A Turkish Wedding and a Bow Tie

This weekend I went to the wedding of two people I’d never met before. When I got there, I didn't want to go in. But I did, and by the end of the evening I'm ashamed to say that I was actually dancing to a remix of a Justin Bieber song. I can't believe I just wrote that on the internet.

Honestly, I'm not the biggest fan of weddings. I'm not the biggest fan of weddings, or parties, or anything that involves dancing or socialising really. Especially not weddings - marriage is an institution and all that. So when I got an invite to the wedding of two people I didn't even know existed before, I was reluctant to go.

Needless to say, my folks ticked RSVP anyway and dragged me along. The wedding was huge, and I didn't know anyone. It’s usually the case with Turkish weddings. My granddad had ten brothers and one sister, and that’s just one grandparent out of four… so you can only imagine how many cousins I have. Despite this we still spent most of the weekend trying to figure out whether the groom was actually related to us or not. Maybe he was a cousin, maybe he was a family friend, maybe we both just had distant relatives from the same village… who knew?

I rocked up in my usual "smart-wear" - a suit with a funky shirt and bow tie. When we got to the entrance, there were a bunch of guys outside smoking, all wearing suits like men are supposed to wear suits, joking around like typical "lads". I just froze and thought what the fuck am I doing? I can't walk into a space full of heterosexual people looking like this.

We entered the lobby. My sister, Leyla, was wearing a bright green dress and bright green glitter-eyeliner. I had glitter in my hair. I looked around at everyone else, looking traditional as ever, and I whispered to her stuff like this always makes me feel like a sore thumb.

I was mis-gendered almost immediately. "Sir" is a word I'm too used to hearing, but I'm not tough or smart enough to have come up with a good come back yet, so I just respond as if nothing has been said wrong. Most the time I don't even correct people. When I needed the toilet, I asked Leyla if she'd come to the ladies' restroom with me because I didn't want to walk in alone. The thing is, I'm all too aware that if one person misgenders me, other people will too. And I hate thinking that when I'm in a women's-only space. I hate feeling like I could be making other people there uncomfortable.

This is ridiculous, of course, because I have as much of a right to be in women's-only spaces as any other woman. Yes, my gender-presentation is more butch/androgynous. And yes, my gender-identity is fluid. But for the most part I am female-identifying, or non-binary but still feeling more like a woman than a man. Rationally, I know I have a right to be there. Emotionally, I feel invasive, uncomfortable and wrong.

After the horror of the toilets was over, I started to relax a little. A little while after that, they played a song we knew by a Turkish popstar, and me and Leyla sung along in the corridor outside the main hall. A little while after that, I was bored so I asked Leyla if she wanted to dance. So we danced. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not the dancy kind of person, usually I hate it. But right then and there I wanted to feel normal. I wanted to feel like I could do what everyone else was doing in that space, and I could do it just as freely as anybody else could. I got a few funny looks. I did notice them. But I had also stopped caring by that point. That's what lead me to the shame of dancing to Justin Bieber (also, who plays Justin Bieber at a wedding?!).

Having said all of this negative stuff, as the night wore on I actually felt quite excited to be there. I got the odd look here and there, but for the most part, people were chilled about me clearly being a butch lesbian. Nobody made any rude comments, nobody seemed to be dragging their children in the opposite direction, and nobody told me I should have worn a dress. They didn't even hint that I would look nicer in a dress/better in a dress/it was weird that I was wearing a suit etc.

There was a time before when I would wear dresses just to fit in, or because someone else told me to. And there I was, at a huge family wedding, hanging out in my suit, and dancing with my sister, and having a good time. My mum, dad, grandma, aunt and the few other people I actually knew, were totally cool about the way I chose to present myself. And nobody thought I was spoiling the wedding simply by being there.

There came a point in my life a while ago when I had to decide between wearing what people expected me to wear and "fitting in," or wearing what made me comfortable and being that "sore thumb." In other words, choosing between accepting myself for who I was, or having other people accept me for someone I wasn't. In recent years I've chosen the loud and proud thing. It's a shame that wearing what I want automatically makes me loud, but that's the world we live in right now. The point is, I went to that wedding, and I rocked glitter, and I showed off my rainbow heart tattoo, and I had the gayest haircut in the world. And I wore a suit and I was happy. And people were nice to me.

I'm always on edge, but it's nice when something surprises you. People can be more wonderful than my anxiety gives them credit for. And that makes me happy about the world.

Why I'm vegan, but not a vegan activist

Content note: homelessness, death, racism, holocaust, cannibalism, war

It's no secret that I'm vegan, so people often ask me why I'm not an animal rights activist. After all, the arguments for veganism are clear: it's better for the environment, better for our health and better for the animals at the receiving end of our quest for meat and animal byproducts. I'm an activist, so why don't I fight veganism's corner? Why don't I do more animal rights activism in any sense of the term?

I'm walking down a busy street in central London, when I bump into a friend of mine. Carrie* is homeless, and has been for about six months. I ask her if I can get her something to eat, because I know the local cafes and restaurants throw her out if she enters to buy food, some bullshit about her homelessness "upsetting other customers." She says to me that she'd like a chicken burger.

I have never hesitated in buying Carrie a chicken burger. But I have thought about how this aligns with my principles.

Principle 1: Kindness. I try to support others where I can, particularly those who are in a situation that makes them vulnerable.

Principle 2: Veganism. I decided to become vegan because I never again wanted a penny of my money to go towards the exploitation of another life.

If I was to buy Carrie an avocado sandwich, or some falafel, or a veggie burger, I would be adhering to both of these morals. But I always buy her what she asks for, therefore consistently disregarding the first. I know that vegan food can provide every nutrient and every ounce of protein that a person possibly needs. So why don't I ever suggest buying her something vegan?

The answer for me is easy: because although I fully support animal rights, I think human rights are more important.

This is not to say that I am not a supporter of animal rights, or that I've never participated in animal rights activism. I often speak to people about my veganism, and up until recently I helped run a stall for animal shelters and animal rights charities in my local area. I promoted petitions against cruel sports like horse-racing, talked to people about snares, and gathered petition signatures against repealing the hunting ban. I wouldn't call myself an animal rights activist, but I've definitely participated in that kind of activism.

So where do I draw the line? Some animal rights activists, particularly vegan activists, have compared the exploitation of animals to eating children, racism and the holocaust.** I just find it all a bit unacceptable. I believe in showing love and acceptance to all forms of life, and I wish I could also believe that all life is equal. But when it comes down to it, if I had no choice but to choose between saving a baby's life or a chicken's life, I would save the baby. And if I had no choice but to choose between a cat's life or a baby's life, I would still save the baby.

I am what some would call a "speciesist" because I value human life the most. This doesn't mean that I think human beings are good for the earth, or good for other animals, or good for anything. In fact, I think our evolution was possibly the worst thing that ever happened to this planet. But I will fight for equality amongst all human beings before I would fight for equality between my sister and a chicken. I'm being a bit silly here, but you get what I mean.

I'm a believer in fairness and kindness between all species through and through. That's why I eat a meat-free diet, and am trying to eliminate all forms of non-vegan products from my life, from soap to medicine to the shoes I wear.

But let's go back to Carrie for a second. She's cold, she's got an infected wound on her hand, the police keep moving her on and she doesn't know if she'll have somewhere to sleep tonight. For me to go over to her and tell her that a plant based diet is what's best for her, and sorry but I don't buy meat, would be, in my opinion, just wrong. I would be taking away her right to decide what food she puts into her own body, and that would be completely dehumanising.

Some vegan activists would argue that I've used an extreme case, that those who aren't homeless could all make the effort to be vegan. But let's not forget that veganism is a privilege in the UK, where meat is so readily and easily available, and we've all been socialised into eating it. Such a big dietary change requires a lot of effort, a lot of time, and a lot of money. There's no point in a middle class kid like me telling other people that "it's so easy" and you "just do this." There's no point in me investing in clothes that were made without any animal by-products, if those clothes were made in some factory in Bangladesh which used child labour and paid the workers 3 pence an hour. And although I never agreed with what happened to Cecil the lion, I am disappointed in every person who signed that petition without giving a second thought to all the human beings being killed right now, from Syria to South Sudan.

So yeah, I'm vegan. And yeah, I love animals. And yeah, I'm proud of it. But there's only so much time a person can give to campaigning for change, and my time will go to human rights first.


*I've used a fake name to protect the identity of the woman I'm writing about
**This is not a representation of all animal rights or vegan activists, or all those who believe in animal rights or a vegan lifestyle. It represents a minority.

Not belonging in Bangkok

The woman at border control is butch and casually displaying her leg hair. She smiles at me as I make my way past the sign that says Welcome to Bangkok. I can't stop noticing queer couples on the street, and I feel a weird sense of immediate belonging, even though I've never visited before.

Of course, I don't belong in Bangkok. It's home to other people and I'm just a visitor. I keep thinking about this as I wander the streets and admire each place that we visit. In amongst the beautiful temples and hectic city rush, I notice skin whitening adverts. I notice how everything is written in English as well as Thai. I notice that there are hundreds of tourists here, oogling at the culture and sometimes laughing at it. I might not laugh, but I am still one of these tourists.

In Bangkok I notice my whiteness. I notice how pale my skin is, how pale my family are, how Eurocentric my history lessons at school where. How Eurocentric all my lessons at school were, and all of the TV shows I watched as a kid, and all the books I've sat and read.

I might be LGBTQ+, but that doesn't make every queer space somewhere for me. I love Bangkok, and I am having a fab time here. But it isn't somewhere that I belong. I hold privileges in many ways and I try to be mindful of this whilst I'm here. I feel ashamed for speaking to people in English so I'm trying to learn as much Thai as I can. I don't really know what this post is about because it's not like this should be something positive to report back on. I'm not doing anything good, just trying to recognise how privileged I am, how I can be a good ally and how I can listen to and respect Thai people more. I'm only a visitor and even the ability to visit is a privilege.

Wishing for a different body

Content Note: Weight, gender dysphoria

I remember the time before I had breasts. I used to stand in front of the long mirror in my parents' bedroom, made sure to keep the door shut. And with a bare chest and skinny legs, in nothing but a pair of shorts, I'd hit out at my reflection. This was before puberty hit, back before my body had curves from stomach to legs to hips to breasts. I was a tiny little kid. I pretended I was a boxer.

My body grew up too fast for me. By the age of 11 I'd started my period, and by the age of 12 I had a bra size of 32D. I quickly had to grow out of pretending to be a boxer, or at least I felt like I did. I pushed breasts into bras that my mum helped me pick. I cringed in horror as hairs began to spike across my legs. I started waxing when I was 13. By this point I had switched from boy's clothes to women's clothes. And even though I cut my hair short and only ever wore the trousers of my school uniform, I was still hurt when strangers called me he.... I have huge breasts, and I shave my legs - I'd think. I was never all the things they told you a woman should be on TV, but I was half of them.

I was always into comic books. I grew fond of half creatures - centaurs and mermaids and werewolves and valkyries. Even years into the feminist campaigning, singing power to the women at marches and protests, I still felt like an odd half. Like my words were void because I wasn't a stereotype of a woman - a proper woman. I always saw other women as more of a woman than I was. I didn't want to devalue their experiences.

I stood in front of the mirror. "She" I'd say out loud, and shake my head. "He" I'd say out loud and shake my head too. I've tried other pronouns, but none of them seem to fit. The language doesn't feel right to me. But I still correct people - it's she. I feel more she than he, anyway.

Femininity and masculinity are complicated things. I don't really know where I stand with gender, but I do know that I've always wanted to be physically more masculine and mentally more feminine. Does our gender reside in our mind or our body, or both? Which is stronger? What gender is my soul?

I stand in front of the mirror. I'm wearing a bra, and boxer shorts. I've sewn the front of the shorts together because I don't have a cock to fill out the space. This is a masculine feature I'm fine without. I love my vagina, I'm a hardcore feminist in that sense. But as I look at myself I poke the curve of my stomach, and I notice how I notice it.

I had this dream when I was a teenager, that I'd have a six pack like so many of the comic book characters that I worshipped. More muscle, more muscle, more muscle.

I don't remember when I first started struggling with weight. Everything else sits neatly on a timeline, but this doesn't seem to have a beginning - or an end. I didn't want to lose weight because it was seen as feminine. I wanted to lose weight to be less feminine. The flatter my chest, the flatter my stomach, the smaller my hips and butt and thighs - the more androgynous I'd look.

But as I thought about weight, it wasn't really weight I had a problem with - it was fat. I wanted my body to be flat and straight, like they showed men's bodies to be in magazines. But I didn't want to be thin. I'm a short person, and I often feel weak, and I still look a lot at my tiny body and think, I wish that I was stronger.

My body doesn't really want to be much stronger though. It has always been tiny. And it constantly tries to remind me that strength doesn't equal muscle and muscle doesn't equal strength. And I should really stop worrying about not looking androgynous enough, or masculine enough, or feminine enough. Because I just am.

I'm about to go on a trip. 10 weeks in South East Asia, miles away from where I'm writing this, in my bedroom in London, sitting next to my cat. I've never been away from home for this long before, but I'm not worried about many things. Except already I'm worried about my body. About not getting enough protein, and how wearing a swimming costume will inevitably highlight all the curves, and how my confusion about gender will make other people uncomfortable.

This time next week I'll be in Bangkok, and I'll try to keep writing.

Face paint

Part 1: The Green thing

What is it? People ask
Is it the Hulk, is it a turtle, is it Elphaba from Wicked?
I'm just green, I say. Just green.
This is not the face that knows what it is.
This is the face that could be anything.

Part 2: The tiger

This isn't the face that makes up stories,
Or the face that gets scared to talk to girls.
This is the brave face, the unashamed face,
The look at my stripes, they're so defined,
I'm not convinced by hiding face.
This is the brave face.

Part 3: The vampire

Spiky teeth are more terrifying sometimes, even if they're plastic.
They protrude from dry and swollen bright red lips under
Eyes that are the same as they always have been.
But they look darker in this light, like black glass.
This is the face of fear, the face of facing fear,
The face of turning away by painting fear.
This is the face of holding back tears and turning pupils glossy instead
This is the face of 2am walks in the dark.
This is not the face of fictional romance.

Part 4: The polar bear

This is the face of reality.
Its roar is louder than its vision.
Its almost see-through when it looks in the mirror.
It says I am your regret.
I am all the decisions you spent without thinking about consequences.
It recognises that it is peelable for the first time.
Everything - everything - is always lost, always covered up,
Apart from the eyes.
I see it in the eyes.
I am all the decisions you spent without caring about consequences.

Part 5: The superhero

At last there's a red star.
It's a mark. A forehead mark -
Like Wonder Woman's red star.
This is the face of a comic book geek
Who always preferred Marvel to DC,
But can't escape the charm of Wonder Woman.
A yellow streak, sneakers on bruised feet,
Walking high above the rooftops screaming I don't want to sleep
I am wonder woman, all my friends are wonder women,
all their friends are wonder women.
We are not impermanent. We can't be washed away.
We don't hide our truths behind layers of paint.
We make artwork, and it leaves its stains.
And when I wash yellow paint down the drain,
The character leaves,
But the strength it stays.

So what if I love my cat?

When I was in school, I used to write blogs about how I wasn’t a lot of things. Like how I wasn’t a cat-lover because I was a feminist (I just was), and I didn’t burn my bra because I was a feminist, and how having short hair didn’t mean I was a lesbian *spoiler alert*. So now I’m going to un-write them: I am a queer bra-burning vegan feminist, whose armpit hair is longer than the hair on the sides of her head. And I really like cats. Really, really.

I fit a lot of lesbian stereotypes. I fit a lot of feminist stereotypes. I fit a lot of lesbian feminist stereotypes. And even though the bra-burning claim *might* have been a lie (bras are expensive!), everything else is true, and I’m proud that it is.

I know I talk a lot on here about when I was younger. But... when I as younger, I actively tried to reject stereotypes in a bid to claim not all feminists. I was so caught up in convincing people that feminist stereotypes weren’t the true picture, that I didn’t stop to think what was wrong with these stereotypes in the first place. So what if feminists burnt bras, practiced witchcraft, destroyed capitalism and were all lesbians? So what if women were cat lovers, or hummus-eating hairy hippies, or even political lesbians? None of these things are inherently bad. Feminism being associated with these things isn’t bad. It’s the fact that these things have such negative connotations that is bad.

When I was younger, I tried so hard to denounce feminist stereotypes, that I actively rejected many things that I felt would box me into a stereotype. The biggest of these stereotypes was the lesbian thing. I’d heard people call me a lesbian too many times, I’d heard the word faggot too many times. There are actual blogs from when I was like 15 years old, where I actively say just because I’m a feminist, doesn’t mean I’m a lesbian. It’s internalised homophobia to the max – even after I could claim short hair, and hairy legs, and vegetarianism, and anti-capitalism, and gender fluidity, and androgyny, I still couldn’t claim lesbian.

And maybe it’s because I was asexual at the time, and confused because I didn’t know what that was, and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t sexually attracted to anyone, of any gender. But I spent most of my teen years trying to prove (to other people, and to myself) that I was attracted to boys… and most importantly, that I wasn’t, in any way, attracted to girls.

I was right that being feminist doesn’t automatically make you a lesbian… but so what if it did? And what if feminism made me a lesbian? What if when I began to feel sexually attracted to people of all genders, I made a decision to only date women. Because it was easier for me, because men can be triggering, because I am so much more emotionally attracted to female-identifying people? So what?

Patriarchy hates the idea of women choosing to be gay, because patriarchy believes that women should be sexually subservient and available to men, always. That’s why lesbianism is such an enemy of patriarchy in the first place. I’m choosing my words carefully… I’m not saying that all women should be queer to overcome patriarchy. I’m saying that if a woman ever does actively choose to only date women, this isn’t un-feminist. After all, it’s a woman’s choice to decide what she wants to do with her own body, and a woman’s right to make her own sexual choices. These are the underlying principles of feminism. It’s every woman’s choice.

I made bad choices before, and I’ll make them again. I made choices to reject labels for the sake of rejecting labels. I made the choice to add more homophobia to this world by doing everything in my power to convince people I wasn’t gay. I have nothing against gay people, I would say, I’m just not gay.

But I am gay. And I'm also hairy. And I also really love my cat, Coco, who sleeps at the end of my bed, and was begrudging when I turned vegan, and who occasionally pees on my things. I love her more than I love most people. And I love hummus, and I have short hair, and I'm also mentally quite unwell. So I'll claim the crazy cat lady trope. And the butch lesbian thing. And the hairy feminist thing. And if that makes me a living, breathing feminist lesbian stereotype, I couldn’t care less.

War

Our grandma always speaks to us in 2 languages - English and Turkish... English because she moved to London in the 1950s without speaking a word of it, and quickly had to learn. Turkish because it's her mother tongue. Growing up we got a mix of both languages, often sentences strewn together in two different tongues. My grandparents infamously call Sainsbury's Suzbury's, and my grandma once asked a man behind a stall in Cyprus for a plastic bag, before remembering that the words plastic bag were slightly out of context! All of my grandparents spoke a mix of Turkish and English in their lifetimes... but I'm sharing my grandmother's story because she spoke more. When we started learning French in school, she helped me count to ten. When me and my sister stayed at my grandparents' for "sleepovers" she'd say a prayer with us in Arabic before bed. And every once in a while, she'll say something in Greek, a language she would have once spoke a lot more frequently.

My grandparents left Cyprus in the 1950s, on the brink of war. I'm not going to claim that I know much about this war, because I don't. All I can say for certain is that before it happened, my grandparents lived amongst friends both Greek and Turkish, and that now, there's a border that slices the country down the middle like a barrier. It separates human beings, culture, and languages. I often wonder if I would have learnt Greek if the war hadn't have happened. I probably would have been born in the same village that my grandparents were born in. And that village wouldn't have been sat on a border.

It's 2015, and my grandparents have a home in Cyprus, but they still live here. Their village is known by two names - Yesilirmak (Yeah-sheel-ur-muk) and Limnidi - Turkish and Greek. It sits on the borderline - only just on the borderline. It's nested in the mountains, bright and green, and the people there leave boxes of strawberries at your door step before you even wake up in the morning. There are telephone lines there that only sometimes work, and no Internet, and the kids have to take a bus to another town to get to school. It's beautiful. It's also full of soldiers. Men drive around in trucks with guns, and even though I've never seen conflict there, conflict always feels imminent. The people are still marred by a war that happened decades ago.

Earlier this week I was on a Don't Bomb Syria protest outside Westminster. And I know the links aren't particularly strong, but I thought of my grandparents. I thought of my granddad who sold his motorbike to try to raise funds for plane tickets, and who worked in the first Wimpy bar for 9 years when he got to London. And I thought of my grandma who made us pray before bedtime and tried to read the Qur'an in Arabic, even though she is only ever really religious at births, weddings and funerals. And I thought about war. And about how the last time I was in Cyprus I found a beach on the borderline that wasn't guarded by soldiers. And how I walked alone across rocks to the Greek side and found a crab. And how I carried him back across the border with me because I wanted to spend time with a creature that didn't see borders, or know borders... to him the rocks were just the rocks, the sea was just the sea, the land was just the land.

It's easy for me to know why I dislike war so much. It's not because it caused my family to leave their home all those years ago, or because it leaves me feeling like I have two homes but neither of them proper, or because so many relatives fought and died in armies for a side that never cared about them. It's because I'm constantly reminded of how ugly war is. How a little village is constantly burdened by it when it isn't even happening any more. 

I've been thinking about how privileged I am. I'm writing about war in a cosy office in Hackney, while other people are dying as a result of it. I don't have to fear for my life. I have the luxury of worrying about how war will hurt others, I'm not forced to worry about my own life... my sister's life... my grandparents' lives.

As I write this, I try to memorise the word for peace in my grandma's 5 languages: peace, barış, ειρήνη, paix, سلام.