Category: gender

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Five Questions With… S. Bear Bergman

S. Bear Bergman is the author of Butch is a Noun, a writer, theatre artist, and educator who tours regularly. Zie’s book, Butch is a Noun, is one of my favorites of the past year because it’s funny, self-ironic, but full of a kind of combination of sadness and love that I found meditative and energizing.

1) I have to say that it was the title of your book, Butch is a Noun, that first caught my attention. Tell me how you came up with it, and why you chose it.

It’s both one of my talents and one of my, er, little problems that I’m a huge language geek. I love words, I love language, and I am always deeply satisfied when I can talk about something well, with good words. But I had a hard time, talking about butch. I would say I’m a butch, and people would hear I’m a butch woman or I’m a butch lesbian. Neither of which is comfortable, or accurate. I kept saying No, listen, I mean that I am a butch, as a noun, all by itself – not a modifier but a thing to them be further described.

For a while, I referred to it as The Butch Book, but I never really liked that as a title, it was just sort of a characterization – an internal shorthand. Then one day, I was applying for some time at a writers’ residency to finish it and when it asked for the project title I somehow just knew: Butch Is a Noun. Continue reading “Five Questions With… S. Bear Bergman”

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Revolution at Harvard

Congrats to Drew Gilpin Faust, the first female president of Harvard University – first in a 371 year history.

National Organization for Women (NOW) President Kim Gandy said of the announcement, “NOW is so pleased that Harvard will finally have a female president — and it has only taken them 371 years. Larry Summers, we couldn’t have done it without you.”

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Not Since Supergirl

Betty sent me this article about match.com, written by a woman about the disastrous effects of the plethora of women available to men on services like match.com. An article like this confuses me, not because I can’t relate – believe me, I can: I had guys cheat on me, guys who didn’t want a commitment, guys who failed to mention girlfriends. & I’m certainly sure that none of the women reading that article and relating to it – the kind of women who use match.com and who need or want or imbibe the “dating principles” at the end of the article – will really care for advice from a woman married to someone trans.

But I’m going to say it anyway: I don’t understand how a woman could be confused as to whether a guy is interested or not. Does he treat you as well as your friends do, or better? Then he likes you. If he doesn’t, walk. If you can’t tell, he’s not interested.

But still, reading it, I’m struck by this urge women have to make themselves into “what guys want.” I go into this some in the new book, but I don’t get re-shaping yourself according to some abstract idea of what men are looking for in women. It doesn’t matter what guys want, what cultural trends are. It just doesn’t. It takes one guy, who’s well-suited to you, who likes you for the things that most guys *don’t* find attractive about you, or at least who aren’t likely to. I’ve always had a hard time understanding what Betty liked about me, and then we rescued Aurora, who is an ornery, difficult, complicated cat who also happens also to be loving, sweet, playful, loyal and smart. It’s only seeing how much she has Betty wrapped around her little paw that the lightbulb went off: Betty likes difficult women. Mystery solved.

I just don’t see how becoming a cookie cutout of a woman would ever help along the quest for a mate. But I guess a lot of women want cookie cutouts for husbands, too, which is also something I don’t understand. I guess my marriage to Betty is more than ample evidence that I prize singularity, as does she. Continue reading “Not Since Supergirl”

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I Always Liked Her, But Now…

… Tyra Banks is up there on my hero’s list. This whole recent brouhaha of her being told she’s fat and not hot anymore has blown my mind, but I’ve been chuffed at her responses.

“If I had a lower self-esteem, I would probably be starving myself right now. That’s exactly what is happening to other women all over this country,” the talk show host said. (You can watch what she said on her show’s website.)

She’s 5’10” and 161 lbs., which means she’s in the “normal” range for BMI. When she was doing the catwalk she was closer to 130 lbs., which is on the low end of the normal range. Tyra Banks is what a healthy, tall woman looks like, and if people think she’s fat, it’s only because our sense of what a normal healthy female body looks like is so fucked up. I really do believe that one of the reasons so many women are overweight in America (aside from all the driving and bad food) is that what’s considered attractive requires near-starvation. If we had healthier images of women’s bodies, that goal might seem a lot more attainable to people.

But the point is: I know I’d happily trade bodies with her, as would most women in America. As if most men would turn her down, too. Puh-leeze.

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Rah Rah, They Suck

Cheerleaders in upstate New York quit the cheerleading team in droves when they were told the laws in the state made them do something they didn’t want to do.

The thing they didn’t want to do?…. cheer! But the catch was that they had to cheer for the girls’ teams in addition to cheering on the boys’ teams.

I can’t figure out if women are their own worst enemies or if this is about homophobia or if (frankly) they’re just being princesses and don’t want to cheer for less-well-attended events. But no matter what it is, it’s a pretty sucky attitude for a cheerleader to have, no?

(Thanks to Dana at BlogHer for the clever title to this post.)

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Domestic Violence Drops

The rate of domestic violence dropped, in half, between 1993 and 2004. Everything you’d expect is still true, however: women who own homes are less likely to be beaten than those with low annual incomes; black women are more likely than white women to be beaten, and domestic violence against men is dropping faster than violence against women.

Analysts speculate that the lower rate of intimate violence may be linked to better police training and more funding for prosecution as a result of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act or the declining violent crime rate in general (it reached its lowest recorded level in 2005).

From the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

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UNICEF Reports: Equal Women Raise Better Children

Okay, that’s not exactly what they reported, but to my mind, it pretty much is:

“Gender equality and the well-being of children are inextricably linked,” said UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman. “When women are empowered to lead full and productive lives, children and families prosper.”

For some people I guess the idea that women need to be equals and to make important decisions about family resources still needs to be made, and for them, UNICEF has created a report that delineates exactly how and why:

The State of the World’s Children 2007 report finds that equality of women produces a “double dividend,” allowing empowered and healthy women to have empowered and healthy children, according to the report (PDF).

I think I can safely add that the opposite is also true: people who prefer women not to be equal are not “pro child.” Somewhere in here I think I can also conclude: feminists are actually the real “family values” set!