Photoblog - Stop the H8

Following the Prop 8 legislation that banned same-sex marriages in California, people from all fifty states turned out to march for equal rights this Saturday in their respective cities. Seattle and Olympia were both on the march. One of my friends, Melissa, went to Seattle and brought some pictures back for show-and-tell.

ME: Even though Prop-8 was California's bad deal, why were people marching for equal rights in Seattle?

MELISSA: Although the majority of the states have motioned to define marriage as "a union between a man and a woman", Prop. 8 was unique in that it took away same-sex marriage rights that had already been granted by the California Constitution. Just because it happened in a different state doesn't mean that we can't process a thought and take action.

ME: You snapped a photo of Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels speaking at the rally on Capitol Hill. What did he say and what does it mean that the Mayor, Senator Ed Murray, King County Executive Ron Sims, and several others in government positions are supporting the cause?

MELISSA: Nickels denounced Prop. 8 as a hateful measure and said it should have never made it onto the ballot. He also declared November 15th Marriage Equality Day in Seattle. We have support from politically influential people; it means a lot to have that kind of support, especially when the viewpoint you're fighting from isn't necessarily the popular one.

ME: How did you meet Fabulous K.J.?

MELISSA: Fabulous K.J. and his two friends were the only other people I saw at City Hall that morning, the original meeting place. I didn't get the memo about the rally being moved to Volunteer Park and obviously neither did they, but I suppose it was an organized venue change because it was pretty much just the four of us. We tripped around together for a bit, confused, and then split up (they went to find breakfast while I tried to locate a few friends). My friend Leo looked things up online and messaged me that the happenings were at Volunteer Park. I don't think I would have made it if it weren't for him. I forwarded the info to K.J. and we reunited during the march.

ME: Who is the saxophone guy in this picture?

MELISSA: Oh, Kevin - he wasn't associated with the Prop. 8 happenings. I just recognized him as one of my brother's classmates and decided to be oddly extroverted. He invited me to join his band. I guess that's flattering.



ME: Who is the naked lady on the balcony?

MELISSA: I wouldn't have a clue, but everyone on the street loved her. I don't think the guys in the next balcony over realized that the sudden surge in whoo hoo was due to naked-support, rather than the usual clothed-support, but, well, you know. We'll take any support we can get, nude or otherwise.

ME: When you got to Westlake Center you were met with anti-anti-Prop 8 protesters. What was their deal?

MELISSA: Oh, the typical burn-in-hellers. They were citing Bible verses and saying we should repent or else. I know the big "or else" thing is a common thread amongst Bible-affiliated religion, but I really don't think there is any choice associated with being gay, lesbian, or otherwise.

I've heard about ex-gay programs... they're really unhealthy; the American Psychiatric Association (APA) doesn't approve of that at all - doesn't that mean anything to people advising gays to repent?

I met a Christian woman on the bus ride home and we talked pretty much the whole time. She said if people want to get married they should get married, and we've got bigger things to spend our time on than fighting over that.

ME: Beautiful picture! Last question: the Washington State Supreme Court upheld in 2006 the definition of marriage as "a union between a man and a woman", and in 2007 Governor Christine Gregoire passed the Domestic Partners Registry which explicitly bans same-sex couples from marriage. What's it going to take to win same-sex marriages in Washington State?

MELISSA: What the exact logistics of getting same-sex marriage legal in Washington State are, I don't know. I think the organization and the peacefulness of the event this past Saturday speaks volumes about our community. There were tables to write to legislators and such about how people in attendance disagreed with bans on same-sex marriage. Domestic partnerships and civil unions just aren't enough.

ME: Thanks, Melissa!

On Women Being Murderous in the Movies

I'm currently re-editing a film I shot with a team of four others during a 48-hour film festival three months ago, in order to submit it to another film festival this March. It's difficult sometimes to work with a diverse group of people and produce something that doesn't reinforce dominating ideologies.

The film follows a drug dealer as he struggles for independence against his sexist supplier who orders the dealer and the supplier's girlfriend around forcefully. At one point his girlfriend (the only woman in the film) approaches the street dealer and they engage in an intimate conversation about (what else?) life with drugs. She pitches an offer to the dealer saying that she can help him kill the supplier. However, an aircraft flies overhead and neither one of them can hear each other. There is a moment of miscommunication that is portrayed with the use of subtitles at the bottom of the screen. The street dealer thinks she is helping him by offering free drugs, and he agrees to this alleged offer, while she believes the dealer has accepted the offer to kill the supplier (i.e. her boyfriend.) Ultimately, the woman murders the supplier, and the street dealer has a moment of agitated confusion.

I wonder about this film, called A Brief, Bright Flash of Red Light, and whether it is reinforcing a dominant sexist ideology that the woman is The Deceiver. This idea can be traced back to at least the Book of Genesis. And with all the talk about miscommunication from theorists like Deborah Tannen etc., we should expect that it is always the man who has the dirty intention to deceive or to ignore The Other, not the woman. Except in this case, both the man and the woman are expecting free favors from the other, yet the man is cheated. That is what Nietzsche said about a woman's power over man. Woman is mysterious and uses deception as a substitute for power. As long as men do not understand the source of this power, she remains more powerful than him.

Conversely, then, by acknowledging that woman has this covert power over a man, and eschewing the false-feminist theorists who gloss over this power analysis and proclaim there are no innate differences in these power relationships, the film tells the truth about women. It in fact says that women have more power over men than the man is willing to accept. The man thought that only another man who is more powerful than him could overcome him, and it is proved that a woman is more powerful than both.

This is not a film about morality. Though the woman is the murderer, it is not meant to place any sort of blame on her for being murderous. Morality is something altogether separate, and I would even say it is false to use it as a narrative. Therefore morality is exempt from the film in my view, and exempt from the analysis of the film. I suppose, however, that when morality and power are thought to be inseparable, the film can be interpreted as saying women are evil.

Thoughts?

How "Feminist Jurisprudence" Works

Anti-feminists have said that sounds like a contradiction in terms.

But Patricia Smith argues it isn't contradictory. It is a "self-interested" account of jurisprudence, she says. First, what makes her theory feminist is not simply that she is a woman writing about jurisprudence. That's far too simplistic, and you should be wayyy over that. Consider this. We all operate within a worldview that constitutes a certain "picture of reality" - a picture that is profoundly and systematically gendered.

This worldview is patriarchal. Therefore the jurisprudence it produces is also patriarchal. A feminist jurisprudence is working to combat the patriarchy within jurisprudential theory and beating down its hostilities to real equality, and therefore it is a defense of real jurisprudence from the wild misrepresentations and biases provided by the patriarchal model.

"If law stands for justice," she argues, "it must be justice for all."

Her account of jurisprudence is in line with the Marxist account of law as a part of the superstructure, part of the dominant code of society. In a sense, while she's arguing against the ideological forms of jurisprudence, she is making a claim that is much more similar to natural law theorists, who posit that there is something, justice, to which all law must aspire. If the law is not aspiring to justice, she can make a claim that it is not really law at all.

I agree with this analysis. Patricia Smith's feminist jurisprudence is a critique of jurisprudence - "patriarchal jurisprudence", which is redundant now that we've spelled it out.

Margery Kemp and Salvific Sex

Mysticism seems to lead to creativity and social action. In "The Book of Margery Kemp", an autobiography, Margery refers to herself in the third-person. The Middle-Aged mind needed to seek a spiritual explanation for everything. When Margery first hears Jesus' message, she had just experienced a madness up to the birth of her first child. She had a vision of an apparition of Jesus and was relieved of her post-partem stress.

We can explain things medically in this age. So there's an urge to explain her vision psychologically or medically. Most interpreters like to keep the interpretation spiritual, but how can we resist? Perhaps reading it spiritually evokes faith in the reader.

At one point in her life she decided to cut her hair, give up sex, and stop eating meat. She would rather have eaten the muck in the gutter than consent to intercourse. She spoke constantly of heaven, and wept copiously. Everywhere she went people saw her weeping as divinely-inspired. She sat and wept in the Church where she lived, and went on pilgrimages to weep in historic Christian places.

In Canterbury she wept so loudly that people threatened to burn her as a heretic. She spoke with Julian of Norwich, the anchorite, about her visions. She then joined a group of pilgrims to the Holy Land, who told her that she could no longer be in her party if she would not eat meat and speak so much about holiness.

A "heretic" and social rebel, she was arrested a number of times for urging other women to escape their husbands. Women came running out of their houses in one place and shouted that they burn her. Other women were more receptive. She nearly escaped a rape from an interrogator who arrested her once.

She was a kind lustful mystic. She wanted to have sex once in a chapel, and the man denied her. She became part of the virginal genre of literature which women wrote of their brideship with Christ. It's often very sexual-sounding. But it is apparently not, say the experts. However, I suspect that the expert readers are simply denying a sexual interpretation which would undermine her writing--in their eyes.

But I think the sexual spirituality is interesting in and of itself and does not need to be denied or defended in anyway. Perhaps this is because I have a secular interpretation of Margery, and in my view it's even more interesting that Margery would literally like to have sex with Christ. Whereas the experts tend to be Christian and would rather overlook, or spiritualize, Margery's very sexual mysticism. They would have her glorifying the manhood of Christ, but in metaphorical terms that are in no way explicitly sexual.

Woman Not Inferior To Man

Woman Not Inferior to Man, written by the mysterious authorship of "Sophia", a pioneer feminist tract, appears to have been attributed to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Her books are evidence that feminism hasn't advanced one inch over the last few hundred years. In response to Sophia's treatise, an anonymous gentleman published Man Superior to Woman, which then became a best-seller. After having read a few excerpts, his book suggests to me that the level of intelligence of our species has changed little over the last couple hundred years.