salty femme.

Forgive me, loyal readers of saltyfemme. I’ve written about this topic so much I have queer self-righteousness coming out of my ears. But the Feministe readers haven’t heard me rant yet, so now I’m giving them their turn. Reposting here. Feministe readers who have moseyed on over, find more of my gay-marriage rants here:

Recent Ruminations on Gay Marriage (June 2006)
Beyond Rhetoric (July 2006)
NYTimes on Those Rebel Gays (July 2006)
Wedding Bells Ring Again (October 2006)
Potlucks, Purim, and Gay Marriage (October 2006)
Blame it on the Gays. Seriously! (November 2006)
Maybe DOMAS Should Address This Instead? (November 2006)
Whose Agenda is GENDA? (July 2007)

And now, the post from Feministe:

There are supposed to be two sides to this marriage debate. Either you’re a member of the Religious Right and are opposed or you’re a good liberal and are in favor. Right? Not so much. I’ve seen a huge range of opinions on this issue from queers who don’t identify with either of these mainstream opinions. I wish that more of these voices were represented in legislative actions and in media representations.

Gay marriage advocates are fighting for the same rights that straight people already have. I’d like to question why straight marriage is the model from which to build gay marriage. Is it convenience? Strategy (i.e. what is winnable?). Why aren’t we fighting for more, why aren’t we representing nontraditional family structures instead of just traditional nuclear family structures? (and no, I’m not talking polyamory right now). What good is the right to share health insurance with your partner when millions of Americans don’t have health insurance to begin with? Furthermore, why should the government get to police who shares our benefits, who can inherit from us, and who can adopt our children? Considering that only 25% of families in this country follow the traditional nuclear model, wouldn’t we be better off instead seeing what might be best for everyone? How do (or will) co-parenting families, cohabiting adults in non-romantic relationships, single parents living with a sibling, and elderly parents living with their child and their child’s partner (among countless other permutations of family) benefit from a marriage that only provides rights to two romantically involved adults? Furthermore, it seems ironic that in a time when it seems like every straight person is avoiding marriage like the plague, gay people are fighting hard.

Academic John D’Emilio puts these changes into historical context brilliantly in his November/December 2006 article in the Gay and Lesbian Review, The Marriage Movement is Setting Us Back. D’Emilio actually argues that gay marriage goes against history. He explains:

Since the early 1960’s, the lives of many, many heterosexuals have become much more like the imagined lives of homosexuals . Being heterosexual no longer means settling as a young adult into a lifelong coupled relationship sanctioned by the state and characterized by the presence of children and sharply gendered spousal roles. Instead, there may be a number of intimate relationships over the course of a lifetime. A marriage certificate may or may not accompany these relationships. Males and females alike expect to earn their way. Children figure less importantly in the lifespan of adults, and some heterosexuals, for the first time in history, choose not to have children at all.

…

These new “lifestyles” (a word woefully inadequate for grasping the deep structural foundations that sustain these changes) have appeared wherever capitalism has long historical roots. The decline in reproductive rates and the de-centering of marriage follow the spread of capitalism as surely as night follows day. They surface even in the face of religious traditions and national histories that have emphasized marriage, high fertility, and strong kinship ties.

The gay marriage movement has also been accused of racism and classism and of taking up so much of the mainstream LGBT movement’s time and energy that it has little left for any other issues (trans rights in NY state, for example).

Is gay marriage the way to go? Can’t we embrace the fact that the nuclear family structure is no longer useful for so many people in this country and legislate to be able to support and be supported by who(m)ever we want and choose? To be clear - I support anyone who wants to celebrate their relationship privately or with their community. In the post, I am addressing gay marriage in a legal sense, the problems I have with the government policing our relationships and the rights that those relationships bring us.

I don’t want to leave out last summer’s Beyond Same-Sex Marriage (BSSM) statement, the most widely-read document that I know of that questions the legitimacy of the gay marriage movement and its “you’re either with us or against us” mentality. The BSSM executive summary is certainly worth a read. Its signatories advocate for:

• Legal recognition for a wide range of relationships, households and families – regardless of kinship or conjugal status.
• Access for all, regardless of marital or citizenship status, to vital government support programs including but not limited to health care, housing, Social Security and pension plans, disaster recovery assistance, unemployment insurance and welfare assistance.
• Separation of church and state in all matters, including regulation and recognition of relationships, households and families.
• Freedom from state regulation of our sexual lives and gender choices, identities and expression.

Realistically, this will never pass as legislation, though I don’t think that was the intent of the writers. I believe they wanted to spark a conversation, to bring the gray areas of the marriage discussion to the fore. Since last summer, not much follow-up has been done, save for a few events here in New York (one of which I attended and kept some notes on). Queers, marriage skeptics, if you’re out there, does BSSM speak to you? Is there anything useful (media or legislatively speaking) we can do with it? For all of you — what are your thoughts on gay marriage beyond the “I believe in equality for all people” lines and in light of these issues? Is gay marriage really the path to equality?

cross-posted to Feministe

…when you ask them what would be a proper punishment for women who have abortions if they became illegal. Truly amazing stuff.

UPDATE: I can’t embed the YouTube video anymore, but you can watch it here.

Via Feministe. Read Anna Quinden’s piece and then Jill’s commentary at Feministe. They said it better than I could.

I’m guest blogging at Feministe this week! Check me out. And check out this entry over there for discussion, it’s cross-posted.

It’s humor so this warning may seem strange - this video is potentially triggering.

I was wary of posting this video for fear of directing more traffic to it. When I saw how many people have already watched it (it has nearly three million views on YouTube and counting), I figured it might be worth the attention. “Bro rape” has achieved mass popularity among (mostly) white college students for reasons I don’t entirely understand. Offensive stuff aside - and I’ll get to that in a minute - I actually just don’t find it funny.

The video is supposedly a parody of Dateline NBC’s programs about catching pedophiles. The Derrick Comedy group, made up of a group of NYU grads, write and perform pretty typical white college student humor, involving alcohol and sex jokes and always tinged with tones of sarcasm and self-mocking.

For those of you who don’t care to watch, here’s the opening bit. After a pretty gross fake rape scene, the fake news announcer jumps in (camera frozen on a “bro” being raped by a fellow “bro”):

It’s a type of rape that’s gone overlooked for decades. And it’s risen 44% in the last year. I’m talking, of course, about bro rape. What is a bro? A bro is an 18-24 year old male who wears Birkenstock sandals, watches Family Guy, plays ultimate Frisbee, and wears an upside-down visor or a baseball cap with a pre-frayed brim. You know, a bro. For every suburban house party, four bros will be raped, and only one in seven bros will tell their boys what happened the next day. As a result, most bro rapes go unreported.

The skit continues with the fake news team luring “bros” on the internet to come to “Chad’s place” to do dudely things. The reporter then rifles through each culprit’s bag, finding dudely items like gamecubes, beer, Axe deodorant and always a big black dildo, at which point the bro is considered caught. If someone can fill me in on why this is so funny that three million people have watched it, please do.

The skit ends with another fake rape scene. News flash to privileged college boys: rape is REAL. Men have been and continue to be victims of sexual assault. This is a pretty ugly contribution to the stigma men face around being rape victims. It mocks and silences male survivors of sexual assault, all of whom deal with the same crap as female victims plus all the feelings around not being real men because real men, straight men, don’t get sexually assaulted. And here’s why this video is silencing male survivors of assault - a group of college boys can make a video mocking male sexual assault that millions of people watch and find hilarious and not feel guilty about it because sexual assault against men is somehow not real. It’s almost as if the reason this sort of comedy is allowed is because it is so far from the realm of possibility. Everyone knows it’s not funny to mock sexual assault against women. Men, of course, are fair game. The reason it’s so funny is because it could never happen, right? A straight man could never rape another straight man. Right, except that most of the perpetrators of sexual assault against men are heterosexual. All of this humor rests on the fact that it is mocking something the creators deem impossible. This is dangerous territory for three million viewers.

Is it possible that they are mocking their own masculinity as a performance in and of itself? The opening lines from the newscaster I blockquoted above are some of the funniest lines in the skit, I think. It is a pretty impressive feat to have a group of boys who possess an overly heterosexual masculinity and style be able to step back and mock themselves. But are they simply reasserting their heterosexuality by mocking the idea of male sexual assault? I’m also curious about what makes this college humor among (mostly) white students. There is also be a bizarre race thread in this skit - why are most of the bros white (with one exception) and all the big dildos black? Mocking rape survivors, racism, homophobia, hints of sexism. And huge popularity with little criticism. What am I missing here?

Crossposted to Feministe

This is from an actual ad campaign by UNICEF in Germany to raise awareness about education in Africa. I didn’t know blackface was making a comeback. More at Black Women in Europe, via BFP. (great comments underneath both of these posts, in case anyone is looking for a bit of analysis)

A Tale of Two Genocides. Check out this article raising questions about US inconsistencies when it comes to genocide in Africa. Turns out, shockingly, that what matters is not how many people are dying but who is vying for power. Via Sylvia.

Via TAN: white people think it’s easier to be black than to not have TiVo. Sounds like an Onion headline, right? Yeah, not so much.

Hollywood is not dealing with abortion in this summer’s blockbusters about accidental pregnancies. Curious. Via Kaiser.

Transpeople and bathroom issues at Feministe.

Ooooh I just lurve this headline. Corporate America: The New Gay Activists.

The next generation of republicans: more war, less gay. Or something. Via Feministe.

And finally, some satire. Stephen Colbert presents “the Susan B. Anthony of Pole Dancing,” your feminist of the day. Via Feministing.

There’s been a great deal of fantastic blogging about street harassment (SH) over at Feministe - first, a post on SH with a focus on queers and one about SH and race/class, both courtesy of Jack, who is guest blogging this week. I don’t usually read the comments underneath the posts - mostly I don’t have the time or the energy. My ears perk up, though, when I see nuanced writing about an issue that is not explicitly queer that includes queer perspectives on it. Jack asks towards the end of her post:

And then I always think - how do visually feminine women, who get way more of this than me, deal? How do femmes and other feminine queer women handle that on the daily?

While I can wax theoretical for hours and hours around other queers about my experience as a femme, I haven’t had much experience doing it with straight women. (sidenote: the vast majority of the women who comment at Feministe are straight - case in point, Jack gives her queer perspective, asks for others to give theirs, but with a few exceptions, the thread ends up being dominated by a discussion of whether a man should be allowed to give a polite compliment on the street - as in, is it a man’s tone or the mere fact that he’s talking to a strange woman that makes me feel degraded and violated?).

Maybe I’m just exercising caution. The differences between straight femininity and queer femininity are pretty huge but nuanced, especially to the naked (i.e. straight) eye. Hell, the differences between how white women and WOC experience femininity are also huge and complicated and I wouldn’t even know how to touch that. I can only talk about my own experiences as a white femme and admit that I share some of those experiences with white straight women. I fear that when I talk about empowerment or “reclamations” of femininity or especially about how I relate to masculine partners, I will hear the dreaded “why is your experience any different than a straight one?”

This is actually exactly what happened at Feministe. I posted this and then got this response. Read it if you like, the gist is that I wrote something about invisibility and about the complications of queer femininity becoming lost on the street and that catcalling further invisibilizes the queerness. The responder rightfully asks, how is your experience any different from a straight one?

I can’t speak for straight women. I don’t know what makes up their personal reaction to catcalling. I would guess that if you are normatively gendered, you don’t necessarily think and obsess about your gender presentation the way queers do and you certainly don’t feel your gender being erased in the same way. After all, I experience my gender as mostly synthetic and unnatural and in that way, it is pretty fragile.

I am not saying that straight women do not obsess about appearance. I’m saying that as a queer feminist, I’ve gone through phases and thought long and hard about what femininity means in the world and the ways that it’s been oppressive and powerful and sometimes both and the ways that I, personally, have experienced it as both. I’ve also obsessed over what it means to have a queer perspective on the world, looking out from inside a body that often passes as straight. And the answer, over and over again, is about invisibility. My answer about SH was not about straight women, it had nothing to do with straight women. And maybe I just need to make peace with the fact that straight women can and do relate to some of my words. (And blah blah identity politics we can have overlapping experiences and still be different people.)

At the same time, queer femmes walk around all day long being taken for something we are not. We’re misread as straight, and of course enjoy the privileges that come along with that, and also are included in the joys of SH. This asshole comes along, “hey baby, hey sexy,” and it’s like boom, again, hit me when I’m already down and already feel like I don’t exist. If the femme experiences of femininity is “empowerment,” there’s nothing more disempowering than a strange man telling you you’re sexy. (And for the record, I hate the word empowerment but I can’t think of anything better. I wouldn’t hate it so much if the fucking Pussycat Dolls and white middle-class pole dancers hadn’t co-opted it.)

And now the navel-gazing must come to an end, please go read and take part in the discussion about SH and race/class issues - namely about why sites like HollaBack seem to be dominated by stories of white women being harassed by men of color.

This is old, but some of you might have missed it. I kind of love Manhattan Mini Storage. Via Feministing.

OK I admit it. It is way more difficult to keep up a blog in the summer. I can’t promise salty sunday every week, but I will try.

Salon had a great piece last week about reproductive rights and poverty in Mississippi. Catch-22s abound: without sex education, teenagers don’t use protection and also don’t get tested soon enough after getting pregnant - and in Mississippi, abortions become more expensive after the first trimester because you have to travel out of state in order to have one legally.

New queer group blog Bilerico Project reports on a Florida judge who declared “two victims” in a trans hate crime.

Check out this summary of the US Social Forum at Workers World and also this piece from the AFL-CIO blog on the exciting new National Domestic Workers Alliance formed at the USSF. Also in DW news, the July/August issue of the Brooklyn Rail includes an article about DW issues and the Bill of Rights. There is also some mention of the JFREJ campaign and has some great quotes from employers!

I’m totally psyched about the brand new health justice blog Cure This - there are already a bunch of great pieces up. Definitely check it out. Via BFP.

Also in the category of new health websites, the Kaiser Family Foundation has started Health08, a resource for health-related election news and analysis. Via Feministe.

At Feministe, Trailer Park Feminist reports that fundies are pissed that a Hindu prayer was read aloud for the first time at the beginning of a US senate session. There were hecklers! Jesus. No pun intended.

I haven’t done salty sunday in awhile and I missed some gems over the weeks that I want to share: Blackamazon on not being a radical (hard to sum up), How to destroy an African-American city in 33 steps (Via BFP).

Finally, some humor. Belledame points readers to genius blog Passive-Aggressive Notes, which accepts submissions from lucky folks who have been subject to the notorious notes left behind by angry flatmates and co-workers. (A personal favorite: “Erica, Thanks for cleaning! It’s so nice to have someone else do it once in awhile!”). I used to be the roommate who left passive-aggressive notes. I’m getting better. I think.

I just watched one of the most powerful visual images of occupation that I think I’ve ever seen. A Palestinian fruit grove in the village of Ertas, near Bethlehem, was destroyed a few months ago to make way for a new sewer system for Efrat (a Jewish settlement). The first half of the video shows some of the village’s inhabitants camping out on their land, discussing the IDF plans for the confiscation and razing of their land. There is an interaction between a Palestinian and a soldier that has an almost friendly tone to it. The second half of the video shows protesters being dragged off and apricot trees literally being uprooted while their owners look on from the side. It is so unbelievably heartbreaking. Part of the drama of the second half of the video is the melodramatic music playing in the background. For the unfamiliar, the song is from the Friday evening (sabbath) prayers. The translation of the lyrics:

Please, with the might of your right, untie the bundle:
Accept your people’s prayer song, heighten us, purify us, Mighty one:
Please hero, your uniqueness worshipers, guard them closely:
Bless them purify them, your rightfulness mercies, always reward:
Immune, proud, with your good will, manage your people:
Single, proud, address your people, who remember your holiness:
Accept our plea, and hear our cry, he who knows histories:
Blessed be his kingdom’s honor forever: (source)

Via Jewschool.

Michael Moore is a beautiful beautiful man. He calls CNN on their shit, straight to Wolf Blitzer, and he has no shame about it. He connects health care, problems with corporate media, and the war in Iraq. Blitzer keeps trying to gets soundbites out of him and he’s just not copping to those silly rules.

Via BFP.

Remember the story about the “fetus” that was found at a golf course in Queens (which later turned out to be a maxi pad)? This story trumps that one, I think. On many levels.

A fetus was found in a bag in the girls’ locker room at a school in Dallas! OMG! Except it was just a rotten orange. Crazy much? Why is it assumed that teenage girls are promiscuous sluts who are not only careless enough to get pregnant but who would leave the fetus in their locker? Whatever happened to absent-minded teenagers who leave food to rot in their lockers?

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon gives some excellent context:

Anyway, Bush-appointed members of the FDA believe that there’s a likelihood of emergency contraception-based teenage sex cults, so why would it be such a leap to imagine that junior high girls are running around having sex with the boys and escaping the due punishment by with Sapphic abortion parties in the girls locker room? It’s not like the Bush administration would have members that had a poor grasp on reality, right? The way the war is going certainly demonstrates that. Why I bet these teenage girls today with their girl power and their Title IX are able to self-abort by playing Britney Spears records backwards. That’s how far this country has fallen, due to the feminist infiltrators.

But it is about gay marriage.

Thank goodness for the good gay marriage fight, without which we would not have states suddenly denying domestic partner benefits because they violate constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. Step back for a second. For some refreshing commentary (not to mention great historical context, if you read the full text), let us consult John D’Emilio:

Please, can we speak the truth? The campaign for same-sex marriage has been an unmitigated disaster. Never in the history of organized queerdom have we seen defeats of this magnitude. The battle to win marriage equality through the courts has done something that no other campaign or issue in our movement has done: it has created a vast body of new antigay law. Alas for us, as the anthropologist Gayle Rubin has so cogently observed, “sex laws are notoriously easy to pass. … Once they are on the books, they are extremely difficult to dislodge.” (“The Marriage Fight is Setting us Back,” from the November/December 2006 issue of the Gay and Lesbian Review:)

Case in point today: Kalamazoo, Michigan. Domestic partners of city employees used to have the option of accessing their partners’ health care. No longer, since legislators recently realized that they could use a 2004 constitutional ban on gay marriage to deem the practice illegal. The answer to this problem is NOT “find a way to guarantee that all couples can access each other’s health insurance.” The answer is not to tell the millions of Americans without health insurance to get married to someone whose employer provides insurance.

I haven’t seen Sicko yet, though I hope to soon. From what I’ve read, the documentary provides ample evidence that our country’s system of spending the most in the world on health insurance and having the highest number of uninsured citizens (not to speak of uninsured undocumented immigrants) is beyond absurd. What is also absurd is that so many gay people will rally around gay marriage as some piece of the solution to “our” (as in the gay community’s) health insurance problems, among other issues, when the reality is that a) many states, cities, and private employers recognize domestic partnerships as they do straight marriages when it comes to benefits and b) many, if not most, gay people would STILL be uninsured if gay marriage was legalized in the federal courts tomorrow.

But I digress. What did Kalamazoo do in response to this conundrum? Something really interesting, actually. They took the same language of the previous law allowing partners of city employees to access their partners’ health insurance and changed the wording from “domestic partner” to “Other Qualified Adult.” It’s kind of brilliant, actually, and it reminds me, if only nominally, of the Beyond Same-Sex Marriage statement, which dares to ask for recognition for all kinds of family structures. The language needed to be ambiguous regarding the relationship between the two people in order to pass - it makes no requirement that the two people be romantically involved. It’s kind of cool, actually. Coolest part? It passed. Interesting.

I’ve said it before and I will likely say it again because if you are a regular reader of this blog, you know this issue drives me nuts. Gay marriage is not the answer to all your gay problems. Seriously. It’s doing us more harm than good (it’s also going against history: thank you John D’Emilio). And it’s taking energy away from other worthy fights.