good writing
“In her blue dress, with her cheeks lightly flushed, her blue, blue eyes, and her gold curls pinned up as though for the first time—pinned up to be out of the way for her flight—Mrs. Raddick’s daughter might have just dropped from this radiant heaven. Mrs. Raddick’s timid, faintly astonished, but deeply admiring glance looked as if she believed it, too; but the daughter didn’t appear any too pleased—why should she?—to have alighted on the steps of the Casino. Indeed, she was bored—bored as though Heaven had been full of casinos with snuffy old saints for croupiers and crowns to play with.”
Katherine Mansfield, “The Young Girl.”
It’s all about the word Casino. Each of the words preceding Casino is awful (they’re exactly the types of words you’d expect to find nearby a pretty girl), Casino is excellent (it represents exploitation; it ends in an “o”), and then you get three more excellent words immediately: “bored,” “snuffy,” and “croupiers.” It’s like an avalanche. “Saints” is also good because it forces you to think about heaven, which earlier in the paragraph you ignored for seeming like a cliche.
movie recommendation: Gia
I’m immune to most tearjerkers because I don’t empathize with heterosexuals. So the lesbian biopic Gia caught me off guard. When Elizabeth Mitchell said to Angelina Jolie, “I thought we’d have more time,” and she was referring to their tea date but didn’t realize Angelina was dying of AIDS, I became very upset.
gay marriage debate: keeping the spark alive
On Wednesday lawyers in the Prop 8 trial will make their closing arguments. The judge has come up with 39 questions for them to address. Some of them bring up issues that we partisans haven’t turned to cud yet:
How does the Supreme Court’s holding in Michael H v. Gerald D […] square with an emphasis on the importance of a biological connection between parents and their children?
Michael H is a child custody case in which the Supreme Court denies a biological father visitation rights because there’s another guy on the birth certificate—the mother’s husband at the time she gave birth. Writing for the plurality, Scalia favors the marital relationship over the biological connection because, he says, that’s what American law has always done.
A pro-gay ruling could use Michael H to defeat two arguments: that America has some kind of grand tradition of privileging biology-defined families; and that kids are better off being raised by biological parents (even if the facts show that they are, the law as stated in Michael H supersedes them).
What are the constitutional consequences if the evidence shows that sexual orientation is immutable for men but not for women? […]
The constitutional consequences are clear: the state would be allowed to discriminate more against lesbians than against gay men. The question’s not academic. At trial the anti-gay side’s only credible argument was that it is a woman’s prerogative to change her mind. Some of their evidence on this point even came from non-religious sources.
If the court finds that lesbianism is whimsical, there are ways to argue we should have marriage rights anyway. For example, all women deserve the same level of protection as gay men, because we are all immutably bisexual. But I hope no one bothers. It’s about time the federal courts recognize that fags and dykes have nothing in common.
THAT’s the most ridiculous thing about Suze Orman?
SNL ran a skit about Suze Orman last night where most of the things she said had to do with how she is a lesbian. Some of the jokes technically only referred to how she was obsessed with her vagina, but judging by what preceded, it’s safe to say they were premised on her lesbianism. It ended with a photograph of her not wearing pants.
(For a reference point, imagine a skit about Denzel Washington that made a bunch of jokes about watermelon and fried chicken, then had him talking about how big his dick was, then showed him pantsless.)
I am okay with straight people mocking our love of cats. I am even okay with suggestive pink shirts on lesbian characters. But I draw the line at “pap smear cruises.” It’s just nasty to depict us as people who enjoy cruises.
Look America, we’re not that interesting. We’re not even that vaginal. Leave us alone.
not that there’s anything wrong with being ugly
When news outlets run stories about government figures, they can either display an official-type photo of the person or a random one. Potential Supreme Court nominee and arguable lesbian Elena Kagan has a nice pic on her office’s website (there are also flattering candids out there), but blogs keep using horrible shots whenever they’re speculating about whether she’s a lesbian—including supposedly pro-gay sites [New York][Slate][Queerty]. It seems like they’re using imagery instead of English to say: “she must be a lesbian, look how ugly she is!”
To counteract the media’s ugly lesbian stereotype, here is a beautiful picture of a lesbian:
next week’s lesbian civil rights issue: universal cat health insurance
Gay activism’s newest front is social security benefits. Protesters and politicians are rallying in Hollywood because gay people can’t inherit their partner’s social security benefits when they die.
First: why do married people get to inherit each other’s social security benefits?
Second: this is why the gay rights movement sucks. They have located the absolute least compelling, most arcane aspect of anti-gay discrimination and are marching around bitching about it. This is worse than when they said adoption policy hurt their feelings.
This issue affects almost no one. Take all the gay people in America. Cut out the ones who aren’t “married” to someone of the same sex. Cut the remainder in half, because they will die before their partners do. Cut that number in half, because half of surviving spouses get bigger benefits than their spouses anyway. There: social security survivors benefits affect less than one quarter of gay people, a puny crowd to begin with, and that’s assuming social security even exists by the time most of us are old.
On top of that, the issue is not even emotional. It’s about money. Crass! These people might as well be Tea Partiers complaining about taxes.
Like I’ve said before, we’ve got to stop parading whiny grown ups and start exploiting children. It wouldn’t hurt to actually help gay kids too, for example by making schools teach gay history the same way they teach about other minority groups. And we should ask Obama to put a lesbian in the vacant Supreme Court seat. (Okay, I am not going to rally for that. But people who like to rally should!)
The lesbian character on Desperate Housewives wears a vagina shirt!
book rec
The Professor by Terry Castle
This essay collection hits all its marks in terms of insight, style, wit, knowledge of the 18th century, etc. But the main excellent thing about it is it’s weird. In an essay about touring WWI battlegrounds with her bull dyke cousin, Castle insinuates that they want to have sex with each other. Describing a trip to New Mexico, she continually makes fun of Georgia O’Keeffe for looking like a man. “Georgia’s a brand, a franchise, a Gap ad, a sitcom star. You go girl! No problem if you look like a man!” That essay ends with an Oregon-Trail-ish mock trip report.
The collection’s main flaw is that the stakes feel low. As messed up as Castle’s early life seemed, I could never forget she ended up a married English prof in Palo Alto. She should have revealed more about her present-day vulnerabilities.
For a representative preview, check out Castle’s essay on Susan Sontag. And if you read the book’s main essay, “The Professor,” forgive its false starts. Keep reading and it becomes hilarious.
history of network TV’s lesbian rules
1970s to early ’80s: The Ellis Island Exception. Sitcom writers may depict butch women pining for their femme roommates as long as they attribute all breaches of femininity to kooky ethnic backgrounds.
Mid ’80s to late ’90s: Zero tolerance. Lesbianism is not allowed. Network heads understand it enough to veto subtext but they do not yet realize straight men like watching women kiss.
Early ’00s: Hipster Victory Lap. Once a series has become its network’s most popular among wealthy young viewers, it may exhibit a lesbian kiss during November, February, or May. At least one of the kissers must be blonde, and the visual must evoke tired ponies.
Late ’00s-present: Plot Twist of Last Resort. After a drama has exhausted all possible story lines for a grating secondary character, she may embark on a relationship with a cheerful blonde lesbian. (NBC allowed ER the Plot Twist of Last Resort in 2001, which is a wistful reminder of how edgy they used to be.)
retraction
I have always made fun of the L Word (for example) because it was goofy, educational, and pornographic. But now that I have seen season 5, I take back all my complaints.
In season 5 (2008) the L Word is like, “anyone still watching us must really like goofy educational pornography, so we are going to run with that.” The ingenue becomes evil, the billionaire almost gets raped in a prison shower by an old lady, and the ex-prostitute runs through a wedding reception with her crack showing after banging the bride’s sisters and mother. Marlee Matlin teaches the viewer American Sign Language. There is no token male and the token straight girl never has sex. The treacherous Floridian nightclub owner has a catchphrase: “I’m Dawn Denbo and this is my lover Cindy.” Token straight girl sneaks up on Dawn Denbo and is about to assassinate her (with a handgun) when she is interrupted by her ringtone, which is the voice of her baby niece.
The percentage of Lesbians is rising in the States, all because of you.
Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West
“Exchanging Hats” by Elizabeth Bishop
(Seriously read this, it’s funny, like a non-jackass version of Judith Butler.)
Unfunny uncles who insist
in trying on a lady’s hat,
—oh, even if the joke falls flat,
we share your slight transvestite twist
in spite of our embarrassment.
Costume and custom are complex.
The headgear of the other sex
inspires us to experiment.
Anandrous aunts, who, at the beach
with paper plates upon your laps,
keep putting on the yachtsmen’s caps
with exhibitionistic screech,
the visors hanging o’er the ear
so that the golden anchors drag,
—the tides of fashion never lag.
Such caps may not be worn next year.
Or you who don the paper plate
itself, and put some grapes upon it,
or sport the Indian’s feather bonnet,
—perversities may aggravate
the natural madness of the hatter.
And if the opera hats collapse
and crowns grow draughty, then, perhaps,
he thinks what might a miter matter?
Unfunny uncle, you who wore a
hat too big, or one too many,
tell us, can’t you, are there any
stars inside your black fedora?
Aunt exemplary and slim,
with avernal eyes, we wonder
what slow changes they see under
their vast, shady, turned-down brim.
The fact that lesbians, who are the opposite of effeminate, also seem, like male homosexuals, disproportionately creative (Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf are famous examples) is evidence against the effeminacy thesis, although an alternative explanation is that, until recently, married women were unlikely to have a career, and lesbians are presumably a disproportionate fraction of all unmarried women. (But Virginia Woolf, for one, was married.)
However all this may sort out, it is not the worst fate in the world to be condemned to a career in the arts. In fact, being homosexual may increase one’s chances of being eminent.
Judge Richard Posner in Sex and Reason (1992)
Sequel to the lesbian separatists story?
The Times keeps reporting on weird Southern women this week. Hot!
