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question for HP & SF/F people
Feb. 7th, 2008 10:18 amPublisher wants to know what magazines appeal to the media nerd demographic for potential advertising. This isn't something I actually have any knowledge of. Ideas?
Feb. 7th, 2008
the numbers argument
Feb. 7th, 2008 10:44 amOn Obama's electability in the national election
http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/obama-the-shock-of-the-red/
http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/obama-the-shock-of-the-red/
Marriage, for being the Hot Gay Issue of the moment, is actually horribly complicated, horribly uncomfortable. We've wound up in a position where almost all of us are lobbying for something we feel at least marginally conflicted about. Some of us worry about a loss of gay culture as if marriage will tame and suburbanize not just us, but our history. Others just feel grateful to have so long avoided the stresses heterosexual couples face regarding relationship milestones, and don't know what impact they may have on those relationships going forward. I wonder, certainly, if marriage would be the hot issue if health insurance in this country wasn't so tied to it.
I grew up knowing two things about marriage: that it was mystical and that as a girl it meant success. And I do mean mystical literally -- I've a father obsessed with religion, with faith and he talked constantly about such things at home, about gnosticism, about alchemy. Had these topics been approached with more deliberateness or organization it would have been a great intellectual boon to my childhood, but instead it was mostly awkward, like talking about sex or politics inappropriately at a dinner party.
Marriage, in the convolutions of my family, was so important that it was the subject of lies. I was raised to know that my parents marriage was the first for both of them and was lectured constantly to never have sex before marriage even in the long years where I never knew any boys. I recall telling my mother I was insulted by the speeches when I was twelve. "I don't know any boys and I'm ugly, so you needn't worry." I said it so clinically she couldn't think of a response.
When I was nineteen in an argument with my father he told me I reminded him of his ex-wife, and when I gaped at him, he merely assured me that there were no children from the marriage. I don't know what my mother knows about it, and I only learnt the name of this woman, from a cousin, last year.
You would think, in the face of all this sloppy madness, I would be more sensible about marriage, more clear, but that is hardly the case. When I was barely twenty and fucking a man twice my age, I dreamed of our future life off-shore (this, a long story involving dot.com fantasies) and the five sons I would give him: Julien, Gabriel, Philip, Martin and Daniel; I have had a long partiality to the names of angels, the names of saints. In my mind I would wear long dresses and be solitary and full of knowing sadness. Why I thought I had to have these children to be like that, I can no longer recall.
Of course, I got older and became marginally more sensible but no less sloppy, getting engaged and then un-engaged to a more suitable man at twenty-four, and then arguing mercilessly about marriage and agenda with Michael on and off for years. That is a story I don't know how to recount with accuracy; it seems strange to say, but it is hard to remember now. I did know he was status though -- the big man with the broad shoulders -- and I knew the way other women looked at me when I was with him. Similarly, I knew the way I looked at him with other women. I had surrendered mysticism to politics, and this is the way all myths go sour. I learnt that no one wants a freaky bisexual artist chick with tattoos to be the mother of their children. I know now that my sense of the political in personal life can be as suffocating as that throwaway disregard.
And so it is very hard and quite strange to be a loud noisy voice when it comes to gay marriage. I know that I find the idea of being a wife sexy - for it is possession and worth, it is being chosen, and whether you like it or not, it is being owned, it is a girl being told she is finally pretty enough, finally pleasing enough. Thankfully, I also find the idea of having a wife to be nearly irresistible - for it is loyalty and responsibility and a quiet, secret specialness. I want to get down on one knee before fairy lights and ask for the honor. I do. Even as I know, entering into marriage more practically seems these days to be the product of a series of awkward discussions and mundane concerns; perhaps that is less toxic. I don't know.
My narratives of marriage aren't just grand, but also problematic. More than that, when have I ever asked the government to give me permission to tell a story. When have I ever asked anyone? Not in a long time, and that's important to me.
The legalization of gay marriage in the U.S. is a critical civil rights issue, and of significant importance for all sorts of reasons crass, morbid or mundane: inheritance and tax filings, health insurance and custody rights. But it seems strange to fight so hard for something I'm so aware of the utter illusions of, that seems likely to radically alter the gay culture that nurtured me from the time I was a teenager, and that seems likely to cause some very rough times for some otherwise exceptionally solid couples.
You want to know what the gay agenda is? It's a lot of us feeling like we have to keep our ambivalence and inner-conflicts about the marriage issue secret.
I grew up knowing two things about marriage: that it was mystical and that as a girl it meant success. And I do mean mystical literally -- I've a father obsessed with religion, with faith and he talked constantly about such things at home, about gnosticism, about alchemy. Had these topics been approached with more deliberateness or organization it would have been a great intellectual boon to my childhood, but instead it was mostly awkward, like talking about sex or politics inappropriately at a dinner party.
Marriage, in the convolutions of my family, was so important that it was the subject of lies. I was raised to know that my parents marriage was the first for both of them and was lectured constantly to never have sex before marriage even in the long years where I never knew any boys. I recall telling my mother I was insulted by the speeches when I was twelve. "I don't know any boys and I'm ugly, so you needn't worry." I said it so clinically she couldn't think of a response.
When I was nineteen in an argument with my father he told me I reminded him of his ex-wife, and when I gaped at him, he merely assured me that there were no children from the marriage. I don't know what my mother knows about it, and I only learnt the name of this woman, from a cousin, last year.
You would think, in the face of all this sloppy madness, I would be more sensible about marriage, more clear, but that is hardly the case. When I was barely twenty and fucking a man twice my age, I dreamed of our future life off-shore (this, a long story involving dot.com fantasies) and the five sons I would give him: Julien, Gabriel, Philip, Martin and Daniel; I have had a long partiality to the names of angels, the names of saints. In my mind I would wear long dresses and be solitary and full of knowing sadness. Why I thought I had to have these children to be like that, I can no longer recall.
Of course, I got older and became marginally more sensible but no less sloppy, getting engaged and then un-engaged to a more suitable man at twenty-four, and then arguing mercilessly about marriage and agenda with Michael on and off for years. That is a story I don't know how to recount with accuracy; it seems strange to say, but it is hard to remember now. I did know he was status though -- the big man with the broad shoulders -- and I knew the way other women looked at me when I was with him. Similarly, I knew the way I looked at him with other women. I had surrendered mysticism to politics, and this is the way all myths go sour. I learnt that no one wants a freaky bisexual artist chick with tattoos to be the mother of their children. I know now that my sense of the political in personal life can be as suffocating as that throwaway disregard.
And so it is very hard and quite strange to be a loud noisy voice when it comes to gay marriage. I know that I find the idea of being a wife sexy - for it is possession and worth, it is being chosen, and whether you like it or not, it is being owned, it is a girl being told she is finally pretty enough, finally pleasing enough. Thankfully, I also find the idea of having a wife to be nearly irresistible - for it is loyalty and responsibility and a quiet, secret specialness. I want to get down on one knee before fairy lights and ask for the honor. I do. Even as I know, entering into marriage more practically seems these days to be the product of a series of awkward discussions and mundane concerns; perhaps that is less toxic. I don't know.
My narratives of marriage aren't just grand, but also problematic. More than that, when have I ever asked the government to give me permission to tell a story. When have I ever asked anyone? Not in a long time, and that's important to me.
The legalization of gay marriage in the U.S. is a critical civil rights issue, and of significant importance for all sorts of reasons crass, morbid or mundane: inheritance and tax filings, health insurance and custody rights. But it seems strange to fight so hard for something I'm so aware of the utter illusions of, that seems likely to radically alter the gay culture that nurtured me from the time I was a teenager, and that seems likely to cause some very rough times for some otherwise exceptionally solid couples.
You want to know what the gay agenda is? It's a lot of us feeling like we have to keep our ambivalence and inner-conflicts about the marriage issue secret.