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Open Thread with Running Basset

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This basset hound in action, chasing a ball, features for this week’s Open Thread. Please natter/chatter/vent/rant on anything* you like over this weekend and throughout the week.


Leroy – Basset Hound A (44), uploaded to Flickr by Justin Beckley
Shared as Creative Commons (CC BY-ND 2.0)

So, what have you been up to? What would you rather be up to? What’s been awesome/awful?
Reading? Watching? Making? Meeting?
What has [insert awesome inspiration/fave fansquee/guilty pleasure/dastardly ne’er-do-well/threat to all civilised life on the planet du jour] been up to?

* Netiquette footnotes:
* There is no off-topic on the Weekly Open Thread, but consider whether your comment would be on-topic on any recent thread and thus better belongs there.
* If your comment touches on topics known to generally result in thread-jacking, you will be expected to take the discussion to #spillover instead of overshadowing the social/circuit-breaking aspects of this thread.

82 thoughts on Open Thread with Running Basset

  1. I’ve spent the day resting on the sofa with my feet up and an icepack on my right ankle. Don’t try to swing dance in platform shoes on thick carpet, the spins are murder.

  2. Ever since I ran away from my dad on that fateful day (whose anniversary is coming up, incidentally), most of the family has decided to avoid interacting with me. Even though I have yet to come out to everyone, I have already become the black sheep of the family. I know that once I am out to them, they will only alienate me further.

    The alternative is that I return to the closet and lock myself in there without the key; the intolerant members of my family will only be pleased with me if I repress myself. So I have no choice but to out myself eventually and then deal with the consequences of being who I am in relation to the family.

    Accepting this reality is upsetting, but I’d rather accept it than continue to delude myself with fantasies about talking to the family face-to-face about how my identity as a butch trans lesbian is valid. The only way I will mature and grow as a person is to accept the inevitable loss of loved ones, and stop clinging to absurd fantasies.

    Most of my family doesn’t give a fuck about me. I can only expect rejection from them. I’m sick of telling myself that things are going to turn out ok in the end. All that delusion does is make the inevitable series of rejections more painful than ever. I made the mistake of trusting my father when he said he accepted me as trans, on the day I outed myself to him, and I don’t want to make that mistake again.

    1. A childhood friend of my daughter is transitioning from female to male, and is married to a very nice girl in the military. His mother and family have rejected him as well. Not only his identity, but his marriage. So he is now a part of my family. You have friends that love and support you. Adopt them as family. They’ve shown you familial love and support, accept it from them, and if your blood family rejects you, turn to your real family. Real family love and support you no matter what, and action shows you who your real family is. Shared DNA does not a family make.

      I’ll tell you what I told Alec: It’s your life. Make the choices that are right for you, and to hell with anyone who doesn’t approve. Only you can live your life, so live it fully. You’re an adult now, and that means the responsibility for your life and happiness falls completely onto your shoulders. That responsibility is a gift, not a burden. Don’t waste it.

      1. Thank you, pheeno. I appreciate those words. Incidentally, my girlfriend said similar things to me last night. It definitely is important for me to focus on the family that accepts me, whether that family is blood-related or not.

        Part of me is tempted to come out to the rest of my family right now. I could do that if I wanted. I know it’s unwise, and I’m not going to out myself without at least due contemplation, but waiting for the day that it happens is so agonizing. I just want to get it over with. I can no longer bear to to hear “I love you” from family members who will ultimately end up treating me like garbage once I’m out to them.

    2. I think your incredibly brave Aaliyah. I have not come out to most of my family members. The ones I am out to think I should forever remain in the closet because coming out would harm the intolerant ones. I too fear and accept accept the inevitable loss of loved ones. But I have no plans to actually come out anytime soon.

      I get that its unbelievably unreal and hurtful to hear “I love you” from family members who will ultimately end up treating me like garbage once I’m out to them.

  3. “This basset hound in action, chasing a ball, features for this week’s Open Thread. Please natter/chatter/vent/rant on anything* you like over this weekend and throughout the week.”

    I think a lot about decision making heuristics, and I’ve always heavily maintained that the biggest draw of feminism for me is it’s predictive power! For example… my company is having a Shark Tank style competition at our yearly staff conference. The competition is outside of all normal work duties and judges by the executives.

    All the staff were split into teams, spread across departmental lines. Each team had two leaders to ensure that there would be something to present.

    It was depressingly obvious the way the men did not feel the need to volunteer for any work. The way almost all the work was done by women. And then the way at the end how three men were chosen to present all the women’s work to the execs.

    Turned out it looked a lot like the woman team leader was screwing over the woman who’s writing the powerpoint in favor of having a young man present backed up by the two big sales men in our group, one of whom was the other team leader who didn’t even show up to any meetings before the one where presenting would be decided.

    I was like this is bullshit, we cannot marginalize women’s voices like this, and then the woman who wrote the powerpoint was like “Hey I thought we agreed that I’d be co-presenter in that meeting” (so I guess that just didn’t make it into the minutes) and I was like “Oh great! Looking forward to preparing the presentation together.” and then magically the next email sent out was updated, so now it’s 3 men and a woman.

    You know those two sales dude are not going to read the presentation. They are the woooooooooorst.

    1. I know other trans people who’ve watched it and liked it, but I also know of a significant number — including me — who’ve refused to watch it. For me, partly because of the cis man playing a trans woman, but also because I already lived through transition once (albeit when I was 25 years younger than the 70-year old character in Transparent), and have no desire whatsoever to relive the experience, or be reminded of it..

      1. For me, partly because of the cis man playing a trans woman

        Question; if a character in a show is a trans* woman who hasn’t transitioned, who should play the role? I was thinking about different possibilities but couldn’t come to any good conclusions.

        Hopefully they have at least one trans* writer on staff.

        1. Question; if a character in a show is a trans* woman who hasn’t transitioned, who should play the role?

          A trans woman. Trans women who haven’t transitioned are just as trans as those who have, so the former should be played by trans actresses.

          The alternatives I can imagine don’t feel right to me:

          If a man plays the role of a non-transitioned trans woman, that will get uncomfortably close to supporting the notion that trans women who have transitioned embody “complete” womanhood as opposed to those who haven’t, the implication being that non-transitioned trans women possess some kind of inherent maleness.

          If a cis woman plays the role of a non-transitioned trans woman, the problem with the previous alternative is absent, but that kind of choice of actress is also troublesome because cis women are waaaay more likely than trans women to ever pass as female, so it’s kind of a spit in the face to have a cis woman play any trans woman, especially one who hasn’t transitioned.

          Like Donna, I think the only person fit for the role of a trans woman character is an actual trans woman.

        2. Here in Oz they did a biopic last year of one of Sydney’s famous 1960s and onwards cabaret performers, Carlotta, who was pretty much the only ‘out’ transgender celebrity in Australia for decades. Carlotta herself was a consultant on the film, and had casting veto rights, and in the end they had a cis woman play the young schoolboy as well as the adult Carlotta.

          Carlotta’s response when asked why she hadn’t approved a trans actor to play her in the film was that none of them were beautiful enough to be convincing as her 1960s and 70s self. Mind you, my impression over the decades of Carlotta’s general PR regarding her transitioned status has mostly seemed to be about having an audience be more comfortable with the one and only Carlotta the entertainer, not so much about having people be more comfortable with trans women.

        3. If a man plays the role of a non-transitioned trans woman, that will get uncomfortably close to supporting the notion that trans women who have transitioned embody “complete” womanhood as opposed to those who haven’t, the implication being that non-transitioned trans women possess some kind of inherent maleness.

          Oh, I was coming at it more from a ‘sucks when people who are trans* don’t get hired to act, while cis* people get hired to play them’ perspective. Thanks for the additional thoughts!

          Could it just imply that a non-transitioned trans* woman appears the same on a TV screen as a cis* man (or, for that matter, a trans* man who has transitioned)?

          Actually, that raises a good point- would you be OK with a transitioned trans* man playing a non-transitioned trans* woman?

          Like Donna, I think the only person fit for the role of a trans woman character is an actual trans woman.

          Genuine question- is that more or less important than having a good number of (respectful, well-written) stories about the lives and experiences of trans* people present in the media? Assuming there’s some trade-off between the two?

          If your response is that a story can’t be respectful if there’s a cis* actor playing a trans* character, I can understand that. Though it also makes me wonder about gay/straight characters- what about storylines where a character comes out, but was cast before that storyline was written? Or is sexual orientation fundamentally different than gender identity?

          Anyways, feel free to ignore all these questions- I don’t want to interrogate you. Just thinking.

        4. Trans women are constantly depicted as abject beings who can serve only two overall purposes for society: to become a fetish object or to be destroyed (purposes which often go hand-in-hand). It’s rare to find cultural depictions of us that don’t frame trans womanhood as inherently predatory, shameful, and morally corrupt.

          That’s why, in my view, it’s so important for trans women to play trans female characters. Trans women, treated as an abject class of society, deserve to be able to represent themselves through themselves. Does every film with trans women in it have to educate cis audiences about transmisogyny? Of course not. But they certainly deserve to be represented as genuinely as possible, and that’s very difficult with actors who aren’t trans women. Even if the actors are good at playing the role (which I admit is possible), there is still a problem in that regardless of their ability to act like trans women, they are still not trans women. It’s because of their unique position in relation to trans women, not because of the quality of their acting, that I’m uncomfortable with such people playing as trans women.

        5. Thank you for expanding on your point. That definitely makes sense.

          Do you feel the same way re: straight people playing gay characters, or other examples of someone with privilege X playing a character with an oppression along the same axis?

        6. It’s difficult to make straightforward equivalences here, but yes, I do think that privileged actors in general shouldn’t play roles of characters whose identity they have power over in a greater social context. Although I think it makes the most the sense to speak about this phenomenon in regards to classes that are treated as abject by society – such as Black people and Indigenous people* – it makes sense to extend this analysis to all cases of oppressor classes playing as people who are members of classes they have power over.

          In the example you’re talking about, it’s difficult for me to elaborate on the case of, say, a straight man playing as a gay man (since I’m not a man). But I certainly do think that a straight woman playing as a lesbian is strange and inappropriate, because such an actress, if she performs well, is going to be judged not on the basis of whether she represents lesbian subjectivity well, but on the basis of whether she did a good job at “acting like a lesbian” – which, I think you would agree, already sounds derogatory. Even if the straight actress does a good job acting, by most audiences her performance will be judged according to lesbophobic standards.

          *Note that I am not in any way trying to say that transmisogyny is functionally and discursively identical to, for example, antiblackness and settler colonialist racism. That’s a dangerous direction for this kind of analysis. I’m simply making a loose reference to arguments made in Homo Sacer by the post-structuralist author Giorgio Agamben, wherein he sets the foundation for a theory of “state of exception” that describes a specific mode of political life. Here’s an example of a conceptualization of Black people as a racial class that lives in the state of exception. Nevertheless, care must definitely be taken to not downplay any form of oppression, even when it has aspects in common with others.

        7. But I certainly do think that a straight woman playing as a lesbian is strange and inappropriate, because such an actress, if she performs well, is going to be judged not on the basis of whether she represents lesbian subjectivity well, but on the basis of whether she did a good job at “acting like a lesbian” – which, I think you would agree, already sounds derogatory. Even if the straight actress does a good job acting, by most audiences her performance will be judged according to lesbophobic standards.

          If your audience is presumed to be lesbophobic before the fact, which I agree is probably a safe presumption in this world, how does that make it offensive for a straight woman to play a gay woman?

          If a gay woman plays a gay woman, the standards by which the audience judges her will still be lesbophobic.

          What about a gay woman who is in the closet playing a gay woman? What about a bisexual woman playing a gay woman? What about a woman who identifies as straight now but had gay relationships previously in her life?

          I thought the whole point of acting was that you were pretending to have desires and make choices that you would not normally have or make.

        8. In general, a lesbian actress who decides to play the role of a lesbian character, or even a non-lesbian character, expects the audience to be lesbophobic, one way or another. You’re right that the lesbophobia doesn’t go away when the actresses are lesbians as opposed to straight women, and I probably didn’t clarify enough.

          So here is perhaps a better way to phrase it: lesbians, as lesbians, deserve to represent themselves in media, and are therefore in a more appropriate position of playing the character role in question. Straight women, knowing nothing about lesbian experience, inevitably portray themselves as who they think lesbians are (even when they don’t intend to be lesbophobic at all), and that changes audiences reactions in the sense that many of them know that the straight woman is, essentially, pretending to be a lesbian. This not only results in our misrepresentation, but it also serves to legitimize lesbophobic mockery, thereby reinforcing the hierarchy between straight women and lesbians.

          Like you said, the lesbophobic response is the same regardless of whether the actress is lesbian or not. But when lesbians get to play as lesbian characters, at the very least they are in a position of representing themselves as themselves. They have to follow a script often made by someone else, of course, but at least they are playing a role in which they actually can do well due to their life experience as lesbians (even if they’re not out to themselves and/or others), and in doing so stay true to what it means to be lesbian. Something that straight actress can’t do, since they don’t have a means of realizing that lesbian-specific self-knowledge.

          As for bisexual women, it’s complicated because they are also oppressed by heterosexism, but they still don’t know what it’s like to be lesbian. While of course many bisexual women have romantic/sexual/emotional relations with other women, lesbianism implies having affinity with only those other women and therefore they have distinct experiences from those of bi women. Every class within heteropatriarchy is distinct, in regards to both basic subjectivity and life experience. Lastly, straight women who previously had “gay relationships” as you say are still straight, and therefore should be regarded as such.

        9. There’s no guarantee that one lesbian’s experience in any way looks like another’s just because they both identify as lesbian.

          There’s no guarantee that a lesbian actor will be more suited for a lesbian part than a straight actor just because the actor and the character both can identify their personal experience of the world as “lesbian”.

          I don’t understand this logic:

          Juanita identifies as gay for a few years and has one long term relationship with a woman. She then later identifies as straight and dates only men.

          Linda identifies as gay all her life, but never has sex with anyone.

          A character is a woman and has a lot of sex with a lot of women.

          Am I morally bound to cast Linda over Juanita?

          Juanita and Linda turn out to be terrible actors, but Najma has been in the LGBT community for years. She identifies as queer, but only dates men. She blows me away at the audition, and I think she’s perfect for the part.

          I see a lot of problems with the sentiment that “every class within heteropatriarchy is distinct, in regards to both basic subjectivity and life experience”.

          I think that sentiment does not reflect how people experience changes in class and identity in different contexts.

        10. As a lesbian myself, I fail to see anything wrong with talking about experiences that nearly all lesbians I’ve known have in common. We, just like any other oppressed group, are totally justified in talking about what unites us as women-loving women despite the fact that no two lesbians are exactly the same.

          Anyway, having a history of sex with women doesn’t make you more or less of a “real” lesbian. Only the one who is a lesbian, all other considerations aside, should play the role, as I see it. What makes a woman a lesbian isn’t sexual history or lack thereof, but rather how she experiences the world as a woman. A woman who is gay but has only ever slept with men is still a lesbian. And just as much of a lesbian as the one who has never had sex.

          As for so-called changes in class, I define class in the strictly Marxist sense, as a system of exploitative value-labor exchange. And i see gender and sexuality as class systems in themselves. So I really can’t see how class can be something that changes in a fluid, unstable manner. That said, we don’t need the labor theory of value, however useful I find it to be, to understand how positions of privilege are generally fixed and unchangeable within the systems of oppression themselves. There is no such person as a “former lesbian” except in the sense that she formerly thought of herself as one and didn’t understand who she really was. Such a person doesn’t have the same access to lesbian self-knowledge as actual lesbians. There are things in this world that only oppressed groups know about on a genuine level.

      2. I don’t know why people are so ready to accept the idea that it’s appropriate for cis men to play trans women in about 75% of the roles for trans women (with about 20% played by cis women, and maybe 5% by trans women themselves) when they wouldn’t dream of thinking it appropriate for cis men to play cis women in 75% of the roles for cis women.

        If you accept that trans women are women, the reaction shouldn’t really be any different.

        I know the excuse that Jeffrey Tambor’s character, Maura, is also seen as her pre-transition character, and that the producers thought they wouldn’t be able to find a trans actress willing to do that. But I suspect that was an assumption, and that they never really tried to find someone.

        Look, I’m not saying that a cis person can never play a trans person. But 95% of the time? There are in fact, trans actors and actresses out there, some of whom have even been cast on Transparent in subsidiary roles.

        1. It also makes me uncomfortable that we’ve gotten to the point that a cis actor playing a trans woman has become an almost guaranteed route to receiving acting nominations and/or awards. Kind of like playing a disabled person.

          This is something I wrote after Jeffrey Tambor won the Golden Globes best actor award:

          I can’t help feeling somewhat conflicted — and even a little bitter — that yet another cis person is rewarded for playing a trans woman. It’s hard to think of a single performance like that in the last couple of decades that hasn’t received, or at least been nominated, for an acting award. I guess it must be that we’re such foreign, exotic, and alien creatures that pretending to be one of us in any remotely convincing way is so incredibly difficult that it’s inherently an amazing — and, of course, brave! — achievement.

          Of course, on the rare occasions when trans people are allowed to play themselves, I don’t notice them getting any awards.

          This is the list I’ve come up with for cis actors who’ve been nominated for and/or won acting awards for playing trans people:

          Jeffrey Tambor (Transparent), Jared Leto (Dallas Buyer’s Club), Felicity Huffman (Transamerica), Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Crye), Jaye Davidson (The Crying Game), Chris Sarandon (Dog Day Afternoon), John Lithgow (The World According to Garp), Tom Wilkinson (Normal), Cillian Murphy (Breakfast on Pluto), Vanessa Redgrave (Second Serve), Lee Pace (Soldier’s Girl), Terence Stamp (Priscilla Queen of the Desert — the one transsexual character), John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) (although I suppose there’s a question about whether Hedwig was “really” trans), Chloe Sevigny (Hit & Miss).

          A bit out of proportion as a percentage of all cis actors playing trans roles, don’t you think? It’s not a guarantee, but it seems to me that if you’re a cis actor playing a trans role, particularly a trans woman, you’ve got almost a 50-50 chance of getting nominated, at least.

          And now I’ve read that Eddie Redmayne is going to be playing Lili Elbe. Oscar, here we come!

        2. when they wouldn’t dream of thinking it appropriate for cis men to play cis women in 75% of the roles for cis women.

          I guess that might be where we depart- if a cis* man could play a cis* woman convincingly and effectively, I’m 100% behind that casting.

      3. I’m not sure I’m into this as a general rule, Aaliyah. Unless there’s something special about acting, the logical extension is that no artists should create/portray characters less privileged than they are on a given axis, which more or less renders most art impossible, given that men, for instance, should not get a free pass to write novels that feature only white men. I think it is an artist’s job to communicate between subjectivities.

        1. I see your point. I don’t think that writers should necessarily avoid writing characters whose status reflects a lack privilege relative to the writers identities. After all, their writing can be aptly representational if they consult the perspectives and opinions of, say, actual lesbians when writing a lesbian character.

          But acting seems different to me. Even an actor who has an ok understanding of marginalized people’s experiences will still end up playing the role inappropriately compared to actual marginalized people who play as marginalized characters.

          Perhaps another analogy may be appropriate. There’s a live action Ghost in the Machine film coming out soon, and the main character, Mokoto Kusanagi, is being played by a white woman even though the character is canonically Japanese. It really doesn’t sit well with me because it seems to be whitewashing at the very least.

        2. But acting seems different to me. Even an actor who has an ok understanding of marginalized people’s experiences will still end up playing the role inappropriately compared to actual marginalized people who play as marginalized characters.

          But since Hollywood actors are, nearly by definition, wealthy, don’t have illnesses/disabilities that prevent them from working, and live in a powerful/developed nation, are you really OK saying there should never be movies about the lives of poor people, people with serious illness, people who live in colonized countries, etc?

          Perhaps another analogy may be appropriate. There’s a live action Ghost in the Machine film coming out soon, and the main character, Mokoto Kusanagi, is being played by a white woman even though the character is canonically Japanese. It really doesn’t sit well with me because it seems to be whitewashing at the very least.

          But you identified the problem- whitewashing. There aren’t enough stories about POC in hollywood, so to take one of the few that exist and cast white people instead of POC is a problem on the basis of representation.

        3. One practical difference, I think, is that every time a white person is cast in a movie or TV show as a person of color, every time a cis person is cast to play a trans person, etc., a person of color or a trans person is prevented from getting the part. It is sort of a zero-sum game.

          Which is why I said above that “I’m not saying that a cis person can never play a trans person. But 95% of the time?”

          Writing a story or novel is different, I think. A white or cis or straight or male novelist creating a black or trans or gay or female character isn’t a zero-sum game, and doesn’t stop writers from a marginalized group from creating characters from that group. In theory, an infinite number of writers can write an infinite number of characters. (Getting their work published is another matter, of course!)

          Although I must confess that I’ve read more convincing male characters by female writers than the reverse.

          And I have yet to see a trans character created by a cis writer — and that includes trans characters in movies and on TV, by the way — that seems very “real” to me. Maybe they get some things right, but I have yet to see the pain of dysphoria — either social or physical — portrayed in a way that makes me think “they get it.”

        4. One practical difference, I think, is that every time a white person is cast in a movie or TV show as a person of color, every time a cis person is cast to play a trans person, etc., a person of color or a trans person is prevented from getting the part. It is sort of a zero-sum game.

          That makes sense.

          I’m still a little fixated (and if you’re not interested in this aspect I’ll stop hounding you) on the issue of some stories not being told at all because there isn’t someone appropriate to cast for them, and whether that’s really better. But what you’re saying makes a lot of sense.

        5. But since Hollywood actors are, nearly by definition, wealthy, don’t have illnesses/disabilities that prevent them from working, and live in a powerful/developed nation, are you really OK saying there should never be movies about the lives of poor people, people with serious illness, people who live in colonized countries, etc?

          Ok, well that’s an exception that could perhaps be made reasonably.

          1. It’s a sad fact of acting as a profession – the training is expensive! People from the most marginalised communities rarely have the financial wherewithal to participate unless there are grant programs specifically targeting disadvantaged groups, and most of the existing programs don’t kick in until the tertiary education years, meaning that most members of groups struggling with poverty have already been pushed away from working towards acting at a professional level by high school at the latest.

            Sure, Hollywood loves to romanticise the stories of kids from poverty-stricken working-class families who make it big in showbiz and buy nice homes for Grandma or Auntie Jane in gratitude for their encouragement when they were young, but most of those stories are decades old now because it really isn’t happening any more. Sure, lots of actors have stories of struggling as waitresses or personal trainers for years in LA while taking classes and losing auditions, but before that they had a substantial middle-class childhood where their parents provided their first opportunities for proper professional training. The myth still comes true occasionally in the music industry, because musicians can practice anywhere and get themselves paying gigs all over the place, and as they build up experience they get booked more, and exceptional talent still gets spotted on the road. But it’s vanishingly rare even for musicians to break into the charmed circle from poverty, and despite the best efforts of actors to form co-ops and put on their own shows, they don’t get the same chances as musicians: it’s very hard to persuade bars/pubs to give actors a gig with those shows, because the audience has to pay proper attention rather than just tap their toes and order another drink, so those shows tend to be seen mostly by other aspiring actors in tiny shoeboxes of spaces rather than by actual punters who build up a word of mouth buzz about who will be playing at the bar down the street next Friday night.

            The way to get ahead in acting still remains paying for year after year after year of training with ever more elite instructors who can pick and choose their students and who therefore have the trust of agents as to which actors are worth representing (and so those actors get sent to decently matched auditions rather than just cattle calls). While aspiring actors are taking all these years of training they also have to put in regular sessions at the gym to meet the ridiculously skewed industry beauty standard, and somehow have to make enough money to pay for all this and rent as well. Very few aspiring actors can make it on their own without having someone in their family/friends circle who is both able and willing to subsidise their expenses, so very few actors who become “stars” come from anything less privileged than an upper-middle class background (and it’s the same for directors and film editors and cinematographers and sound/lighting crew and stunt crew etc). Indeed, all aspects of big-budget film production are becoming increasingly dynastic – and the industry sees this as a good thing, because people with family already in the business are expected to understand the “realities” of showbiz more thoroughly and therefore put up with industry bullshit more complacently.

            The only way a moviegoing audience can change any of this (and it’s a long haul against the inertia of the expectations the industry has built up in us) is to start showing more willingness to go out of their way to watch fully independent films (necessarily lower budgets and limited theatre distributions) where actors/writers/directors/cinematographers are more likely to come from outside the industry’s charmed circle of conventional paths to fame and fortune. This will mean that the film’s production values (and thus how effectively the acting is displayed) are going to be less glossy than that of conventional Hollywood, because budget determines how many weeks can be spent filming and editing the footage to produce the final product, and that time matters.

            tl;dr Hollywood is show business, not an artform that operates on true merit. The few dozens of consistently superb actors over decades make the rest of the industry look far more talented and broadly representative than it ever really has been. Actors coming from oppressed populations are hugely disadvantaged in simply accumulating the training they need to be considered for a background speaking part in a movie, let alone anything more substantial. So if you want the stories of the marginalised to be told in a mainstream and widely distributed film, you have to accept that the actors and nearly everybody else involved is going to be from an upper middle class background and therefore overwhelmingly white.

            It sucks, but it’s not about to change.

          2. I should say, it’s not about to change in a hurry. There are growing numbers of POC stars producing their own movies, and that’s slowly changing some of the stories being told with big budgets. There’s still a grossly disproportionate lack of women, let alone lesbians, let alone trans women, who have the resources to form a production company to control how stories of people like them are told.

            If people who want to see more stories centreing people like them refuse to go and see movies about people like them because the casting is too cis-het-white for their liking, the message Hollywood will absorb is not that they should cast those parts more representatively. The message they will absorb is that those stories don’t bring audiences, and then even fewer of those stories will be greenlighted in the first place.

        6. I think I’m not sure what makes acting so different from writing or painting or something like that. If a writer can do research and consult with other people, surely an actor can do so also.

          I think there are some very good historical and cultural reasons white actors shouldn’t play in black- or red- or yellowface, and similar (also different) reasons cis men shouldn’t be playing trans women. Both have a clear and recent history of being used to cruelly mock the groups in question, and in particular w/respect to trans women, using a cis male actor reinforces the harmful notion that trans women are “really” men.

          But aside from specific cultural harms like those, I am also uncomfortable with what seems to me to be the reification of the idea of an authentic, reliable concept of personal identity. Specifically with respect to the example advanced above, the actress who used to identify as a lesbian and be in a long-term relationship with a woman and no longer does identify as a lesbian–I find it really presumptuous and fundamentally incorrect for somebody else to claim that she was never “really” a lesbian. She lived as a lesbian. She identified as a lesbian. Unless you subscribe to some transhistorical idea of essential “lesbian-ness,” who is anybody to say that her identification was incorrect? That she doesn’t have access to the experiences and knowledge she needs to play the role? “Lesbian” is not a transhistorical, transcultural identity.

          Very few identities are. I recently published a story about a Jewish cis woman in 17th-century Germany. I am a Jewish cis woman, but in 21st-century NYC. I don’t imagine that my experiences of being Jewish have…practically anything in common with those of a 17th-century German cis woman. I’ve never lived that level of persecution and it’s not essential to my identity as a Jew. A person who has lived greater persecution than I have may well have more relevant expertise in writing that story than I did.

          My point is that identity and the meaning of identity change from time to time and place to place and culture to culture. And for a given person over time. Identity is not immutable. And I am really loath to pass judgment on whether or not somebody is sufficiently “lesbian” to be cast.

          I hear the point about casting and jobs, but again, I don’t think it’s unique to acting. Publishers, anthologies, magazines, galleries, they all have limited space and limited budget, and if they buy a story or show a painting from one writer/artist, it means they’re not going to buy one from a bunch of other writers/artists who are also competing for that spot.

          Some of my favorite female characters have been written by male authors–I can’t say I’ve ever noticed a pattern in believable vs. unbelievable characters. There are some kinds of unbelievable women who I find are almost always written by male writers, and I avoid Heinlein for that reason. But Pratchett’s Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg are not only two of my favorite characters (and I aspire to be the former), but his books are some of the only ones I can think of that are about old women and the close friendship between two of them.

        7. “Lesbian” is not a transhistorical, transcultural identity.

          I agree. What constitutes lesbianism varies widely across many contexts, and of course individual lesbians differ greatly in many respects, including life experience and whatnot. But I do believe that lesbians, alongside other non-straight women, constitute a class distinction that is inherent within patriarchy because being women-loving women casts them into a specific labor exploitation relation to straight women and men (just as women have such a relation to men). Non-straight women are inherent to patriarchy just as all men and women are. For the record, I also believe that trans people constitute an inherent class distinction within patriarchy – for example, in my culture, we have the hijra, who can’t be understood fully in any other culture yet structurally relates to cis people in a such a way as to constitute trans women.

          That said, this is only something I believe that is true of patriarchy, conceived as a set of material relations. And by implication, I can’t discuss the intersections between patriarchal identities and non-patriarchal identities (the ones I don’t have, at least), such as the experiences of Jewish women.

          Anyway, I understand what you’re getting at here, and I do realize that my position was a bit extreme, in light of the factors that you’ve pointed out. I also feel that I’m becoming a bit lost in this argument, so I think I’m going to bow out now.

      4. I already lived through transition once (albeit when I was 25 years younger than the 70-year old character in Transparent), and have no desire whatsoever to relive the experience, or be reminded of it.

        I don’t know if you are willing to elaborate, but as someone who is contemplating transition (still very much on the fence about it), I’d like to know what things about the experience would make someone not want to be reminded of it.

        If you don’t want to say anything, feel free to ignore this.

    2. It literally took me until right this minute to understand your post. I blame it on lack of sleep. Congratulations, pheeno!

    3. I don’t blame it on anything other than being dense, but I still don’t get it! Unless it’s your birthday?

    4. Lol yes, it was my birthday and I’m 42. ( from hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, Donna. They build a computer to answer the question to life the jniverse and everything and the answer is 42)

      1. I got 2 free meals ( along with the hubby because we have the same bday, just 10 years apart..I’m older) a pair of Dalek socks, a doctor who dont blink tshirt, makeup I wanted, hair color so I could go from blonde to strawberry blonde and a set of throwing knives. It was a good day.

        2. Thank you. Hubby is waiting til the scottish faire to get his bday stuff. I’m assuming some sort of sword will be involved lol

  7. I wonder what zodiac signs the regulars of Feministe have…I’ve been intensely curious about astrology lately. I don’t believe in it as the Truth or anything like that, but it’s fun to think about.

    1. Aaliyah, I expect this it going to sound like harshing your squee, but I think that’s unavoidable when I’m ringing a warning bell for something that is really rather important for anyone online.

      I’m intensely sceptical about astrology for general critical thinking reasons, but more importantly I’m also very wary about giving out one’s zodiac signs online, because it’s a pretty obvious pointer to one’s birthdate, which can be used to socially engineer a cracking of one’s personal accounts, especially if somebody else then asks what your year is in the Chinese/Japanese calendar. It’s important to protect the information one gives online (hey, fake birthday on facebook, yo!) because Big Data is mining everything it can in order to target marketing to your demographic and Big Data can so easily be hacked for nefarious shenanigans.

      Where any of the signs/temperaments philosophies are useful I think only lies in a system that highlights how Not Everybody Thinks/Reacts To Stuff In The Same Way, which is an important lesson for anybody to learn.

      1. I understand, and I admit that I should be more careful about the things you’ve outlined. For me it doesn’t really matter since I’ve already disclosed my zodiac signs on here, but I can definitely see how others should avoid doing likewise. Sorry about that.

      2. Pheenobarbidoll just told us her exact birth date. Why no warning for her? IMO it’s not that big of a deal, but I guess it doesn’t hurt to be careful. I wouldn’t shy away from talking about astrology over it. If someone is that bent on getting information about you… well, they will probably find a way.

        1. (a) pheeno’s announcement was obcure enough that I didn’t even realise it was a birthday thing until a day later
          (b) pheeno wasn’t asking other commentors to talk about their birthdates as a jolly jape
          (c) pheeno is a net veteran who seems generally warier about her privacy than many other commentors, I presume she’s thought about this stuff

        2. My birthday is tomorrow if anyone cares. That means I am an Aquarius if anyone is counting. I also really don’t know much about astrology, but it’s interesting.

        4. Happy birthday! Aquarians are cool. Also, for the record, I don’t think it was unfair at all for tigtog to warn only me. I was being careless and I think tigtog’s points were spot-on.

        5. Thank you for the birthday wishes. and for saying Aquarians are cool… even though my wife tells me I am more of a Capricorn being that I am on the ‘cusp’. Either way, thanks. Also, I agree it was decent advice, I just thought it was funny the two posts were right next to each other. It is probably best to keep personal details to yourself. Advice I don’t really follow myself. If anyone has time to comment on my post further down about a comic I am planning that would be great. I am really on the fence about it and even if the advice I get is “don’t do it” at least I will have some feedback of some kind.

  8. Has anyone else noticed that Cracked.com has become more SJ-oriented lately? This month alone they’ve posted several articles on mental illness, rape culture (including a survivor’s story on how the system screws them over), and sex work.

    1. Yes. I have noticed this. Cracked is pretty unapologetically “SJW” and I think it’s really great. The way they consistently get input from real people for their articles is unique as far as I know.

    2. Oh man, that article from the survivor was awesome. It opened a conversation between me and the person I’m currently dating on how he responded to my confession about being a survivor (around point 2, where zie talked about how shady people can be when someone makes that disclosure).

      I like that it’s slanted that way, and you’re absolutely right. I think it happened somewhere around the article about Robin William’s suicide, which still makes me cry.

  9. I am starting a side career as a comic maker (someone who writes and draws for comics) and I have been kicking around an idea for a short story – 16 pages. I want to make a feminist comment on the patriarchy using existing tropes found in comics and other media.

    My take was going to be satirical, and in the style of 60’s era Archie style teen comedy comics. The main character would be a modern feminist female, that is trying to get along in a old fashioned sexist elitist environment. The art would be spoofing old Archies, and the other characters would have attitudes that come from a rather non progressive (to say the least) kind of place.

    I wanted to turn to the people on this site for advice or thoughts on if it sounds like something I should pursue. Would you like to read something in that style? What would be some common pitfalls I might encounter, given that description? I imagined it to be fairly lighthearted, but with an underlying pro-feminist and pro-equality message.

    I may have to have some of the other characters saying some sexist stuff to give the plot momentum, but the lead character would come out on top in the end. 16 pages is rather short, so it’s not some huge involved plot, probably something like she wants to join the tennis club at school and is meeting resistance and elitism.

    I am kind of kicking around ideas at this point, but I thought I would reach out to others to see if it’s a worthwhile concept or not. Do any of you have any thoughts? Is it offensive even as an idea? Does me being a straight man make it so I shouldn’t even attempt making something like this? Really looking for honest feedback, and hoping not to offend anyone in the process. If this concept proves me to be misguided and stupid, let me know.

    1. Does me being a straight man make it so I shouldn’t even attempt making something like this?

      It’s a bit of a cliche, but some cliches are true, so I would pass on the advice given any budding writer: ‘Write what you know.’ For your first work, you’d be much better drawing on your own experiences. That doesn’t mean you HAVE to write an anecdote based on your own life, I’m talking about theme rather than subject. When you’re starting out, even if your subject is warlords from space, it’s best to have first hand knowledge of your main themes.

      2. Fat Steve, Thanks for the response. Of course I have heard that before, and agree. To clarify, it’s not my first work. But of course, I am still starting out with no name or large body of work to give me any kind of credit or name recognition. This idea came to me as a possibility for a few reasons.

        1. online sexism has really started to bother me of late, and I want to say something about it. (yes I know it should always have bothered me and it’s not a new thing, but all the attention on rape threats, and gamergate and other recent controversies has me thinking about it more and more lately.)

        2. I have a chance at being published in a book alongside a comic hero of mine that is kind of old school in his art style, and is a pretty proud and well documented feminist.

        3. I thought the Archie art style and the feminist message might blend well with whatever story he may have in mind.

        4. I have been wanting to practice some Archie (Dan DeCarlo) art style because I also find it compelling.

        5. Archie is considered very “quaint” by comic standards, but has lately been getting praise for having pro LGBT messages, being anti gun, and for taking other progressive stances. But I still find the portrayals of Betty and Veronica and other girls in the series to be sexist in many ways.

        6. It sounds like fun.

        Things I am afraid of:

        1. That I am not either smart enough, clever enough or well equipped to make it effective as satire.

        2. That my good intentions will fail and that I will be viewed as a well intentioned, privileged, straight white male that is talking about something he has no business talking about, because of lack of first hand knowledge and general cluelessness.

        After thinking about it…. I think I am going to plunge ahead and see where this takes me. No one can or should give me “permission” to make this or any other piece of art. The best advice on deciding what to make in your personal work that I have heard is to make (in this case) comics that I would like to read… and I think I want to read this. If I fail, then I learned a lesson. I just sometimes feel fairly ill equipped in talking about racism, sexism or ableism or whatever else because it is talking about things that I don’t personally go through, so it’s not part of my personal identity. let’s just say I have a high degree of trepidation over this project at this point.

    2. Does me being a straight man make it so I shouldn’t even attempt making something like this?
      No. You are presumably always going to be a straight man. Immutable characteristics are not the best ways to establish hard boundaries of expression because that defies human self determination. They can guide the expression though, and can frame your experiences.

      Is it offensive even as an idea?
      It isn’t to me, but I can imagine a theoretical person to whom this is offensive as an idea whose position I would respect.

      Do any of you have any thoughts?
      I used to read Archie comics idly at a best friend’s house. They’re compelling. The whole Betty and Veronica thing was off-kilter enough to be a little interesting even.

      What would be some common pitfalls I might encounter, given that description?
      Sexism, racism, ableism…
      But really the most common pitfall you might encounter is being boring and unoriginal.

      Would you like to read something in that style?
      Yeah maybe

      1. Thanks for the point by point Broseidon. You are probably right that the biggest threat to this being an effective piece of work is people not caring at all. I also find Archies oddly compelling for a variety of reasons. There are other (arguably better done) teen comedy/romance comics from years ago that are pretty interesting as well. I guess I am going to just jump into creating the script, and talk to the editor of the comic about his thoughts, then submit. I guess I have to trust that my storytelling skills are enough to make it an effective satire that is worth reading. If not, I guess I am not ready for prime time and I’ll just try something else when the opportunity presents itself. I am going to try and dispel my fear of offending anyone… I have heard that is a pretty big pitfall in writing and making comics, because pretty much anything can offend SOMEONE. If it doesn’t have the potential to offend anyone, it is probably so watered down as to not be worth much to anyone.

  10. My stomach ulcer is back. It first manifested when I had anorexia and severe anxiety (fortunately I no longer have either). But it came back once I made the very stupid choice of drinking harsh energy drinks mixed with alcohol alongside my already greatly impoverished diet. Monster mixed with vodka is evidently a great way to fuck up my stomach. X_X I won’t be doing that ever again, let alone drink energy drinks and alcohol in any form.

    Any advice for taking care of it, or at least help me feel like my stomach isn’t constantly being pummelled by invisible fists, would be greatly appreciated.

      1. Stomach ulcers are caused by a bacterial infection. A dose of the appropriate antibiotics should sort it out entirely, but in the meantime bland processed food should keep the inflammation to a minimum.

    2. Ugh. Those are so unpleasant. I’ve had them since I had, yup, bulimia and depression. For me, the recommendation was OTC acid blockers + bland diet + no caffeine + no carbonation + no alcohol. So basically, no fun until the stabbing pain stopped, but then I could ease back into the fun stuff. I think it took four to six weeks.

      Incidentally, that was when I started loving Cajun food. I’d never cared for it in the past, and then I had to go off of spicy food, at which point all I wanted in the entire world was a baby pool full of jambalaya, now, please.

    3. BTW, years back an alcohol drink came on the market with extra sugar and caffeine and was sold in a lot of mini-marts. It has since been banned in most states, I think. Concept: get drunk, but you won’t pass out as quickly. Not a good idea.

    4. In terms of non-medication based relief, coconut water helps me greatly. I get the flavored kind because I don’t actually like the taste of coconut (that’s probably an endorsement of it, me not liking the taste but drinking it anyway.) It’s expensive when you buy it in little bottles at corner shops but I’ve seen it much more reasonable in bulk. I also eschew alcohol in favor of cannabis (and have switched to vaping almost exclusively.)

      Now my only real trigger is eating before I go to sleep. My penultimate night in the US, I decided I wanted to have a burger, fries and a shake, and I passed out moments after the last bite hit my tummy. Woke up with that invisible fist feeling you described, didn’t go away until I managed to regurgitate said meal. Not sure if it was the ulcer coming back or just plain old acid reflux but either way, I got the message: don’t fall asleep directly after you eat.

  11. TW: street harassment, KKK, Nazis

    Two things I encountered on a recent walk outside:

    1) A dude who cat-called me. He actually did that stereotypical cat-call whistle at me and grinned. It was gross and also really bizarre – further proof that even when if one is butch and wears all-black clothes consisting of an oversized hoodie and jeans, one can still run into creepy dudes.

    2) White supremacist graffiti all over a part of a trail I was about to walk through. I saw swastikas, phrases such as “Imperial Wizard” and lamentations about the high number of Black POC in California. Needless to say, I turned around immediately and found another area to walk in. And to think that there were children of color playing outside not too far away from that area. I wasn’t too surprised to see the graffiti, because every square mile of this country is racist as hell – and getting worse over time – but it was still really frightening because I’m not used to suddenly finding tons of racist symbols right before my eyes.

    I don’t understand anyone who is proud of this country, to be honest. The US began as a racist, colonialist, anti-Black hell that evolved and expanded as a nation through its acts of genocide, and it has changed very little ever since.

  12. A story on a self-proclaimed male feminist radical activist anarchist (the kind who has a blog extolling Emma Goldman, etc.), who is apparently another Hugo Schwyzer (only worse if possible): a serial sexual abuser and rapist.

    http://jezebel.com/what-happens-when-a-prominent-male-feminist-is-accused-1683352727

    I feel intense hatred towards this poor excuse for a human being. And unfortunately, it only increases my innate suspicion of cis white male radical activists.

    1. I should add: not to mention those who loudly proclaim that they’re feminists, talking more than they listen.

    2. Yeah. As soon as I hear some dude say “I’m totally a feminist” or “I’m not sexist at all” I just don’t believe them and think they are lying liar pants. And frankly men that are all vocal about proving their “feminist cred” have always made me a little suspicious. Maybe it is because I question their motives, or because I then require a higher standard that they will certainly fail to meet. Either way, I find them insufferable and would much rather deal with the dudes who go about in their quiet way, doing feminism without drawing attention to themselves.

      1. I tend to say ‘I try not to be sexist,’ just as I ‘try not to be racist.’ And I’m open to people pointing out where I fail in both circumstances. But I’m not some high and mighty academic dude, in fact I have no credentials whatsoever, which makes it easier to prove my ‘cred,’ feminist or otherwise. If I was asked to ‘prove’ anything, I would hope I would be judged on my actions rather than my words.

      2. I often say that I am “really into feminism” because I think of feminism much more as a philosophy than an identity. I get the idea of quietly carrying out one’s own feminist praxis, but sometimes I think it’s great to say “I am volunteering for this position specifically because I am really into feminism”. “I am reading this book of feminist philosophy because I am really into feminism”.

        Then if they want we can talk about feminism and feminist philosophy, which is interesting. Talking about how I’m a feminist: not that interesting.

        Sometimes I reveal at the end of a conversation that what we’ve been discussing is feminism. I’m like “Surprise! All these reasonable ideas that you engaged with? Feminism. Isn’t feminism interesting?!”

    3. And unfortunately, it only increases my innate suspicion of cis white male radical activists.

      I am also suspicious of cis white male radical activists. The one I am most suspicious of is myself, though I really wouldn’t call myself an activist. I’m more likely to call myself a yuppie, or a jock, or even a bro.

      But I do try to make sure that any “activism” I do is something that’s going to make things harder for me, because it doesn’t make sense for me to be able to gain success by fighting patriarchy. Patriarchy is why I am successful. Things that fight white-supremacist patriarchy make it harder to be a successful white cis man.

      But like, other people do not make it easy for cis white men to do that. People go out of their way to make sure we are not unduly burdened by the consequences of our actions. I think mostly because we are oppressors, and people are afraid of being targeted for no goddamn reason other than that we’re in a bad mood and have a lot of power and the institutional support of whatever organization we are in.

  13. …although Elam compares the family court system’s treatment of fathers to Jim Crow, he abandoned his biological children not once but twice. Although Elam says that “fathers are forced to pay child support like it was mafia protection money,” he accused his first wife of lying about being raped so he could relinquish his parental rights and avoid paying child support.

    Link

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