Oh, I’ve caught up. I was less far behind than I thought… Confusing.
Continue The Song!
‘Kay, so not that these ideas of mine generally seem to take off, but giving it a shot anyway. I just watched this video, in which John Green can’t remember the words to Hush Little Baby and starts making stuff up, and it turns hilarious. And I realized that I don’t remember much farther than he does.
So I figure, if each person adds one more silly ad-lib link to the song, this could be a pretty fun chain. (I recommend using ‘I’m’ in place of ‘Mommy’ or ‘Daddy’ or what-have-you, just so it all flows together)
(Doing the first five lines as normal, and then the fun begins)
Hush little baby, don’t say a word;
I’m gonna buy you a mocking bird.And if that mocking bird don’t sing,
I’m gonna buy you a diamond ring.And if that diamond ring don’t shine…
I’m gonna buy you a piece of twine.
And if that piece of twine don’t tie…
I’m gonna buy you a pink bow-tie;
And if that pink bow-tie won’t bow…
14kgoldnyc replied to your post: 14kgoldnyc replied to your post: There are a few…
I think with words that are in the process of changing, especially, people need to be much more conscious of age and background. My dad still cringes when I use ‘queer’, because that was a slur aimed at him. It’s an important perspective to keep.
True, true. Good point. Our ways of expression and presentation often adjust to suit the situation and the audience, including choosing our words according to how the people’s we’re addressing will interpret them. And there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that.
(Hey look, I replied to one of these without making it into an essay! I feel proud. On this positive note, I shall go to bed.)
dinoquark replied to your post: There are a few people who use “bisexual” as “attracted to all possible genders,” claiming that the “bi” can refer to “people with genders like yours” and “people with genders not like yours.” But they’re also usually the people who deny the rights of others to identify as pansexual, so I’m wary of the logic, as it seems to come from a place of dictating how other people should identify!
I don’t see bisexual as being any more binarist than heterosexual, homosexual, gay, lesbian, or straight. I guess I don’t see why bi is usually what’s brought up here while all those others tend to be ignored.
I’m with you there.
Well, I guess ‘homosexual’ is less questionable since the proposition that someone is attracted to people of the same gender as themself doesn’t imply anything at all about how many other genders there may be. And ‘lesbian’, if it means ‘woman attracted to other women’ (which I think is how pretty much everyone uses it?), is similarly okay although oddly specific.
But basically I think Kinsey Hope is right to say that our set of terms for sexuality, taken as a whole, is to a greater or lesser extent underwritten by heteronormative cissexism. If we were starting from scratch we’d probably develop a completely different set of descriptive terms that would clearly distinguish between, among other things, sexual preferences based on physiology and sexual preferences based on gender identity. But we obviously can’t just ignore the existing set of terms, awkward and unhelpful though they may sometimes be: we can’t ignore them because those are the criteria by which oppression is exerted. One can say ‘oh hey I’m not homosexual because that implies a conceptual type of sexuality and actually I just really like dicks of all genders and none and in fact the dick I currently enjoy on a regular basis is attached to my girlfriend’, but that isn’t going to make that person safe from anti-‘gay’ bigots.
So apparently my conclusion is that it’s all quite complex and messy and non-ideal?
14kgoldnyc replied to your post: There are a few people who use “bisexual” as “attracted to all possible genders,” claiming that the “bi” can refer to “people with genders like yours” and “people with genders not like yours.” But they’re also usually the people who deny the rights of others to identify as pansexual, so I’m wary of the logic, as it seems to come from a place of dictating how other people should identify!
Honestly, I frequently use ‘bi’ for convenience’s sake: most straight folk are more likely to understand me when I use that then if I just say ‘pan’ or ‘queer’. Plus, I’ve been identifying as such for a long time, before other terms were in use.
Fair enough! I am absolutely not here to criticize anyone for doing or saying things that make their lives as marginalized people easier, or for identifying themselves however they do. I’m sorry if it seemed like that. It’s the bit where they start trying to criticize other people’s identifications that makes me prickly.
Not that there aren’t times when it’s legit to criticize other people’s identifications. If a white person identifies as two-spirit or a cis person with somewhat non-normative gender presentation identifies as genderqueer then there’s obviously room for saying, ‘Er, maybe this is not okay’. I personally wouldn’t get too much into that because I’m not a member of any of the groups that have a two-spirit tradition, I’m not genderqueer, &c., and I think identity is one of those particularly sensitive things that people probably shouldn’t call others out about unless they can do it from a position of saying ‘I am one of the people you’re hurting’.
So I guess my position is that I’m not saying people shouldn’t use ‘bisexual’. I’m not saying it’s oppressive. I’m not saying it isn’t oppressive. I’m saying I think it has a certain undercurrent of binarism in it, but whether that makes it actually harmful (and, if so, whether the harm outweighs its benefits) is a judgment I can’t and don’t want to make. I don’t think it harms me, that’s all I can say about it. And whether or not people use it to describe themselves, I don’t think people should ascribe it to others who don’t want it. Especially not when, as with the criticism of Cynthia Nixon (because I’d hate this conversation to float too far from the original context — that’s when things get messy, I find), they’re doing so in order to reject the other person’s self-identification.
Me, well, there’s no word I can use to describe my sexuality that isn’t going to leave most people with either the wrong idea or no idea what I mean. So I guess that puts me in a slightly inside / outside position on the whole thing. :)
There are a few people who use "bisexual" as "attracted to all possible genders," claiming that the "bi" can refer to "people with genders like yours" and "people with genders not like yours." But they're also usually the people who deny the rights of others to identify as pansexual, so I'm wary of the logic, as it seems to come from a place of dictating how other people should identify!
(Context.)
Are there indeed! I didn’t know that, thanks. Hmm.
Well, I dunno. If people want to try to shift the meanings of words, or use words differently from others, okay. But someone who’s doing that is presumably not a believer in linguistic prescriptivism. So unless those people are also highly inconsistent, they presumably wouldn’t try to say that there is only one valid definition of ‘bisexual’.
Prescriptivists generally rely on dictionaries, or at the very least on common usage, to distinguish their one ‘correct’ definition from all the other ‘incorrect’ ones. Someone whose definition is not in dictionaries and is not supported by common usage really hasn’t got any basis for promoting their definition over anyone else’s. (I mean, they can argue that it has greater merits and ought to be adopted, but they can’t argue that others are wrong.)
Since we’re on this subject, I actually do think there’s a kernal of binarism lurking in the word ‘bisexual’. It isn’t as simple as ‘but etymology!’. Etymology, as Melinda says, is not a linguistic top trump. But I think the difficulty comes from the tension between the word’s etymology and its meaning. It’s important that this is a very obvious and well-known etymology. A lot of people who would never guess the original connotations of (to use Melinda’s examples) ‘vocabulary’ or ‘rape’ will immediately, without even thinking about it, grasp that ‘bisexual’, when used in the same way as ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual’, must mean ‘attracted to precisely two genders’.
So if we have a definition, in ordinary usage, of ‘bisexual’ as ‘attracted to women and men’, and we put that together with a very hard-to-ignore etymology of ‘attracted to two genders’, we end up with a word that really only makes sense if there are only two genders and they are male and female. If that doesn’t make the word in itself binarist, it makes it a word that’s much more comfortable in the gender binary than out of it. It’s transparently a word that a non-binarist world would not have come up with. That doesn’t mean it can’t be repurposed, but it does make me wonder why it isn’t better just to use words without these problems.
mikroblogolas replied to your post: Re: Nixon, I fully support her right to define her own sexuality as long as she doesn’t try to erase mine, i.e. “I don’t pull out the ‘bisexual’ word because nobody likes the bisexuals.” (Source Towleroad. Ask filters links, but I blogged it earlier today.) Maybe if “nobody” likes us, media figures should stop acting like bisexuality is something to be ashamed of.
“bisexual” isn’t by default binarist. see my long post on this and a million other people’s discussions of it, as well as the definitions by a lot of bi orgs. some people use it to mean “two,” but a great number of people use it mean “more than one.”
Hello! Yes, I read your post a week or two ago, in fact, and it’s one reason I was quite careful not to say that ‘bisexual’ is necessarily binarist. Which I’m pretty sure I didn’t?
I think what I said was that the fact that there are more than two genders means we can’t assume that Cynthia Nixon is bisexual. That’s still true even though some people use ‘bisexual’ to mean ‘attracted to more than one gender’, because we can’t know whether she is one of those people. The only way we could say that she’s definitely bisexual (ignoring my other two reasons why we can’t) is if we were going to say not only that ‘bisexual’ can mean ‘attracted to more than one gender’ but that ‘bisexual’ always means ‘attracted to more than one gender’, or that ‘attracted to more than one gender’ is the only definition of ‘bisexual’. Which is, of course, not true.
Also I think it’s fairly evident that the term was not being used in that sense by either of the people I’ve been engaging with who want to call Nixon bisexual and want her to call herself that. John Aravosis, in a passage I quoted, said this:
What she means is that she’s bisexual, and doesn’t quite get that most people aren’t able to have sexual romantic relationships with both men and women because they’re just not into both genders. She is into both genders.
Doctordisaster made a post, obviously responding to Nixon’s comment that ‘nobody likes the bisexuals’, saying:
“Nobody likes the bisexuals”EVERYBODY LIKES THE BISEXUALS!
it may have something to do with the DEFINITION OF THE TERM
Which obviously makes no sense unless you think ‘the definition of the term’ is ‘has sex with everybody’. And, although there are people who use ‘bisexual’ to mean ‘attracted to more than one of the various possible genders’, there are, as far as I know, no people use it to mean ‘attracted to all possible genders’ except the people who think ‘more than one gender’ and ‘all possible genders’ are the same number, i.e. two.
Re: Nixon, I fully support her right to define her own sexuality as long as she doesn't try to erase mine, i.e. "I don’t pull out the 'bisexual' word because nobody likes the bisexuals." (Source Towleroad. Ask filters links, but I blogged it earlier today.) Maybe if "nobody" likes us, media figures should stop acting like bisexuality is something to be ashamed of.
Hi! Thanks for pointing me to that. For others, this is the Towleroad article, which in turn quotes from a longer interview at the Daily Beast. Relevant passage:
Kevin Sessums: …You’ve been quoted as saying about these two relationships in your life: “In terms of sexual orientation, I don’t really feel I’ve changed … I’ve been with men all my life and I’d never fallen in love with a woman. But when I did, it didn’t seem so strange. I’m just a woman in love with another woman.” I’m a bit confused. Were you a lesbian in a heterosexual relationship? Or are you now a heterosexual in a lesbian relationship? That quote seemed like you were fudging a bit.
Cynthia Nixon: It’s so not fudging. It’s so not. I think for gay people who feel 100 percent gay, it doesn’t make any sense. And for straight people who feel 100 percent straight, it doesn’t make any sense. I don’t pull out the “bisexual” word because nobody likes the bisexuals. Everybody likes to dump on the bisexuals.
KS: But it is the “B” in LGBT.
CN: I know. But we get no respect.
KS: You just said “we,” so you must self-identify as one.
CN: I just don’t like to pull out that word. But I do completely feel that when I was in relationships with men, I was in love and in lust with those men. And then I met Christine and I fell in love and lust with her. I am completely the same person and I was not walking around in some kind of fog. I just responded to the people in front of me the way I truly felt.
Is that erasure? I’m not an expert on this stuff. I have relatively little experience of erasure, of how it happens and how it harms. But to me this doesn’t read like she’s saying bisexuality doesn’t exist. Or even denying she is bisexual herself. It reads like she’s saying she doesn’t use that term because ‘everybody likes to dump on the bisexuals’. Which, from what I gather, is kind of true?
Does simply choosing not to call yourself bisexual constitute erasure of bisexuality? Are we taking that approach now? Are we saying that bisexual people are obliged to identify themselves as such, even when they can expect to be stigmatized or marginalized or not taken seriously, even within queer communities, as a result? Are we saying that people who are afraid or ashamed to call themselves bisexual are actually being oppressive? Why are we interested in criticizing those people rather than the structures that are making them feel that way?
Okay, I recognize that it’s a self-perpetuating problem. The under-representation and the marginalization deter people from proclaiming their bisexuality, and at the same time the fact that people don’t proclaim it means it continues to be under-represented and marginalized. That’s clearly a reason to praise and celebrate people who resist that trend and make their bisexuality known. It sounds like you’re one of those people, and I celebrate you for it. But shouldn’t we be very careful before going from ‘people who are open about their bisexuality are doing a good thing and should be praised’ to ‘people who are not open about their bisexuality are doing a bad thing and should be criticized’?
But anyway, I’ve got a bit off the track here, because I’m writing as if it’s a given that Nixon is, despite what she says, bisexual. It isn’t. Even if there is some sort of moral obligation on people who are bisexual to say that they are, I don’t think we can say that she has that obligation because I don’t think we can say that she’s bisexual. Here are three reasons why.
First, okay, so she had sex with men in the past. Now she’s in a relationship with a woman. It seems to be a monogamous relationship. As far as we know, she hasn’t had sex with a man in the last, like, eight years. A lot of gay people have had straight relationships at one time or another. Some quite serious ones. Then they stop having them. Are they all always bisexual for the rest of their lives? Is there a certain number of years that have to pass? Or do you become gay as soon as you disavow your former relationships and confess that you were living a lie the whole time? Can’t sexuality change?
Secondly, there are more than two genders. That doesn’t mean that people can’t be bisexual or that all bisexual people are ‘really’ pansexual or whatever, but it does mean that even if you think it’s okay to label someone’s sexuality according to some kind of ‘objective’ criteria regardless of their self-identification, you can’t logically assume that a woman who has sex with men and women is bisexual. That person may also have sex with people who have another gender, or people who have no gender. We don’t know.
Thirdly, and coming back to the theme of my post yesterday, we can’t confidently say that Cynthia Nixon is bisexual because she doesn’t say she’s bisexual. Because, look, maybe I’m being overly rainbows-and-butterflies idealistic about this, but I think it would be nice if we could support her right to define her own sexuality even if she were trying to erase other people’s. It would be nice if we could support her right to define her own sexuality, regardless of anything she says or does, because it’s her right, because getting to define your own sexuality and describe it in your own terms is not a privilege that you have to earn by doing good deeds but something that we should support even the most obnoxious hateful people to do, because that’s the kind of revolution we want. One where people don’t deny or question your identity, your own account of yourself, even if you’re kind of a douche a lot of the time, because that’s just one of those things that we don’t do to people.
I know that isn’t my judgment to make. I’m not bisexual. If you think Nixon is being so harmful and oppressive to you that her own account of her sexuality doesn’t deserve respect or support, I have to concede that I’m less qualified than you are to make that assessment. All I can say is that I wish it weren’t like that; and that I’d like a queer community that regards accepting people’s self-descriptions as a basic rule and that criticizes the forces that oppress people rather than the people who don’t manage to overcome those forces. That’s the sort of community I see people I admire working for, and that’s what I want.
Image is a screen-capture of a headline reading Cynthia Nixon On Being Gay: ‘For Me It’s A Choice’, above a photograph of Cynthia Nixon.
Well. Now Cynthia Nixon has gone and pissed me off.
“America Blog writer John Aravosis was among those to criticize Nixon’s choice of words… ‘Every religious right hatemonger is now going to quote this woman every single time they want to deny us our civil rights.’”
I can definitely relate to what she’s saying, but only because I’ve been in the same place. Straight people can’t relate to that and saying that being gay is a choice really conflicts with the idea of being “born this way” which I think is the only way many people begin to understand the roots of homosexuality.
Nobody comes out of this looking good.
I take your point, Sarah, but to me it seems like Aravosis and company come out looking a lot worse.
I mean, when did political inconvenience become a valid reason to criticize a queer woman for the way she describes her own sexuality? Exactly what kind of world is Aravosis working towards? One where people can have civil rights as long as they’re prepared to subscribe to one particular model of human sexuality and describe themselves in its terms even if it doesn’t fit them?
It’s worth just comparing a couple of Nixon’s comments with some of Aravosis’ response. Here’s Nixon:
I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.
…
Why can’t it be a choice? Why is that any less legitimate?
Here’s Aravosis (warning for binarism and ‘splaining):
What she means is that she’s bisexual, and doesn’t quite get that most people aren’t able to have sexual romantic relationships with both men and women because they’re just not into both genders. She is into both genders. And that’s fine. But she needs to learn how to choose her words better…
Allow me to get sarcastic here, because, hey, wow, I would definitely like to sign up for the new rainbow utopia where your sexuality is whatever Mr John Aravosis tells you it is. That absolutely sounds better than the one where people get to define their own identities and it doesn’t matter whether those identities are chosen or innate or constructed or whatever because it is generally understood that someone’s identity is their identity and that alone deserves a bit of bleeding respect.
Okay, at this point my first draft of this post turned into an angry link-filled rant about how objectionable Aravosis is, but you can google him yourselves if you want to know about that. That isn’t the point because he isn’t the only person saying this kind of thing. The point is:
- If some people are going to use a queer person’s account of their own identity to bolster anti-queer bigotry, how about criticizing the bigots, not the queer person?
- If some ‘allies’ are only okay with queer sexuality as long as it’s innate and can’t be helped, how about challenging that view, not shushing anyone who isn’t prepared to collude with it?
- If we want a world where people can be open about their sexuality, how about supporting people who are open about their sexuality?
- If we’re trying to make things better for people, how about prioritizing and listening to actual people, not treating them like obstructions to ‘the cause’?
- Basically, how about having a movement that tries to be what it wants the world to become?
So Jamie got an Ask a couple of months ago basically asking if he could truly call himself ‘queer’ when he (apparently) receives straight privilege in every way.
This is the ask in question.
I know that it is important for certain aspects of an identity category to be questioned, but seriously, my gut reaction to the ask was this:
I don’t exactly like the implications of my being misgendered. Hmmm.
The picture is a simple drawing of someone side-eyeing a computer screen.
~•~
And here’s another response:
qinhara answered your question: Okay so I made a post a few days ago that I…
hey. i think it’s valid for you to identify as queer. and i think it’s terrible that this anon is invalidating your partner’s gender. D:
~•~
Not much to add really!
Dr. King, Nichelle Nichols, and Dr. Mae Jemison
Summary: an article about Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura in the original Star Trek, and Mae Jemison, first black woman in space.
Curator’s note: this post didn’t make it into today’s lineup at the main blog—I wrote this way late last night/early this morning—but I wanted to share it because it does speak to the power of seeing one’s image in pop culture. It’s also one of my favorite stories about Dr. King. ~~Andrea (AJ) Plaid
[Image: a grayscale photo of Nichelle Nichols, the black actress who played Uhura on Star Trek, at NASA mission control surrounded by black people.]
In honor of Dr. King’s birthday and the US government choosing Dr. Jemison to lead a multigenerational mission to the nearest galaxy this past week, let’s look at the woman who connects these two historic people: actor and advocate Nichelle Nichols, who also made history.
From the Wall Street Journal blog:
I understand that the Uhura character didn’t even exist before you were hired.
I walked in to the interview with this magnificent treatise on Africa by [Robert] Ruark called Uhuru, which is Swahili for Freedom. Gene said he really liked the name of that book and wanted to use the title as a first name. I said, why don’t you do an alliteration of the name Uhuru and soften the N and make it Uhura? He said you are Uhura and that belongs to you.
How much input did you have in creating Uhura?
I created my background, where she came from, my parents. They were ambassadors and one was a scientist, so I had this to live up to as well as the expectations of Spock. I made him Uhura’s mentor.
It sounds like you put a lot of thought into the part. Why did you want to quit after the first season?
After the first year, Grace Lee Whitney was let go so it became Bill and Leonard. The rest of us became supporting characters. I decided to leave the show after the first season.
What convinced you to stay on?
I was at a fundraiser and the promoter of the event said there’s somebody that wants to meet you. He is your biggest fan. I stood up and turned to see the beatific face of Dr. Martin Luther King walking towards me with a sparkle in his eye. He took my hand and thanked me for meeting him. He then said I am your greatest fan. All I remember is my mouth opening and shutting.
What was that like?
I thanked him so much and told him how I’d miss it all. He asked what I was talking about, and told me that I can’t leave the show. We talked a long time about what it all meant and what images on television tell us about ourselves.
Did you know then how much of a role model you’d become?
Oh, god, no. I thought of it as a stepping stone to Broadway. I went back to Gene and told him what had happened, and that I was staying. He smiled up at me and said, thank god for Dr. Martin Luther King.
Did the experience change how you played Uhura?
Nichols: It’s one of the most important things that happened in my life and it changed and defined my career. I took my role much more seriously after that.
Because of this conversation and because Nichols took King’s advice, she inspired generations of people—especially young Black girls—to imagine themselves in space. One of those people is former NASA astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison, who is a longtime friend of Nichols.
[Image: a photo of Nichelle Nichols and Mae Jemison.]
From Dr. Jemison’s alumni publication:
“Images show us possibilities,” the Stanford graduate says. “A lot of times, it’s fantasy that gets us through reality.”
A quarter of a century after Lt. Uhura boldly went where no African American had gone before, her protegee returned the favor. Before blasting into orbit aboard the Endeavour in 1992, Jemison, the first woman of color in space, called actress Nichelle Nichols to thank her for the inspiration. And then she made a promise:
Despite NASA’s rigid protocol, Jemison would begin each shift with a salute that only a Trekkie could appreciate. “Hailing frequencies open,” she could be heard repeating throughout the eight-day mission.
Jemison also paid the favor forward: she appeared in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. According to Slice of SciFi, Jemison has “the distinction of being the first real astronaut to appear in a Star Trek series.” She also co-founded the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, which sponsors a international science camp and, according to the wiki about her, appeared at a “forum for promising girls” in Washington, DC, with FLOTUS Michelle Obama in 2009.
Just something to think about on this holiday.
Photo credits: Star Talk Radio and Collect Space
I adore both these women.
Four photographs of a little white-and-ginger kitten. In one it has biiig black pupils; in another it’s looking up hesitantly; in one it’s doing a sort of little growly face; in one it’s yawning.
Rebloggin’ for Erin. 8D
BAAAABBIE~ Look at those precious eyes~
(via torayot)
“The parents’ plotline is my favorite part of teen melodrama.”— no one(via supcakes)My so called life anyone?
(via yeahgrrrl)
Joan of Arcadia anyone?
I really liked the way My so-called life used Angela’s parents to resolve the problem the writers were stuck with when it got cancelled. [Spoilers.] They’d obviously wanted to set Angela up with Jordan and then play that out over another season or two and eventually she’d grow out of him and meanwhile Brian would get less self-righteous and stuff and they’d get together. When they didn’t have time to do that, they could have just chucked her and Brian together, but it would have been too early and wouldn’t have worked.
So they let Angela choose Jordan and ride off on his bike, because he was the right choice for her at that point. They didn’t reward Brian’s Nice Guy tendencies. But at the same time over the last few episodes they filled in the parents’ back-story — her mum having to make the same sort of choice, going with the hunk, eventually ending up with the geek — to show how it could play out over the long run that we aren’t going to see. That was well played.
I haven’t seen Joan of Arcadia — would you recommend it?
Help Kiri out?
tchy:
Kiri’s tax refund still hasn’t come in, and she’s living on very little in terms of money for her food and necessary living expenses right now, after having paid her rent.
If you have any change to spare, it would mean a lot if you could send it her way and help her not go hungry. If not, could you reblog this for her?
GPOY
Pensive bathrobe buddies! :D
At the top is a webcam photo of Garland, lit strongly from one side and looking pensively off-camera. He’s wearing what looks like a dark blue dressing-gown with lighter blue stripes.
The second picture is a webcam photo of me, in a pose approximately mirroring Garland’s and similarly lit. I’m wearing a dark blue dressing-gown with lighter blue stripes.
Pear gave me this dressing-gown for Christmas and it’s really warm and comfy and I like the colours and the rounded collar / lapel thing. I basically wear it whenever I’m at home now, even if it isn’t really cold enough to warrant it.
