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Featured Article Jan Steckel
Jan Steckel
Bi-Dyke Bonnie and the Sword of Snart

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Bonnie's wrath only began to subside when the following letter arrived from the cool-headed lesbian Lord Nicki Hastie of Nottinghamshire, who resided at nickihastie.demon.co.uk.

Lord Nicki Hastie of Nottinhamshire
Lord Nicki Hastie of Nottinhamshire

"Bonnie, I can't believe someone would give you a lesson in the word 'dyke'! I think 'bi-dyke" is a great term and makes it very clear to anyone who wishes to really listen and understand that you identify as bisexual and are primarily woman-identified. The important thing is that we self-identify, that we call ourselves what feels best to us. For me, the term 'bi-dyke' gives me a feeling of strength and unity. I think of it as another way of celebrating the word 'dyke'."

Under the calming influence of Lord Hastie's reasonable rhetoric, Bonnie's wrath abated somewhat, and she returned to her researches. The question became, Bonnie realized: Who had the right to tell another woman what to call herself, or how to identify? What authority would be issuing sexual identity cards, and how would the sexual identity police enforce membership in the categories they deemed legal? Finally Bonnie found a website called Kreative Korps that gave her an answer. The site listed some 900 gender/sexuality names, of which bidyke (now a single unhyphenated word) was just one. Others included "trisexual," "fourth gender," "hard femme," "library dyke," "homovestite," "MTFTM," and "do-me queen." Wrote the author of the site: "I will not attempt to define all these terms, since no English words could do any of them justice. The exact meaning of each one is undefinable, and there probably isn't an exact meaning anyway, since some of these even differ among people."

Zie then went on to suggest visitors combine terms for their gender, sex, orientation, sexuality, identity, etc., pointing out that "there are a total of 8.4527_10 to the 270th power or 8.4 novemoctogintillion possible combinations, more than there are elementary particles in the universe," and invited readers to "[s]end any suggestions for sex, gender, or orientation terms to genderterms at kreativekorp dot cjb dot net. Send any flames, hate mail, or homophobic/transphobic crap to /dev/null." If that wasn't an example of consummate Snart, Bonnie didn't know what was.

By the time she had finished her search, Bonnie understood there need be no Battle of the Bi-Dykes. She had natural allies all over the known perverted World. The evolution of language and attitudes was clearly on her side. She could call herself whatever she pleased, and she didn't have to worry about offending some ungallant old-school butch who just crawled out from under a lesbian separatist rock. She thrust the Sword of Snart into a chunk of granite at the corner of Castro and Market. There it remains, awaiting the day that another righteous cause shall arise, and the anointed Autogynephiliac, Bitchboi, Transhuman, Cisgender Boy or Hermaphrodyke shall wrench it free and wield it once again.

Jan Steckel, a former physician, is the author of The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006). Her stories, poems and essays have appeared in Anything That Moves, Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, and elsewhere. Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize twice, once for creative nonfiction and once for poetry. More of her work can be found at jansteckel.com
 
 
 
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