Queer couple plays with traditional marriage.

After this was marked for school (and got an A!) I decided that it would be awesome to post on my blog so that people could read it. I ended up writing this after a after-work conversation with my manager Mindy. She is rad. So is her wife Sarah. They were so awesome in fact, that I had to write about them. What was once an academically sided feature on gender became an awesome lesbian marriage story. At least I hope it did.
[This was intended for my grandmother's generation to read and understand, thus the obvious nature of some of it.]

Thanks for reading!


Queer couple plays with traditional marriage.

Mindy Hurlburt-Wong smiles out from the frame of her wedding photo. Perched on her partner’s lap she holds on tight and laughs while the hem of her white strapless dress falls to the floor. Sarah Wong plays the groom to Mindy’s bride and Sarah sits proudly in a suit and tie. In 2005 when Mindy married her longtime girlfriend they resembled the traditional cake topping couple. Being a same-sex couple allowed the pair to examine their own identities and figure out how they saw themselves in relation to their straight friends.

“There’s still not a lot out there as far as cultural identification [goes],” says Mindy, sipping on her glass of white wine. “[Queer people] have to find identity through what we’re not.” They found that they fit the mainstream images of male and female, but this is not as straightforward as it first appears.

If you saw Mindy on the street you couldn’t tell that she’s a lesbian. She identifies as “femme.” A derivative of the word feminine, femme is a term for women - or men - who wish to be feminine in their appearance. Wong prefers to stick to her typically masculine appearance. It is the state in which she is most comfortable. But her masculine appearance doesn’t mean she wants to be a man. It is just the way she feels at ease.

“It doesn’t really affect anything more than what kind of clothes we like to wear,” Mindy says. “Everybody plays with those kinds of roles to some degree. It doesn’t mean that I’m not always the one that kills bugs in our house.”

Culturally, the stereotypical lesbian looks more like Billy Idol than Madonna. She might have a job as a truck driver or a construction worker. Her hair is short and her she stands with an intimidating posture – not the type of person you’d want to meet in a dark alley. The increased awareness and acceptance of lesbianism has helped dismiss this stereotype, but Mindy agrees there’s still work to be done.

While Sarah adopts some of the traditional lesbian qualities - short hair and male dress clothes - she still does not have the rough personality historically associated with her appearance. Mindy finds that she doesn’t need to take on the traditional lesbian image. She can enjoy the parts of being a woman that she loves. “I love being a woman and I don’t plan to change that during my lifetime – but that doesn’t mean I won’t take on other roles,” she says, making it clear that her appearance doesn’t make her weak or inadequate.

Mindy doesn’t see any characters on TV or in magazines who look and act the same as she does. Most of the queer images in mainstream media send a negative message, which makes finding a positive and realistic sign of queer culture difficult.

“The only representations I’ve encountered in mainstream media are victims [of abuse] like Matthew Shepherd and transgender people like Hillary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry,” she says, pointing out the sensationalism and factual errors that accompany any portrayal of alternative lifestyles.

Lacey Haynes has studied queer lifestyles and finds that the media is quick to pigeonhole people into stereotypes for clarity rather than accuracy. “You lose all the other aspects of people based on their label. Then everyone with the same label becomes the same person. Like queer female and that’s her label but we forget that that person is also a mother and an academic,” says Haynes. “We like to think that we are more progressive than we actually are. I think it’s still really black and white.”

Often the labels of lesbian relationships extend from sexual preference into gender roles. “Gender wise I would have to say that there is no definitive identification available to any of us,” says Mindy. “I think it’s quite a fluid thing and depends on the circumstances of my partner and how I hold myself and present myself in any given situation,” she says, making reference to her feminine stature in her wedding photo. “I think playing femme is a big part of our relationship. I admittedly call it a performance.

“I think when I am with my wife I’m always read as straight because we are read as a straight couple everywhere we go. I appear to be very feminine and she appears to be very masculine,” she says. “We’ve had a few issues with that within the gay community as well. Sometimes people think that my wife is a transman,” she says, referring to the gender presentation of biological females who have transitioned to be males.

We talk about other forms of transformation. “I love the idea of drag. It’s what we did when we were kids. We dressed up. We used to play Gun Smoke. The girls always stuffed their mothers’ bras with tennis balls,” she says, laughing as she recalls the popular ‘50s show.

The mention of childhood role-playing brings her back to our discussion of adult roles. “Sarah believes we are no different from hetero middle class males,” says Mindy. “She said ‘we want a house, we want a wife, we want a car, we want a vacation once a year,’” Mindy says, explaining the generalized goals of the male middle class.

Mindy finds that she and Sarah stretch the acceptable boundaries of what is permitted among their middle class straight friends. “The kids of friends of ours ask my wife, ‘Why do you look like a boy?’ Or ‘Are you a boy or a girl?’” Mindy says she often sees her friends shush their children as they ask these questions about Sarah’s appearance. Mindy says that her wife is very open to explain herself, “Sarah has never ever hesitated to kneel down and explain, ‘I’m a girl, I like to wear my hair short and I like to wear boy’s clothes but I’m a girl,’”

“I think there is definitely a political sensitivity that is making it more difficult than it has to be,” says Mindy.