A quick note to CNN.com:

Do you suppose that some of the problems female filmmakers might be having in gaining respect come from headlines like the following, which has been on your Entertainment frontpage since last week?



Nah. I'm sure you're just being wittily ironic.

That, or small pre-pubescent flightless birds account for far more motion pictures than I ever would have guessed. Come to think of it, that might explain some of the movies I've seen lately...

Tags: commentary, culture, feminism

Is it a coincidence that I'm doing a show with nudity at the same time I keep running across people who are scared of referencing genitalia? We already know little girls shouldn't know what to call their pee pee spot. Now we discover that many librarians don't feel like a nut:

The word "scrotum" does not often appear in polite conversation. Or children's literature, for that matter.

Yet there it is on the first page of "The Higher Power of Lucky," by Susan Patron, this year's winner of the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in children's literature. The book's heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.

"Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much," the book continues. "It sounded medical and secret, but also important."

The inclusion of the word has shocked some school librarians, who have pledged to ban the book from elementary schools, and reopened the debate over what constitutes acceptable content in children's books. The controversy was first reported by Publishers Weekly, a trade magazine.

I think my previous response to the "brouhaha over hoo haa" carries over here. I especially love that a librarian seems to think "you won't find men's genitalia in quality literature." Do they not cover past "See Spot Run" in Library Science programs these days?

(via)

Tags: books, commentary, culture

Apparently, using the proper anatomical term for body parts is offensive:

A theatre in Florida has had to change the title of a charity production of The Vagina Monologues on its marquee, after a woman complained that it was offensive.

The new name? They've decided on 'The Hoohaa Monologues'.

It gets better. The person who complained? A woman whose niece asked what a vagina was after she saw the sign. The woman was, apparently, "offended [she] had to answer the question."

I'm sorry, was your niece born without a vagina? Is she a hermaphrodite and you aren't ready to explain to her why she has extra parts the other girls don't? Last time I checked, you didn't have to strip a girl below the waist and go into a dissertation on sexual intercourse to tell her where her vagina is.

To the theatre's credit, a video on CNN suggests they've made this change more to capitalize on its publicity than because they're really worried more little girls might be able to refer to their bodies in something above a toddler's vernacular. Sadly, I doubt the woman who made the complaint realizes that; she's probably quite proud to have "thought of the children."

One can only hope she's raising none of her own.

Tags: anecdotes, commentary, culture, theatre

I fully admit I'm probably not considering all the facts, but who sees this:



and thinks "OMG, it's a bomb!" Seriously? It looks like a freaking Lite Brite. Oh, wait:

"It had a very sinister appearance," [Massachusetts Attorney General Martha] Coakley told reporters. "It had a battery behind it, and wires."

Well, sure. I mean, clearly the only electronic device that might use a battery for power and wires to conduct the charge ... oh, wait, that's how electronics work.

But we're not over-hyping the terror threat at all and generating institutionalized paranoia. Nope. Not a bit.

Tags: commentary, culture

I probably don't have much new to add to the discussion of Chuck Dixon's views on homosexuality and comics, nor his assignment to the Grifter and Midnighter comic mini-series, but for some reason I really can't pass on Dixon's latest:

So Clark and Lois can be seen kissing and being affectionate and there's no need to explain it. The sexual aspect of their relationship doesn't have to be explored. But if Wonder Woman and Supergirl are seen kissing then that does call for an explanation. The sexual aspect of a relationship like that will call forth questions from the kiddies.(emphasis mine)

I don't think I can adequately express how tired I am of the willful ignorance in this kind of argument. It puts forth the notion that kissing is more sexual depending on the participants of the kiss. As if, somehow, Clark and Lois can kiss without having ever seen each other more than fully clothed, but Wonder Woman and Supergirl would only ever kiss if they'd just spent the last year regularly performing cunnilingus on one another.

Actually, I should give Dixon a point: Wonder Woman and Supergirl kissing would be more sexual than a Lois and Clark moment. This has nothing to do with same-sex kissing being innately hyper-sexual, however, and everything to do with the fetishized female form in contemporary super-hero comics. Wonder Woman wears panties and a gold bustier, Supergirl wears a short skirt and bears her midriff, and both of them wear thigh-high red leather boots and have a charming tendency to arch their backs when in profile: by and large, Wonder Woman and Supergirl standing ten feet apart in a room is more sexual than Lois and Clark.

Seriously, assuming they're kissing the same way (I obviously concede that sticking your tongue down a person's throat is more sexual than giving them a simple peck on the cheek), a man and a woman kissing is exactly as sexual as two men kissing or two women kissing; that it turns on different groups of people doesn't change the sexual tensions between the participants.

Even better, Dixon seems to think that seeing pregnant heterosexuals is less likely to require a talk about sex than seeing a man-on-man kiss. Now that's the kind of deep, heartfelt commitment to ignorance that requires a special ovation.

Tags: comics, commentary, culture

Overheard in the locker room of the Y, in response to the Democratic wins in Congress:

People are stupid. These are the worst traitors to the country, and I hate them. And that's what I'm teaching my children: they hate you, so you hate them right back.

I didn't stick around long enough to see if he was also going to be helping his children get pilot's licenses.

Tags: anecdotes, culture

alyx_chance recently asked for opinions on political outing. In no particular order, my thoughts:

I believe in a right to privacy. That some people use said right to hide their hypocrisy doesn't change their right to have it. And if the point is to punish hypocrites, violating my own arguments re: privacy rather makes me the pot and them the kettle, yes?

I think coming out is hard enough on one's own, and anyone who has come out to any extent understands that fact. Every time anyone forces an outing, especially if it's with the intent of harming the person outed (and let's not for one minute pretend that political outing is being done for the outed person's "own good"), it makes it more difficult for other people to come out: when you use "look who's gay!" as a weapon, it raises the level of hostility we associate with the process.

Identity, sexual and otherwise, is personal. I don't think I have much right to tell someone who they are, and that's exactly what outing is: someone deciding that X level of male/male sexual contact = gay, as opposed to bisexuality, or bi-curiosity, or experimentation, or gender dysphoria, or pre-op trans-sexuality, or just a Really Drunk Night.

Political outing creates more gay villains: the outing organization become gay terrorists; the outed party is a dirty closet case who only goes to show how far our moral fiber has been degraded by the horrible homos. I fail to see how this serves an agenda ostensibly working toward wider acceptance and civil rights.

There seems to be an innate assumption that closeted men who fight against gay rights aren't being honest about their beliefs. It strikes me this thinking is flawed, and it's reasonable (if depressing) to think that the reason these men are closeted is because their public beliefs are honest. Punishing them for their homosexuality strikes me as more likely to bolster those beliefs than change them.

The context of political outing feels to me very much like catching politicians at drug use / prostitution / mob activity. Unfortunately, I think a lot of other people make that same connection, such that political outing makes it feel like being gay is of apiece with shooting up heroin. I don't think equating sexuality with destructive criminal activity does the cause any good, myself.

Tags: commentary, culture, lgbt

I went to McDonald's for lunch today. Of course I shouldn't have gone, and of course it's bad for me, and no I didn't see "Super Size Me" but I've been told ad nauseum about its content. Not the point.

So, I went. I was standing in line. I looked up at the ad they have for their perennial Monopoly promotion, listing the items that carry game pieces: Large Fries, check. Drinks, check. Chicken sandwiches and fingers SelectsTM?

The drink thing I get, since as I understand there's a noteworthy profit margin on soda. Ditto fries. What up with the chicken? McChicken's worth a chance at money, but Big Mac is a big loser?

Now I'm wondering if the Chick-Fil-A cows have struck some sort of secret deal with the people licensing Monopoly. 'Ware the beef, I say.

Tags: anecdotes, culture

This just in, gay civil rights help heterosexual couples:

A state judge has ruled that North Carolina's 201-year-old law barring unmarried couples from living together is unconstitutional.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued last year to overturn the rarely enforced law on behalf of a former sheriff's dispatcher who says she had to quit her job because she wouldn't marry her live-in boyfriend.

And what legal precedent did the judge use to strike down this ridiculous piece of legislation?

State Superior Court Judge Benjamin Alford issued the ruling late Wednesday, saying the law violated Hobbs' constitutional right to liberty. He cited a 2003 Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Texas sodomy law.

Sadly, I'm sure there's some moron out there who thinks this proves that gays are ruining marriage further, what with their helping straights live in sin and all.

Tags: commentary, culture, lgbt

I'm generally pretty luke warm on the "ask us about our sex lives" stuff in The Sink, but this last, bonus Sink (#13), did get my interest when they all had to answer the question about when they lost their virginity. Not because I had a burning desire to know the whens, but rather because it leads me to ask: what constitutes virginity?

( Warning: Frank sexual discussion follows, including gay sex. I don't want to hear complaints about TMI if you keep reading )

Tags: commentary, culture, sexuality