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November 25, 2006

The Kind of Person Who Goes through Unlocked Gates in Public Spaces

I hope everyone has had a lovely Thanksgiving. Mine has been quite nice: quiet and restorative, which is what I wanted--nothing like the exciting trip to Paris and Brussels I took last year over my Thanksgiving break. I had dinner Thursday with friends but other than that I've mostly just worked. I'm still struggling to dig myself out from under the mountain of grading and school-related business that fell on me two weeks ago, but I think, by the time classes start again next week, I will have succeeded.

Anyway, here is something I wrote in my journal two years ago about an event that happened the Saturday after Thanksgiving in 2004.

***

I got bored with the business I was doing on campus and decided to go for a walk in an area I'd never explored. I discovered this very old, very tiny cemetery, from the early 19th century. There's this "meditation garden" outside it with no place to sit but it does feature a kind of cool cairn built of fragments from broken headstones. The cemetery itself is enclosed in a waist-high chain-link fence, and there was a gate in it, and I thought, if the gate is unlocked, I'll go in it, because I have always been the kind of person who goes through unlocked gates in public spaces--they seem to demand it; they seem to say "go through me" the way that bottle in Alice in Wonderland said "drink me."

And I went in and there was this poor turkey, pressing itself against the fence in an effort to melt through it. The poor turkey was very unhappy, because it was a windy day and we've had rotten weather lately, and chain-link fences offer little protection from the elements--and neither do narrow old headstones and a few old trees. I was struck by how pretty it was--though when I thought about all those turkeys we colored with brown and orange and red crayons in grade school, their tails all fanned out like some autumnal-colored peacock, it didn't seem so weird that it would be quite a lovely bird, except for its head, which was of course scaly and red and rather gross. For all the beauty of its feathers, you could see that the turkey had injured its side from pressing against the fence. It occurred to me that someone was keeping it there, but if someone was, s/he was doing a bad job of it because the turkey had no shelter and no food.

So I did what seemed best: opened the gate and walked behind the turkey slowly enough to keep it moving but not so fast that it freaked out and started running all over the yard. It walked right past the open gate once, so I opened it further and this time it saw the opening and ran out. But then it didn't go far: just on the other side of the fence, the side that kept things out rather than in, was a big pile of scrap wood, branches and sticks and such, and the poor turkey huddled up under that and seemed relieved to be there rather than in the yard, so I left it alone and continued my walk. I went back about 20 minutes later and it was still there. I might check tomorrow and see if it's around--probably someone will shoot it before too long, but at least it won't be quite so cold and wet during its last days on earth. Or maybe turkeys have ways of weathering winter: build big nests or something; who knows? I'm not a turkey expert.

But it did seem rather appropriate in a weird way to rescue a turkey from a graveyard during the Thanksgiving weekend.

Posted by Holly at 11:31 AM | Comments (3)

November 21, 2006

Punchline

A guy walks into a bar.... And two women having a leisurely conversation over drinks they bought themselves don't even notice.

Posted by Holly at 6:41 AM | Comments (2)

November 8, 2006

Marriage Manifesto

My friend Troy is awesome. He is not only gay (sexual orientation) but queer (social identity) and after the four panelists had spoken in the Brokeback session at Sunstone (see the intro and the excerpt), I asked him to come up and make a comment, in part because he knew all four women on the panel, and in part because I knew he'd deliver both a queer-positive and a woman-positive message. He gets it: he understands the patriarchy is the basic problem, and claims that one reason he's such a decent, enlightened person is because he has listened to the women in his life. He also doesn't take the "oh, I'm gay and it's such a source of heartache" approach to homosexuality--he acknowledges that people go through that stage, but at some point, he says, embrace your gayness! Love yourself for who you are! Be positive about all the fabulous aspects of gayness, instead of trying to retain as many elements of straightness as you possibly can.

Troy does a radio show in Salt Lake called Now Queer This. He's working a documentary about some brouhaha in southern Utah over legislation to define a marriage as existing only between one man and one woman. He has filmed orthodox Mormons, gays, and polygamists as part of the movie.

Troy gets this as well: alternative marriage is alternative marriage, and so he supports the decriminalization of polygamy. Independent polygamists get it too: many support legalization of gay marriage between consenting adults because they realize that it will pave the way for decriminalization of polygamy among consenting adults. (Which many in the gay community find distressing.) My family, which is well stocked with Mormon Republican lawyers and judges who find both gay marriage and polygamy revolting (one is counter to god's will, and the other is entirely god's will, but not something anyone with any self esteem and a real love for her spouse would ever do if she could possibly avoid it), understand that point as well--and they're really afraid.

And all that is why, at dinner a couple of days after Sunstone ended, Troy and I began discussing how we rather hoped the issue of alternative marriage was forced in Utah, that some federal ruling made both gay marriage AND polygamy legal, not only because it would be legally consistent, but because it would be really, really fun to watch the brethren of the church squirm as they tried to decide what to do about the legacy of polygamy, this horrible embarrassment that is rejected by the church as a practice but embraced as a doctrine.

Unfortunately our position enraged Annabelle, a Mormon feminist who joined us for dinner. Annabelle is devoutly opposed to religious polygyny, as she calls the Mormon flavor of polygamy. She felt that the legalization of polygamy would ensure the repression of women.

Troy and I argued otherwise: make it legal! Shine the light of day on the whole sordid business, and make it less sordid. Insist that all plural marriages be recognized by the legal system, so that any marriage that appears to be coercive, or to involve someone who is underage, can be stopped, and the men in such cases prosecuted.

Which is a way of saying that I fully support the right of all consenting adults to marry whomever they want.

If a gay woman wants to marry a straight man and he wants to marry her, I support their legal right to do so.

If two straight men want to marry one straight woman and she wants to marry them both, I support their legal right to do so.

If two bi-sexual women want to each other, as well as two bi-sexual men who have also married each other, so that all four are married to each of the other three, I support their legal right to do so.

What I don't support--and I believe that both religious polygyny and the rhetoric of Ben Christensen (and very likely his actual marriage) are examples of this--is the invocation of religion, God's will and God's favor in support of marriages that privilege the desires and demands of men over those of women.

And since there's no way to legislate against that particular dimension, I'm left with discussing why I think such patriarchal marriages are back-asswards, foolish and destructive, even though I feel quite strongly that as long as they involve adults of relatively sound mind, they should be legal.

So, Ben et al, there you have it, just as you requested: I acknowledge your right to do as you want, and I support your legal right to marry whomever you want, to work out your sex life as you see fit, and to have as many children as your marriage can produce.

Now please acknowledge my right to find your choices in this regard every bit as foolish, naive, and pigheaded as those of someone who chooses to eat nothing but celery, lettuce, rice cakes, diet soda and laxatives, and is always defending her right to be anorexic.

Acknowledge as well my right to critique a piece published in a magazine I've subscribed to and published in for years, and to call attention to bad logic, poor writing and limited thinking when I see it.

Ben has already acknowledged that he was foolish not to imagine that there could be a feminist critique of his position--not that he acknowledged the validity of my critique, just that he should not have assumed no such critique would ever happen.

It ain't much, but considering the source, it's a start.

Posted by Holly at 10:25 AM | Comments (1)

November 7, 2006

Blooming Early Christmas

Check out my Christmas cactus!

OK, it has bloomed early, given that it's only the beginning of November. But it will feel like Christmas to me if I wake up Wednesday and find that the state I live in is no longer Santorustan!

Posted by Holly at 12:01 AM | Comments (3)

November 6, 2006

Teaching Carnival

OK, I don't read EVERY blog I enjoy and respect every single day (or even, sometimes, every single week), because like everyone else I know, I'm busy. But sometimes I find myself with a few unclaimed hours, and I go through my list of bookmarked favorites, and realize, "Hey, I haven't visited that blog in a shamefully long time!"

And I visit and I find something really cool, like Teaching Carnival 15 on New Kid on the Hallway.

Posted by Holly at 8:27 AM | Comments (1)

November 5, 2006

A Little Love for Big Love

All the disks of season 1 of Big Love are somewhere in my Netflix queue, but I can't be bothered to move them closer to the top. First of all, I'm currently far too preoccupied with getting through season 2 of both Project Runway (which I'm rather obsessed with--if I had any skill in making patterns and such instead of just sewing them together, I'd be auditioning to get on) and Battlestar Galactica (which I respect and am intrigued by but find kind of tedious--the tone and tenor of each episode is too unvarying).

Plus I can't get all that excited about a watching a show that will require me to look at both Bill Paxton and Chloe Sevigny, two of my least favorite actors. I honestly don't understand why they are ever cast in anything. Shows with just one of them are bad enough, but I will really have to grit my teeth to make it through an entire season of something where the two of them share screen time. Chloe is so whiny, and has SUCH horrible posture: I want to slap her across the shoulder blades and scold, "Didn't your mother ever tell you how important it is to stand up straight?" As for Paxton, I find it a shame that he's not torn to pieces by aliens in every show he's in.

But I will watch Big Love some day, because I feel a commitment to seeing how Mormons are depicted in the mainstream media, yada yada yada. Then there's also the fact that one of the most interesting panels I attended at Sunstone was on Big Love, and two of the panelists were women who work on Mormon Focus, the pro-polygamy magazine that supposedly served as the inspiration for the series. These two women consider themselves "independent" polygamists, meaning that they are not affiliated with some fundamentalist group telling who to marry whom. And they LOVE the show.

These women, who were articulate, bright, educated and capable, if very conservatively dressed, love the show because they feel it portrays polygamists truthfully, sensitively, generously. It does a good job, they say, of depicting both the affection between the husband and the sister wives, as well as the strife than can occur. It also presents the polygamists as "normal" people who choose an alternative lifestyle.

Polygamy is seen by many people as extremely repressive for women--and I'm certain that in many forms (particularly the variety overseen by the likes of Warren Jeffs), it is extremely repressive. Nonetheless, the women in independent polygamist marriages are much more vocal and visible than the husbands, because the husbands can be prosecuted for bigamy and the women cannot. The women are vocal and visible in part because they are arguing for the decriminalization of polygamy between consenting adults (which I'll discuss further in a future post).

Neither woman on this panel, it should be mentioned, is actually in a polygamist marriage right now: one is a widow, and the other was a second wife, but not long after she joined the family, the first wife became unhappy with the arrangement and left. So these women are left in the position of espousing a lifestyle they cannot currently enjoy. It will come as a shock to learn, I'm sure, but it's not actually that easy to recruit "independent" women to "independent" polygamist marriages--independent women tend to want an independent husband of their own.

So that's why I will, someday, watch all of Big Love, just like I watched Orgazmo. I've seen two episodes of BL already, courtesy of some friends with Tivo, and I admit I wasn't overwhelmed, one way or the other. It didn't irritate me the way Angels in America did or impress me with its rigorous accuracy the way the South Park episode on Joseph Smith did. When I try to remember it now, I remember mostly annoyance: I was annoyed by the way the youngest wife dressed--no one trying to pass as Mormon would wear such skimpy outfits--and by the fact that the characters mispronounce "temple recommend," putting the stress on the last syllable of "recommend," as if it's a verb, when Mormons stress the first syllable--stuff like that would be so easy to fix if they just had a Mormon as a consultant for the show! And I didn't find Bill Paxton a good fit for the role he plays: he lacks a certain... glossiness Mormon priesthood holders exude, so the fact that I hate him to begin with made his position in the show even more annoying. But I've been told by plenty of Mos and Post-Mos that overall the show is pretty good and gets enough things right that you can enjoy it quite thoroughly. So I'll watch it all, truly I will--when I get done with the stuff I really want to see.

Posted by Holly at 9:46 AM | Comments (6)

November 3, 2006

Buffy, Fiction and God

Here's an entry from Stephen Frug that speaks to several of my primary interests: good writing, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, moral and artistic complexity, and religion. I recommend it with this disclaimer: it's LONG, as long or longer than some of the stuff I post. But it's really thoughtful and interesting, and worth your time.

Posted by Holly at 7:51 AM | Comments (3)

November 1, 2006

Will, Grace and Angels in Brokeback America: Straight Women, Gay Men and Mormonism (the excerpt)

Here are some excerpts from the paper I presented as part of this panel.

As part of my presentation, I pose this question, "why isn't it politically correct for a gay man to venture into the exclusive territory of straight men--to marry a woman and have a family--if that's what he chooses to do?," first posed by Ben Christensen (whose temple garments are all in a twist because I claim the right to think he's a self-deceived, selfish gas bag--see the comments on this post) and cite ancient Athenian and Hebrew society (both of which required men who had sex with men to nonetheless marry women) to support my contention that Christensen's basic assumption is flawed. As it happens I am all for opening what has been the exclusive territory of straight men--to marry a woman and have a family--to gay WOMEN. But Christensen shows little care for the rights and opportunities of women, gay or straight: his concern is with preserving the privileges of MEN, straight or gay. Thus remains a question needing an answer, which is this:

What does it mean for a homophobic, patriarchal, misogynist society to require men to marry women and impregnate them as part of their duties as members of the community?

Why should a gay Mormon man give a damn about women's sexuality, since doctrine created by straight Mormon men doesn't? Consider Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants (a.k.a. the "new and everlasting covenant," a.k.a. polygamy): a man can have an infinite number of wives who belong to him, but no more than one man can belong to a woman, because women are given to men to multiply and replenish the earth. Women's pleasure and subjectivity aren't factors.

I know it can take a while to figure out one's sexual identity, and that people who avoid sexual behavior during their teens, only to marry in their early 20s, might not have a firm handle on their sexual orientation. I've known people who figure out after a decade or two of marriage that maybe they're not straight after all. I know from watching friends go through it that it's profoundly painful. But I also think from observing various marriages and divorces that there's something different happening when men who know ahead of time that they are gay marry women they know are straight. Whether or not these men are seeking some kind of "cure," they still seek to assuage their own suffering and discomfort through means that create profound suffering and discomfort for women, suffering and discomfort women have been trained to believe they should accept. I submit that patriarchy endows men with a sense of entitlement--witness Christensen's resentment that marrying women and fathering children is still the "exclusive territory of straight men"--that blinds them to the real cost of their actions, whereas women are trained, through doctrines like the new and everlasting covenant, to expect that they will not have the exclusive regard or affection of their husbands, that indeed their feelings about their marriages are less important than the patriarch's wielding of authority.

Both Fales and Christensen stress that they informed their wives of their homosexuality before the wedding. They did NOT make this revelation at the start of the courtship; they waited until marriage had been discussed. If a gay man truly wants to be honest and honorable, the real time to make this admission is on the first date, before the woman is in love and has a vision of her future with him. Admitting to a serious girlfriend that you're gay ends the deception, but I doubt it improves the chances for success of any subsequent marriage, given how naively and earnestly hopeful Mormon women are about marriage--and how ignorant they are about sex if they've obeyed the law of chastity.

In his commentary to Christensen's essay, Ron Schow notes that Christensen oversimplifies "his options as either temple marriage or ‘a rampant life of unrestrained queerness.' Obviously," Schow points out, "there are many choices between the two extremes" (139). Christensen ends his essay by relating an epiphany that occurred after a "BYU fireside where they tell you to get married. I'd pretty much tuned out the entire thing," he writes, "because it didn't apply to me, but then I got home, sat on my bed, and had a distinct impression that yes, it did apply to me. Yes, I was gay, but that didn't mean I was excluded from Heavenly Father's desire for his children to marry and have families" (131).

I am glad Christensen had that epiphany--I accept its truthfulness. What I don't accept is his oversimplified and religiously predetermined interpretation, that any marriage he might have must be with a woman for whom he feels little sexual desire. While I acknowledge the right he and his wife have to do as they please, I have the right to find their efforts foolish and destructive rather than admirable. Why should he settle for a partner he doesn't desire? Why should his wife settle for a partner who doesn't truly desire her? The fact that they're willing to doesn't strike me as adequate justification.

I want for these gay men who marry straight women what they seem unable to want for themselves or their wives: to be able to form their families and raise their children with a partner beloved, cherished and desired body and soul, and I think the world will be a better place for me and all other straight women and men when gay women and men have that right.

Posted by Holly at 9:20 AM | Comments (4)