6/11/10
Weekly Savaging: Goodbye, Dan
Dear Dan Savage,
It would not be hyperbole to say that you are one of the most influential figures I've had in my life. I discovered you as a teenager, when I'd snag copies of SF Weekly paper on excursions to the glamorous, gay city from the Central Valley cow town where I grew up. I'd immediately flip to the back of the paper to find your advice column, nestled between escort ads. Hilarious and scandalous, yet practical and strangely heartfelt, your writing deeply affected my understanding of my own sexuality and how I approached relationships.
I became more of a fangirl as I entered my 20's. Testament to this is that I own a copy of every book you've written, including one signed by you at reading you gave in the Haight (I was that stammering girl with her gay friend who embarrassed you by going on a bit too long about how awesome you are - I'm sure you remember me clearly). I still recommend "The Kid" to anyone who will listen. You were my Gay Best Friend when I was stuck in conservative small towns and flyover states. Plus, I had an not-entirely platonic crush on you.
During the years, as I've become more politically aware, being a fan of yours has cause some problems. Quite a few people in the circles I run in, both online and off, have a problem with you. The first complaint I heard was that you're a misogynist. This was easily brushed aside for me - sure, you might have compared female genitalia to a canned ham being dropped from a tall building, but so what? You're a gay man, and your vulvaphobia wasn't a problem for me, particularly since you were also so quick to call out straight boys on theirs, as well as to tell them that they don't deserve to be in sexual relationships if they weren't willing to give women the orgasms they deserve. To me, the benefit you did as an advocate of female sexual pleasure far outweighed some crass humor.
But the problems didn't stop there. Your take on fat people has consistently been simplistic, hurtful, and unnecessary. Comparing people with race-based sexual preferences to preferring one hair color over another ignores ingrained societal racism. After Prop. 8 passed here in California, you had a horrible blog post blaming Black Californians for the end of gay marriage in California, while whining that Obama couldn't have been elected if not for gay people, which conveniently erased the existence of Black queer people. And as anyone who has paid attention to you, like, ever knows, you have consistently said fucked-up shit about bisexual men and women, as well as about trans people.
For starters, you're one of the biggest advocates of the obnoxious "female sexuality is fluid (so male sexuality must not be)" meme, which helps negate womens' queer identities in one sense (we're not really ever straight or queer, just "fluid") and completely makes bisexual men invisible, which isn't surprising because you basically don't really believe they exist. You've also stated that there are no male-to-female transgendered people who ever perceived themselves as gay men, and make jokes about how every butch lesbian will eventually transition to male, both of which display a ginormous lack of understanding about trans experiences. Oh, and is this an appropriate time to bring up your pro-war stance in Iraq? No? Too bad.
But to top all this shit off, you go and pull shit like this, in which you make a "joke" claiming a bigoted cis male politician is actually a female-to-male transsexual. Then you get an employee of yours to publish a ridiculous defense of a blatantly transphobic act (and not mention, bafflingly unfunny "joke") which is almost as stupid as the original offending post.
I'm sorry, but this whole, "It's funny to say that bigoted figures are really what they hate," is an old, boring, and pointless meme. Yes, some homophobic politicians have in fact been outed as queer (unlike you, I hesitate to assume that men who have sex with men but have been married to women are automatically gay). Most homophobic politicians are still just plain ol' bigoted straight folks, and frankly, I care less about their orientation than I do about the actual harm they are doing to GTLBQ people. Then you take that one step further and make a running joke about Rob McKenna being a trans man - presumably, because you think he "looks" like one. Setting aside the problematic idea that trans men look a certain way, he doesn't even fit the stereotype of what trans guys are supposed to look like! What he does have is delicate facial features, so I guess that makes him "feminized" in your eyes - so he must be a trans man, i.e. not a REAL man, right, Dan? I see no other way of interpreting this.
But now, you're claiming can't be transphobic because you've raised money for trans causes. Is that kind of like how fundamentalist Christian Zionists must not be anti-Semitic because they support Israel (as far as it relates to their own ends)? And unable to resist pouring salt on a gaping wound, Queerty (don't read the comments - never read the comments) reports you saying this in your "defense":
"I am not biphobic or transphobic. One my best friends is trans. People accuse me of being biphobic when all I am doing is articulating that a lot of bisexuality has certain issues and problems. Many people did identify as bisexual when they were coming out and it was a lie. That is just true. It is not crazy when you meet a bi person to wonder if they are really bi. It isn't disrespectful. It is rational. Many bi people end up in an opposite-sex relationship so they are not in the same boat with us as gays and lesbians. … I joke about trans stuff. We are not allowed to say tranny anymore. There's the T word and the F word, there is every letter of the alphabet word. … I still use the word "faggot" all the time in my column. Every time that I am on chat shows on cable I make a point of using fag in reference to myself because I don't think it is a dirty word. I don't think we should be stupid about it."
While your wit is well-known, you've never been accused of a being a particularly deep thinker, Dan, as this quote makes clear. Are you really so self-focused that you cannot conceive of how it's a little bit different for you, as a gay man, to reclaim "faggot" than it is for as a cis person to insist that "tranny" is OK? Would you really be comfortable being called a "faggot" by someone you know to be an anti-gay bigot? If words didn't have power, you wouldn't have tried to reclaim and de-legitimize "faggot" as a slur, and you do not get to decide what is or is not a slur for groups you are not a part of. I mean seriously, sit the fuck down and think on this a while. Do white people get to use racial slurs if they "have *insert ethnicity here* friends?" And are you seriously not aware of how incredibly fucking stupid it is to use "I have *insert whatever here* friends as an excuse for any sort of bullshit?
As far as your biphobia goes, for fuck's sake dude, this isn't 1992. Male bisexual chic has fallen far since the time you were coming out, whereas hey, guess what? Being a gay dude has become far more accepted. While yes, every single gay man on earth has a story about a guy who used to call himself bi and is now gay, this idea that men are actively taking on the stigma of male bisexuality in droves as a temporary measure to avoid the stigma of male homosexuality is kind of ludicrous.
And while it's true, based on the simple numbers game, that most bisexual people will "find themselves in an opposite-sex relationship" - what you mean here, obviously, is "will settle down with an opposite sex person." What you did here is basically declaring a bisexual identity not relevant to queer politics because of a bisexual person's relationships. An out bisexual person, Dan, can still be on the receiving end of homophobia simply by virtue of being honest about who they are, regardless of who they're dating. They can still lose their jobs, custody of their kids, or get kicked out of the military. I know it seems scary, but I promise you that acknowledging that bisexual people face oppression similar to what gays and lesbians face does not actually reduce your claim to the oppression you suffer as a gay man. This isn't a zero sum game.
Here's the thing. Unlike, it seems sometimes, a lot of rhetoric that gets thrown around in anti-oppression circles, I get that in the real world, most of us are not generally interacting amongst people who say, know what "cisgender" means or is terribly invested in radical queer critique or anti-racist analysis. And especially for someone who came of age in a much different gay culture that a lot of this talk you deride as "alphabet soup" and such can seem like politically-correct women's-study-majors buzzkill bullshit. And if you were just some random gay guy who had some less-than-cool opinions about what words you are supposed to say or what you think about bisexuals, I wouldn't give a shit.
But you're not some anonymous, increasingly irrelevant negative queen with no power.You're a public figure. Not just any public figure, but one of the U.S.'s most famous advice columnists. The "Savage Lovecast" is one of the top 10 most popular podcasts on the entire Internet. Like it or not - and I suspect you rather like it- you are in a position of authority, particularly to queer youth, but also for straights and how they perceive queerness. For fuck's sake, Dan, you are Stephen Colbert's "Spokesgay"! You are a representative for sex, liberty, and gayness to the rest of this fucked-up country. So you have a real responsibility as someone who claims to care about young freaks everywhere to not be a huge fucking dick about people you don't like or understand. Because it affects people.
It would be great if you bothered to educate yourself and learn why your views on appropriate language and transgendered people and bisexual people are ignorant and wrong. Or if you can't be bothered to do that, to at least learn to shut the fuck up about your bigotry in the public sphere. But we both know that isn't going to happen. So you can continue to increasingly sound like a throwback to some regretful primeval era of gay politics, the "glory days" before you had to worry about the "T" or the "B", because we're breaking up. It's been a long time coming, but I'm fresh out of excuses for you, and you're embarrassing us all.
It would not be hyperbole to say that you are one of the most influential figures I've had in my life. I discovered you as a teenager, when I'd snag copies of SF Weekly paper on excursions to the glamorous, gay city from the Central Valley cow town where I grew up. I'd immediately flip to the back of the paper to find your advice column, nestled between escort ads. Hilarious and scandalous, yet practical and strangely heartfelt, your writing deeply affected my understanding of my own sexuality and how I approached relationships.
I became more of a fangirl as I entered my 20's. Testament to this is that I own a copy of every book you've written, including one signed by you at reading you gave in the Haight (I was that stammering girl with her gay friend who embarrassed you by going on a bit too long about how awesome you are - I'm sure you remember me clearly). I still recommend "The Kid" to anyone who will listen. You were my Gay Best Friend when I was stuck in conservative small towns and flyover states. Plus, I had an not-entirely platonic crush on you.
During the years, as I've become more politically aware, being a fan of yours has cause some problems. Quite a few people in the circles I run in, both online and off, have a problem with you. The first complaint I heard was that you're a misogynist. This was easily brushed aside for me - sure, you might have compared female genitalia to a canned ham being dropped from a tall building, but so what? You're a gay man, and your vulvaphobia wasn't a problem for me, particularly since you were also so quick to call out straight boys on theirs, as well as to tell them that they don't deserve to be in sexual relationships if they weren't willing to give women the orgasms they deserve. To me, the benefit you did as an advocate of female sexual pleasure far outweighed some crass humor.
But the problems didn't stop there. Your take on fat people has consistently been simplistic, hurtful, and unnecessary. Comparing people with race-based sexual preferences to preferring one hair color over another ignores ingrained societal racism. After Prop. 8 passed here in California, you had a horrible blog post blaming Black Californians for the end of gay marriage in California, while whining that Obama couldn't have been elected if not for gay people, which conveniently erased the existence of Black queer people. And as anyone who has paid attention to you, like, ever knows, you have consistently said fucked-up shit about bisexual men and women, as well as about trans people.
For starters, you're one of the biggest advocates of the obnoxious "female sexuality is fluid (so male sexuality must not be)" meme, which helps negate womens' queer identities in one sense (we're not really ever straight or queer, just "fluid") and completely makes bisexual men invisible, which isn't surprising because you basically don't really believe they exist. You've also stated that there are no male-to-female transgendered people who ever perceived themselves as gay men, and make jokes about how every butch lesbian will eventually transition to male, both of which display a ginormous lack of understanding about trans experiences. Oh, and is this an appropriate time to bring up your pro-war stance in Iraq? No? Too bad.
But to top all this shit off, you go and pull shit like this, in which you make a "joke" claiming a bigoted cis male politician is actually a female-to-male transsexual. Then you get an employee of yours to publish a ridiculous defense of a blatantly transphobic act (and not mention, bafflingly unfunny "joke") which is almost as stupid as the original offending post.
I'm sorry, but this whole, "It's funny to say that bigoted figures are really what they hate," is an old, boring, and pointless meme. Yes, some homophobic politicians have in fact been outed as queer (unlike you, I hesitate to assume that men who have sex with men but have been married to women are automatically gay). Most homophobic politicians are still just plain ol' bigoted straight folks, and frankly, I care less about their orientation than I do about the actual harm they are doing to GTLBQ people. Then you take that one step further and make a running joke about Rob McKenna being a trans man - presumably, because you think he "looks" like one. Setting aside the problematic idea that trans men look a certain way, he doesn't even fit the stereotype of what trans guys are supposed to look like! What he does have is delicate facial features, so I guess that makes him "feminized" in your eyes - so he must be a trans man, i.e. not a REAL man, right, Dan? I see no other way of interpreting this.
But now, you're claiming can't be transphobic because you've raised money for trans causes. Is that kind of like how fundamentalist Christian Zionists must not be anti-Semitic because they support Israel (as far as it relates to their own ends)? And unable to resist pouring salt on a gaping wound, Queerty (don't read the comments - never read the comments) reports you saying this in your "defense":
"I am not biphobic or transphobic. One my best friends is trans. People accuse me of being biphobic when all I am doing is articulating that a lot of bisexuality has certain issues and problems. Many people did identify as bisexual when they were coming out and it was a lie. That is just true. It is not crazy when you meet a bi person to wonder if they are really bi. It isn't disrespectful. It is rational. Many bi people end up in an opposite-sex relationship so they are not in the same boat with us as gays and lesbians. … I joke about trans stuff. We are not allowed to say tranny anymore. There's the T word and the F word, there is every letter of the alphabet word. … I still use the word "faggot" all the time in my column. Every time that I am on chat shows on cable I make a point of using fag in reference to myself because I don't think it is a dirty word. I don't think we should be stupid about it."
While your wit is well-known, you've never been accused of a being a particularly deep thinker, Dan, as this quote makes clear. Are you really so self-focused that you cannot conceive of how it's a little bit different for you, as a gay man, to reclaim "faggot" than it is for as a cis person to insist that "tranny" is OK? Would you really be comfortable being called a "faggot" by someone you know to be an anti-gay bigot? If words didn't have power, you wouldn't have tried to reclaim and de-legitimize "faggot" as a slur, and you do not get to decide what is or is not a slur for groups you are not a part of. I mean seriously, sit the fuck down and think on this a while. Do white people get to use racial slurs if they "have *insert ethnicity here* friends?" And are you seriously not aware of how incredibly fucking stupid it is to use "I have *insert whatever here* friends as an excuse for any sort of bullshit?
As far as your biphobia goes, for fuck's sake dude, this isn't 1992. Male bisexual chic has fallen far since the time you were coming out, whereas hey, guess what? Being a gay dude has become far more accepted. While yes, every single gay man on earth has a story about a guy who used to call himself bi and is now gay, this idea that men are actively taking on the stigma of male bisexuality in droves as a temporary measure to avoid the stigma of male homosexuality is kind of ludicrous.
And while it's true, based on the simple numbers game, that most bisexual people will "find themselves in an opposite-sex relationship" - what you mean here, obviously, is "will settle down with an opposite sex person." What you did here is basically declaring a bisexual identity not relevant to queer politics because of a bisexual person's relationships. An out bisexual person, Dan, can still be on the receiving end of homophobia simply by virtue of being honest about who they are, regardless of who they're dating. They can still lose their jobs, custody of their kids, or get kicked out of the military. I know it seems scary, but I promise you that acknowledging that bisexual people face oppression similar to what gays and lesbians face does not actually reduce your claim to the oppression you suffer as a gay man. This isn't a zero sum game.
Here's the thing. Unlike, it seems sometimes, a lot of rhetoric that gets thrown around in anti-oppression circles, I get that in the real world, most of us are not generally interacting amongst people who say, know what "cisgender" means or is terribly invested in radical queer critique or anti-racist analysis. And especially for someone who came of age in a much different gay culture that a lot of this talk you deride as "alphabet soup" and such can seem like politically-correct women's-study-majors buzzkill bullshit. And if you were just some random gay guy who had some less-than-cool opinions about what words you are supposed to say or what you think about bisexuals, I wouldn't give a shit.
But you're not some anonymous, increasingly irrelevant negative queen with no power.You're a public figure. Not just any public figure, but one of the U.S.'s most famous advice columnists. The "Savage Lovecast" is one of the top 10 most popular podcasts on the entire Internet. Like it or not - and I suspect you rather like it- you are in a position of authority, particularly to queer youth, but also for straights and how they perceive queerness. For fuck's sake, Dan, you are Stephen Colbert's "Spokesgay"! You are a representative for sex, liberty, and gayness to the rest of this fucked-up country. So you have a real responsibility as someone who claims to care about young freaks everywhere to not be a huge fucking dick about people you don't like or understand. Because it affects people.
It would be great if you bothered to educate yourself and learn why your views on appropriate language and transgendered people and bisexual people are ignorant and wrong. Or if you can't be bothered to do that, to at least learn to shut the fuck up about your bigotry in the public sphere. But we both know that isn't going to happen. So you can continue to increasingly sound like a throwback to some regretful primeval era of gay politics, the "glory days" before you had to worry about the "T" or the "B", because we're breaking up. It's been a long time coming, but I'm fresh out of excuses for you, and you're embarrassing us all.
5/29/10
A movie that's good
Ben Tanaka and his girlfriend Miko Hayashi exit a movie theater. There is a sign by the entrance saying "Asian American Digi-Fest." They walk to their car.Miko: Well, I know that probably wasn't your cup of tea, but thanks for coming.Ben: Did you really like that?M: I guess it was kind of corny, but... yeah.B: I can't believe that was supposed to be the best of the festival. Talk about a big fish in a small pond.M: Well we had more submissions than ever before this year.B: Yeah... of digital videos made by Asian-Americans who happen to live around here. Didn't they also have to be left-handed or something?They get in the car, and keep talking.M: We worked really hard to put this festival together.B: I know! I'm not criticizing you. I'm criticizing the shitty movie. Am I allowed to voice my opinion?M: You don't have to. You made it perfectly clear with all your fidgeting and groaning. I'm sure that Ling could hear you snickering throughout her film.B: It's good for her! You can't control an audience's reaction.M: Well it's a little embarrassing for me. And really, who are you to criticize?B: Hey... I know a lot more about movies than she does. I'm in the industry...M: "The Industry"? You manage a theater!B: That's right... a real movie theater. Where none of those movies are good enough to play at.M: Look, if you didn't like the movie, that's fine. I don't understand why you have to get so angry.B: Because everyone knows it's garbage, but they clap for it anyway because it was made by some Chinese girl from Oakland! I mean, why does everything have to be some big "statement" about race? Don't any of these people just want to make a movie that's good?
- from Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine
I'm really looking forward to the Frameline San Francisco International LGBT film festival. There is something very exciting about being in a room of largely queer people watching films depicting queer lives, perhaps because so much of the oppression of queers is enacted through invisibility and shame. Of those films I am especially drawn to films set in Southeast Asia or made by Southeast Asian queer directors or starring Southeast Asian actors (the photo above is from the publicity page for the short film "Swing" set in Singapore)
On the one hand it's a little embarrassing. I worry that I'm falling into some kind of trap of just liking a film "because it was made by some Chinese girl from Oakland" (which would somehow destroy my discerning-cinema-goer-cred). On the other hand, I think that there's something particular about the filmmaking process too that resists shame in a powerful way which in turn makes the film good just by nature of its usually devalued subject matter. In order for a film to be made and shown, generally a whole mess of people has to be involved, not least of which is the audience. Queer film for queer audiences, but screened for the public is liberating because it says "we will spend time and resources to document our lives and make those documents public, and we will do so in a way that engages us as a community, but invites any who care to see it to do so." That's pretty wow to me.
And the other thing is... there's some kind of affinity for me between my queerness and the medium of film. It's been a long cultural trope that gay men, especially, are more creative, or that we have special talent at the arts. I don't want to give too much credence to this, but there has, at least academically, been a connection between queer theory and film. For myself, and for many others, our first exposure to "queering" was through film - learning to re-read ostensibly "straight" movies made during the time of the Hollywood "code" through a queer lens (even some of the central metaphors of queer theory invoke film. We speak of 'lenses' and 'performativity').
At the same time, of course, I must admit I've sat through many terrible movies and even sort of liked them just because they had gay or bi male central characters. Sadly I can't say I had the same indulgence for films just because they depicted queer women or transgender characters (this was made abundantly clear to me when, after a back-to-back screening of "Beautiful Thing" and "Better Than Chocolate" my lesbian friend and I expressed diametrically opposed views about which film was 'the sweetest thing ever' and which film was trite and boring).
Ok so this post was mainly an excuse to publicize the festival as well as Tomine's excellent book, and to use the word "affinity."
5/28/10
The Skong Song
So it's Friday afternoon and I haven't posted anything in a few days, so you get FLUFF. Lacy genital fluff. That's right, I'm writing about underwear.
I got a Fredericks of Hollywood catalog in the mail the other day, which is always a treat, since it's got the trashiest underwear you can buy outside of the hooker wig stores in Logan Square and East Wicker Park, and I am a huge fan of such things. However, I was a little disturbed by a new trend unfortunately named lingerie: the skong. (see exhibit a)
At first I assumed it was a typo, but then I realized it's a reference to a ridonculous skirt/thong combo, not someone's soiled drawers (ie, skanky thong). It kind of reminds me of those skirted bikini bottoms small children wear, but I'm not going to run a google image search for "toddler bikini pic
s" to illustrate as that would probably set off a pedophilia sting operation. At any rate, the skong is almost as terrible as the amazing "sexy apron lingerie" teddy thing (with pockets!) I spotted at Pay Half a while back. (exhibit b) At least they didn't try calling that a "slapron" or something equally terrible. (Remember the slanket?)
I am also kind of ashamed to admit I considered buying crotchless gartered undies from the Frederick's catalog. Historically I always thought crotchless underwear were really dumb and pointless, but now I think they could *maybe* be slutty in a hot way. I like boning while wearing a garter belt and/or my panties pulled to one side, so in a weird way maybe crotchless panties would be hot. Or just skanky. Or both?
I've also gotten really addicted to window shopping for undies for my BF. I think the majority of men's underwear is really boring/unhot, except for the stuff that's made for gay men (and even then, a gold
lame thong with a zip front is just taking it too far). My BF is straight but gets away with dressing like a gay man, so I bought him a three pack of black briefs from PAPI at a gay clothing shop in the Castro while vacationing in San Francisco, and they are SO HOT! At first I wasn't sure if his white ass could get away with wearing twink briefs with a vaguely incestuous homoerotic Spanish term of endearment emblazoned across the waistband, but fuck it, because they make his junk look amazing, and less cliche than Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein! (and you can also buy them at Macy's in Chicago, woot!) Their website is almost as fun as the Frederick's catalog, especially the purple undies that have a fucking SAMURAI silk screened over the dick (exhibit C)!!! And no, they didn't pay me to say any of this, though they should, even if I am not their target demographic.
Um, did this post have a point? FUCK NO! Enjoy your weekend!!!
I got a Fredericks of Hollywood catalog in the mail the other day, which is always a treat, since it's got the trashiest underwear you can buy outside of the hooker wig stores in Logan Square and East Wicker Park, and I am a huge fan of such things. However, I was a little disturbed by a new trend unfortunately named lingerie: the skong. (see exhibit a)
At first I assumed it was a typo, but then I realized it's a reference to a ridonculous skirt/thong combo, not someone's soiled drawers (ie, skanky thong). It kind of reminds me of those skirted bikini bottoms small children wear, but I'm not going to run a google image search for "toddler bikini pic
s" to illustrate as that would probably set off a pedophilia sting operation. At any rate, the skong is almost as terrible as the amazing "sexy apron lingerie" teddy thing (with pockets!) I spotted at Pay Half a while back. (exhibit b) At least they didn't try calling that a "slapron" or something equally terrible. (Remember the slanket?)I am also kind of ashamed to admit I considered buying crotchless gartered undies from the Frederick's catalog. Historically I always thought crotchless underwear were really dumb and pointless, but now I think they could *maybe* be slutty in a hot way. I like boning while wearing a garter belt and/or my panties pulled to one side, so in a weird way maybe crotchless panties would be hot. Or just skanky. Or both?
I've also gotten really addicted to window shopping for undies for my BF. I think the majority of men's underwear is really boring/unhot, except for the stuff that's made for gay men (and even then, a gold
lame thong with a zip front is just taking it too far). My BF is straight but gets away with dressing like a gay man, so I bought him a three pack of black briefs from PAPI at a gay clothing shop in the Castro while vacationing in San Francisco, and they are SO HOT! At first I wasn't sure if his white ass could get away with wearing twink briefs with a vaguely incestuous homoerotic Spanish term of endearment emblazoned across the waistband, but fuck it, because they make his junk look amazing, and less cliche than Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein! (and you can also buy them at Macy's in Chicago, woot!) Their website is almost as fun as the Frederick's catalog, especially the purple undies that have a fucking SAMURAI silk screened over the dick (exhibit C)!!! And no, they didn't pay me to say any of this, though they should, even if I am not their target demographic.Um, did this post have a point? FUCK NO! Enjoy your weekend!!!
5/21/10
Jezebel turns three (but is it worth reading anymore?)
Jezebel, Gawker's "feminist" blog turns three today.
Former editor Maureen (Moe) Tkacik also provided the well-timed cover story for this month's Columbia Journalism Review, regarding the navelgazing hybrid of journalism and blogging that seems to be the fate of modern media (it's kind of TL;DR but I actually did read the whole thing and loved it. It explained a lot about why I ultimately walked away from journalism as a female writer in my 20s and haven't looked back since.)
And most importantly in this string of fateful events, I got promoted to a Gawker "starred commenter" after several years of commenting on Jezebel, a privilege that I'm not sure if I should be more proud or ashamed of.
Moe's article provided a lot of interesting insight to Jezebel:
"2007, I took a job at Gawker Media helping launch a sister blog targeted at Gawker’s demographically attractive female readership—a property that was named Jezebel, at the insistence of Gawker CEO and founder Nick Denton and against my vociferous objections, after the blasphemous Old Testament whore who was eventually eaten alive by dogs."
and
"For most of my time there, bloggers earned bonuses that were tied to the page views their posts received, so the leisurely three minutes required to download a haggard image of Amy Winehouse from a celebrity photo agency and post it with a five-word caption was rewarded as generously as the frenzied hour and a half spent compiling the daily roundup of celebrity gossip, and at least twice as generously as anything I actually wanted to spend an hour and a half writing about."
That would explain the glut of "filler" that the site suffers from- celebrity tweets, cute animal pics, reposts from tabloids, lazy re-hashes of articles written better elsewhere.
I read Jezebel to kill time at work, I don't read it because I think it actually offers that much of substance at this point. And while it boasts its fair share of feminist indignation, it's 90% fluff that I'd probably ignore if I wasn't bored at my office job.
I actually got into reading Jezebel through editor Tracie Egan's blog One D at a Time, which appears to have gone AWOL since Tracie got married and promoted to Senior Writer (though the majority of her "writing" at this point reposts of celebrity tweets and clips from trashy TV shows, which is a shame because she's an awesome writer. But it all goes back to page views=dollars, and that's what's easy and gets hits.)
Back in the day, Tracie(then a staffer at Jezebel's underpaid paper analog BUST) wrote One D at A Time under the moniker "Slutmachine." Slutmachine was like an X rated Williamsburg version of Chelsea Handler- coked out, shamelessly promiscuous and snarky, the crazy friend we all like to live vicariously through. She reminded me a lot of myself- we were the same age and we both had a lot of weird sex and wrote about it, except she was making a lot more money than I was at what I then considered to be my dream job. She took impressive risks as a writer, and it paid off. She wrote about having herpes and why this is wrongfully stigmatized (which is fucking brave, in my opinion.) She and another Jez blogger took secret video at American Apparel of them trying on skanky outfits in what is possibly the greatest Jezebel post ever. Her piece de resistance was an essay she wrote for Vice about paying a male hooker to fake rape her- it's shocking, hilarious and brilliant. Pictures appeared on Jezebel of her getting out of a car sporting a giant fake bush, and re-enacting the Lindsay Lohan knife play photos with other Jezebel staffers in her kitchen. It didn't hurt that she was a gorgeous brunette with huge boobs and amazing fashion sense either. OTOH, she also posted various and sundry fat-phobic and uptight/conventional shit that made me like her a lot less (loosely quoted via Pot Psychology:"I'd rather fuck a fat dude than a dude in a kilt." I'm sorry, that's just weak.)
And then, in her coup de grace, she got got married, retired the Slutmachine moniker, got rid of One D at a Time, and now posts reality TV clips to Jezebel in lieu of, ya know, actual content.
I totally understand and respect why Tracie retired the Slutmachine persona, putting one's scandalous personal life in the public domain has the potential to really fuck up your life. And now she's married and (presumably) monogamous, which changes everything. I hope she's happy, but I do feel a weird sense of loss as fan.
I keep reading Jezebel because I hope that someday it'll be what it once was- sloppy and occasionally gross, brave, and funny, but instead I find another sterile fashion roundup or debate on potential photoshopping of Blake Lively's boobs.
This is what feminism looks like? I want my money back.
5/20/10
OKCupid has jumped the shark, for realz.
For years OKCupid has been my go-to dating site for several reasons: it's free, it (used to) attract unconventional, geeky people who were still fuckable, it wasn't exceedingly meat markety, it doesn't have a Christian agenda, there were funny quizzes, you didn't have to answer a bunch of stupid questions unless you wanted to.
Via OKCupid, I met a couple decent fuckbuddies (several of whom I'm still on good terms with), various and sundry assholes, a flat out terrible boyfriend, and even a friend or three. The site did facilitate me hooking up with current BF even if it wasn't how we met. I've used the dating styles quiz as a litmus test for where I was at WRT dating at various points in my life. All in all, OkCupid has served me well enough in the past.
The thing is, it's gone downhill recently. It's possible that as I enter my thirties and get pickier, I'm aging out of the OKC demographic. But here's the thing- ten years ago, online dating was stigmatized by the general public which meant the people who did it were either totally undateable, or else kind of weird but awesome (I prefer to view myself as an early adopter in the latter category). But somewhere along the line, assholes realized it was an easy way to get laid. (I briefly dated a fat dude with a neckbeard who confessed over beers that "he no longer thinks he could be in a committed relationship since it's so easy for him to get laid with online dating." Just, EW.) And a lot of people don't understand online dating netiquette, so the site is now flooded with profiles of assholes in Naperville who only post one photo, don't fill out their profile, don't read my profile, and send me messages that say "Yo."
I've put up and taken down profiles maybe 5 or 6 times as successes and frustrations with the site have waxed and waned. However, a friend of mine posted something they sent her on her Facebook today that annoyed the shit out of me:
"We are very pleased to report that you are in the top half of OkCupid's most attractive users. [. . .] Your new elite status comes with one important privilege:... You will now see more attractive people in your match results.[. . .] Suddenly, the world is your oyster. And, no, we didn't just send this email to everyone on OkCupid. Go ask an ugly friend and see."
Ok, so what is this shit? (and yes, I'm one of her "ugly friends" apparently.) This strikes me as so petty, so ick, and so unlike what I thought OKCupid stood for, as a weirdo-friendly dating site. There's already a "beautiful people" dating site that boots members if they gain 5 pounds, and while attractiveness is important, it's also highly subjective. While I agree that said friend is lovely, rewarding members as with "elite" privilege on the basis of conventional attractiveness strikes me as petty and alienating to the majority of users.
It makes me feel like, at the end of the day, high school oppression mentality is still lurking everywhere. Anyone have any suggestions for dating sites that are free and don't suck?
Rethinking Cheating in Sex-Negative Culture
I was recently blown away in not one, but two different posts in a certain community I frequent that involved the issue of cheating. The first post was trying to mock the idea that sometimes, if someone cheats, revealing the act to their partner can be a selfish, destructive act. The other post was discussing this incident, which is clearly about a privacy issue, but because infidelity was involved, quickly turned into an unimaginative and predictable series of tirades about how wayward spouses deserve to have their privacy violated, even by large telecommunication companies.
The basic gist of the comments in both posts boiled down to these "truths":
If two people in a relationship have decided that they are only interested in being monogamous, that is entirely justified. But the lack of recognition that lifelong monogamy isn't a choice someone makes once, then forgets about - as opposed to a choice that is made on an ongoing, daily basis - is kind of ridiculous. In one of these posts, a commenter sarcastically faux-whined, "Monogamy is hard!" But that's the thing. It is hard, for most people! Particularly in long-term relationships where infatuation has waned, and passions have shifted. I mean, let's not do a disservice to all these couples who have made a commitment to monogamy and stuck to it, pretending that it's what comes easily and naturally to most people, because that's a load of shit. In doing so we're negating the sacrifices and hard work that lifelong monogamy entails for most people.
But back on topic, why do people freak out about cheating so much? "Because cheating is a horrible thing!" Yeah, I know it is. One of the first things that happens in a discussion about cheating and ethics is those who are of the "Cheaters are worse than Hitler!" camp start claiming that anyone who disagrees with them obviously has never been cheated on, or are even likely cheaters themselves.
I've been cheated on, in a very serious relationship, over a period of time. I've been directly lied to even when I confronted the guilty party with hard evidence of their cheating. I never suspected that this particular ex would ever cheat on me, and since we'd explicitly talked about the possibility of opening up our relationship if one of us ever had the urge to cheat, I trusted completely that he'd have no reason to do this. I was utterly shattered, disgusted with my own naivete. I came to loathe what really should be considered a good quality in myself: my trusting nature.
But the funny thing is, having the benefit of hindsight, I realize that being cheated on was far from the worst thing I endured in that relationship. There are many, many ways people can hurt each other. Many of them are purposeful, and while it's true that some people do use infidelity to lash out at their partners, generally it's more about the desire (emotional or sexual) of the person doing the cheating than anything else.
"But it's a breach of trust!" the cheaters-are-evil brigade say. Yes, it is. So is, say, buying a car without your partner's permission. Yet the trope about the guy who brings home an expensive financed recreational purchase is not treated as nearly as big a transgression as the dreaded cheater. Cheating is placed in a special category of extra-horrible-wrongness. And sex-negative values has everything to do with it.
Part of the problem is the way sex and love are conflated. Women in particular receive strong messages that for them, love has to be present for sex to be worthwhile or good. That old cliche about trading sex for love actually is fairly spot-on as far as societal messages go. And I know that for some people, sex is only satisfying and meaningful when in the context of a loving relationship. Yet a brief glance at human history does make it pretty clear that this isn't the norm. I suspect that most people have the capacity to enjoy sex within a variety of different dynamics.
But for some reason, the idea of sex divorced from love is terrifying to many, so we get the idea that people who are truly "in love" don't have any desire to have sex with other people. The extreme end of this view are the deluded folks who get upset at the mere idea of their partners masturbating to images or even thoughts of other people. "Committing adultery within the heart," as a sin, which is basically some crazy idea of thoughtcrime that denies most people's basic experience as sexual beings. I remain convinced that the conflicts some couples have over porn viewing has a lot less to do with a feminist critique of the porn industry or women's-bodies-as-commodities and more to do with a physical and sexual insecurity so deep that the very thought of our partner getting off to an image other than our own is profoundly threatening.
This isn't to say that I want to blame people - and women in particular - for their insecurities around this issue. We are bombarded with so many conflicting and fucked up messages about sex, desirability, body image, and relationships that it's amazing any of us can retain any sense of sexual self-esteem whatsoever. Yet I have a hard time believing that the neurosis would be so deep and painful if we weren't buying into the "sex = love" message. "If they really loved me, he wouldn't look at porn, because I would be enough," is not an uncommon refrain. (Some of the folks who say this even admit to looking at porn themselves!) But there's this fucked-up romantic ideal that we carry around with us that if we are the sexiest, most awesome lovers ever, our partners will fall so irrevocably in love/lust with us that they simply wouldn't have any interest in anyone else. For the rest of their lives. Of course, nobody can be the perfect love/lust object, but we hate ourselves for not measuring up, regardless. And then sometimes we take it out on our partner, or random strangers on the internet who have the gall to confuse the narrative by challenging deeply-held notions about sex and love.
Why even bring up porn and masturbation habits in a discussion about cheating? Because cheating is relative. It is not uncommon to find people who describe porn-viewing as cheating. Others draw the line at "netsex" or phone sex or flirting or kissing or non-physical "emotional affairs" or god knows what. Cheating, we're told, is a black and white issue: always wrong, never justified, and always a symptom of a "deeper issue" in the relationship, yet we don't even agree on what cheating is! It occurs to me that "cheating" is whatever event that trips up your own insecurities or jealousy to the point where you feel threatened. Given that insecurities are personal and vary from person, it makes sense that the definition of what cheating is varies as well. What doesn't make sense is that once we decide what cheating is, we allow for no gray area with regards to why someone cheats, or whether it's always a horrible, relationship-threatening event.
People cheat for a ton of reasons. Sometimes the cheat inadvertently because they didn't have a common understanding of how their partner was defining cheating. Sometimes they cheat because they don't want to be in a relationship, but have not been able to break it off. Sometimes they cheat because they are horny, or have issues with sexual compulsion or impulsive behavior. People cheat because they are afraid to ask for what they really want in their relationship, or because they are afraid their partner will leave them if they do. It may sound crazy to many, but some people cheat because they want to stay in their relationship and are unwilling to go without sex. Do any of these reasons justify lying to your partner? No. It would be far better if we lived in a magical world where relationships are simple, and honest communication is rewarded with empathy and understanding. That's not the case, and it's frustrating when discussions about infidelity are derailed with reductivist, black and white thinking that don't allow for the full range of human experience and emotion in favor of demonizing cheaters regardless of the situation.
What I don't get is why people who don't want to cheat and don't want to be cheated on are so insistent on keeping the narrative around cheating so, well, narrow. Doesn't it make more sense to explore and understand other people's motivations and desires so we can better understand what leads people to cheat - and, if it's important to you - how to avoid situations where you or your partner are more likely to do so? Just shaming cheaters as irredeemable and malicious doesn't help relationships or prevent cheating. It just makes people less likely to talk about it, and the culture of silence around sexual desire that isn't socially-sanctioned just leads to a cycle of guilt. Jimmy Carter may have been mocked for talking about his own non-monogamous desires in the famous 1976 Playboy interview, but he had a point that's worth considering today, dated language, Christian trappings and all.
"Because I'm just human and I'm tempted and Christ set some almost impossible standards for us. The Bible says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Christ said, I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultery. I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times.... This is something that God recognizes, that I will do and have done, and God forgives me for it. But that doesn't mean that I condemn someone who not only looks on a woman with lust but who leaves his wife and shacks up with somebody out of wedlock. Christ says, don't consider yourself better than someone else because one guy screws a whole bunch of women while the other guy is loyal to his wife. The guy who's loyal to his wife ought not to be condescending or proud because of the relative degree of sinfulness."
The basic gist of the comments in both posts boiled down to these "truths":
- There is never any scenario where cheating is "ok" or morally neutral or the lesser of two evils. Ever.
- Any and all lying in a relationship is unhealthy, destructive, and bad.
- People who love their partners would never, ever cheat.
If two people in a relationship have decided that they are only interested in being monogamous, that is entirely justified. But the lack of recognition that lifelong monogamy isn't a choice someone makes once, then forgets about - as opposed to a choice that is made on an ongoing, daily basis - is kind of ridiculous. In one of these posts, a commenter sarcastically faux-whined, "Monogamy is hard!" But that's the thing. It is hard, for most people! Particularly in long-term relationships where infatuation has waned, and passions have shifted. I mean, let's not do a disservice to all these couples who have made a commitment to monogamy and stuck to it, pretending that it's what comes easily and naturally to most people, because that's a load of shit. In doing so we're negating the sacrifices and hard work that lifelong monogamy entails for most people.
But back on topic, why do people freak out about cheating so much? "Because cheating is a horrible thing!" Yeah, I know it is. One of the first things that happens in a discussion about cheating and ethics is those who are of the "Cheaters are worse than Hitler!" camp start claiming that anyone who disagrees with them obviously has never been cheated on, or are even likely cheaters themselves.
I've been cheated on, in a very serious relationship, over a period of time. I've been directly lied to even when I confronted the guilty party with hard evidence of their cheating. I never suspected that this particular ex would ever cheat on me, and since we'd explicitly talked about the possibility of opening up our relationship if one of us ever had the urge to cheat, I trusted completely that he'd have no reason to do this. I was utterly shattered, disgusted with my own naivete. I came to loathe what really should be considered a good quality in myself: my trusting nature.
But the funny thing is, having the benefit of hindsight, I realize that being cheated on was far from the worst thing I endured in that relationship. There are many, many ways people can hurt each other. Many of them are purposeful, and while it's true that some people do use infidelity to lash out at their partners, generally it's more about the desire (emotional or sexual) of the person doing the cheating than anything else.
"But it's a breach of trust!" the cheaters-are-evil brigade say. Yes, it is. So is, say, buying a car without your partner's permission. Yet the trope about the guy who brings home an expensive financed recreational purchase is not treated as nearly as big a transgression as the dreaded cheater. Cheating is placed in a special category of extra-horrible-wrongness. And sex-negative values has everything to do with it.
Part of the problem is the way sex and love are conflated. Women in particular receive strong messages that for them, love has to be present for sex to be worthwhile or good. That old cliche about trading sex for love actually is fairly spot-on as far as societal messages go. And I know that for some people, sex is only satisfying and meaningful when in the context of a loving relationship. Yet a brief glance at human history does make it pretty clear that this isn't the norm. I suspect that most people have the capacity to enjoy sex within a variety of different dynamics.
But for some reason, the idea of sex divorced from love is terrifying to many, so we get the idea that people who are truly "in love" don't have any desire to have sex with other people. The extreme end of this view are the deluded folks who get upset at the mere idea of their partners masturbating to images or even thoughts of other people. "Committing adultery within the heart," as a sin, which is basically some crazy idea of thoughtcrime that denies most people's basic experience as sexual beings. I remain convinced that the conflicts some couples have over porn viewing has a lot less to do with a feminist critique of the porn industry or women's-bodies-as-commodities and more to do with a physical and sexual insecurity so deep that the very thought of our partner getting off to an image other than our own is profoundly threatening.
This isn't to say that I want to blame people - and women in particular - for their insecurities around this issue. We are bombarded with so many conflicting and fucked up messages about sex, desirability, body image, and relationships that it's amazing any of us can retain any sense of sexual self-esteem whatsoever. Yet I have a hard time believing that the neurosis would be so deep and painful if we weren't buying into the "sex = love" message. "If they really loved me, he wouldn't look at porn, because I would be enough," is not an uncommon refrain. (Some of the folks who say this even admit to looking at porn themselves!) But there's this fucked-up romantic ideal that we carry around with us that if we are the sexiest, most awesome lovers ever, our partners will fall so irrevocably in love/lust with us that they simply wouldn't have any interest in anyone else. For the rest of their lives. Of course, nobody can be the perfect love/lust object, but we hate ourselves for not measuring up, regardless. And then sometimes we take it out on our partner, or random strangers on the internet who have the gall to confuse the narrative by challenging deeply-held notions about sex and love.
Why even bring up porn and masturbation habits in a discussion about cheating? Because cheating is relative. It is not uncommon to find people who describe porn-viewing as cheating. Others draw the line at "netsex" or phone sex or flirting or kissing or non-physical "emotional affairs" or god knows what. Cheating, we're told, is a black and white issue: always wrong, never justified, and always a symptom of a "deeper issue" in the relationship, yet we don't even agree on what cheating is! It occurs to me that "cheating" is whatever event that trips up your own insecurities or jealousy to the point where you feel threatened. Given that insecurities are personal and vary from person, it makes sense that the definition of what cheating is varies as well. What doesn't make sense is that once we decide what cheating is, we allow for no gray area with regards to why someone cheats, or whether it's always a horrible, relationship-threatening event.
People cheat for a ton of reasons. Sometimes the cheat inadvertently because they didn't have a common understanding of how their partner was defining cheating. Sometimes they cheat because they don't want to be in a relationship, but have not been able to break it off. Sometimes they cheat because they are horny, or have issues with sexual compulsion or impulsive behavior. People cheat because they are afraid to ask for what they really want in their relationship, or because they are afraid their partner will leave them if they do. It may sound crazy to many, but some people cheat because they want to stay in their relationship and are unwilling to go without sex. Do any of these reasons justify lying to your partner? No. It would be far better if we lived in a magical world where relationships are simple, and honest communication is rewarded with empathy and understanding. That's not the case, and it's frustrating when discussions about infidelity are derailed with reductivist, black and white thinking that don't allow for the full range of human experience and emotion in favor of demonizing cheaters regardless of the situation.
What I don't get is why people who don't want to cheat and don't want to be cheated on are so insistent on keeping the narrative around cheating so, well, narrow. Doesn't it make more sense to explore and understand other people's motivations and desires so we can better understand what leads people to cheat - and, if it's important to you - how to avoid situations where you or your partner are more likely to do so? Just shaming cheaters as irredeemable and malicious doesn't help relationships or prevent cheating. It just makes people less likely to talk about it, and the culture of silence around sexual desire that isn't socially-sanctioned just leads to a cycle of guilt. Jimmy Carter may have been mocked for talking about his own non-monogamous desires in the famous 1976 Playboy interview, but he had a point that's worth considering today, dated language, Christian trappings and all.
"Because I'm just human and I'm tempted and Christ set some almost impossible standards for us. The Bible says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Christ said, I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultery. I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times.... This is something that God recognizes, that I will do and have done, and God forgives me for it. But that doesn't mean that I condemn someone who not only looks on a woman with lust but who leaves his wife and shacks up with somebody out of wedlock. Christ says, don't consider yourself better than someone else because one guy screws a whole bunch of women while the other guy is loyal to his wife. The guy who's loyal to his wife ought not to be condescending or proud because of the relative degree of sinfulness."
5/17/10
Make Love, Not Porn
Cindy Gallop has created a website, Make Love Not Porn, whose goal is to educate people, primarily men who have sex with women (though also a bit for women who have sex with men), about how sex in real life might differ from sex in porn. She did a brief, very enjoyable, presentation at TED about the website and the reasons that she created it.
Here's part of that presentation (self-transcribed. Apologies for any errors!):
In an era where hardcore porn is more freely and widely available on the internet than ever before, and where kids are therefore able to access it at a younger and younger age than ever before, there's an entire generation growing up that believes that what you see in hardcore pornography is the way that you have sex.
And this is particularly exacerbated because we live in a puritannical double standards culture where people believe that a teen abstinence campaign will actually work; where parents are too embarrassed to have conversations about sex with their children; and where educational institutions are terrified of being politically incorrect if they pick up those conversations. And so it's not surprising that hardcore pornography de facto has become sex education.
Now as a mature, experienced, confident older woman, when I encounter this, I have no problem realizing that a certain amount of re-education, rehabilitation and re-orientation has to take place.
The website right now is mainly about straight porn (or should I say "different-sex porn?"), but I think it's a great idea, and perhaps it would be great for people who have sex with those of the same sex to think about how real sex and porn sex differ as well. I have one thing to offer up for man on man sex vs. man on man porn:
Porn World: Bottoms can be feminine or masculine, but tops are always masculine, and either talk dirty, don't talk at all, and only pause to ask "do you like this?" to which the answer, of course, is always "yes."
Real World: Some tops are feminine, and some bottoms love that. Also, it's ok as a top to ask non yes/no questions, and it's great for bottoms to let a top know when they don't like something, and to suggest something else that they would prefer.
5/13/10
Weekly Savaging
So ManOverBored and The Boy About Oaktown are not, in fact, Dan Savage fans. This might have something to do with the fact that Dan Savage, advice columnist and editor-in-chief of the Seattle Stranger, is one of those rich white gay dudes who has little interest in political organizing that doesn't affect rich white gay dudes. In short he has been consistently biphobic, transphobic, sexist, fatphobic, and racist and shows no desire to not be these things.
On the other hand, he's the first really sex-positive advice columnist, can be extremely funny, and is usually very good at giving sound, practical relationship and sex advice. For this reason I have a soft spot for him (and by soft spot I mean, "I own autographed copies of all his books, read his column and download his podcast religiously, and would very much like to have sex with him") but despite my weakness I too recognize that Savage fucks up frequently and have no problem calling him out, as ManOverBored did in this post.
So we've decided to turn our Savage Hate into a weekly column in the spirit of Bitch Magazine's "Petty Jane Criticism Corner." Enjoy!
For our first official installment, I'm taking issue not with Dan being a dick, but rather with plain ol' bad advice. In the Savage Lovecast #186, a couple that has been dating for two scant months calls in with a serious issue. They are a new couple and dig each other, but one wants to live monogamously, while the other wants to be polyamorous. Neither has indicated a desire to compromise on the matter, and were calling into Dan for confirmation about what their heads were telling them - "We're fucked," as they put it - contrary to the desires of their hearts, because they are clearly infatuated with each other.
Now the Dan I know and love (with reservations) is a big proponent of Dumping The MotherFucker Already (DTMFA) and has repeatedly said that people with irreconcilable sexual differences should not be in relationships with each other. So I was prepared for Dan to reinforce what this couple already knew - that they shouldn't be together.
Instead he calls them back and suggests they "compromise." What? Compromising on being monogamous is like being "kinda" pregnant. It's not really possible. He went on to say that couples in long-term relationships can often compromise on these sorts of issues, because they really want to be together.
This is true - in the context of, a couple has been together for a really long time, and one of them wants to make a major change, like becoming non-monogamous - to the relationship. With the basis of trust that is built up in long-term relationships, this can sometimes work. It can also end in giant flaming disaster. But to suggest that a new couple proceed in the relationship for "six months to a year" to see if they could decide to compromise was some of the worst advice that I've ever heard. While it may be painful for them to break up now, it will likely be far harder for them to disentangle themselves after a year of serious dating when their irreconcilable differences make it impossible to continue.
If they go forward as Dan suggested, the monogamous partner will always feel as if she is trying to "be enough" for her polyamorous partner. She will never feel secure. Meanwhile, her polyamorous partner, if he agrees to monogamy for the short term, is going to feel resentful at being forced into a lifestyle that he's clearly not interested in. That is not a solid foundation upon which to build a relationship. It's hard enough negotiating non-monogamy within the confines of an established, previously non-monogamous relationship - but these kids aren't even going to have the chance to build it. They were right - they're fucked, unless one of them magically becomes OK with a lifestyle that they are currently adamant they do not want.
Bad Dan! Bad!
On the other hand, he's the first really sex-positive advice columnist, can be extremely funny, and is usually very good at giving sound, practical relationship and sex advice. For this reason I have a soft spot for him (and by soft spot I mean, "I own autographed copies of all his books, read his column and download his podcast religiously, and would very much like to have sex with him") but despite my weakness I too recognize that Savage fucks up frequently and have no problem calling him out, as ManOverBored did in this post.
So we've decided to turn our Savage Hate into a weekly column in the spirit of Bitch Magazine's "Petty Jane Criticism Corner." Enjoy!
For our first official installment, I'm taking issue not with Dan being a dick, but rather with plain ol' bad advice. In the Savage Lovecast #186, a couple that has been dating for two scant months calls in with a serious issue. They are a new couple and dig each other, but one wants to live monogamously, while the other wants to be polyamorous. Neither has indicated a desire to compromise on the matter, and were calling into Dan for confirmation about what their heads were telling them - "We're fucked," as they put it - contrary to the desires of their hearts, because they are clearly infatuated with each other.
Now the Dan I know and love (with reservations) is a big proponent of Dumping The MotherFucker Already (DTMFA) and has repeatedly said that people with irreconcilable sexual differences should not be in relationships with each other. So I was prepared for Dan to reinforce what this couple already knew - that they shouldn't be together.
Instead he calls them back and suggests they "compromise." What? Compromising on being monogamous is like being "kinda" pregnant. It's not really possible. He went on to say that couples in long-term relationships can often compromise on these sorts of issues, because they really want to be together.
This is true - in the context of, a couple has been together for a really long time, and one of them wants to make a major change, like becoming non-monogamous - to the relationship. With the basis of trust that is built up in long-term relationships, this can sometimes work. It can also end in giant flaming disaster. But to suggest that a new couple proceed in the relationship for "six months to a year" to see if they could decide to compromise was some of the worst advice that I've ever heard. While it may be painful for them to break up now, it will likely be far harder for them to disentangle themselves after a year of serious dating when their irreconcilable differences make it impossible to continue.
If they go forward as Dan suggested, the monogamous partner will always feel as if she is trying to "be enough" for her polyamorous partner. She will never feel secure. Meanwhile, her polyamorous partner, if he agrees to monogamy for the short term, is going to feel resentful at being forced into a lifestyle that he's clearly not interested in. That is not a solid foundation upon which to build a relationship. It's hard enough negotiating non-monogamy within the confines of an established, previously non-monogamous relationship - but these kids aren't even going to have the chance to build it. They were right - they're fucked, unless one of them magically becomes OK with a lifestyle that they are currently adamant they do not want.
Bad Dan! Bad!
Biphobia: Real and Relevant
"...For homo and hetero define themselves as opposites, however social science instruments like the Kinsey scale and the Klein grid keep demonstrating that purity is a cultural artifact. And identity politics as well as science has an interest in keeping them opposite. To add "bisexuality" as a third category here is not in fact to refine the terms of analysis but instead to expose the radical limitations of rights-based arguments when linked to a concept of fixed identity." - Marjorie Garber, "Bisexuality: The Eroticism of Everyday Life"
There was a recent discussion in a friend's blog in which a lot of people understandably lambasted bisexual activist Kyle Schickner's "report" (I use this term loosely) about the lack of bi visibility at the 2010 GLAAAD awards in Los Angeles. The article, in addition to being poorly written, had some problems, notably his description of trans folk as having "leapfrogged from the bottom rung of the queer community past bisexuals by developing a community and iconic celebrities." The mainstream LGTBQ movement is at best dismissive of, and at worst, actively hostile and transphobic to trans people, and to set up this false dichotomy of trans versus bi (ignoring the many bi people who are trans). This can best be described as playing the "oppression olympics," and unfortunately colored what otherwise was a very fair point: that bi visibility has been significantly reduced since the 1990s, and that this is due to many factors, the most significant of which is a lack of a cohesive, political bisexual community within the LGTBQ movement.
But as the comments over Schickner's piece raged on, it became clear that many people who are queer or queer allies were incredibly dismissive over whether biphobia even exists, or whether bi activism is necessary or valid. The reasoning being that if one is visibly bisexual then the only oppression one experiences is homophobia And if one is not visibly bisexual (the assumption being that someone in a "heterosexual" pairing cannot be visibly bisexual, which is problematic in and of itself) then that person receives straight privilege, thus invalidating the concept of biphobia.
The argument goes that gay and lesbians, being part of an oppressed group, cannot have any institutional power over a privileged group - bisexuals being assumed to generally fall into the latter. And yet when you have examples like a self-described LGTBQ sports organization actively discriminating against bi people for "not being gay enough," it makes me wonder if the traditional model of privilege becomes too simplistic when talking about issues within queer communities. It seems that this is an area where a model based on intersectionality would be a more functional way of analyzing these issues as opposed to a black and white view of "real queer people" (i.e. queer people who are not partnered to other-sex people) versus bi people, seen as people who automatically benefit from an uncomplicated straight privilege due to the assumption that they are or will end up in opposite-sex partnerships and have no other visible markers of queerness.
Part of the problem is that I think most of us, within queer and queer ally spaces, do buy into a particular stereotype of the "typical bisexual" - a cisgendered young white woman who is partnered to a man, and either had some sexual interactions with women when she was single, or occasionally has threesomes with her man and another woman. I admit, one of the reasons I am still wary of describing myself as bisexual despite knowing, intrinsically, that my sexual desires are very queer, is because I fit into that stereotype. I know I have experienced very little homophobia in my life (although it would be incorrect to say I haven't experienced any) and don't anticipate facing much in the future, so taking on an oppressed identity felt like appropriating. But how bizarre is it to define an orientation by the amount of oppression one faces as opposed to who you are? The underlying sentiment that I see behind the stereotype of the typical bi person and the reaction to Schickner's piece is that bi people are sexual tourists, privileged people who get to flirt with a queer identity in an appropriative fashion who always have the ability to retreat into straight privilege.
This way of viewing bi identity is typical of the main issue bi people face that is actually separate from homophobia: invisibility. Bi people who are non-gender conforming, who date primarily same-sex partners or are in a same-sex relationship often do not get read as bi at all. So their existence as bisexuals is invalidated and shoved into the tent of "real queerness" and we're left with the most privileged bi people as the unofficial representatives for everything bi.
I recognize the problems with drawing comparisons between different kinds of oppressions and I will attempt to resist doing that here. But "passing" is a word that is used in various communities to define how much a person is able, intentionally or unintentionally, to "hide" a socially undesirable identity from mainstream culture. In most discussions about "passing" (and I acknowledge the word is inherently problematic for multiple reasons) the idea is that any privilege one receives from passing is a double-edged sword. Someone can pass as something they are not and receive privileges for it, but that doesn't negate their core identity and forces them into a constant cycle of having to chose whether to continually out themselves or not. The very stress that has to go along with having to constantly make that choice, day in and day out, is largely ignored in the context of most discussions I see about bisexuality.
This factors in with the current accepted narrative that claims that homosexuality is inherently an inborn trait, as is straightness. What would follow from conclusion, which is simplistic but may be based in some degree of fact, is that bisexuality is similarly an inborn trait, but it isn't treated as such. It often seems to me that the notion behind a biological root of homosexuality is the idea that no one would choose gayness if they were able to. Bisexuals fuck up that narrative by having the ability to "choose" to live either a gay or straight lifestyle yet by the very act of acknowledging themselves as bisexual they refute and refuse the binary. This is obviously threatening, primarily to straight people who don't want to confront the issue of sexual behavior as a choice, but also to the modern mainstream gay rights movement which depends on the idea that gay people really just can't help it - they're born that way.
How does this relate to biphobia? One of the main reactions to someone coming out as bisexual is a "yawn" or "why does this matter?" Those reactions are telling. Because bis have the ability to choose, their queerness is invalided, both by straights, and yes, sometimes by gay people as well. It's a "yawn," as in, "Why would you tell me this? Your sexual behavior doesn't concern me. You're really straight and looking for attention." Or it's "Why does this matter? What you do with your sex life is of no concern to me." While gay people get these reactions as well, from what I've seen it's more pronounced with regards to bi folk, because their sexual orientation is conflated with their sex lives. There was a time when gayness was reduced to same-sex acts, but mainstream gay rights organizations have gone a very good job of presenting gay people as a"just like straights" - married, picked fences, and so on. And this works, because if we "heteroize" gay behavior to be "Just like straight people, - biological, inborn, but with the same sex instead of the opposite sex," then it's less threatening to straight people as they don't have to really question their own potential queerness. This has been defined as "homonormativity" by Lisa Duggan. From Wikipedia:
"According to Penny Griffin, Politics and International Relations lecturer at the University of New South Wales, homonormativity upholds neoliberalism rather than critiquing monogamy, procreation, and binary gender roles as heterosexist and racist.[30] Duggan asserts that homonormativity fragments LGBTQ communities into hierarchies of worthiness. LGBTQ people that come the closest to mimicking heteronormative standards of gender identity are deemed most worthy of receiving rights. LGBTQ individuals at the bottom of the hierarchy (transsexuals, transvestites, intersex, bisexuals, non-gender identified) are seen as an impediment to this elite class of homonormative individuals receiving their rights.[31] "
You'd think it would be a big "duh" to say that defining a queer person primarily through how they have sex is horrible, but this is the common way that bi people are spoken of on mainstream gay blogs and communities, even though this is exactly the same line of thinking that has dehumanized and sexualized gay people within straight society. Bisexual behavior is far to often treated as a kink, or a sideline sexual interest, as opposed to being part of someone's identity. Mainstream gay rights organizations may have been somewhat successful in desexualizing gays, but this has never happened for bis, and won't be able to happen until we move past the simplistic narrative of being "born gay" or "born straight." The inherent radicalness of bisexuality forces everyone to confront the full spectrum of human sexuality, and for that reason it's threatening. Bisexuality, as something that is not just a biological imperative but an active choice, resexualizes the narrative of queerness.
As I've said before, I am not anti-identity politics. It has been an incredibly valuable way to inspire individual and community pride, as well as an essential organizing tool for achieving tangible political gain. But when speaking in a holistic sense about "sexual orientation" or "sexual identity" identity politics does not provide the tools to speak about someone's full experience. A cisgendered bisexual person in a heterosexual relationship may often pass as straight, and in that sense they absolutely have privilege over many other queer people. Yet that passing is fraught. Bisexual people are constantly judged on the basis of their sexual and relational choices, not just by a homophobic straight society, but by the queer community that demands they prove their queerness as the price of admission. Bisexuals are the "other" in both worlds. Straights wonder why bisexual people would choose to be out as bisexual, when they could easily pass - as in, "Why are you wasting the straight privilege you could have?" It seems like no one cares how bis actually experience privilege. Tomorrowshorizion wrote about this experience on Feministing: "My experience is that being initially granted straight privilege often just makes the backlash more vehement than if we'd just be read as queer in the first place. We're not just seen as weirdos, but also as traitors once they figure it out."
Meanwhile, there is real emotional pain and frustration associated with the difficulty of not being accepted in the queer community while being rejected by the straight world that is ignored in the larger discussion about privilege and power.
I'm not saying we shouldn't call out bis in queer spaces when they engage in homophobia or act in privileged ways. Of course we should, and bis, particularly those of us who benefit from striaght privilege, have a responsibility to own that and know when our voices are oppressive to other queer people. That said, the way I see things framed in current discussions about privilege ignores the complexities of bi identity and lives. Identity politics have been very helpful, but what happens when it bumps up against individualism and shitty Internet behavior? We get a narcissistic version of the oppression olympics in which the less privilege you have, the more you "win" - win at what, I haven't quite figured out yet. It seems obvious that oppression isn't a zero sum game, but in many queer and feminist spaces online and in the real world, it's certainly treated as such. Thus someone is who is bi and out becomes a target, because being bisexual, they are admitting to having access to straight privilege, and thus their experience of queerness is made irrelevant. If that's not biphobia, what is?
There was a recent discussion in a friend's blog in which a lot of people understandably lambasted bisexual activist Kyle Schickner's "report" (I use this term loosely) about the lack of bi visibility at the 2010 GLAAAD awards in Los Angeles. The article, in addition to being poorly written, had some problems, notably his description of trans folk as having "leapfrogged from the bottom rung of the queer community past bisexuals by developing a community and iconic celebrities." The mainstream LGTBQ movement is at best dismissive of, and at worst, actively hostile and transphobic to trans people, and to set up this false dichotomy of trans versus bi (ignoring the many bi people who are trans). This can best be described as playing the "oppression olympics," and unfortunately colored what otherwise was a very fair point: that bi visibility has been significantly reduced since the 1990s, and that this is due to many factors, the most significant of which is a lack of a cohesive, political bisexual community within the LGTBQ movement.
But as the comments over Schickner's piece raged on, it became clear that many people who are queer or queer allies were incredibly dismissive over whether biphobia even exists, or whether bi activism is necessary or valid. The reasoning being that if one is visibly bisexual then the only oppression one experiences is homophobia And if one is not visibly bisexual (the assumption being that someone in a "heterosexual" pairing cannot be visibly bisexual, which is problematic in and of itself) then that person receives straight privilege, thus invalidating the concept of biphobia.
The argument goes that gay and lesbians, being part of an oppressed group, cannot have any institutional power over a privileged group - bisexuals being assumed to generally fall into the latter. And yet when you have examples like a self-described LGTBQ sports organization actively discriminating against bi people for "not being gay enough," it makes me wonder if the traditional model of privilege becomes too simplistic when talking about issues within queer communities. It seems that this is an area where a model based on intersectionality would be a more functional way of analyzing these issues as opposed to a black and white view of "real queer people" (i.e. queer people who are not partnered to other-sex people) versus bi people, seen as people who automatically benefit from an uncomplicated straight privilege due to the assumption that they are or will end up in opposite-sex partnerships and have no other visible markers of queerness.
Part of the problem is that I think most of us, within queer and queer ally spaces, do buy into a particular stereotype of the "typical bisexual" - a cisgendered young white woman who is partnered to a man, and either had some sexual interactions with women when she was single, or occasionally has threesomes with her man and another woman. I admit, one of the reasons I am still wary of describing myself as bisexual despite knowing, intrinsically, that my sexual desires are very queer, is because I fit into that stereotype. I know I have experienced very little homophobia in my life (although it would be incorrect to say I haven't experienced any) and don't anticipate facing much in the future, so taking on an oppressed identity felt like appropriating. But how bizarre is it to define an orientation by the amount of oppression one faces as opposed to who you are? The underlying sentiment that I see behind the stereotype of the typical bi person and the reaction to Schickner's piece is that bi people are sexual tourists, privileged people who get to flirt with a queer identity in an appropriative fashion who always have the ability to retreat into straight privilege.
This way of viewing bi identity is typical of the main issue bi people face that is actually separate from homophobia: invisibility. Bi people who are non-gender conforming, who date primarily same-sex partners or are in a same-sex relationship often do not get read as bi at all. So their existence as bisexuals is invalidated and shoved into the tent of "real queerness" and we're left with the most privileged bi people as the unofficial representatives for everything bi.
I recognize the problems with drawing comparisons between different kinds of oppressions and I will attempt to resist doing that here. But "passing" is a word that is used in various communities to define how much a person is able, intentionally or unintentionally, to "hide" a socially undesirable identity from mainstream culture. In most discussions about "passing" (and I acknowledge the word is inherently problematic for multiple reasons) the idea is that any privilege one receives from passing is a double-edged sword. Someone can pass as something they are not and receive privileges for it, but that doesn't negate their core identity and forces them into a constant cycle of having to chose whether to continually out themselves or not. The very stress that has to go along with having to constantly make that choice, day in and day out, is largely ignored in the context of most discussions I see about bisexuality.
This factors in with the current accepted narrative that claims that homosexuality is inherently an inborn trait, as is straightness. What would follow from conclusion, which is simplistic but may be based in some degree of fact, is that bisexuality is similarly an inborn trait, but it isn't treated as such. It often seems to me that the notion behind a biological root of homosexuality is the idea that no one would choose gayness if they were able to. Bisexuals fuck up that narrative by having the ability to "choose" to live either a gay or straight lifestyle yet by the very act of acknowledging themselves as bisexual they refute and refuse the binary. This is obviously threatening, primarily to straight people who don't want to confront the issue of sexual behavior as a choice, but also to the modern mainstream gay rights movement which depends on the idea that gay people really just can't help it - they're born that way.
How does this relate to biphobia? One of the main reactions to someone coming out as bisexual is a "yawn" or "why does this matter?" Those reactions are telling. Because bis have the ability to choose, their queerness is invalided, both by straights, and yes, sometimes by gay people as well. It's a "yawn," as in, "Why would you tell me this? Your sexual behavior doesn't concern me. You're really straight and looking for attention." Or it's "Why does this matter? What you do with your sex life is of no concern to me." While gay people get these reactions as well, from what I've seen it's more pronounced with regards to bi folk, because their sexual orientation is conflated with their sex lives. There was a time when gayness was reduced to same-sex acts, but mainstream gay rights organizations have gone a very good job of presenting gay people as a"just like straights" - married, picked fences, and so on. And this works, because if we "heteroize" gay behavior to be "Just like straight people, - biological, inborn, but with the same sex instead of the opposite sex," then it's less threatening to straight people as they don't have to really question their own potential queerness. This has been defined as "homonormativity" by Lisa Duggan. From Wikipedia:
"According to Penny Griffin, Politics and International Relations lecturer at the University of New South Wales, homonormativity upholds neoliberalism rather than critiquing monogamy, procreation, and binary gender roles as heterosexist and racist.[30] Duggan asserts that homonormativity fragments LGBTQ communities into hierarchies of worthiness. LGBTQ people that come the closest to mimicking heteronormative standards of gender identity are deemed most worthy of receiving rights. LGBTQ individuals at the bottom of the hierarchy (transsexuals, transvestites, intersex, bisexuals, non-gender identified) are seen as an impediment to this elite class of homonormative individuals receiving their rights.[31] "
You'd think it would be a big "duh" to say that defining a queer person primarily through how they have sex is horrible, but this is the common way that bi people are spoken of on mainstream gay blogs and communities, even though this is exactly the same line of thinking that has dehumanized and sexualized gay people within straight society. Bisexual behavior is far to often treated as a kink, or a sideline sexual interest, as opposed to being part of someone's identity. Mainstream gay rights organizations may have been somewhat successful in desexualizing gays, but this has never happened for bis, and won't be able to happen until we move past the simplistic narrative of being "born gay" or "born straight." The inherent radicalness of bisexuality forces everyone to confront the full spectrum of human sexuality, and for that reason it's threatening. Bisexuality, as something that is not just a biological imperative but an active choice, resexualizes the narrative of queerness.
As I've said before, I am not anti-identity politics. It has been an incredibly valuable way to inspire individual and community pride, as well as an essential organizing tool for achieving tangible political gain. But when speaking in a holistic sense about "sexual orientation" or "sexual identity" identity politics does not provide the tools to speak about someone's full experience. A cisgendered bisexual person in a heterosexual relationship may often pass as straight, and in that sense they absolutely have privilege over many other queer people. Yet that passing is fraught. Bisexual people are constantly judged on the basis of their sexual and relational choices, not just by a homophobic straight society, but by the queer community that demands they prove their queerness as the price of admission. Bisexuals are the "other" in both worlds. Straights wonder why bisexual people would choose to be out as bisexual, when they could easily pass - as in, "Why are you wasting the straight privilege you could have?" It seems like no one cares how bis actually experience privilege. Tomorrowshorizion wrote about this experience on Feministing: "My experience is that being initially granted straight privilege often just makes the backlash more vehement than if we'd just be read as queer in the first place. We're not just seen as weirdos, but also as traitors once they figure it out."
Meanwhile, there is real emotional pain and frustration associated with the difficulty of not being accepted in the queer community while being rejected by the straight world that is ignored in the larger discussion about privilege and power.
I'm not saying we shouldn't call out bis in queer spaces when they engage in homophobia or act in privileged ways. Of course we should, and bis, particularly those of us who benefit from striaght privilege, have a responsibility to own that and know when our voices are oppressive to other queer people. That said, the way I see things framed in current discussions about privilege ignores the complexities of bi identity and lives. Identity politics have been very helpful, but what happens when it bumps up against individualism and shitty Internet behavior? We get a narcissistic version of the oppression olympics in which the less privilege you have, the more you "win" - win at what, I haven't quite figured out yet. It seems obvious that oppression isn't a zero sum game, but in many queer and feminist spaces online and in the real world, it's certainly treated as such. Thus someone is who is bi and out becomes a target, because being bisexual, they are admitting to having access to straight privilege, and thus their experience of queerness is made irrelevant. If that's not biphobia, what is?
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