VIRGIN IN THE VOLCANO
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Be Careful Where You Put Your Head
Because my parents have contractors coming to the house next week to paint and re-carpet the upstairs, the brother and I have been boxing up and moving everything. I've got a couple thousand books in my bedroom, so this is no quick or easy task. But I've had a little fun with some of the things we found, like the skull my dad's had since dental school and keeps in one of the bookcases, next to the travel guides and foreign language dictionaries. I would take him outside to photograph him in better light, but the hinge of his jaw is very loose and I keep dropping the top of his skull, which was once conveniently sliced off and pinned neatly at the temples but now rests precariously on one remaining pin. Let this be a lesson to any of you who might consider donating your body to science.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Like A Blowhard
So while I continue to work on law school papers and job apps, I'm also starting to apply for a writing fellowship or two. The thought of spending the entire summer writing briefs or bench memos is unbearable, and I'm looking to carve out one month of the three for real writing time. But applications for writer/artist residencies all require that I describe my project. Simple enough, you would think, since I'm about a third of the way in to a coherent manuscript. Except that I can't for shit articulate what I mean to do with poems without sounding like a complete asshole. It's not entirely my fault--most people sound like blowhards when talking about what writing or art does. For example, a recent New Yorker review of the Marlene Dumas show describes one of her paintings with an "exceedingly dead Jesus." How exactly is anything exceedingly dead? Isn't regular dead always dead enough? And as Winter pointed out, don't a heck of a lot of people believe that Jesus was resurrected? That exceedingly part, yeah, not so much.
There's no Jesus in my manuscript, dead or otherwise, but I fear I'm stuck describing it just as ridiculously as the Dumas reviewer. If I could really articulate what the poems were meant to do, then I wouldn't likely need to write them in the first place. I tried instead to talk about my influences, the obsessions that are propelling this project. But if I could truly explain how I'm pulling in to paintings to push out in to poems, I think I'd be done with both. The sense of discovery would be lost, the pleasure of calculated wandering, of following each thread. And when you get down to it, it all sounds so horribly reductive. How do I talk about--while maintaining any sort of feeling--the way an open-mouthed de Kooning woman--slightly maniacal, somewhat ugly--feels warmer and more charged with possibility, freer maybe than almost anything? That the mark on a Saville where the skin breaks open is the heart of every story? That Twombly makes me cry, that Lucian Freud makes me open-piss angry. That I have spent hours staring at the thinly painted white fabric knots of Alison Watt, knowing--arrogantly, impossibly--that everything I've ever felt is suggested in the shadowed folds. And that if I can just stay in the spaces of these paintings long enough, I become more present, more open to the meat of what I need to do in poems.
See what I mean--"the meat of what I need to do in poems"? Blowhard already. And I still haven't said anything. If anyone has suggestions, or can tell me what my poems actually do, I'd probably loan you a kidney. Or at least send you a bottle of booze.
There's no Jesus in my manuscript, dead or otherwise, but I fear I'm stuck describing it just as ridiculously as the Dumas reviewer. If I could really articulate what the poems were meant to do, then I wouldn't likely need to write them in the first place. I tried instead to talk about my influences, the obsessions that are propelling this project. But if I could truly explain how I'm pulling in to paintings to push out in to poems, I think I'd be done with both. The sense of discovery would be lost, the pleasure of calculated wandering, of following each thread. And when you get down to it, it all sounds so horribly reductive. How do I talk about--while maintaining any sort of feeling--the way an open-mouthed de Kooning woman--slightly maniacal, somewhat ugly--feels warmer and more charged with possibility, freer maybe than almost anything? That the mark on a Saville where the skin breaks open is the heart of every story? That Twombly makes me cry, that Lucian Freud makes me open-piss angry. That I have spent hours staring at the thinly painted white fabric knots of Alison Watt, knowing--arrogantly, impossibly--that everything I've ever felt is suggested in the shadowed folds. And that if I can just stay in the spaces of these paintings long enough, I become more present, more open to the meat of what I need to do in poems.
See what I mean--"the meat of what I need to do in poems"? Blowhard already. And I still haven't said anything. If anyone has suggestions, or can tell me what my poems actually do, I'd probably loan you a kidney. Or at least send you a bottle of booze.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Friday, December 26, 2008
The Whining Continues
I'm still working on paper number one of two. I have a week left to finish them, and the slog is absolutely miserable. Mostly because I don't understand the things I'm writing about. How did bank regulators' Community Reinvestment Act compliance requirements for interstate charters impact subprime underwriters' lax lending standards? Fuck if I know. Why can't I do something in law school with something I know about? I guess there's not a huge niche market in the laws of Britney or Perez or poets or figurative painters. Well, fine, but banking law better get more interesting then. Can you imagine my misery next year when I'll have to write my forty page note on this boring shit?
The slog is tougher too because I can feel myself in poem territory and can't do anything about it. I'm about to get my period, and I always get my best writing out of the week before my cycle finishes. I think a lot of women writers and artists experience something similar, and when you know that the best part of yourself is tied to your hormones, you get pretty fucking bitter about surrendering it to banking law. All day yesterday I got stuck on the words of my research, wanting to unroll them into a different landscape. Banking law uses a lot of compound nouns and acronyms and makes weird, overly complicated nouns out of other existing nouns. It's not unlike reading German, and I'm itching to pull apart the compounds, invert everything, and play poet. This morning I awoke feeling that I hated everything I've ever written, that the writing has to change entirely, that the heart of it has to slide around elsewhere. And yet, here I'm sitting around reading more riveting news from the Comptroller of Currency.
For something far more interesting, check out Winter's new book available for pre-order on Amazon. And 20% off right now!! Also available for pre-order is the catalog for the upcoming Paint Made Flesh exhibition, a show that I'm not entirely convinced was not stolen directly from my head. That sounds more than pompous, but it's a show so perfect for me that I may actually brave a trip to Tennessee to catch it. Just as soon as I get the law school part out of the way of my life.
The slog is tougher too because I can feel myself in poem territory and can't do anything about it. I'm about to get my period, and I always get my best writing out of the week before my cycle finishes. I think a lot of women writers and artists experience something similar, and when you know that the best part of yourself is tied to your hormones, you get pretty fucking bitter about surrendering it to banking law. All day yesterday I got stuck on the words of my research, wanting to unroll them into a different landscape. Banking law uses a lot of compound nouns and acronyms and makes weird, overly complicated nouns out of other existing nouns. It's not unlike reading German, and I'm itching to pull apart the compounds, invert everything, and play poet. This morning I awoke feeling that I hated everything I've ever written, that the writing has to change entirely, that the heart of it has to slide around elsewhere. And yet, here I'm sitting around reading more riveting news from the Comptroller of Currency.
For something far more interesting, check out Winter's new book available for pre-order on Amazon. And 20% off right now!! Also available for pre-order is the catalog for the upcoming Paint Made Flesh exhibition, a show that I'm not entirely convinced was not stolen directly from my head. That sounds more than pompous, but it's a show so perfect for me that I may actually brave a trip to Tennessee to catch it. Just as soon as I get the law school part out of the way of my life.
Friday, December 19, 2008
It's All Disagreeable
For his inaugural invocation, Obama has chosen Rick Warren, an Orange County evangelical who has compared homosexuality to incest and bestiality and who openly campaigned for Prop 8. Warren supports the Iraq war and gave G.W. an international medal of peace. He's a guy who likes to see his face on TV and in the press, who throws around the words Nazi and Holocaust about as often as I change my socks. During the Terry Schiavo battle, he publicly called Schiavo's husband a Nazi for wanting to respect his wife's wishes. During any discussion of abortion rights, he equates pro-choice supporters with Holocaust deniers.
Warren is one of the reasons that I was often frightened during the 7 years I lived in Orange County: the region is bubbling with an institutionalized, legitimized, and pervasive hatred. By selecting Warren, Obama only gives these hateful "values" more legitimacy.
In defense of his choice, Obama notes that "we can disagree and not be disagreeable." But propagating this kind of hatred is entirely disagreeable. And Obama's arrogance is astounding. It's as if he knows that gays, no matter how raw a deal the Democrats might give them, will not defect to the other side. Obama can continue to suggest civil unions in place of real marriage for homosexuals, can continue to deliver a stage for homophobes like Warren, can continue to employ a team of anti-gay think-tankers, and can continue to nurse his own thinly veiled contempt for homosexuals.
All without impunity.
We may have had no better alternative to vote for in November. And I know we are terrified by the imploding global economy. We are clinging to this man as if he were a messiah, as if he alone were capable of ushering in real change and solutions to the myriad problems Bush has left us. But no man, including Obama, should be granted a blank check.
Warren is a bad choice. Obama's lack of support for homosexuals is shameful. We need to get loud, people. We need to make him hear this.
Warren is one of the reasons that I was often frightened during the 7 years I lived in Orange County: the region is bubbling with an institutionalized, legitimized, and pervasive hatred. By selecting Warren, Obama only gives these hateful "values" more legitimacy.
In defense of his choice, Obama notes that "we can disagree and not be disagreeable." But propagating this kind of hatred is entirely disagreeable. And Obama's arrogance is astounding. It's as if he knows that gays, no matter how raw a deal the Democrats might give them, will not defect to the other side. Obama can continue to suggest civil unions in place of real marriage for homosexuals, can continue to deliver a stage for homophobes like Warren, can continue to employ a team of anti-gay think-tankers, and can continue to nurse his own thinly veiled contempt for homosexuals.
All without impunity.
We may have had no better alternative to vote for in November. And I know we are terrified by the imploding global economy. We are clinging to this man as if he were a messiah, as if he alone were capable of ushering in real change and solutions to the myriad problems Bush has left us. But no man, including Obama, should be granted a blank check.
Warren is a bad choice. Obama's lack of support for homosexuals is shameful. We need to get loud, people. We need to make him hear this.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
The 1900's House
About ten years ago, the BBC did a reality series where they returned a Victorian rowhouse to all its original bowels and trimmings and plunked a modern family in it for three months. The family had to forgo everything that wasn't available to the British middle class in 1900. The result produced something both more and less introspective than I'm guessing the network imagined. From the first day the family moves in, it's obvious that women are literally tethered to the house, it's insistent need for boiling water, stoking fires, mending, and cleaning. Laundry gets boiled in soda crystals and agitated by hand, wrung and hung and ironed--it's so much work that the girls have to stay home from school to help with the wash. Cooking even something as simple as potatoes and cabbage takes hours on the primitive coal range. Every surface in the house takes on layers of soot, and the cleaning solutions of the time are either entirely ineffective or toxic. The modern wife, a history buff who had initially been the family's instigator in getting the gig, very quickly breaks down. By the end of the first week, she's a blubbering mess, bemoaning the boring, stifling, backbreaking existence of the middle class Victorian woman.
The solution? Hire a "maid of all work." Pay a poor young skivvy to wash your linens and petticoats, beat out your rugs, scrub down to the brass welding of your bed posts. The modern wife is a bit uncomfortable with a servant in the house, but ecstatic with her new freedom. She goes bike riding and swimming, has time to produce skits with the children and to make her own face cream. She also starts waxing heavily on the state of the suffragettes and grows intoxicated with the idea of herself and her eldest daughter as independent thinking women with the strength to buck the era's most revered trends. And you know what? It's obnoxious. After the three months, we all know this woman returned to her middle class career and home. The maid of all work shed her petticoats too, but little beyond her costume changed. She picked up more of the janitorial work she'd been doing before the show. She was, at 30 years old, already a career cleaner, as her mother was and as her grandmother and great grandmother had been.
I suppose I'm more uncomfortable with the maid's position because of my own. Whether I work as an attorney or not after law school, I'll have three degrees. I can teach college again or do PR. Unless I fuck up profoundly, I will have a professional career. I will have choices. So it's easier for me to sit here blogging or writing poems about gender identity and our individual and collective failures to recognize broader possibilities. It's easier for me to be angry, to claim a sense of injustice. It's easier for me to make the time.
Most of the women I know who read this blog are educated, many ridiculously so, and almost all are middle class. A few have unmentionably large trust funds. And many are writers and artists. Ladies, what do we do here? How to reconcile our lives of privilege, the luxury of the time and presence it takes to make art, with the source of our discontent?
The solution? Hire a "maid of all work." Pay a poor young skivvy to wash your linens and petticoats, beat out your rugs, scrub down to the brass welding of your bed posts. The modern wife is a bit uncomfortable with a servant in the house, but ecstatic with her new freedom. She goes bike riding and swimming, has time to produce skits with the children and to make her own face cream. She also starts waxing heavily on the state of the suffragettes and grows intoxicated with the idea of herself and her eldest daughter as independent thinking women with the strength to buck the era's most revered trends. And you know what? It's obnoxious. After the three months, we all know this woman returned to her middle class career and home. The maid of all work shed her petticoats too, but little beyond her costume changed. She picked up more of the janitorial work she'd been doing before the show. She was, at 30 years old, already a career cleaner, as her mother was and as her grandmother and great grandmother had been.
I suppose I'm more uncomfortable with the maid's position because of my own. Whether I work as an attorney or not after law school, I'll have three degrees. I can teach college again or do PR. Unless I fuck up profoundly, I will have a professional career. I will have choices. So it's easier for me to sit here blogging or writing poems about gender identity and our individual and collective failures to recognize broader possibilities. It's easier for me to be angry, to claim a sense of injustice. It's easier for me to make the time.
Most of the women I know who read this blog are educated, many ridiculously so, and almost all are middle class. A few have unmentionably large trust funds. And many are writers and artists. Ladies, what do we do here? How to reconcile our lives of privilege, the luxury of the time and presence it takes to make art, with the source of our discontent?
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
I Don't Have To Eat Oatmeal Until Spring
I'm a bagel and schmear girl. I don't much like oatmeal, which as far as I can tell, is reserved mostly for Episcopalians. But I eat oatmeal on test days, sometimes test prep days too. It's substantial enough to get me through my morning routine and a four-hour exam, and it's not greasy or spicy. It's the bland diet of champions.
Or so you'd think after all the years I still bother to eat it for exams. But law school hasn't been fooled. Even while dutifully eating my oatmeal, I am not easily confused with the better students. Sure, I've got the fancy laptop and the right pens, the five different colored tabs and all the hornbooks. But I'm also still not brushing my hair, and tucked into my ridiculously oversized backpack between the Federal Rules and a casebook are two collections of poetry and a Frank Auerbach monograph. When my exam ended this afternoon, I turned down beers with the gang because I'm desperate to hit the MFA one more time before I leave for Xmas in LA. Doesn't that just reek of corporate attorney behavior?
Yeah, right. Anyway, now that at least immigration law is over, I'm off to lose the rest of the day in some paintings, a collection of poems Winter recommended, and maybe a movie. The papers I still have to tackle can wait till tomorrow. And I'm not eating oatmeal for them.
Or so you'd think after all the years I still bother to eat it for exams. But law school hasn't been fooled. Even while dutifully eating my oatmeal, I am not easily confused with the better students. Sure, I've got the fancy laptop and the right pens, the five different colored tabs and all the hornbooks. But I'm also still not brushing my hair, and tucked into my ridiculously oversized backpack between the Federal Rules and a casebook are two collections of poetry and a Frank Auerbach monograph. When my exam ended this afternoon, I turned down beers with the gang because I'm desperate to hit the MFA one more time before I leave for Xmas in LA. Doesn't that just reek of corporate attorney behavior?
Yeah, right. Anyway, now that at least immigration law is over, I'm off to lose the rest of the day in some paintings, a collection of poems Winter recommended, and maybe a movie. The papers I still have to tackle can wait till tomorrow. And I'm not eating oatmeal for them.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Still Whining
My immigration law exam is tomorrow morning, so today has been something more than awful. In short:
Pages of single-spaced outline copied by hand into textbook: 44.
Pages of handouts, text, and statutes read: 1 bazillion.
People gchatting about removal, waivers, and labor certification: 5.
Beers for drinking: 0.333.
Diet soda for drinking: 2.75 liters.
Diet soda for spilling: 0.75 liters.
Coffee for drinking: 5 cups.
Times I've peed: 1 bazillion.
Times I've sharpened a pencil: 1 bazillion.
Times I told my mom to stop calling: 2.
Highlighters used: 7.
Colored tabs used: 1 bazillion.
Times I listened to a Nick Cave song: 173.
Times I've figured out the correct waiver to apply for: 0.
Pages of single-spaced outline copied by hand into textbook: 44.
Pages of handouts, text, and statutes read: 1 bazillion.
People gchatting about removal, waivers, and labor certification: 5.
Beers for drinking: 0.333.
Diet soda for drinking: 2.75 liters.
Diet soda for spilling: 0.75 liters.
Coffee for drinking: 5 cups.
Times I've peed: 1 bazillion.
Times I've sharpened a pencil: 1 bazillion.
Times I told my mom to stop calling: 2.
Highlighters used: 7.
Colored tabs used: 1 bazillion.
Times I listened to a Nick Cave song: 173.
Times I've figured out the correct waiver to apply for: 0.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Colette. Today. Listen.
Listen to Colette today!! You know you'd rather hear her poems than study anything more today.
http://bibliocracyradio.blogspot.com/2008/12/monday-december-15-atkinsonchin-two.html
http://bibliocracyradio.blogspot.com/2008/12/monday-december-15-atkinsonchin-two.html
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Quieter
So despite the fact that law school is hugely in the way of my life, my head is still tucked into the "Pretty" poems I've been working on. And, as Winter will attest, I hate all poets except maybe 5, so I haven't looked directly at poetry for my fuel in a long time. Instead, I read a lot of fiction and look at a lot of paintings. But yesterday when gchatting with Philosofya, I thought of a Killarney Clary poem I fell in love with years ago and then had to go find it. It's in her second? book, By Common Salt, which I'm rereading now instead of the House Committee reports on the Community Reinvestment Act. Hard choice, huh?
Anyway, I'd forgotten the quiet strength of this book, the slow and careful telling of what it is to be plainly human. For a while now, I've wanted so badly to push out along the edges, to testify to the extremes of our humanness, the parts of ourselves that we're afraid to follow, that I've ignored how beautiful the ordinary can be. It helps, of course, that Killarney's almost tactile relationship with language is the stuff that turns zinc to gold, but it's mostly the eye here that amazes me. There's no moment of our lives here that's not noteworthy, no particle of ourselves too small for a look. Nothing of us that doesn't feel. And because anything can hurt us at any given time, the most ordinary experiences take on weight.
It's a weight that doesn't need reaching for, which is something I needed reminding of. Maybe after exam period, there will be some quieter poems in me. Or maybe just a quiet moment in the violence, a space to enter into the argument, a space to stay.
Anyway, I'd forgotten the quiet strength of this book, the slow and careful telling of what it is to be plainly human. For a while now, I've wanted so badly to push out along the edges, to testify to the extremes of our humanness, the parts of ourselves that we're afraid to follow, that I've ignored how beautiful the ordinary can be. It helps, of course, that Killarney's almost tactile relationship with language is the stuff that turns zinc to gold, but it's mostly the eye here that amazes me. There's no moment of our lives here that's not noteworthy, no particle of ourselves too small for a look. Nothing of us that doesn't feel. And because anything can hurt us at any given time, the most ordinary experiences take on weight.
It's a weight that doesn't need reaching for, which is something I needed reminding of. Maybe after exam period, there will be some quieter poems in me. Or maybe just a quiet moment in the violence, a space to enter into the argument, a space to stay.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
How Gay Are You
I stole this link from a friend of a friend. In about 2 minutes, it will tell you how gay or straight you are. Take the test, people. Take it!
The Brother is 33% straight. I am 29% gay. Oh, the therapy ahead!
The Brother is 33% straight. I am 29% gay. Oh, the therapy ahead!
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
More Evidence Of Our Imminent Doom
Giving oneself over to full-time studying during an exam period involves a lot of compromises. Any law or med student will tell you that things like cooking and cleaning get sacrificed for a solid month each semester. But today, hitting a new low, I stood in front of my bathroom mirror contemplating tweezing only some of my eyebrows. Which "some" I have no idea, but I felt like I only had a minute to spare, not the three or four that a proper tweezing would require.
And it gets worse. For lunch today, I heated my tortilla but not the beans because I could only deal with the thought of one pan. I also changed the fitted sheet on my bed, but not the duvet cover. Because only what's underneath you in bed gets dirty?? Then there's the glass on my desk that I've been drinking from since Sunday, and the sweatshirt I sleep in and then wear throughout the day. I've shaved my pits but not my legs. I've washed and saved the cottage cheese container so I didn't have to call it trash that required a trip outside to the bins. I've conditioned my hair without shampooing because it no longer needs to be clean, just brushable.
So I want to know, what's the dumbest/strangest/silliest behavior you've rationalized during exam period?
And it gets worse. For lunch today, I heated my tortilla but not the beans because I could only deal with the thought of one pan. I also changed the fitted sheet on my bed, but not the duvet cover. Because only what's underneath you in bed gets dirty?? Then there's the glass on my desk that I've been drinking from since Sunday, and the sweatshirt I sleep in and then wear throughout the day. I've shaved my pits but not my legs. I've washed and saved the cottage cheese container so I didn't have to call it trash that required a trip outside to the bins. I've conditioned my hair without shampooing because it no longer needs to be clean, just brushable.
So I want to know, what's the dumbest/strangest/silliest behavior you've rationalized during exam period?
Monday, December 8, 2008
It's 6 p.m. And I'm Still Sober
Which means it must be finals time. Nothing but coffee, juice, water, and diet coke until at least 8. And in addition to the forced sobriety, there's the daily outlining and avoiding outlining, the pacing about my studio as I try to figure out what the hell the Department of Homeland Security was ever thinking. (I'll give you a hint: it involves a lot of regulations to get rid of brown people).
For those of us who had vague notions of becoming good guy lawyers, who weren't (only) applying to law school to make some big money later, the thing about the law that people forget to tell you is that it's just so fucking boring. There's a lot less saving of good guys and a lot more of mindless regulations and abbreviations meant to distance folks from actual participation in the law. There are a lot more forms and exceptions and waivers, a lot of plodding, impractical logic, a lot of last minute reactionary legislation. And the more time I spend with this shit, the more boring I become. In fact I'm so boring now, I'm bored of even whining about it.
The most exciting thing that happened to me this week? I found some guy's passport while walking home from the law tower. Against my better judgment, I didn't sell it. If it had had a lot of stamps or anything interesting inside, I probably would have kept it, tucking it into my little plastic sheet protector book of odds and ends of other people's lives (Don't ask. Really, it's safer if you don't know.). But in a fleetingly generous mood, I contacted passport guy and hand delivered it back. He sent me $50 in an Amazon certificate to thank me. I'm sitting on my $20,000 semester tuition bill but that $50 made my goddamn day. And that's the end of the story.
Which brings me back to boring. Law school is boring. The law is boring. Exam days are more boring than regular boring law school days. If you're boring for too long, do you stay that way?
My brain called. It wants its life back.
For those of us who had vague notions of becoming good guy lawyers, who weren't (only) applying to law school to make some big money later, the thing about the law that people forget to tell you is that it's just so fucking boring. There's a lot less saving of good guys and a lot more of mindless regulations and abbreviations meant to distance folks from actual participation in the law. There are a lot more forms and exceptions and waivers, a lot of plodding, impractical logic, a lot of last minute reactionary legislation. And the more time I spend with this shit, the more boring I become. In fact I'm so boring now, I'm bored of even whining about it.
The most exciting thing that happened to me this week? I found some guy's passport while walking home from the law tower. Against my better judgment, I didn't sell it. If it had had a lot of stamps or anything interesting inside, I probably would have kept it, tucking it into my little plastic sheet protector book of odds and ends of other people's lives (Don't ask. Really, it's safer if you don't know.). But in a fleetingly generous mood, I contacted passport guy and hand delivered it back. He sent me $50 in an Amazon certificate to thank me. I'm sitting on my $20,000 semester tuition bill but that $50 made my goddamn day. And that's the end of the story.
Which brings me back to boring. Law school is boring. The law is boring. Exam days are more boring than regular boring law school days. If you're boring for too long, do you stay that way?
My brain called. It wants its life back.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
The Third Sex
The NY Times has a new short and rather uninformative piece on the muxe in Oaxaca. The gist of it is that long before the Spanish colonialists sat on Mexico and said everyone had to be a good Catholic, the Zapotec had men, women, and muxe--a recognized third gender of biological males who identified and lived as women. And as mixgendered, the muxe continue to maintain a legitimate place within Zapotec culture, despite the culture's lack of tolerance toward homosexuals.
I don't know why the Times picked now to run a piece like this, but the muxe conveniently fit with some of the ideas I wanted to discuss with you all about gender boundaries and the whole mess of homo hatred that crescendoed in the passage of Prop 8. The muxe are no rare phenomenon. There are many cultures, both ancient and modern, that recognize a third gender. The Hijra in India, for example, are so entrenched in the country that in 2005 passport forms were changed to accommodate a third gender. The forms now have boxes for men, women, and eunuchs. The term eunuch is misleading though because the Hijra don't see themselves as male or female and only 8% of them have been actually castrated.
There is growing evidence too that many species are made of more than two genders. Red deer have three genders, as do several species of salmon. There are sparrows with four genders and the side-blotched lizard has five.
I will continue to argue that our current sense of gender is incredibly narrow and incredibly harmful. The prescription for a boy or for a girl is so damn limiting that it's no wonder so many of us feel uncomfortable in our own skin. And we're taught that it's impossible to separate gender from sexuality. So when a woman presents herself as something less feminine than a Heidi Montag or a Sophia Loren (how those two made it into a single sentence in my head, I'll never know), there's nothing left to do but call her a dyke. And a guy who likes soft tight sweaters and sugary drinks? Faggot, faggot, faggot.
What if everything doesn't really come down to what you, uh, want to rub up against? What if there are simply more permutations of men and women than we have delineated categories for?
I don't know why the Times picked now to run a piece like this, but the muxe conveniently fit with some of the ideas I wanted to discuss with you all about gender boundaries and the whole mess of homo hatred that crescendoed in the passage of Prop 8. The muxe are no rare phenomenon. There are many cultures, both ancient and modern, that recognize a third gender. The Hijra in India, for example, are so entrenched in the country that in 2005 passport forms were changed to accommodate a third gender. The forms now have boxes for men, women, and eunuchs. The term eunuch is misleading though because the Hijra don't see themselves as male or female and only 8% of them have been actually castrated.
There is growing evidence too that many species are made of more than two genders. Red deer have three genders, as do several species of salmon. There are sparrows with four genders and the side-blotched lizard has five.
I will continue to argue that our current sense of gender is incredibly narrow and incredibly harmful. The prescription for a boy or for a girl is so damn limiting that it's no wonder so many of us feel uncomfortable in our own skin. And we're taught that it's impossible to separate gender from sexuality. So when a woman presents herself as something less feminine than a Heidi Montag or a Sophia Loren (how those two made it into a single sentence in my head, I'll never know), there's nothing left to do but call her a dyke. And a guy who likes soft tight sweaters and sugary drinks? Faggot, faggot, faggot.
What if everything doesn't really come down to what you, uh, want to rub up against? What if there are simply more permutations of men and women than we have delineated categories for?
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Everybody Hates A Woman
The Brother forwarded me a surprisingly good Richard Rodriguez interview. Rodriguez, who's gay and Catholic and Latino, argues that church support for Prop 8 is really fueled by panic over the disintegration of the traditional family. As more women get out of the kitchen and into the workplace, the old notion of family fractures, the church loses its stronghold, and there has to be someone out there to scapegoat--might as well be gay people. It's an interesting argument, but more interesting--I think--is the underlying suggestion that Rodriguez never plays out. I've said this before to several of you: I think much of the hatred directed toward gays has little to do with sexuality and everything to do with gender.
Put simply, there's a lot of hatred for women. Men are supposed to be at the top of the food chain. But gay men are threatening because they're viewed as effeminate, as something less then the men they are expected to be. They veer dangerously close to those hipped and breasted second-class citizens that men keep around for sex and dinner parties. And gay women are threatening because they're viewed as masculine, as having usurped the roles of men. They let men know that someone else can fix the car and the toilet, buy a strap-on for the wife. As a rule, I think gays are perceived as threatening because they make the idea of men less necessary. Gays make it too painfully clear that a man's man is not the only one who can lead and defend a home, support a family, and carve out a place of power and influence in the world at large.
If you could extract gender from the gay/straight equation, what's really left to hate? I doubt it would have much to do with which pegs go in which holes; after all, most men boast about all the other holes they've put their pegs into. Plus, there's that favorite argument among homophobes that what lesbians do in the bedroom isn't real sex anyhow. (Because the best way to neutralize the threat to your manhood is to pretend that the threat doesn't even exist).
I don't think the gays have much of a chance for a modicum of the equality they deserve until we get more men and women to stop hating women. Until we legitimize what it means to be female. Until we expand the tired, suffocating notions of gender. So while we work on finding more successful angles to the Prop 8 appeal, how about also discussing why women continue to make less money in boardrooms and factories across the nation. Or why this nation continues to hold as allies other nations who legally sell acid to men who burn and torture their wives. Why a woman still cannot be elected president in 21st century America. Why a woman wearing a man's clothing, or a man wearing a woman's, is a thing to beat and spit on in the street. Why a pushy woman is called a bitch while a pushy man is called ambitious.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Winter and I hashed around some of this weeks ago, but she's no easy convert. I'll be writing more on all of this later, especially where the trans world fits in to this problem. As you can probably tell, I am avoiding my immigration outlining and my banking law paper.
Put simply, there's a lot of hatred for women. Men are supposed to be at the top of the food chain. But gay men are threatening because they're viewed as effeminate, as something less then the men they are expected to be. They veer dangerously close to those hipped and breasted second-class citizens that men keep around for sex and dinner parties. And gay women are threatening because they're viewed as masculine, as having usurped the roles of men. They let men know that someone else can fix the car and the toilet, buy a strap-on for the wife. As a rule, I think gays are perceived as threatening because they make the idea of men less necessary. Gays make it too painfully clear that a man's man is not the only one who can lead and defend a home, support a family, and carve out a place of power and influence in the world at large.
If you could extract gender from the gay/straight equation, what's really left to hate? I doubt it would have much to do with which pegs go in which holes; after all, most men boast about all the other holes they've put their pegs into. Plus, there's that favorite argument among homophobes that what lesbians do in the bedroom isn't real sex anyhow. (Because the best way to neutralize the threat to your manhood is to pretend that the threat doesn't even exist).
I don't think the gays have much of a chance for a modicum of the equality they deserve until we get more men and women to stop hating women. Until we legitimize what it means to be female. Until we expand the tired, suffocating notions of gender. So while we work on finding more successful angles to the Prop 8 appeal, how about also discussing why women continue to make less money in boardrooms and factories across the nation. Or why this nation continues to hold as allies other nations who legally sell acid to men who burn and torture their wives. Why a woman still cannot be elected president in 21st century America. Why a woman wearing a man's clothing, or a man wearing a woman's, is a thing to beat and spit on in the street. Why a pushy woman is called a bitch while a pushy man is called ambitious.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Winter and I hashed around some of this weeks ago, but she's no easy convert. I'll be writing more on all of this later, especially where the trans world fits in to this problem. As you can probably tell, I am avoiding my immigration outlining and my banking law paper.
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