Bridie's Diary, from the #Lesbian #Diaries Series by @GiselleRenarde

Last month I brought you Ariadne's Diary. This month we've got Bridie, and the books couldn't more different.

Ariadne's Diary is pretty porny, about a young woman crushing on an older one. Bridie's Diary is about an older woman crushing on a younger one. So maybe they're not so different after all. I guess the difference is tone rather than content. Both contain plenty of sex, but Ariadne strikes me as more smutty, whereas Bridie is more literary.

Or maybe the tone of both books is exactly the same. Authors are terrible judges of their own books.

All I know is that, at this point in my life (midlife), I identify with Bridie far more than Ariadne.

I'm glad things work out for her. I hope it's not a spoiler to say that her future's looking bright by the end of the book.

Bridie’s Diary
by Giselle Renarde
Series: The Lesbian Diaries
Book: 2

Bridie never expected to find herself in this position at midlife: leaving her husband and moving to the ends of the earth, purchasing her childhood home, falling in love with her tenant...

Ness is everything Bridie is not. She’s young and bold and artsy and trans. Bridie can’t fight the attraction. It’s addictive. It’s overwhelming.

But when Bridie’s best friend shows up to remind her what life was like when they were lovers, she’s torn between fresh possibilities and familiar passions. Will Bridie choose the old or the new? Or will life choose for her?

Lesbian fiction from award-winning queer Canadian author Giselle Renarde.

Get it from Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/987942?ref=GiselleRenardeErotica
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Radish readers can read the serialized version here: https://radish.app.link/eNqKBykw50

Hello, Kitty by Giselle Renarde

I'm not sure who started it.  Maybe it began organically.  Maybe it started with Lexi Wood, the sock puppet who lives in my night table and writes stepdaddy smut.  Or maybe it started before that.  Hard to say.

Maybe it started with a spanking.

In fact, yes, it probably did.

Was that spanking my idea or hers? Can a spanking be a mutually spontaneous idea?  If it can, then it was.  She'd never spanked anyone.  I'd never been spanked.  But from the very first smack, we were hooked.

It grew from there.  We'd both mentioned, in passing, that roleplay wasn't an interest.  We weren't lying.  When we said those words, they were true.  And yet, somehow, things evolved.  Spankings altered the power dynamic. In bed, I grew younger, she grew more... authoritative.

When she bought me the hot pink Hello Kitty panties, she became my Daddy.  I became her little girl.

Now, there are complications here.  Complications beyond the taboo nature of a Daddy/daughter ageplay scene.  We've got insecurities, yes we do. And many of our primary insecurities are around gender.

Lesbian Daddies have been around since the dinosaurs. There's a long history there, but for an older trans woman who's led a shockingly vanilla life (until she met me), that seems like a different world. I've never called Sweet "Daddy" out loud, and I'm not even sure I'd want to. I think it might squick me bad and throw her into a not-so-sexy abyss of gender dysphoria.

But wouldn't you think I'd fall into that same abyss when my girlfriend calls me her little girl?  I am genderqueer, after all. My gender seems constantly in flux and it's hardly a binary entity. When people use strongly gendered terms with me in day to day life, it fucks me up.  For me, gender dysphoria feels like... I don't know, vertigo? What does vertigo feel like?  Makes me dizzy, anyway.  Sometimes all the way to that pre-fainting feeling where you know you're going to black out but you're trying really hard not to.

Is that how I feel when my girlfriend calls me her little girl?

Nope.

It's titillating. And it suits me, physically. I've got this tiny body.  Some of my clothes are children's clothes because that's what fits. But when I'm out in the world, do I want to be treated like a little girl?  Nope on the "little" and nope on the "girl".

In the bedroom is a whole other matter.  I put on my hot pink Hello Kitty panties and I get to be this person I would never be in public. I get to be that person in a safe space with a woman I trust more than anyone in the world.

She's bigger, I'm smaller.  She's older, I'm younger.  These are elements that can become very distressing in a relationship if you try to sweep them under the rug. It's no good to dismiss the ways in which being older/younger and bigger/smaller impact the power dynamic in the relationship as a whole. If you don't acknowledge these factors, they can fester--been there, done that.  It's not pretty.

We can add an element beyond bigger/smaller, older/younger.  Of course we can.  In fact, we can add two, because what's an ice cream sundae without a big banana and a cherry on top?  So let's add the fact that my girlfriend is actually actively a father.  She's not out with her kids.  She might not be their Daddy but she's certainly their dad. And me? I never discuss my gender identity with my family. Just doesn't seem necessary at this stage.  Or I'm scared. Point is, won't I always be my parents' little girl?

These are topics that can be uncomfortable to discuss and tricky to work through.  I think the organic roleplay that's eased its way into our sex life has helped us to address some of our anxieties around size, age and gender.

Maybe some day I'll be ready to call my girlfriend Daddy. Maybe some day she'll be eager to hear it.

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A Man's a Man, For All That

by Jean Roberta



[This photo shows "Ken Lisonbee" with companion Stella Harper, 1929]

“In the mid to late 1860s, a trans man who went by the name of George Green married Mary Biddle in Erie, Pennsylvania. . . It is unclear where George and Mary lived immediately following their Pennsylvania marriage, but at some point in the 1870s the couple moved to the rural countryside seventy miles outside of Raleigh, North Carolina. . . At some point between 1900 and 1902, the couple moved 140 miles to the north, to the small town of Ettrick, Virginia."

Why is all this noteworthy? Because "George Green" (born in England in 1833), who spent all his life doing farm labour in the United States, was found to be biologically female after his death in 1902.

Were the Greens' rural neighbours shocked and horrified? It seems not. Here is what George`s widow had to say, quoted in a Virginia newspaper: "He was the noblest soul that ever lived. He has worked so hard through his life, and has been all I had to cheer me. No man can say he ever wronged him. He was a Christian and I believe he is now with Christ."

Apparently, Green's funeral was held in a local Roman Catholic church, and he was buried in the Catholic cemetery in Petersburg, Virginia.

"This is just one of the historical stories of "passing" women, or trans men, in True Sex: The Lives of Trans Men at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (New York University Press, 2017) by Emily Skidmore, an Assistant Professor of History at Texas Tech University.

As Skidmore shows, most of these men (people?) lived in rural areas, not in urban communities where "queerness" might be less noticeable. Most of them married cisgendered women, and lived conventional lives as white male citizens. As the author shows, whiteness, hard work, and patriotism were all important components in their social acceptance in the American "heartland," even after their "true sex" had been revealed.

This book is one of a spate of recent studies that disputes what "Jack" Halberstam has called "metronormativity:" a widespread belief among students of "queer" history that before the Stonewall Riots of 1969 (in Greenwich Village, New York), LGBT individuals migrated to cities so they could live with any smidgen of safety.

The men (and this word seems much more accurate than "women") in Skidmore`s book lived far from any contemporary edgy, artsy, avant-garde communities, and most of them professed conservative values. For all practical purposes, they were male citizens. They ploughed fields, chopped wood, fought in wars, ran businesses, drank and smoked in saloons. And they voted in local and national elections before women were given the right to vote in 1920.

This is a fascinating book, and as the author explains in her introduction, the research was made possible by modern technology. She spent several years combing through digitized regional and national newspapers from about 1870 to 1940, and the thoroughness of her research wouldn`t have been possible while all this material only existed on yellowed paper.

For better or worse, this historical information throws a monkey wrench in the concept of a coherent "queer" community, "queer" identity, or "queer" history. Queerness has always come in a rainbow of colours.

If at First...

by Giselle Renarde

I don't remember meeting my girlfriend. That sounds terrible, but she doesn't remember meeting me either. We know how we met, but neither of us remembers specifically what day of the week it was or what the other was wearing. It if had been love at first sight, we would have remembered. There would have been sparks.

Maybe I've told this story before. In fact, I'm sure I have in one way or another. You know by now my girlfriend is trans. You also know she's not out with her family. With them, she presents male. That's how she looked when I met her.

We didn't take much notice of each other until we fell into conversation. I noticed she took particular interest in gender and gender identity. In fact, she brought up trans topics so often I thought she was a trans man for a while.

She tested the waters with me by saying she looked good dressed as a woman. She didn't come right out and tell me she was trans.  Even though she knew I had a lot of trans friends and acquaintances, she still didn't know if she could trust me.  She didn't want to lose the friendship we'd built.  She couldn't have known, back then, that I don't hold myself at any one end of the gender spectrum. I'm not sure I could have articulated where I was coming from, but I think our individual journeys with gender brought us closer.

I can tell you everything about the night I met Sweet presenting as a woman. Every detail.

I'd been out with a friend and came home to about 16 voicemail messages. First, Sweet was inviting me to a movie. Then, as it got later, "Maybe we could get together. I just want you to SEE me." To this day, Sweet never thinks to call my cell phone. She'll just leave a series of messages at my home number.

As soon as I got home I called her back. "It's late," she said. "I'll come to you... if that's okay."

We live in different cities. It wasn't exactly a short drive. She didn't knock at my door until one in the morning, and when I opened up it was to a striking redhead wearing a long green skirt, short-sleeved blouse and sandals. I can see her in my mind. I can see the scene so easily.

"This is ME," she said. And I knew what she meant.

That's when the spark happened. That's when I fell for her. I don't want it to seem like it was necessarily her physical appearance that changed things so much. It was more like an unveiling. She wanted me to SEE her, and I did.

****
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Fascination/Disgust

by Giselle Renarde

I won't say who (because it really doesn't matter), but one time I mentioned online that my girlfriend is trans and a fellow author was absolutely FASCINATED. She said, "Oooh that's so interesting! I've never had the honour of meeting a trans person, but I've always wanted to."  Not the first time I've encountered that reaction, but it's one that always leaves me feeling a little uneasy. And I'll tell you why:

The whole world's got a Madonna/Whore complex when it comes to the trans population. I don't know what the deal is, but it's like there are two categories trans people get dumped into:

1. "Eww! Gross! Disgusting perverts! Keep them away from me!"
2. "Wow, they're so special and spiritual and fascinating and inhabit a higher plane of existence than us mere mortals."

Okay, obviously I'm vastly oversimplifying and usually when I discuss touchy subjects I get a lot of angry communications, so I've been pretty quiet lately because it really sucks to bare your soul to the internet and then get shit all over, but oh well. I think this is pretty important, so here it is.

People are people.

I won't even touch on the "Eww" reaction because if you're reading this I'm sure you realize that being grossed out by trans people is  really really super-duper transphobic. If you carry this reaction inside you (even buried deep deep down), that's something you should probably look at.

But what's so wrong with the flip side? What's so bad about being like, "Wow every person in population X is totally awesome. They're all THE BEST!!!"?

Well, because positive stereotyping is actually pretty dehumanizing. When I hear someone being either fascinated or disgusted by an entire population, all I can think is like... that's  A LOT of people you're grouping together right there. A lot of different people. It's not like every member of the trans population is exactly the same person. Being fascinated or disgusted just sort of reveals the speaker as having little/no experience with that population.

Which isn't news, I guess. I mean, look at the quote I started with. The author was telling me straight out that she'd never met anyone who was trans (to the best of her knowledge, I'll add). But the most telling part of that quote was the word "honour." It implies a kind of otherizing fascination that emphasizes difference. "Those people are not like us."

Now, I don't want it to come across like I'm saying there's no commonality within the trans population. Obviously there is an aspect of shared experience for those who are raised one gender and and have lived any portion of their lives with another gender identity.

But ultimately trans people are just people who are trans. Some may feel a degree spirituality or yin/yang-ness in relation to their transness, but everybody's different that way.

So, is it an honour to meet someone who's trans? Well, sure, I guess--in the same cosmic sense that it's an honour to meet anyone (Namaste means "the divine in me greets the divine in you." I know I act like a jaded old bastard sometimes, but I do believe there's divinity in everyone.) But it's no more so an honour to meet a transgender person than it is to meet a cisgender person... unless we're talking about someone famous like Janet Mock, because OMG wouldn't you just DIE? She is so cool. But I'm sure she would laugh at me for gushing and be like, "I'm just a person too."

I feel like I'm doing a really crappy job of articulating my point,but it is three in the morning and I totally just derailed myself by mentioning Janet Mock, so maybe I'll say if you're stuck inside a fascination/disgust feedback loop, read her book Redefining Realness.

And, just for Lisabet, I'll mention that I have a new book of lesbian erotica out. It's called What Do Lesbians Do In Bed? And, yes, it includes a few stories with trans characters.I write what I know.

Mortified

by Giselle Renarde

I'm somewhat at a loss.  This fortnight's topic (near-death experiences) isn't one I can related to.  The only time I've ever lost consciousness was last year, when I sliced my finger open with a kitchen knife and fainted.  Woo!  That was something else!  But not a near-death experience.

I asked my girlfriend, just now, if she's ever had one.  Nope.  No luck there.

But it got me thinking about something that happened to her a couple years back, when she was having lunch with a friend.  In case I haven't mentioned it lately, my girlfriend (I call her "Sweet" online) is transgender.  She identifies as female, but she's not out of the closet with her family.  A few of them know, but most see her as a man, and she continues to present as male when she's around them.

Among friends, she's stealth--that is to say, she presents and identifies as a woman. Not trans. Not genderqueer.  Not "other."  Just a woman.

Many of the trans women I know are older people--say, sixty-plus.  One big difference I've noticed between trans friends in the "older adults" versus "younger adults" age category is that the older ones tend to be stealth.  Only their inner circles know they're trans.  Many also lead lives in which their time is split between two distinct identities, two distinct genders. In some situations they present male, even though they identify as women.

By contrast, the younger trans women I know tend to be out.  They don't mind people knowing they were raised as boys.  They deal with any repercussions that might arise because they don't feel ashamed of their identities.  This isn't a hard-and-fast rule, of course--just something I've noticed among friends.

Anyway, back to this non-near-death-experience.

My girlfriend was eating lunch at a restaurant with a friend with whom she was stealth.  They were enjoying a perfectly pleasant conversation when everything went black.  The next thing Sweet remembers is regaining consciousness in an ambulance, with a paramedic holding her wig in one hand and her driver's license (with her male name) in the other.

She was mortified.  She had no idea what had happened. There was only one thing she was sure of: her friend would abandon her, hate her, tell all their mutual acquaintances what a freak "she" was...

That's not what happened.  Her friend filled in the blanks as much as possible.  Apparently Sweet started nodding off as they were eating, then just collapsed.  She kept breathing, but nobody could bring her back.  Restaurant employees called 9-1-1.

When the paramedics arrived, they couldn't get her to regain consciousness.  They loaded her onto a stretcher and carried her to the ambulance.  Her friend came along and witnessed Sweet unmasked and revealed in a way that made my girlfriend very uncomfortable.

Sweet was absolutely sure the incident would dissolve a friendship she'd spent years cultivating.  She was far more concerned about the social fallout than her health. Her health was an afterthought.  (She's been scheduled for an MRI twice, but each time she's had an anxiety attack at the prospect of entering that machine.)  When I talked to her that day, she was freaking out.

And then... nothing happened.  Her friend drove her home and called the next day to make sure she was okay. Her friend emailed, as usual, to schedule their next get-together.  Nothing changed.  Their friendship went on, as usual.  Maybe this woman read Sweet as trans all along.  Who knows?  It's hard for me to assess my girlfriend's "passability."  We're just too close.  To me, she's the most beautiful woman in the world.  Could be that others view her differently.

Doesn't really matter, though, because the point of the story is that the scariest thing in my girlfriend's world happened to her.  She was "unmasked" in front of a friend and in front of strangers.  (Those paramedics put the "professional" in healthcare professional, by the way.)  And she lived to tell the tale.

Come to think of it, it's not even a very exciting story.

Off with the Fairies

by Giselle Renarde

I'm glad J.P. Bowie mentioned pantomime earlier this week. I can riff on that.

Because my Sweet talks about pantomimes once in a while.  Her take is that you can't really pull off panto the same way they could back in the day, because children's sense of humour is too sophisticated.  Used to be that the adults were the only ones laughing at the dirty jokes.  Now kids have enough exposure that they understand innuendo.

I don't know if that's true, but it's never the point of Sweet's story. She tells me about the seventies, when her kids were growing up and kids in general were still naive enough that pantomimes didn't raise parents' hackles.  Her daughter's drama group put on a pantomime one year, and asked if any of the dads would take on the Dame role. Sweet jumped at the opportunity.

So, I should probably mention that my girlfriend still identified as a man in the seventies.  She'd been cross-dressing secretly since childhood, but the word "transgender" wouldn't pop up on her radar until the 1990s.  Hearing that word for the first time, and learning its implications, would become a Eureka moment.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let's stick with the seventies.

See, when Sweet performed in pantomime, that was the only time she got to be herself in public.  Sure, she was basically a joke, but she didn't care.  If the trade-off was that she had to be the butt of a joke in order to wear a skirt in public... well, she was willing to laugh along.

A lot has changed in the past... holy fuck, was the seventies forty years ago?  Anyway, my girlfriend identifies as a transsexual woman now (though she's still very closeted where her family's concerned) and she shies away from any behaviour that might call her gender into question.

Sweet's stories about the progression of her identity from cross-dresser to questioning to trans have fueled my fiction for years (with her enthusiastic blessing, of course).  It seems flighty for a grounded person like me to consider any other human my muse, but her history has certainly inspired a lot of my work.

I've dubbed November Transgender Fiction Month (and I am unanimous in this) because I'm re-releasing my huge backlist of trans and genderqueer erotic romances. (Four of them have been mysteriously "declined" by Kobo, but if you want to know more about that you can check out my blog.)

To bring this post back to the fairy realm, I'll mention two titles that showcase the breadth this genre can encompass:

A Wolf in Grandmother's Clothing is an erotic(ish) adaptation of the Little Red Riding Hood story.  I say "erotic(ish)" because there's actually no sex in it.  It's a fetish story, a cross-dressing story assuming that Grandma was super-into BDSM gear.  Once she's inside the wolf (because he eats her, people! it's not dirty!), he can't suppress the woman's voice in his head, telling him to shave those legs and put on some leather.

On the flip side, there's another fairy story--actually, a story about fairies--Secrets of the Solstice Sacrifice, which is set long, long ago in a mythical Welsh village.  Trysta is a mixed-roots fairy with a "female problem" she hasn't fully disclosed to her supportive caru Bedwyn.  Her anatomy doesn't quite match her heart. Trysta's only

hope to transform her body lies with Professor Selyf, the solitary magical who falls instantly in love with her.  And it's a good thing they're both drawn to each other, because the only way route to transformation is a sexual sacrifice on the solstice...

My brain is shutting down at the moment, so instead of saying something deep and meaningful I'm just going to post an excerpt from Secrets of the Solstice Sacrifice:

Wrapping her arms around his neck, she ensnared him in a kiss the likes of which he’d never imagined. He felt her veiled passion coursing through his veins as his mouth melded with hers.

Their tongues fought and surged, one against the other. His whole body was so rapt with hers he could hardly breathe. As they kissed, he ran intrepid fingers through her silken hair and down her back. In turn, she held his cheeks and his neck, his back and his sides. When he grasped the firm flesh of her buttocks, Trysta wheezed and broke free.

The look in her eyes was indiscernible but for the temptation it aroused. He almost apologized for being so dreadfully forward before realizing it was she who’d kissed him.

Grabbing her wrists, he pulled her into his arms and carried forth the sweet embrace she’d abandoned. After a moment of brave indecision, she gave in to the kiss and melted in Selyf’s arms. His tongue wrangled hers until she broke away once more.

Pressing her soft lips to his ear, she whispered, “I’ve never felt like this before.”

“Neither have I,” he admitted. “You’ve aroused in me the sleeping serpent.”

At that turn of phrase, her body grew limp in his arms.

“Yes,” she said. “I know only too well what you mean.”