sundries

[rm]

Now that Patty has posted it, I can tell you that she passed her comps.

Less than one week until Europe.

Yesterday we essentially finished the recording for Inception: The Musical, although there will be lots of intensive work (that's not mine!) to make all the files neat and clean and shareable on the Internets.

We also solved a couple of small but pivotal Dogboy & Justine (Kickstarter currently at $1,055) problems and went to the NYMF closing party.

By and large, as much as I HATE initiating conversations with strangers, if they come to me, I'm pretty good. We explained the show cogently most of the time, and were able to ascertain quickly what was and wasn't working as pitch content.

1. People love that it's a show about dominatrices and see dollar signs right away.
2. People either confess their own interactions with or knowledge of sex-work or make uncomfortable jokes -- I am personally good with the first and tolerant of the second.
3. As we're two women doing a show, there's a certain immediate "do the children know what they are doing?" vibe in some conversations. This is unavoidable, and deeply unpleasant to me.
4. If I dressed masculine-ly for such soirees, I suspect we'd get less of item 3, but more of "if your show is about lesbians, they better be hot lesbians" -- an item that came up because there was some butch lesbian content in the festival this year.
5. People DO NOT want to know that I was ever a dominatrix. This actually annoys me, not because I give a shit one way or another if people know, but because of the horrible, bullshit answers I'm going to have to give to the "Why dominatrixes?" question, which from now on will be a reiteration of "I really love that musical theater trope of backstage stories, but I wanted to go with an environment that was less familiar.... blah blah blah blah." Still, I'm not keeping the secret, because I'd never be able to manage to; but I'm now going to side-step the dare that that question is -- because yeah, that's what the question is, and then when you take people up on it, they get all spiky.

So were we perfect? No. Was it better than "more hits than you can possibly imagine!"¹ -- I keep telling myself, reluctantly, uncertainly, yes. Clearly, among other things, we need to take a media training approach to disciplining the social aspects of this endeavor. And proceed with a constant awareness of how much creative control two women aren't expected to want -- the whole experience was both really positive and put up a lot of blinking warning signs for me, both on factors external and internal.

But hey, business cards and follow-up emails.

As an Afghan-German filmmaker's student thesis is thrust into the spotlight he deals publicly with what it means to be perceived as a foreigner at home.

Women kicked out of mall for kissing, because, as usual, it's different when gay people do it.

Tea Party candidate Ken Buck compared being gay to alcoholism.

---

¹ There's this story buried somewhere on the Romeo + Juliet DVD about a disastrous pitch meeting Luhrmann had for it, when he'd been given advice not to mention that it would be using Shakespeare's original language. It's pretty funny, and is also a nice baseline for "Did you make more sense than that? If so, you live to fight another day."

Comments

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

I'm really excited about dog boy and justine even though I've never seen it. I'm really wanting this to happen for you, even though I'kll likely never have a chance to see it.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you. It's going to be an adventure, with many little stages. But this shit will happen.

[hoyland54.livejournal.com]

This bit of the film article really stood out to be (and is partly emblematic of why I hate the NYT):

Even though he is Muslim, Mr. Qurbani and his family adopted the culture of Christmas. As a small child, he said, he was pleased to learn about Catholicism during religious classes in school because he wanted to understand his friends. And he professes to carry the guilt of Germany’s Nazi past.

“Of course I do,” he said, recalling how as a child he was taken on school trips to former concentration camps.

Still, he is acutely aware that he is looked on as an outsider.

The article at least seems to start out from the premise of not challenging Qurbani's German-ness. Then that use of 'professes' chucks it all out the window and we're told to believe he can't be German enough (or, more insidiously, perhaps human enough) to experience guilt about Nazism.

Man, this article falls so squarely into something I was writing about last night, even more than Angela Merkel and her periodic declarations against multiculturalism. (That's another failing of the article--suggesting that pronouncement came out of nowhere yesterday.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my relationship with the NYT lately is "thank you for alerting me to something I'd like to actually read a good article about."

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

Speaking of the NYT, did you see yesterday's article about Shoppingcart Annie of the Fulton Fish Market? I was thinking you'd find the play of identity and sexuality in her life history interesting.

[yarram.livejournal.com]

The chain of posts about the immigration-and-Islam discussion in Germany triggers a whole bunch of thoughts, some of which I can't really unpack because I'm not enough of a cultural insider to go there. However there are two things I can say. One, the entire discussion about immigration in Germany is framed around assimilation rather than integration, which makes it really hard to center immigrant voices and experiences. Two, my main reaction is "Oh, ghods, Germany, please don't go back there again. Show us that there's at least one country on this fucking planet that's capable of learning from its own history."

[sahiya.livejournal.com]

Not really, I'm afraid. At least not in any sort of functional way. It used to drive me crazy when I was living there; the things that would come out of the mouths of the young, educated, liberal Germans I was living with at the time were completely appalling. And I had a student in a class of tenth graders (who in Germany are usually 16-17 years old) tell me in total seriousness during a discussion I was running about the Civil War and the legacy of slavery in the U.S. that "there is no racism in Germany."

There isn't even much academic discourse about race in Germany, which is why you get a lot of Germans coming to the U.S. to do their PhD's on topics like Turkish-German literature (one of my own subfields). Any courses about race or ethnicity get relegated to the English department (along with anything related the slightest bit to gender). A lot of German academics seem to consider critical race theory something that's been forced upon them by the Anglophone academic community.

This is not to say, of course, that there aren't Germans who are interested in trying to build a multicultural society, but it's hard when there's so little discourse; when people lack a functional vocabulary related to the topic even in academia, it becomes hard to picture what something like that would look like. And then you have German politicians like Merkel saying what she did to pander to the Christian right and other politicians going around talking about Leitkultur (basically, hegemonic "German" culture - as though "Germanness" didn't have a hundred regional variations itself) and . . . yeah. It's a mess.

[graene.livejournal.com]

This is the shopping center where we got our rings and where I took Turbo to storytime the last two years, because it's gorgeous library branch had times that worked with Miss M's school hours. The security people were asses, but York also managed our condo, and I think they are sincere in their "this is not okay" attitude, so I will hope things continue to get better both locally and globally.

[atrophying]

I've spent many hours at the same shopping center (and that library - I miss it terribly!), and was flabbergasted when I heard. It's certainly not a huge city, but I'd always thought that Raleigh was pretty queer-friendly. I guess this sort of crap is pretty much everywhere, though. Frustrating, I swear.

[graene.livejournal.com]

I think Raleigh is pretty queer-friendly, but we're still withing the Bible Belt, so you never know who might be just arrived from the sticks...or not so 'just arrived'.

[adelheid-p.livejournal.com]

RE: Dogboy and Justine -- I threw in some support so I'm definitely interested in it being done and I want to see it. I'm sort of mystified by some of the reactions you've gotten but then my husband keeps telling me that I don't think like most people so I'll just chalk it up to that. I think being able to assess your audience is an important marketing skill and it sounds like you have it.

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

Heh. What's ironic about the Tea Party thing is that, when I was growing up (pre-deciphering the human genome), it was assumed that being gay *was* a choice and the idea of equality for queers had nothing to do with the 'they can't help it explanation'.

I still believe, actually sort of like (at first glance -- I read only the scant article up there) the Tea Party guy up there, that being queer -- or more accurately -- all sexual orientation issues are socially determined, as mediated by genetics. That sexual orientation is determined at some point in very early childhood, probably before children speak or comprehend like adults. My theory is that there is a developmental phase of the brain, similar to the developmental phase of language acquisition, where sexual behavior is determined based on the environment the child is in. So, yes, to me queerness is a 'choice' but not in the way people nowadays seem to believe. As if it a: mattered whether someone chose it or not (which to me is a dissembling argument buying into prejudice) and b: anyone would chose to be treated as a second class citizen. Which leads to a peculiar thing about conservative fears of queerness -- often their arguments about visible queerness seem to imply that queerness is either so powerful or so desirable that unless you suppress it vigorously, it is capable of turning anyone queer.

But, aside from all that, this whole 'gay is a genetic condition' thing going on now is a recent phenomenon depended partly on current understanding (and fetisizing) of genetics. The fact that a man in his ... gray haired age does not believe it is not proof of crazy nut-jobness IMO (though, of course, being a TeaParty member does incline me to suspect that other aspects of the man are probably crazy nut-job).

[yarram.livejournal.com]

The thing that bugs me about the "choice" framing is that unlike religion, where people can and do convert with quite some regularity, that's not really strictly possible wrt sexuality. Yet there are people arguing that because sexuality is a "choice", it shouldn't be a protected class, even people who would not seriously suggest that someone should change their religious affiliation just to avoid discrimination and bigotry. (Yes, there are people who do propose that, too, but there's still a systemic disconnect, even among deeply conservative active-proselytizers, where they agree that religion should be protected but sexuality should not.)

[quick edit for clarity]

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

Pretty much.

If there's nothing wrong with being queer, then why does it matter whether it's a spin on the genetic lottery wheel or a choice -- or even a conscious choice (which I don't think anyone can reasonably argue).

[sanat.livejournal.com]

there's still a systemic disconnect, even among deeply conservative active-proselytizers, where they agree that religion should be protected but sexuality should not.

Yeah, funny how that works out for them. >:(

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

I don't think I ever asked you if you've read "Whip Smart"?

A girl I went to grad school with wrote it.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

People DO NOT want to know that I was ever a dominatrix

...I apparently am not suited to be a "real" theater person, because I'd consider that a selling point for the show that the author had personal experience, and I'd totally want to hear stories. Then again, I tend to be intensely curious about things people get awkward about.

As an answer to "Why dominatrixes?" what's wrong with, "It hasn't been done before, it's attention-grabbing, and when you get down into it there's really a lot of fascinating material there." I wasn't there and I have met these people, but I'm not really sure why the question is a dare so much as, "That's an unusual choice of material, I'm sure there's an interesting reason for it and I'd like to know what it is." They're probably expecting, "I saw a CSI episode on doms when I was 12 and have been fascinated ever since." or something similar tittlating but ultimately mundane.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

The article about the Afghan-German student is so frustrating, and Merkel's comments are chilling. I'm so tired of watching majorities refuse to make multiculturalism work and then blame minorities.

Also, I apparently borked the postage on the birthday-flavored thing. Should i hold it until you get back to the States?

[sanat.livejournal.com]

The only similarity I see between homosexuality and alcoholism is that the prevailing "treatment" programs are based on questionable science promoted by conservative Christian groups. Last I read, the genetic markers supposedly indicative of alcoholism or "addictive personalities" in general were actually (or additionally?) responsible for schizophrenia or some other distinct condition, so it's rather less clearly genetic than being queer is.

Also, being gay isn't inherently harmful to one's health. Duh.

[austengirl.livejournal.com]

Congrats to Patty on passing comps!