Fluent in Fag

Monday, August 28, 2006

"I think I swallowed a girl"

I read this article in today's SF Chronicle (I don't normally get it, but I got a copy from some friends).

The article is about how many parents and schools are becoming more aware of gender variance in children, and are being supportive instead of trying to force them to conform to "appropriate" gender behavior. Generally the article is positive about this trend, although it has that slightly forced "neutral" (i.e.: emotionally dead) voice that really annoys me.

While I am excited at any positive mainstream mass media coverage of gender variance, I did notice that the article still reveals some slightly misguided attitudes about gender variant kids.

First off, a quibble about the title and tagline for the article, "When is it OK for boys to be girls, and girls to be boys? Many kids want to look and act like the other sex. For some, it's a phase; for others, it's not. Parents and schools are adjusting." Reinforcement of the gender binary much?

There's also this (I love the quote at the end, so I quoted the whole paragraph):

For some children, it's a passing phase. Some grow up to be heterosexual, some gay. Some children insist they are the opposite sex although they might have a hard time explaining it. One nurse therapist said a boy once told her, "I think I swallowed a girl."

There's an implied conflation of gender variance with non-straight sexual orientation. Now, I'm personally of the opinion that homosexuality and bisexuality are themselves aspects of gender, and that the tone of some gay/lesbian denials of the linking of sexuality and gender-variance are somewhat transphobic (and often, in the case of gay men, femme-phobic as well). However, I don't think that's the analysis here.

Yeah, I'm a picky bitch. But you knew that already.

Other than these quibbles, the article is really good. The web version also has some good resources following the article.

I particularly liked a bit in the middle about the dangers of trying to enforce gender roles. However, the message is diluted somewhat by the "mainstream medical health professionals are not unified" bit. Sans explanation. Are we to believe that Warren Throckmorton*, quoted later, who supports ex-gay therapy, is a "mainstream medical health professional"? It's unclear:
Their common message is not to try to change who these kids are, though mainstream mental health professionals are not unified. Some believe such feelings can and should be extinguished through therapy; others believe that can destroy children's self-esteem.

"If you are forced to be something you don't want to be as a kid, you are miserable," said Carla Odiaga of Boston, the consultant hired at Park Day.

Odiaga speaks from a decade of experience counseling lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender teens who she says are scarred by early memories -- a daughter forced to dress like a girl or a son whose dad hit him when he refused to play sports.

In the worst cases, children pushed by parents and picked on by peers grow depressed, suicidal or physically ill, said Caitlin Ryan, a clinical social worker at San Francisco State University who is conducting a long-term survey of gay youths and their families. She said many adolescents she talked to were picked on from kindergarten age -- long before they knew their sexual identity -- for looking or acting "too feminine" or "too butch."


*Throckmorton's bio on his website mentions that he is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Grove City College, but neglects to mention that this is a private Christian college. It is also
the Grove City College that was so opposed to gender equality that it litigated a Title IX case all the way to the Supreme Court. For a rather more full-disclosure version of the bio for Warren Throckmorton, one really needs to go over to Ex-gay Watch.

I have one more snarky response I need to get off my chest, in response to this quote from Andrea Lafferty, the ED of the Traditional Values Coalition:

"If you talk to your typical person across America, they would be appalled," she said. "God made us male and female, and God makes no mistakes. To teach a child at an early age self-hatred, and that's what this gender variance is, is very sad."


God makes no mistakes, eh? So all those homosexuals and other sexual "deviants" that the TVC wants to discriminate against are... what, exactly? God's Special Political Puzzle? God's Fundraiser for the Religious Right? What's the plan, Andrea?

More generally, it annoys and dismays me that right wing crazies are appropriating the language of progressive communities. "God makes no mistakes" and "self-hatred" are our buzzwords, damn it.

On the topic of gender inappropriate behavior, do people remember Ferdinand the Bull? I read this as a child and loved it, although it doesn't move me as much as Are You My Mother? (abandonment fear trumps sissy-identification any day). One of my friends, who is middle aged, also remembers reading it when he was a child. It's a really old book!

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Back in SF


Was it worth the 17 hours sitting in a dehydrated plane cabin, the 1 back-pain-inducing hour at Immigration, and the full body cavity search by a handsome customs officer, all just to get back to San Francisco?

You bet your BARTing-to-Berkeley, glorious-sunshine-moderated-by-sea-breeze-enjoying, cheap-taco-eating, raw-food-cafe-going, peach-sniffing, fuckbuddy-phoning, bicycle-riding, blue-bottle-coffee-drinking, strawberry-picking, evening-fog-breathing, rainbow-grocery-shopping, roseanne-thoning, tank-top-and-skirt-wearing ASS it was.

Okay I made up the full body cavity search thing.

What's the relation of this to queerness? Umm... Not that much. I'm just really happy to be back, and wanted the few of you who read this blog who don't read my other blogs to know. Woot! Also, SF has so many of teh Gay. Plus I might go to Folsom St. Fair and blog that, so... I have to be here to do that, and that's why it has something to do with being queer.

*shakes fist at everpresent blog mission*

Image in this post from cbcastro, it's under the ever-awesome Creative Commons license.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Righteous Sex

I just read JoAnn Wypijewski's article "The Way of All Flesh" in the current issue of Mother Jones. In it she describes the website The Marriage Bed. The site is a kind of "Leviticus meets Girls Gone Wild", dispensing sex advice (both from "experts" and through community fora to Christians who want to make sure they're doing the Right Thing.

Here's a great bit that Wypijewski quotes in her article:
[Women are] urged in an essay by the Reverend Paul titled "How to Strip for Your Husband" to "finish your performance by letting him watch you enjoy a self induced orgasm. To drive him over the top, put a chair in front of him, sit down, put your feet on his knees, spread wide and masturbate. Bonus point for self penetration."

It's like Savage Love for the evangelical set.

Of course, the website condemns extramarital sex (including sex with someone of the same gender), but it does allow for certain types of masturbation.

The list of "What's OK? What's Not?" reads a little bit like a Sexual Harrassment training explaining what constitutes appropriate and consensual sexual behavior, except the person consenting here is God, and the law is the Bible (mainly the old testament, I believe). Here's what they have to say about masturbating in front of your spouse (as you may have guessed from the quote above, the gist is that it's okay):

...[One] issue is a couple watching each other masturbate. Most men, and many women, find this very arousing, and it can also be informative. As a frequent alternative to more interactive sex it could be a problem, but we know of no Biblical or medical reasons why it would be wrong or unwise to do this from time to time.

Notice the cautious tone of the approval, though - it's a classic lawyerspeak approach: "With some limited exceptions, we know of no specific reason why not to perform this activity".

Another interesting bit for me was the discussion of permissible sexual fantasies and roleplay:
Since God cares about our thoughts, not just our actions, there must be a line in this that we should not cross, but where is that line? A safe way to approach this is to say it's wrong to fantasize or act out anything it would be wrong to actually do. This means you must always play yourselves, not a real movie star or someone you know. It also means you must be married in the fantasy.

There is an interesting parallel to this position in the anti-BDSM strain of feminist thought, which argues that (enactments of) fantasies of domination or non-consensual sex are wrong. In part the argument turns on the effect of such fantasies on your own thoughts, and not the problem of actual consent of a partner (that is, even if consenting to the enactment of such fantasies was unproblematic, the fantasies themselves were still problematic). There is no posited third entity (God) watching, but you are expected to be your own censor.

Much of the feminist analysis of BDSM focuses on heterosexual or lesbian BDSM. As far as I know there has been little significant feminist/queer criticism of BDSM in the gay male community (which is not to say that there is not a fair share of sex-negativity among gay men - it's just not as heavily theorized with regards to BDSM).

Which got me thinking - what are the sexual norms of the gay male community? Are there such norms? I know that there are micronorms for certain gay male spaces like saunas, bars, street parties.

Gay men don't seem to spend a lot of time searching for these norms (at least, not aloud) - we're more concerned about getting what we want. A message board about "what kind of gay sex is okay"* seems like it would be a non-starter. Even Savage Love columns seem mainly to consist of letters from troubled straights; or bisexuals in heterosexual relationships, though its audience includes a large number of gay men.

*I mean "okay" in a broadly ethical sense, not the instrumental sense of preventing STD transmission.

Personally, except for certain rare circumstances (criminal law classes on rape, reading feminist essays on BDSM) I don't spend a lot of time worrying about what kind of sex is moral. I'm more likely to be thinking about what kind of sex would feel good, when I'm going to get to have that sex, who is likely to join me, and how to go about finding such people. So in a way morality and sex seem to be totally different realms of thought and emotion for me. I never feel self-righteous during sex.

Unless the other guy comes first.

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Wear your hate on your sleeve

How would you feel if someone at your high school wore a T-shirt on National Day of Silence that read "I WILL NOT ACCEPT WHAT GOD HAS CONDEMNED," on the front and "HOMOSEXUALITY IS SHAMEFUL ‘Romans 1:27’" on the back?

Tyler Harper did just that, and his school asked him to leave (they didn't suspend him). Actually the school asked him to leave the next day, when he wore a shirt with the same message on the back, but a "BE ASHAMED, OUR SCHOOL EMBRACED
WHAT GOD HAS CONDEMNED" on the front. Very topical.

Harper sought a preliminary injunction against the school. The district court denied it. Three judges on the Ninth Circuit affirmed (opinion behind the link). Harper asked for a rehearing en banc, but was denied

Dale Carpenter writes about the original Ninth Circuit opinion over on The Volokh Conspiracy. He thinks that the Ninth Circuit applied the case law incorrectly (in other words, based on existing First Amendment law, they should have held that Harper had a right to wear that T-shirt, or at least had a good case for it). However, Carpenter thinks that the case law should change. This would require the Supreme Court to modify or overturn a previous First Amendment case - Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District.

Tinker set a judicial standard for deciding when a school could and could not regulate students' speech. Basically, if student speech would infringe the rights of others or interfere/disrupt school activities, the school can suppress it. Carpenter thinks that the problem isn't the specific content of these standards, but the level of intrusion they allow judges into schools' actions. He wants there to be more discretion given to public schools to decide what is and is not permissible speech on their campus.

Carpenter argues the eminent reasonableness of preventing a student from wearing a T-shirt saying that homosexuality is "shameful", in a school where there had been a history of harassment of LGBT students:

Of course, a single T-shirt bearing the words “Homosexuality is shameful” isn’t that sort of direct face-to-face harassment and doesn’t, by itself, create a pervasively hostile environment. No single derogatory statement, taken by itself, creates a pervasively hostile environment. The problem is that it's expressed in a context that is already a living hell for gay kids in many public schools, as it probably was in this one, making it difficult for them to concentrate on getting an education.


I am disinclined to agree with Carpenter. I find it hard to imagine an alternative, workable standard that doesn't end up giving way too much leeway to ideologues or complacent bureaucrats in schools to prevent student dissent.

Carpenter does make a qualification that he would protect students' right to express any viewpoint in an appropriate setting:

I would not want to allow schools to banish all ways of expressing certain viewpoints, including the viewpoints that homosexuality is wrong, that blacks are inferior, or that women should remain at home. It should be permissible even to say that homosexuality is "shameful" in the context of, say, a classroom discussion of sexual morality. There should be times and places for expressing political views in schools; but that time is not all day and that place is not in the middle of a classroom on another topic. Schools should be given considerable latitude – certainly more than Tinker seems to give them – to ensure that students focus on the curriculum.


This all sounds reasonable until you consider the fact that schools most effectively suppress student dissent precisely by never providing the appropriate forum to discuss their viewpoints, or by structuring the forum so as to minimise the effectiveness of a dissenting voice. A school that does not want to hear about student dissatisfaction with immigration policy, for example, might ask its teachers to reschedule a history unit on immigration to a time when the issue is not up for debate in Congress. A school that does not want students to discuss queer sexual politics might remove all discussion of sexual morality from its curriculum. In my own experience, there was rarely an "appropriate" classroom time to bring up queerness or political dissatisfaction - many curricula at the pre-college level seem designed precisely to PREVENT substantive disagreement from entering the classroom.

This is not to say that I think that Tyler Harper's T-shirt was just great and a fabulous contribution to any kind of discussion. In fact, it was a rather uninformative, dogmatic and hateful piece of couture ideologique. While it didn't quite rise to the level of invective or fighting words, I certainly don't think it would have been ok for the school to leave Harper alone and take no action in response. In deciding to do something, the school's administrators had the right idea, though perhaps a bad implementation.

However, as cliche as this sounds, the school was free to respond to Harper's speech with more speech. Teachers could speak to their classes about the negative effects of homophobia, and even bring up the fact that not all Christian denominations or congregations believe that homosexual sex acts are sinful. Students who organized the Day of Silence could be invited to speak to classes about the day. Outside speakers could be brought in. All of this could be done without treading on the dangerous ground of state infringement of speech.

In suggesting that Tinker be overturned, Carpenter flirts with a disastrous curbing of First Amendment rights. In these paranoid times, it is bizarre for any person who cares about civil liberties to call for overturning or limiting Tinker, a case that protected the right of students to wear armbands in protest of the Vietnam War.

Student dissent is what we need now more than ever. If it means that once in a while schools and students have to shout down a self-righteous homophobe, well, that's the joyous clamor of a free conversation.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Priorities

Let's see. If I were god, which of the following would I most want my followers, with their limited resources, to be most concerned about?
a) ending hunger
b) eradicating poverty
c) promoting peace
d) hating fags
e) the evils of cotton-poly blend

Black Episcopalians have decided that it's not (d). According to the article, black Episcopalian leaders are calling for the church to stop focusing on gay clergy while ignoring issues of poverty and oppression.

[Rev. Sandeye] Wilson linked the debate over gay ordination to the decades-old ordination of women -- a pill she said conservative leaders never fully swallowed. With women now incorporated into many churches, she said gays have become a new scapegoat.

She joined other leaders who said the church enlisted the support of right-leaning African bishops while overlooking issues facing their continent, including the HIV crisis.

On Tuesday, she asked black Episcopalians to remember the civil rights era as she held up a copy of the Windsor Report, a 2004 document that urged U.S. Episcopal leaders to apologize for dividing the faith.

"As I looked at the Windsor Report, there were echoes of all the oppression that I've experienced throughout my life as a black woman," she said. "We who have been oppressed and rejected ... do not need to be a part of rejecting and oppressing others."


I usually couldn't care less what churches are doing to "improve" their stance towards LGBT people (though I am more than ready with my Bag-o-Snark when they do stupid homophobic things). However, I was drawn to this article because of Wilson's expression of black people's solidarity with LGBT people. I think it's a ridiculous thing that, with everything else going on in their countries, African bishops seem to have made a huge issue out of Gays in the Church (ooh, wouldn't that be a great sequel to Snakes on a Plane?).

Love sucks. Hate sucks more.

My mother used to scold me for using the word "hate". When I'd say something like "I hate this park, there are bugs!" or "I hate this itchy shirt!"; or "This movie is so boring. I hate it!" I would get a swift reprimand, and an instruction to say "dislike" instead. I guess she was trying to teach me that hate is a potent emotion, not something to be thrown around lightly. Hate has consequences. The thing is, you can't beat up a buggy park*, you can't kill an itchy shirt, and you can't intimidate a boring movie with a knife (well, you could try, but... well... okay, you know what? Do what you want). Ooh! You know what you can intimidate, beat up and kill? Fags, dykes and trannies! And many people do. And sometimes it seems nobody cares.

*when I was about 10, I went through a phase where I would buy food at recess that came on styrofoam plates, and then gleefully break the plates into pieces as I threw them away, thinking that would release more CFCs, leading to global warming, and killing all those bugs that I hated so much.

From feministe, I clicked to this post, Epidemic of Hatred by Shakespeare's Sister about the media silence on homophobic/transphobic* violence.

*Note: Shakespeare's Sister doesn't specifically mention or reference any instances of violence against people who identify as trans-, but as Kate Bornstein said (I'm paraphrasing, obviously): we aren't bashed for "being gay", we're bashed for transgressing the rules of gender.

ShakeSis points out that the media and Congresspersons create political storms in a teacup over flag-burning and keeping the pledge of allegiance in schools, yet say nary a word about the numerous anti-queer incidents happening all the time:

How little it takes to whip up the media into an exploitative frenzy, all in the name of “protecting” us. How little it takes to move our Congress to pay attention to an issue and pass legislation to “protect” us. (Which is, of course, ever an excuse to limit our rights, but they nonetheless claim it’s about “protection.”) One or two incidents, or, sometimes, just an imaginary scenario of what might happen. That’s all it takes.

But in the course of two months, there have been at least six vicious attacks on the LGBT community, and the media is silent. And Congress, well, they were pushing for an amendment to deny equal rights to same-sex couples. Their focus was “protecting the sanctity of marriage.” They’re more concerned with protecting an institution, an abstract concept, than protecting people.


In 2004, according to the FBI, 1,482 people were victims of crimes motivated by hatred based on "sexual orientation". Of these, about 600 were targeted by violent crimes. The other incidents were mainly property damage and intimidation. That's just under 2 violent incidents per day! And that's just the reported ones. I hardly need to note the reasons why such crimes might go underreported (either not reported at all, or not reported as motivated by hate).

Even if someone reports a crime and mentions the motivation, there's no guarantee that the agency receiving the report documents it or passes that information on. Check out this table. Out of Alabama's 51 participating agencies, only 3 submitted reports of any hate crimes at all. Now, do you think that no hate crimes happened in the other 48 agencies' jurisdiction?

Now, you may be opposed to or ambivalent about hate crimes laws* (I'm ambivalent), but hate-motivated crime is still something that needs more media and community attention. Our communities need to address and change the culture of fear and misunderstanding underlying these crimes, as well as the too-prevalent underenforcement of existing laws, or victim-blaming in cases involving anti-queer violence.

*Actually, I make a distinction between laws requiring documentation of hate crime, laws requiring special attention to hate incidents (or preventing police or prosecutorial neglect of hate incidents), and laws requiring increased punishment of hate crime - I am unequivocally in favor of the first two, and ambivalent about the last one.

This need not involve criminal law at all. CUAV in San Francisco, for example, has a great volunteer speakers bureau program that puts on events in schools and other settings to educate people about LGBT issues by giving them a safe, non-confrontational setting to interact with openly queer speakers. My undergraduate college had a similar program, and speaking with a class of high school kids about LGBT issues was such a rewarding experience - I learned as much from it as they did, if not more.

So, as ShakeSis says:
write your Congress members and your local media and tell them to pay attention to this Epidemic of Hatred against the LGBT community. Donate to LGBT advocacy groups. Straight people, register your support with Atticus Circle and PFLAG. And keep talking about this. Blog this issue. Tell anyone who will listen and get them involved.

I would add: find out about your local LGBT/Queer community organizations and ask them what they are doing to address anti-queer hate and build understanding, and what you can do to contribute (it could be time, it could be money, it could be some other resource).

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Cellphone girl to the rescue!

http://www.whowantstobeasuperhero.tv/

Is this for real? Has anyone seen it? How is it?

The SCI FI Channel, Nash Entertainment (Meet My Folks, For Love or Money, Who Wants to Marry My Dad?), and legendary comic-book creator Stan Lee (Spider-man, Hulk, The Fantastic Four, X-Men) are the producers of this six-episode, one-hour weekly competition reality series that will challenge a lucky few to create their very own superhero and reward the winner with the best reality competition prize yet: immortality!

Each contestant begins with an original idea for a superhero, a self-made costume, and their best superhero mojo. From thousands of hopefuls, Stan Lee chooses the lucky finalists who move together into a secret lair. There they will begin their transformations — and their competition for the opportunity to become real-life superheroes. Over the course of the series, they will test their mettle, try to overcome their limitations, and do what it takes to prove that they truly are super.

Love, Valor, Commitment

My mother emailed me this article from Yawning Bread (it's pretty old, but still worth reading, seeing as it's not about current events so much as a musing on gay relationships).

Here's an excerpt:
Let’s face it. Gay men’s relationships are completely different [from straight marriages]. Don’t kid ourselves. They’re not built on love and commitment. They’re love or nothing. What commitment there is comes out of love. You can’t pull commitment out of yourself (let alone out of your partner) in the absence of love. There’re no children, there is no legal basis to shared property, and no fear of alimony. Love or nothing.
...
It’s no wonder then that gay male relationships tend to fall apart within a few months or years, not because their love is more hollow, but because quite often for men, whether gay or straight, that's about how long love lasts. Nevertheless, despite this knowledge, the pain is terrible still. And then the misery is compounded by comparing ourselves with straight marriages that seem to last forever. Anything more than 10 years is forever. In fact, we’re not comparing like with like, but we don’t even realise it. It’s not that the majority of straight men remain in passionate love for ten years. They just get used to the wife, and enjoy the compensations of children, comfort, security and social esteem. If we want to compare, then compare how long we remain in love with how long straight men remain in love. Don’t compare ourselves to a piece of paper called a Marriage Certificate.


The analysis is simplistic (YB is a master of the art of the simplistic but appealing argument - I don't mean that in a snarky way. It really is an art), but it brings up a point that I think is well taken. Marriage is about more than love. In fact, often it is about something quite different from love, namely "commitment".

The problem is, when you look at how "commitment" is enforced in a marriage, it starts to look awfully coercive. Now, I'm not against a little coercion now and then, but... well, we'll leave that for another post. Anyway, the essay's worth reading, is my point.

Oh, it also made me wonder if relationships last longer in cities where apartments are expensive. Stay together for the rent control. There's a great personal story about that over at Mortification & Leisure, btw.

CAVEAT: feminists among us (I include myself) will notice some pretty back-asswards attitudes, especially in the first part of the essay, about relations between men and women, and the totally male-focused analysis of heterosexual marriages is offputting to say the least. I promise it gets better in the second half. I just thought I'd warn y'all.