On Beating a Dead Horse

 

I am a rather opinionated person, especially when it comes to issues of politics, science, philosophy, and food (which is basically everything that I ever talk about). I graduated from the Berkeley political science department last May with high honors. I have spent a fair amount of time and effort studying politics and loud opinions (especially where I am concerned) kind of come with the territory. So, occasionally I feel bad for the family and friends that sit across dinner tables from me with indulgent smiles as I prattle boldly (more boldly after a few manhattans) on about one of my pet issues. I spend a lot of time beating dead horses.

I am a gay male. No one is surprised that same sex marriage, and more generally, the politics of sex and sexuality are very near and dear to my heart. So here I am again beating what to my mind should be a very dead horse. I am starting to think there maybe a necromancer around or a looming zombie apocalypse. No matter what gauge shotgun I use, the dead horse still seems to be running around: civil marriage, as defined by the United States Supreme Court (most notably in Loving v. Virginia, the case that struck down laws banning interracial marriage), is a fundamental right. Unless the government extends that right to gay couples with all the same freedoms and latitudes with which it extends it to straight couples, it is committing a grave act of discrimination and ultimately an act of dehumanization.

It seems to me that very few understand the full scope of that simple statement, even people who should know better. This morning a friend sent me an LA Times article, “He wasn’t the Marrying Kind” by Neal Broverman who is the managing editor for the Advocate Magazine. The article is basically a cute little short story about the author’s date with a gay man who, horror of all horrors, doesn’t “necessarily believe in same-sex marriage.”

The narrative drivels on for approximately 934 words. I say drivel, because though we hear all about Yelp recommended Argentinean restaurants, delicate shrimp eating, and an uncomfortable time spent watching an evening movie in the park, Broverman systematically waists every teachable moment for both his date and his readers.

The thrust of narrative turns on the assertion by Mr. Broverman’s date, Dylan, that he "does not necessarily believe in gay marriage." Dylan’s lack of belief seems to center on his layman’s observation that “The gay relationships [he] see[s] are not what [he] would consider marriage. They are not monogamous.” Dylan defends his views by saying that he “would never vote against [gay marriage]. And [he] support[s] equal rights.” Dylan then goes on to further defend that “people can think different things. We don’t all have to like color purple.”

Now if you are like me, when I hear nonsense like this spew out of a date’s mouth as if their mouth were an open sewage pipe, you get ready to have a teachable moment (though perhaps first you change the subject so you can calm down enough to avoid yelling). In all fairness, Broverman does make his dismay clear to his date. However, his counter arguments are weak and lack the nuance necessary to get at the heart Dylan’s misguided beliefs.

Broverman, points out that you cannot equate marriage rights to color preferences (thank god). Boverman then acknowledges that there is a lot of promiscuity in the gay communities. In an aside to the reader Broverman reports that the last man that he dated, asked, after three months, if he could have sex with his old ex-boyfriend. Broverman tells the reader that since his last committed relationship all the men that he has dated have viewed monogamy as a punishment. In response to Dylan, Broverman goes on to argue a self fulfilling prophecy, that “by refusing to grant gay people the privilege of marriage, many believe that they are not capable or worthy of a monogamous relationship.”

I am happy that Broverman was able to call his date out on the foolish color preference analogy. But I have a real problem with the stuff he says about the self-fulfilling prophecy of marriage, monogamy, and promiscuity. First of all, I think that it is sad to say that gay men think that they are not worthy of a monogamous relationship unless they can put their names on a piece of paper. Personally, I like to think that gay people have higher self-esteem. Being able to put your name on a marriage license is not what makes you worthy of marriage.

But I also have a problem with the fact that both Dylan and Broverman seem to be using the same faulty logic. Dylan says that he does not believe in same sex marriage because gay relationships tend not to be monogamous and Broverman says that marriage will make more LGBT relationships monogamous. It may just be me, but I am having trouble seeing what the connection is between having your name on a marriage license and being monogamous with your partner.

Marriage licenses are not magic monogamy makers. There are plenty of straight couples that still manage to cheat even though their names are on one. There are straight couples that also have more or less consensually open relationships. Though admittedly, the “marriage culture” in straight society does seem to encourage an ideal of long-term monogamous relationships, there is nothing that says it must or that it will encourage the same things for gay people. More to the point, married couples have always been more or less free to define the terms of their own relationship, undoubtedly same-sex married couples will do the same.

Gay people are not fighting for marriage (or at least I am not) so that they can be more like straight people. Rather, marriage has been defined as a fundamental civil right. The government recognizes the commitment that straight people make to one another, whatever the terms of the commitment may be (excluding polygamy and pederasty, etc). It is discrimination if the government then turns around to same-sex couples and says that it will not recognize the commitments that they make to those they love, in the same manner, with the same freedom that straight couples have to define their own relationship.

I think that it is perfectly acceptable to have a conversation about monogamy and marriage. But lets not confound the issues. Whether or not any particular gay relationship is or is not monogamous has nothing to do with the question of whether or not gay couples should have access to the institution of marriage under the same terms that straight people have access to it. As much as we might like to think it, as much as we think it should be, monogamy has never been a mandatory component of a marriage.

It is an open question whether or not gay people and their relationships really are more promiscuous, less monogamous than straight couples. It’s an empirical question. You could design a study, operationalize your variables and go out and take a representative sample. In fact, some academic has probably already done it. But that is all beside the point. It is easy to demonstrate (in the text above I just demonstrated) that at least with regard to marriage rights the supposed promiscuity of gay people and the alleged monogamy of straight people is a difference without distinction. It should have no bearing on the question of same-sex marriage.

I am more than willing to acknowledge that Broverman’s article was obviously not meant to be a serious discussion of policy and law. But because he is the managing editor of the Advocate people will listen to what he says about same-sex issues, the LA times did, and I certainly did. I am disturbed by the pattern of the arguments in his story. The pattern smells suspiciously of same sort of arguments that come out the mouths of the far right, and people opposed to same-sex rights.

The form of the argument is pretty simple. People who oppose same-sex rights bring up some sort of difference that they perceive between same-sex and opposite sex couples, some sort of difference between gay people and straight people. Then they say, well, that is why, that difference is why, gay people should not be allowed to marry, should be excluded from public institutions, ostracized, feared, etc. Gay people are promiscuous, gay couples can't have kids, there is a higher risk of HIV infection in gay communities, gay people dress differently, gay people don’t fit the normal gender roles, and the list can go on and on.

It is true that gay people are different. But gay people are no more different from straight people than straight people are different from each other. The reverse is true as well. Straight people are no more different from gay people, than gay people are different from each other.  More to the point, especially where the question of civil rights are concerned, these are all differences without distinction.

If you want to know why people opposed to same-sex rights are going to be on the wrong side of history it is precisely for this reason: they don’t know the difference between a plain old difference, and a difference with distinction. Politicians, voters, and courts for some time now have asked the homophobes of the world “why shouldn’t gay people be allowed to marry?” In response the homophobes list a whole load of differences. But not once have they been able to tell us why any of those differences could possibly justify refusing to recognize a fundamental civil right.

I am concerned that Mr. Broverman suffers from the same disability. Does he know the difference between the plain old differences and the ones with distinction, the ones that matter? One certainly can’t tell from his article. While Mr. Boverman’s story mucks about in Argentinean restaurants; while it ponders “what people back at the Advocate” would say about dating someone who is anti-gay marriage; while Mr. Boverman dithers about self-fulfilling prophecies; Mr. Boverman misses the teachable moment.

Mr. Boverman misses the moral of his own story. He misses the moment when he says to Dylan, “ yes gay people are different. Yes, some times we are promiscuous. Yes, you yourself are different. But these are all differences without distinction, no one should take away your rights or mine because of them. It is ok to be different.”

I suppose until we all learn this very important lesson we are all going to be beating dead horses for a very long time to come. But it is ok because I am well stocked and well prepared for the looming zombie apocalypse, are you?   

On War and the Soldier

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We have all seen the “Army of One” or the “Few, the Proud, the Marines” commercials. Their images appear in TV ads and before movies. As jets streak across blue skies and ships across the sea, strong looking men and women mix metaphors to the narration of a bombastic announcer. They seem to fight their way through rock and fire, sprinting through obstacles and fighting.

We flash through their training, see them fighting our wars in the fields and in command rooms, glimmering with the sparkle of computer screens and technical read out.  The commercial concludes when much sacrifice, hardship, the drama of combat, and military discipline turn coal into diamond. The commercial’s protagonists stand adorned in the full glory of military uniform. They appear to us heroes on a crest over viewing a vast computer generated landscape.

These commercials only compliment images of soldiers fighting that the average 18 year old male citizen is bombarded with, in movies, in news, and, let’s not forget, in first person shooter video games. Together all these images tell a story: that serving your country in war, that serving your country in combat transforms the spineless, impotent, degenerate-piece-of-coal-civilian into a diamond, into a man (or woman) of integrity and courage, into the virile heroic protector of democracy.

This is perhaps the true story of some if not many of our honorable soldiers. I am not qualified to comment on whether it really works this way. I am not a soldier. I have never been in combat. I have never had to make a life or death choice. I have never had to hold a gun. I am a happily degenerate civilian. Even to me the story of our gallant protectors is intoxicating. But far away form the diffused insurgent fronts in the Middle East, even I can observe that this story is only one of many stories coming back to us.

Clearly, war changes different men in different ways. Since we hear so much about our diamonds in the rough, it might be worth reviewing some of the other stories. How about the soldiers that come back to us with missing arms and legs? How about the soldiers that come back with brain damage from having their heads slammed around in their helmets? How about the soldiers that come back with health problems and can’t accesses their benefits? How about the soldiers that come back in a pine box? 

And those are only the ones that come back with their honor intact, if not their minds and bodies. Let us not forget that the inverse can also be true: some come back to us with intact minds and bodies, but have been stripped of their honor, a disgrace to their own human dignity. We need name only a few. How about the abusers at Abu Grab and Guantanamo? How about the soldier that (reportedly) opens fire and kills 16 sleeping Afghani villagers? Some don’t come back heroes but torturers and murders instead.

All of these stories, the good and the bad, reflect on the charter of our society and they have implications that are both local and global. We should not be proud of all of them. It is clear that war and the military transform.  It is not clear how they do so. It is not clear what the end result of the transformation will be. For many the end result is positive, or at least they are able to go back to family, friends and some sort of civilian life. Despite even the best intentions some times the results are horrific.

Do you think that soldiers enlist with the intent of torturing prisoners or murdering civilians? Perhaps some twisted individuals do. However, I am inclined to believe that more often than not, even our disgraced soldiers enlisted with the intent to protect and serve our country. People enlist with the intent of becoming a better person. They enlist with the intent of learning to become a hero. They enlist with the intent of seeing and making their way in a world that is growing ever more complicated. How do good people with the best of intentions come to do bad things? This is an important story and many have attempted to tell it.

The world has never been anything close to simple, and it continues to grow ever more complicated. We may not always reliably know how environments – like combat, like the military – transform individuals or what the end result of the transformation will be. However, the social sciences, and in particular social psychology, have proven that our environment profoundly influences the way we behave and the way that we think. We know that the influence of our environment often trumps both our personal beliefs and our conception of our selves as “good people.”

Many renowned experiments demonstrate these principles. However perhaps the most well know are the Stanly Milgram Experiments.  In the Stanly Milgram experiments individuals responding to a newspaper ad came to a Yale laboratory where they were told that they would be participating in a study on learning. When subjects arrived they meet a confederate posing as a fellow subject. A rigged lottery assigned the subject to the position of teacher, and the confederate to the position of learner. 

Subjects and the experimenter were then lead to a separate room where they saw a table, chairs, and a shock generator with a dial ranging form 125 volts, all the way up to “XXX.” Subjects were told that they would be reading word pairs to the learner. The learner would recite them back; but if he made a mistake, the teacher would administer shocks in increasing voltage.  As the shocks increased, the learner, who was a professional actor, would become more and more frantic – begging the teacher to stop the experiment, faking spasms, and finally passing out. If the teacher hesitated to administer the next shock, an experimenter in the room would tell the teacher that the experiment required them to continue.

Before conducting his experiments Milgram asked leading psychiatrists what percentage of his subjects would administer the highest shock level. Their estimates ranged from 2% to 3%, which is the prevalence of psychopathy in the general population. Milgram was astonished when roughly ten times that amount (about 30%) administered the final shock.

The Milgram experiments are one of the best demonstrations of how a bad, authoritarian environment can lead well intentioned people into doing bad things. The Milgram studies make me nervous, because I know that I would be one of the “good people” sitting in the chair pressing the button, shocking someone till they pass out. Milgram told a good story because bad, authoritarian environments exist outside of the lab. Milgram's story is one that we must remember when we send people to war.

My 18 year old cousin from Colorado just graduated from Boot Camp.  Though we have never been close, I am proud of him, and nervous for him, upset, and afraid. I am upset because he has wanted to be in the marines since he was 5 years old. I think that people wanting to commit acts of violence (no matter what it is for), is a tragedy. I am nervous because according to a close friend who was in the navy, the marines are “bullet sponges.” I am proud because despite the fact that I (and people like me) am nervous and upset and frankly afraid of and for the people that fight in my name, these people do so any ways. I am afraid because experiencing, witnessing, and inflicting violence, pain and suffering will transform any human being, and it is not always for the better.

Behind my feelings my choices, my cousin’s feelings and his choices, our countries feelings and our choices, there are many stories. Each one contains elements of both fact and fiction and it is incredibly difficult to understand them, to figure out which stories are best to base our choices on. The process of understanding is dynamic, iterative, and unending. To come to understand we must ask many questions of our stories, answer those questions with an integrity that respects empirical facts, and then evaluate the implications of the answers with honesty – which in turn forces us to tell new stories and ask new questions. 

From understanding comes an obligation to both investigate when it becomes clear that we do not understand well enough and to make choices that respect people by respecting what we do know. Understanding how toxic, fear and ridged command structures and a mandate for violence can be to the human condition (i.e. the Milgram studies) obliges us to ask many questions and confront their honest and complicated answers with integrity.

Here are a few questions that come to mind: Is the cause that our solders fight for worth asking them to attempt to endure the toxic environment that is war? Are their other viable alternatives to armed conflict? Will armed conflict actually protect our cause? I am not qualified to answer these questions on my own. But I think that as a citizen it is my duty, our duty, to at least ask them, to learn the art of asking many questions, and to learn how to ask them well.

The presidential election approaches, and my cousin, and our sons and daughters, lovers and haters, friends and family are still marching off to destinies unknown. As a citizen, I have a lot of questions. It is my hope that as citizens we pay our solders the utmost respect by doing our duty as citizens: asking the big and uncomfortable questions and making the big decisions with as much integrity as possible.

On Football

The scene of father and son passing the old pigskin back and forth is a quintessential image of the American family. Indeed, the paternal engendering of football and sports appreciation has become so Americanly archaic that the story line is now conveniently captured in AT&T high speed wireless commercials. The story’s montage is cinematically choreographed to appropriately dramatic music: fathers pass the ball to their sons, take them to football games, and encourage and inspire them to go out for high school teams, perhaps college teams. Fathers in the stands cheer their sons on into a manhood that seems to comprise all the sportsman-like values of America: fierce competition, fair play, hard work, and determination. Through football we see a geneses of American manhood and a whole future of beers and good old father-son, male-male bonding time in the stands or around a big screen TV.

Yet this is not football’s only American story. I, for one, drink too many things with maraschino cherries, little umbrellas, and fancy garnish for male-male bonding time over beer and a big screen TV. At 21 my voice has yet to drop low enough to even make the shouts, grunts, and yells that pass for communication on a football team. Though I am familiar enough with brightly colored spandex pants and net jersey shirts, I would never dream of paring those with cleats, helmets, and pads. And yes, I think that a football game would be infinitely more entertaining if both the cheerleaders and the players got to use pom-poms.    

Football’s integration into America is so complete that not even a nerdy, skinny, white gay guy can escape it. Indeed, football and I have a long and tawdry history. Our sorted affair stretches back to the depths of my bookish, asthmatic, illiterate 8-year-old childhood. My ex high school football star father decided that I needed to be familiar with sports for the “breadth of my education as a person”. Though most kids would have relished the opportunity to spend some quality athletic time with their dad, at the time I felt differently.

Back in the day, my father and I had nothing but quality time. My sister lived with my mother. I went to all my father’s piano tuning appointments after school. Because dad did not allow cable and I was dyslexic, my father would read to me for hours on end instead. Time playing sports meant that dad was going to take longer to get through the anthology of Sherlock Holmes we had just gotten into. So, I threw a knockout drag-out fit complete with tears and flailing limbs that no line backer could have blocked. Yet dad’s unilateral parental order stood firm and by the end of our “ball time” he usually got me to enjoy myself. 

I moved in with my mother in 5^th grade. In middle and high school, football and I renewed our old enmity. I found out just how awful teenage football players can be. For the adolescent boy, athletics is the gateway to a masculine brotherhood and future homo-sociality that tends to ward off bulling and teasing. At the time I was more concerned with my magic card collection and beating my friends at Super Smash Brothers than playing a sport. Mother decided that it could not hurt to ask her best friend’s husband to “pass the pigskin” with me. Though I did not know it at the time, looking back it was probably the first time that I ever had a crush on another man.

Though I couldn’t yet articulate these feelings to others, or myself, I grew to more than adore Jake over the time I spent passing the ball with him, trying to pay attention to foot ball games, listening in rapt attention to his explanations of the rules of the game. Eventually my mother had a falling out with her friend and I stopped hanging out with Jake.

After I graduated high school I went to work for as a legal assistant part time while going to community college. Our common love of fine food and fine cooking made my boss and I fast friends. Hating to get left out of a good meal, I would often come over to my boss’s (who having gone to university of Texas is a die-hard Long Horns fan) for dinner and football. I found that I was perfectly capable of limiting polite dinner conversations to commercials when there was plenty of “classic football food” around: duck and sour cherry sauce on my plate and pinot noir in my glass. After much pate and sherry, wine and food, liquor and dessert I came to understand that even a nerdy gay man can learn to appreciate beefy men in metallic spandex pants clobbering each other on a football field.

This year my friend Tim, who I met rock climbing in Bishop invited me to the super bowl party he and his roommate, Leo, were throwing. Despite my tawdry history with the sport, I had a blast. From what I could gather, the crowd at the party consisted approximately of two major groups. Tim is deaf and many of his friends are deaf, gay, rock climbers (or some other combination there of). Leo is also a rock climber; he is a lawyer as well. There was a fair amount of his friends too: gay, rock-climbing, lawyers (or some combination there of).

It was the most fun I have ever had watching a game simply because of the diversity of the people there. Whenever a successful play was made, the TV room would be filled with a mixture of lawyerly cheers, a flurry of joyous signing, and the happy ululations of people who clearly have no idea what their voices sound like. The happiness and excitement of the game was literally heard, seen, and signed through the air.

Conversations, spoken, scribbled on scraps of paper, typed out on iPhones, and signed centered on topics as technical as coaching decisions or topics as frivolous as the virtues of football player’s spandex adorned asses. I managed to have a conversation in my pathetic attempt at broken spanglish regarding work, college, and cute guys. There was some serious critique of the Black Eyed Peas half time show debauchery. In the kitchen among the baking spinach puffs and pizza, beer bottles, wine, and liquor a group of muscle-bound, rock-climbing lawyers used a storm of legal jargon to discuss prospects in the federal gay marriage case.

It is my impression that when people think of football often they often think only of the stories told in the commercials. You know the one about the production macho white men with beef for brains. I am just as guilty as anyone else: since the days of “ball time” with dad I had always thought myself (at least in the back of my mind) too nerdy, too gay, too sophisticated, and just not bro enough to enjoy football. But regardless, it is foolish to let self-conscious insecurities prevent you from having a good time.

As I flitted from conversation to conversation at Tim’s party I realized that there were no macho men with beef for brains there. In fact not one of the people I talked to lived a life depicted in commercials, and really no one does. Though this is a rather simple observation to make, its profound nature (in my opinion) lies in the fact that it is often neglected. The existence of Tim’s party in and of itself is a repudiation of the American commercial stories.

Though undoubtedly there are quite a few homes in American that follow the commercial bro and beer paradigm, there are parties out there having duck and sour cherry sauce and spinach puffs instead of hot wings with the game. There are parties where people sign their cheers, instead of shouting them. There are parties were the men have the pom-poms and the women have the beer.

I think that the story that was told, at this super bowl party, and parties across the nation, was merely one of people coming together to have a good time. And really isn’t that the more American story? E pluribus unum, out of many one. Despite all the divergent and different stories of people across the nation, on super bowl Sunday those stories converge around something as inane as beefy men in metallic spandex. Whether this convergence happens around a football game, the election of a president, the fighting of a war, or the shooting of a congresswoman, it is quintessentialy a human story and it is the American story. The only question that remains then is how do we want to tell it?    

On the Reverse Strip-Tease

A couple of weeks ago, I had to write a paper about an “on campus event” for my queer African cultures literature class. Because the original event I chose turned out not to work for my paper, I made arrangements with the professor to extend the deadline so I could attend a panel discussion facilitated by the Berkeley Center for Race and Gender on “Pleasure, Power, and Profit in Race Performance.”

The panel featured a number of academics and artists, and was attended by a very diverse crowd of older, very academic looking racial and, perhaps, sexual minorities. I was the only 21 year-old, nerdy, skinny, white, gay guy there. I had no clue what was going to be discussed. Every one else seemed like they knew what was going on. It was strange to feel as if Pleasure, Power, and Profit in Race Performance were quotidian topics of rumination, which had just not occurred to my uncouth mind. I felt very out of place, and very ignorant.

To make matters even better, the weak prescription in my glasses lead me to accidentally seat myself among the speaker designated chairs of the front row. Needless to say, it was not the most ideal location to experience the first strip-tease I have ever witnessed in public (even if it was a reverse one).

I took polite notes through the first couple of speakers. I thought that their presentations were entertaining and relevant to understanding the way that mainstream media and pop culture can pervert our interpretations of race and sex. However, I have been told that it is impolite to take notes during a strip tease. I put down my pen and paper when Narcissister, the last speaker and a successful gallery performance artist, began her presentation. She screened an art-video in which she elegantly manages and admirable physical feat. Narcissister’s performance begins butt naked, and over the course of much dance and frivolity choreographed to the classic disco hit “I Am Every Woman,” pulls an entire outfit, complete with yellow stilettos, handbag, and ray bands out of her hair and the various other orifices of her body.

I figure that on the bright side, I did not have to pay cash for my first strip tease. There were no cover charges, I did not have to tip, and there was no drink minimum. However, I paid double in embarrassment. During the entire, rather lengthy video, with the exception of me, the entire audience was dead silent. People were stroking their chins, and nodding their heads in what appeared to be serious academic and aesthetic appreciation of the art projected bigger than life on to the wall directly in front of me. I, on the other hand, could do nothing but wear a stupid smile and try with all my might to not burst into a fit of giggles. Unfortunately, I do have the comic appreciations of a 5^th grader. Why I did not leave earlier, I do not know. But during the question and answer portion directly after the video while Narcissister was discussing the “challenging physical aspects” of her performance, I knew my oh-so-thin mask of self-control was going to split. I gathered my things and left. The door to the lecture hall closed behind me and I burst out laughing.

I have related the shock and embarrassment of my first strip-tease to a couple of my friends. There has been much appreciation and entertainment from my brush with this XXX rated intersection of race and sex. But after laughing, many of my friends have responded with sentiments such as, “the things that pass for art these days,” or even, “this is the sort of stuff that gets funding for the arts slashed.” These responses puzzle me.

The primary reason that I was embarrassed was that out of the event attendees, I thought that I alone was mentally unprepared with the tools necessary to break down and understand the critique articulated by the reveres strip-tease of every woman. Though it is a poor excuse, the shock from my general unfamiliarity with the naked female form, and the dramatized absurdity of the whole situation left me unexpectedly mentally isolated with my own immature sense of humor, which occasionally finds dancing boobs and vaginas funny. The awkward nature of my poorly suppressed laughter in a silent hall perpetuated the embarrassment and caused more laughter. It was a vicious cycle

However, it never crossed my mind that what I was looking at was “not art” or that it was “offensive” or “gross”. In fact, on reflection I think that for me it was the most relevant presentation. You can debate the definition of art and aesthetics all you like. Regardless, as hard as it is to imagine, the art of the reverse strip-tease accurately describes phenomena experienced by a nerdy, skinny, white, gay guy, and perhaps all people who have ever had to understand themselves in the context of race and gender norms.

I was never a “popular person” in middle school or high school. I was awkward, socially inept, lost in magic cards and science fiction novels, and for whatever reason vaguely effeminate. Indeed, many of my peers seemed to know that I was gay before I was personally aware that I had sexual desires for anyone at all. Like a lot of kids, I was harassed and made fun of, to some extent, for the majority of my lower education.

Being made fun of hurts a lot, and so in middle school I talked to my mother. She thought that my effeminate mannerisms were probably part of the reason I was being made fun of (and she was right). It takes a special kid to appreciate cooking, pretty cloths, and singing quite as much as I did. And so, after much thought and the continuation of my schoolyard woes, my mom decided that my father, from whom she is divorced, was not teaching me “how to be a man.” Lacking the appropriate genitals and experience herself, the next vacation we were off to Colorado Springs, Colorado to visit my uncle for what I came to know of as “man-lesions.”

In retrospect, My mom’s choice in “man-teacher” was not the best one; granted there weren’t many options. Whatever his virtues, when one thinks of manliness and virility, one does not think of my uncle. He is a short middle-aged engineer and pianist with a passion for cycling in bright, multicolored spandex outfits. In fact, off the top of my head, about the only conspicuous, heteor-normatively masculine thing that he does is raise two kids with his wife.

Needless to say, after many bike rides and much time spent with an uncle that was way too smug about his “successful life choices,” the only definitive things that I knew about being a man were 1) drinking out of a water bottle without the sports cap was more manly than drinking water with the sports cap on; and 2) that I could not be the type of man my uncle was, and certainly did not want to be. Though the initial result of the trip was confusion and insecurity, it left me with an understanding of just how absurd and arbitrary labels like “girly,” “manly,” “effeminate,” ect. really are.

I started with knowing what kind of man I did not want to be and eventually figured out that though there are things you can do to avoid being made fun of in school, ultimately, it is more important to try and be a good person whoever you are and whatever your gender happens to be. Conforming your personhood to someone else’s ideas about what it is to be a man (or a woman) is always a matter of performance. In such cases, it is funny how irrelevant your genitalia actually are.

My clever mother understood that gender was an act. Inherently it has to be, if it is something that can be taught. My mom was even right in understanding that many of my social woes (social ineptitude aside) came from my gender nonconformity. Unfortunately because people insist that the act of manhood is attached to a narrowly defined set of observable behaviors that often conflict with people’s desires, gender nonconformity is often perceived as a threat to the masculinity of others.

For these reasons gender nonconformity is not ok with a lot of homophobic people or ignorant kids who have confounded the external act of gender performance with internal moral personhood (yours and their own). Unfortunately, this is a confusion that often results in suffering and, in recent news, teen suicide. 

To those who have suffered at the hands of bullies who gay bash and gay bate: these people aggress because their internalized conception of their own masculinity is so fragile that the existence of any queer identity is a threat to their self-concept, which is tied up in masculine norms. In nonacademic terms, though it is no excuse for their behavior, bullies are ignorant and afraid because they think they have accidentally given you the power to decide whether or not they are a man. My recommendation is to do them (and yourself) a favor and show them that as long they labor under this delusion, they have already made themselves the very ungendered thing they fear. Remember, people do learn and things do change with time. Nothing, not even suffering lasts forever.  

It is the dire consequences (in this case teen suicide) of misunderstandings like homophobia, which make art, like Narcissister’s so valuable. In its own lewd and laughable way Narcissister’s art reminds us that “identities” like race and gender are merely specific external acts that must be legible to an external reader for them to be conceptually coherent, or to exist at all. The satirical overly dramatized way that Narcissister takes a racialized costume of womanhood out of her orifices debunks and pokes fun at the notion of race and gender as emanating from our bodies instead of from the way we read each other and ourselves.

What a strange world this would be if gendered garments really did come from people’s sexual organs. The song Narcissister dances to proclaims, “I am every woman, It’s all in me!” and indeed, Narcissister shows us that it is. But how did it get there, for we can all agree that articles of clothing don’t in fact come from a human body? Narcissister is able to pull a scarf out of her ass, a dress out of her vagina, a shirt and gloves out of her mouth, and stilettos, a purse, and ray bands out of her hair, because in reading African American womanhood in the naked form of her body we have already mentally attributed those objects to and of her body. Ironically, it is ultimately the reader that transforms Narcissister  into the figuration of the “every woman.” Here race and gender are represented literally as they are ideologically: just costumes that we pull out of our asses.

Shakespeare once wrote “All the world's a stage,
and all the men and women merely players.” God, how true it is. We can’t stop acting, and we can’t stop reading. Narcissister is merely reminding us that there is a big difference between the way we read the acts others use to convey an internal personhood and the actual internal content of that personhood. Narcissister has shown us that the reading audience defines the content of the performance. In light of Narcissister’s demonstration and Shakespeare’s perception I think that there is a very important question people are forgetting to ask: if all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; then who the hell is the audience, because, god damn it, the show must go on?

***If you are adventurous, you can find the "Every Woman" video Narcissister screened  during the discussion here.***

On Honey and Lavender Brioche and Breakfast Potatoes

Last Saturday a friend and I had a lovely breakfast at a very cute French café on the south side of Berkeley. Amid the provincial décor and pleasant service my friend and I dined on brioche with honey and a touch of lavender, served with berry jam, butter, coffee, breakfast potatoes and roasted tomatoes. Needless to say I was pleasantly stuffed. Yet I still needed two to-go boxes for my leftovers. I had a very nice time.

I live on the north side of Berkeley. So, I was looking forward to walking off my meal. In order to get home from the café I walk along Shattuck, a street that is populated by restaurants, banks, little shops, and B.A.R.T. stations. It is also sports one of the most depressing homeless populations I have ever encountered. 

The large and ever present homeless population around The Bay area has been a huge thing for me to “adjust to.” In LA my understanding is that the police, for the most part, keep the homeless population out of the “nice streets.” In Berkeley this is not the case. Most of the time it is hard to walk down the street without being asked for change. I have lived here for only about a month and a half, and I think that I might have internalized the work of the LAPD:  I avoid streets where I am going to be “heckled.” Normally, I try to avoid streets that aren’t nice, but those who live in Berkeley can attest that Shattuck is relatively unavoidable. 

Normally I don’t notice that my brisk walks along Shattuck are punctuated with the stench of unwashed bodies, stale urine, and cheep alcohol. And as long as I am telling little fibs: I have not noticed that they are ornamented with sick, malnourished, and filthy bodies propped up against prim shop windows; I didn’t realize that they are scored with the sounds of pleas for change and the whispers mumbles and shouts of the mentally ill wanderers of the streets; no, I never have never noticed any of those things. That day, as usual, the friction of my feet on the dirty pavement and an ability to ignore my surroundings would have guided me happily home, but a woman asked for the leftovers out of my hand and I gave them to her.

My gut reaction was to ignore her. I was half way down the block before the request had registered. I had moved on to the next block when for some reason I turned around, walked back, and gave both boxes of food to the woman who had asked. The remainder of my lavender and honey kissed brioche and garlic breakfast potatoes went to woman in her late twenties or early thirties with festering sores on her face and stench that could wilt the lavender she was about to eat. I gave her the food and without a word stalked off.

The rest of the way home I really did manage to lose my self in thought. Right now the taxpayers of California and to a lesser degree, the United States pay all of my expenses: from pleasant breakfasts and school tuition to rent and B.A.R.T. trips. I have a full scholarship to Berkeley. I am reliant on the good will, perhaps the charity of the state. Weather I look at my education as a gift, a job, or an investment (perhaps it is all of these), I can't help but wonder what brings some people to Berkeley to beg on Shattuck and others to learn in the one of the best universities in the world.

I have asked around and received a number of different answers. Some people say that I got into Berkeley because I worked hard. Some people insist that the poor are on Shattuck because they are lazy. Some people tell me that I am at Berkeley because I have been lucky. Some people declare that the poor are on Shattuck because they have been unfortunate. Some people say I am at Berkeley because I wanted to be a student. Some people assert that the poor are on Shattuck because they want to be beggars. Some people have told me that I am in Berkeley because I am smart.  Some people think that the poor are on Shattuck because they are stupid. But regardless of our wants, the unfortunate, stupid, lazy truth of it is that you should not give a rat’s ass about what some people say, because some people don’t know their asses from cream cheese.

The list of pusdo-explanations goes on and on. But unless provoked, for the most part I find that people don’t even bother to make them. There is as little will to explain the problem, as there is to fix it. It is more simple to just walk by and completely ignore it. But the fact remains that with regards to the above psudo-explanations I can only make one counter claim: that regardless of my wants, my luck, my intelligence, and my work ethic I would be nowhere without the help, and yes, charity, of others.  Without the help and guidance (regardless of whether I wanted or not) of my parents, friends, mentors, teachers, and the society in which I live, I would be nowhere.

To say the least, homeless people smell bad and are often ill and dirty. Even walking by them can be an assault on your senses. Admittedly my immediate gut reaction is to have as little to do with them as I possibly can. But, regardless of gut feelings and rationalizations, there is no denying that we owe more to humanity than to allow others to suffer merely because we don’t want to think about the problem or because the intervention would be too dirty. No one is any more deserving than anyone else food, shelter, medical care, and a good life. We do not help people because they deserve it, we help them because they need it, and we all do whether we want it or not. The self-made-man is a myth. It is little more than a fiction used to rationalize away the fact that some people have so much and some have so little.

As I was standing on the corner, a block away from the woman I had just given my brioche too, an old woman with long grey hair attempted to cross before the light. She was almost run over by a car. The car didn’t stop. It didn’t honk. It just drove on.

When she reached my side of the street, assuming that I had actually been paying attention to her near brush with death, she turned to me and said “you know, they will run right over you.”  There was a queer look in her eye as she said again, “ I tell you boy, they will run right over you, they will run right over you.” And again, “they will run right over you around here.”  Just as the light was about to change, she asked, “Hey, you go to UCB?” I mumbled an affirmative as I stepped off the sidewalk. I walked away and she said, “Good, you have a cool look about you. ”

Until last Saturday I had not given a penny to homeless here, and technically I still haven’t.  In that respect I think I am just like the man in the car. People “will run over you”, but even in Berkeley, it involves a choice to not see. The near miss might have been an accident. The woman was crossing against the light.  But it was wrong of that driver to not stop and make sure the old woman was ok. That driver knew that he had a very near miss, but he chose to drive on and not see.  He could not spare a second to make sure that he had not killed or maimed someone.

How many times do we on the sidewalk choose to not see, to not hear the beggar on the street? They are no less invisible than the old woman. How many times do we not stop to makes sure that some one is ok? Perhaps we don’t stop because we already know the answer to that question. But perhaps better questions to ask are why aren’t we helping, and how can we start?

On Pick-Up Lines

There are many dilemmas that come with being an eligible gay bachelor. One of the primary ones is dating. Between upper division classes, work, and an eligible population well under 5%, it is difficult to find the time or the man.

Today, gay bars and clubs have deteriorated into little more than cesspools of awkward, drunken, over-sexualized social interactions, which are more likely to lead to something dangerous than meaningful. In short, they were thrilling when you were 16 and stupid. All it takes is little life experience to ruin what used to be a good time.

Evidently, the new “solution” for the eligible gay bachelor is online dating. Though I must confess that I was at first enamored with the concept, I now understand that online dating has merely taken the disaster of the club and transcribed it, minus the flashing lights and bad techno-remixes of over played pop songs, into indelible digital letters.

Remember all those come-ons and one-liners that you uttered in the relative anonymity and frivolity of a bar? Thankfully it is easy to forget such things. Today Pick-up lines, which, by the grace of god, used to be muddled by alcohol, loud music, and a crowded bar appear on your computer screen in perfectly legible black letters. Indeed, whether you are G.L. (good looking) or V.G.L. (very good looking), D.T.F. (down to fuck) or looking for a L.T.R. (long term relationship); such Pick-up Lines are now the universal currency of online dating. The First words you email someone are the first axiom of an augment whose logical conclusion is a hang-out/date.

Counter to fact, one might even assume that typically such legible words would be at minimum polite, complementary, and inquisitive. Lets face it, regardless of your “stats” (variables such as height, weight, body build, ethnicity, and yes… cock size) there are only so many ways to respond to introductions such as “Dude” “Hawt,” “Sup,” “cute,” or “☺”. Most of them do not involve a return email. These introductions are the calling card of the desperate, sex staved, beggars of the online dating scene.

Though I have received such calling cards, by virtue of my poor eye sight and vintage (from the 90s) Calvin Kline round black mettle glasses, there is an even more obvious and “original” come-on for me: “has anyone told you that you look like Harry Potter?” I suppose posting picture where I am wearing glasses (as well as cloths) might invite this come-on. I suppose that being told that you remind someone of Daniel Radcliff (only taller) is a compliment. But the proper answer to the question is yes. “Yes, I have been told that I look like Harry Potter.” This answer usually implies that ”no, your not the first person to make that observation. No, you’re not clever or original after all.” So I usually don’t respond, and if I do, I say thank you and move on.

Last night, fed up with my homework, I decided to check one of my dating sites for emails. I was excited to have received one from a beautiful (if the picture was real) tall, muscular, tan, blue eyed man who’s profile included poetry. Call me a sucker.

Him: Hi how are you? I find you interesting so far.

Yay! Not Harry Potter! It seems like he might actually have something to say.

Me: hahah why is that?

Hell, I was curious. Generally you don’t tell someone they are interesting without a reason

Him: I could no sooner answer that question than answering the purpose of the universe.

Grammatical problems aside, you have got to be kidding me right?

Me: Ha! I will take that as a compliment. But I don’t think you can answer the purpose of the universe. It is not asking you a question.

If only he could have picked up on the sarcasm…

Him: I beg to disagree. We all are matter and matter is comprised of the universe. It has been proven that every human being accounts for 1 % of the universe within them, therefore, you being made up of universe particulate ...it is asking through you

Bang!... Most profound metaphysical statement of my life: matter is comprised of the universe (silly me, I always thought it was the other way around. Wasn’t energy in there some where?), which consists, in its totality, of 100 people (1 person = 1% then 100 people = 100%).

---End Conversation---

So I just ridiculed a guy that I have never met in a public forum where he has no opportunity to respond. That’s right, I can be an ass and a coward (I am really bad at come backs) at the same time. In exactly 100 words (I counted) we can both walk away with profound yet almost completely unsubstantiated negative judgments about each other. To a certain extent that is what dating is about. It is a judgment about who you want to spend time with and how you want to love. He was handsome, funny, nice, polite, and inquisitive, hell… I will even give him poetic. Yet, I can honestly say that I wont talk to him again and have no desire to ever know him. Would you?

I think that it is sad when an institution, which is supposed to promote people being together, becomes a new way to arbitrarily ascribe negative qualities to one another. One of the great talents of the human brain is something called “theory of mind”: we are aware that other people are independent agents capable of their own thoughts. Furthermore, to a certain extent we can anticipate the thoughts of others and make judgments based on this modeling.

This task becomes extremely difficult and complicated when the person you’re modeling is someone that you have never met sitting at a computer anywhere with an Internet connection. How do we judge? Do we rely on a pick-up line? What about “stats”? How about 100 words? But I guess the better question to ask is how should we think about each other? How should we love?

A Rose for LA

I have always found that whichever dark (and possibly smelly) place your head has been, it is never too late to reflect. Though I didn’t realize it till I left, over the course of 20 years living in LA I accidentally managed to establish a pretty nice life. I have lived in Berkley now for just over a month. My mother and sister have moved from LA. It would be hard for me to go back for anything but short visits now. But LA still feels like home.

So I hope it is also not too late to give a tip of the hat to the city that I came from. I have waded through a boozy nightlife, slaved in pristine century city penthouse firms, and fought the vicious old ladies and wild bimberinas of Brentwood. Admittedly, I would like to think I learned something along the way.

Though LA is often thought of as a haven for superficial judgment and shallow thought, I have found it to be a land of principles and standards. Not even the most superficial judgment can be made without the acknowledgment of some higher standard. The reciprocal is also true: no standard can be relevant without the judgments that bring it to life.

There is no denying that there are a lot of judgy people in LA. On the grand scale of things these superficial standards might be foolish. But it seems to me that in the attempt to evaluate we also affirm and perhaps create a meaning that transcends the mere implications of our actions. Though this is no protection against cause and effect, it is insulation against the bitter cynicism and determinism that fools people into not being involved. You cannot deny that in LA people are involved, even if it is only with them selves!

Movie stars and fancy billboards; slutty nightlife and snobby ladies, gaudy mansions and gutted ghettos; in my experience, no matter how superficial or foolish, people in LA people act and treat them selves as if they matter. LA is an illustration of how even the vacuous, supercilious, and just plain silly can produce something worthwhile.

The result is an LA that burns bright enough to attract people like moths, from all over the world. Despite the threat of a fiery death, they stay. There is a magic and beauty when a life is transmuted into a flash, pop, and puff of smoke. Perhaps in the end it is magic such as this, which gives us the meaning and light that sustains and guides us all.