Getting over PiV [Or how Lesbian Sex Changed my Str8 Sex]

18th
Nov. × ’11
By Rachel R. White

photo by Giulia Agostini

When I was a kid, I thought “sex” was two people peeing on each other. Like, I imagined you got in a bed naked and cuddled  for so long that inevitably you would have to pee. But instead of getting up to pee, you just “let go” and peed together, in the bed. This romantic notion just made sense in my eight-year-old brain.

By the time I hit middle school, I totally knew what sex was. Or at least I acted that way, ready to jump on my more naive peers with a “You mean you don’t know?!”

I thought I had gathered the correct information about the genitals, for the most part. I stared at the instructions that came with boxes of tampons, and tried to understand how one went about inserting them … or anything at all down there. I prayed no one would give me a pop quiz about how the logistics of it all worked.

So when I was 15, and my 14-year-old boyfriend and I decided to have sex, it won’t shock you to know that we couldn’t figure it out. We knew sex meant this one act, this penetration thing, but it just didn’t work for us. Later, when we broke up, I wrote, heartbroken in my diary, that I’d “practically had sex with him.”

I remember writing that diary entry, and feeling like I had lost a layer of my virginity, and a significant one; it wasn’t sex per se, but it was still something important. Later, I crossed out the entry, because I hadn’t gone all the way. The big question amongst my friends was, “Did you, or didn’t you?”

Later, of course, I did. At 16, I had a serious boyfriend, who was a few years older than me, meaning he had his own place. Every time we saw each other, our clothes just jumped off our bodies and we went through a montage of sex positions and role play games. There were schoolgirl costumes and anime porn (both my ideas, which I feel baffled about to this day, these tastes haven’t followed me to adulthood.) But, I was into this at the time. I liked the sex we were having. Yet, sometimes I felt pressure for it to end in penetration, like I owed it to him, like that is what counted and made it sex.

As we settled, a few years into our relationship, the role play stopped, the intensity began to disappear– but we were still having a lot of sex. Every-time we hung out, it was a lot of laying on the couch watching movies, waiting inevitably, for the kiss on my neck and poke in my backside. And, always, I would oblige. But I would find myself trying to hurry the sex along, faking turned on, wondering if he would go home in time for me to catch re-runs of “The Golden Girls” on Lifetime.

I guess I felt like, that is what you did as a couple, or like, I wanted to be physically intimate, so sex was what I should do.

Looking back, I wonder how would it have been different, if I had known what I know now about sex. Could I have offered a different sex act instead that I might have enjoyed more?

In college, single and going to house-parties, I started keeping close tabs on my number. Not because I was terribly worried about sleeping with too many people, but because I liked tallying, and keeping things neat and clean. On nights when I couldn’t sleep, I liked re-counting my sex partners, imagining some strange reality show where someone locked all of the men I had slept with in a room together and made them interact. Would they guess what they had in common? Who would get along?

But inevitably, as I tried to tally my sex partners, I found myself wondering, the same thing my friends did about the first guy: Did that one count? Did I or didn’t I have sex with him? Was there actual penis-in-vagina? Should I add him to the list?

Then I started dating a girl and came out as bisexual. Maybe I should have mentioned, even my eight-year-old-self thought “pee sex” could happen between ANY two people!

–Read the rest at TheFrisky for my Aha! moment

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Do you Believe in Marriage? Pt. 1: Some History on the Wife

11th
Nov. × ’11
By Rachel R. White

According to EJ Graff, scholar and author of the book What is Marriage For, there are five static reasons people have married throughout time: 1. property, 2. kin 3. money 4. order 5. heart.

When I got married it was with the idea that we  could have a sort of liberated wedding. Sure, marriage is a troubled institution, but we could pick and choose between sexist traditions, and keep the ones we felt some sort of connection with. But, of course, it is not just the wedding that has troublesome roots (how often we fiance’d  forget: a marriage is not a wedding!)

So, what is the baggage that comes with “wife”? Here, I’ve talked to a handful of marriage researches, trying to dig into the roots of the institution I am in.

According to marriage historian, Stephanie Coontz, virtually all societies marry. The only culture Coontz found that didn’t marry was the Na or Mosuo, a small matriarchal society near Tibet. Because they don’t marry or live with partners, children are raised by their mother’s family. It reminds me of when I was a little kid and my Mom asked me who I wanted to marry when I grew up. “You” I said, bewildered. Wouldn’t I be with her forever?

Coontz says marriage has spread to, essentially, all cultures because marriage does one important thing  in every society: it creates in-laws. (I’ll abstain from mother-in-law jokes.) Coontz says, “Marriage arose as a way of extending social cooperation between groups: acquiring allies, trading partners and making peace. The Anglo-Saxon word for wife is peace maker.”

But for the peace-maker, historically, there wasn’t a lot of choice. One can say women were once chattel, in Ancient Greece ‘gifted’ from their fathers to husbands.

Wife selling was once popular. In England in the 17th century, during a time when only the very rich could divorce, the wife would be announced in a newspaper. During the event, the woman would be led around by a rope or ribbon, shown off to the crowd and then sold to the highest bidder. How is that for a reality show?

According to E.P. Thompson who has done a great deal of research on wife-selling, the wife might already be living with her new partner, who would surely be her highest bidder — though she might be subject to bids from complete strangers. Thompson also tells of one bargaining where the woman didn’t like the highest bidder, so she and the former husband opted for a lesser bidder.

But wives had major roles in family business.  So say, in the 17th century, you were a lady who married a shopkeeper. You were just as vital to the business, you might keep the books and deal with customers. The wife was as a business partner, but legally, the husband owned all wages.

“That situation began to change in the mid-1800s, as judges and legislators began to allow wives to keep the wages they earned. Women also succeeded in getting some states to offer grounds for divorce. Back then (and still today) women initiated divorce proceedings more often than men did” says Coontz.

Then Industrial Revolution made a big shift: “Work left home. Men were kicked out of the house and into offices, while upper and middle class wives were locked inside. Instead of being a shared economic bond, marriage became an emotional haven,” says Graff.

Instead of marrying to start a business together, marrying for love was the shocking new idea. Which kind of marriage, again, is the one with sanctity?

Until the 18th century, families had the biggest say over marriage. In this way, young men were just as much prisoners to marriage, having not much more choice than women. Read this way, the institution can be seen as less about men controlling women and more about families controlling their offspring.

Marrying for love came from the radical new notion that humans had a right to happiness. “Social conservatives of the day were horrified. They predicted that once marriage was based on love, some people might refuse to marry without love, while others might demand the right to divorce if there was no love. They worried that men might stop exerting their authority over their wives and start giving in to them. It took a while for these things to play out, but they were quite right,” says Coontz.

And today, social conservatives are just as outraged about where marriage is now headed — to equality, for the right of all couples to marry.  I wear a gold band on my left ring finger, symbolizing the relationship but my husband, but sometimes I find myself hiding that hand, unsure of my status as someone who “believes in marriage”.

There area  lot of reasons to not believe in the institution. For us, being married works, and I can accept the troubled history of the institution…. but I would feel a lot better about my ring finger if all consenting adults were able to marry.

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Guest Post | Unpopular Men: Representations of Men & Masculinity in Pop Culture

4th
Nov. × ’11
By Rachel R. White

This is a guest post by the notorious Quiet Riot Girl.

Remember that review by Lindy West last year, of Sex In The City II? Where she inquired:

“What is the lubrication level of Samantha Jones’s 52-year-old vagina? Has the change of life dulled its sparkle? Do its aged and withered depths finally chafe from the endless pounding, pounding, pounding—cruel phallic penance demanded by the emotionally barren sexual compulsive from which it hangs?”

Apart from the fact the young Seattle journalist was able to employ misogyny in order to criticise the misogyny of a Hollywood film and get away with it, I was struck by how her article was one of so many. Not just one of so many that criticised Sex In The City II, but also one of so many articles that focus on representations of women in popular culture.

Lindy West became a symbol for me, a symbol of feminist media and cultural criticism that completely ignores men, or belittles and demonises them whilst going on and on about “sexist” portrayals of women in film and television. Lindy West and other feminists caused me to ask a question I am now known for asking: no, seriously, what about the men?

A feminist who has actually turned her attention to men and masculinity in popular culture, is Hannah Rosin. But I’m particularly unhappy with her treatment of the subject. Rosin recently wrote in The Atlantic, that the many of examples of ‘loser’ men characters on current TV shows represent her theory that we are now witnessing The End Of Men.

Rosin cites TV comedies such as: Man Up!, Last Man Standing, How to Be a Gentlemanand observes:

“They all feature men who are unemployed or underemployed, love to play video games, and are desperately in need of a makeover. ‘Life is a big jerk and punches you in the face over and over again,’ complains Bert Lansing, a lughead personal trainer in ABC’s How to Be a Gentleman, played by Kevin Dillon from Entourage. Now that I have actually seen them… I worry that maybe I have helped to unleash a race of genetic mutants onto the population–diseased and dysfunctional men ranging from placid to sad to furious, fumbling around in the office, the supermarket, or the bedroom while the rest of America laughs.”

I could add to the list of programmes featuring ‘loser’ male characters, The King Of Queens, Two And A Half Men, Everybody Loves Raymond and Family Guy.

If Rosin was a feminist woman commenting on negative representations of women in TV programmes you can be sure that, like Lindy West did in her SATC review, she’d be crying ‘stereotypes’! and ‘sexism’! and ‘misogyny!’ But no, comparing these shows to some others, she writes: ‘The loser-men sitcoms, by contrast, are fairly heavy on the realism’.

So Rosin is saying programmes like Two and A Half Men, featuring an alcoholic, workshy womaniser, are ‘realistic’ depictions of how men are in general. Misandry much?

Read More »

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Praising Monogamy

4th
Nov. × ’11
By Rachel R. White

Recently my husband and I went on a double date. We met my friend Kate and her husband Bear, at a German Beer Hall. I hadn’t met Bear, and I always find meeting a friend’s partner interesting. Kate seemed to come to life in Bear’s presence. He is upbeat but sensible, she is witty and wildly imaginative. She is small and brunette, he is big and blond. They are a physical yin and yang. And even though there was plenty of room on the bench, they sat close, Kate in the nook of his arm.

Maybe it was the crowded hall or the oversized stein of beer, but I suddenly felt warm watching Kate pluck pommes frites from Bear’s plate. They are proof that monogamy is a valid option, and one that can be mindfully chosen with integrity.

I fully endorse monogamy, but my husband, Edmund, and I are not monogamous. And among the polyamorous, non-monogamous set, monogamy isn’t often talked about as a valid option. Maybe it’s because most people just fall into monogamy as a relationship default. But monogamy can be chosen, and in the beer hall, I remembered the days when Edmund and I chose it.

When we were first dating, we slept in a small twin bed. No matter which way one of us turned, there was the other’s body: face-to-face, head-to-chest, butt-to-butt (the latter of which is apparently called “zen style,” the more tasteful way to describe it).

One weekend morning, I woke up to a surprise: a new queen size bed had been delivered with fresh bedding and pillows.

“You know I ordered that bed for you,” Edmund likes to remind me.

This was when we were getting serious. We were becoming exclusive. He wanted to nurture our bond and he did so by making space for us to fall in love, a private space.

In those early days, I couldn’t have imagined fitting another person into our life. There wasn’t time for it. It seemed like days were lost in our new bed. Every moment was spent staring at each other, or when apart on the phone, saying “I love you” before we hung up (which is great until you accidentally say it to the boss, then you spend all non-boyfriend  phone calls, half listening, half mentally reminding yourself don’t say “I love you”!)

The eye-gazing adds up. It takes time to get to know another person, and by being monogamous we had  a lot of time to devote to one and other, to understand how we fit together, to understand what kind of relationship  would work for us.

When I asked Kate why she and Bear chose monogamy (this was big choice for her as well) here’s what she said:

“When you’re secure, you have all of this time. Time to get to know your partner really well. Time to get really, really good at having sex with them. Time to think about plenty of other stuff. When I was single, I was always looking. Like, a tenth of my brain would be looking for a potential partner while the rest of it was doing something else.”

In mine and Edmund’s relationship, building a foundation with monogamy made me secure. Being monogamous at first was a way to get a handle on jealousy, it was showing each other that we were committed. It was understanding how we both handled jealousy. It was building trust, so that later, we could shake the foundation up a little and still be okay. I don’t think being non-monogamous from the start would have worked, for us. Read the rest at The Frisky.

Photo by Rita Lino

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Trans Masculinities; Exploring Trans Issues

28th
Oct. × ’11
By Rachel R. White

Last weekend I attended the Masculinity, Complex conference at City University of New York, my favorite panel was on Trans Masculinities. Someone that day said “it is funny we talk about trans people as both totally normal and angels, doing so much for the discussion on sex and gender”. I laughed, because I too feel in awe of trans people and the way their visibility opens up discussions on sex and gender. Here is what the panel got me thinking about:

Buck Angel and a Dead Trans Teen: Sometimes it is easy to forget, living in a progressive LGBTQ bubble how dangerous and pervasive transphobia is.

One speaker gives a talk about Buck Angel, the infamous trans male porn star or “man with a pussy”. He begins with a clip of Buck on the Howard Stern show, in which Howard is made to guess Buck’s “secret”, also in which Buck rides the simian– a fucking machine with a dildo’d apparatus.The speaker points to the look on Howard’s face when he realizes Buck is not a “real man”. The joke is on Howard– but the focus on transphobia here feels especially important.

We had heard earlier from Ken Corbett, who recently sat on trial for the Oxnard California middle school shooting. Corbett describes Brandon, a blonde and blue eyed popular boy who killed Larry, a brown boy who was out as gay. Though Corbett suggests that from what we can gather, Larry was probably trans.

During the trial, Brandon, the blonde one, the alive one, said he was doing the school a favor–everyone knew Larry was a problem. There defense argued that Brandon wasn’t bullying the trans boy, Larry. But that Larry was bulling everyone by “causing a distraction”.  That he was being a menace just by being himself.  Teachers from the school testified about how feminine Larry was, how he wore high heeled boots. Corbett recalls a moment in court, where the teachers and defense lawyer mime how Larry walked.

During the Buck Angel presentation, an interview is shown in which Buck reminisces about his own adolescence, how as a child his parents accepted him as a boy and he was mostly treated like a boy, allowed to go by a boy name. But when Buck hit puberty, his family urged him to dress feminine, act like a young woman.

I was transported, momentarily, to a memory. I am home from college and a family member is asking an old highschool friend whether or not her little sister is still dressing like a boy, now that she is a teenager and all. Still a tomboy. “Is she still acting like a boy?” asked this family member. “Who cares” I spat out, angry at this — to which both my friend and family member frowned and said, “don’t you care about this little sister?”

Gay TransMen: Lou Sullivan and the fact that Gender and Sex are Separate

The next speaker read from the diaries of Lou Sullivan. Lou was a transman living in San Francisco in the 70’s and 80’s. A young Lou writes about going out dressed up in cowboy garb and enjoying lingering looks from men. Later, still living as a woman, Lou has a long term relationship with feminine a man, whom he encourages to have gay encounters.

Lou was F-M trans and he was also a gay man.  Because of this, psychologists refused him hormones  (surely if he liked men, he must not be a man!) Later in the 80’s, Lou would die of AIDS, leaving us with the knowledge that gender identity and sexual orientation are separate concepts.

from Sean Dorsey’s suite of dances choreographed to the diaries of Lou Sullivan; this one is the AIDS sequence

I took special interest in Lou’s diaries. I had just written about gay trans men.

From that story: “Passing in the world as a man, the transman’s relationship to other men changes completely. ‘I remember when I began passing fully, and I started getting checked out on the street by men…that was interesting,’ says Amos Mac, editor in chief of Original Plumbing, a quarterly magazine about the trans male experience. ‘You become invisible to the queer girls who checked you out before. Suddenly everyone is ignoring you, except for gay men. I remember really liking their attention, I always wanted that attention. Before, when I would work the door at gay clubs and hang out with gay men, all I wanted was to be accepted by them, I hated being seen as a girl by gay men.’”

I’m starting to feel a little Gender Queer myself or Who actually identifies with their Gender role?

The closing speaker of the panel was the gender queer cabaret star, Justin Vivian Bond. On Bond’s website is a list of preferred pronouns. It reads: Prefix: mx | (pronounced “mix”) | Pronoun: V  | Gender: trans or T | Full Name: Mx Justin Vivian Bond.

Bond read from V’s memoir. In closing, Bond told a story from the night before. A group of teenage girls got on the train, giggling before falling on the seat like a “pile of kittens”. One braided the others hair, and when they arrived at their stop, the girls trotted off together, hands still in each other’s hair. Bond said “I just wanted to share that . I guess I feel lucky that I’ve been able to experience that kind of intimacy.” Then, later: “The gender police are erasing so many possibilities by enforcing these two roles”.

Images all from Original Plumbing, shot by Amos Mac

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What I learned at a Sugar Daddy/ Sugar Baby Party

20th
Oct. × ’11
By Rachel R. White

The last guy bought Tia a car. He also paid rent, bought clothes and gave her thousands of dollars here and there. She was 19 and in school; he was 45 and owned a construction company. “He told me, ‘You got what it takes to take what I got.’ And I took him for all he had!” says Tia. She is here to try to find someone to replace this ex. I’m here undercover for Time Out New York, posing as someone like Tia, to figure out how the world of sugar daddies works.

This sugar daddy/sugar baby ball is hosted by SeekingArrangement.com, a dating site for those looking for “mutually beneficial relationships.” The party is at the Copacabana, a Times Square bar that might look glamorous to tourists. Tonight, women who sparkle under the club’s neon lights fawn over men who are drab in comparison.

Tia smooths her hair, which is swept to the side, prom-style, revealing one glittery earring. She asks what kind of guys I’ve talked with. “Two hedge-fund managers,” I reply. She’s talked with a lawyer and a business owner. The men in the crowd range in age from their thirties to eighties.

Mel, the first hedge-fund manager, is on the younger side, with a baby face and a briefcase. When I ask if the nature of the sugar relationship is freeing, he sneers. “I don’t like it when the girls get really transactional. I’m busy, and it’s a low-key way to meet women. But it can be trashy,” he says. I ask him to clarify. “Here—” he gives me his phone and tells me to put my number in. “You ask too many questions, but I’ll talk to you about it later. Somewhere not so loud.” I lift his arm from my shoulder and politely move on.

Among the women, there were lots of tall heels, hair extensions and accents—local ones from Queens, Long Island and Jersey, and more newly local, from the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and Latin America. The women were friendly to one and other—we were in this together, after all. I chat with Christina, a J-Woww lookalike who’s planning to leave the sugar-baby lifestyle; she’s starting her own business and has great investors. She didn’t go to college but has learned a lot through her older friends. Later, I bond with Arielle, an artist with auburn hair and tattooed arms. She lives in Bushwick with her artist boyfriend. “What does he think?” I ask. “If I can get a second stream of income out of this dating site, why not?” she says.

Thanks to several websites like SeekingArrangement, recession-trend stories have been sparked about college girls using the site to help with tuition. In New York, there is now an entire “sugar culture.” According to researchers from the Sugar Project, a study on sugar-daddy culture funded by George Washington University, there is always a negotiation moment in these relationships where each party names their price. “Say, she only wants to see him once a month and she wants $5,000. He counters, fine, but he wants to be able to call her to come to events,” says researcher Elizabeth Nistico. If this agreement isn’t made in the first few dates, it often takes a more passive route. For instance, perhaps every time she meets him, the woman will find $500 in her purse afterward. Without that money, she would stop seeing him.

My new sugar-baby friends offer me tips on how to set this up. Candy, a 22-year-old with bubbly cleavage and a gap between her front teeth, advises that I negotiate before the men so much as touch. The first time she did this, a guy gave her $2,000—all she had to do in return was go to a nice dinner and give him a hand job: “A hand job! How easy is that?” As we talk, Tia comes over. She’s upset because the guy flirting with her asked, point blank, how much? While Nistico says many women negotiate up-front—by e-mail or phone before meeting– Tia, like Mel, prefers a little more illusion. “He was an investment banker,” Tia tells us. “You should have asked for $5,000!” Candy replies.

According to employees of SeekingArrangement, there are seven women for every man on the site. At the party, there seem to be two to three women for every guy. The men seem happily dazed, sitting back as women in mini dresses form lines to sit at bottle service with them. As the night wears on, the women arriving seem to grow more beautiful and more aggressive. “Listen to his problems, let him talk about his family or work,” I’m advised by my new friends. I watch as brazen Arielle and Candy suddenly become coy and demure around men.

When I ask Nistico what findings are the most surprising, she says it’s how much the men can be hurt by the sugar relationship, “The role reversal is what is so interesting to me. The women are manipulating the men, and if the relationship takes a turn for the worse, the man often ends up being victimized—not the woman,” she says.

In the ladies’ room, Christina is giving a speech from the stall. “Get yours! Ask up-front. Don’t date if they don’t own that business. Network! Is that cocaine on the floor? Someone sniff it up!” It is another illusion unraveling: While the girls play submissive in the club, here in the greenish light of the bathroom, it is clear that it is the guys who are betas.

Toward the end of the night, I see one man slip a wedding band back on as he leaves the club. Some men and women leave together, but many depart alone. The sugar babies want money for a date, not a one-night stand, and the competition is tough. “I’ve got a date for every night this week!” a blond guy in his forties exclaims.

The next day, I receive a text from Mel. He wants to know if I’d like to “rendezvous to see if we are in sync” [wink face]. I consider forwarding the text to Arielle or Candy, but I don’t have their numbers, and I’m certain they’ll get what they need eventually. Given all the girls last night, surely, Mel will find what he’s searching for as well.

In Part Two a male writer, posing as a Sugar Daddy, hilariously tries his luck at the same party. Read the rest here! I recommend it.

What do you think of “Sugar Culture”? Do you support people who sign up for these sites?

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Re-visiting No Make-up Week

14th
Oct. × ’11
By Rachel R. White

Remember No Make-up Week?

“Yeah, but I don’t wear much….”  were my first thoughts last year when I decided I wanted to run the experiment. And I realized I was a little quick to run to the defense of my make-up bag.  I wrote: “Make-up is a powerful tool, it has the ability to transform, incite imagination and creativity. But, when an option turns into a necessity,  I don’t know it it’s still a tool. At the least, it loses it’s spark.”

Flash forward a year later. I have lived in New York City for four months and I still haven’t shaken the “Sex and the City” fueled naivety of, “Who knows who you might run into!” I’ve gotten used to making myself up for these imaginary special someones. I feel a flinch of pain just leaving the house to get orange juice at the corner bodega without any primping.

This year, I am not conducting a blogosphere wide No Make-up Week, but I am doing the experiment on my own– I shunned cosmetics for a week, journaled about it and wrote about it for The Frisky. The philosophy of this No Make-up Week is the same: It’s not about taking a week off  because make-up is somehow bad or because not wearing it is better. It’s that by taking a week off, I should be able to understand my relationship to cosmetics more clearly.

Because sadly, I don’t think a healthy relationship to cosmetics is a given. It’s things like this: A study from students at the London College of Fashion, claims that 8 out of 10 women prefer their female colleagues to wear makeup and the same number of women said they would rather employ a woman who wore makeup than one who didn’t.

By day two I am feeling that social pressure. I remember those studies that claimed make-up mirror ovulations, a time of the month when we are naturally “more beautiful” because we are, essentially,” in heat”. I realize with slight disappointment that I’m not ovulating. That must have been last week,  when I felt a secret urge to grab an attractive person’s crotch in the street and began thinking evolutionary psychology really had some merits.

On day four, As I rounded the corner to my apartment I spotted a group of skaters, some guys who are crashing (squatting?) in a Brooklyn garden unit next to mine. As I approached, they greeted me, as per usual. That’s when a realization hit me. Blow number one: I don’t feel like I can be an attractive, sexy lady, without makeup. Blow number two? That I actually wanted these guys to find me hot.

I started considering what it means to be sexy as a woman in our culture. How it’s often this one specific image—young, thin, and femme with and an air of sexual availability. (But not too available, of course—let’s keep girls confused!)

But what does the image of a successful female look like? It seems basically the same. As I began to make meetings with editors and fellow writers, I realized,  I felt a similar pressure to appear conventionally attractive—even sexy—to my professional contacts as well.

My favorite moment from last year’s No Makeup Week was when I first saw the gallery of photos women submitted. Scrolling through, I felt astonished by how unique everyone looked. I realized that with makeup, we were all sort of painting on the same face—the same exaggerated lips, the same big eyes, the same even skin. Everyone looked so much more interesting without these things.

The gallery prompted responses like “Everyone is so beautiful!” and “Such natural beauties!” It seemed set up for responses like this, in a way, but still—it bothered me. It was the idea that we needed to be seen as beautiful to be worthy. “You are naturally beautiful” was never meant to be the project’s message.

On day six, in the bathroom during a meeting with an editor, I think, damn, was this the realization I was waiting for all along? Your value is not your looks. I think of the “You are Beautiful” mantra, a street art message later co-opted by bloggers. I think: “Maybe you are not beautiful. But what about your other qualities?”

 Do you remember No Make-up Week? Where are you one year later?

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Long Live the King: Why don’t we Love Drag Kings like we do Queens?

13th
Oct. × ’11
By Rachel R. White

photo snapped of Switch n Play

I’m out with a pack of drag kings. I’m in the backseat and in front are Billy Burg and Jonathon Bitchman — members of drag-king troupe Switch and Play. We’ve just come from a performance and Jonathon is still in muttonchops and cowboy hat. We are headed to a John Waters-themed drag party. “John Waters loves drag kings!” someone says in the front seat — “Well, John Waters at least had drag kings in one of his movies, which is more than I’ve seen anywhere else.”

Lady Gaga’s recent VMA stint as drag king persona, Jo Calderone, may be the first drag king performance on national television. We’ve seen drag queens on screen, Rupaul has been on television for more than 20 years, but there has been no king equivalent. But it’s not for a lack of a scene — Murray Hill, an accomplished NYC drag king is finally getting some notice by UK television — still no love in the U.S. Propping myself up between the two kings in the backseat, I’m trying to figure out why.

Drag historian, Joe E. Jeffreys archives early footage of drag performances, and from what he’s found, drag kings were there from the beginning. Storme Delarverie, a drag king (and Stonewall veteran) performed at the Jewel Box theater in the 1950’s. The Jewel Box was a traveling drag show that extensively toured the U.S. from the 40’s up until the early 70’s.

Even in earlier days of vaudeville (in the late 1800′s on) drag-kings were common. Women would take the stage dressed as men to sing songs, tell stories — which were somewhat off color — and smoke cigars. Simultaneously, in American culture, gender roles were under going a massive change. This era saw women pushing for the right to vote, and even the right to wear pants. “The big sociological question is how did this transfer to the stage?” asks Jeffreys.

In a loud club, I am drinking whiskey with the kings. I shout over the music; “Is the drag king more taboo than the drag queen?”

There are a lot of answers to this. “It’s more disruptive of power,” says Billy, getting at the idea that a man loses power when he dresses up as a woman, but a woman gains power by dressing as a man. “I mean it’s literally aggressive to put on male drag,” someone agrees.

The talk inevitably turns to Gaga’s performance and the very reason it was so shocking. She was being sexy in a male way, which registered as shock and horror on the faces of sexy pop starlets like Katy Perry and Britney Spears. “I can’t think of another time a female pop star — or anyone — so blatantly broke the gender binary on television,” someone says. Definitely, women in pop culture are expected to adhere to very specific roles.

According to Jeffreys, the popularity of drag king’ing comes in waves. If the 1940’s and 50’s saw was a time of celebration of drag kings — the 1990’s was the drag king explosion. In New York, Club Cassanova was the first weekly drag king party. Diane Torr offered drag king workshops. And at bars in the East Village, Shelley Mars took the stage, in drag, telling sexist jokes — “why do men come before women?” — “Who cares?” before jerking off beer bottles. Or, she played a gay male character with AIDS dementia.

portrait of DRED by Rebecca Swan

In 1997, John Waters interviewed Club Cassanova’s organizer, Mo B. Dick. Mo points out that, at the time, there were a lot of feminist messages in drag — a critique of men — but the drag kings of color were often more respectful. “There’s too much negativity going around as it is. So they’re more positive,” Mo says. DRED’s on stage message is a shining example: “Society is so concerned with what makes a woman and what makes a man. All that matters is what makes us human… Let your light shine through. Let your fire burn.”

Mo also describes his first drag character — a sailor who slapped boys on the butt. Waters says, “You were ‘trade’ that’s what you were. A woman dressed as male trade. That’s very sexy. It’s confusing. See, to me, sex is always the best when you’re confused.”

Classic drag is about performing a gender role– one that is outdated. “Who is that person lady gaga presented? Has that person existed since 1955?” asks Jeffreys.

Where the kings of the 90’s were critiquing masculinity on stage, the kings that followed embraced it.  “I’m interested in how men are vulnerable. And how masculinity can be a burden” says Billy, whose personas include a businessman who discovers he’s gay, and a creepy preacher.

At the John Waters showcase, I am getting an education in the newest school of drag performance. The younger kings go beyond masculinity and shun the binary altogether. A drag king might have breasts and a phallus. As Jeffreys reminded me, sociologists tell us that the first two things you register about anybody in the first three seconds of meeting them is their race and their gender. And maybe that’s why I like this new drag so much, it is confusing.

Talking to the Kings, it feels frustrating that they have not been able to break into popular culture the same way queens have. “We live in a society that sexualizes femininity, so to have a woman dress as a man breaks those norms and mainstream society has a difficult time seeing women in masculine roles,” says Billy.

But also, as I watch the John Waters showcase, which includes gender-queer homages to Divine, and an act where a performer does something unspeakable with a hard boiled egg, it’s hard not to appreciate feeling a part of something still off the mainstream radar, untainted by the inevitable effects of joining popular culture.

This story originally ran on Sexis as part of my SexBeat column. See more stories like this one here.

You tell me:

Why haven’t drag kings caught on in popular culture the same way as drag queens?

Is there something more taboo about a woman taking on a male role?

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Occupy SlutWalk | A Personal Account of Two Protests

7th
Oct. × ’11
By Rachel R. White

It is Saturday night in New York City, just after midnight. While most of Manhattan seems to be walking to and from bars, at Liberty Square hundreds of protesters are in sleeping-bags covered with tarps to keep out the rain. It’s hard to navigate the park without stepping on a snoring body; a few are sprawled blanket-less on park ledges meant for sitting. Someone strums a guitar and people sing in a tent by flashlight, as if from inside a paper lantern.

Earlier today I went to SlutWalk, the world-wide anti rape-culture protest. It’s timely in New York, with two cops acquitted of rape charges and police warning women to dress conservatively. But after Slut Walk, I came here, to day fifteen of Occupy Wall Street–the “live in” protest about the disparity of wealth among the classes, the control big business has on the government and the corruption of Wall Street institutions. I should have guessed that tonight the protesters would be exhausted–just hours before 700 people were arrested in a march over the Brooklyn Bridge.

At SlutWalk, I pulled my sunglasses over my eyes, as I felt them filling with tears. It was the feminist rhetoric I grew up with that got to me. All around me were women with signs like “blame the system not the victim” — and “Slut” scrawled on their chest ala Kathleen Hanna. The lonely teenage riot grrrl inside of me couldn’t believe it.

But at Occupy, my eyes were wide. It wasn’t the fight I grew up with, but the one that was happening all around me, the frustrations of my generation unfurled. There were messages like “Wealth is meaningless on a dead planet“  or “United Snakes of America”  scrawled on deflated Trader Joes bags or spotted pizza boxes. I watched in a daze, before realizing I had fallen in line for the march.

At the foot of the bridge,  a sea of people unrolled as far as I could see. It was a sampling of the general population– the various ages, ethnicity and culture you might see on a Metra train. At Slutwalk one of the speakers had said “look around you, look at all of the different people and cultures and colors” and I swallowed back a tiny sob. Here, all the more true, I felt warm and stunned, too shocked to cry.

As we marched onto the Brooklyn Bridge, other protesters went on the street below  which had now been cordoned off. “I want to be down there!” I heard and people began jumping from the bridge to the street. One man positioned himself over, gripping the railing, and a police officer grabbed his legs– he was dangled above a 500 foot drop into the east river. Some protesters pulled him back onto the bridge.

I missed the SlutWalk march. But as SlutWalk marchers rounded back chanting, “hey, hey, ho, ho, rape-culture has got to go” I felt my heart beat, bongo-like. At Occupy Wall Street, we were told “don’t yell at the police, they are part of the 99% too. Be peaceful!” But at SlutWalk, everyone knows, cops are not friends. The acquittal of two NYPD officers charged with rape rung in the ears of New York. The protesters yelled, directly at the police, there were anti NYPD chants and some carried signs like: “We will protect ourselves, get a .45” and “Rape is a Felony even for the NYPD”. When the cops told myself and a few girls to move out of the way, we rolled our eyes.

Soon, at the Occupy Wall Street protest, the cops were arresting everyone in the street. A preteen girl with an Invader Zim cap was among the arrests; and cuffed protesters kept chanting– “the banks got bailed out, we got sold out” — “Whose bridge? Our bridge!”. We were told to march on, and I checked the twitter hash-tag, and retweeted “@CNN Is the Brooklyn Bridge too far from your midtown offices to get a camera crew there? Cover the news. #occupywallstreet”.

I saw reporters at SlutWalk, snapping photos of some of the sparsely dressed girls. While the media image of SlutWalk  has become the topless protester, a number of the girls I talked to told me, “I’m wearing what I was sexually assaulted in”–A SlutWalker I met at Occupy in jeans and a hoodie told me this. We sadly agreed: “That’s the real SlutWalk uniform”.

As Occupy protesters got arrested, we marched into Brooklyn. Here, there was a rally, using the people’s mic. Without a PA, Occupy announcements are passed through a sort of game of telephone–the speaker speaks one sentence at a time, pausing, as the crowd repeats it to those behind them. It has been called one of the more striking features of the protest, and undoubtedly hearing messages reverberate through a crowd is powerful.

One man named Trevor stood to talk–“I work 60 hours a week. I get two paychecks a month. One goes to rent and the other goes to food. We can do better than this. This is indentured servitude.”

Later, a veteran of the Iraq war spoke. He talked about holding an Afghan child in his arms, as he died, then holding a Marine as he died. “Some people say we were fighting for one thing. Other people say we were fighting for another thing” people repeated through the crowd. “All I know is I now understand we are dieing for the bank accounts of the rich.”

Before I left SlutWalk, there was a rally too. Sarah E. Patterson gave a fiery talk about sex workers rights: “A society that does not treat its most vulnerable members with the respect doesn’t treat anyone with respect” she said to cheers. Ceyenne Doroshow talked about being trans and made story about almost getting raped by two men into something uplifting and light. I  remember SlutWalk this way, colorful, joyous even. But when I  think of Occupy it’s the gray sky bearing down on the Brooklyn Bridge’s stringed arches, ominous.

While most toss and turn in their sleeping bags at Liberty Square, I find some people hanging out in the back of the Wikileaks truck. There are bean bags and mattresses. There is no alcohol or drugs allowed on the premises, and the protesters take this as seriously as they take staying peaceful. They are not here to be violent, they are not here to party. But in the truck, the mood is light. The kids take turns telling bad jokes. “Knock knock” someone asks. “whose there?”… “9/11”. “9/11 who?” someone asks back. “You said you’d never forget!”

Earlier that day, scrolling through the hastag, #occupywallstreet, I saw acclaimed Internet feminist, Sady Doyle on the thread–ranting at the WikiLeaks truck. Bringing up the Julian Assuange rape case, she  tweeted: “Asked the guy at the #wikileaks truck point-blank whether penetrating an unconscious person was rape. He said, not rape “if they’re married” or “if they’ve slept together.”#occupywallstreet.”

At the SlutWalk rally, someone adressed Occupy Wall Street– “We need to talk about whether we should be occupying this land at all. We need to talk about colonialism and imperialism. We are not the indigenous people of this land!” No doubt, there is a place for this discussion, but it seemed to confuse the audience, who were dispersing. Why did it feel like SlutWalk was pinning itself against Occupy? As though one cannot be a feminist and any other sort of activist?

“What the hell happened with Sady Doyle?” I ask the Wikileaks truck guy. He tells me that Doyle came up to the truck and started yelling at him about the Assuange rape case. His answer– that sometimes in relationships it isn’t rape– obviously isn’t great or even cool. But I can’t shake feeling alienated by this clash of the movements, especially considering how egalitarian Occupy is. One of the rules of the people’s mic is that it’s customary to ask: “are there any non male, non white folks that would like to speak first?”

Despite mainstream media outlets like The New York Times making the Occupy protesters out to be faux-intellectual drop-outs, the kids  are witty and smart. The conversation flows smoothly between atheism, feminism, ethics and philosophy. They are college grads, who are living what they learned in school–despite the fact that they can’t get jobs.

Perhaps the misunderstanding of the movement is generational. The protests of the 1960’s or 70’s seem black and white in contrast, but today’s digital age brings with it a kaleidoscope of viewpoints and political shades. And while there are a number of democrats here, there are lots of anarchists, some are syndicalists who believe in unions, a few are capitalists who believe in free markets and most don’t specify.

It leads me to wonder if this is the birth of a new movement–perhaps, a first ever unification of many different political ideologies. If so, it makes sense that it would take them time to find a message that unites them. Or perhaps the mainstream just can’t hear their message.

In truth, the camp is impressively organized, and works as it’s own tiny town. Entering, I’m offered a sleeping bag, heavy coat, and a tarp to pull over myself in the rain. The food table is filled with granola bars, fruit and hot pizza. There is also a lending library and creative project area to keep people entertained.

There is a joke of needing a sectioned off sex area as well. Occupy Wall Street offers impressive sex kits which include condoms, dental dams, lube and finger cots.  “I almost stepped on this couple having sex in their sleeping bag, they just looked at me, laughed and kept going” says one of the protesters.

Late into the night, the fire department arrive at the square — they are flashing lights and blowing sirens. “What’s going on?” I ask. A protester named Max explains that this has happened every night. “They are here to fuck with us, make sure we don’t get sleep. It’s not the firefighters fault, they are ordered to it do it,” he says.

The conversation drops off, and he worries aloud about what might happen, the violence. The protesters are tired and the cops are hardening. This is supposed to be a peaceful protest, but what happens if a cop goes further, what happens if a cop kills a protester? “We will snap.I am afraid of what I would do” says Max. “Everything will change.” The rest of the group agrees, wearily and fearfully, that sometimes it does feel like this is what it’s building toward.

Today, going over the Brooklyn Bridge, I passed a girl who had also just come from SlutWalk, saying about the cops– “they hate feminists!”  Another girl, passing her, turned and said, “it’s not just feminists they hate.”

As the firemen wake more and more people up with their flashing lights, I check the time. It’s 3:00 a.m. and  the people who’ve been arrested should be arriving soon, but it’s hard to imagine where they will all fit. “That’s why we marched to the park in Brooklyn” says Max. “The rumor is, that’s going to be our outpost.” Unlike the cooked Radiohead is playing Occupy rumor, this one makes sense. The protest keeps growing and the kids are here for the longhaul.

On Wednesdays night, I watch the videos from that days march, which I don’t attend– I see a cop beating a woman with a baton, swinging to hit as many people as he could. I hope for this extra space.

SlutWalk NYC was an explosion that was over in a few hours. No one yet knows when Occupy Wall Street will end. You can’t compare the two movements, they for different causes, reacting to different things. But both are born of a similar seed– of fighting a similar evil, of the same generation. A generation who want better, who were promised better. And who are out doing something to get it.

Occupy photos by Edmund X White, SlutWalk photos by EnnuiPoet

You tell me.

Do you support SlutWalk? Occupy Wall Street? Why or why not?

How are the movements the same, how do they clash?

What does this mean for our generation?

 

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I interviewed My Parents about Their Romance

6th
Oct. × ’11
By Rachel R. White

My mom and dad started dating in the early ’80s. Dad spent the ’70s driving around Chicago in a black van painted with flames, then went out West with nothing but his motorcycle, friends — and, judging by a photo I found from that time period, a decent amount of marijuana. Meanwhile, Mom was putting herself through nursing school and had a reputation as a party girl. She’d borrow her roommates’ dresses and hem them shorter before a night out dancing — but she’d only do a false hem, and afterward return them to the closet, roommate none the wiser.

When Dad was struck by a car on his motorcycle, he decided to “clean up” and go to forestry school. One of the only forestry programs in the country was located in the same small town where Mom lived. Dad noticed Mom around town, but when they finally had their first date, a whirlwind would follow.

So, Dad, despite your wild past — painting your teenage bedroom black, doing hallucinogens out west — you were suddenly shy about hitting on Mom?

Dad: I had moved to go to school, and after nearly dying in a motorcycle accident I was bent on getting my life together. I wasn’t partying as much anymore. But I would see your mom around, and I knew this was the girl I wanted to go out with. Yet, when it came to talking to her, all of a sudden, I was a weenie-boy. I just admired her from afar.

Mom: We first met at a wedding.

D: The first time we met, she sat close to me and kissed me on the cheek, but she had this boyfriend around. I was happy nevertheless and told my sister, “She was smoochin’ on me!” My sister just said, “Oh, she kisses everyone like that, even the guy who sells bagels from a cart at two a.m.!”

M: I liked your dad and was flirting with him, but my old boyfriend was there. We just had chance meetings from then. Later, I saw him in the grocery store. I asked about Christmas trees, then invited him to a New Year’s Eve party, but I was engaged to that same boyfriend by then.

D: I didn’t go. I remember saying to my sister that I really liked this girl — why would I go to the party she and her fiance were throwing?

So, Mom, who was this guy you were engaged to?

M: He was an artist and photographer. He was very cerebral and it felt stable, but sort of conservative or cold. He wasn’t one to dance or party. We had intellectual conversations, but we didn’t really laugh. One of our major problems was that he was very insecure — I was outgoing and a big flirt, and his insecurity about that just made it worse. At a party, if I knew he was watching me, I would really put on a show.

So what happened?

M: We got into a fight one night. Our fights were more like debates, very democratic, taking turns. I finally said, “This isn’t working, I’m done.” I didn’t give him back the ring — but that night he came over and took it off my finger while I was sleeping! That was the only time I’d seen him angry or dramatic. Later, he apologized and said he wanted to stay together but, really, it wasn’t working. After that, I vowed to stop dating guys just because they seemed like stable husband material or had a good job. I decided to just go with my heart and instincts.

From family dinners where everyone’s had a little too much wine, I know that at one point, Dad sort of slept with one of your friends. What happened?

M: It was November, ten months after I invited him to the New Year’s party, but by then I had broken off the engagement. I walked into Cherry Street, a disco, and there was my friend, dancing with your dad. I thought, “Wait, I’m supposed to be dancing with him!” So, I asked him to dance, and he was a great dancer, and really witty. Afterward, I gave him a little kiss on the cheek, tore off a deposit slip from my checkbook with my phone number and address on it, handed it to him and said, “Call me.”

D: I thought, “Oh man, this chick is a professional.” I called and called and she was busy, every time. I figured she was blowing me off.

So, how did the first date finally happen?

M: He was a little younger than me. He was a student, and I was busy with a new job. I had all these excuses, but then he stopped calling. So, I called him up and invited him to my office Christmas party, but since that seemed so formal for a first date, I had him over first.

D: She invited me to her apartment and made dinner. We spent the entire night together on the couch just talking. I had to tear myself away! She begged me to stay, but I had a rule about not sleeping with people I liked on the first date.

M: [Laughs] I did not beg him to stay. And that rule only lasted for the first date.

So you guys got pretty hot and heavy after that?

M: Before this, I always knew deep down my relationships weren’t going to work out, because guys would stay over and I’d think “I wish he’d just go home now.” Even with my fiance, it felt like he was a guest, and I had to be on my best behavior. But when I woke up with your dad, I thought, “Oh, you can stay forever.” I was just comfortable. I could be goofy and relax. He made me laugh so much, and we had great conversations. I knew he could handle my crazy family, and it would just be okay. He was gregarious and outgoing like me. He would fit in with everyone I knew.

D: I couldn’t believe she was interested in me. It was a high that lasted for months. She was so gorgeous and smart and accomplished. I was just smitten.

M: He went home for Christmas, but he bought me the most beautiful Christmas tree and an ornament with the inscription “Our first Christmas together.”

D: When I came back, we decided to throw a New Year’s Eve party to announce our engagement.

So you guys had been dating less than a month before you got engaged? How did this happen?

M: We were cuddled up on the couch, talking about how crazy we were about each other. I said, “If you want to marry me, you have to do it fast, or I’ll back out.” And he said, “I accept!” He called his mother right then to announce it. So we had an engagement party, and as people were coming in, it was like, “Hey! Meet so-and-so! We’re getting married!”

How did people respond?

D: I answered the door, and it was her sister. I introduced myself and said, “I guess I’ll be your brother-in-law!” She just walked past me and said, “We’ll see about that!”

Yep, things start to get crazy from here. Click to read the rest at Nerve!

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