Report Back from San Francisco's Sodomy - I mean - Pride Week

Dear readers: this has been a week of being in full body contact with the queer community of San Francisco during our sodomite celebrations. If you are my mom, dad, or grandma, please stop reading here.

Also, I'm sorry I'm having to post everything in tiny chunks, since I last blogged Blogger has started to super-suck for its unpaid members. You can't post more than a few paragraphs at a time.

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Thursday, June 26th, 2003:
The Day the US Supreme Court Fell On Its Knees Before the Country's Sodomites

I spent part of that celebrated day at my (FTM top) lover's pot dealer's house, where she (a butch top) asked me:

Q. “What’s so great about being a femme bottom?”

I couldn't answer very well at that moment, for marijuana-related reasons, but I thought and wrote about it in the ensuing days of encounters with other femme bottoms whose opinions I respect.

A. Becoming transcendental shimmering egoless light under the touch of a good, understanding top, who takes pleasure in your pleasure.

A. Getting to choose to be vulnerable on your own safe/ sane/ consensual terms, a relief when every day on the streets you are forced to act strong on the terms of a misogynist, hostile, aggressive bio-male-centered world.

A. Being admired for qualities like tolerance and femininity that make you a second-class citizen in the patriarchy.

A. If/ when you are a service bottom: the challenge/ delight of succeeding in pleasing someone, maybe healing the absent/ disapproving/ detached father (and mother!) wounds so many of us carry.

A. If/ when you are a stone bottom: the challenge/ delight of taking whatever is dished out to you: releasing a negotiated amount of control of your circumstances that you are forced to try to completely control all day, maybe healing the exhaustion and burnout that comes with being perceived as a public target all the time.

A. Submitting to someone else’s will under controlled circumstances exposes you to certain health risks, but it is mentally therapeutic. Even tops seem to have to bottom to something for mental health—usually god, liquor, or some other controlled substance. Oh, and for all you tops reading this: that “we do all the work” crap doesn’t sound so valiant when you look at our parallel complaint-- “we get all the infections.”
So why play with power and boundaries in sex at all? Because it leads to good processing (and transcendance?) of the world's underlying invisible structures that disempower dykes. Plus, it's just fun.

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Saturday late, after the dyke march, notes from a great conversation with M. about transsensuality versus transfetishism:

On transsensuality:

We bonded over being bi-femme-bottoms who like living around/ discussing trans identity, grey-area complexities of masculine and feminine mixtures, women’s issues and lives and histories in male-shaped life/bodies. We are both afraid of being seen as FTM-fetishizers, but are constantly getting involved with FTMs, and so we are starting to come out as transsensual. This is a quality/quantifier of our attractions, not a requirement for admittance to our bedrooms. We decided we'd probably be in straight relationships if we hadn;t come to the SF Bay Area. But in the SF Bay Area, when not with FTMs, we tend to get involved with other dykes, femme and butch, not bio-men. We are distrustful of the het privilege temporarily conferred on the streets to a femme dyke with an FTM partner, because we know it can backfire violently in a heartbeat. We seek friendships in and act in solidarity with the FTM transgender community. But in the privacy of our own company we examine our own motives.

On the problem with the FTM fetish:

There is an FTM fetish that is the attraction to (or shallow obsession with) the ideal of the formerly-female having a physical male shape and attitude. That fetishism can be alienating and unsupportive to the realities of FTMs (who don’t attain or retain the ideal body/ attitude 24-7), and frightening to butches (who see femmes with FTM fetishes and have body issues triggered by it).

On femmes who leave their butch lovers for not being butch enough, or for having aromatherapy candles instead of beer bottles on their coffee table:

Femmes with the FTM fetish aren’t usually prepared to stick around for the hard real issues of having a woman-shaped history (or current woman-shaped life) with a male-shaped body. They can be drawn to the joys of girlsex in private with the benefit of straight privilege on the streets, and then flee when all
the complicated mixtures and imperfections within the glamour come to the surface. These femmes mostly haven’t yet had intimate, nonsexual, supportive, friendship-based relationships with people who have transitioned FTM. But they probably will, and then the fetish will turn into understanding and a more
finely-honed taste in partnership material (i.e. not just based on appearance, or interior decorating choices).

On FTM sexuality surprises:

Confession: I once was involved with an older FTM who had a heinously old-school lesbian separatist music collection. It was almost enough to end the fling when he put some boring 70’s sisterhood-is-powerful folk on the tape deck. Not to impress me. These were his people. He was singing along. And let me tell you, those 70’s sexphobic lesbian separatist types can unearth some pretty weird sexual pleasure paths when they start dropping T (testosterone). You femmie FTM-fetishizers better put on your seatbelts before you get on that wagon. Hello, strangulation fantasies! And another thing: T can give (very) high blood pressure, which makes sex impossible. It’s like watching a dog chase its tail: they take the
T, get horny, and then feel like a balloon about to pop and are too nauseated to stand up, let alone mouth-kiss. All these issues and more can be yours along with your FTM fetish! In my opinion it’s worth it if you can love the person beyond their physical appearance and health negotiations.

On hot FTM-on-FTM action / FTMs rejecting femmes because “Girls are too complicated”:

It’s true, someone experiencing a testosterone high isn’t really good at verbal processing. Sometimes girls (or girl-like-creatures) are too complicated for people buzzing around on a testosterone cloud, feeling like fucking or fighting all the time. This state of affairs can look like a good time to some butches, like being FTM-identified gives you a license to act like a 14-year-old boy, a most prized license to people who often spent their 14th year terrified someone would beat them up for acting like a boy. Like their 14-year-old boy counterparts, having a “girls not allowed space” is powerful good fun. For some it’s even a long-term preference-- the faggy-boy FTM identity we’re seeing so often now. Sexual pleasure paths are a personal matter: I can’t say I want to waste my time trying to turn out someone who prefers boys (or boy-energy). I try to filter my jealousy over certain hot FTMs who only like other boys into a healthy admiration for their stigmatized and hence brave choices. Anyway, lust is ultimately an urge that is only concerned with itself, so jealous arguing over someone else's body as though it were property to be negotiated is a selfish act independent of the urge to make an individual (you or anyone else) truly happy.

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Friday night at the Sexcapades -- a carnival of perversion for dykes and FTMs (and the stray well-behaved bio-boy):

My femme bottom friend M. and I working at the masturbation booth to our voyeurs:
“We’re sodomizing ourselves in honor of the supreme court ruling yesterday.”
We provided details of the ruling as we bounced away on the air mattress, surrounded by purple x-mas lights.

One lanky butch from out of town:
“I’ve never come standing up before, thank you.”

At the coat check line, the tired old running joke:
"Mine's the black leather jacket."

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Saturday night marching with the sex worker contingent in the dyke march:

I'm not a sex worker, but people paid to see me Friday night, so M. invited me to join her in the sexiest
contingent at the march. It felt so great to run into ex-girlfriends with my contingent of femme dykes proudly displaying our dominion over our explicit sexual dyke bodies.

Our Chants:

Sodomy, sodomy, rah rah rah!

Yaaay- hos!

Whose streets? Whores’ streets!

1-2-3-4- I’m a dyke and I’m a whore
5-6-7-8- not all working girls are straight
(or: “working girls are never straight,” as one woman commented to herself)

2-4-6-8 I get paid to masturbate

Our Signs:

A graphic of a stiletto heel wreathed by the words “San Francisco Sex Workin' Dykes Got Pride" (text in attractive big black scratchy-font print on white), with purple feathers glued to the sides of the white foamcore which was glued to a flat short wood stake. Since I work at a queer rights organization, I felt completely honest carrying this sign, because the back read:

"We’re here, we’re queer, we get paid for it."

This may have been one of the best ever protest signs, and I am a discriminating customer in the
activist signage department. Read my blog on signage here - written during the anti-war protests in the spring.

Some of Our Stickers:

(We gave these out freely. Black text on bright neon sticker paper.)

Boobs not Bombs (--the most popular)

US Out of My Underwear! Support Sex Workers' Rights! (--and)

SFPD Out of My Underwear!

Feminists Fuck Better (--and)

Dyke Feminist Sex Workers Fuck Better

I’m not a whore but my girlfriend is (--the most popular for straight couples-- the boy would take one and then the girl would read it and say "Hey, I need one too.")

Sex worker rights = women’s rights = human rights

Dykes and sex workers UNITE: our bodies, our rights!

Support Your Local Lesbian Sex Worker: Ask me how! (--I think I gave this one to a grinning Jewelle Gomez.)

Some of Our Pins:

(These were also free to all takers.)

Dyke Whore

A cute little pin-up girl image

A cute little dominatrix image

M’s sign from the bombshells-not-bombs contingent in various peace marches:

Easy on your eyes- hard on your empire.

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Saturday night: continuing the notes from my conversation with M. on transfetishism versus transsensuality

On “Butch Flight”:

Susie Bright coined this phrase for butches running away from their female bodies into the decision to transition F to M. Of course, it trivializes the real and painstaking decisionmaking process people go through. But there are dilettente FTMs, people who aren't transitioning in any direction, and who ten years ago would have been happy identifying as butch.

These same butches sometimes choose to start identifying as FTM without actually a) passing as men, b) trying to pass as men, c) wanting to pass as men, d) taking hormones, or e) even considering hormones (never mind surgery).

These butches may or may not be FTM in a long-term transitional sense, they may be 3rd gender, intersexed, and/or simply lacking a better term than FTM for what they are. They may not be transitioning in any direction whatsoever but see that calling themselves FTM will help get them play (with girls and/or boys). Other motives for taking on the FTM moniker in the absence of transitioning gender can include trendiness, wanting to act in solidarity with an oppressed minority (being a political FTM but living a butch dyke life, the way so many women are political lesbians while living a straight woman’s life), actually liking being in FTM spaces (in the tradition of femme fag-hags, there are butch FTM-hags), and liking the way femmes flock to FTM spaces like so many grandmothers picking over the tomatoes at a market.

Probably the two main motives for identifying FTM without being in transition from F to M come down to sex and friendship. If we are going to be a sex-positive community, we need to be happy that people are exploring their sexual boundaries, and (if we prefer butches to FTMs) contain our anxiety about the scarcity of butches. OK, I have found myself needing to contain my anxiety about the scarcity of butches. Specifically good butch tops. It’s hard to watch a good butch top dematerialize into the faggy orgies going on in the back rooms of the FTM community, sometimes never to return, but I can always just pocket those thoughts and turn them into positive sexual fantasy fodder. And as for friendship— in general this community needs to be more supportive and friendship-based. Building a movement through extended families of ex-lovers is not exactly a sustainable long-term plan for revolution that we want to pass on to our replacements. They are filtering even now into the queer bars out of the pre-teen gender mochepit and they are looking to their elders for values systems to follow. Do we really want to teach sex first, friendship second?

I’m not saying don’t have sex with these juicy youngsters, I’m just saying that we have to model respectful behavior towards eachother’s ever-changing identities that we impose on the 3-dimensional sexual animal we each carry in our core. Let whoever call her/him/hirself whatever, and ask respectful questions about what you don’t understand about her/his/hir choices.

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The Slackerstalker Shimmy Down Market Street in the Pride March Sunday:

Yes I marched, without expecting to. I was hanging out among the contingents about to depart, where a wonderful (Lebanese) femme friend was playing finger cymbals, so I was shimmying along, when the (Egyptian) contingent leader (also a friend) needed someone to hold the "Strong Middle Eastern Queer Women" sign, and I was the only female nearby without something to carry.

Which is how I ended up marching with the South West Asia North Afican Bay Area Queers (SWANABAQ)--- still wearing my sex worker rights stickers and little slutty black leather outfit from the night before. So, I was a middle eastern sex worker for a day… I told a friend this in the neighboring South East Asian contingent, and he made the "rock on" hand gesture and said "the more the merrier!"

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Sunday night at the girl rock-n-roll movie “Prey for Rock and Roll” at the Castro:

Gina Gershon, the star of the movie, was there answering questions and fending off brazen offers from the local dykes.

On picking out the hottie for the movie's lezzie sex scene: “I saw her picture and said- please god let her be able to act.”

Gina was very sassy, even talking back to Linda Perry (of 4 Non Blondes, former band also of Cheri Lovedog, the writer/ protagonist of the movie) who was asking about the research she had to do for the sex scene: "Shut the fuck up Linda."

Cheri's only instruction to Gina for the sex scene, apparently, was, "this isn't making love. There's no candles, flowers, soft music. You are fucking her." And then when the scene rolled around, Cheri was nowhere to be found, so Gina just had to figure it out for herself. I'm not saying this movie is perfect, but that sex scene is completely realistic. Rock on, Gina! Oh, and she does her own singing in the movie. And the band that came together for the movie is going on tour in support of the movie, so watch out for Gina Gershon on your local punk dive stages, America!

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More notes from Femmebottomville after this last week’s festivities:

I know Shar wrote the book on this stuff, but remedial femmes like me might need some even more basic pointers:

-- Use two different tissues to correct your mascara and to blot your lipstick.

-- Remember how last time I wrote about doing your nails and then fixing your hair? Don't do your nails right before flossing either. Ew.

-- Never run on yellow. If you are a femme bottom, you are either barefoot or ridiculously shod and shouldn’t be playing deer-in-the-headlights at crosswalks. If you are late to an appointment, you should still strike a relaxed pose and wait for the green. Your date may be somewhere down the street watching, and s/he doesn’t need to see you falling ass over teakettle.

-- I’ve (re)discovered that a lot of femme-chasers like a little something to hold on to. Don’t diet for attention— diet to look good to yourself. Looking at yourself should turn you on. It’s the surest way to attract people turned on by who you are. I thought I’d gotten over those issues, but I have been watching a lot of Buffy this past year and one starts to wish one could fit into those little
gauzey slip-thin numbers she wears to such great effect…

-- Bring an oven mitt if you ever anticipate marathon use of your Hitachi Magic Wand. That little motor gets pretty hot.

-- I highly recommend wearing lace-up leather arm cuffs with slippery nylon laces that are always coming undone as a way to test-drive potential personal knot-tiers.

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Reportback from Femme-Bottomville



I mark today six weeks into being sexually active again, and two weeks into dating again, after a year and a half of heavy grieving from my girlfriend's suicide. I have to say, it's a bad time to run out of antidepressants. But, on the other hand, I'm enjoying rediscovering my femme-bottom identity after being a tentant of Celibate-Misanthropolis.



Some new discoveries about my femme-bottomhood:



Reprising my teenage experiments with makeup and nailpolish -- where the goal was to be punk and different -- are useful for knowing the color-combination DON'Ts. Punk is an aesthetic that is ready to be put on its pension. Especially if you don't like to make the first move (i.e. are trying to look approachable).



Losing my compulsion to locate someone on the socio-political activist spectrum in favor for operating from my gut reactions -- essentially subjugating my intellect to make it bottom to my sexual instinct -- was the best new thing to come out of the complete crash-meltdown that was/is my grief-process. Butch tops often have sordid personal histories leading to interesting political insights that are not positioned in relation to the rest of the progressive movement, but all the same are valid and worthy. Being less judgemental makes me a better, happier bottom.



Asking my date what I should wear, something my ultraliberated mind would never do before, is now fun. Ultimately, I don't care what I look like as long as it doesn't fall under the rubrick of "embarrassing to my date."



And lastly: do your freakin' hair BEFORE your nails. Good god you'd think I would be smart enough to have figured this out by now. But just now with the putting in the bobby pins with the wet nails. FYI, there's no better way to completely and instantly ruin a nail job.



By the way, thank you Shar Rednour for being a beacon of good sense in femme self-caretaking. I keep remembering parts of your book The Femme's Guide to the Universe. Especially the advice about not cheaping out on things that go on your skin.



Some historical discoveries I've been mulling about femme-bottomhood:



I just have to say, the days of the Lesbian Avengers were good days. But the L.Av. are dead and it's because we were the sorts to challenge labels and gender/ sexual identity, so when we looked around and the entire group here in San Francisco was identifying as FTM or MTF or bisexual or a supersized combination order of these, and nobody's first choice of identity was lesbian, we tried to change the name and the group dissolved. Honestly, I bailed before the name change. I just didn't care enough to sit through endless processing about the word "lesbian." But BEFORE we all gave up on identity politics and were happy to be assumed to be lesbians, we had a kissing booth fundraiser at the Folsom Street (leather kink) Fair where all the bisexual femme bottoms (me among them) made a rule. We would not kiss a strange bioman, anyway not as a cheap-ass $5-per-kiss fundraiser. The butch tops, on the other hand, were all gung ho (ahem) to give the boys a taste of a lipsticked shaved-headed manly-woman. They wanted all the money we could get.



So what was that about? You'd think to us femme bottomy types it wouldn't matter whether we kissed another boy. But we had all been in some way or another scarred by consensual bad boy top experiences. I don't think I was able to completely embrace my femme bottom identity with a feeling of empowerment until I extended this Folsom Street Fair Kissing Booth rule into the rest of my life: no kissing of bioboys I don't know. It's a good rule. Especially since I've extended my definition of "know" to require one calendar year of being around the person. It effectively makes me a lesbian. But I can't rule out bioboys, even under these conditions, so I still call myself bisexual. I think I used to think that these rules made me a coward, but now I know it makes me a good bottom. Good bottoms make their own rules and make their rules known, and then abandon control from that seat of power.



Why I think femme bottoms don't have a special community support network like every other damn microdemographic:



We should, but we don't have a lot of spaces to ourselves. We are essentially the most private/ invisible sector of the queer community, partly because we tend to pass as het. Also because - even though most of us are politically or socially very active - we tend to be really very independent and reluctant to go outside our inner circle of friends for support. In other words, you don't find a lot of femme bottoms in support groups. In mountain climbing clubs or circles of artists, yes, but not in a place where we advertise our weaknesses to potential caretakers. We know the power of the caretaker, and we select our caretakers (tops) with extreme care. So, it's not that we wouldn't do well to have some unity among us, but wherever we make ourselves a public demographic, we become the targets of bad tops. So, we are quiet and grateful to find eachother where we do.



And where do we find eachother? In kink-positive space. I was a fan of the famous "Fuck Fests" here at the dear, departed Castlebar in San Francisco, where we separated the room into two sides, top and bottom, and it was your choice to define yourself as you wanted to be for the duration of the party. There were tables on which we could extend ourselves (from neck-down) under a thick black curtain, on which we would pin (on the "top" side) our list of limits and desires. The tops weren't allowed to communicate directly with us, only through dungeon monitors who were standing on guard on both sides of the curtain. I found such amazing sisterhood among the (butch and femme) women/ FTMs on the "bottom" side of the curtain. We took care of eachother, we enjoyed eachother's pleasure, we gave hugs and butt-slaps where they were needed, and we fed eachother complements and food. It was the most powerful, pleasureful, sexually secure space I've ever been with a group of people, and it still strikes me what a rare feeling that is. There won't be any more Fuck Fests (the venues for such things are basically gone from the city), but I will always cherish that memory of bottom-bonding. It was like the hard workers of the non-management part of staff getting together to just see our numbers and temporarily unionize-- viva the struggle of the hard working bottoms!

Stalking a Social Life



Well, my dear readers, I have been slacking on blogging because I have been stalking a social life. I think I have it effectively cornered and I am figuring out how to feed it. Here are some morsels I have thrown at it that were tasty:



The Monterey Bay Aquarium - I went with friends to grovel before the Cthulic cuttlefish, but they did not demand a sacrifice... this time.



The Ruby Room - I've been trying to log hours under the red lights to get my hipster quotient up out of the negative numbers. Some mighty dykey bartenders, who (bonus!) are also usually my neighbors in East Oakland.



Exodus - I was honored to organize a reading/ performance thingy with this incredibly talented, young and powerful lady hiphopster, the author of these words (the poem "My dinner plate/ grandma's back yard"):

Simple greens

Verses frozen beans

Corn meal

Knee- d- ed into corn bread

Light Mango spread

On Banana bread

Eat your spinach like your mother said

And charge your chard

Paint the rainbow with your squash

And cry like the Nile with

Saboas

Lentil jump around in my

Arroz con pollo

Tauro, Tauro, Tauro

Ahora usteds....

Con Orchata

Simple greens

Verses frozen beans

The last of the mo-ji-cama'

Dance the rain dance in my tang

Pina y pina

The ripe co-co-nut on the floor of the cut little hut

Simple greens

Verses frozen beans

Don’t taste like the skillet of my grandma hands

In her southern ways

Too much pork fat in those days

Caused her to sing simple

Songs

'Bout simple green verses

Frozen beans

In California....

Rock on, Exodus!



Another tasty tidbit: the PornOrchestra -- a recent development in the East Bay, they improvise music to bad mainstream porno flicks. I'm afraid I have to say it is an idea that is better on paper: in practice I found the music and the porn both a little tedious. The highlight was a 70's porno with the female figures blotted out, and some particularly thoughtful jazzy instrumental accompaniment. If you want a taste of this sort of thing, improving/ innovating soundtracks to original film is much better done by the Sprocket Ensemble. But hey! I got out of the house, down to that amazing Oakland cultural institution the Parkway Speakeasy Theater with all my fingernails and toenails painted (all the same color purple- I'm such a vamp!) and a nice slutty outfit to go with. I even had a date.



The SF Lesbian & Gay Film Festival -- which I stupidly eschewed for years because they don't have "bi" and "trans" in the title of the festival -- and the National Queer Arts Festival -- hopefully these two festivals will keep my social life fat and happy for the rest of the month. The only drawback is the initial immobilizing shock of sudden immersion in seas of queer people (including exes who I enjoy not seeing) that exhaust one with their combination of unfathomable optimism with unfathomable cattiness. You know, there you are, crying at a touching low-budget movie short about coming out to your family and someone behind you says "that is so GAY." I mean, I'm glad we're reclaiming "gay" as an invective for our own saccharine white-washing tendencies, but really. A little after-school-specialness isn't going to make queers irrelevant to the counterculture.



Or maybe it will. At an event Saturday Kate Bornstein gave a heady lecture about the poisonous nature of assimilation that seemed very old (can I say retro-90's yet?) which was followed, as if to illustrate the point, by a slide show by some ladies who have bought a farm in the country and got married there (and wanted to flaunt a little apolitical propertarian privilege). Going from Kate Bornstein to the married farmers gave me some serious vertigo: one, throwing her speech's pages angrily on the floor, shaking a fist at the violating nature of marriage constructs, and the other waving her spotless (still price-tagged) chrome hay hooks at the audience, boasting about how she had actually figured out how to use them to move hay. *I* never had hay hooks. I got hay burn all over my arms and legs every spring, loading hay with just gloves. God how we hated the dilettante cityfolk who fled NYC to the far reaches of the north to recover their sense of humanity by buying shiny toys and white-washed fences that would be auctioned and abandoned after five years. They never rode their horses enough to warrant owning the purebreds they invariably bought. But yet, at the end of the night, I still had more to talk about with the farmer wives than the communist demagogue. These awkward social mixes are just a necessary hazard of social life husbandry, I guess.

Another Stake in My Innocence



I have been doing personal ads on Craigslist and finally got curious enough to research what "420" meant. Of course I thought it was something much more interesting, involving more people and fewer clothes. The origin of it is pretty funny.



Said former pot-smoker Steve to the LA Times (from this article)...

The group [of friends] agreed to meet that afternoon after school at 4:20 p.m. by a campus statue of Louis Pasteur, he said, and head out to search for the marijuana patch [one of their brothers-in-law had given them]. "But one thing led to another," he laughed, "and suffice it to say we never found it. Every day we'd meet at 4:20 by this statue, and every day we'd just end up getting high and driving around for hours." Over time, the mere phrase "four-twenty"--exchanged in a hallway, or discreetly mentioned in the presence of teachers and parents--became their personal code for "time to get high," he said.

More Reasons Why The US Doesn't Completely Suck



The Banjo - our first indigenous instrument! Here is an article about women in the "banjo craze" of the 19th century.



Edward Gorey - indigenous Victorianesque weirdness! Here is the quiz to find out which Edward Gorey book you are.



Baseball and Softball - strangely relaxing, superstitious, and supremely geeky! Here is a nice and weird list of ways for baseball players to get good luck. Not through practice and hard work, silly.



Immigrant Pride - every Columbus Day! From the home of Gay Pride and Pagan Pride! Here is the lovely "Who's the Illegal Immigrant, Pilgrim" poster by San Francisco's own Yolanda M. Lopez -- this poster is usually widely wheatpasted for Immigrant Pride day, especially since the anti-immigrant legal changes in California in the mid 90's.



NYC Dyke Immigrant Jewish Theater At the Turn of the Century! Who would believe that the first depiction of homosexuality on the US public stage was in the early 1900's in the Jewish emigre theater: "The God of Vengeance" by Sholom Asch, featuring a lesbian relationship between a Jewish woman and a prostitute. Here is an article about "Schtick" by Sara Felder, the San Francisco show that brought this play's existence back to light a few years ago. The censors didn't go apeshit about this play until it hit Broadway in 1923, when I think the playwright was actually thrown in jail for his depiction of explicit lezzie love-- even though it was actually a conservative cautionary tale.



And now, the Slacker Stalker Guide to the Best in US Children's TV Entertainment:



Science Court aka Squigglevision - when I first got my own television in 1999 I was addicted only to Xena and Science Court. It was an instructional kids' television show illustrating complex science concepts in a satirical take-off on Law and Order, Ally McBeal, and other such self-important social commentary/ legal shows. I heart(ed) Science Court. Here you can sing along with some of their rockin' learning songs.



The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse - short-lived in the 80's: it was cancelled after John Kricfalusi (of later Ren & Stimpy Fame) had Mighty sniff some white powder and regain his strength. Wonderful, wonderful camp.




Count Duckula - ok, this one was British, not US-made. But such a goddamn hoot-- a flamboyantly gay vegetarian vampire duck. I love how he redecorates the family castle and has a flair for show tunes.



The Tick (cartoon) - no, I didn't have a TV when The Tick was on, but I was friends with fans with TVs and VHS recordings. I was a frequent houseguest. Maybe the better way to describe it would be "indigent waif." There are so many sites devoted to this cartoon, I'll just give you the adoring Jump the Shark list of gushing comments.




Reboot - ok, this isn't a US show either. It was made in Vancouver. But I include it because I had a crush on Hexidecimal. Here is a well-linked up page about this, the first TV series produced entirely with computer graphics. The characters had slow and wooden movement, but the voice actors were really witty. The main super evil villain was revealed to have a secret ambition to be a rock star at one point.



The Real Ghostbusters (cartoon) - just thinking about this cartoon brings back warm memories of curling up with a mug of cocoa and a honey sandwich after school. It was my evening ritual before going out to feed the horse and check the fence. It was my daily dose of candy-corn parapsychology. Sometimes they even had real little bits of myth and magic lore that would send me into research frenzies. Like on Buffy, much later, the demon hunters were often friends with the demons.



    and of course



Pinky and the Brain - of course, who couldn't love the little mousey take-off on Orson Welles with a mousey goofball sidekick/ lifepartner who is gay, gender dysphoric and telekinetic. Here is a list of those ever-useful Are-you-pondering-what-I'm-ponderings. When Pinky gave the Brain "the world" (a globe keychain) for Christmas one year, I actually cried.

826 Valencia -- Another Reason to Love the US



Granted, Dave Eggers' brainchild 826 Valencia (where I volunteer) and its fundraising store - "the pirate store" - for which these fabulous piratical signs were written - wouldn't have such a booming business if our public schools had smaller classes and kids had more options for extracurricular language skills development. They have something like twenty kids coming in for their free tutoring help after school these days.

A Coupla Reasons to Stay in the YouEssAy



I am not alone in thinking it's time to take my anti-war patriotic ass away from this country for a while, while it recovers from its recent blight of warmongering and regime-changing. So as I'm readjusting to speaking nothing but English all the time (today I spelled the name "Maureen" Marine and didn't notice it until later in the day when I reread my notes) I am finding myself grasping for reasons to stay here. It would be an awfully lot more convenient to stay than go.



Today's reasons to like the United States:



Black Mary - a tough 6-foot tall cowboygirl who was an ex-slave sharp-shooter bar-brawler and enterprising sort of woman. She died in 1914 in her 90's. They don't make role models like this in EVERY country.



the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission - I know, it's self serving, since I work here, but really, I wouldn't get to know how much I dislike the US if this organization - founded in the US - didn't support me galavanting abroad to promote a human rights agenda.



I know I know it's a cliche. But I can't help it. She's one of my role models and she is not only a product of the US but of North-Western New York, not all that far from where I grew up. I'm so glad the RBRmy finally got that freakin' web page going. And look! I didn't know that Ani had signed Bitch-n-Animal! How very cool.



And now a scattershot list of things that occur to me that I put together in a brainstorm session with a few friends.



The Chicago Manual of Style - the exquisite, nervous, extreme fringes of geekiness!



SpongeBob SquarePants - this is a site ONLY for serious fans. SpongeBob is soooo gay. I ate a whole box of SpongeBob SquarePants CheeseNips the day after I got back from Slovenia just to ground myself in the neon orange food group for which the US has become famous.



The Nation - unconventional wisdom for the uppity intellectual.



The Daily Show With John Stewart - oh how John Stewart makes me doubt my lesbianism. In a brainy sort of way.



The Boondocks - the gospel of Huey Freeman, the little black intellectual version of Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes), from the pen of Aaron McGruder.



The Wild and Massive but Rather Untranslatable Popularity of Buffy the Vampire Slayer That link is to "Buffy the Patriarchy Slayer." One of my (gay) college friends did a thesis on the movie the year it came out-- about how the vampires represented rapists and Buffy represented the new "take back the night" generation. I thought he was so silly to be so obsessed with that movie. And now here I am, obsessed, turning on the TV at 7 am to watch Buffy reruns on FX. Every morning. At 7 am.



Zora Neale Hurston - said Zora I want a busy life, a just mind and a timely death. Well, two out of three ain't bad.

-- I was at an activist meeting about getting California Native American History incorporated into the gold rush centennial celebration studies going on in California public schools, and this cool 5th grade teacher had this poster on her wall. That smile captivated me. I had no idea who Zora Neale Hurston was, but her smile was the smile of a genius, a troublemaker, a confident thinker and mover and shaker. So I wrote down that name and over the years picked up her books and searched out her story. I blogged about her and her connection to Santeria and the creation of zombies here. Zora is now featured on a US stamp, which kind of astonishes. It's like the Vatican producing rainbow flags. Didn't anyone do their research?

Hometown Vertigo



For chrissakes would you all PLEASE go to this website and vote against the war. I know, I know, the war is over, but this pissy ass website, built as a community site for my high school (sigh, a military cow town), has a poll running which gives you the choice of supporting our troops and country (adding to the brave blue column in the poll results) and opposing the war (wussy pink). I'm a goddamn patriot, I just have a HUGE healthy distrust and dislike our government, and sure as hell don't appreciate being given the choice of EITHER supporting our troops or opposing the goddamn war. Now I remember why I grew up angry.



I can't believe spelling bees used to be one of the ways I got award trips to get out of town. I mean, I can't believe I actually used to win trophies for being able to spell in English, I can't believe I used to go to such lengths to get out of town for any period of time, and I can't believe I now, sitting in my San Francisco queer human rights activist office, consider it a long trip out of my way to walk all the way to the Thai lesbian cafe for afternoon espresso instead of just going to the Japanese place on the corner. It's all so dizzying.

Stalking and Killing and Leaving for Dead The Matrix, Reloaded


Well, I liked it, but not ten-dollars' worth of liking it. I would have paid a fiver for that and felt pretty good about it. Ten? Sigh. Luckily we made the extra five dollars worth of fun ourselves by dressing up in black plastic tight clothing and mugging in all the reflective surfaces of the fancy art deco Grand Lake Theater. That was the way to see this super-empty super-sparkly piece of pseudo-zen.



Jesus Figure: of course, Keanu Christ/ Superman Reeves. Uno. Emo. Whatever his name is.



Gay Figure: what a completely compulsively heterosexual movie! I really need some nominations for this one. I just have no idea. OK, I thought that the council member (old white eyebrows-like-wings guy) was going to make a pass at Uno there for a minute, taking him down to the engineering level to show him the whacky machines with all their mechanical thrusting, thrusting, thrusting...



Lesbian Movie Standard (two female characters who have at least one conversation about something other than a man): no chance, kids! This one is pure, pure Hollywood. Although, it was filmed partly in my own backyard, here in Alameda and Oakland! You'd freakin' think they'd have Trinity have some tactical defense conversation with one of the other (many) female warriors, wouldn't you? The tough ladies of Oakland talk to eachother!



So, for your smart science fiction, go rent Starship Troopers. Readhere a Liquidtheater.com review that reflects some of my own thoughts, especially this part (quoting reviewer Mike Shea):

A couple of years ago I was walking through an airport in Stuttgart, Germany. Two 18 year old kids were patrolling the airport armored in flak jackets and armed with sub-machine guns, pistols, and other forms of submission devices. I remember thinking how much nicer our life in America was compared to that. Six months ago I watched a guy in a flack vest and a 9mm pistol poke through my shoes on his steel table while I sat in my socks a few feet away. While wishing I had used more bleach on my grey socks, I thought about how much our life has changed in the last couple of years. Watching Starship Troopers again gave me another dark wake-up call. Watching it again was a far different experience for me today than it was three years ago.

Hear hear. The Matrix Reloaded just didn't chill me. After all, I'm pro-Borg. A totally militarized community freaks me the hell out, on the other hand.



You know, I didn't see any live weapons except for border crossings the whole month I was in the VERY RECENTLY war-torn former Yugoslavia. One day in Oakland and San Francisco and I feel like military helicopters are following me.

When One Is Struggling With a Transition From a Nice, Sensible, Phonetically-Spelled Language Back to English




...it occurs to one that English is extraordinarily capricious in its spelling. Fantastical, even. I came home the other night and hit "play" on my answering machine and failed to write down the number for my dentist because her first name is Polly. I spent the entirety of the message trying to spell the word "Polly." I finally crossed my misspellings out and wrote "Dr. Rivas" -- but by then the machine had deleted her message. The next day I called 411 to get her number. By then I had figured out how to spell her name.



These are some of the ways I would have prefered to spell my dentist's first name:




Paulie

Palli

Poli

Poly



Another time when I was flitting back and forth between the sensibly spelled Russian language and whack-a-mole krazy-quilted English I was completely unable to piece together the correct spelling of the word "carousel." My first attempt was karasol. I think I was three paragraphs down the page when the faintest annoyance of a suspicion of error drew me back to check the spelling of the word. I was so out of range of the correct spelling that my spellcheck turned up a complete blank, except for maybe suggesting "kerosene."



I have plenty of witty and insightful things to write about Slovenija and Croatia, really. I just haven't settled back into my loving, snuggly relationship with English yet. I took myself to Borders and got a pile of books--- that was a nice first date. I'll let you know how the romance rekindles.

Aren't We All Russian Teenage Lesbians?



This just sent to me by my friend I'll pseudononymously call AlAl:



Morissey, former singer of The Smiths, who originally wrote and
performed the song "How Soon Is Now?" in 1984 had this to say about
t.A.T.u. in the U.K.'s Word Magazine:

Word: Did you hear t.A.T.u.'s version of "How Soon Is Now?"

Morissey: Yes, it was magnificent. Absolutely. Again, I don't know
much about them.

Word: They are teenage Russian lesbians.

Morissey: Well, aren't we all?

Soon come: reportage from my month-long Adriatic Odyssey, when I feel my grasp of English (as opposed to Slovinglish or Croanglish) firming up a little more.

A postcard from the edge of the alps



OK, here is the breakdown.



Croatia and Slovenia are like my first and second born. I cannot choose between them. I could live either place. There is nothing keeping me from moving here except for my job and my cat and about a dozen permanant obligations.


The places they call tourist traps here are what I call comfortable populated and slightly more expensive but still worth a visit. I have not yet (in three weeks of travel around Croatia and Slovenia) found a place I couldn't feel comfortable living.


The queer scene in Croatia is having a renaissance, and I am blessed to have participated in the first ever explicitly queer (as in, not just lesbian) conference held in Croatia. I made contacts with Serbian, Bosnian, Macedonian, and of course Croatian and Slovenian activists who are professional, smart, young,and determined to succeed. The future is bright here.


I will now go back to the edge of Bled, the pristine alpine lake in the south central alps. I will be back on my regular posting schedule in a week.


Stalking on....

Stalking the Slackerstalker in Slovenia and Croatia



Follow along on your maps, stalkers! I will be gone (maybe entirely) from the interwebs for the next month on an Odyssey, minus fleece but hopefully with sirens.



First Stop: the land of the Bird-handed Girl - Opatija, staying at the Imperial Hotel, inspired by this woman's account of the place. I will dance barefoot on the sand just like Isadora used to.



Second Stop: "Cheers Queers" the queerest spot in the former Yugoslavia for five days - where I'll be a guest of the coolest women's center in the whole of Croatia (it is said). If it's not cool enough I will be at the only youth hostel I could find in the whole city of Zagreb.



Third Stop: Rijeka at this beautiful old (cheap) hotel on the water.



Fourth Stop: Via a former convent in Venice to Florence, with parents in tow. May all our genetic revelations be amusing. We'll be staying at this hotel - I can see why they didn't post an outside view on their website.



Fifth Stop: in beautiful Fiesa and Piran, Slovenia at this sweet little brick number. We will rent a car and drive to a farm where I will ride a Lippizzaner and a town (Lokev) where my parents will ogle old things from wars and stuff. Before or after that we will go sit in hot water.



Sixth Stop: on our way to our hotel in Ljubljana we will stop at the famous Lipica stables where I'm having a riding lesson. Then we're going to the Predjama castle a visit inspired by that site's virtual tour, and by this article where a tourist notes that the noble who lived in the castle fended off troops by tossing roast duck and fresh cherries down at them from the parapets.



Seventh Stop: the unfortunately (for English speakers) named resort town Bled, where they tend to have world conferences on things like suicidology and nervous disorders. And chess. I will be disappointed if we don't make it to Kobarid for the award-winning WW I museum, but this site's virtual tour of the place will make up for it.



Eighth Stop: back to Fiesa and Piran and Portoroz for the maritime festival that has the cyberstyley name "Internautica."



Ninth Stop: brez roditijelej - sans parentals - I will be going to a beautiful place in the western Slovene alps to ride for a few more days before I leave via Ljubljana (and this hostel, the cheapest one I could find) and Prague (where I think I'll be staying in a student dorm- parrrr-ty!).


Hopefully I have not been mislead by the maps and schedules at Euroave.com, Routenet.nl, Trenitalia, the Slovenian bus system site and this little UK-Croatian site.

More From the Genre of Strange Online Tarot Innovations:



The Blogger Tarot - today's card is the High Priestess/ Web Grrrl. I got this in a reading last night, in fact. However, to be correct, I didn't just run into Ani in a deli. We had a long, long string of chance and intentional run-ins on the street and fan-to-starlet chitchats backstage. I was quite the stalker in my day. It started at the Bottom Line (NYC) in January 1992, when I dressed up in my fanciest clothes to sneak in (I was underage) to see Ani open for Two Nice Girls. Ani used to be so, SO enthusiastic to meet her fans. Back when Gretchen Phillips was a diva.

She was a Panther before Panthers were Cool.



Born in 1892 Rebecca West (nee Cicily Fairfield) was a socialist, suffragette, and feminist journalist who had an unmarried partnership with HG Wells. Their partnership produced a boy who took his middle name from HG's nickname for Rebecca: Panther.



I'm absorbed in reading her famous 1100-page Yugoslav travelogue Black Lamb, Grey Falcon. She writes in this book like a matron of her time, aged 45 and becoming increasingly reactionary in her cultural tastes (she mentions feeling nausea when she sees a woman perform a male folk dance in male clothing, or when non-Negro dancers perform Nego dances: to her it looks like primitivism, backsliding, viscerally wrong). So she's no great beacon of open-mindedness, but she is a very self-conscious and astute observer of the 1937 Yugoslav state that she's observing. She mournfully add (when the book was printed in 1942) to text where she talks about the Hapsburgs' treatment of Croatia as the worst betrayal ever enacted on a people in Europe the small footnote reminding the reader that it was written in 1937. The book's (1942) dedication is "to my friends in Yugoslavia, who are now all dead or enslaved."


Besides providing rich historical context for my trip (in only five days!) to the former Yugoslavia, she has also given me clues for packing. She and her husband endured a freak snowstorm when she arrived in Zagreb a day before Easter 1937... I arrive two days (and sixty-six years) after she did, so into the pack go the long underwear. Read for yourself a short bio of the fierce, opinionated Rebecca West.


Here's her pouncing controversially on the Habsburgs:

?I hate the corpses of empires, they stink as nothing else,? ... ?the Herzegovinians had found that one empire is very like another, that Austria was no better than Turkey.?

And pouncing again-- this time on the assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand:

?Nobody worked to ensure the murder on either side so hard as the people who were murdered.?

You Can't Change the Ocean-- You Can Only Change Your Course



Read about the Tall Ship Semester for Girls-- how cool.


"Girls who might otherwise be hanging in the mall now find themselves hanging in the rigging."



Coming from a San Francisco-based organization, that sounds fairly ominous, but in fact it's completely wholesome and inspiring.

While the US Troops are Busy Planting Evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Scrambling to Explain Their Own Violations of the Rules of Combat...

Like bombing press headquarters...



Take a Break and Enjoy a Little Safe Pre-Stalinist Communist Art


At An Exhibit of Children's Books of the Early Soviet Era.



It reminds me of what I liked about my brief time in the Soviet Union at age 15 in 1989, and in the immediate post-Soviet years 1993-4. For example, the understanding that girl-children can grow up to be great architects -- as taught in a children's book illustration published in 1933.

This Week's Circumlocutory Heavyweight World Championship Belt Goes to...
Unnamed British Official as quoted in this week's Global Development Briefing, for using the word "people" more gently and euphemistically than I've ever, ever seen it used.



Here's the KO:

"There is a temptation to say why should we be subtle after we weren't supported in the Security Council. We certainly hope people will resist that temptation."



- An unnamed British official on the likelihood of another acrimonious political battle in the UN Security Council over the administration of Iraq's oil industry after the war, in an interview for The Washington Post. The US Defense Department is reportedly pressing ahead with plans to temporarily manage the industry and use the proceeds to rebuild the country, creating a conflict with US allies in Europe and the Middle East. UN and British officials said the US lacks the legal authority to begin exporting oil even on an interim basis without a new Security Council mandate.

I don't always read through the whole briefing, but the quotes are always special. It's the feature with which they always start their round-up of world events affecting "developing" countries. Subscribe to the (free) Global Development Briefing mailing list here.

A Contribution to My Collection of Bad Celebrity Poetry, By Donald Rumsfeld.



Yes, he says existential, effusive, poetic things. A journalist just added the line breaks.



A PBS airing of "Blair's War" tonight featured a review of how Rumsfeld fucked up our relationship with Europe: he actually did say that France and Germany are "old Europe" and when we think of Europe today we think a little further East. Like RUSSIA? Russia, who is more and more reluctant to issue visas to US citizens because they just don't want our business anymore? Russia, who was just visiting its ally Saddam Hussein the week before we started bombing, probably making another arms deal?

Today, A Competing Lego Tarot Deck, Would You Believe

Ok, Playmobil, technically, but still. Mystical plastic square bendy figures.



I like the happy smiling blondes chained to the Devil the best.

Again Departing From the Hippy Crap Saving the World Stuff

(because it is a lot easier to wake up in the morning sober when I don't watch CNN at 3 am)

To Celebrate the Lego TAROT!



"Not Sanctioned By Lego In Any Way."



The Queen of Swords as Lego-Leia in her sticker-bikini with a lightsaber is my favorite.



Thank you, thank you, thank you, Reasonably Clever. You made my day.



And as Reasonably Clever says: "Please drive safely, offer void in Utah, don't mix old and new batteries."

Enough Anti-War Linkage to Choke a Hippo



Copied from my bay area lez-bi women's mailing list. Just too nicely already put in HTML code to resist reposting.



Off the KPFA website:



ANTI-WAR / CALL FOR ACTION INFO

Direct action to atop the war

http://www.actagainstwar.org/

Getting naked for peace

http://www.baringwitness.org/

Boycott companies who support Bush's administration

http://www.bethecause.org/writers/articles/nowar.shtml

California Peace Action

http://www.californiapeaceaction.org/

Human Shield Mission to Iraq

http://www.humanshields.org/

International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) - analysis,
reports, rally logistical info

http://www.internationalANSWER.org/

Iranian-American Community (IACUS) website

http://members.aol.com/iaczine/

Mothers Acting Up - mobilizing the political strength of mothers

http://www.mothersactingup.org/

The MoveOn - email bulletin, lots of info

http://www.moveon.org/

Not in Our Name - activities against war and repression

http://www.notinourname.net

Not in Our Name (SF) Bay Area Calendar

http://www.notinourname.net/~bayarea/

Oxfam/UK's petition to Tony Blair

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/campaign/cutconflict/action/iraq.html


Patriotic Americans who believe unprovoked war will increase human suffering

http://www.patriotsforpeace-ca.org/

Easy Online Activism

http://www.progressiveportal.org

Stop bomb production in Tennessee

http://www.stopthebombs.org/

Tools for influencing peaceful resolutions

http://stopthewarcentral.com

Ben and Jerri's grassroots education

http://www.truemajority.org/

Full spectrum awareness and raw truth broadcasting

http://www.truth-now.com

United for Peace and Justice

http://www.unitedforpeace.org

Vote No to War - educational campaign of International A.N.S.W.E.R.

http://www.votenowar.org/

Details on impeachment of President Bush and other officers

http://www.votetoimpeach.org

California law students voice dissent

http://www.wakeupaboutthewar.org/

Mainstream voice advocating alternatives to pre-emptive war against Iraq

http://www.winwithoutwarus.org/



ANTI-WAR ACTION / Location-specific sites
North (SF) Bay/Napa Valley

http://www.napavalleypeacetable.com

Fresno Center for Nonviolence - advocacy organization
http://www.peacefresno.org/

Sacramento-Yolo peace action

http://www.sacpeace.org

Peace and Justice Center of Sonoma County

http://www.sonic.net/~peacentr/



ARTISTS WORKING FOR PEACE & SOCIAL JUSTICE

California College of Arts and Crafts -free downloadable peace posters

http://www.anotherposterforpeace.com

Encouraging critical thought and dialog on vital issues
http://www.fineartsmilitia.com

Musicians United to Win Without War

http://www.moveon.org/musiciansunited/

Artists for peace, justice, civil liberties - gallery, anthology

http://www.TAParts.org



CENSORSHIP / CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES

Electronic Frontier Foundation - defending freedom in the digital world

http://www.eff.org



ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

Visionary and practical solutions for restoring the earth

http://www.bioneers.org



MEDIA / NEWS / ANALYSIS

American foreign policy and the Arab & Muslim worlds

http://www.aljazeerah.info/

Cedric Muhammad's daily news and analysis

http://www.blackelectorate.com/

Breaking news and views for the progressive community

http://www.commondreams.org/

Political newsletter by Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Claire

http://www.counterpunch.org/

Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman

http://www.democracynow.org

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

http://www.fair.org

KPFA's Flashpoints investigative news radio magazine

http://www.flashpoints.net

Free Speech Radio News

http://www.fsrn.org

Columnist for UK's Observer

http://www.gregpalast.com/

KPFA's Hard Knock Radio

http://www.hardknockradio.com

Independent Media Center main site with links to all other Indy Media centers

http://www.indymedia.org/

New York City independent media

http://www.indypendent.org/

Regular reports from Iraq by Democracy Now!'s Jeremy Scahill

http://www.iraqjournal.org/

KPFA's Living Room

http://www.livingroomradio.org

Training/resources for media, community organizations, political activists

http://www.media-alliance.org/

Pacifica network & stations

http://www.pacifica.org

http://www.kpfa.org - Berkeley

http://www.kfcf.org - Fresno, broadcasts

KPFA signal to the Central Valley

http://www.kpfk.org - Los Angeles

http://www.kpft.org - Houston

http://www.wbai.org - New York

http://www.wpfw.org - DC

Project Censored - tracking media's self-censoring of the news

http://www.projectcensored.org/

SF Bayview/Hunters Point newspaper

http://www.sfbayview.com/

Info and analysis biweekly reports

http://www.war-times.org

World events, issues, and cultures

http://www.worldlinktv.org



POLICY ANALYSIS

Information and int'l policy analysis

http://www.ciponline.org/



SOCIAL JUSTICE / PRISON / HUMAN RIGHTS

Human rights abuses within the US criminal justice system

http://www.ellabakercenter.org



YIPES

BBC article on Jewish settlers offering 'terror tours'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2821391.stm

"we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and
extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity,
and our principles."

http://www.newamericancentury.org



Now get clicking, slackers!

Departing from the Hippy Crap Saving the World Stuff for a Moment to Ponder

...why I don't mind that Ta.Tu. is using lezzie identities to sell their albums.



So, SlackerStalker, why?


Because they are drawing lesbophobic fire, getting censored, and putting lez-affirming images in front of mainstream people the same as real lezzies, regardless of who ACTUALLY turns them on.



It's nice to see that Rex Wockner has lightened up a bit on his tone of "but but but but they ARE STRAIGHT" (helloooo- anyone hear of bisexuality? Anyone?) because they seem to have boyfriends at the moment. Here is his latest article about them (all typos, word choices, etc. his own):

=======================

INTERNATIONAL NEWS #463

March 10, 2003

by Rex Wockner

wockner@panix.com

=======================

--> KNIFE MAN LUNGES AT t.A.T.u.



A knife-wielding man lunged at the Russian
lesbian-themed band t.A.T.u. during a concert in the
Czech Republic in late February.



Bodyguards tackled the man as he headed for singers
Julia Volkova, 18, and Lena Katina, 17.



According to Sky News, the girls have had bottles and
a knife thrown at them in the past as they performed.



"There have been incidents but there is no point
worrying that you are going to get killed when you go
on stage," said Volkova.



The girls' current single, "All The Things She Said,"
has hit No. 1 around the world and the video has been
banned by Britain's BBC and ITV1 because Julia and
Lena passionately kiss and make out throughout the
clip.



The girls have repeatedly suggested they are lovers,
but Russian journalists claim both have boyfriends
whom they keep hidden so as not to endanger the band's
lesbian image, which is seen as advantageous.



Speaking to the British lesbian magazine Diva in its
March issue, Katina stated: "So you want to hear that
we are sleeping together, that we are fucking every
night? Of course we do!"



Later, she said: "This is the message [of our video]:
We wanted to say that everybody shouldn't be afraid of
their feelings. If it's real feeling, why not? If you
love, it doesn't matter if girl loves girl, or boy
love boy or something, or girl love boy. It's just
love and we shouldn't be afraid of this crowd's
opinions. Stupid things."



"t.A.T.u." is an abbreviated form of the Russian
phrase "that girl loves that girl" ("Ta lyubit tu").
The band is Russia's most successful pop act ever.

Now, I don't know what Rex means when he says that last bit, but I expect he means in terms of money. One of the very most popular acts of recent years is Zemfira, someone who sends everyone's gaydar off the charts, but who keeps her private life private. Here's hoping that Ta.Tu's success will create space for our beloved Zemfira to finally come out.


And P.S.-- someone on one of my lez-bi community mailing lists was holding against them that Ta.Tu wants to pose for Playboy as soon as they are both 18. As though that proves that they are straight. Whatever. I subscribe to Playboy, not Off Our Backs (*!) (anymore), because Playboy gave me a free subscription. So, bring it on, Ta.Tu. babes! At least one lezzie chick will be grateful!

(*!) Of course I meant "On Our Backs" not "Off Our Backs." I forgot: OFF our backs = anti-sex, ON our backs = pro sex. It is a bottom's world, isn't it?

Stalking the Streets




So the amazing spectacle of Thursday the 27th with its mass protests around San Francisco gave way to Friday, with its extremely overpaid on overtime and overexcited police force complete with rubber bullets and riot shields. I was a sideline witness to the 'Franklin Street Sweep' but didn't learn about what happened to my friends in the 'Sweep' until Monday. I was on my merry way to a queer affinity group gathering in the Castro, and since I was late I didn't linger to find out what the hell was going on with the police influx around the intersection of Hayes and Franklin. Turns out everyone was rounded up, even people on the sidewalk trying to comply with police directives, and arrested for failing to disperse. They were held for six hours and released with a warning to stay off the streets for 48 hours, or risk jail time if they again fail to disperse (i.e. stand on the sidewalk near a police officer).



Here is an account of the 'Franklin Street Sweep' by a SlackerStalker correspondent in the field:

The group we were in was walking peacefully on Franklin Street when the cops surrounded us on all sides. They did this by forming a phallanx and running at us from behind so that we were trapped in the interior of a block where we couldn't leave. There were cops on all sides of us then. We were then squeezed in from all sides by at least 200 cops in a circle around us, not unlike how fish are caught by pulling the nets in from all sides at once.



The cops charged at us with their billy clubs braced in both arms while screaming at us to "MOVE! Get out of the way!". One cop shoved an older disabled man with a cane down so hard that he was bleeding from his head and knee. He needed to be taken to the hospital for treatment by ambulance. Linda saw another cop repeatedly shove a man on a bike, even though the man had complied immediately with his orders. Two very over-the-top reactions that just the two of us witnessed. Who knows how many other acts of police misconduct were observed by other people?



I also watched as press people were denied access to the area that we had been corralled into (a city block). One cop stood directly in front of a camera crew so that they couldn't film the scene. I also noticed that the highway patrol helicopters cricling above kept news helicopters from entering the airspace above our block. It was a news blackout. Freedoms of the press are also going out the window as well, it seems...

Meanwhile, late to the gathering in the Castro, I heard that the protestors who had been starting to try to block Van Ness and Market (apparently an anarchist affinity group that ran away from the 'Sweep' just in time) had been dispersed with rubber bullets as soon as they occupied the intersection. So, when our little fringe protest hit an intersection, we were careful to stay to the side of the road or on the sidewalk, and cross with the lights. We were trailed by an entourage of about eight cop cars and caught glimpses of a few city buses full of cops in riot gear circling the neighborhood. They tried to anticipate our route and we just randomly chose a direction at every intersection.



I marched and chanted and sung for four hours over at least as many miles. The police effectively blocked every intersection we encountered and almost every street we flanked, so nobody had to leave the sidewalk and get arrested-- the cops did our work for us! As we neared downtown the eight squad cars were joined by about a dozen motorcycles, and still later about fifteen cops in riot gear jogging alongside us. By the end of the night they looked neither aggro nor scared, just bored and exhausted.



Meantime our mood was both conscientious and bouyant. It was such a relief to do something besides watch the news. My friends and I walked with a woman with an enormous white shaggy sweet boydog named August who was wearing a pink sign "Puppies for Peace." Nearby was a mom with a gaggle of six or seven young (10 or 11 year old) kids, who we had picked up as we passed Mission High School. They led us in the Spanish language version of "The People United Will Never Be Defeated." One of the kids looked JUST like Harry Potter, so we nicknamed their crew the Harry Potter For Peace contingent. You get the picture-- we were pretty upbeat. The whole thing was very therapeutic-- especially having the citybus drivers and ambulance crews honking and waving the peace sign gesture at us as we passed them. My favorite chant was what I think is a modified soccer/football singing chant: "no war, no war, o-way owayowayowaaaaay." That was what we were singing as we hit the high point of the night, turning from Market onto Castro and picking up a whole new crew of marchers and getting a great welcome from the sidewalk passersby.



Now it is time for...

The SlackerStalker Guide to Late Night Urban Unpermitted Protest Marches

A supplement to The Slacker Stalker's Rules for Marching in a Mob Against Something (click and scroll down past the list of sign slogans).


1. Remember that at night everything is gray-scale and reduced to shapes and movement. Your pretty signage on sticks is wasted. Costumes, sandwichboard signs (for up-close reading), and flags are good. Flags give shape, movement, and drama to the movement of people through the street at night. It almost doesn't matter what is on the flag, if anything. If you are stuck marching with a sign on a stick, look for the police searchlights and TV cameras with their nuclear-powered gazillion-watt floodlights: they will pick up your message. ESPECIALLY if it is a TV helicopter-- turn your sign facing the sky and I guarantee they will try to focus in on you. Soundmakers are good too-- a little boombox with a CD of Mumia's statements against war is a nice choice.



2. BYO lighting. Flashlights, yes. Torches, no.



3. BYO entourage. Dogs and kids, yes, but keep an eye on them even if they aren't yours.



4. Get more mileage out of yourself with a little personal care and vocal chord maintenance. Chapstick, gum, bottled water, and the multipurpose cloth bandana or a handful of tissues, yes. Excess baggage, or even ANY baggage-- no.



5. Communicating with non-marchers is a must. Flashing the "peace" sign at passing motorists-- the minimum. Light-hearted taunting of people in restaurants (i.e. the particularly enjoyable friendly chanting of "Americans Out of Baghdad" to the customers at the Bagdad Cafe on Market Street)-- good. Beckoning seductively and chanting "join us"-- better. Cheering and blowing kisses to the people being arrested or standing in detention areas-- an absolute must. If you have propoganda promoting your cause then handing it out to passers-by is usually more effective at night. People on the streets are more likely to take propoganda handed to them by strangers at night than in broad daylight. Go figure.



6. So you have a bullhorn. Point that thing as high as you can away from eardrums that may be at your usual screaming height. Thank you.



7. So you don't want to get arrested. Either way, carry some form of ID, and a good pen. If it looks like you're falling into a police trap, find someone (try the guy with the bullhorn) with the number for your local Legal Aid firm and write it on your arm. Hook arms with the people near you and go limp as the police try to arrest you. This is the only way to try to guarantee they won't charge you with resisting arrest. Standing up too quickly can be construed by a nervous cop as a pretext for a good billyclubbing. And remember: smile in your mugshots. You don't need to look guilty. You never know when you'll be running for public office!



8. So you want to get arrested. Don't have enough activist cred doing the legal thing? Then follow the advice in #7 but, since you are planning ahead to get arrested, wear wristwarmers. 80's fashion rebound to the rescue! The plastic handcuffs will be loosened by any wrist apparatus you can manage to keep on. Then, when you have gotten a little leeway, retrieve the toenail clippers you stashed in your front pocket and snip yourself and your friends free.



9. Have sex. I heard this story from a credible source and an eyewitness to the San Francisco protests of the 1991 Gulf War One. A pier the cops were using as temporary holding for protestors was full of young gay men. They all had their fancy plastic wrist ties on, but that didn't stop them. They decided to start trying to have sex. It was turning into a full-fledged orgy (I guess the wrist ties were working for them). The cops were so weirded out they decided to let them go.



10. Eat fire. It is really a bummer to know how to eat fire but mostly end up protesting things in the daylight, when fire-eating is a lost cause. Here you are sticking hot stuff in your mouth and all you get for it is a fume high. So, when you know you'll be taking to the streets after dark, take:

• a lighter
  
  
• a small coffee can (with lid) with at least a cup of rubbing alcohol or lighter fluid
  
  
• a metal coat hanger
  
  
• and a 10" strip of old cotton t-shirt fabric
  
  

     Tie the fabric into a tight little swab on the end of the straightened hanger wire, soak it in the fluid, light it, STAND FACING DOWNWIND, tip your head as far back as possible, hold the wire swab-down perpendicular (i.e. at a 90 degree angle) to your face, open wide, dip it in, lightly close your lips on it (not all the way) and exhale through your mouth. Voila. Impresses the ladies. It is especially impressive if you wear some kind of message on your body (may I suggest painting slogans on naked torsos? Is that too Lesbian Avengerish of me?).

Wishing For Ignorance


An interview with a journalist on the radio just now-- not KPFA (I had to take a break, they were listing the military affinities of my city's mayor Jerry Brown- letting the military conduct urban combat training in Oakland- it was too painful to remember)-- on NPR-- the journalist was talking about the reality of the civilian casualties, and the furious reactions of soldiers' families who have lost their children to Bush's war. He said that one US pilot pointed out that in Gulf War One not all pilots had been wearing night vision goggles. Now they are all wearing them. He's not sure it is better for them to wear them, because it allows them to see what they are doing perfectly.



I was a teenage firebrand in Northern New York on a science field trip to Fort Drum (the division that invaded Afghanistan first, and the largest land training grounds on the East Coast, and when I lived there also the base with the highest DWI, suicide, and domestic abuse rates). They handed me the new fangled night vision goggles, a toy we could play with for a few minutes as they got our MRE's together for our picnic lunch. It was spring of 1990, about seven months before we attacked Iraq the first time. The whole world turned eerie green. I imagined stealing the goggles... I didn't. Who is holding them, who is watching the streets of Baghdad through such goggles, who is looking into the other end of them, I don't want to know. I just don't want to know.

An Interesting Arrest Tally



If you want to catch up on how many protestors shutting down San Francisco have been arrested so far, and what intersections have just been shut down (they are still shutting them down), check out the ongoing updated coverage at the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center.



Tonight (home sick) I saw the coolest and most inspiring local TV coverage I've ever seen. Not the TV commentators, scared and looking terribly confused about why people would be grieving and angry and acting out. The people, people, people in the streets.

A Fascinating Raed



An Iraqi engineer's blog. A friend's name (or pseudonym) is Raed, and the title of the blog right now is "Where is Raed?" Our blogger, his friend Raed, and his family are still in Baghdad. It's Friday there now but he has no Friday blog yet. He has a great quote up on one of his side banners right now:

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.


-- Samuel P. Huntington

Hippie Crap Saves the World aka The Earth is Crammed with Heaven



Today some of my witch friends have been quoting the wisdom our local Bay Area astro-guru Rob Brezsny, the only biological man I've ever seen effectively (and stunningly so) lead a Pagan ritual prayer entirely by himself. He's also a Cancer like me, so his insight on the stars is tailor-made for me. Click on his name above to read Painful Blessings -- his very eloquent statement on the state of the world and the nearness of war and the necessity of inner fire. He is determined to recenter us on desire.



Also, scroll down, look on the right, and you'll find a letter from a Brezsny fan about another Brezsny fan-- Rachel Corrie, the woman who died this past Sunday trying to save the home of a Palestinian doctor. The tank driver claimed he didn't see her. She died with a bull horn in hand screaming Desist!



Rachel's Brezsny horoscope for this week:

"It's a perfect moment to overcome your fear of revealing your raw beauty to the world..."

There is a lot of raw beauty left to be revealed to the Israeli government. And ours.

A Pause From Your Busy Schedule Stressing About the War to Appreciate Terry Jones of Monty Python



Some worthwhile anti-war fluff.



Links to an Observer article about Terry's justification for blowing up his block, and a new Observer article by Terry about poor Mr. Blair not getting any of the lucrative development contracts for rebuilding Iraq:



I'm losing patience with my neighbours, Mr Bush





Poor Tony Blair Wakes Up

On Top of Being Alarmed About the Impending War...


...and the resemblance of the pro-war demonstrators to facist nationalist/ Nazi types marching past me at the bus stop this morning, waving a torch and a flag and chanting "we support our troops" ...


I have just now run across THIS depressing dinosaur bone on the internet. Actually it's more like a broken clay tablet in cuneiform-- with the story of a once-rich queer cafe culture that has all but disappeared in the SF Bay Area.



Seven out of twelve are gone, as far as I know. Here are some of the casualties:



Mad Magda's -- a personal favorite with a nice blend of Russian, Jewish, Pagan and queer culture. I miss most the hammer and sickle inside the Star of David painted on the floor where you ordered, and the little magic garden where they had acoustic music, did aura readings and served tea under the only birch tree I've ever seen in San Francisco. Mismanaged by the diva / performer who owned it, sold, reopened as some other cafe. RIP.



The Patio Cafe -- closed for remodeling for like ten years now. I miss the adorable gay boy waiters in their super tight short shorts, their eggs Florentine (one of my few sins when I was still vegan), and the outdoor heaters with the wonderful cascading ferns and ivy in the back.



Josie's Cabaret and Juice Joint -- the comedy venue where I first saw Marga Gomez, after she left SF and before she moved to NY. She had a lot to say about LA lezzies, convincing me to not rush to go south of Salinas. I still have never been. Josie's was also the headquarters for the Tom Ammiano write-in campaign for mayor, and as a volunteer there I was reminded that Josie's was not only vegetarian in terms of the (delicious) food they served, but volunteers were not allowed to bring in non-vegetarian food to eat on the premises. A place friendly to dogs, and friendly to dykes, and sorely missed. Now it is a Zao noodle house. I loved the bash they threw for the Survivor's Guide to Sex book release party, where Annie Sprinkle (pre-house-boat fire, wearing one of her awesome costumes) led us all in a guided meditation to bring the entire 200 person audience to orgasm, Tina D'Elia wore one of her slit all the way up the thigh tight red dresses and read a dripping, hot, wet poem or two, and in finale the Hail Marys played their sparkling all-dyke pop rock for a small remaining audience consisting mostly of the band's lovers and ex-lovers.



Red Dora's Bearded Lady Cafe -- the Bearded Clam, the women's performance art Ground Zero, the home of the smallest bathroom in North America, the place where the china was chipped, the counter help was surly, and the gossip was torrid. Since it changed hands and then sunk into unprofitability (posting hours of business that seemed to relate not at all to when it was actually open) and closed, I have ended up in close relationship with the people who founded and kept alive that steamy Bearded scene. I actually performed at the last show at the Bearded Lady. But I was too depressed to go help dismantle the decor. I miss the horse model/ cowboy toy collection, strange installation art shows, the climbing, flowering vine-filled back quarter, and the 5 zillion different kinds of fliers on the walls, doors, and piled inside the front window. I remember seeing a flier there for someone trying to start a queer youth pirate radio station-- "help start this station or you'll shrivel up and die listening to KFOG!" (Now, I like KFOG for their morning show, but boy there's only so much Chris Isaak and Bruce Hornsby one person can take.) I missed the golden age of the Bearded Lady when my now-dead girlfriend Kris was paying the cafe's rent, cleaning and cooking, and trying to keep the doors open by hosting Friday night performance art shows. She did something like 20 shows there and managed to bring in talent like Dorothy Allison, Kathy Acker, Jewel Gomez, Michelle Tea (pre-Sister-Spit, pre-book{s}), and I think she even had Michael Franti. Or maybe she just tried to get him. She was impressed by his chainsaw act with The Disposable Heroes of HipHopracy when they played the Women's Building for some white lezbo event. So you get the idea. Crazy shit went down there, like someone opening 52 cans of tunafish, dumping it on the (concrete and spongelike-to-fish-oil) floor and stomping around in it, and another performance artist reading a poem while getting fisted. I saw the mysterious cowgirl duo Downriver there, and as part of the DirtyBird young queer punk festival I saw radical movie shorts there (one short that featured knife and blood play managed to nearly empty the place), and lastly, before the final final show, I saw my lover Kris read her novellas there, being recorded for posterity. Nothing has taken the place of the Bearded Lady, and probably nothing ever will.



Radio Valencia had a lot of bad luck. Right after being remodeled a truck drove right through their plate glass window and put them back at square one. When they finally again reopened, I became a regular for their African peanut soup, and of course their great music selection, which you could follow along with playlists at each table. They had the class, kitchy-chic decor and good food that Hamburger Mary's wanted. They had sonorous acoustic jazz ensembles almost every night, it seemed, and yet they were not too hip to have good service. I miss their good soup the most. Now it's either a Chinese or Thai food place with one of the ugliest signs on all of Valencia.



The Brick Hut and Edible Complex are both gone, also. I heard a lot about the former, and not much in comparison about the latter. I was freshly landed in the area when the Brick Hut started having the telltale symptoms of desperate benefit concerts. I am not sure I had even figured out how to use BART to cross the bay when it finally closed. I still hear women lamenting the loss of the Brick Hut- apparently it had really good concerts. I didn't hear anything about why it really closed, but I remember that landlord greed was blamed. I don't believe anything has taken over that building yet. In fact, looking on line a little, I think that it is scheduled to be destroyed in order to build some kind of housing there.



I found another sad gay list of mostly closed venues here-- it lists my beloved and lamented Alfred Schilling and Valentine's.



Alfred Schilling had the best mochas in all of San Francisco, and possibly the gayest waiter I've ever met. They were a little pricey, and had this weird dour Egyptian decor, but their bouncy gay waiter- who I think was French- gave the best waitservice in that whole neck of town, actually earnestly concerned that you had a really good meal, and a really good day. Besides the mocha and the waiter, I miss their whole-building mural of an African/ Egyptian pharoah topless queen seeming to soar like a torpedo out of the wall aimed at the Castro, her eyes rolling up to look at the rainbow flag on top of the building.



Valentine's was my little special occasion place back when I gave a shit about my diet, with its totally vegan but also gourmet menu. The last time I went there was after the Gay Pride Forced March 2000, with someone whose e-mail user name and hence my mental nickname for her is "Veganliz." We were windblown and sunburned, and after being topless half the day we were a little chilled. But still we sat on the sidewalk in the sun to have our coffee with soymilk (served in a porcelain serving pitcher) and organic green salads. I have no idea why it closed, but I especially miss their warm biscuit side dish.



Other casualties of mismanagement and/or the Dot Com Boom/Bust since I moved here include the amazing Old Wives Tales bookstore, Womencrafts West, the Whiptail Lizard Lounge, The Lab (that one went quietly-- unless it is technically still open but just not hosting shows), the CoCo Club, the Chat House, Castlebar, and - although not explicitly gay, an important punk venue - the rowdy smoky velvet-painting-clad Chameleon. Now the building where The Lab was (is?) and where queer arts venues Theatre Rhino and Luna Sea are still chugging along is in danger of being sold. Queer cafe, art, and performance culture has sure taken a beating since I moved here in 1995, not to mention Pagan culture (I think there's only one or two Pagan supply stores left in the city- when I moved here there were six or more).



You can see my measly attempt at queer culture preservation-- San Francisco in Exile -- a project where I work as one of the producers to stage queer performances and audio record them for posterity, an idea spawned by my dead girlfriend (pre-death) and passed on to me.




Tomorrow-- hopefully a morning free of nationalists with torches and flags!