For me, one of the things that gave me hope along the way was an article I found in a Chatelaine magazine, somewhere around 1989. I was flipping through the mag at my aunt’s place when we were there for dinner when I saw a picture of two girls grinning, arms wrapped around each other, both wearing tuxedos with pink cummerbunds and pink satin high heeled shoes. The article was a sympathetic portrayal of two lesbian teenagers who went to their high school prom together. I remember surreptitiously tearing the article out of the magazine, folding it carefully in half, and tucking it into my jacket, which was hanging in the hall. I still have that article now in my files somewhere. I kept it because when I was a kid, there was no YouTube, there were no GSAs in high schools, there was no Ellen on TV. This was it. This was the sole representation I’d ever seen of queerness, and it told me that even if I couldn’t see it anywhere near me, in my community, at school, at church—it was out there, somewhere. And eventually I would find it.

Bottom line for me is that It Gets Better is certainly not a well-rounded, prescriptive plan of action for combating homophobia. But that’s not what Savage set out to do. He set out to put a simple, accessible beacon of hope and the message “hey, you’re not alone” out there for kids who might be looking for it… and I think he got it right.

p.p.s. In the Sex Geek blog, there is also a VERY good article examining the phrase “queer suicide” worth reposting here.

On September 22nd, an 18 year-old named Tyler Clementi jumped off the George Washington bridge connecting New York & New Jersey after his roommate had streamed a live internet feed of Tyler’s encounter with another man in his dorm room.

Tyler was a first-year student at Rutgers University, sharing a cramped room with another freshman named Dharun Ravi. Dharun placed a webcam in the dorm room and, from another students’ room, watched Tyler making out with another young man. Dharun’s Twitter & Facebook posts leading up to the incident indicate that he was uncomfortable with the fact that Tyler was gay. Tyler’s posts on an online message board show both his anger at the invasion of his privacy and the homophobic voyeurism it entailed, and his uncertainty over how to deal with the situation. After Tyler discovered Dharun’s webcam pointed at his bed for the second time two days later, Tyler went to his residence advisor. The next day, he jumped into the Hudson River.

Tyler is one of five teenagers in the month of September alone who took their lives after enduring repeated harassment that targeted their sexuality. 
Somewhat surprisingly, and heartbreakingly, Tyler was one of the oldest of the five. 13 year-old Asher Brown shot himself in the head on Sept 23rd in Austin, Texas. 15 year-old Billy Lucas hanged himself in Indiana on Sept 9th in Indiana. 13 year-old Seth Walsh died in hospital on Sept 29th after attempting to hang himself in Minnesota, and gay 19 year-old Rhode Island student Raymond Chase died after hanging himself the same day.

Whether or not any of these young men (in general, suicide rates for women are notably lower, often accounted for by the lower ‘success rate’ of the means women often use) self-identified as gay is possibly irrelevant. The bottom line is that they believed that to be called gay or to be assumed to be gay was worse than death. And while it’s highly unlikely that the homophobic harassment they received was the sole reason they decided to commit suicide, the cumulative effect of it no doubt precipitated that decision.

Queer & questioning youth are much more likely to attempt suicide than non-queer youth. A 1999 NZ study by Fergussen, Horwood, & Beautrais corroborated a myriad of international findings, stating that that 38% of queer youth reported suicidal ideation, vs. 28% of non-queer youth; and 32.1% of queer youth up to age 21 had attempted suicide, vs. only 7.1% of non-queer youth. That’s over four times as likely. The reason is not, of course, anything inherent in being sexually attracted to members of the same sex. Rather, it is the social stigma around being queer that makes for suicidal predisposition:

“The process of realizing that one is gay and having to accept it is not just an immediate stressor and can actually narrow one’s options further by taking away coping resources, such as friends and family.” (Kitts, 2005)

In the wake of Billy Lucas’ suicide, Dan Savage – as if I didn’t love him enough already – has created the It Gets Better Project. The goal is to tell kids that, well, it gets better. Eventually, you will find a community. You will find people like yourself. You will not be alone.

10. Wait What – Mo Stars Mo Problems

9. Queens of the Stone Age – I Wanna Make It With You

8. Tegan & Sara – Walking With A Ghost

7. The Roots feat. Joanna Newsom – Right On

6. Counting Crows – Sullivan Street

5. Kings of Leon - Knocked Up

4. Robyn – None of Dem

3. Mumford & Sons - Timshel

2. The Black Keys – Howlin’ for You

1. Arcade Fire – We Used To Wait

Listeners suggested (among others) Jeff Buckley, Carlos Santana, Phil Collins’ “Something In The Air”, and Groove Armada’s “Not Forgotten”. What are yours?

"I can see it now..."

The article doesn’t offer up a particularly nuanced discussion of the two representations of what it means to be a young woman in America these days. After all, it’s MTV.com, so realistically I wouldn’t expect much more – in fact I’m mildly astounded they even used the F-word (….. feminism). But I have to take issue with the author’s disclaimer towards the end of the piece:

“To that end, while I don’t want to wade too heavily into the field of gender politics (these are, after all, just a pair of pop videos), it’s interesting — if not sort of disappointing — that neither Perry nor Swift are seen running Fortune 500 companies or piloting Black Hawk helicopters in their videos.”

Kudos to Montgomery for noting (throughout the piece) that the Perry and Swift options are by no means the only paths available to young women, and pointing out the notable absence of other empowering life choices… but WADE ON, my friend! Claiming that these representations are “just” pop videos is the most ridiculous load of defensive shite I’ve ever heard. The fact that they are pop videos makes them more, not less, important. Pop culture both reflects us and educates us; it has more cut-through than anything learned in the classroom or even coming from our parents mouths (though not necessarily their actions).

Let’s never be ashamed of reading society in cultural artifacts; that’s what culture IS. Even if you work for MTV.

“The paradigm that says that everything about me that isn’t my body works, and everything about me that is my body doesn’t work… sex can explode that.”

Watch: (Sex)Abled: Disability Uncensored from SexSmartFilms, inspired by a panel series called “Are Cripples Screwed?” put on by the UC Berkeley’s Disabled Students Union. It’s a candid, smart, and poignant intro into the nexus of issues surrounding disability and sexuality… easily one of my favourite video clips of 2010. I found this while researching for my interview with Philip Patston of DiversityNZ on the same topic, which airs this Sunday, August 29th at 9pm on 95bFM.

The film reflects much of what I talked about with Philip. The most obvious thing, though (and one of the reasons the interview was so long), is that we can’t talk about disability and sexuality without questioning the concept of disability itself.

“We usually see disability as some kind of physiological condition that limits the ability of people to function in society, to play the social roles that are typically expected of them…. [in this case] to be sexually and romantically impaired in some way. In fact those expectations, those views about disability, point to the fact that disability is not simply medical or physiological; much more importantly is social and cultural. It’s a constructed identity, so that certain physical traits or mental traits get stigmatized… and the stigma is globalized, to engulf their entire identities.”

I find it hard to believe that anyone is ever able to define sex as one particular act (penetration), and differently-abled bodies really hammer home the idea that sex is a multitude of practices and pleasures.

I found this video, and my time with Philip, incredibly interesting and enlightening. People with disabilities tend to be pretty invisible in pop culture, and therefore, in the lives and consciousness of typically-abled individuals – myself included. Listen in this weekend… you might be surprised.

(Sorry this isn’t the most enlightening blog post, I’m going to blame that on first-week-back syndrome.)

“Unless we face up to the fact that it’s really gonna scare the crap out of people – whether it’s potential partners or healthcare providers or our families or our parents – if we don’t face up to the scariness, we can’t really find out ways of dealing with the scariness.”

Little girl behind me: Mommy, is that a boy or a girl standing in front of us?

Mommy: It’s a girl, honey.

Little girl: But they have short hair!

This has happened to me 7 or 8 times before and I could ACTUALLY not care less; usually the other person gets really apologetic and embarrassed, while I’m generally thinking “mission accomplished”. I get a kick out of it, especially with kids. I was once walking down Williamson Ave with my hood up and a pair of boys asked me outright “Are you a boy or a girl?” – to which I replied, kneeling down, “What do you think?” and letting them mull it over for a minute. The vote was split, in the end, with one kid certain I was a boy and the other not so sure, even with the hood down and being close enough to see mascara.

I love it because kids are the only people without the social conditioning that moderates the rest of us and our dialogue; they haven’t yet developed the instinct to censor oneself. That lack of ‘filter’ reveals what are kids are taught via pop culture and the media. In this case, kids prove to me again and again that hair in particular is one of the most powerful – if not THE most powerful – gender signifiers we have.

I love it is because it makes me feel like every time a kid asks and finds out girls can exist with short hair, it chips away at those entrenched gender norms. Our idea of what is ‘normal’ is crafted in our childhood; what we are exposed to in our early years forms our outlook on the world. If I can make a crack in the mental wall that divides girls from boys in a kids’ mind, I’m happy.

Bonus points if you can guess who this is.

The concept of gender is an arbitrary one. Which is not to say, as some might expect me to argue, that gender needs to be abolished. It doesn’t. It is simply to say that an individual’s gender expression is not limited by their genitalia or chromosomal makeup, and we shouldn’t expect it to be so.

p.s. here’s the schedule of pre-recorded interviews that will be running in the Sunday Night Sex Show slot while I’m out of the country (Sundays from 9pm on 95bFM). Enjoi!

July 18: DVice – Sex Toys and Beyond: Part 1
July 25: DVice: Part 2
Aug 1: NZ Prostitutes Collective – Sex Work in NZ
Aug 8: Kirsten Zemke – Sex/uality, Gender, & Pop Music: Part 1
Aug 15: Kirsten Zemke: Part 2
Aug 22: Philip Patston – Disability, Diversity, & Sexuality

Fortunately for me, homeboy is apparently coming down to NZ after his North American tour ends in September. Thus begins my new Plan, and stealth work on Sony New Zealand.

Proof that there should be an A.Lam equivalent to lesbianswholooklikejustinbieber.tumblr.com

Here’s my case:

- I host a sex show. The man is sex on legs. Brand alignment? I think so.

- A.Lam is the first openly gay artist to be signed to a major label. That’s big. Really big. (If not a bit disheartening, seeing as its twenty-fucking-ten and rock music was effectively created by a gay black man anyway… but I digress.) He’s also the only major pop artist that I can think of who’s gotten away with kissing another man on stage almost every night on his FIRST NATIONAL TOUR. This speaks volumes about a) where his label’s head is at, and b) where the label perceives mainstream U.S.A. to be in terms of cultural expectations right now.

- He’s touring through the south & midwest, much to the delight of the Westboro Baptist Church, who have come out of the woodwork in all their ‘God Hates Fags’ glory – I’m just waiting on what the fan reaction is going to be. Do all the 16 year old girls who secretly think they could ‘turn’ A.Lam really connect him kissing his bass player with the fact that he actually has sex with men? And if they don’t, will the idiot WBC picketers help make that connection for them? Maybe I can do some research on that in Seattle.

Leave it to me to turn a pop concert into a site of anthropological fieldwork…

What often comes up in my discussions with people about language is “meaning” – i.e. “I don’t mean it that way” or “It doesn’t mean that anymore”. And sure enough, this morning there was an onslaught of rebuttal to Richie’s suggestion that we all be a bit more conscious of the language we use, all claiming that either “the gays stole ‘gay’ first” or “it’s all about context” or “language is constantly in flux”.

All of which is true.

NONE of which does a thing to change the fact that language is extremely powerful, and therefore capable of causing real damage to individuals.

Think of it this way: if you’re a queer individual in a new environment – or even just a place that you’re not 100% certain about, like a workplace, a classroom, etc – your feelers are going to be out, looking for signs and signals about whether or not this is a place that you can feel comfortable and safe. Words like ‘gay’ or ‘homo’ or whatever are pretty big red flags, regardless of the intent on the part of the speaker. If I don’t know you really well, how the fuck do I know what your intent is? How am I supposed to assess the level of maliciousness behind those words? Bottom line is: hearing that kind of language sets up a homophobic tone whether you mean it to or not. And that means anyone who was uncertain of whether or not to be totally open about who they are is probably doubting that it’s safe to do so. So the next time you toss out “that’s so gay”, think about how you might be helping keep someone in the closet just a little bit longer.

It’s not about freedom of speech, it’s about acknowledging the power that language has. And if you’re fortunate to never have experienced what it means to be at the sharp end of that stick, take one for the team so that others don’t have to feel it. If you’re a good human being, you shouldn’t have a problem making small (and likely insignificant-to-your-own-life-but-potentially-very-significant-to-someone-else’s-life) changes to your own behaviour in order to make the world easier for people around you.

In other words: empathy, bitches.

Julian and I had an extensive email debate about this video, which I have reproduced below… ending, aptly, with his suggestion that we “post the video and let the debate start”. Well, kids, I’m not above stealing a good idea, so here we are.

Effectively I guess the question comes down to whether or not you believe the director was trying to be transgressive by including androgynous women in the video. If you do believe the goal (in whole or in part) was to be transgressive, I think you have no choice but to admit that the director fell short of it by only casting women.

Thoughts?

On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 6:24 PM, Sarin wrote:
Yo… true times 12 everything you said there… feeling like the music doesn’t match what I’m watching though. Lyrically, yes, but musically, I find myself wanting something less… dance? I feel like I’m willing the tempo to slow and the synths to come down and calm down like an octave.That being said I think it might be growing on me. Definitely very beautifully done in terms of cinematography, and certainly trying to make the viewer slightly uncomfortable, I’m a fan. (Plus I am SUCH a sucker for girls in suits.) 

On 28/05/2010, at 11:08 AM, Julian wrote:
Brooding intensity! That was the phrase I was looking for, definitely high on the brooding scale. Yeah, genius cinematography, and THOSE girls in the background ARE the stars of the whole show right. Could watch that disdain/hunger/nonchalance etc of theirs all day. But absolutely with the music, would love to watch it with more like you described.

On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 3:04 PM, Sarin wrote:
They’re the stars, but only because we have a faux-lesbian fetish. It would have been much more transgressive to have feminine looking men instead, or in conjunction with.

Now, you can make the argument that they weren’t trying to be transgressive, that they were merely trying to create aesthetically pleasing imagery, but I don’t believe that. I think they were going for true ambiguity but missed the mark because they’re all women (and not in a particularly hard-to-discern way, either). 

That doesn’t mean I don’t find it attractive, because I totally do. I just have a complete inability to turn off the anthropological/analytical/queer-studies-educated part of my brain when ingesting pop culture. (Which, for the record, I do not mind at all.)

I think it would have been AMAZING to get cast though… way too much fun to play with that disdain/hunger/nonchalance that you aptly describe.

What do you make of the first dancer? 

On 1/06/2010, at 11:24 PM, Julian wrote:
Ok, ingested. Well that is interesting, I agree with your diagnosis there, seems like I do have a faux-lesbian fetish. Not a full blown one, but perhaps a demi. A demi-fetish, I like that. Even a demi-fetish feels too strong, oh well, I’ll run with it. Were they trying to be transgressive or create aesthetically pleasing imagery (API)?  I have thought on that a bit. Obviously it’s not just one or the other. Isn’t transgressive art about coming not just from a place outside of ‘mainstream’ society, but so outside it would cause someone in the mainstream to be ‘outraged’ to some degree? Evidence for this is where the first dancer, as you refer to, comes in. To me she goes beyond skinny, to a size that most people would feel an adverse reaction to, they would ‘notice’ -to me that is transgressive. What else is transgressive? The lesbian’s in suits? Yeah, I’d say so there as well, but not to the same extent as the dancer. So how about API? The overall cast, even the older woman, showing mainstream acceptable representations of beauty. The set, the cinematography, the wardrobes, the second and third dancers, the third dancer especially. 

So your take was they were predominately going for transgressive art, including the use of ambiguity? Hmm… I don’t know… I don’t think that was the central objective. I think beauty was, beauty amplified by a still ascetically pleasing but forbidden driver, and beauty highlighted showing the dark side (the first dancer), but not so dark it’s highly ‘outraging’. We should totally watch this again together though, I in no way think I’ve got a clear idea of what I think about it. 

Hey, what could replace my use of the term ‘mainstream’? Feel there could be a much better phrase.  

On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 6:07 PM, Sarin wrote:
Let’s be fair: pretty much everyone does. We’re socialized that way. And straight women are socialized to at least accept other naked women, if not be turned on by them, whereas straight men are socialized to be revolted by other naked men. Women ARE sexuality at this point. There’s a reason that Cosmo AND Maxim are both full of half-naked women. And there’s also a reason they chose androgynous women over androgynous men to represent beauty in that video. 

I guess I consider ‘transgressive’ to be anything that challenges hegemonic ideas; where outrage is not a prerequisite, but often a consequence of breaking the norms. People CAN choose to react in other ways… curiosity, questioning, ambivalence, whatever… but often they choose outrage because, consciously or not, they don’t want to deal with challenges to their own world views. It can be a scary thing, and when you’re afraid, it’s easy to be aggressive. But to get back to your point: how far outside the norm does it have to be to be ‘transgressive’? I don’t know. I will, of course, tell you when I think it’s not far enough. I think you could make a more solid argument that the first dancer was much more transgressive because she made us feel uncomfortable. She offers a commentary on womens’ bodies and on dancers’ bodies in particular that we prefer not to see. In contrast, girls in suits offers a much more diluted commentary on ambiguity, and reinforces the use of women for all forms of sexual consumption. We like to see girls in suits. Especially together. Again, had they included gender-ambiguous males into the equation, I wouldn’t make the same critique. 

As a sidenote, I obviously don’t think there’s anything wrong with fetishes or simply knowing what turns you on, and everybody’s got ‘em. Though I think the word ‘fetish’ has a slightly (and undeservedly) negative twang. 

If you don’t like ‘mainstream’, try ‘hegemonic’?

Okay. Bring it on.

On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Julian wrote:
To all of your email: ‘like’

It seems a shame that this conversation is contained to you and me. This is something that would be very cool to throw into a community of listeners – post the video and let the debate start.      

Life-like... apparently.

Last night Mike and I talked about some new tech developments in the sex field, all geared primarily toward masturbation (though you could, of course, use any of these gadgets with a partner): the OhMiBod, a vibrator that syncs up to an mp3 player and pulses to the music; the RealTouch, an artificial orifice (read: vagina or anus) that syncs up with online pornography to squeeze/massage in sync with what you’re watching; and Roxxxy, one of the first sex robots that is capable of rudimentary, grade-3-level conversation. I argued that while a vibrator was never designed or marketed to recreate sex with another human being, products like the RealTouch or Roxxxy are created specifically to imitate sexual activity with a human being (if you can overlook the creepy wires leading out of Roxxxy’s back to the nearby laptop, that is).

Mike suggested that this is merely the natural progression of the virtual reality concept – after all, the sex industry (namely porn) has always been at the leading edge of technological development: the VCR, the internet, and now, potentially the VR experience. So while these may be ‘logical’ or unsurprising developments, I still can’t help but feel a bit sad that in our pursuit of sexual pleasure, the products and gadgets we use are actually driving us further apart. If you get to “have sex with the most beautiful pornstars in the world anytime you want”, as the RealTouch boasts, or bang a robot who will always be in the mood, what’s the incentive to have sex with a REAL human being, one that you’ll have to meet, talk to, and (heaven forbid) give pleasure to instead of merely receiving it?

Ignoring the gender skew (the RealTouch and Roxxxy products here are made exclusively for men) and the really awkward implication that what straight men really want is a set of orifices on legs that doesn’t talk back, I’m weirded out by the fact that we’re choosing machines over humans. Are we just too much trouble these days? Surely not, with a sex-soaked pop culture and a large portion of the population comfortable with casual sex? I’m all for battery-powered gadgets that get you off, but I’m not for replacing human beings with virtual reality sex partners that will never say no.