The History Boys

Picked this film up at random this evening and watched it with two friends.

It was amazing.

I don't want to give away any plot information, but here are three things that were raised during the film:

1. Student-teacher relationships, including power dynamics.

2. Pedagogy, specifically modern vs. postmodern understandings of truth, history, and literature.

3. Masculinity, male adolescent development, and sexual identity.

It plays out against the background of a British grammar school with wonderful, if incredibly understated (stereotypically British?) writing and acting - as it would turn out, the cast of the film is the same as the cast of the play the film was based on. It also shares the same writer and director as the play.

Anyway, the thing that impressed me the most was the way in which the film treated everyone with compassion.

Go see it.

More on the ENDA/Transgender Flap

From Bay Windows....

If only we’d seen the passion, the blog posts and the last-minute organizing by LGBT organizations around a trans-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) last year. And the year before that. And the decade before that. Just yesterday, a coalition called United ENDA unveiled its website featuring talking points for a trans-inclusive ENDA; legal analysis showing that an ENDA bill that only protects lesbians, gay men and bisexuals will be too weak to actually protect lesbians, gay men and bisexuals (the bill’s failure to protect actual transmen and women is conspicuously absent from the analysis); and an impressively lengthy list of national and state LGBT organizations demanding an all-or-nothing approach to passing ENDA.

...

There is much concern that if a bill protecting employees solely on the basis of sexual orientation is passed then protections for transmen and women will be forgotten. It’s hard to take that concern seriously given the flurry of support that’s been forcefully expressed for trans rights now that we know a trans-inclusive ENDA simply will not pass in the House as its currently configured.

The T in LGBT

From John Aravosis at Americablog, who I disagree with quite a bit, comes a good bit on the inclusion of transgendered persons into the struggle over so-called 'gay rights':

If you're hell-bent on passing ENDA this year, then you don't add a provision to ENDA that you know is going to kill it. And if you were planning on eventually dropping transgendered people from the bill from the git-go, then why add them in the first place, when you know darn well that there's going to be hell to pay when you drop them?

...

I would argue that the gay community never collectively and overwhelmingly decided to include the T in LGB (or GLB). It happened because a few groups like NGLTF and GLAAD starting using it, and they and a handful of vocal activists and transgender leaders pretty much shamed everyone else into doing it. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing, and it doesn't necessarily mean that the T shouldn't have been added. I'm just saying that I don't think the T was added because there was a groundswell of demand in the gay community that we add T to LGB. I think it happened through pressure, organizational fiat, shame, and osmosis.

And that is how we got into the mess we're in today.

...

People are simply afraid to ask any questions about this issue, and those unresolved conflicts are coming home to roost. I know I was afraid to write about this issue, and still am. I thought long and hard about even weighing in on this issue last week. Did I really want to have to deal with people screaming and calling me a bigot? And I've got gay journalist friends and gay political friends who have sent me private "atta boy"s supporting my public essays, while refusing to go public themselves.

There is a climate of fear and confusion and doubt about the transgender issue in the gay community. And no one wants to talk about it. And when you don't talk about your small concerns, when you're afraid to talk about them, when it's not considered PC for you to talk about them, one day those small concerns turn into big problems and the revolution comes tumbling down.

Aravosis says some things I think are probably wrong, but I'm not in much of a position to know answer for sure.

What I do think is that he fails to make one connection that would make this whole issue much clearer.

I think a big reason to add 'transgender' into the mix when it comes to working towards other non-traditional gender rights is simply that: it's non-traditional. What was once, perhaps, a movement for 'gay liberation' for one particular group of people has (and again this is a maybe) morphed into a movement that's working to end a heterosexist/patriarchal system and all the attendant and painful consequences of such restrictions not only on behavior, but even physical identity.

In other words, what was once a movement advocating that gay folks have the same rights as straights evolved into a movement that declared traditional sex and gender categories to be a harmful and inaccurate representation of reality, and as such, said constructions should be torn down - and people should be free to live and love how they please. Yes, there is a significant shift in aims - but I like the new iteration much better, as I see it as much more inclusive, comprehensive, and consistent.

Anyway, I'm curious to hear Aravosis' take (and his reporting of the words of others) on this issue, because it suggests that the point I made above is not actually a commonly held opinion. I'd be curious to know if that's actually true, or if there is something I missing in this debate that overshadows my point.

Politics vs. Justice

Via Americablog, a story in the Washington Post regarding Idaho Senator Larry Craig's decision to try and stay in the Senate.

Craig is the person who initially pled guilty to attempting to solicit sex from an undercover male cop in an airport bathroom. He is now fighting to withdraw his plea and seems to be intent on staying on as a Senator.

Interestingly, the Republican Party - of which Craig is a member - is looking like it's going to be leading the charge to kick him out of the Senate.

This presents Democrats with a choice - or maybe it's an opportunity. The way I see it, the Dems can do one of several things:

1) They can do nothing, stand on the sidelines, and watch to see if Craig emerges victorious or whether or not he gets drummed out. (I'm not sure how true this is since I don't know members of the Minority Party can call a hearing or if they have to have the approval of the Chair of the Ethics Committee - in this case a Democrat.)

2) They can side with the GOP and (presumably) argue that Craig has disgraced the Senate through his actions and his conviction, and pressure him to leave.

3) They can side with Craig and fight the GOP.

In other words, I think the Democrats can side with justice on this one, or they can side with politics and use this issue for political gain. I don't think they can do both.

Siding with justice means, for me, that the Dems actually take Craig's side and argue in the public eye that being gay is OK. This opens up an opportunity to talk about the suffering that LGBT folks who are in the closet have to go through, and also about the silliness and injustice present in lots of anti-sodomy laws. Caveat: The whole prostitution angle needs to be navigated, but I think that's doable. Just talk about how this would never have happened if Craig was free to love whomever he wanted. Overall, a great opportunity for the Dems to take a stand rooted firmly in equality and justice for all, with the added bonus that politically, the Dems will be "above" politics since they would be helping a Republican Senator whose views may change a tiny bit as a result of this (I believe if Craig leaves, his appointed replacement will be a Republican anyway).

However, I think the Dems are more likely to take what I would call the low road on this one and either sit idly by while Craig fights the GOP or even assist in Craig's ouster. There might be some sniping at the GOP regarding hypocrisy, but not too much, since there are plenty of Dems who fear exposure. This route views the battle as primarily about gaining short-term political advantage for the Party by utilizing power-as-a-zero-sum-game rules: Hurt the GOP and the Dems look better. Unfortunately, it does nothing to help the LGBT community as a whole, and nothing to create a better environment for politics to take place in.

Like I said, the Democrats have a choice. They can ally themselves with justice, or they can play at politics. I'm curious to see what they do.

"Now You Know"

Some time back I found this blog, Sexual Intelligence. I don't read it that often, but perhaps I should, with posts like this:

Dear Larry Craig:

Now you know what it’s like.

I don’t say this in a mean way, I’m just pointing out a simple fact: Now you know what it’s like.

You already knew what it’s like to be terrified of being found out. You already knew what it’s like to hide who you are. But like millions of other Americans, now you know what it’s like:

* To lose a job because of your sexuality
* To be entrapped and then busted for inviting consensual, adult sex
* To be told you don’t belong where you know you do belong
* To suddenly be seen as totally different because of one private thing
* To be told that your sexual interest is the only important thing about you
* To be told that your “perversion” is the only important thing about you
* To be an acceptable butt of jokes, with no moral standing to protest
* To suddenly have your rights taken away even though you didn’t hurt anyone
* To go from being one of “us” to one of “them,” even though you haven’t changed

continued....

Queerness and Small Towns

From Little Light, over at Feministe, a great post on being queer and rural:

We’re another subspecies, us rural queers. See, our small towns are hard on us, yes, but so are our queer communities. The default culture is an urban one, and it’s assumed–well, why would you stay in a town or a church or a country that didn’t welcome you? Why wouldn’t you come to the city? Isn’t the city better? Better culture, better hangouts, better imagery, better people? We didn’t have our own subculture, back home, with its own parallel institutions. Small towns can make you ashamed and isolated for who you love and what you are; why should the places we run to sneer at our accents and our clothes and our food and our music, in turn? Yeah, if you have the resources to run to the city, you probably do–but some don’t, and others are attached to their roots, their families, their cultural trappings, the dirt and sky and rock of where they live. Sometimes a deep love of place comes first. But still, our mainstream queer organizations and publications and politics focus on city people and city concerns, and just assume that the countryside is going to be a conservative cesspit, nothing to be done about it. For some of us, the country is home, even though we’re refugees, and we would love for it to change so we could live there safely, but we’re just demographic anomalies, apparently.

...

This assumption that queer folk are city folk is just not working. It isolates and abandons those of us out in the sticks making lives work, and it isolates those of us in cities, with its implicit message that if you venture out past the metro area without a helmet, you’ll dissolve. It limits our causes to just working for those of us all clustered together while the rest of the state fears and misunderstands what we’re about. It just ratchets up our ability to sneer.

Go read. It's a great post, and it raises a good question for me. I've noticed the urban trend among my friends that are queer, and it's very pronounced.

There Is At Least One Good Dennis

From the liveblogging thread over at Americablog:

6:55: Joe: ENDA issues - what do you see as a hurdle to getting it done.
Kucinich commends Barney Frank for leading on the legislation. The issue of employment non-discrimination affects everyone; there should be no reason to discriminate. The same kind of hurdles are faced in marriage equality issues as well. One plus one, when you're talking about gay couples currently equals zero under the law.

Summary: long pregnant pause before he starts to speak. He says we need a president to understand love in the deepest sense. He couldn't imagine meeting the love of my life and being told that you cannot be married. That would be devastating. He's ready to be the person that transforms this nation and reconnects us with the deepest truths there are.

There are some things that make it crystal clear to me how far away our value system is from one in which people are allowed and even encouraged to give freely of themselves, especially when it comes to love.

I am also talking about, of course, the fact that Kucinich gets laughed at by people for not being "serious" enough, what with his talk of a 'Department of Peace' and his talk about love and whatnot.

There is nothing more serious than love.

The New World: Religious Freedom = The Ability to Discriminate

At the risk of going somewhere I maybe shouldn't at the moment, I found this story at Pandagon about the firing of a gay employee who had come out to his boss the day before. I know, I know - it's probably just coincidence, right? Right? Sigh....it's too early in the day for this.

What makes it, um, interesting, is that the boss in question (who apparently had a habit of badmouthing gays and lesbians at work) is claiming that he doesn't have to answer questions about the reason he fired the employee because such questions infringe on his "constitutionally protected religious beliefs."

Um, what the fuck? Since when? I get that religious freedom allows a person to believe what they want. However, religious freedom has never meant the right to harm others based on your personal beliefs. Or the right to expect others to live as though they held your beliefs.

Or has it? Maybe that's one of those big gaps in communication between the 'left' and the 'right'. Maybe there are folks who believe that 'religious freedom' really means 'christian state' or 'my religion trumps your well-being'.

Or maybe some people actually expect the world to conform to them.