PRIDE.

It's Pride weekend, here in Oly, and OH GEEZ I don't know why I've spent so much time away from queer spaces*. Last night's CabarGAY! and today's festival have hosted so much talent, genderfuckery, fun, and beautiful words and sounds, that I have to share. Consider it Queer Art Weekend, as part of Pride, and share yr links in the comments!

Very specific version of love, actually

So I just watched "Love Actually" for the first time. I know, it came out 7 years ago, so this is not BREAKING FEMINIST NEWS. But this movie made me so grumpy, which is of course a strong motivator to blog it out.

Not that it doesn't have good bits! Hugh Grant dancing around 10 Downing Street: always welcome, in my book. (Speaking of great scenes of dudes dancing in movies: have you guys seen In and Out? Go put that on your Netflix queue stat.) That adorable kid's adorable smiles: yes. That gorgeous Brazilian guy: yes, yes, yes. That wretched Christmas song: truly and hilariously wretched! But it was just a little bit of adorableness, wrapped in a pastry of patriarchy, wrapped in a LIE!

Since social science research is my paying job now, one thing I liked about Love Actually is that it provides a nice sample size. Let's examine our data, shall we?
(Spoilers after this, but trust me, the plots go pretty predictably.)

Quick Note

I added a new site, Violence Unsilenced, to our blogroll. The website is a venue for people, particularly women bloggers, to speak out about domestic and sexual violence they've lived through. If you click on the general website link, it takes you to a trigger warning for the whole site, but if you click the link for the most recent update, it will go right to the person's story, with not additional warning at the beginning of the post.

So: TRIGGER WARNING for all Violence Unsilenced links. I think it's awesome that women have carved out that space on the internet for their stories of survival, and that it is important for everyone to check in with that reality when they feel safe, but it is a site entirely composed of violence and trauma, and inspiring or not, they still feel like a kick in the gut. To both survivors and allies. I think it's very important, but look out for yourselves as you go along, folks.

Bonus: the Resources page is excellent, with national info as well as state by state contacts, and, mais oui, more blogs!

I still wear my Weezer Muppet tee because I never bought that Planet Terror shirt

TRIGGER WARNING: Discussion of pervasiveness of misogyny and sexual assault in film, and self-blame that comes from viewing these films.

"Pinkerton" is the Weezer album that dudes like; or, in our current discourse, “the best Weezer album.”

-- Sady Doyle, Rivers Cuomo Messes You Up Forever

This is going to be long, since I got excited about Why I am interested in watching certain films, as well as wanting to discuss aspects of the films themselves. Here we go, after the jump.

Transblog Update?

Not sure if you folks're interested or not, but I've started keeping a BookBlog and my most recent post is a Genderqueer Reading List, which seems relevant to Ladysquad issues.  Check it out, if you'd like some genderfabulous nonfiction up in your summer reads!

PANTHERA and the PATRIARCHY

The maybe even real life adventures of a young lady in Kansas!  Don't hate on my Crayola marker skillz.

Et tu, Broadsheet?

Now I know headlines and sub-headlines are written by editors, not the original authors. But when I read Mary Elizabeth Williams’s post, I found that they were pretty close to her original point. From her actual post:

Lindsay Lohan's slow meltdown: It's all about Dad
The actress's painful public drama is a lesson in how hard it can be to grow up without a good man in your life

[...]

That's why, awful as the whole shabby spectacle is, we keep watching. We know that girl. We've been that girl. I think of my own daughters, how lucky they are to have a devoted dad who adores them, and how much harder the road was for me because I didn't.

[...]

So if you ever need a reminder of the power of a man in a girl's life, if you question whether or not fathers matter, take a good look at the girl with the gun to her head. Because she's everywhere.

Okay, so, you’ll get no argument from me that good parents are a good thing, and bad parents are a bad thing. Tautology: it’s tautological! Williams also argues that, while mothers are often blamed for their children’s screwed-up-ness, bad fathers can also do damage. Again, I’m not exactly arguing for abusive, absent, or otherwise difficult dads here.

But: “The power of a man in a girl’s life”? Seriously?

Newsflash to Mary Elizabeth Williams: there are a lot of un-screwed-up kids out there who grew up without fathers and are doing absolutely fine. Not that she discounts this possibility; she comes up with Barack Obama and Charlize Theron as examples (my two role models?). But note the shift in this typical excerpt:

But the Lohan family drama is, more than anything, a potent and painful example of what can happen to girls without good men in their lives. Michael Lohan, whose most recent stunt was to call police to Lindsay's home for a "welfare check" on her sister Ali, seems to take crappy parenting to a level others can only aspire to.

Again, the latter sentence blames “crappy parenting”—which we can surely all condemn—but the former refers only to, again, “girls without good men in their lives.”

So girls need both a mother and a father, is that right? Hmm... where have I heard this rhetoric before?

Of course, being a single parent is challenging, and children of single, divorced, separated, or otherwise non-normative families may not have perfect childhoods, just like children of heterosexual legally-married couples. But Williams seems to forget a growing group of kids who grow up without a father in the home (or without a mother) and do just fine.

The limited but consistent evidence suggests that children of same-sex parents turn out just as well as children of heterosexual parents, except a little more tolerant. From my personal experience, I feel fortunate that I had a model for a healthy, egalitarian relationship, among the other benefits of having two moms. Every single one of the disadvantages (awkward conversations and legal inconveniences, mostly) can be traced back not to my parents or their parenting, but to a homophobic culture and heterosexist society. I grew up in a state with almost zero protections for same-sex couples, nothing remotely resembling marriage equality, and some very conservative neighbors. And, since Williams is putting forth her fatherless childhood as a relevant example, I’ll do the same: I’m doing great, thanks.

I am so, so tired of this bullshit argument: that the lack of a good man, rather than the lack of good parenting (or the presence of abuse), produces hopelessly dysfunctional kids. This may just be one little post that happened to annoy me, but this very same logic is used again and again to prevent gays and lesbians from becoming foster parents or adopting children—and to deny same-sex couples marriage equality.

I get enough of this nonsense from Focus on the Family, Broadsheet. I expect better from the feminist blogosphere.