Outspoken feminist. Proud lesbian. Women's issues author. Staunch liberal. Title IX supporter. Women's rugby coach. Odd are the paths that led me to Allah, my brothers and sisters. My Christian name was Meredith Janet Hawthorne. My friends called me M.J. Recently I changed my name to Fatuma Al-Shabar. Changing my name to fully reflect my Muslim identity. I am forty years old. I stand five feet eleven inches tall, with short reddish blonde hair and pale blue eyes. I was born in the City of Galway, Ireland. My family moved to the City of Boston, Massachusetts, shortly after my birth. I attended Boston University, where I earned my Master's degree in Business Administration. It's also where I discovered I was a lesbian, and became a staunch feminist. A defender of women's rights in a deeply patriarchal world. I married my long-time lover Kristina "Butch Kris" Henderson in 2007, after more than fifteen years together. In 2010, I converted to Islam, divorced my gay female partner, and became a proud advocate of the Muslim cause. Have I got your attention now?
A lot of people gawk in amazement when I tell them my life story. I was the only female wrestler in an all-male wrestling squad at Kennedy Community High School. I won so many matches against male wrestlers that I became the captain of the wrestling team. My senior year, I won twenty matches and lost nine. Not bad for a lady, eh? I won an athletic scholarship to Boston University, where I became the only female on the men's varsity wrestling team. I distinguished myself wrestling at the highest level. While studying business administration at Boston University, I met this lovely young woman named Kristina Henderson. Five feet nine inches tall, slim, with medium brown skin, almond-shaped brown eyes and short Black hair. I've always had a thing for butch lesbians and they didn't get any more butch than her. She rode a Harley Davidson motorcycle, sported tattoos and worked out at the gym so much that she could pass for an amateur bodybuilder. Kristina Henderson is biracial, born to an African-American father and Italian mother. And she was openly gay at the time we met. I fell in love with her. This beautiful, openly gay Black woman stole my heart. And she introduced me to her circle of friends, most of whom were lesbians and all of whom were staunch feminists.
Kristina and I stayed together for many years. We moved in together in a beautiful apartment in the Brighton neighborhood of metropolitan Boston, in the State of Massachusetts. We joined a growing crusade of gays and lesbians fighting for gay liberation, women's rights and gender equality worldwide. We rejected all religions because all of them seemed to treat women badly. The Pope refused to let women be priests in Catholicism. The Buddhist religion also relegated women to a secondary position. They couldn't be Monks, for starters. At least not Monks on par with the Great Buddha. Only the Voodoo faith seemed to grant men and women equal rights as far as leadership, but it wasn't as widespread as most other faiths, all of which were deeply sexist and patriarchal. Kristina and I lived together, and adopted a Doberman which we named Mildred. Life went on. I graduated from Boston University's MBA program and began working for the Boston Museum of Science as a Human Resources Assistant Manager. It was a pretty decent job which paid eighty five thousand a year. After taxes. I was doing alright. Kristina graduated from Boston University's civil engineering program and began working for a small, private firm. We were doing alright for ourselves as a high-powered, interracial lesbian couple. We continued the fight for women's rights and gay rights. We had many friends and we were doing well. Yet I still felt a void in my life. Why wasn't I happy? That's a question which would haunt me for many years until I shockingly found the answer.
Now, many people would have you believe that the life of a wealthy, gay white female in the United States of America is sensually thrilling but spiritually barren. For me, that couldn't be further from the truth. Seriously. Even when I lay in my lesbian partner's arms at night, happy and sated after some hot sex, I still felt...unsatisfied. And I wondered about the source of my dissatisfaction. I've always known I was gay. I've never once felt attracted to a person of the opposite sex. Brad Pitt. Tyson Beckford. Will Smith. Jason Scott Lee. George Clooney. They all leave me cold. Give me Alicia Keys or Charlize Theron any day of the week. Kristina and I decided to try swinging...lesbian style...just to spice up our relationship. We met this lovely Chinese-American lawyer named Katherine Song. She was divorced, and the mother of a mixed son, Keith. Her ex-husband, Boston Police Department sergeant Tyrone Albright was African-American. Katherine Song, the bisexual Chinese-American woman proved to be a wonderful addition to our bedroom games. I mean, the gal was really kinky.