The QLP Questionnaire: Gina Femia
"When you’re in a long-term relationship, the other person will be there to watch you grow and change. I share parts of myself that I’m not even aware I'm sharing."
Did you struggle to find love? Or maybe you had a difficult time making it work in a same-sex relationship or outside the typical heteronormative parameters that dominate our culture and have lessons to share? Since most LGBTQ+ people don't have many role models to help us learn what it means to put ourselves together, we invite you to take “The Queer Love Project Questionnaire” and share your distinctive experiences so that others might learn from them. Email us at QueerLoveProjectSub@gmail.com to find out how you can participate.
My name’s Gina Femia, or G, and I’m a playwright, screenwriter, author, educator and occasionally, a performer. I like to encourage folks to follow their voices when they’re writing, and enjoy investigating the infinite queer spectrum when I write. My (very queer) YA novel, Alondra, came out last year, and I’m currently getting ready for my (again, very queer) play, Mercutio Loves Romeo Loves Juliet Loves, to be produced in New York City this month. It’s a new queer kinda adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, set at an all-girls Catholic school's drama club.
Mercutio Loves Romeo Loves Juliet Loves will be running November 8-24, 2024 at the A.R.T. Uptown Spaces, produced by Boomerang Theater. Find out more about the play and buy tickets here.
What is your age, where in the world do you primarily live, where did you grow up?I’m 37 years old, and I grew up and still live in South Brooklyn. I grew up in a neighborhood called Bay Ridge and now live in Bensonhurst. While I’ve moved around Brooklyn, I’ve never lived anywhere else.
How do you define yourself on the LGBTQ+ spectrum?
I’m a queer/bi trans/non-binary person.
What is your relationship status?
I’ve been married to my husband, Freddy, for six years. We’ve been together for 12 total.
Do you have an “ideal” relationship status?
My ideal relationship status is the one I’m currently in—not just married but married to Freddy.
When was your first intimate moment (holding hands, kiss, etc.)? Was it with someone you liked? Did you feel pressured into it?
I went to an all-girls Catholic school in the early 2000s at a time where I had no language for gender diversity or sexuality. I knew that gay men existed, and I assumed that meant gay women existed, but I spent the formative years of high school not knowing that there was such a thing as bisexuality, let alone the beautiful, infinite spectrum that is queerness.
So I knew I was attracted to guys, and I knew I was attracted to women—specifically some of my fellow students—but I didn’t know if there was a word or phrase for any of that, or if it would be something I’d just “grow out of.” But something that straight girls liked to do in high school was be very physically intimate with their friends.
One of my first moments of physical intimacy was holding hands with and cuddling on the couch with the girl who was my best friend at the time. Those moments were beautiful and consensual, but it became clear later that they were moments that meant very different things for each of us. I was falling in love with her, while she was just snuggling with her best friend.
How would you define love? Is it the thing you work at for a long period of time? Or is it the strong feeling you feel for someone right from the beginning for no reason? Defining love is as futile an act as trying to definitively define queerness or gender. It’s too large and complicated and simple and true and real a thing to try to narrow down into a definition, and it’s specific based on the person and person/people involved in that love.
I know that the moment I met Freddy, I fell in love with him. There was just something inside me, telling me that he was my person. Before that moment, I never believed in love at first sight; I was always cynical of the idea. But it wasn’t lust and it wasn’t “like,” it was love from the moment I met him. How can I explain it other than that?
Luckily, similarly to gender and sexuality, it isn’t something that needs to make sense to anyone else. And I don’t think that our definitions of love needs to make sense to anyone aside the ones experiencing it.
Does the relationship fill your deepest needs for closeness with a person? Or do you prefer not to share every part of yourself?
When Freddy and I started dating in 2012, I didn’t have the language for gender diversity and though, similarly to when I was in high school, understood transness on a binary, I didn’t know there was something that could define the feeling I had inside, that there was something not quite jiving with being a woman. I assumed everyone felt this way and just chocked it up to being normal.
Before Freddy, I was in two previous relationships with cis/het men and, when I told them I was bi, each one dismissed me and told me I wasn’t. When I came out to Freddy, he accepted me. Because of that acceptance, I was able to turn my attention to my gender and begin to discover that language, to experience that awakening and, once again, when I told Freddy right before we were going to get married that I was non-binary, he again met me with openness. He was also not totally surprised.
When you’re in a long-term relationship, and are able to share that closeness, the other person will be there to watch you grow and change. I share parts of myself that I’m not even aware I’m sharing, but because we’re so close, Freddy sees it anyway. And I do the same with him.
Are there any pivotal pop culture moments that you credit for teaching about love and/or relationships?
Adrienne Rich’s Twenty-One Love Poems.
Do you have a Chosen Family?
Oh yes. I have many-many members of my chosen family, most of them (if not all!) part of the Community in some way. Being in theater means that I’ve been able to be a part of a variety of different communities and, within those, my heart tends to seek out other queer, trans/non-binary folks.
When I look back at the origins of my most meaningful chosen family relationships, I can see those seeds were planted in the most innocuous of ways: sitting next to them at a play, getting stuck together at a bar, reaching out to talk more about a piece they were writing. I feel so held by my Chosen Family and feel honored I get to hold them, too.
What do you (did you) like about dating as a LGBTQ person? What do/did you dislike?
Before Freddy, I only had two long-term relationships in my adult life, with those aforementioned cis/het folks. In addition to them being close-minded about sexuality, they were also abusive. Abusive relationships are complicated things, and there’s often a desire to make them simple in order to better understand them.
I like to think about an abusive relationship like a cracked mirror, each shard of reflective glass providing a different complication, a different reason a person winds up in them. There were many reasons I found myself in those relationships, but one of those reasons was the stamping out and dismissal of my sexuality. Being told that I was wrong and that I didn’t exist made me internalize it inside me so that a part of me simply ceased to exist.
I haven’t had to date someone new for 12 years, but I know there have been members of the Community who have attempted to dismiss my sexuality or gender, so I unfortunately know that this isn’t relegated to cis/het folks. I share this because, if anyone is trying to dismiss a part of you—especially in a romantic dating situation—walk away. A person who is right for you will accept every facet of you.
Are there any things that standard heterosexual relationships have that you feel are out of reach or that you wish you had or could achieve?
A lot of our growth together has been unlearning what our relationship “should” look like in a heterosexual context. We do have a lot of privilege—because of our birth assignments, we were able to get married without an issue and when we walk down the street, folks most likely assume we’re a cis/het couple. But there’s a lot of ways we navigate our relationship against the expectations of that normativity. We make our relationship our own—and I think that’s the embodiment of queerness.
Any advice you’d give to someone younger than you who thinks it’s impossible to find love?
Never settle: Your person or people are out there. A relationship can look however you and your other partner/s want it to look—there is no normal, only what is right for you.
Mercutio Loves Romeo Loves Juliet Loves will be running November 8-24, 2024 at the A.R.T. Uptown Spaces, produced by Boomerang Theater. Find out more about the play and buy tickets here.
BONUS:
We all need more inspiration. Please recommend something that influenced or helped shape you significantly that you’d recommend to someone else.
Book: I’m a huge reader so need to shoutout some of my queer faves:
In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, a memoir which recounts Machado’s experiences in an abusive relationship with a same-sex partner
Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H., a memoir about the author’s complicated relationship with their Muslim faith
In the Margins: A Transgender Man’s Journey with the Scripture by Shannon T.L Kearns, a book of essays written by a trans priest
The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes, a great YA novel about being a queer kid in a Catholic School
Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas, a YA novel about a trans-brujo falling in love with a ghost
Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki, a sci-fi novel about a transwoman who plays violin, aliens and a woman who made a deal with the devil.
Movie: I Saw the TV Glow
Play, Musical, Other Cultural artifact:
The Baltimore Waltz by Paula Vogel
Oddity by Ashley Lauren Rogers
Wood by Haygen-Brice Walker
In The Amazon Parking Lot by Sarah Mantell
Mirrors by Azure D. Osborne Lee
Thank you so much for sharing this.