thereby making another patron "fear for her well-being". The police showed up, security showed up, and there I was having to shoulder this huge burden of being different in a world that doesn't allow for differences.

I have been drug out of a bathroom at Sea-Tac Airport with my pants around my ankles, struggling to pull my boxerbriefs up because someone "feared for their safety with a man in the washroom". And again I had to shoulder that burden.

I was beaten within an inch of my life in a washroom in Oklahoma City because I looked like a" faggot" in the guys room. And YET AGAIN I had to should that burden.

And now, at the one place I considered safe, I too had to shoulder the burden of being and looking different than some bullshit heteronormative binary definition of masculine and feminine/male and female.

And so, I carried this around with me all weekend. I tried my best to forget it in the duties of my job, in the arms of my lover, the comforting words of my friends and chosen family. But it was like a thorn in my side, digging deeper and festering with infection.

It simply wasn't going away.


So, it was Wednesday when I was invited to go to an Ivan E. Coyote and S. Bear Bergman performance at Empty Sea Studios here in Seattle. And I am sure you all are wondering how this is going to tie into the nightmare of the washroom madness. And by the time I am done talking about this show, it will all become clear.

You see, I had seen Ivan's work around the Internet, I had read his writings about the same things in reguards to the washroom. And never did they really take much precedence as I read through them. It was more of a, "Yeah, I totally get that, I have SO been there.".

So, last night, I sat as he spoke his truth, and bared his soul.

And something he said made it all clear to me.

He was talking about a letter to his younger self, and what he would tell himself from who he is today. And he said, "Hold you head up." He said, "Don't let the queer community pressure you.", and a myriad of other things that my soul just needed to hear. It is one thing to read someone's words, but another to hear them speaking them.

Seeing him on that small stage, made him all the more real. Made his words all the more real.

And because of that, his words took depth, took meaning. And I learned I was not alone. I learned that it is in solidarity that we learn to carry on, we learn to walk on, holding our own path. Because, there is always someone else out there who may need our experiences to help them through the same rough bullshit sometime.

I was so moved by his words yesterday, that I ended up buying his anthology called, "Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme".

I knew I would look to it to keep me knowing that I struggle with this not in vain, not alone. To know that I can survive this, and do so with my dignity still intact.

So, this morning, feeling good about my experience last night, my catharsis as it were, I flipped open this book, and read the first few pages of the introduction and the first story inside. And as I did, these words came out at me with the force of an atom bomb:


"...Audre Lorde said: 'When we define ourselves, when I define myself, the place in which I am like you and the place in which I am not like you, I'm not excluding you from the joining-I am broadening the joining.'


We hope this book will broaden the joining. We hope it will stretch and break and reform those tired and tiring definitions into the words and worlds we all see around us.....


We hope that you find parts of yourself in these pages and a sense of history and community and belonging between it's covers. And we hope you persist."



And it was those last 5 words that echoed through my heart and soul.

"And we hope you PERSIST."

And my brain played those words over again....

"AND WE HOPE YOU PERSIST."

With those epiphanous words, I had found the dignity I had lost, I had found the strength I lacked. And I knew, nothing these narrow-minded and ignorant people could say or do would take away who I am, and how I walk through the world. I will persist.



I WILL PERSIST.