'Bye, Queer Film Fest.

I just finished watching the movie By Hook or By Crook. It was great, very intense, very messy. Seeing butches on screen like that was amazing. I wonder if anyone showed up to the 3 pm screening. I actually slept through it. Oops. Fortunately, Ryan let me borrow the DVD.

I made it to most of The Celluloid Closet, though. That was the first gay film I ever saw, back in Ms. Poulson's Gay-Straight Alliance. I remember feeling my heart soar the first time I saw women kiss on that screen. I remember thinking, "Damn. So that's what a 'heart soaring' feels like."

Finals Season.

I have so much work to do, it's overwhelming to the point of paralysis. And of course, I am still sick. I'd probably get better if I got more sleep.

The sore throat is cool, but the fluid in my ears has been bothering me.

I doubt anyone needed to know that.

Tonight I went to a super pretentious poetry reading, and unfortunately missed the Q&A because I was on the phone with Mom. I wanted to ask, "Why is retaliation mauve?" (It must've been gay or something. Ha.)

Then later was Take Back The Night. It was good, but I liked the vigil thing in the Surrey better than the sharing in Wilson Chapel. The chapel is too large, not intimate enough for sharing these things. It's a tall space, designed to inspire some awe. Not cozy enough for something that usually requires boxes of tissues.

They had so much amazing chametz to eat at the reading and at Take Back The Night. It was hard not to eat it. I also heard that last night in Senate, Becky ordered pizza, incurring the wrath of Jewish senators. So, I've started a new facebook group for students keeping Passover at Skidmore: http://skidmore.thefacebook.com/group_profile.php?gid=1204

Check out the logo pic. I took it in the d-hall yesterday. Treyfest picture ever. I swear there were noodles floating in the matzah ball soup.

Dance tomorrow night!

Anti-Feminism in 'Vagina Monologues'

[Posted per Levi's request. Published in the Skidmore News, 14 April 2005, volume 80, issue 22, page 4.]

Dear Editors,

Now that this year's V-Day Campaign to end violence against women is behind us, with a successful run of the Vagina Monologues and plenty of awareness raised around campus, it's time for the Skidmore community to address the discourse surrounding the campaign, and feminist organizing at Skidmore generally.

The V-Day Campaign and the Vagina Monologues are an important tool for feminist activism, and a great introduction for both activists and spectators to women's issues. [Anything else I can say about them in this vein?] At the same time, some attitudes expressed by the individuals within the campaign have been troubling.

Certain fliers posted in association with the V-Day Campaign, featuring actual quotes from Skidmore students on "why we love women," seemed disturbingly ANTIfeminist. It disturbs me that Skidmore students who said these were expressing their idea of what it means to love women as a group. Even more disturbing is the fact that some women at Skidmore College found these statements appropriately supportive of women and feminism. If these statements were publicized as satire, in order to shock the community at what subtly antifeminist sentiment lurks in the hearts and minds of Skidmore students, the satirical aspect of this tactic was not made clear. Members of the V-Day campaign I spoke to seemed, for the most part, unaware of how these fliers could possibly be insulting.

Statements about loving the stereotypically feminine, heteronormative features of women, and writing as if these characteristics apply to all women, and are the reason d'etre for valuing women as a group, is antifeminist and offensive -- not just to women, but to gender variant people, non-heterosexual people, people who choose not to have children, and just about everyone with human agency. Praising women for their reproductive capacity, for being pretty, or for being companions to men is what feminism was fighting against in the first place.

These problematic aspects of feminist discourse are not limited to Skidmore College, but as an institution of higher education where "Creative Thought Matters," we should take the opportunity to address these pitfalls in innovative ways.

Editor's note: To view examples of the fliers in questions, please visit http://taxishoes.blogspot.com/2005/02/your-vagina-is-angry.html.

SPA's 2005 "Third drag show!"

Amanda and I did most of the decorating. But Curtis was a real godsend: he picked up the entire floor that Stompin' Soles had left behind and moved it into the Entertainment Lounge. Chris showed up because Curtis told him to, and he was a big help as well. Jacob also helped a bit, but he had to go primp. Ryan, Craig, and some guy from Pure Energy took care of the techie aspects.

Check out our mad decorating skills:


You can read this, right?

The show was emceed by the incomparable Jezebel and the Amazing Ezmerelda.


Jez 'n Ez open.

They're the best professional drag performers SPA has ever hired. They sang. They danced. And they were fucking hilarious. With all that, they were a hard act to follow. I did my best, though.


"And then I'll use your cell phone, baybeh, long distance . . . "

Jacob was mesmerizing as Mia.


Performing to "All Or Nothing".

And then Mia and Antonio Delucci performed a highly amusing rendition of Aqua's "Candyman". (The lollipop bit was genius, Amanda.)


Is this 'gay marriage'?

Ez and Jez played with the crowd like it was silly putty.


Jezebel flirts with Mr. 'Ladd Hall'.

One SGA reunion alum in the audience, Bradley, was a Broadway producer, and even someone from the Ez 'n Jez entourage (yes they did have an entourage) thought they'd planted him there! But his presence was pure serendipity.

After intermission . . .


How many outfits do these queens have?!

Skidmore alumni James "Jack" Studley and Betty Chicago performed.


"She's got a girlfriend now; she says, 'guys don't do no more for me'."

Then I went on again. Apparently this song was so funny Ryan almost pissed his pants. Haha.


VAGIIIIIIIIINA!

Mia's final outfit is too scandalous for me to publish. (I'll send Jacob the pics to do with what he wilt.) For the finale, there was a parody of "Summer Lovin'." We do-wopped in the background and acted like we knew what we were doing.


The grand finale!

After the show, I went out to Friday's with a whole mess of people. Ryan called me "Kid Cock" incessantly. It was pretty amusing. After dinner we went to Price Chopper to get food for the brunch that happened this morning.

Today I had the brunch at GASH, which went swimmingly, and the Scribner Village block party, which was also a success. I didn't help out much there, but I did get the tongs. Heh. Story: I went into the office in back of the kitchen, looking for the supervisor. It was some guy I didn't know. I asked this chef, Jerry, who the supervisor was, and he told me, "This guy right here, _______." (I forget his name.)

"Hi," I say to _________, "I'm helping out with the Scribner Village barbecue, and they need a couple of spatulas and tongs down there."

"Okay," he says, "Jerry, this young fellah is helping with the barbecue down in Scribner, so give him whatever he needs."

Jerry remembers me, of course. He pauses. Then tells his supervisor, "I'll just give him a couple spatulas and pairs of tongs." He looks down at me, asks: "How you doin', girl?"

"Great, thanks. How are you?"

Weird, eh?

Oh yeah, and also as I was walking to the d-hall to get the tongs, this guy [whose name I can't remember for the life of me, sorry] stops me -- "Ren?" -- and tells me he appreciated the editorial I wrote for SkidNews! He said he thought maybe he was the only one who percieved the fliers that way. I said nope, not at all, thank you, I'm glad I wrote it then.

While we were eating outside, Gabby told me that some folks at her polo banquet, besides asking what it's like to live with gay people (who have massive orgies all the time, naturally) told her they'd seen my editorial. "You live with Ren, right? Is she mean?"

As I walked back into Dogwood from the block party, I smiled and said hello to a Campus Safety officer.

"I enjoyed you in the show last night," she said.

"Thanks."

What's with this sudden rise in notoriety, eh?

Drag show tomorrow!

NUJLS, heather + me

NUJLS was awwwesome. Sadly, I didn't hang out with NUJLS people much outside of the conference events, because I was with Heather. But I didn't hang out with Heather much, because I was at the conference most of the time. My failure lay in not uniting the two.

Highlights:

+ S. Bear Bergman performed. This might be pathetic, but I've wanted to see hir perform for years. Ze did the theater piece called Clearly Marked, and it was thought-provoking and moving and hilarious. Bear was also happy to be speaking to other queer Jews.

+ Bear's workshop the next day. I went, not because I wanted to learn amazing new things about the way current concepts in gender theory are destabilizing the concept of sexual orientation (which was the topic) but because I wanted to see Bear's teaching method, the way the material was talked about and presented, what particular definitions ze'd use, and so on. Bear was super engaging. The session spawned numerous inside jokes. ("STEER? Ohh, sphere." "Maybe a steer, and a spear! And a sphere. Here, hold this." Asher holds it. Later: "What's the international symbol for complex gender?" HUH!)

+ Surprisingly good food. Light years better than what they had last time.

+ Didn't feel totally excluded and cut off from everyone.

+ A couple of cute girls.

+ Networking with upstate NY people -- Cornell, Bard, and RIT? -- though who knows what'll come of that.

+ Vinny's cool discussion on passing, where I met

+ the incomparable Susanna Cohen, who ran an amazing workshop called "Straddling the Mechitzah". She gave us excerpts from texts about Queer Jews, and divided us into three groups. Each group read one text and discussed, then shared with everyone. Susanna was extremely professorial about it! The passage my group read was a conversation between two people about their experiences at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. One of the speakers was a trans man who went to Israel right after changing all his paperwork and stuff to male, and passed full time even though he wasn't out to the friends he was with. (Though I do not see how that is possible?) The other speaker was genderqueer, I guess, and female-assigned. Exactly what happened to hir at the wall happened to me with the airport bathrooms on my way to Chicago -- though obviously there is a huge difference between airport bathrooms and the holiest geographical location in Judaism. And the whole thing reminded me of why I feel like I should put on a skirt in religious Jewish contexts.

+ Randy's "accidental Bar Mitzvah"! And all of the singing that ensued. Plus the singing durings bentsching. Man, I wish the JSU would bentsch. We wouldn't know what the heck we were doing.

+ Havdallah involved a big circle on the lawn in front of the Hillel house, and exhuberant dancing.

+ Realization: NUJLS is Jew Camp for me. Hey, my parents couldn't afford to send me to camp with y'all, but here I am now.

+ Seeing Haymarket people, especially meeting that porn star kid. He was very nice and entertaining. (He also hasn't actualy been in a porn -- yet.) Also the food at Haymarket is generally fantastic. Heather's cookies are a highlight, of course. Mmm peanutbutter cookie addiction. I got to see a hookah up close and personal. Also we went to scary parties and my feet killed. It was fun though!

+ NUJLS board looks like it might actually happen and get things done this time!

Lousy crap happened too, but I'm gonna ignore it right now.

Leaving for Chicago

I'm off to Chicago for the weekend, to attend the National Union of Jewish LGBTIQQ Students (NUJLS) conference, and to see my dear friend Heather who attends the University of Chicago.

Gabrielle has all my gratitude for chaffeuring me to the airport this morning.