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chipotle · 1 year

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A year back in Florida

About a year ago, I moved away from the San Francisco Bay Area, back to Tampa Bay, Florida, where I’d lived for (mostly) all my previous life.

Florida is not the same place it was when I left. The metros feel more urban, more alive, than I remember. Some of that is undoubtedly on me, on my failure to explore them adequately back in the 1990s. But a lot of what I’ve been finding now simply wasn’t there two decades ago. St. Petersburg now has blocks of walkable downtown, starting from the waterfront museums and moving west through the Edge District, on to Kenwood and Grand Central, where they recently held one of the biggest Pride festivals in the country. Tampa’s downtown no longer feels like they roll up the sidewalks at five (a problem that San Jose struggled to solve for years as well). Just like St. Pete’s Central Avenue reminds me—a little—of K and J Streets in midtown Sacramento, smaller towns like Gulfport and Dunedin remind me—a little—of the smaller walkable towns back in California like Danville, Campbell, and Livermore.

Some of the areas that were truly nothing twenty years ago have become, well, something. The town I’ve moved to, Ridge Manor, is an unincorporated area a few miles north of still-tiny Dade City, on a state road that goes straight east-west between I-75 and Orlando. The next “big small town” over, Clermont, has blossomed from a near-abandoned downtown into a genuinely interesting suburb, even if it’s hard to figure out just what it’s a suburb of. Wesley Chapel, about a half-hour south along I-75, is a surprisingly large suburb of Tampa now.

A year ago, I wrote that you can find great coffee shops and craft breweries and cocktail bars in any metro area, and that’s true here, too. Dade City itself has a great craft brewery and a solid coffee shop, and there are far more throughout Tampa/St. Pete and Orlando. Great cocktail bars are the hardest to find here, I’ve found, but they are here.

Florida is not the same place it was when I left. It was, back then, a relatively purple state overall. There are still Florida liberals and leftists, but the Florida of 2023 is a one-party state. And, not to put too fine a point on it, Florida Republicans lead the charge to make that party indistinguishable from the far-right fascist parties plaguing Europe and Central America. Every day brings a new attack on the rights of people DeSantis and his supporters have identified as The Enemy. Trans people. Queer people. Drag queens. Immigrants. Teachers. Librarians. Disney.

A drive around rural Florida a quarter-century ago would have certainly taken you past houses and farms flying confederate battle flags; the state’s panhandle has long been an epicenter for the neo-confederate movement. On a similar drive today, though, the flags are almost exclusively for Trump. And there are many, many flags for Trump. Flags and bumper stickers and banners, and an ugliness I can’t remember seeing in America in my lifetime. When I left Florida, Jeb Bush had just won reelection; I’ve returned to a state where Republicans would consider Jeb too suspiciously liberal to elect him to a municipal utility board.

I am not in the same place in Florida as I was when I left. Politically and culturally, I’m more Left Coast than I had been two decades ago, to be sure—but I spent most of my previous Florida years in Tampa or its suburbs, or the wealthy, culturally rich city of Sarasota.1 As someone who presents as a cishet male, I have little to worry about in most interactions here yet—but that yet slowly gathers weight. I’ve been open about my beliefs, moderately open about my not-so-binary, fairly asexual identity. I write queer, often political, furry fiction under my own name. So far, this has only resulted in lost friendships, but the potential for worse is real.

Yet my worries don’t center on me. The majority of my friends are queer, too. Will any trans friend, including my BFF/partner, be safe here even for a visit? They’re certainly not going to move here. More and more, I’m hearing of people moving out.

I am not in the same place in Florida as I was when I left. All my adult life, both in California and previously here, I could reach dozens of choices for shopping, eating and drinking in under fifteen minutes; some were just a nice walk away in good weather. But Ridge Manor’s several thousand residents spread out over rural half-acre lots. A few businesses cluster in a couple of strip malls around the I-75 interchange. There’s a grocery store, three or four decent restaurants (and three or four fast food places), so-so Chinese takeout, and a few gas stations. Anything else is twenty minutes away at a minimum.

That might not sound like a big deal. It didn’t sound like one to me, either. I’d come home to this house every Christmas from California; I knew where it was. And, I’ve always enjoyed driving. For years, my BFF and I took Saturdays out, exploring towns hours away. How bad could this be?

The answer, it turns out, is worse than I thought. In all my adult life, I’ve lived where I could reach dozens of choices for shopping, eating and drinking in under fifteen minutes, often in places where some were just a nice walk away in good weather. Now, hitting even most standard suburban chains is no longer a whim, it’s an excursion.

Sometimes I’ve dreamt of living in a cabin in Big Sur. I don’t anymore. I want to be in walking distance of something, a short driving distance of anything. Markets, coffee shops, a neighborhood bar, an ice cream parlor. Ridge Manor is not a place where that’s possible, and despite the construction and development around the area, it never will be. Yes, it will get hundreds of new tract homes, but the people who move in there will find that they, too, are a half-hour away from everything.

But do I regret moving? No. I moved to be with my mother, to help take care of her and the house. Our relationship isn’t frictionless, but it’s good, better than many such relationships that I see among my own friends and, for that matter, among hers. I know her better now than I have at any previous point in my life. It’s not just a solid, loving parent-child relationship, it’s a solid, loving friendship. That’s invaluable.

I still take Saturdays out, albeit mostly by myself now, and I’ve discovered or re-discovered plenty of cool places, many of which weren’t here before and all which have changed. There are places I could truly feel at home in, if I lived closer to them, and if Florida’s politics ever become less fraught. And if I can still deal with Florida summers.

The what-ifs remain, though, no matter how much I try to shunt them away.

First what-if: My ability to carve out my own time has been markedly impaired over the last year, from writing to TV watching to reading. Perhaps I am not good at setting boundaries, or perhaps I am just not used to living with someone who wants a lot of attention compared to past, undemanding housemates. Would it have been better to live in the suburbs a half-hour down the road, drive up here a few times a week for dinner, spend the night every other week?

Never say never, but I’m doubtful. The connections I’ve been making with my mom couldn’t have been made if we weren’t living together. Beyond that, I wouldn’t be here to be able to help with routine small things, and helping with large ones would be that much more challenging. She’d be markedly lonelier, and despite my penchant for solitude, I would be, too.

And there’s the cost of living. Despite the isolation, there are many things to like about this house—it’s on over an acre of wooded land, for a start—but the number one thing is, simply, that it’s fully paid off. A year ago, I wrote, “I won’t miss paying as much in rent share [in California] as I would pay for an entire two-bedroom apartment in Tampa.” That turned out to be optimistic; a decent one-bedroom, not two, apartment in Wesley Chapel would be hundreds more a month than my rent share in Santa Clara was. The median rent in Sacramento is, as of this writing, lower than both Tampa and Orlando.

Second what-if: my mother and I could move somewhere else, somewhere that checks off more of my boxes and, ideally, more of hers. She’d like to be closer to amenities, closer to medical care, closer to the water. We’re both concerned about the heat, too. As I write this, Florida swelters in record-breaking heat. The SF Bay Area and Sacramento are at unusual highs, too, but the old “it’s a dry heat” joke hits home. Sacramento’s projected high of 103°F tops our projected 94°, but our heat index hits 116° compared to Sac’s 164°—and our low will be 74° (with a heat index ten degrees higher), whereas Sacramento will make it down to a comparatively arctic 58°. If this is the new normal, it may be untenable for both of us.

Housing prices anywhere we’d want to live are likely to be challengingly high even with our resources pooled together, though, and I don’t know what place we’d both agree on. Stay in the state, or leave it? She thinks about going back to Baltimore, where she grew up, or around Asheville, where Floridians seem to be moving to when they want to leave this state. I have no personal affinity for Maryland or North Carolina, though; the places I do have affinity for—most of California and the Pacific Northwest, parts of the Southwest—aren’t places she does.

The thought of moving anywhere, though, leads to uncomfortable thoughts of mortality—both my mother’s and my own. When will I find myself living alone once more? Will I want to stay where I’m living then? If it’s still here, still in this house, the answer is likely no. But if my mother and I move to a new place, she’ll push for a bigger house. I doubt I’d want a bigger house by myself, or even with a housemate. (And if it’s in Florida, the current politics all but ensure my trans BFF won’t be that housemate.)

Of course, maybe a bigger house still makes financial sense; with luck, having a more expensive house means I get more money if I sell it and do move somewhere else, ultimately. The money isn’t being lost. Objectively, I know that. But I don’t feel it.

So, where does this leave me? It leaves me with a loving parent and great finances; it leaves me isolated, frustrated with my inability to manage my own time, wondering why I’m even worse than I used to be at coordinating with friends. It leaves me in a good and bad place. It leaves me in limbo.

I’ll check back in after another year.

Sarasota is now ground zero for not just Florida’s culture wars but all of America’s, as the home of the neofascist Moms of Liberty and epicenter of QAnon conspiracy nonsense. My college, New College, is the one that DeSantis is in the process of transforming from a nationally-recognized liberal arts school into a national laughing stock. [return]

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therandomfandomme · 4 years

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"Sometimes I really hate Americans"

that is the post I wanted to make yesterday in the middle of the night, but that is not true. I don't hate Americans, I do not know many of them, but you seem okay and I have nothing against you.

It's just that I'm tired.

I'm tired of the us-centric view the internet holds and how it sometimes seems that the USA forgets the rest of the world exists or is not also the USA but then in a different spot.

While the USA has made itself important, the world isn't all centered around it. You're problems might not be my problems and my problems might not be yours.

I know that as I make this post, I make it from a place of privilege.

I am not black, nor islamic, nor jewish, nor Roma, nor disabled. I live in West Europe, my parents are middle class and they are fully supportive of my queerness.

So I cannot make appeals on their part and I know their struggles are global, so in the USA as well as in Europe and the rest of the world we need activism for them, and I'm not trying to undermine them.

I'm also not saying that none of the USA's problems are relevant here, but I am saying that the USA's problems are more advertised everywhere. Like how I know so much about Stone Wall and hardly anything about how I got my rights, to the point that Pride overtakes those voices that fought for me.

In the years 2016-2020 I saw the US president more than my own prime minister, even in the pandamic. I know more about USA politics than those in my own country and I can argue more for changes in America than here.

And it is good that those problems are being talked about. I love learning about what I can do to help and it's good to educate yourself. It's just that American activism isn't something each country can import.

I know that if I make an awareness post for an American issue it will get more attention than if I post about the leader of our growing fascist party comparing his racists and homophobic texts with saying you dislike snow while you actually like snow.

I know that it's harder to start up conversations about the prejudice in west Europe about eastern Europe even though the word slave most likely comes from Slav due to the amount of slaves captured from there during the Carolingian era. And the cold war had a massive impact on the relationship between the two sides, not just between Russia and America.

I know the Wall was a big thing and what's happening on the border betweenthe USA and Mexico is terrible, but I see post that romanticise European borders, completely ignoring how Europe is trying to keep out so many people who are fleeing from wars we contributed to.

I know that smaller issues in America get more attention than bigger issues elsewhere, a gap that is more apparent when it's not an European country.

That's just how it is.

But that's not how it should be.

This post is not made for you to feel guilty, you are watching out for yourselves in an environment catered to you.

However, this post is meant as a call to every American. A call to ask yourself: am I as educated about the issues of other countries as I expect them to be of mine? Do I assume people are American? Will I be less invested in the issues when they're not American?

It's not your fault for your mindset, but I have had so much stress over American politics on top of my worries about my own country and I would like Americans to realize that their issues get highlighted more than others.

We don't make Americans are dumb jokes because we think that, but just because your mistakes get the most attention.

Just be kind and look to help others, I think that's what I want to motto of this post to be. Be kind and advocate for everyone, everywhere

TL;DR: The internet is an us-centric place and that can be kind of annoying when not American. Try to think of your non-American neighbors on this platform and learn about their issues too :D

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sizzlingpatrolfox · 3 years

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If Jimin and Jungkook are lgbt in Korea they probably have bigger fish to worry about than Taehyung posting pictures and delusional shippers doing what they do best. Maybe they have had the ideal experience two people who entered a ruthless star system as minors and in a country that has no legal protections against lgbt targeted hate crimes could have. Or maybe they have seen some shit and been through some things and all this hullabaloo isn't even on their radar.

I really struggle with thinking that they're not more privileged than the majority of lgbtq people in Korea. Korean couples in general don't seem to have a culture of PDA except maybe walking hand in hand down the street, so I don't think it's something they would miss even if they weren't celebrities. And as idols, we've seent them holding hands a couple of times, and they've held hands with other members too. I've seen videos of gay men walking hand in hand or with their arms around each other down the street in Korea. The older generations might be bigoted but the younger people actually seem to be quite open minded. So things are changing.

A lot of lgbtq people are kicked out of their homes and/or disowned when they come out or maybe their families just find out without them telling. Jungkook and Jimin can afford 5 million dollar apartments... they at least have always had a private place to meet and be with each other, and it's soooo much more than most lgbtq young adults have or will ever have. I don't think it should be understimated the freedom of having your own place and your privacy.

I have never perceived them as people who would come out. Never... I just don't think it's something they want to do or even care about doing. Jungkook had a dog for a year and he didn't say anything, sexuality can be something so private for a lot of people.

I don't know if this is related to your ask, I'm sorry if you find it useless, but I'm suddenly thinking of these two women from my country and I think I could get my point across better using them as example. They were rock singers in the 1980's, solists, really really popular and loved by everyone. Around 1990 they formed a duet and they were a couple (all of this was before I was born, so I'm not sure if they were a couple before forming the duet or started dating while they were working together). It was a really bad time for this country, politics wise. One of them (the one in all white) was always out, from the start she said she was a lesbian and actively involved herself in lgbtq matters. She called out homophobes and bigotry in every interview and talked about her and her partner loving each other so much. The other woman, the one with the black jacket, she never said anything. She never admitted to loving Celeste and she never came out of the closet either. Years later, way into the 2000s, she got married to another woman and while doing interviews she said

"I've known I was gay since I was very little. I always had the intention of living my life quietly the way I wanted to, happy and serene. It was never my intention to hold a sign over my head. I think it's okay to not expose everything. In those years, the press wanted me to admit that I was gay, and I never said it because I didn't think it was necessary, and I did everything I wanted to do with complete freedom."

They're singing a love song about two women hiding their relationship. You don't even need to understand the lyrics (tho if you want a translation, I'll provide it!) you can tell they are in love just from the way they look at each other.

I think sometimes we get so caught up in the sad stories of the lgbtq community, most of which are our own experiences, and forget that being queer doesn't mean having to live a sad life or like you're missing out on stuff. I think Jungkook and Jimin are really happy with their lives and I think they're doing so much more than they would've thought they could do. I don't think that if they weren't celebrities they would be wearing rainbow tutus on the pride parade or making out in front of churches. I think that even as non celebrities, they would not be making declarations to anyone except their most closest loved ones.

youtube

I feel like I missed the point of your ask tho... 😅 If I did, please feel free to elaborate.

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thecinephale · 7 years

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Best Movies of 2017

I’m so excited that many of the great films this year did so well at the box office and are such a big part of the awards conversation. I’m grateful that every year brings great works of cinema, but it’s even better when a bunch of people actually get to see them.

This is the first year I’m not counting miniseries. The lines are becoming too blurred between TV and film and also nobody needs me to say again how much I love Jane Campion and Top of the Lake: China Girl.

Still need to see: All the Money in the World, Berlin Syndrome, Graduation, Happy End, In the Fade, Loveless, Lovesong, Prevenge, Princess Cyd, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, A Quiet Passion, Slack Bay, Staying Vertical, Thelma, Woodshock

If your favorite movie isn’t on this list maybe I didn’t see it because a sexual predator was involved or maybe it was just a really crowded year with a lot of really good movies!

Honorable Mentions: -Battle of the Sexes (dir. Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton) -The Beguiled (dir. Sofia Coppola) -Call Me By Your Name (dir. Luca Guadagnino) -Colossal (dir. Nacho Vigalondo) -Columbus (dir. Kogonada) -A Fantastic Woman (dir. Sebastian Lelio) -Good Time (dir. Josh and Benny Safdie) -Landline (dir. Gillian Robespierre) -Lemon (dir. Janicza Bravo) -Logan Lucky (dir. Steven Soderbergh) -Parisienne (dir. Danielle Arbid) -Phantom Thread (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson) -Wonder Woman (dir. Patty Jenkins)

15. Planetarium (dir. Rebecca Zlotowski)

The first two movies on this list got fairly bad reviews so take my opinions as you will. And I get why many struggled with this film. Not only is it dealing with a wide swath of issues, but it’s also doing so with a variety of different tools. It dabbles in the occult, but it’s not a horror movie. It’s a period piece, but feels of the present. It suggests romance, suggests betrayal, suggests familial tension, yet… But here’s what’s great. It’s gorgeous. With some of the best cinematography of the year (Georges Lechaptois), some of the best production design of the year (Katia Wyszkop), and easily the best costumes of the year (Anaïs Romand) it’s compulsively watchable. Combine that with Natalie Portman’s incredibly grounding performance and I was more than willing to go along with Zlotowski as she explored the history of images, the power of images, and the danger of images without committing to a conventional structure.

14. It’s Only the End of the World (dir. Xavier Dolan)

I don’t know how anyone could love Dolan’s other films and dislike this one. It’s such a perfect embodiment of Dolan’s career thus far. Dolan’s films are operatic because he understands that for individuals their problems are operatic. Pretty much every family has conflict, disagreements, scars, but that can’t be dismissed so easily when they are OUR conflicts, OUR disagreements, OUR scars. I love how much respect Dolan always has for that truth. The cast is filled with French cinema royalty and they fully live up to the material’s grounded melodrama.

13. The Lure (dir. Agnieszka Smoczynska)

There’s one key reason this vampiric Polish horror-musical retelling of The Little Mermaid works in a way that other adaptations fall short. Sure, the sheer audacity of that genre mashup makes for a fascinating and unique viewing experience. But what ultimately makes it work emotionally and thematically is that it’s about two mermaids. This was always intended as the initial concept was a horror-less, mermaid-less musical about the Wrońska Sisters (who wrote all the songs in this). But still Smoczynska and her screenwriter Robert Bolesto really manage to keep all that’s wonderful about the source material while contextualizing its complexity. I’ve softened on the Disney version over the years, but it still can be painful watching Ariel change herself for a man (especially when one of those changes is not speaking). Here the presence of her sister, sometimes judging, always worried, creates a circumstance that allows this film’s “little mermaid” to make the realistic mistakes of a teen girl in love with a boy and in hate with herself, without the filming giving its seal of approval. There’s no judgment one way or the other. It’s just real. All that aside this is a vampiric Polish horror-musical retelling of The Little Mermaid. Like, come on. Go buy the Criterion edition!!

12. The Rehearsal (dir. Alison Maclean)

This is the only film on this list that isn’t available to watch. I was lucky enough to see it at the New York Film Festival two years ago, then it had a one week run at Metrograph, then nothing. The real shame is that this isn’t some avant-garde headscratcher to be watched in university classrooms and backroom Brooklyn bars. This is a deeply humanistic, very accessible movie that almost demands wide conversation. And given its setting at an acting conservatory I especially wish all the actors in my life could watch it. Well, hopefully it pops up on some streaming site someday. But until then check out this early Alison Maclean short film that’s equally wonderful albeit wildly different in tone (this one is more like feminist Eraserhead): Kitchen Sink (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt58gDgxy9Q&t=1s).

11. Novitiate (dir. Margaret Betts)

The history of cinema is a history of queer subtext. But it’s 2017 and while it may be fun to speculate whether Poe Dameron is gay and I’d be the first to say “Let It Go” is a perfect coming out anthem, it’s no coincidence that the best queer allegories of the year ALSO had explicitly queer characters. This film in particular is so special because it’s both the story of a young woman’s repressed sexuality and a story about how faith of all things is comparable to said sexuality. Sister Cathleen’s mother does not understand her affinity for Jesus the way many parents do not understand their children’s sexuality or gender. While coming out stories are a staple of very special sitcom episodes, I’ve never seen one that captures the pained misunderstanding the way this film does. Part of this is due to wonderful performances by Julianne Nicholson and Margaret Qualley and part of it is that religion is oddly the perfect stand-in for queerness… even as it represses queerness within this world. The movie begins with a series of flashbacks that feel stilted and conventional in a way that’s totally incongruous with the rest of the movie. It’s unfortunate because otherwise this would’ve been even higher on my list. But this is Betts’ first film and the majority of it is really special. And while I do think she’ll make even better films in what will hopefully be a long career, this one is still really worth checking out. I mean, I haven’t even brought up Melissa Leo’s frightening and absurd (yet somehow grounded?) performance that makes Meryl Streep in Doubt look like Amy Adams in Doubt.

10. The Florida Project (dir. Sean Baker)

As marketing extraordinaire A24 has managed to spread this film to a wider audience, they’ve made a lot of fuss about this film’s political depiction of Florida’s “hidden homeless,” Baker’s approach of mixing professional and non-professional actors (shout-out to Bria Vinaite who deserves as much awards attention as Willem Dafoe), and how the film “feels like a documentary.” And while I’m glad this strategy has worked, I tend to balk at the tendency of marketers and critics alike to call any movie with characters who aren’t all rich and/or white “like a documentary.” But regardless of its realism which I feel in no position to comment on, it’s certainly a great film about childhood and fantasy and how sometimes it’s easier to be a parent to everyone except your own kids. And not to build it up too much if you haven’t already seen it, but the ending is truly one of the best endings in recent years, not only in and of itself, but how it contextualizes and deepens everything that came before.

9. Whose Streets? (dir. Sabaah Folayan)

This is an exceptionally well-constructed film. I feel like most documentaries in this style have great moments but show a lack of restraint in the editing room and/or struggle to find a clear narrative. But this film moves along at an exceptional pace while still feeling comprehensive. Every sequence feels essential even when the scope expands beyond the two central individuals. This can be credited in part to the editing, but the succinctness wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for the footage captured. The intimate moments we’re able to watch are stunning and enhance the already high stakes of the surrounding film, the ongoing narrative of the country. This is an essential reminder of the humanity behind activism, the sacrifice behind news stories, and that for many people political engagement is not something to do with an open Sunday afternoon but a necessary part of survival.

8. Their Finest (dir. Lone Scherfig)

Easily the best Dunkirk-related film of the year, this is the rare movie about movies that doesn’t feel self-satisfied, but instead truly captures the joy of cinema and storytelling. It’s odd to me that romantic melodrama, a genre so celebrated when it comes to classic film, is often written off as fluff in contemporary cinema. Yes, this movie is romantic. Yes, this movie is wildly entertaining. But it’s also painful, it’s also telling a story of women screenwriters we haven’t heard before, it’s also showing how powerful art can be as an escape and a mirror in difficult times. If you’re interested in filmmaking and/or British people, check this out on Hulu. Gemma Arterton is really wonderful and Sam Claflin is good eye candy if you’re into that sort of thing.

7. Starless Dreams (dir. Mehrdad Oskouei)

This documentary about a group of teenage girls living in an Iranian “Correctional and Rehabilitation Center” is proof that sometimes the best approach to the medium is simplicity. Oskouei pretty much just lets the girls talk. But it’s truly a testament to his abilities as a filmmaker (and person) and the girls’ vulnerability and storytelling prowess that the movie remains compelling throughout. As the girls tell their stories it becomes clear that the center isn’t simply a prison, but also almost a utopic escape from the daily horrors they faced outside. Both options are so completely insufficient when compared to the lives these young women deserve this realization is enraging. And while the film takes place in Iran it doesn’t require a lot of effort to realize young women have similar stories and circumstances all over the world. This movie is on iTunes and I really, really recommend checking it out. The subject matter is heavy, but because the girls are allowed to determine the narrative it never feels maudlin or unbearable and at times is even quite funny and joyous.

6. Raw (dir. Julia Ducournau)

I really appreciated how Marielle Heller’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl captured the all-consuming lust of teenagehood. So, um, think that movie, except cannibalism. A lot of cannibalism. I feel torn between being honest about how truly gross this movie can be and pretending otherwise because I really don’t want to scare anyone away. I’ll put it this way. It’s really, really worth it to watch this through your fingers if you even maybe think you could handle it. Because it’s just a really great movie about being a teenage girl, discovering sexuality, being away from home for the first time, having a sister, having a first crush, a first sexual experience, feeling completely out of control of your desires and needs. Hey, even Ducournau insists this isn’t a horror movie. So don’t eat anything beforehand, but definitely check this out.

5. Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele)

I hardly need to add any analysis to what has easily been the most talked about and written about movie of the year. But I just need to say that it makes me so happy that a socially aware horror movie (the best subset of my favorite genre) not only made a huge amount of money but is also considered an awards frontrunner. That is so wonderfully baffling to me and a testament to the greatness of this movie. Many great horror movies capitalize on people’s fear of otherness, but those who are othered in our society are much more likely to be victims than villains. That Peele managed to show this without ever feeling like he was exploiting real pain is truly an accomplishment. The tonal balance this film achieves is certainly something I’ll study when I make a horror movie writing back to Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, Sleepaway Camp, etc.

4. Faces Places (dir. Agnès Varda, JR)

Agnès Varda has spent her entire career blending fact and fiction, opening up her own life for her art. But there’s something different about this film which is likely to be her last. While so much of her work places her vivacious spirit front and center this film feels almost like a cry of humanity. Oddly enough I’d compare it to Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky in that it seems to say, “Don’t fetishize my happiness, don’t mock my joy, don’t infantilize me, just because you can’t enjoy life like I can.” I look to Varda as the kind of artist (and person) I want to be in how open she always seems to be. But what this film made me realize is that part of that openness is how sad she can be, how angry she can be. Varda is often called “the grandmother of the French New Wave.” I guess this is the only way the film community knows how to contextualize a woman being the one to start arguably the most influential film movement. Varda is the same age as all those guys! She’s not the grandmother! She just happened to make a bold, experimental film about five years ahead of the rest of them. By ending with Godard, and pairing up with JR who is basically an incarnation of Godard and friends as young men, Varda is really exploring her place in film history and the world, and how difficult it is to be to be a pioneer. No country has more contemporary films directed by women than France and this is in a large part due to Varda. But being the one to create that path is exhausting. I realize I’m making what’s easily the most life-affirming, humanist film of the year sound like an angry, self-eulogy, but I think this aspect of the film and Varda’s career should not be ignored. If you’ve never seen anything by Varda, this film will read very differently, but still be wonderful (and honestly more joyous). I recommend seeing it, watching 20 of her other films, and then seeing it again.

3. The Shape of Water (dir. Guillermo del Toro)

The trailer for this film shows the main character, Elisa played by the always wonderful Sally Hawkins, doing her daily routine. Alarm, shining shoes, being late to work, etc. But even the redband trailer leaves out one of her daily activities: masturbating. Maybe it’s odd to associate masturbation with ambition, but the choice to show that early on and then repeatedly seems like a perfect microcosm of why this film is so great. It’s not afraid. Guillermo del Toro has made a wonderful career out of celebrating “the other” through monster movie pastiches, but this to me is his very best film because of how willing it is to be both clear and complicated. This movie is many things, but one of those things is a queer love story. And even though human woman/amphibian man sex is maybe even more taboo to show on screen than say eating a semen filled peach, this movie just goes for it. I’m not sure if this movie succeeds in everything it tries to do but I so deeply admire how much it tries. Not only is one of Elisa’s best friends gay, but we spend a significant amount of time getting to know that character and see that maybe his obsolete career hurts him even more. Not only is Elisa’s other best friend black, but we see how being a black woman affects her specifically in what is expected of her versus her husband. Fantasy and sci-fi often use real people’s struggles as source material for privileged protagonists, and while this film certainly does that, it works because the real people are still shown on screen. Also del Toro is a master of cinematic craft so this is really a pleasure to watch.

2. Lady Bird (dir. Greta Gerwig)

Before diving into this specific film it’s worth noting that this is one of six debut features on this list. It’s so exciting that we’re hopefully going to get full and illustrious careers from all of these people. But when it comes to Gerwig it feels like we already have. She has been proof that if the film community is going to insist on holding onto the auteur theory, they at least need to acknowledge that actors and writers can be auteurs. Gerwig is known for being quirky, but this really sells her talent short. She is clearly someone who has a deep understanding of cinema and, more importantly, a deep understanding of people. Part of being a great director is casting great actors and then trusting them and it’s so clear that’s what happened on this film (let me just list off some names: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Lucas Hedges, Tracy Letts, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Lois Smith, I mean come on). They really make her wonderful script come alive. This is a great movie about female friendship and a great movie about mother-daughter relationships, but more than anything it’s a great movie about loving and hating a hometown. Even though I’ve only seen the film twice I think back on moments in the film like I do my own adolescent memories. They feel familiar even when I don’t directly relate to them. This movie feels big in a way only a small movie can.

1. Mudbound (dir. Dee Rees)

This is when my penchant for hyperbole really comes back to bite me in the ass. I use the word masterpiece way too much. But when I say Mudbound is a masterpiece I don’t just mean it’s a great movie I really loved that I recommend everyone see. I mean, it’s The Godfather. It’s Citizen Kane. It’s the rare movie that has a perfect script, perfect cinematography, perfect performances, is completely of its time, and will stand the test of time. If we ever get to a place where art by black women is justly celebrated it will be in the 2070 AFI top 10. It’s that good. Part of what sets the movie apart is its almost absurd ambition. It breaks so many movie rules (not only does it have heavy narration, but it has heavy narration from multiple characters), and yet it always works. I love small movies, I love weird and flawed movies, but there is something so spectacular about watching something like Dee Rees’ third feature. I’m so excited to watch this movie again, to study it, to spend a lifetime with it. I feel like it really got lost in the shuffle by being released on Netflix, but that also means right now it’s on Netflix and you, yes YOU, almost certainly have or have access to Netflix. So you could watch it. Right now. Watch it. Stop reading. Turn the lights off. Find the biggest TV or computer screen you have so you can really appreciate Rachel Morrison’s cinematography and watch it. It is perfection wrapped in a bow of perfection and I really must insist you watch it.

Television!

Still Need to Catch Up On: The Girlfriend Experience (S2), Queen Sugar (S2)

Honorable Mentions: -Big Little Lies -Broad City (S3) -Girls (S6) -Insecure (S2) -Master of None (S2) -One Mississippi (S2) -Orange is the New Black (S5) -Search Party (S2) -Shots Fired

10. Twin Peaks: The Return 9. Jane the Virgin (S3/4) 8. Transparent (S4) 7. Better Things (S2) 6. I Love Dick 5. The Good Place (S1/2) 4. Sense8 (S2) 3. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (S2/3) 2. Top of the Lake: China Girl 1. The Leftovers (S3)

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saezutte · 5 years

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Dear Yuletide Writer

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Happy end-of-the-year season! Thank you for writing for me!

This is my first time signing up for Yuletide, though I’ve been reading Yuletide fic for 14-15 years and it’s one of my favorite yearly traditions. Now I’m turning over a new leaf of active participation in my old age! I guarantee you I am much more worried about what I’m writing than what you’re writing—I’m pretty easy-going about the fic I read and I am going to try to help you out as best I can with this letter. If there’s something you’re unclear about, feel free to contact the mods or stalk me to find my preferences.

My AO3: saezutte

My public twitter: juncassis

My tumblr: here but I do not use tumblr much anymore, sorry.

Do Not Wants

[note: I have no actual triggers, nothing you can write for me will make me any more depressed or anxious than I already am]

Death (of major/important/beloved characters)

Suicide attempts

Rape

Angst without a happy ending, really too much angst at all

University/college settings

Established relationship

Cheating

Actual Unrequited Feelings

Pregnancy (the actual process; breeding kink is fine)

Scat or watersports

Hard BDSM or any kink complicated enough that the characters would have to discuss it ahead of time

Non-canon cisswapping or gender change (it’s ok if they do it in canon, e.g. HX/SQX)

Homophobia as a plot device

Excessive attention to sexual identity or queer politics

Note on AUs: I am ok with the usual popular AU tropes (except, see above, university settings) but I do not want them combined, e.g. A/B/O is fine and coffeeshop is fine, but I don’t want an omega barista getting his scent all over the lattes he makes for some alpha lawyer who comes in every morning. (Ridiculous example, but you get the point.) For AU/modern settings of fandoms with magic, I often like it when the magic is still there in the AU setting. I also like AUs which maintain the general outlines of the character’s relationships, like if the characters are childhood friends in canon, I like to keep that intact.

General preferences:

I am a pretty basic bitch when it comes to fanfic: I like it when two clueless boys pine for each other through some shenanigans and then lock eyes/lips/dicks.

If you fed a neural net every fanfic written in Stargate Atlantis fandom between 2005 and 2010, the result would probably be some nonsense I’d enjoy.

I love many tropes. Tropes! Bed-sharing. Sharing an umbrella. WASHING EACH OTHER’S HAIR? Confessions where they are having an argument and then one of them yells “Because I love you!”

I love situations where characters are forced to spend time in close proximity and find themselves with feelings.

I love fakeness: fake dating, fake marriage, arranged marriage, marriage of convenience, fake lust induced by sex pollen or heats, aliens make them have sex, whatever.

I’d prefer story/romance/build-up to PWP but you are welcome to write porn

Tian Guan Ci Fu

Requested characters: He Xuan, Shi Qingxuan

Note: If you don’t want to write those two, I would be happy with Hualian! There are other pairings I like as well, like Fengqing. I requested these two because they are the ones I want the most, but I like almost all of the characters in TGCF so if you want to write me something that sells me on your pet pairing, go for it. Caveat is that I don’t like Qi Rong (sorry cousin)—he makes me anxious, haha.

Why I like the canon: Tian Guan Ci Fu is my favorite of MXTX’s novels, which took over my life this summer. What I love about it is the gods/mythology angle. The different story arcs remind me of reading myths about gods going out on adventures—I love folklore and myths! I love Xie Lian, I respect him so much, and I love Hua Cheng. I love how dark the story gets and I love that I could read it while being relatively assured of a happy ending. But with MXTX, you only ever get that happy ending for the main pair, hence why I requested my side pair.

Why I like these characters: I was in love with these two when He Xuan was pretending to be a grouchy Earth Master who reluctantly goes along with whatever Shi Qingxuan wants. When it turned out to be ABOUT REVENGE and they have FATES WHICH ARE ENTANGLED TOGETHER, I promptly lost my mind. I like the contrast in personalities.

I love Shi Qingxuan as a happy gossip god who is friends with everyone and yet also still pretty good at his job (unlike a lot of the gods around). I like his struggle with realizing he wasn’t meant to be a god and I honestly like where he ends up at the end of the novel—but personally I’d like it better if he re-qualified as a god, haha. I love his sex switching and you are welcome to play with that, though I would prefer if it weren’t a straightforward switch where he (she) settles as a woman. With He Xuan… I love that he’s on this dark completely-justified vengeance quest but he is also kind of a mess? How in debt is he to Hua Cheng? Has he totally neglected his ghostly duties to play Earth Master in heaven? How did he feel starting to be friends with SQX when he’s still planning on ruining his life?

What I would like for these two is something between pure fluff / all the issues are solved / “decapitated brother who?” and angst. I think they mirror Hualian in a lot of ways and I wish they had a chance together!

Prompts:

Them meeting again post-canon: He Xuan not knowing what to do with his (after)life now that he’s got his revenge and not being totally sure what’s keeping him around now that his business is over. SQX living his happy beggar life and HX not sure how he’s still so energetic.

A canon divergent AU where He Xuan doesn’t pull off his revenge plot ? Instead something else happens?

A soulmate AU would work well for these two IMO

Modern AU where HX is infiltrating the company that destroyed his family business and falls in love with the heir to the company president

SQX reascending to godhood as a beggar god and HX suspecting he will come for him in revenge but he just wants to be friends again

The Untamed (RPF)

Requested characters: Wang Yibo, Xiao Zhan

Why I like the canon: Uh, it took over my stupid life this summer. I haven’t liked an idol in years. I have frequently said I don’t like RPF because the canon is too diffuse to keep up with! And yet look at my twitter. I’m living in a hell of my own making.

Anyway, I got into the RPF side for The Untamed initially because the fictional canon here was very overloaded with its status as an adaptation of a novel where the characters are already together and where there aren’t many points for a writer to jump in and add to it. So I got more interested in the actors’ dynamic particularly because it’s different from Wangxian—WYB is a gremlin! Xiao Zhan is the serious professional one! And then I fell in love with them and now this is my life.

Why I like these characters: I just love their stupid handsome faces, I can’t help it. Don’t look at me. I am more of a Xiao Zhan fan but I want to be Wang Yibo’s best friend and bully him.

With Xiao Zhan, I love his smile and I love that he can write a whole essay on Wei Wuxian’s character and I love that he was a regular person who worked in an office before deciding to join one of wjjw’s basically-a-scam idol raising shows and then accidentally becoming the most famous man in China. He’s so professional and serious in interviews and it’s a great contrast to how we see him goofing around with WYB and the others on set.

With Wang Yibo, I like that he’s a wild boy who will run off to race motorcycles at any minute. I would like to shove him a little bit, in an affectionate manner. I love that he’s always looking at XZ and smiling and doesn’t seem to care if anyone notices.

Prompts:

Fooling around on set leads to love? The most basic of basic

AUs with different settings/meetings—maybe XZ is still a designer and his company ends up working with WYB (who is still an idol)? Or WYB is a pro motorcycle racer and XZ is a sports photographer?

They drift apart now but meet again in 10 years with Regrets

Porn star AU

Having to share a bed

WYB is scared of something! XZ comforts him!

Any dumb AU you want but I would like to veto ABO for this, it’s too weird for me when they’re real people.

The Untamed (TV)

Requested characters: Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian

Note: There are other CQL/MDZS pairings I like, namely Jiang Cheng/Nie Huaisang. I also like the junior trio (as OT3 or as various twosomes.) Also, one night I read a Jiang Cheng/Lan Sizhui fic and suddenly I got all these ideas for inappropriate uncle pairings JC/LSZ and LXC/JL. If any of that speaks to your heart instead, go wild.

Why I like the canon: So obviously I read the novel and plunged into this MXTX abyss for 100 years. With this adaptation, there are a few things I don’t like versus the novel but I’m happy to ignore them because I love what they did with the visuals and music and the acting choices. Some of the changes I also do love—I love how WWX seems to be so much more into LWJ from the beginning! I love seeing them goof around, I love drunk!WYB in the drama.

I also don’t like established relationship fic for the most part, so the censorship in this adaptation means I have more to play with in fanfic!

Why I like the characters: They invented love!!! They did. I particularly like them both as kind of messes… It’s easy to forget with how great Hanguang-jun is but he’s also bad at expressing himself and it gets him into trouble. Then you have WWX the deviant genius troublemaker with a heart of gold (even when he doesn’t have his golden core). They’re immature kids who can’t figure their shit out before things get serious and then 16 years later, they are emotionally stunted 30-somethings and (tbh) I feel that. These two are meant for each other and meant to wander the country following the chaos and getting into adventures together while fucking a lot.

Prompts:

How do Wangxian get together in this universe? Was it as teens? During the war? Did they split up? Did LWJ give in to temptation earlier than in the novel? When did WWX realize his feelings?

Fix-it for the ending where they separate!! Duh! Does anyone think them being apart is going to last?

Star Trek AU with the Lans as Vulcans

Uh, I really like A/B/O fic for these two.

MAGIC SEX CURSES. Fuck or die! Sex pollen! Particularly if they’re not a couple yet and this leads to awkwardness and getting together.

Nirvana in Fire (TV)

Requested characters: Mei Changsu, Xiao Jingyan

Note: I also love Lin Chen so if you want to write some MCS/LC or LC/Fei Liu or LC/MCS/JINGYAN OT3??? go for it. I am also a Nihuang/Xia Dong shipper so if you want to put that in… somehow… my gay little heart would be happy. I also like Nihuang/MCS/XJY or MNH/MCS + MCS/XJY but I’d like the focus on the men in that case!

Why I like the canon: I watched this show because someone recommended this show to me as, like, Chinese Game of Thrones but good. I think it’s genuinely one of the best TV shows I’ve ever seen. I love plots and revenge and good people doing bad things for justice. Even the ending is good for me though obviously it left me unsatisfied on several points.

Why I like the characters: I am deeply into sickly doomed genius MCS and every time he got even more deeply ill, I fell deeper in love. Every time he coughs up blood, my heart would race. I love his terrible schemes and stupid self-sacrificing choices. I find watching this show very soothing because I knew he would always come out on top in his schemes. I trust him. I love handsome clueless Jingyan and how he’s just so good (it’s terrible.) I love his mom and how much he cares for her. I love him but he is useless, he needs his Xiao Shu and I need fanfic to restore him to him.

Note: So my limited research on this says that male/male sex practices were accepted and well-known in this time period in history, so I really don’t want them thinking “oh no what are these weird gay feelings.” There are other barriers to them being together, like a ruler or official being overly attached to one person was considered very bad. I am also a big supporter of the socially-approved polygamy of this time period, so I don’t need Jingyan to refuse to sleep with his wife or something out of loyalty to MCS—he has to do it! Or all their plans are ruined! And he can enjoy spending time with her or the concubines without affecting his feelings for MCS—you could explore that complexity in fic if you like.

Prompts:

Mei Changsu isn’t dead, he’s hiding again, Jingyan searches for him

They start having sex during the series, the ending is averted [somehow]

Post-canon, MCS is alive and Jingyan hides him in the palace with his consort/concubines to keep him on as an advisor without anyone objecting

AU where male/male marriage is customary (maybe aristocratic men are expected to have one male and one female consort?) and so MCS decides the best way to influence and help Jingyan in the capital is by becoming his wife or one of his concubines

anything just get them together and happy.

Promare

Requested characters: Galo, Lio

Why I like the canon: I love this film but I also find it to be… not enough? I wanted more character development, I wanted more plot, I wanted the goddamn Burnish to stay burning things. So I requested it because I want more! Please help me.

Why I like the characters: I love freedom fighter idealist Lio who will kick everyone’s ass for what is right. I love idiot idealist Galo who wants to fight all fires and learns to love exactly one fire. I think now that they aren’t saving the world by punching global warming, they should have a nice romance. I also like they points where they clash in the film, so I’d love to see them adjusting to “normal life” and having to deal with not having the crisis to make sure they get along.

Prompts:

Galo and Lio rebuilding the world together

Lio regaining Burnish powers?

AU where the Burnish are still a thing but it’s not a big crisis/battle and they just have normal jobs and there are integration programs and Lio is an angry Burnish teen and Galo volunteers at a community center helping Burnish control their powers. Like a world that’s more everyday X-Men than X-men in full adventure war mode.

This is the one request where I’d probably enjoy gen fic with lots of worldbuilding.

I would also enjoy lots of horny porn, preference for Galo topping with his giant stupid dick? I’m sorry I’m like this.

I do want to note ahead of time that I might be traveling (as in, possibly literally on a plane) when fics go live, so please do not be upset if I do not comment on the fic right away! But I definitely will! I know this can be a sore spot for authors so I wanted to give some warning.

I think that is all! Thank you very much and I’ll see you at the end of all this.

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strangegirlsontv · 7 years

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All In The Family (Part 1) - Judging Books By Covers

With things being what they are in 2017, All in the Family can be a tough series to discuss. Not only do you have to look back on it and consider the social and political landscape it was written in, but it is a series that was somewhat misunderstood when it was new and very misunderstood now. A lot of this misunderstanding comes from a misunderstanding of the lead character, Archie Bunker, who is by far the most defining character in the show. After all, everything that happens in the show gets filtered through Archie first.

Divorced from the context it was devised in and ignoring the man who made it, far too many people take exactly the wrong messages from Archie. Watch nearly any of Archie’s rantings and ravings on Youtube and you are almost guaranteed to find comments praising him for “telling it like it is”, saying “Archie gets what’s wrong with America today”, things of that nature. Archie is frequently described as a “lovable bigot”, but his character was never intended to be this way. Archie was intended by creator Norman Lear to be wholly unlikeable. How could anyone like this man who is every kind of bigot in the book, and lets you know this very quickly and very loudly? Archie is supposed to be so awful and so bigoted that the viewer is supposed to regard him as a clown, a full on parody of how ignorant people can be.

Unfortunately, viewers fell in love with the man, whether it was despite his bigotry or because of it. Archie isn’t without his redeeming qualities--he does have many sweet moments with his wife Edith and daughter Gloria, when he’s not controlling or berating the two. He’s also known to do the right thing in the end--sometimes. At least, he usually doesn’t do the wrongest possible thing in the end. But the degree to which he has been hailed as a hero, both then and now, is a result of absolutely missing the point of his character. In the end, Archie is intended to be laughed at, not with.

The subject of homosexuality was not commonly discussed on American television in 1971 when the show began. However, All in the Family introduced a storyline about gay folks and homophobia within just a few episodes, and although it’s frequently in the context of Archie’s unwavering homophobia, the presence of gay people is never hidden in the show. Watching Archie casually talk about “fags” isn’t exactly a great time, but it does something a lot of shows didn’t at the time: recognize that gay people exist at all.

All in the Family ultimately had two episodes centered around homosexuality. The first of these two episodes is “Judging Books By Covers”, the fifth episode of the series. The second, “Cousin Liz”, would not air for another six years. Unfortunately, public views on homosexuality, as well as Archie’s views, change very little in those six years.

The first episode, “Judging Books By Covers”, starts with Michael and Gloria preparing the table for a guest who is coming to lunch. Michael is a key character to understanding the sort of mechanics to the show--he’s an educated liberal, open minded young Polish man. He’s everything that Archie finds wrong with the world, and he is the husband of Archie’s daughter Gloria, who largely shares his views. The struggle between Archie and Michael, between right- and left-wing politics, between older and newer generations is one of the main sources of conflict in the series. However, in this episode, it only accounts for half of the battle.

While Michael and Gloria prepare for lunch, Archie and his wife Edith enter the home. The two are having a small argument about clothing donations--Archie refuses to participate in these “handouts”, quite literally saying the phrase “that’s the problem with this country today”. Seeing Archie is in a bad mood, Michael attempts to avoid him to no avail. The two bicker mindlessly for a few seconds before Archie learns that Gloria and Michael’s friend Roger is the guest they will be having for lunch, to which he immediately exclaims “Roger the FAIRY?”

It doesn’t take a lot of critical thought to figure out how Archie feels about gay people. Archie believes in “a man being a man”, he’s presumably religious although he frequently misquotes the Bible, and he’s resistant to any of these “new lifestyles”. He’s immediately very hostile to the idea of Roger visiting, saying they don’t need any “strange little birdies flying in and out” of his house. Every mention of Roger is dripping with contempt.

Gloria immediately jumps to Roger’s defense, saying he’s not a “strange little birdie.” In fact, this brings up the point that Roger (who is not a recurring character, so he’s a mystery at this point) may or may not be gay. All we know is that Archie believes he is. Archie quips to Michael that his friend is “as queer as a four dollar bill, and he knows it.” Gloria and Michael condemn Archie’s homophobia, but Gloria reinforces that what Archie is saying is “an outright lie.” Michael says that Archie only thinks this because his friend is sensitive and educated and wears glasses, which Archie replies to with a line that for some ungodly reason became a somewhat iconic line from the show: “I never said a guy who wears glasses is a queer. A guy who wears glasses is a four-eyes, a guy who’s a fag is a queer.” Cue laugh track and audience applause.

After a bit more arguing (including a bizarre rant from Archie about how England is a “fag country” and how everything the English do is based on “fagdom”, don’t ask me) we finally meet Roger. Roger has kind of long hair and a neckerchief, which is more than enough proof for Archie. Roger has just come back from a trip from Europe, and Archie uses this as an opportunity to grill him in the strange ways only Archie could conceive to grill someone. Super Sleuth Archie’s master plan for outing Roger is to ask him if he did any sports in Europe, like bobsledding. “Bobsledding, there’s a manly sport,” he says. Roger says there isn’t a lot of bobsledding in London, where he spent his time. Ah, London. As we remember, that’s that town in that “fag country”. Good enough for Archie Bunker. Archie has what he thinks he needs and looks to Michael and says “your witness.”

Archie eventually gets tired of listening to Roger and heads out to Kelsey’s Bar to meet up with his friends. Though most of his friends aren’t quite AS openly bigoted as Archie, they more or less all line up politically. However, there’s a bit of a debate in the bar over whether workers should go on strike. The debate over the ethics of striking very quickly devolves into a discussion about a new Swedish film, whose defining feature by the description given seems to be an actress’s large breasts. Archie isn’t entirely thrilled at the thought, as he’s too worried about these foreign films being too close to pornography.

It’s vital to understand that although Archie despises an “abnormal” sexuality like being gay, he’s not at all comfortable with his own heterosexuality either. Sex is a topic Archie does not like to discuss or think about outside of doing the act himself within the context of his marriage to Edith. Archie has sex, but when he’s not in the middle of having sex he generally doesn’t want to think or hear about sex. To some degree, it’s likely that his overall discomfort with any kind of sexuality makes his disgust at homosexuality ten times stronger.

As two of Archie’s three friends continue discussing the movie at large, Archie speaks with the third friend, Steve. Archie remarks that as a bachelor, Steve likely doesn��t have to go see a Swedish film to see all the attractive women he wants. All Steve answers back is “whatever you say, Archie.” The two sit down at a table to have a private chat about Steve’s pro football career, which Archie is eager to drool over. Archie’s face lights up talking about how back in Steve’s day they played “real” football, manly-men-roughing-each-other-up-type football. Steve isn’t very keen to talk about the two seasons of football he played, but Archie keeps pressing, asking how Steve keeps in such great shape, remarking on his impressive shoulders.

There are definitely some of you that have already figured out where this is going.

Michael and Roger enter the bar, looking to get a pitcher of beer to take back to the house. Archie quietly mentions to Steve that that’s his son-in-law and “his pal Tinkerbell.” However, Archie doesn’t get a chance to make any other comments as Roger walks over and greets Steve, shaking his hand. It turns out Roger and Steve know each other. Apparently Steve works in a camera shop and Roger bought a lens from him before his Europe trip. The two exchange a nice goodbye as Roger walks back to Michael, leaving Archie insisting he pays for Steve’s drinks.

As Roger returns to the bar, the bartender Kelsey asks if he’d step aside so he can talk to Michael privately. Kelsey asks Michael if Roger is straight. Michael essentially rolls his eyes at the question, to which Kelsey tells him he thought based on his warm greeting to Steve that Roger was “a little uhh... [waggly hand gesture, weird look on face],” which while not an unusual way to refer to gay people in TV of the time, seems a bit awkward after hearing so many “fags” and “fairies” in the episode. However, Kelsey next tells Michael that he “doesn’t mind Steve”--after all, Steve only comes in for a drink here and there and his shop is nearby. Plus, Steve doesn’t “camp it up,” as he says, and doesn’t bring in any of his friends. Kelsey’s main concern is his bar not getting a reputation as a gay hangout.

Michael has other problems. Michael’s friend Roger isn’t gay, but Archie’s friend Steve apparently is, and Archie doesn’t know. Back home, everyone is finishing up their meal as Archie walks in. Roger politely greets Archie as he heads out, which Archie responds to by making a quiet crack about how they could “just open up a window” and “watch him fly out.” Michael is getting tired of Archie’s comments and threatens that he could tell Archie something that could “really shock [him],” which Archie strongly doubts given his vast life experiences.

There’s then a short diversion involving that old trick where you step a certain number of steps back from a wall, lean forward, lift a chair then stand up, a trick that supposedly only (cis) women can do and (cis) men can’t. Archie gets incredibly angry that he can’t stand up with the chair in his hands and is fairly sure they’re playing some sort of prank on him. When he finds out that Roger showed them this trick, Archie makes a snide comment about how Roger could definitely stand up with the chair. After all, Roger’s not a “real” man.

Michael’s had enough, and finally lets it loose: he tells Archie that if anyone could really lift that chair, it’s his friend Steve. Everyone is in disbelief, particularly Archie, who immediately starts yelling. He’s furious at Michael and begins ranting about how the schools raise kids as “pinkos” and how the young people all have sex all the time “for no reason,” but the final straw is that young people are now “nuts” enough to slander the name of someone like Steve. This isn’t just an uncomfortable rumor about the big macho all-American football player Archie admires, this is a full on attack on everything Archie believes in.

Archie retreats to Kelsey’s Bar, where Steve and their other friends are noisily watching a boxing match. After the match, Steve and Archie sit down for a chat, but not before Steve jokingly pretends to punch Archie. After sitting, Archie challenges Steve to an arm wrestling match, which Steve very quickly and easily wins. This puts Archie’s mind at ease--just as going to London meant Roger was definitely gay, winning at arm wrestling definitely means Steve is straight. Archie starts whining about Michael’s “whole generation” to Steve, then begins questioning Steve about Roger.

Apparently Steve has known Roger for a few years as a customer of his camera shop. Archie then comments that Steve MUST know that Roger is a “[non-committal waggling finger hand gesture],” to which Steve only asks if that’s what Michael thinks of Roger. Archie tosses what Michael thinks in the metaphorical trash can and challenges Steve to another arm wrestle. While arm wrestling Steve asks again what Michael thinks, and Archie admits that Michael thinks Roger is straight, but--and here Archie just flounders around for a moment, only managing to say “he thinks that you’re a f--” before going quiet. And after a few seconds of silence, Steve says “he’s right, Arch. He’s right.”

Archie is stunned into silence for a while, but finally manages to say “oh, you mean he’s right about his friend Roger,” but Steve shuts this down immediately, saying “about everything!” Steve seems flat out amused at Archie’s attempts to dodge the reality of the situation and hands him another beer as he begins to lay it out.

“How long you known me, 10, 12 years? In all that time, did I ever mention a woman?”

“Well what difference does that make, you’re a bachelor!”

“So?”

“I know, but bachelors are always actin’ sorta private.”

“Exactly.”

Archie still believes the whole thing is a joke, and Steve is starting to think it is too, although not the sort of joke Archie thinks it is. He tells him, “have it your own way, Arch. The truth’s in the eye of the beholder anyway. I’ll see ya later pal.” Steve gives Archie a bit too hard of a friendly punch to the shoulder as he leaves the bar. Archie says to no one in particular, “well if that’s the punch of a fruit...,” but his face turns serious for a moment. It only takes about two seconds of serious thought before Archie literally handwaves it away with a loud dismissive “nyahhhh!!” and walks out.

In the end, Archie may or may not truly believe that his handsome, muscular, football playing all-American friend is gay. He most likely will continue believing that the slightly effeminate Roger is gay. Archie is not a man who will allow his worldview to shift even an inch without an extreme fight. His stubbornness is one of his most defining traits. But for that two seconds of serious thought, Archie did know the truth. He simply chose not to accept it, because accepting it would mean that his image of what it means to be a man and what it means to be gay was wrong. Steve was quite literally Archie’s ideal of what a man should be. Archie absolutely adores Steve and everything he stands for. Archie almost looks up to him, despite Archie being significantly older, because Steve is the “real man” Archie wishes he could be. But now Archie has to come to terms with the fact that the man he spent so much time idolizing is gay. If he can be gay, then that means gay men aren’t just an easy to spot stereotype that he can handwave away. It shatters one of Archie’s most fundamental views about the world--that there are men, and there are women, and those are two very specific roles in this world that must be adhered to at all costs. There are “real men” from the Old Way Of Doing Things and then there are the “pansies” from the New Way These Youngsters Act and there is no crossover. We all know that this is not the case. Archie chooses to not know that, and will actively work to make himself believe that this is the world he is in. It has to be.

I’ve seen several takes on this episode that suggest that Archie’s discomfort comes from the fact that he secretly finds himself attracted to Steve, and that by finding out he’s gay Archie worries that he himself may also have some same-sex attraction. I can sort of see the temptation to see Archie’s behavior as a crush. But to be honest, I can’t get on board with this theory. To me, it just reads like the same old “homophobes are all just secretly gay” stereotype that does far more to hurt gay people than anything else. Archie does have very strong feelings related to Steve, but they aren’t any kind of romantic feelings. They’re feelings about Archie himself. It’s clear that Archie doesn’t even have much of a strong relationship with Steve at all, despite how long they’ve known each other. After all, Archie didn’t know one of the core things about Steve’s identity, even though he had zero hesitation in effortlessly confirming it with Archie. It’s likely that most of Steve’s actual friends already knew.

Steve is merely a vessel through which Archie can channel is feelings about his own masculinity. Archie isn’t the fit, athletic manly man bachelor that goes on fun sexcapades that he sees Steve as. He’s just sort of a frumpy, angry old man with a bad job, an absent minded wife and a bleeding heart liberal son in law he can’t stand married to his only daughter. Steve is the man that Archie could live the American dream vicariously through, the man that could arm wrestle him under the table and packs quite a punch without even trying, and if he accepts that Steve is gay, he can’t see Steve that way anymore, because that would mean living vicariously through a gay man. So his choices are to either find a new man to absorb the second hand masculinity of, or deny that Steve is gay. Archie seems to have chosen the latter.

Though the main story wraps up here, there is a brief scene at the end that just sort of acts as the dessert to the main course we’ve been served. As Archie returns home, a friend of Michael and Gloria’s is doing the chair trick again. This friend has short hair and a big bulky letterman jacket. Archie shouts, “I thought you said a guy couldn’t do that!” But their friend turns around to reveal that they’re actually a semi-butch woman, and she greets him with a friendly, “oh how do you do, Mr. Bunker?” Archie declares “nowadays you can’t bet on nothin’!” The usual applause and laughter.

Though Archie’s behavior in this episode was less than stellar, it ultimately has a relatively harmless ending. Steve sort of laughed things off and went on about his day in the end. Archie has decided to just not think about things too hard. But, Archie’s next notable interaction with a gay person is not nearly as pleasant or quiet, six years later in “Cousin Liz.”

[Part 2]

You can watch “Judging Books By Covers” online here.

#all in the family #archie bunker #judging books by covers #queer tv #70s tv #television #lgbt #1971 #gay #norman lear

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agnesgoesadventuring-blog · 7 years

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Why Representation Matters

I want to talk a little bit about representation in many different forms and why it's important, because throughout these on-and-off discussions about Vax's fate, I've received a couple of responses along the lines of "it's just a show, what does it matter?" And I get that. Even as an asexual woman who suffers from depression and anxiety, I didn't really understand how important representation is until I took a Media Psychology course to fulfill a requirement for an online transfer program a couple of years ago. It wasn't until then that I realized that representation is about way more than just people having characters to identify with and that it encompasses many different kinds of things and effects more people than just those who personally identify with the characters.

When we're talking about media, we're talking about mass media, which is any form of media that reaches a wide audience, and that covers a whole lot of things. Movies, television, music, video games, books, plays, podcasts, webseries, comics, television news, newspapers, online news sources, radio, and other things. And when we're talking about representation in media, we're talking both about in fiction, which would be fictional characters having traits and aspects of certain groups, and in non-fiction, which would be featuring stories and detailing the history that impact and relate to certain groups.

There's this thing called the "Circuit of Culture", which is basically the path through which a thing, in this case different pieces of media, are given meaning within the culture in which they exist, and how that meaning is imparted to the people involved in the culture. It's divided into five "moments" that build upon each other. The first is Representation, which is how different things are used to convery and present a concept or idea. The second is Production, which is how the product is made. The third is Consumption, which how the product is used by people, the meanings they ascribe to it, and the various social contexts in which it's used. Fourth is Identity, which can only happen after meaning is constructed. It's how the product and its meanings are then used to create the identity of a group or individual. Fifth is regulation, which is the way that government, networks, studios, companies, different groups, and/or individuals, usually within the accepted norms of a culture or society, impose various regulations on the content, ideas, and meaning presented by both the product itself and by the people who have ascribed meaning to it.

If we’re applying it to a fictional character, Representation of that character would be what the writers/creators and portrayer intend to express with that character and the traits they give that character. They might write a character as suffering from depression. They might write the character as being gay. And it refers to exactly how that information is expressed. They might have a character visiting a psychiatrist and talking about how they're struggling, or they might use more visual cues with how they dress a character, the state of their living space, things like that. They might show the character on a date with someone of the same gender. Production would refer to the actual writing of the character, the filming of the character, the way the piece of media is edited, and how it's released to the world. Consumption is then how the world consumes it, both referring to the specific platform (television, movie, book, play, etc. in this case) and their personal connection that develops as they consume it, and the meanings that they then put on that character based on what they see. If they see a gay character portrayed as a complex, fully developed and realized character who bucks social norms they might take away the message that gay men don't have to fit into a narrow social perception that so many see them in. On the other hand, if a piece of media portrays a gay character as overly sexualized and dishonest without more depth and characterization, the message a person might take from that would be that gay people only care about sex and that they aren't to be trusted. That then feeds into how that meaning is formed to develop both personal identity and perceptual identity. If a young gay person sees a portrayal of a gay character as overly sexualized and dishonest, that could play a part in them developing a personal identity of self-loathing. On a larger societal scale, such a portrayal could lead to a cultural perception that gay people as a group, and individual gay people, are dangerous and untrustworthy and that they should be treated with suspicion and scorn. And then that feeds into the way the media is then regulated by various groups. A negative portrayal of a gay character can lead do a great deal of different things. Viewers could be offended by such a portrayal and stop watching the show, which could lead to a drop of ratings, which could have all manner of effects on a show, from budget cuts, to new writers, to even cancellation. A network or studio might notice outcry or negative press and force the show's creative team to do certain things to assuage the upset public. On the other side, a positive portrayal of a gay character could lead to a rise in viewership, but it could also lead to attempts from more bigoted viewers to gatekeep the show and its community, protesting the use of such characters and trying to keep queer people out of conversations. Regulation also refers to the way that product influences social norms and rules.

And these things all feed into each other and have their own unique relationships. The way a group might regulate or attempt to regulate a piece of media could change the way people consume that product, it can change the way society views the identity of that group, it can change the way a product is produced. The way people consume a product can have an impact on how it's produced, or the perception of the identity of the product. The identity people ascribe to a product can change the way people consume it and how it's regulated. It's basically a big messy flow chart filled with arrows going from everything to everywhere.

This happens with every piece of media that is produced. Of course, there will still be people who scoff at it, who continue to say "but it's just a tv show, there are bigger things to worry about."

If you're one of the people saying that, it's important that you realize that the effects of media representation are established facts at this point. There have been multiple studies done on the topic.

Culture is all about shared meanings. It's about the perceptions and ideas that we, as a group, have created, and it's those perceptions and ideas that we use to make sense of things. And media is one of the most major parts of our culture, it reaches a huge amoung of people in all different types of groups. The same show that someone in a busy, liberal metropolitan area is watching is also being watched by someone in a small, rural, conservative community on the other side of the country. People from different places, who have very different lives and experiences, are consuming the same product and learning from it. And while being from different places and having different experiences means that they're going to consume that product in different ways and ascribe different meaning to it, the meaning that the creators of that content put in that product does matter. A person who lives in a small, rural, conservative, and religious community might not have much exposure to queer people in general, and to positive ideas in regards to queer people. Media allows them to experience a part of culture and society that they might not experience otherwise. Media helps to established a shared meaning for our greater culture, even if the people experiencing that culture live in very different areas with very different lives.

We give meaning to these ideas, to these pieces of media, but the meaning we give them is base on the meanings that the creators imbued upon them when they created them. Both of those meanings are important because meaning, the meaning that we and others give to various things, from both our own qualities to the qualities of others, is how we create our identities. Identity is not a self contained thing. When we see a trait that we have, an aspect of ourselves or our character, being portrayed in a positive way, that helps us to feel good about that part of ourselves and it helps us to develop a healthier identity. But when we see those traits portrayed in a negative way, it leads to us developing a far less healthy personal identity as we come to view those things about ourselves as undesirable and wrong.

In the same way, the meaning that we and others give to certain ideas and character traits is the main thing that develops wider societal perceptions of various identites, both for groups and individuals. If there's an overwhelming amount of content that portrays a group of people as having negative traits, a negative perception develops of that group. And that absolutely has an impact on the way that group, and the people within it, are treated on a cultural level, a political level, a religious level, and pretty much in all walks of life. Because that Regulation part of the Circuit of Culture doesn't just refer to the way that product is regulated. It also refers to the different cultural norms and rules that are established because of that product. It refers to the way positive media portrayals of marginalized group leads to more visability and acceptance. Refers to the way that negative media portrayals of marginalized groups leads to more distrust and violence. When negative, demonized portrayals of Muslims and other characters with brown skin increased in the early-to-mid 2000s, violence against Muslims and people with brown skin also increased.

There's a collection of essays from the 1990s called "Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices", and in the introduction the book's editor, Stuart Hall, examines the way culture and media are like languages of their own and ways they express and impart meaning in ways that are incredibly similar to verbal language. Languages themselves work on systems of representation. Different words represent various ideas and objects. All words are a form of represention. All suffixes, prefixes, forms of declension, etc. are forms of representation. Those things are all accepted by people in a society as having the meaning ascribed to those words. Media works in the same way. Certain things acts as representation, as symbols, for different ideas, and when a certain symbol or representation is used enough it becomes the accepted representation for that idea. So when you have a high volume of negative portrayals of marginalized groups, that becomes the agreed upon symbol and memaning for those groups. These are called discursive formations. As Hall says, they "define what is and is not appropriate in our formation of, and our practices in relation to, a particular subject or site of social activity; what knowledge is considered useful, relevant, and 'true' in that context; and what sorts of persons or "subjects" embody its characteristics."

All of this means that representation matters both for personal identities and for cultural and societal identities. It matters to individual and people and individual groups in regards to how they develop their personal identity, and it matters to society at large for how they develop different perceptions of different groups, behaviors, and practices.

So many different kinds of representation are important.

We need positive representation for marginalized social groups, particularly people of color and queer people, so that these individuals can develop a healthy personal identity, so they can be proud of who they are and not have internalized hate for themselves and others in their societal groups. And society at large needs it so that positive perceptions of these groups can develop, which will lead to said groups being treated with respect and equality, reducing violence and discrimination. Unarmed black people, black KIDS are being murdered in the street and the white cops who killed them aren't even charged. A white supremecist attacked multiple people and murdered one person, using a car as a deadly weapon, and people were perfectly fine with the President not condemning the Nazis and white nationalists and blaming the victims of their hate as well. Black people, Latinx people, Native American people are murdered or go missing all the time and the amount of coverage their cases get is minimal, but when a white woman goes missing or is murdered it floods the news channels. Gay people are still the victims of so much violence. Trans women are still murdered at alarming rates. Bisexual and asexual people are discriminated against by both heterosexuals, from whom they face violence, and other queer groups, who often want to push them out of queer spaces, thus removing places they can be and feel safe. Threats of corrective rape are treated as little more than jokes, while violent and damaging "conversion" therapy is still legal and seen as acceptable in some areas. We need better, positive representation so that the personhood of these groups becomes more accepted, so that they're seen as equal human beings and not some kind of lesser species.

We need positive representation for neuro-atyical people and people who suffer from mental illness. These are groups that are desperately in need of hope and they need to have cultural representation that helps them to develop a personal identity that doesn't make them feel like they're wrong or broken. Society at large needs positive representation of these groups so they can develop a greater understanding of how mental illness works, so the perception can conform to the fact that it's an illness and needs to be treated as such, which can help relieve a significant burden from those who are suffering. People treat those who are mentally ill as though they're either dangerous, treating them with suspicion and fear, or as people who are being overdramatic, who need to just "get over it", treating them as people who are lazy and dishonest. They face violence from impatient and unempathetic family members, they face discrimination in employment and other areas of society. Better representation is needed to help a more factual perception of mental illness as actual ILLNESS can develop, which will save lives.

We need positive representation for women that is diverse in the ways femininity are portrayed, that place women in diverse roles and give them power in different parts of their lives so that women and young girls can develop healthy, strong identities where they don't view themselves as subservient, where they don't view themselves as dumb, or dirty, or inherently masculine for the way they dress, the things they enjoy, their sex lives, their jobs, etc. Society at large needs these representations of women so that a greater respect for the agency and autonomy of women can develop, so that women in position of power can become more respected and accepted, so that sexual activity in women isn't demonized, so that different forms of femininity aren't treated as inherently better or worse than others, so that violence against women can stop being treated as a cultural norm. Women's behavior is put underneath a microscope, their behaviors judged and condemned in ways that the behavior of men is not, and that puts us at threat of ostricization, discrimination, and violence. Better, more positive representation where those preferences and traits aren't demonized needs to exist so a greater perception of women, that's more equal to the way men are treated in society, can develop.

We need representation in the form of healthy romantic and sexual relationships between men and women so that women can develop personal identities that aren't reliant on men, that don't open them up to abuse violence, and violations of their agency and autonomy. Society at large needs this representation so that a perception of these unhealthy and abusive relationships and actions being unacceptable can develop. We live in a world where women are unable to say no to a man and have it taken seriously because of the perception that men are entitled to us as long as they want us or are nice to us, and because the idea that "no means us" and that we just need to be convinced is so pervasive. Where women who are in abusive relationships are blamed for the violence committed against them because they're "too stupid to leave." Where, when women are raped, she's blamed because she was dressed a certain way, or in a certain part of town, or because she was drinking, or because she was flirting with a guy or went out on a date with him, and she should have "expected" it, and where the media coverage of these crimes often focuses on how the future of the rapists are ruined rather than on the victim at all. Our society needs better representation of relationships and interactions between men and women so the perception can develop that these things are not okay.

We need better representations of those living in poverty, so that people in those situations can develop a better identity of themselves that doesn't define them by where they live, the amount of money they have, or thethings they own. And society at large needs better representation of poverty so a better understanding of their situations can develop and a perception can grow where they aren't seen as criminals, as lazy, as people who just don't want to do the work to get ahead. Poverty is often a cycle, and when you're born into poverty you don't have any of the advantages that other economic groups have, which can make it pretty much impossible to get out of it. The way society is structured puts people living in poverty at a massive disadvantage because of the way they pretty much have to spend their money in order to survive. Instead of recognizing those disadvantages and how impossible it can be to overcome them, the cultural perception of these people is that if they don't pull themselves up out of poverty then it's their own doing, that it's because they don't want to put in the work because they'd rather live off welfare, that they're criminals, or even that they aren't smart so they don't deserve to get out of their economic situation. Better, positive representation of those living in poverty can lead to the development of a more complete understanding of their situation and the cycle of poverty.

We need better representation of WHITE and other privilged characters in regard to the way they treat these groups. Having character from privileged groups regularly interacting with more marginalized groups, having people from these groups as a part of their lives in positions that aren't subservient, interacting with positive portrayals of marginalized groups in ways that show they value them is incredibly important. It's important for the personal identity of marginalized people because it helps to minimize the idea of them as the "other", and it's so important for people from those privileged groups to see people like them treating marginalized groups with dignity and respect because it will help them to develop a perception that casts those groups as equals rather than as "other".

"It's just a show, what does it matter?" It matters because everything that is consumed by a large portion of a society becomes a part of its culture, and the meanings that exist in those products have an established impact on the way of culture works and the ideas that are considered acceptable. Media is perhaps the most influential thing that society has in determining and establishing social rules and norms. Every single idea and meaning that is expressed by a piece of media matters. So if you’re saying “what matters is what makes a good story. What does it matter that Vax is a queer character or a character who suffers from mental illness?”, you need to know that it does matter. It matters to the individual people who identify with that character, that character who represents them, it matters on a larger societal level, and it matters to the perceptions that exist of those groups within our culture.

#my metas #representation #critical role #vax'ildan

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thefeministherald · 8 years

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1. There Are Organizations That Will Help You Run For Office

Ali: You, yes, specifically you. A lot of representatives were there from those organizations that day. Aisha Moody-Mills of the Victory Fund, who I’ve seen before at Lesbians Who Tech, pointed out that gay candidates actually have a higher success rate than their straight counterparts. Perhaps it’s because they’ve thought and rethought and strategized before jumping in.

She acknowledges that women, the LGBT community and people of color endure a different level of scrutiny when running for public office, but that it shouldn’t stop you if you believe strongly in democracy and you think you can make a difference. She also said representation matters at every level of government, which is an opinion I share. So don’t forget your local positions. And check out the Victory Fund to find ways to get involved, donate or get some campaign training.

Raquel: Absolutely, local positions. We can rebuild this into what we want to see from the ground up. Running for office seems scary! But it’s not any scarier than trying to get anything done: what you need is knowledge, networks, and planning. It’s also a vital and powerful way to be involved in your own community, where you’re best suited to represent your community’s needs just by nature of being a part of it.

And remember: if tons and tons of mediocre white men stumble their way into it, you can too.

2. Don’t Wait to Feel Brave, Don’t See Losing as Failure

Ali: This is something I struggle with. I often wait until I feel ready to do something, whether it’s write my book or apply to graduate school or anything in my professional life ever. I am seriously considering running for local office in the near future, and I keep coming up with reasons not to do it. My internet presence is one of those reasons. My fear of failure is another. But as Christine Quinn said, “Don’t wait to feel courageous to run because it’s never going to happen.”

She also reframed failure a little—it’s not necessarily about winning, it’s about running. The simple act of your campaign could push an issue to the forefront that you care about. You can start a conversation that wasn’t happening. Sandra Fluke of Emerge California and reproductive justice advocacy fame assured us, “You’ll get called names and it doesn’t matter that much.” The bravery doesn’t matter, the backlash doesn’t matter. What matters is the service, the issue you care about.

Raq: This was huge for me as well, and I think it applies across the board. I’ve been a perfectionist my entire life, and because of that I’ve kept from doing things out of fear that I wouldn’t do them well. But the reality is, the only way to do something well is to do it really badly a lot first. If you don’t win the spot in your first run for office, you still learned a ton about how to navigate your local government, how to run a campaign, how to build networks. You’ll get to talk to people who care deeply about the same things you do, and refine your arguments against the people who want to stop you.

And when I say this applies across the board, I also want to say that this is more a statement about going for the things that matter to you and learning from whatever happens, whether that’s volunteering, activism, applying for a job that scares you. Your queer learning, and queer success—whatever that looks like—is also queer resistance.

3. Pay Attention to Your State

Ali: It wasn’t just one person that talked about this. It came up over and over and over again. We’re all paying attention to the federal government and that’s good. We can’t look away right now. But as the current administration begins to dismantle our federal government, we need to be reliant on our state policies and politicians. States will lead the country as we repair after this administration—if a single state can figure out how to implement a beneficial policy, it might trickle up, so to speak.

That’s what happened with Massachusetts and health care. Plus if we’re strengthening our politicians at a state level, we groom the future. Right now, the Democratic Party has been focusing so much on the national stage that there’s a dearth of new, young political talent. Focusing at a state level can change that.

Raq: +1000 Ali! Working at the state level will also help you cut your teeth on campaigning or activism or whatever you’re working at, figuring out the most successful ways of achieving impact on the national level without biting off more than you can chew.

As a Texan, I’ve had to learn how to fight a losing battle—battle after battle—and do it because it’s vitally important. (Thanks to my friend Hannah Smothers for saying this more eloquently here). You learn a lot from that, and it will help build you and your community up for winning the war.

4. Admit That The Other Side Is Really Good At This

Ali: This is directly from Michael Moore and I’m already starting to see this admission in my spaces. The very presence of the Indivisible Guide, which breaks down Tea Party organizational tactics for use by the Herbal Tea Party (us), is an admission that they’re winning for a reason. Now, of course, some of that reason is harassment and gerrymandering. We will not use those tactics. Nor will we farm our youth for free labor at the expense of their education. But I do often see a dismissal of the other side’s strategy as well as their bigotry and poor policy proposals.

We can both think that they’re pushing policy rooted in hatred, xenophobia and an economic fantasy land AND also learn from them and engage with them on their terms. Basically what we’ve got going on right now is the Democrats and Republicans made an agreement to sit down in a house and play a board game. The Republicans got tired of it and set fire to the house; the Democrats are still trying to play the board game while the walls burn around them. We need to look at what they’re doing and engage with it.

Raq: Yes. Advertisers know how to target people down to their chocolate preferences, and the other side used that to their advantage. Yes, we hold ourselves to a higher ethical standard, but we should also be using these technologies and techniques to mobilize, change minds, and help our people.

Also, I am so ready to annoy the hell out of every single senator and representative and alt-right leader I can get my hands on. Honestly, this took a lot of the pressure off of calling, showing up, etc.—I don’t have to worry anymore about making them like me, or about building such an eloquent, rational statement that everyone immediately changes their minds. There are places for that (like publishing on Autostraddle), but that’s not what works here! What works here is being the squeakiest wheel, and I am going to shout louder, longer, harder, and more irritatingly than every racist and homophobe and asshole in the state.

5. Use Humor

Ali: This is another one from Michael Moore, but a lot of the actors and writers echoed it as well. This administration is particularly needled by humor. We’ve seen the simple act of Melissa McCarthy portraying Sean Spicer throw the administration into a small tailspin. It’s so difficult to find the funny right now, but we gotta. That’s how horrid ideologies are fought. It’s the poets and the satirists.

Raq: I’ve been saying for awhile that satire has lost its bite for me—everything they could say has been out-absurded by the reality. But now it’s time to take that on and do it better. It’s time to take that back. Humor is so powerful. It can completely disarm a dangerous situation; it can humanize people you hadn’t thought of. It has the power to make people pause, and can deliver information, even criticism, to people and places that would never otherwise listen. There’s a reason the best courts had jesters, and the best jesters were the ones that could change a tyrannical king’s mind through a joke.

A perfect example of using humor to humanize while rebuking.

Another great point, made by Michael Moore: Trump hates being made fun of. His skin is so thin, he is distracted by almost any unfavorable portrayal. By the numbers at the inauguration. By SNL skits. By The Apprentice’s ratings. He’s so desperate to be popular, to be liked. Let’s show him just how much he isn’t, and then get shit done while he’s whining about it on Twitter.

6. Be Voracious In Your Media Consumption

Ali: Read everything from everywhere. Watch things you might not normally. Almost everyone said to be diverse and aggressive with your art, journalism and story experiences. Again, this isn’t something only one person said. But there was a media panel, and everyone agreed: reading and listening to experiences that are not you own makes you smarter and more empathetic. If you’re going to exist in the time of Trump, those are two things that we need from everyone. It’s something we especially need of those who are running for office.

Raq: I’ll be honest with y’all: I’m finding this hard right now. I’ve just about shut my media consumption down completely. But soon the time to take care of myself will end, and the time to reemerge and be vigilant will come.

Reading local papers is vital to get a truer read of a place: one woman on the media panel mentioned how the only person in her circles who wasn’t flabbergasted by Clinton’s loss was a woman reporting locally on the ground in Pennsylvania.

Reading novels and essays from the people who have done this before: I recently saw the film I Am Not Your Negro, and it made me want to read everything James Baldwin’s written.

Reading poetry, fiction, comics: fill your heart with a diversity of stories, and strengthen yourself with beauty.

7. Set Our Sights on the Hyde Amendment

Ali: We were privileged to close the day with a conversation between Ashley Judd and Representative Lee from Oakland. Lee did not attend the inauguration and chose to spend the day with us instead. One very astute woman asked, we’ve got all these people, you showed up for us, what’s one thing we can do to show up for you. And Representative Lee responded by saying she’s had the Hyde Amendment in her sights for years.

The Hyde Amendment, if you don’t know, is a legislative provision that basically bars federal funding for use in abortion, except to save the life of a woman or if the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest. Given the administration just reinstated the global gag rule, we might not get very far on this. But Representative Lee asked, and we should try. We should add it to our list. We should see where our own Representatives stand on it. Just because it doesn’t seem possible right now doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give it a try. First off, one never knows. Second off, supposing we have another Presidential election and this isn’t the start of a coup, this won’t last forever. We need to think short term and long term. The Hyde Amendment has got to go.

Raq: Yes, the Hyde Amendment has got to go. There’s so much going on, that it can have the effect of diverting and distracting our energies. Before we know it, things are put in place that take years to change back. Right now, everything feels like a lot of defensive parries, but we also need to be on the offense for what we need, want, and deserve.

8. Children Want to Help; Let’s Help Them

Ali: A girl, about fifth grade I’d guess, stood up and asked a question. What can us kids do, she asked, with curfews and school and limited resources. I didn’t like everyone’s response. They seemed to forget that children are really powerful. The panel in question seemed to settle on “pick your issue and get your school to make a resolution.” But honestly, children can call their representatives too, with a nice little tag line of “I will be able to vote in x number of years.”

A few of us found her after, to give our own answers. I gave her one. I told her to get really good at writing. You’d think, I said, that everyone can do it. But they can’t. A lot of people are really bad at it, actually. And being able to structure your ideas and explain them to other people, to be persuasive, is a really valuable skill when other people have more power than you. So practice writing every day, I said. Do the other things that everyone else advised, but become a good writer as well.

It was a good reminder. Our children aren’t only watching, like the campaign ads said. They’re forming their own opinions and ready to fight. And they should be encouraged, helped wherever we can. I often forget how much children pick up given that I don’t have any of my own. But time makes you bolder, children get older, etc. etc. These kids will be running the show in a decade. Let’s help them get started now.

Raq: Ali, I love that. If I start thinking about some of the most eloquent and badass people affecting culture right now, I think: Teen Vogue. Rookie Magazine. Malala Yousafzai got the Nobel prize before she’d have been able to vote.

Our resistance right now is two-fold: change the insides, and build structures of power and support on the outside. Children have voices that will be privileged by those on the inside, and they are already used to figuring out the world and making it work for themselves outside of the structures they can’t be in (yet). I think there’s something we can learn from them, too.

#resistance #resist #politics #how to run for office #run for office #how to run #feminism #feminist

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thesnhuup · 5 years

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Pop Picks – November 25, 2019

My pop picks are usually a combination of three things: what I am listening to, reading, and watching. But last week I happily combined all three. That is, I went to NYC last week and saw two shows. The first was Cyrano, starring Game of Thrones superstar Peter Dinklage in the title role, with Jasmine Cephas Jones as Roxanne. She was Peggy in the original Hamilton cast and has an amazing voice. The music was written by Aaron and Bryce Dessner, two members of my favorite band, The National, with lyrics by lead singer Matt Berninger and his wife Carin Besser. Erica Schmidt, Dinklage’s wife, directs. Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play is light, dated, and melodramatic, but this production was delightful. Dinklage owns the stage, a master, and his deep bass voice, not all that great for singing, but commanding in the delivery of every line, was somehow a plaintive and resonant counterpoint to Cephas Jones’ soaring voice. In the original Cyrano, the title character’s large nose marks him as outsider and ”other,” but Dinklage was born with achondroplasia, the cause of his dwarfism, and there is a kind of resonance in his performance that feels like pain not acted, but known. Deeply. It takes this rather lightweight play and gives it depth. Even if it didn’t, not everything has to be deep and profound – there is joy in seeing something executed so darn well. Cyrano was delightfully satisfying.

The other show was the much lauded Aaron Sorkin rendition of To Kill a Mockingbird, starring another actor at the very top of his game, Ed Harris. This is a Mockingbird for our times, one in which iconic Atticus Finch’s idealistic “you have to live in someone else’s skin” feels naive in the face of hateful racism and anti-Semitism. The Black characters in the play get more voice, if not agency, in the stage play than they do in the book, especially housekeeper Calpurnia, who voices incredulity at Finch’s faith in his neighbors and reminds us that he does not pay the price of his patience. She does. And Tom Robinson, the Black man falsely accused of rape – “convicted at the moment he was accused,” Whatever West Wing was for Sorkin – and I dearly loved that show – this is a play for a broken United States, where racism abounds and does so with sanction by those in power. As our daughter said, “I think Trump broke Aaron Sorkin.” It was as powerful a thing I’ve seen on stage in years.

With both plays, I was reminded of the magic that is live theater.

Archive

October 31, 2019

What I’m listening to:

It drove his critics crazy that Obama was the coolest president we ever had and his summer 2019 playlist on Spotify simply confirms that reality. It has been on repeat for me. From Drake to Lizzo (God I love her) to Steely Dan to Raphael Saadiq to Sinatra (who I skip every time – I’m not buying the nostalgia), his carefully curated list reflects not only his infinite coolness, but the breadth of his interests and generosity of taste. I love the music, but I love even more the image of Michelle and him rocking out somewhere far from Washington’s madness, as much as I miss them both.

What I’m reading:

I struggled with Christy Lefteri’s The Beekeeper of Aleppo for the first 50 pages, worried that she’d drag out every tired trope of Mid-Eastern society, but I fell for her main characters and their journey as refugees from Syria to England. Parts of this book were hard to read and very dark, because that is the plight of so many refugees and she doesn’t shy away from those realities and the enormous toll they take on displaced people. It’s a hard read, but there is light too – in resilience, in love, in friendships, the small tender gestures of people tossed together in a heartless world. Lefteri volunteered in Greek refugee programs, spent a lot of interviewing people, and the book feels true, and importantly, heartfelt.

What I’m watching:

Soap opera meets Shakespeare, deliciously malevolent and operatic, Succession has been our favorite series this season. Loosely based on the Murdochs and their media empire (don’t believe the denials), this was our must watch television on Sunday nights, filling the void left by Game of Thrones. The acting is over-the-top good, the frequent comedy dark, the writing brilliant, and the music superb. We found ourselves quoting lines after every episode. Like the hilarious; “You don’t hear much about syphilis these days. Very much the Myspace of STDs.” Watch it so we can talk about that season 2 finale.

August 30, 2019

What I’m listening to:

I usually go to music here, but the New York Times new 1619 podcast is just terrific, as is the whole project, which observes the sale of the first enslaved human beings on our shores 400 years ago. The first episode, “The Fight for a True Democracy” is a remarkable overview (in a mere 44 minutes) of the centrality of racism and slavery in the American story over those 400 years. It should be mandatory listening in every high school in the country. I’m eager for the next episodes. Side note: I am addicted to The Daily podcast, which gives more color and detail to the NY Times stories I read in print (yes, print), and reminds me of how smart and thoughtful are those journalists who give us real news. We need them now more than ever.

What I’m reading:

Colson Whitehead has done it again. The Nickel Boys, his new novel, is a worthy successor to his masterpiece The Underground Railroad, and because it is closer to our time, based on the real-life horrors of a Florida reform school, and written a time of resurgent White Supremacy, it hits even harder and with more urgency than its predecessor. Maybe because we can read Underground Railroad with a sense of “that was history,” but one can’t read Nickel Boys without the lurking feeling that such horrors persist today and the monsters that perpetrate such horrors walk among us. They often hold press conferences.

What I’m watching:

Queer Eye, the Netflix remake of the original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy some ten years later, is wondrously entertaining, but it also feels adroitly aligned with our dysfunctional times. Episode three has a conversation with Karamo Brown, one of the fab five, and a Georgia small town cop (and Trump supporter) that feels unscripted and unexpected and reminds us of how little actual conversation seems to be taking place in our divided country. Oh, for more car rides such as the one they take in that moment, when a chasm is bridged, if only for a few minutes. Set in the South, it is often a refreshing and affirming response to what it means to be male at a time of toxic masculinity and the overdue catharsis and pain of the #MeToo movement. Did I mention? It’s really fun.

July 1, 2019

What I’m listening to:

The National remains my favorite band and probably 50% of my listening time is a National album or playlist. Their new album I Am Easy To Find feels like a turning point record for the band, going from the moody, outsider introspection and doubt of lead singer Matt Berninger to something that feels more adult, sophisticated, and wiser. I might have titled it Women Help The Band Grow Up. Matt is no longer the center of The National’s universe and he frequently cedes the mic to the many women who accompany and often lead on the long, their longest, album. They include Gail Ann Dorsey (who sang with Bowie for a long time), who is amazing, and a number of the songs were written by Carin Besser, Berninger’s wife. I especially love the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the arrangements, and the sheer complexity and coherence of the work. It still amazes me when I meet someone who does not know The National. My heart breaks for them just a little.

What I’m reading:

Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls is a retelling of Homer’s Iliad through the lens of a captive Trojan queen, Briseis. As a reviewer in The Atlantic writes, it answers the question “What does war mean to women?” We know the answer and it has always been true, whether it is the casual and assumed rape of captive women in this ancient war story or the use of rape in modern day Congo, Syria, or any other conflict zone. Yet literature almost never gives voice to the women – almost always minor characters at best — and their unspeakable suffering. Barker does it here for Briseis, for Hector’s wife Andromache, and for the other women who understand that the death of their men is tragedy, but what they then endure is worse. Think of it ancient literature having its own #MeToo moment. The NY Times’ Geraldine Brooks did not much like the novel. I did. Very much.

What I’m watching:

The BBC-HBO limited series Years and Years is breathtaking, scary, and absolutely familiar. It’s as if Black Mirrorand Children of Men had a baby and it precisely captures the zeitgeist, the current sense that the world is spinning out of control and things are coming at us too fast. It is a near future (Trump has been re-elected and Brexit has occurred finally)…not dystopia exactly, but damn close. The closing scene of last week’s first episode (there are 6 episodes and it’s on every Monday) shows nuclear war breaking out between China and the U.S. Yikes! The scope of this show is wide and there is a big, baggy feel to it – but I love the ambition even if I’m not looking forward to the nightmares.

May 19, 2019

What I’m listening to:

I usually go to music here, but I was really moved by this podcast of a Davis Brooks talk at the Commonwealth Club in Silicon Valley: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/podcast/david-brooks-quest-moral-life. While I have long found myself distant from his political stance, he has come through a dark night of the soul and emerged with a wonderful clarity about calling, community, and not happiness (that most superficial of goals), but fulfillment and meaning, found in community and human kinship of many kinds. I immediately sent it to my kids.

What I’m reading:

Susan Orlean’s wonderful The Library Book, a love song to libraries told through the story of the LA Central Library. It brought back cherished memories of my many hours in beloved libraries — as a kid in the Waltham Public Library, a high schooler in the Farber Library at Brandeis (Lil Farber years later became a mentor of mine), and the cathedral-like Bapst Library at BC when I was a graduate student. Yes, I was a nerd. This is a love song to books certainly, but a reminder that libraries are so, so much more. It is a reminder that libraries are less about a place or being a repository of information and, like America at its best, an idea and ideal. By the way, oh to write like her.

What I’m watching:

What else? Game of Thrones, like any sensible human being. This last season is disappointing in many ways and the drop off in the writing post George R.R. Martin is as clear as was the drop off in the post-Sorkin West Wing. I would be willing to bet that if Martin has been writing the last season, Sansa and Tyrion would have committed suicide in the crypt. That said, we fans are deeply invested and even the flaws are giving us so much to discuss and debate. In that sense, the real gift of this last season is the enjoyment between episodes, like the old pre-streaming days when we all arrived at work after the latest episode of the Sopranos to discuss what we had all seen the night before. I will say this, the last two episodes — full of battle and gore – have been visually stunning. Whether the torches of the Dothraki being extinguished in the distance or Arya riding through rubble and flame on a white horse, rarely has the series ascended to such visual grandeur.

March 28, 2019

What I’m listening to:

There is a lovely piece played in a scene from A Place Called Home that I tracked down. It’s Erik Satie’s 3 Gymnopédies: Gymnopédie No. 1, played by the wonderful pianist Klára Körmendi. Satie composed this piece in 1888 and it was considered avant-garde and anti-Romantic. It’s minimalism and bit of dissonance sound fresh and contemporary to my ears and while not a huge Classical music fan, I’ve fallen in love with the Körmendi playlist on Spotify. When you need an alternative to hours of Cardi B.

What I’m reading:

Just finished Esi Edugyan’s 2018 novel Washington Black. Starting on a slave plantation in Barbados, it is a picaresque novel that has elements of Jules Verne, Moby Dick, Frankenstein, and Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad. Yes, it strains credulity and there are moments of “huh?”, but I loved it (disclosure: I was in the minority among my fellow book club members) and the first third is a searing depiction of slavery. It’s audacious, sprawling (from Barbados to the Arctic to London to Africa), and the writing, especially about nature, luminous.

What I’m watching:

A soap opera. Yes, I’d like to pretend it’s something else, but we are 31 episodes into the Australian drama A Place Called Home and we are so, so addicted. Like “It’s AM, but can’t we watch just one more episode?” addicted. Despite all the secrets, cliff hangers, intrigue, and “did that just happen?” moments, the core ingredients of any good soap opera, APCH has superb acting, real heft in terms of subject matter (including homophobia, anti-Semitism, sexual assault, and class), touches of our beloved Downton Abbey, and great cars. Beware. If you start, you won’t stop.

February 11, 2019

What I’m listening to:

Raphael Saadiq has been around for quite a while, as a musician, writer, and producer. He’s new to me and I love his old school R&B sound. Like Leon Bridges, he brings a contemporary freshness to the genre, sounding like a young Stevie Wonder (listen to “You’re The One That I Like”). Rock and Roll may be largely dead, but R&B persists – maybe because the former was derivative of the latter and never as good (and I say that as a Rock and Roll fan). I’m embarrassed to only have discovered Saadiq so late in his career, but it’s a delight to have done so.

What I’m reading:

Just finished Marilynne Robinson’s Home, part of her trilogy that includes the Pulitzer Prize winning first novel, Gilead, and the book after Home, Lila. Robinson is often described as a Christian writer, but not in a conventional sense. In this case, she gives us a modern version of the prodigal son and tells the story of what comes after he is welcomed back home. It’s not pretty. Robinson is a self-described Calvinist, thus character begets fate in Robinson’s world view and redemption is at best a question. There is something of Faulkner in her work (I am much taken with his famous “The past is never past” quote after a week in the deep South), her style is masterful, and like Faulkner, she builds with these three novels a whole universe in the small town of Gilead. Start with Gilead to better enjoy Home.

What I’m watching:

Sex Education was the most fun series we’ve seen in ages and we binged watched it on Netflix. A British homage to John Hughes films like The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Pretty in Pink, it feels like a mash up of American and British high schools. Focusing on the relationship of Maeve, the smart bad girl, and Otis, the virginal and awkward son of a sex therapist (played with brilliance by Gillian Anderson), it is laugh aloud funny and also evolves into more substance and depth (the abortion episode is genius). The sex scenes are somehow raunchy and charming and inoffensive at the same time and while ostensibly about teenagers (it feels like it is explaining contemporary teens to adults in many ways), the adults are compelling in their good and bad ways. It has been renewed for a second season, which is a gift.

January 3, 2019

What I’m listening to:

My listening choices usually refer to music, but this time I’m going with Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast on genius and the song Hallelujah. It tells the story of Leonard Cohen’s much-covered song Hallelujah and uses it as a lens on kinds of genius and creativity. Along the way, he brings in Picasso and Cézanne, Elvis Costello, and more. Gladwell is a good storyteller and if you love pop music, as I do, and Hallelujah, as I do (and you should), you’ll enjoy this podcast. We tend to celebrate the genius who seems inspired in the moment, creating new work like lightning strikes, but this podcast has me appreciating incremental creativity in a new way. It’s compelling and fun at the same time.

What I’m reading:

Just read Clay Christensen’s new book, The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty. This was an advance copy, so soon available. Clay is an old friend and a huge influence on how we have grown SNHU and our approach to innovation. This book is so compelling, because we know attempts at development have so often been a failure and it is often puzzling to understand why some countries with desperate poverty and huge challenges somehow come to thrive (think S. Korea, Singapore, 19th C. America), while others languish. Clay offers a fresh way of thinking about development through the lens of his research on innovation and it is compelling. I bet this book gets a lot of attention, as most of his work does. I also suspect that many in the development community will hate it, as it calls into question the approach and enormous investments we have made in an attempt to lift countries out of poverty. A provocative read and, as always, Clay is a good storyteller.

What I’m watching:

Just watched Leave No Trace and should have guessed that it was directed by Debra Granik. She did Winter’s Bone, the extraordinary movie that launched Jennifer Lawrence’s career. Similarly, this movie features an amazing young actor, Thomasin McKenzie, and visits lives lived on the margins. In this case, a veteran suffering PTSD, and his 13-year-old daughter. The movie is patient, is visually lush, and justly earned 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (I have a rule to never watch anything under 82%). Everything in this film is under control and beautifully understated (aside from the visuals) – confident acting, confident directing, and so humane. I love the lack of flashbacks, the lack of sensationalism – the movie trusts the viewer, rare in this age of bombast. A lovely film.

December 4, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spending a week in New Zealand, we had endless laughs listening to the Kiwi band, Flight of the Conchords. Lots of comedic bands are funny, but the music is only okay or worse. These guys are funny – hysterical really – and the music is great. They have an uncanny ability to parody almost any style. In both New Zealand and Australia, we found a wry sense of humor that was just delightful and no better captured than with this duo. You don’t have to be in New Zealand to enjoy them.

What I’m reading:

I don’t often reread. For two reasons: A) I have so many books on my “still to be read” pile that it seems daunting to also rereadbooks I loved before, and B) it’s because I loved them once that I’m a little afraid to read them again. That said, I was recently asked to list my favorite book of all time and I answered Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. But I don’t really know if that’s still true (and it’s an impossible question anyway – favorite book? On what day? In what mood?), so I’m rereading it and it feels like being with an old friend. It has one of my very favorite scenes ever: the card game between Levin and Kitty that leads to the proposal and his joyous walking the streets all night.

What I’m watching:

Blindspotting is billed as a buddy-comedy. Wow does that undersell it and the drama is often gripping. I loved Daveed Diggs in Hamilton, didn’t like his character in Black-ish, and think he is transcendent in this film he co-wrote with Rafael Casal, his co-star. The film is a love song to Oakland in many ways, but also a gut-wrenching indictment of police brutality, systemic racism and bias, and gentrification. The film has the freshness and raw visceral impact of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. A great soundtrack, genre mixing, and energy make it one of my favorite movies of 2018.

October 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We had the opportunity to see our favorite band, The National, live in Dallas two weeks ago. Just after watching Mistaken for Strangers, the documentary sort of about the band. So we’ve spent a lot of time going back into their earlier work, listening to songs we don’t know well, and reaffirming that their musicality, smarts, and sound are both original and astoundingly good. They did not disappoint in concert and it is a good thing their tour ended, as we might just spend all of our time and money following them around. Matt Berninger is a genius and his lead vocals kill me (and because they are in my range, I can actually sing along!). Their arrangements are profoundly good and go right to whatever brain/heart wiring that pulls one in and doesn’t let them go.

What I’m reading:

Who is Richard Powers and why have I only discovered him now, with his 12th book? Overstory is profoundly good, a book that is essential and powerful and makes me look at my everyday world in new ways. In short, a dizzying example of how powerful can be narrative in the hands of a master storyteller. I hesitate to say it’s the best environmental novel I’ve ever read (it is), because that would put this book in a category. It is surely about the natural world, but it is as much about we humans. It’s monumental and elegiac and wondrous at all once. Cancel your day’s schedule and read it now. Then plant a tree. A lot of them.

What I’m watching:

Bo Burnham wrote and directed Eighth Grade and Elsie Fisher is nothing less than amazing as its star (what’s with these new child actors; see Florida Project). It’s funny and painful and touching. It’s also the single best film treatment that I have seen of what it means to grow up in a social media shaped world. It’s a reminder that growing up is hard. Maybe harder now in a world of relentless, layered digital pressure to curate perfect lives that are far removed from the natural messy worlds and selves we actually inhabit. It’s a well-deserved 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and I wonder who dinged it for the missing 2%.

September 7, 2018

What I’m listening to:

With a cover pointing back to the Beastie Boys’ 1986 Licensed to Ill, Eminem’s quietly released Kamikaze is not my usual taste, but I’ve always admired him for his “all out there” willingness to be personal, to call people out, and his sheer genius with language. I thought Daveed Diggs could rap fast, but Eminem is supersonic at moments, and still finds room for melody. Love that he includes Joyner Lucas, whose “I’m Not Racist” gets added to the growing list of simply amazing music videos commenting on race in America. There are endless reasons why I am the least likely Eminem fan, but when no one is around to make fun of me, I’ll put it on again.

What I’m reading:

Lesley Blume’s Everyone Behaves Badly, which is the story behind Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and his time in 1920s Paris (oh, what a time – see Midnight in Paris if you haven’t already). Of course, Blume disabuses my romantic ideas of that time and place and everyone is sort of (or profoundly so) a jerk, especially…no spoiler here…Hemingway. That said, it is a compelling read and coming off the Henry James inspired prose of Mrs. Osmond, it made me appreciate more how groundbreaking was Hemingway’s modern prose style. Like his contemporary Picasso, he reinvented the art and it can be easy to forget, these decades later, how profound was the change and its impact. And it has bullfights.

What I’m watching:

Chloé Zhao’s The Rider is just exceptional. It’s filmed on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which provides a stunning landscape, and it feels like a classic western reinvented for our times. The main characters are played by the real-life people who inspired this narrative (but feels like a documentary) film. Brady Jandreau, playing himself really, owns the screen. It’s about manhood, honor codes, loss, and resilience – rendered in sensitive, nuanced, and heartfelt ways. It feels like it could be about large swaths of America today. Really powerful.

August 16, 2018

What I’m listening to:

In my Spotify Daily Mix was Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman, one of the world’s greatest love songs. Go online and read the story of how the song was discovered and recorded. There are competing accounts, but Sledge said he improvised it after a bad breakup. It has that kind of aching spontaneity. It is another hit from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, one of the GREAT music hotbeds, along with Detroit, Nashville, and Memphis. Our February Board meeting is in Alabama and I may finally have to do the pilgrimage road trip to Muscle Shoals and then Memphis, dropping in for Sunday services at the church where Rev. Al Green still preaches and sings. If the music is all like this, I will be saved.

What I’m reading:

John Banville’s Mrs. Osmond, his homage to literary idol Henry James and an imagined sequel to James’ 1881 masterpiece Portrait of a Lady. Go online and read the first paragraph of Chapter 25. He is…profoundly good. Makes me want to never write again, since anything I attempt will feel like some other, lowly activity in comparison to his mastery of language, image, syntax. This is slow reading, every sentence to be savored.

What I’m watching:

I’ve always respected Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but we just watched the documentary RGB. It is over-the-top great and she is now one of my heroes. A superwoman in many ways and the documentary is really well done. There are lots of scenes of her speaking to crowds and the way young women, especially law students, look at her is touching. And you can’t help but fall in love with her now late husband Marty. See this movie and be reminded of how important is the Law.

July 23, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spotify’s Summer Acoustic playlist has been on repeat quite a lot. What a fun way to listen to artists new to me, including The Paper Kites, Hollow Coves, and Fleet Foxes, as well as old favorites like Leon Bridges and Jose Gonzalez. Pretty chill when dialing back to a summer pace, dining on the screen porch or reading a book.

What I’m reading:

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson tells of the racial injustice (and the war on the poor our judicial system perpetuates as well) that he discovered as a young graduate from Harvard Law School and his fight to address it. It is in turn heartbreaking, enraging, and inspiring. It is also about mercy and empathy and justice that reads like a novel. Brilliant.

What I’m watching:

Fauda. We watched season one of this Israeli thriller. It was much discussed in Israel because while it focuses on an ex-special agent who comes out of retirement to track down a Palestinian terrorist, it was willing to reveal the complexity, richness, and emotions of Palestinian lives. And the occasional brutality of the Israelis. Pretty controversial stuff in Israel. Lior Raz plays Doron, the main character, and is compelling and tough and often hard to like. He’s a mess. As is the world in which he has to operate. We really liked it, and also felt guilty because while it may have been brave in its treatment of Palestinians within the Israeli context, it falls back into some tired tropes and ultimately falls short on this front.

June 11, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Like everyone else, I’m listening to Pusha T drop the mic on Drake. Okay, not really, but do I get some points for even knowing that? We all walk around with songs that immediately bring us back to a time or a place. Songs are time machines. We are coming up on Father’s Day. My own dad passed away on Father’s Day back in 1994 and I remembering dutifully getting through the wake and funeral and being strong throughout. Then, sitting alone in our kitchen, Don Henley’s The End of the Innocence came on and I lost it. When you lose a parent for the first time (most of us have two after all) we lose our innocence and in that passage, we suddenly feel adult in a new way (no matter how old we are), a longing for our own childhood, and a need to forgive and be forgiven. Listen to the lyrics and you’ll understand. As Wordsworth reminds us in In Memoriam, there are seasons to our grief and, all these years later, this song no longer hits me in the gut, but does transport me back with loving memories of my father. I’ll play it Father’s Day.

What I’m reading:

The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin. I am not a reader of fantasy or sci-fi, though I understand they can be powerful vehicles for addressing the very real challenges of the world in which we actually live. I’m not sure I know of a more vivid and gripping illustration of that fact than N. K. Jemisin’s Hugo Award winning novel The Fifth Season, first in her Broken Earth trilogy. It is astounding. It is the fantasy parallel to The Underground Railroad, my favorite recent read, a depiction of subjugation, power, casual violence, and a broken world in which our hero(s) struggle, suffer mightily, and still, somehow, give us hope. It is a tour de force book. How can someone be this good a writer? The first 30 pages pained me (always with this genre, one must learn a new, constructed world, and all of its operating physics and systems of order), and then I could not put it down. I panicked as I neared the end, not wanting to finish the book, and quickly ordered the Obelisk Gate, the second novel in the trilogy, and I can tell you now that I’ll be spending some goodly portion of my weekend in Jemisin’s other world.

What I’m watching:

The NBA Finals and perhaps the best basketball player of this generation. I’ve come to deeply respect LeBron James as a person, a force for social good, and now as an extraordinary player at the peak of his powers. His superhuman play during the NBA playoffs now ranks with the all-time greats, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, MJ, Kobe, and the demi-god that was Bill Russell. That his Cavs lost in a 4-game sweep is no surprise. It was a mediocre team being carried on the wide shoulders of James (and matched against one of the greatest teams ever, the Warriors, and the Harry Potter of basketball, Steph Curry) and, in some strange way, his greatness is amplified by the contrast with the rest of his team. It was a great run.

May 24, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I’ve always liked Alicia Keys and admired her social activism, but I am hooked on her last album Here. This feels like an album finally commensurate with her anger, activism, hope, and grit. More R&B and Hip Hop than is typical for her, I think this album moves into an echelon inhabited by a Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On or Beyonce’s Formation. Social activism and outrage rarely make great novels, but they often fuel great popular music. Here is a terrific example.

What I’m reading:

Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad may be close to a flawless novel. Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer, it chronicles the lives of two runaway slaves, Cora and Caeser, as they try to escape the hell of plantation life in Georgia. It is an often searing novel and Cora is one of the great heroes of American literature. I would make this mandatory reading in every high school in America, especially in light of the absurd revisionist narratives of “happy and well cared for” slaves. This is a genuinely great novel, one of the best I’ve read, the magical realism and conflating of time periods lifts it to another realm of social commentary, relevance, and a blazing indictment of America’s Original Sin, for which we remain unabsolved.

What I’m watching:

I thought I knew about The Pentagon Papers, but The Post, a real-life political thriller from Steven Spielberg taught me a lot, features some of our greatest actors, and is so timely given the assault on our democratic institutions and with a presidency out of control. It is a reminder that a free and fearless press is a powerful part of our democracy, always among the first targets of despots everywhere. The story revolves around the legendary Post owner and D.C. doyenne, Katharine Graham. I had the opportunity to see her son, Don Graham, right after he saw the film, and he raved about Meryl Streep’s portrayal of his mother. Liked it a lot more than I expected.

April 27, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I mentioned John Prine in a recent post and then on the heels of that mention, he has released a new album, The Tree of Forgiveness, his first new album in ten years. Prine is beloved by other singer songwriters and often praised by the inscrutable God that is Bob Dylan. Indeed, Prine was frequently said to be the “next Bob Dylan” in the early part of his career, though he instead carved out his own respectable career and voice, if never with the dizzying success of Dylan. The new album reflects a man in his 70s, a cancer survivor, who reflects on life and its end, but with the good humor and empathy that are hallmarks of Prine’s music. “When I Get To Heaven” is a rollicking, fun vision of what comes next and a pure delight. A charming, warm, and often terrific album.

What I’m reading:

I recently read Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, on many people’s Top Ten lists for last year and for good reason. It is sprawling, multi-generational, and based in the world of Japanese occupied Korea and then in the Korean immigrant’s world of Oaska, so our key characters become “tweeners,” accepted in neither world. It’s often unspeakably sad, and yet there is resiliency and love. There is also intimacy, despite the time and geographic span of the novel. It’s breathtakingly good and like all good novels, transporting.

What I’m watching:

I adore Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 film, Pan’s Labyrinth, and while I’m not sure his Shape of Water is better, it is a worthy follow up to the earlier masterpiece (and more of a commercial success). Lots of critics dislike the film, but I’m okay with a simple retelling of a Beauty and the Beast love story, as predictable as it might be. The acting is terrific, it is visually stunning, and there are layers of pain as well as social and political commentary (the setting is the US during the Cold War) and, no real spoiler here, the real monsters are humans, the military officer who sees over the captured aquatic creature. It is hauntingly beautiful and its depiction of hatred to those who are different or “other” is painfully resonant with the time in which we live. Put this on your “must see” list.

March 18, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Sitting on a plane for hours (and many more to go; geez, Australia is far away) is a great opportunity to listen to new music and to revisit old favorites. This time, it is Lucy Dacus and her album Historians, the new sophomore release from a 22-year old indie artist that writes with relatable, real-life lyrics. Just on a second listen and while she insists this isn’t a break up record (as we know, 50% of all great songs are break up songs), it is full of loss and pain. Worth the listen so far. For the way back machine, it’s John Prine and In Spite of Ourselves (that title track is one of the great love songs of all time), a collection of duets with some of his “favorite girl singers” as he once described them. I have a crush on Iris Dement (for a really righteously angry song try her Wasteland of the Free), but there is also EmmyLou Harris, the incomparable Dolores Keane, and Lucinda Williams. Very different albums, both wonderful.

What I’m reading:

Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece on Christopher Steele presents little that is new, but she pulls it together in a terrific and coherent whole that is illuminating and troubling at the same time. Not only for what is happening, but for the complicity of the far right in trying to discredit that which should be setting off alarm bells everywhere. Bob Mueller may be the most important defender of the democracy at this time. A must read.

What I’m watching:

Homeland is killing it this season and is prescient, hauntingly so. Russian election interference, a Bannon-style hate radio demagogue, alienated and gun toting militia types, and a president out of control. It’s fabulous, even if it feels awfully close to the evening news.

March 8, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We have a family challenge to compile our Top 100 songs. It is painful. Only 100? No more than three songs by one artist? Wait, why is M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” on my list? Should it just be The Clash from whom she samples? Can I admit to guilty pleasure songs? Hey, it’s my list and I can put anything I want on it. So I’m listening to the list while I work and the song playing right now is Tom Petty’s “The Wild One, Forever,” a B-side single that was never a hit and that remains my favorite Petty song. Also, “Evangeline” by Los Lobos. It evokes a night many years ago, with friends at Pearl Street in Northampton, MA, when everyone danced well past 1AM in a hot, sweaty, packed club and the band was a revelation. Maybe the best music night of our lives and a reminder that one’s 100 Favorite Songs list is as much about what you were doing and where you were in your life when those songs were playing as it is about the music. It’s not a list. It’s a soundtrack for this journey.

What I’m reading:

Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy was in the NY Times top ten books of 2017 list and it is easy to see why. Lockwood brings remarkable and often surprising imagery, metaphor, and language to her prose memoir and it actually threw me off at first. It then all became clear when someone told me she is a poet. The book is laugh aloud funny, which masks (or makes safer anyway) some pretty dark territory. Anyone who grew up Catholic, whether lapsed or not, will resonate with her story. She can’t resist a bawdy anecdote and her family provides some of the most memorable characters possible, especially her father, her sister, and her mother, who I came to adore. Best thing I’ve read in ages.

What I’m watching:

The Florida Project, a profoundly good movie on so many levels. Start with the central character, six-year old (at the time of the filming) Brooklynn Prince, who owns – I mean really owns – the screen. This is pure acting genius and at that age? Astounding. Almost as astounding is Bria Vinaite, who plays her mother. She was discovered on Instagram and had never acted before this role, which she did with just three weeks of acting lessons. She is utterly convincing and the tension between the child’s absolute wonder and joy in the world with her mother’s struggle to provide, to be a mother, is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once. Willem Dafoe rightly received an Oscar nomination for his supporting role. This is a terrific movie.

February 12, 2018

What I’m listening to:

So, I have a lot of friends of age (I know you’re thinking 40s, but I just turned 60) who are frozen in whatever era of music they enjoyed in college or maybe even in their thirties. There are lots of times when I reach back into the catalog, since music is one of those really powerful and transporting senses that can take you through time (smell is the other one, though often underappreciated for that power). Hell, I just bought a turntable and now spending time in vintage vinyl shops. But I’m trying to take a lesson from Pat, who revels in new music and can as easily talk about North African rap music and the latest National album as Meet the Beatles, her first ever album. So, I’ve been listening to Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy winning Damn. While it may not be the first thing I’ll reach for on a winter night in Maine, by the fire, I was taken with it. It’s layered, political, and weirdly sensitive and misogynist at the same time, and it feels fresh and authentic and smart at the same time, with music that often pulled me from what I was doing. In short, everything music should do. I’m not a bit cooler for listening to Damn, but when I followed it with Steely Dan, I felt like I was listening to Lawrence Welk. A good sign, I think.

What I’m reading:

I am reading Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Leonardo da Vinci. I’m not usually a reader of biographies, but I’ve always been taken with Leonardo. Isaacson does not disappoint (does he ever?), and his subject is at once more human and accessible and more awe-inspiring in Isaacson’s capable hands. Gay, left-handed, vegetarian, incapable of finishing things, a wonderful conversationalist, kind, and perhaps the most relentlessly curious human being who has ever lived. Like his biographies of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, Isaacson’s project here is to show that genius lives at the intersection of science and art, of rationality and creativity. Highly recommend it.

What I’m watching:

We watched the This Is Us post-Super Bowl episode, the one where Jack finally buys the farm. I really want to hate this show. It is melodramatic and manipulative, with characters that mostly never change or grow, and it hooks me every damn time we watch it. The episode last Sunday was a tear jerker, a double whammy intended to render into a blubbering, tissue-crumbling pathetic mess anyone who has lost a parent or who is a parent. Sterling K. Brown, Ron Cephas Jones, the surprising Mandy Moore, and Milo Ventimiglia are hard not to love and last season’s episode that had only Brown and Cephas going to Memphis was the show at its best (they are by far the two best actors). Last week was the show at its best worst. In other words, I want to hate it, but I love it. If you haven’t seen it, don’t binge watch it. You’ll need therapy and insulin.

January 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Drive-By Truckers. Chris Stapleton has me on an unusual (for me) country theme and I discovered these guys to my great delight. They’ve been around, with some 11 albums, but the newest one is fascinating. It’s a deep dive into Southern alienation and the white working-class world often associated with our current president. I admire the willingness to lay bare, in kick ass rock songs, the complexities and pain at work among people we too quickly place into overly simple categories. These guys are brave, bold, and thoughtful as hell, while producing songs I didn’t expect to like, but that I keep playing. And they are coming to NH.

What I’m reading:

A textual analog to Drive-By Truckers by Chris Stapleton in many ways is Tony Horowitz’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning Confederates in the Attic. Ostensibly about the Civil War and the South’s ongoing attachment to it, it is prescient and speaks eloquently to the times in which we live (where every southern state but Virginia voted for President Trump). Often hilarious, it too surfaces complexities and nuance that escape a more recent, and widely acclaimed, book like Hillbilly Elegy. As a Civil War fan, it was also astonishing in many instances, especially when it blows apart long-held “truths” about the war, such as the degree to which Sherman burned down the south (he did not). Like D-B Truckers, Horowitz loves the South and the people he encounters, even as he grapples with its myths of victimhood and exceptionalism (and racism, which may be no more than the racism in the north, but of a different kind). Everyone should read this book and I’m embarrassed I’m so late to it.

What I’m watching:

David Letterman has a new Netflix show called “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction” and we watched the first episode, in which Letterman interviewed Barack Obama. It was extraordinary (if you don’t have Netflix, get it just to watch this show); not only because we were reminded of Obama’s smarts, grace, and humanity (and humor), but because we saw a side of Letterman we didn’t know existed. His personal reflections on Selma were raw and powerful, almost painful. He will do five more episodes with “extraordinary individuals” and if they are anything like the first, this might be the very best work of his career and one of the best things on television.

December 22, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished Sunjeev Sahota’s Year of the Runaways, a painful inside look at the plight of illegal Indian immigrant workers in Britain. It was shortlisted for 2015 Man Booker Prize and its transporting, often to a dark and painful universe, and it is impossible not to think about the American version of this story and the terrible way we treat the undocumented in our own country, especially now.

What I’m watching:

Season II of The Crown is even better than Season I. Elizabeth’s character is becoming more three-dimensional, the modern world is catching up with tradition-bound Britain, and Cold War politics offer more context and tension than we saw in Season I. Claire Foy, in her last season, is just terrific – one arched eye brow can send a message.

What I’m listening to:

A lot of Christmas music, but needing a break from the schmaltz, I’ve discovered Over the Rhine and their Christmas album, Snow Angels. God, these guys are good.

November 14, 2017

What I’m watching:

Guiltily, I watch the Patriots play every weekend, often building my schedule and plans around seeing the game. Why the guilt? I don’t know how morally defensible is football anymore, as we now know the severe damage it does to the players. We can’t pretend it’s all okay anymore. Is this our version of late decadent Rome, watching mostly young Black men take a terrible toll on each other for our mere entertainment?

What I’m reading:

Recently finished J.G. Ballard’s 2000 novel Super-Cannes, a powerful depiction of a corporate-tech ex-pat community taken over by a kind of psychopathology, in which all social norms and responsibilities are surrendered to residents of the new world community. Kept thinking about Silicon Valley when reading it. Pretty dark, dystopian view of the modern world and centered around a mass killing, troublingly prescient.

What I’m listening to:

Was never really a Lorde fan, only knowing her catchy (and smarter than you might first guess) pop hit “Royals” from her debut album. But her new album, Melodrama, is terrific and it doesn’t feel quite right to call this “pop.” There is something way more substantial going on with Lorde and I can see why many critics put this album at the top of their Best in 2017 list. Count me in as a huge fan.

November 3, 2017

What I’m reading: Just finished Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, her breathtakingly good second novel. How is someone so young so wise? Her writing is near perfection and I read the book in two days, setting my alarm for 4:30AM so I could finish it before work.

What I’m watching: We just binge watched season two of Stranger Things and it was worth it just to watch Millie Bobbie Brown, the transcendent young actor who plays Eleven. The series is a delightful mash up of every great eighties horror genre you can imagine and while pretty dark, an absolute joy to watch.

What I’m listening to: I’m not a lover of country music (to say the least), but I love Chris Stapleton. His “The Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning” is heartbreakingly good and reminds me of the old school country that played in my house as a kid. He has a new album and I can’t wait, but his From A Room: Volume 1 is on repeat for now.

September 26, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished George Saunder’s Lincoln in the Bardo. It took me a while to accept its cadence and sheer weirdness, but loved it in the end. A painful meditation on loss and grief, and a genuinely beautiful exploration of the intersection of life and death, the difficulty of letting go of what was, good and bad, and what never came to be.

What I’m watching:

HBO’s The Deuce. Times Square and the beginning of the porn industry in the 1970s, the setting made me wonder if this was really something I’d want to see. But David Simon is the writer and I’d read a menu if he wrote it. It does not disappoint so far and there is nothing prurient about it.

What I’m listening to:

The National’s new album Sleep Well Beast. I love this band. The opening piano notes of the first song, “Nobody Else Will Be There,” seize me & I’m reminded that no one else in music today matches their arrangement & musicianship. I’m adding “Born to Beg,” “Slow Show,” “I Need My Girl,” and “Runaway” to my list of favorite love songs.

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fashiontrendin-blog · 6 years

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A Vietnam Veteran on Growing Up Transgender

https://fashion-trendin.com/a-vietnam-veteran-on-growing-up-transgender/

A Vietnam Veteran on Growing Up Transgender

Collage by Edith Young and Emily Zirimis

This Memorial Day I wanted to re-share three stories of current and former service members and military spouses. This beautiful interview with Felicia Elizondo, originally published in August 2017, is just as relevant and touching today. – Nora Taylor

An increasing number of young people are identifying as activists, but to call this a new trend would not only be naive — it would also be a missed opportunity. Older generations offer an important perspective on what it means to be politically and socially active. In an effort to soak up their knowledge, we’re speaking to activists who have been doing this work for decades. First up was 74-year-old Sally Roesch Wagner; then 66-year-old Jackie Warren-Moore. Today is 71-year-old Felicia Elizondo.

When I called 71-year-old Felicia Elizondo on her San Francisco landline to ask about her life’s work in transgender activism, she told me she’d give me a roller coaster ride I’d never forget. As she shared her experiences over the next hour, weaving through timelines and memories, I knew she was right.

Although she “still feels young every once in a while,” the San Jose native and Vietnam War veteran has lived through forgotten events, dramatic life changes and hard-to-imagine struggles. She’s witnessed the transgender community grow and change throughout the decades and has worked to preserve the efforts of those first activists during her time.

Below, a conversation with Elizondo, transgender rights pioneer, war veteran and self-described “Mexican spitfire” who believes that anyone, regardless of gender or sexual identity, should have the right to fight for their country in uniform.

What was it like growing up in an era when there was little awareness or acceptance of transgender people?

I knew I was different from four or five years old — but I thought I was gay, because I didn’t know about transgender people. I knew I was feminine; I wanted to play with girls and with dolls. They called me sissy and all kinds of names when I was little, but I didn’t know the meaning.

When I was 14 or 15, a guy walking down the street told me [unsolicited] where young kids like me hung around in the park. I started hanging out there and found out there were a lot of people like me. That’s when I learned about drag. Drag wasn’t really common until the ’80s, but on Halloween we could pretend to be girls.

My friends from San Jose and I played hooky from school to go to the Tenderloin [a neighborhood in downtown San Francisco]. It was the gay mecca in the 1960s, but it wasn’t advertised in the media or television or newspapers; it was known by word-of-mouth. It was a place we could go and act the way we wanted to. Gene Compton’s Cafeteria [in the Tenderloin] was the center of the universe for a whole bunch of the queens, the sissies, the hustlers, the kids who were thrown away by their families like trash.

Why did you decide to join the military when you were 18?

They were asking for volunteers to go to Vietnam, and I decided to volunteer in 1966. I was hoping that the military could change me. I wanted to be the man that I was drilled to be since I was little. I enlisted in the Navy and did all the manly things I was supposed to do. I lowered my voice so nobody could tell that I was gay. I totally changed my ways.

Eventually I understood that, no matter how hard I tried, I was always attracted to men. One day I decided: If the military couldn’t make me a man, nothing would. I went to my priest and told him, “You know something? I tried to change. I tried to do what men do, and I just can’t seem to get it.” We went to the commanding officer and told him I was gay. The FBI and CIA interrogated me because it was happening during the time of war. They cleared me and undesirably discharged me at Treasure Island in San Francisco.

Were you initially afraid to talk to your priest about it?

I’ve always been Catholic. I did my baptism, my communion when I was a little boy, my confirmation, all that stuff. At the time, being Catholic was all I knew. I was 20 when the FBI interrogated me for being homosexual, but I never thought [being gay] was that bad. I knew it was against the law, but that was who I was. My religion doesn’t accept me, but God does. I don’t go to church, but I pray when there’s a need to pray, here in my house. My God is here at home.

On July 26, Donald Trump tweeted that “the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.”* How did you react to his words?

I am proud to have served in the military. I am American. I was taught that people should fight for their country and for freedom. No matter who I was, I had to do what I had to do in my heart. In a way, I had to prove to myself that I could do something that was so important.

[Donald Trump] promised the LGBT community that he would fight for us, and where is he? He wants to ban us from the military? I was appalled. I’m sad for him because he thinks that, just because we’re different, because of who we are, we don’t belong and we don’t deserve the honor of serving our military. I knew I was different, but I wanted to serve. He’s not my president.

What was your experience like when you came home from the military?

Things had changed. Before my service, cops were taking us to jail or harassing us because we dressed feminine — it was against the law to wear feminine clothes.

The hippie generation had evolved. In the ’70s, people started to wear long hair and feminine styles. Still, no one would hire feminine boys. The only thing we could do was sell drugs or pursue prostitution. I started as a prostitute. I wanted to be myself. I was tired of hiding.

In 1971, low-income Latinos were being recruited to start professional work. It was then that I was hired as a long-distance telephone operator. I was still dressing as a girl at nighttime, but my coworkers didn’t know.

At what point did gender confirmation enter your purview?

I found out through the grapevine about a gender dysphoria clinic in San Mateo, and I applied for gender reassignment. I talked to the psychiatrist, and he approved me for surgery. The conditions were that I would have to work as a female for two years and dress as a female for two years prior to the surgery. But two years was too long for me to wait to be who I wanted to be. I had waited a lifetime to find out who I was. I had to go for it. I heard about a doctor in Mexico and went there.

I transitioned from male to female in 1973. When the telephone company I worked for got the letter from the gender dysphoria clinic that said I was psychologically ready to be a female, they accepted me. Still, after I got breast implants and a nose job and came back as female, I drove around the block three or four times before facing my co-workers because my nerves were shot.

Six months after my transition, the supervisors took everyone out and, when I needed to go to the bathroom, they had somebody wait outside the door so nobody could go in and disturb me. They took care of me. In the ’70s, that was something I never expected.

You’re featured in a 2005 documentary about the 1966 Gene Compton’s Cafeteria riot, a protest by transgender people against police brutality that happened three years before the Stonewall protests. Why is it important to you to spread word about the riot?

I was in the service until 1967, a year after the riot had already happened. A lot of the things [after the riot] did not change. Nobody talked about it because it wasn’t in the newspapers. The riot was forgotten for 40 years until Susan Stryker, the documentary director, found a document about it at the San Francisco GLBT History Museum. She started interviewing people who were there in the ’60s. I told her how life was for us then, how I became a prostitute and how Gene Compton’s Cafeteria was the center of the universe for us.

I may not have been there for the riot, but I knew all the girls who were there in the ’60s. I am going to carry the torch for those girls, who did so much, so our transgender history will never be forgotten. Last year, we added a “Gene Compton’s Cafeteria Way” street sign on the 100 block of Taylor Street. Since 2005, I’ve held an anniversary every year in August to make sure the girls of the Tenderloin will never be forgotten for their bravery and stamina to be who they were. Last August, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the riot.

Sometimes I want to walk away and let it go and hope the youth of today will take over, but it’s hard because they don’t know. A lot of the people in San Francisco are not from here. Most of the people taking over today don’t know anything about our history. They’re making their own way — they’re not worried about the past or what we went through. That’s why it’s imperative for me to tell people how I perceived it in 1967 at Compton’s, because Compton’s didn’t stop after the riot. If it weren’t for us in the ’60s, the trans youth wouldn’t be [where] they are today.

Other than learning about your history, what advice do you have for the young transgender community today?

Unite. That is so important, in any community. In the ’60s, we were a gay community, all together, all colors, fighting for the same thing. We were standing up. Nowadays, I think the trouble with our trans community is that there are too many disparate leaders and not enough united followers. They aren’t worried about the collective history. They’re reclaiming the word “queer.” I was appalled and sad when I first heard that. We were killed because of that word; it’s painful to me. After a while, I gave up and learned to endure it, but the people out there using it should know what a horrible word it was to us before the ’70s.

What other forms of activism have you participated in?

The AIDS epidemic came out in the ’80s, and I found out I was HIV-positive. I didn’t know what to do or how long I would live. I started giving back to my community. I gave emotional and practical support for people with AIDS, going to people’s houses and taking care of them. I sewed an AIDS Memorial Quilt and sewed everything by hand with love. Now I’ve made 80 of them. In 1987, I became a trans drag queen [with the name Felicia Flames] to raise money for AIDS. I started volunteering and holding office jobs for organizations: Shanti Project, Project Open Hand, the San Francisco LGBT Community Center. I think I’ve raised money for every LGBT-related or AIDS-related organization in San Francisco.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

I’ve been here in this apartment for 25 years. I have two dogs, a Cocker Spaniel mix and a Pomeranian mix, and I walk them three times a day. They’re my life and my support. They keep me going.

Yes, I’m alone. I haven’t had sex in over 20 years, but I’ve had enough sex to last me a lifetime. Now, if someone doesn’t love me for who I am, I don’t need a man in my life. I am happy. I am the woman I was meant to be. Where I am today is exactly where I’m supposed to be, and nobody can take that away.

The simplest thing I can think of is to know that we’re not all bad people. We’re human beings like everybody else. I would just like more education and more people out there doing good for everybody.

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anghe10-blog · 6 years

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Letter for Donald Trump

To every single Trump supporter trying to say that voting for Trump does not mean that you are racist, homophobic, sexist, xenophobic, assholes… that you just like the way he didn't really care what people thought and just said whatever he wanted… that he wasn't a politician, so he wasn't part of the establishment and didn't have corrupt money backing him…

This is for you:

Your words are worthless, because your actions have led to the single-handed destruction of all the progress we've made socially as a nation. You have, with your pure ignorance and refusal to understand the way the government and the world works, allowed a power-hungry business tycoon to take over the United States of America. "The land of the free, the home of the brave, under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for ALL."

You are HYPOCRITES.

Restoring the America-that-was is only stagnating the progression of our consciousness. You voted for a person who built an 18-month campaign off the back of your hatred. He manipulated ALL of you with such ease by speaking to the darker parts of you that had started to feel ashamed about the way you viewed the "politically correct" world. He became your champion, because he spoke to the parts of you that think you are superior to the rest of us (just like Hitler did in Germany before the Holocaust! Just read his autobiography: Mein Kampf).

This politically correct world we've created, which is really just a world with social etiquette, where we have weeded out the language of racism and explained why, where we have established feminism as a growing notion of making women realize their validity and right to be treated as the full complex beings they are and men the same (which clearly needs A LOT of work considering how women across America, especially white women, voted for this man who insulted your very existence every time he opened his mouth or disrespected Hillary during his campaign), where we have had to create numerous labels to help queer people who didn't fit the cis heterosexual mold feel valid and identified in a world where narrow-minded consciousness has made them feel invalid and invisible for so long. That's the "politically correct" behavior you wanna get rid of? You wanna restore America to a world where the human beings around you feel scared to be themselves and live and love freely?

Apart from how selfish that is, it is so very un-CHRIST-like, because your God is watching and He knows your hearts and He is aware of the true reason you chose such a human to run the most powerful country in the world, and I promise you the God that I have come to know and love is intolerant of judgment and hatred. And I know this, because I was raised Roman Catholic in a Latin household and went to private Catholic school my whole life so I have studied WAY more than most of you have studied the religion or the Bible for that matter. The ONLY reason is your inability to accept the growing world around you. You chose hatred. Your heart chose to separate yourself as a superior when the only superior in existence in this entire universe is SO much greater than you.

Our "political correctness" that your champion, Donald Trump, so pointedly disregarded throughout his entire campaign and now with the appointment of his advisors and other government officials, is the language we have worked tirelessly to establish to feel safe in a world that never stops reminding us we are minorities. I am a bisexual Cuban-American woman and I am so proud of it. I am proud to be part of a community that only projects love and education and the support of one another. I am proud to be the granddaughter and daughter of immigrants who were brave enough to leave their homes and come to a whole new world with a different language and culture and immerse themselves fearlessly to start a better life for themselves and their families.

I am proud to be a woman. Proud that the sex between my thighs provides a strength and resilience in me that only other women can feel, that my body curves in ways that allow me to create life within me, that my entire life is filled with adversity and doubt and people questioning my intelligence and my artistic potential and my expression of myself and my virtue and honor because I am too much woman. I am proud that I get to prove them all wrong. I am proud that I have to work even harder for it. I was raised to feel that I can do ANYTHING, and I will always believe that. I am proud to feel the whole spectrum of my feelings and I will gladly take the label of "bitch" and "problematic" for speaking my mind the same way any man would be admired and respected for doing. But, I will also extend the fullest hand of compassion and empathy for anyone labeling me as such.

I also know that in my struggle of being a woman I am so very privileged. I was born with a lighter complexion and green eyes (thanks genetics) so from that narrow-minded perspective, I'm white. I have experienced the privilege those genes have granted me, and I am grateful and will continue to speak on behalf of the women around the world and in our very own country who do not experience a fraction of that respect because of the color of their skin or what they choose to wear, or how their hair looks, or how much makeup they have on or any other absurdity that we women are reduced to.

It's truly disheartening to me to see so many beautiful women who have no idea what their potential is. This election made it blatantly obvious just how many women can't see it. We have failed ourselves as a nation. We are the example for the world, and we have failed our fellow humans who were watching us with hope that we would not allow hatred to prevail. I have had the privilege of being in a band that has allowed me to travel all over the world. I cannot express the gratitude I have for this experience because it opened my eyes to so many things and has allowed me to view the world from such a simple perspective, a perspective that I understand not very many people have the opportunity to experience.

If I could tell every Trump supporter two things, it would be to travel and read a history book. Look beyond yourselves, look at how petty the morals you uphold seem when you realize we are not the only ones. Realize that your white skin is the result of immigration from Europe, that the only true "Americans" are Native Americans, who are indigenous people that inhabited this land before these conquerors from other countries (England, France, Italy, Spain) wiped them out almost entirely. None of us belong here but all of us deserve the right to feel safe and live our lives in peace. To not have to worry about potentially dying, or being electro-shocked, or beaten, or raped, or emotionally abused because our existence and/or choices for ourselves upset someone else. This is the world Trump is fostering. This is the division that has risen since the beginning of the campaign. We are not America indivisible any longer, we are united on two separate sides; Love and Hatred. We are not "whining" about our presidential choice losing, we are screaming battle cries against those whose political and personal agendas threaten our lives and sanity. We are making sure you hear us, no matter how much it bothers you, we EXIST.

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usesoftheerotic · 7 years

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Q. What’s your name, country of origin, ethnicity, pronouns, how do you identify in terms of your queer identity?

Camila or Mila, because my grandmother was called Mila and I’d like to recover my feminine ancestry. My country of origin has always been on the border. I’m originally from the Dominican Republic (DR), but my family actually comes from a little town that’s on the border between DR and Haiti. So, I always felt like in the border between Dominican and Haitian identities. I feel a very deep connection of these two nationalities that have been fighting a long time. and For me, they represent the ridiculousness and the violence of the nation-state.

I was very aware of this since I was very little and my other part of my origins come from Chile, but my mother's family left Chile during the dictatorship of Pinochet. My mother left Chile when she was 5 years with all of her sisters and my grandfather. Now, they all live DR. So, I kind of have a Diasporic Latinx Caribbean identity traveling between this South American thing to this Caribbean and Black Afro-Caribbean thing. I struggled with these identities and then I kind of came to a more intentional racialized decision of being more close to my Afro-Caribbean roots than my Chilean ones. This is something I’ve always felt and never felt comfortable with. I never liked it not because of chile itself, but because whiteness dominates Chile so much more than it does in the DR. Because of that, I reclaim more of my Dominican origins. As you see, my answer for my origin is kind of complex, but I would say I’m Afro-Caribbean and I define my queer identity as a queer femme caramel cinnamon person.

Q. How would you define the erotic?

I always felt like a very sexual person. I’m a Scorpio! Since I was very little, in my very own basic ways of understanding the erotic, I always felt that this is a pulsation of life and it’s like a fire that’s so much more than just having sex with someone or having sex with you. For me, it’s life.

In tarot, we have these cards that are represented by fire and wood sticks and they represent the power of creativity. In my path as a witch, the same power in sexuality and sexual desire is the power that allows you to create and that you can channel that creative power not only in sexuality but also to create anything in your life. To create your work. To create a garden. To create a house. And even to create a baby. In this heterosexual society that we live in, we are taught that the only way that we create with this sexual energy is to create a new human being, but before the process of colonization, patriarchy and the heterosexual world that we live in other cultures and societies have this wisdom that sexual power, the erotic, is a place where you can create anything. For me, the erotic is this place of fire and energy that kind of lives near your hips. Where you can expand and create with yourself with others.

Q. How do you recognize the erotic within your life and how does the erotic manifest in your life?

For me, It’s very easy to feel when I’m not connected to my eroticness. When I feel disconnected from my erotic power and my erotic self, it’s like I feel really down and depressed. First of all, one of the more simple places where I think you can feel the erotic is often seen and thought off as superficial, is in your aesthetics. How do you dress, how do you feel every day you want to feel, like with a lot of glitter or you want to feel, like with a lot of color. For me, how I dress and how “mezcalo”, a word in Spanish “mezclarse” it means making yourself shine literally, and if the eros is fire, shining means your eros is on. for me, having my nails like this all of these things are ways to remind myself every day that my erotic energy is important to me and I want other people to see it. Eros can also be a place of joy. Caribbean aesthetics are very erotic and I feel as a critic about the system, the system has used this shit to just put in the mainstream and with that they have taken it (the erotic) out of us, something that is powerful. Often, intellectual political groups of people, having your nails done, if you’re waxing your body, or if you’re worried about how you dress, means you’re being oppressed “That’s like superficial, you’re being dominated by the system.”

As I was studying and living in Chile, I have to become very gray, everyone dressed in gray and black, and the best is when you get unnoticed. I feel like often, there are things that we find in the oppression that were original things that are empowering or good but the system has put them in a mainstream place that actually finds to dominate us. You feel obligated to look nice, but for me my aesthetic, when you’re feeling good, that’s important.

My main place for the erotic is in dancing. When I don’t dance for a week, even to play some music in my bedroom for like half an hour, I feel that. I feel like I don’t have more fire in me. I feel decompartmentalize. I feel like something is not making sense inside of me. I’d also define as the erotic as not only a place of fire that creates, but also something that makes us one with ourselves. When you have sex, you feel connected when you get to the orgasm right. When you’re connected to your eroticness , I also feel like that it is something keeps you feeling connected to yourself. Dancing for me is really important. It shows that we’re not just the mind. I’m not gonna just rationalize how I feel the erotic. It’s something that has to pass through your body. For me, dancing is really important, just move your butt and your hips. I think that’s where the erotic kind of lives. It’s also the way I relate to people. I’ve never been a formal person, I like to just be informal and be flirty in the way I talk. I don’t care if I’m being sensual. Sometimes people think I’m flirting with them and I’m not. It’s just the way I like to act. I don’t buy into this formal square cold way of relating with people. I think that the way you relate to others, how you communicate, the way you move, how you speak, these are also things to me that are part of the erotic.

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demitgibbs · 7 years

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Don’t Be Stupid, You Know Shania Loves You

Contrary to popular belief, some things _do_ impress Shania Twain. The country-pop icon and paragon of leopard print has great admiration for her LGBTQ fans, who she says have become guiding lights in her own life.

Twain’s inspiring story is one of survival, from her childhood hardships while growing up in the small town of Timmins, Ontario, where she raised her three younger siblings after her parents died in a car accident in 1987, to her 2009 divorce from Robert “Mutt” Lange, producer of Twain’s 1997 crossover behemoth Come on Over. The best-selling country album of all time was a game-changer with an impressive track record – 40 million copies sold globally, 50 weeks atop the Billboard country charts over three years, 11 singles released – that Twain still champions in the female-artist arena.

Fifteen years after dropping her last juggernaut, 2002’s Up!, Twain, 52, is again demonstrating slay status to her legions of loyal, boot-stompin’ queer fans. Even a neurological voice disorder called dysphonia couldn’t keep the genre subverter, who once thought she’d never sing again, from recording her long-overdue fifth LP, Now. Released in September, Twain wrote every song, and her shiny résumé got even shinier when the album instantly seized the No. 1 spot on the Billboard albums and country charts.

Country-pop’s comeback queen was an open book during our recent conversation, speaking passionately and candidly about her LGBTQ activism at the onset of her country career in 1993, having to “agree to disagree” with those who aren’t pro-gay, and bringing drag queens and Bud-guzzlin’ bros together with “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”

But, also, you don’t get Shania Twain on the phone without reminiscing on 1998’s VH1 Divas, when Twain shared the stage with an epic mix of icons – Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion and Gloria Estefan – for one of the most legendary, gay-loved nights in diva (and hair) history.

Do you have enough leopard print gloves to go around for all the gays to partake in celebrating your comeback?

(Laughs) I should make them, right? What do you think would be the preferred fabric? Silk or…?

Velour.

Yeah, like, velvet.

We need a million of those by tomorrow. But first, Shania, after all these years, how do you explain your connection to the LGBTQ community?

I can’t really explain my connection in any sort of theoretical way to anyone. But I would say my intentions are to inspire and connect with people, to be relatable then and now. I think that it is what resonates – we relate to one another, we relate to struggle, and then surviving struggle and celebrating who we are and what we are and appreciating that as a community of people regardless of what it is. Just celebrating together to the anthemic nature of some of those songs, and on this new album there are several like that as well.

Is there something specific you hope to convey to LGBTQ audiences with this album?

Surviving against the odds. A song like “I’m Alright” – just that statement there and telling yourself, “I’m alright. I’ve made it through. I’ve survived.” And with a fist-in-the-air attitude, with conviction.

What was your introduction to the gay community?

I work with a lot of gay people and they’re just a part of my almost daily family world. So, they’re just part of my friends and my community. I guess more when I started to become successful, I was really surrounded by more creative people, and there are so many creative people in this industry who are gay, both men and women. It just becomes the norm.

During some of your rough patches, did you get any sage advice from your gay friends?

Oh, I get good advice from gay friends all the time! (Laughs) I think more than anything I’m inspired by the spirit of where the gay community is right now and that conviction to be who you are. I love standing up for that. It’s just so important to be transparent and open about who you are and to not hide behind fear.

Have you clung to that sentiment as a way to push past your own personal pain?

Completely! I mean, my whole transition into where I am now in this moment has been facing fears and taking that leap of faith myself, and that would be my advice to anyone out there. A gay person who has been living behind their fears and then makes that courageous decision to start living as who they really are and stop pretending and embrace it – it takes a lot of courage.

For me, I’ve just learned that there’s no time to waste. You need to take that leap and be who you are, and we’re in a society now that is making it easier. We still have a long way to go, but there are a lot more outlets.

But the gay community – and minority communities in general – are always fighting. I have a song on the album called “Swingin’ with My Eyes Closed” and it’s a fun party song, but the true depth of the song is about even when you can’t see what is in front of you, you still have to move forward. You can’t move backwards; you gotta keep moving forward and fighting for that freedom to exercise independence and courage.

There couldn’t be a better time for a song like that. In 2013, you tweeted about the Supreme Court overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, saying, “Congrats to everyone celebrating equality today in the U.S. #loveislove.” Why is it important for you to take a stand on gay rights and other LGBTQ issues?

I just feel very saddened by any kind of oppression in our society in today’s day and age. I mean, it’s so negative. Equality should be a no-brainer, automatic, all the way around. We need to have mutual respect all the way around. Supremacy of any sort is just poison. I just feel like we’re not above each other in any way and mutual respect and an admiration for an individual’s abilities, talents, heart, commitment – I mean, what does that have to do with any minority status that we might be labeled with today, whatever that may be? Certainly, I know that gays feel that.

How does it feel knowing that your songs “Forever and For Always” and “From this Moment On” have probably been the first dance at a number of same-sex marriages?

Awww! That’s lovely. It’s so lovely. But love is beautiful, and music is very much a part of our lives and monumental moments of our lives.

Because country music has long been deemed conservative in its views, could we speak as openly as we are now about LGBTQ issues at the beginning of your career?

I mean, I did. You know what this is really about? This is about pro-equality, this is about pro-mutual respect. And if you’re really for those things in life, then why would there be any boundaries? Why would you side where there are? Why would you a draw a line there?

In the country community, I think it comes down to the fear of potentially alienating conservative fans.

I think everybody has the right to their opinion, and that I would never argue with. That is a huge part of freedom of speech and mutual respect, having the right to your own opinion. If you’re not pro-gay, then you’re not pro-gay, and we just have to agree to disagree. I would never get into a fist fight with somebody who didn’t agree. I just think that would be counterproductive. So, I think we all have to respect each other’s opinions on these issues.

But, listen, with a song like “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” – and this is, what, 20 years ago? I’m over that come a long time ago. A lot of straight men sing “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” just for the sheer entertainment of it. So, I think songs like that have been great, maybe, contributors to bringing us together, if not for anything than just for the common denominator of music and owning that for whatever it means to them, and that breaks down barriers.

WATCH:

youtube

How do you reflect on your gender-bending style, when you donned menswear, in that video?

I like to have a sense of humor about everything, especially things that can have a lot of tension. A song like “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” just smacks it dead for me. The audience issue is not something I worry about. I’m respectful to my audience and I appreciate them for relating to my music regardless of their point of view on whatever it is, whether it’s politics or social issues. I’m not here to judge.

Tell me about the first time you encountered a Shania drag queen.

I went to an imposter show in Las Vegas and it was incredible. You brought up the country world and maybe how that might be more conservative, but it’s funny, three of the artists that were in the show were myself, Reba McEntire and Dolly Parton. I thought that was so wonderful. It’s like, “OK, we’re country artists, and we’re in there!” Any artist that is, on a visual level, very expressive would make a great imposter night subject!

What is the one thing a queen cannot go without if they truly want to feel like Shania Twain?

Probably something leopard print, and I would say a top hat. The boots, for sure!

For gay men everywhere, 1998 was one of the best years as it was the inaugural VH1 Divas, the best and most iconic. It doesn’t get any better than you, Mariah Carey, Gloria Estefan, Celine Dion, Aretha Franklin and guest performer Carole King. Of them, who are you still in touch with?

Mariah Carey. Celine Dion. We still cross paths – it’s great. I always like to catch Mariah when she is live, and Celine, too. It was such a wonderful group of ladies, really terrific.

Who most lived up to the diva title during the show?

I think Mariah had the biggest hair, so probably her. (Laughs)

You were second, I think.

I was! I said, “OK, I gotta look at Mariah’s hair. I want to try for it to be as big as hers,” because she has this naturally big, amazing hair. So I’m like, “Come on, let’s go for it. I know Mariah’s gonna have bigger hair than me, so I’m gonna go for it and have fun with it.” She has that hair that I want, that naturally big hair with this gorgeous wave and those ringlets.

When you all performed “Natural Woman” as your encore, I wasn’t sure who was stealing the spotlight: Mariah’s hair or Aretha.

(Laughs) I know! Nobody can kill Aretha’s spotlight.

If you did another Divas, what other diva would you want to sing alongside?

Rihanna, for sure. She’s just so awesome. I love her voice; I never get tired of it. Never, never. And we hear it so much on the radio, right? She’s every second song on the radio and I just never get tired of it. Even with “Love on the Brain” – I mean, it just doesn’t get better than that. So, she’d definitely be on my list.

I’m hoping for you and Taylor to team up – our two country-gone-pop queens.

Taylor would be a good one. She’d be a must on Divas, for sure. She’s awesome. She’s such a great creative person and a super songwriter and really uses her brain, so it’s lovely to watch her.

Lastly, how many costume changes can gay audiences look forward to when you hit the road?

(Laughs) How many would a gay audience find ideal, do you think?

At least 15.

(Laughs) Whoa. OK, that is a friggin’ high demand. I’d have to change every two songs!

As long as you bring out the iconic ensembles, no harm, no foul.

Gotta have a little flashback moment here and there, yeah!

from Hotspots! Magazine https://hotspotsmagazine.com/2017/10/26/dont-be-stupid-you-know-shania-loves-you/ from Hot Spots Magazine https://hotspotsmagazine.tumblr.com/post/166819963270

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hotspotsmagazine · 7 years

Text

Don’t Be Stupid, You Know Shania Loves You

Do you have enough leopard print gloves to go around for all the gays to partake in celebrating your comeback?

(Laughs) I should make them, right? What do you think would be the preferred fabric? Silk or…?

Velour.

Yeah, like, velvet.

We need a million of those by tomorrow. But first, Shania, after all these years, how do you explain your connection to the LGBTQ community?

Is there something specific you hope to convey to LGBTQ audiences with this album?

What was your introduction to the gay community?

During some of your rough patches, did you get any sage advice from your gay friends?

Have you clung to that sentiment as a way to push past your own personal pain?

How does it feel knowing that your songs “Forever and For Always” and “From this Moment On” have probably been the first dance at a number of same-sex marriages?

Awww! That’s lovely. It’s so lovely. But love is beautiful, and music is very much a part of our lives and monumental moments of our lives.

Because country music has long been deemed conservative in its views, could we speak as openly as we are now about LGBTQ issues at the beginning of your career?

In the country community, I think it comes down to the fear of potentially alienating conservative fans.

WATCH:

youtube

How do you reflect on your gender-bending style, when you donned menswear, in that video?

Tell me about the first time you encountered a Shania drag queen.

What is the one thing a queen cannot go without if they truly want to feel like Shania Twain?

Probably something leopard print, and I would say a top hat. The boots, for sure!

Mariah Carey. Celine Dion. We still cross paths – it’s great. I always like to catch Mariah when she is live, and Celine, too. It was such a wonderful group of ladies, really terrific.

Who most lived up to the diva title during the show?

I think Mariah had the biggest hair, so probably her. (Laughs)

You were second, I think.

When you all performed “Natural Woman” as your encore, I wasn’t sure who was stealing the spotlight: Mariah’s hair or Aretha.

(Laughs) I know! Nobody can kill Aretha’s spotlight.

If you did another Divas, what other diva would you want to sing alongside?

I’m hoping for you and Taylor to team up – our two country-gone-pop queens.

Lastly, how many costume changes can gay audiences look forward to when you hit the road?

(Laughs) How many would a gay audience find ideal, do you think?

At least 15.

(Laughs) Whoa. OK, that is a friggin’ high demand. I’d have to change every two songs!

As long as you bring out the iconic ensembles, no harm, no foul.

Gotta have a little flashback moment here and there, yeah!

from Hotspots! Magazine https://hotspotsmagazine.com/2017/10/26/dont-be-stupid-you-know-shania-loves-you/

0 notes