accidental feminist

okay, well, back to life… April 26, 2007

Why have two shows, “The Girls Next Door” and “Big Love“, both about polyamorousness, taken off this past year? And, really, they couldn’t be more different:
Reality Show vs. Complete Fabrication
Hot Playboy Chicks vs. Stuffy (if hot) Mormon Ladies
Absence of Sexual Taboos vs. Presence of a Myriad of Taboos (all except being married to more than one woman).

Is it because they reflect a 21st century feminist attempt to suggest that, as long as a woman is an equal actor in a consentual sexual relationship, it doesn’t matter what form it takes? I’ve had many a conversation about the problematic nature of the term “exploitation”. If a woman consents to something that others would be seen as demeaning, is it still “exploitation”? What if she has a emotional or psychological history that might explain the abberation in her moral judgement? Do we than say that she lacks the presence of mind to recognize her own exploitation? Don’t we all?

Interestingly, however, in both shows, there is a clear “Wife #1″, the premise being that, all things taken into account, the man is still uncapable of (or unwilling to) provide equal emotional support to all three lady-friends. Or perhaps he is simply, despite himself, is affected by our society’s conventions of monagamous love between a man and a woman, and thus must relegate the others to a status of second-tier in order to maintain some semblance of emotional normalcy for himself.

I should also remember that “he”, in this case, is Hugh Hefner, the man who all but invented post-modern sexuality, especially with respect to the woman’s role in it. And yet, is he not a man? If you prick him does he not bleed? If he walks into a restaurant with 8 playboy centerfolds and 3 hot girlfriends, is he not the mack? (oh, rule of three; you are so cheap and yet so compelling…)

this is serious April 23, 2007

A student in my Jr. English class died this weekend. I’ll not be voyouristic and link to the various articles about it. She was out w/ her friends on a rooftop in Goose Island and accidentally fell through a skylight. When Yosef called to tell me the news, I had just come out of Second City. At first, I was shocked and in a state of disbelief; then I started bawling at the corner of North and Wells.

I wasn’t “close” with her, like a friend or family member, but what hurts me is something that may be unique to a teacher-student relationship. And that is: the whole function of our relationship is as a preparation for some furture challenge, life experience, etc. I am, by nature, a transitory person in my students’ lives; there to help them in their journey for a few years and then watch them move on. But for Jessie, there is no moving on. She was in the middle of reading “The Grapes of Wrath”. She will never finish it, and now it doesn’t matter. She was getting an A- in my class; this also does not matter. SHe was absent last week and handn’t yet made-up a quiz from that day. When I came to school today, I saw the note to myself on a worksheet: “quiz for Jessie”, to remind myself to bring it in to class so she could take it. None of this matters anymore at all. And in a strange way, it matters so much more than it did before, when it was just some stupid quiz, some tiney portion of her grade, that I was stupidly forgetting to bring to class all week. Now it represents, for me, all of the little, stupid, and beautiful things she will never get a chance to finish, or to choose not to finish.

Jessie was a beautiful girl; inside, yes, but she was also strikingly beautiful on the outside. And I was always struck with her lack of self-conciousness about her beauty, her unassuming manner, her understanding that this sort of beauty was, in the end, insignificant.

Last week in class, she made a particularly insightful comment about the “heifer jokes” in the Grapes of Wrath. She suggested that maybe the reason the farmers joked so crassly about the cows having sex, and the misunderstanding over whether it was a man or a bull who would actually impregnate the cow, was because of their own sense of vulnerability to the land and their work. I had never thought of that, and I was struck by the honesty and vulnerability of the answer itself. That is probably what will always come to mind when I think of her, which I will often.

young mothers April 20, 2007

Bassie (at bedtime): Mommy…you’re really young for a Mommy. Most Mommy’s are, like, 39, or 40, or something.

Besides for the obvious appeal to my vanity, I love the idea of Bassie and her friends sitting around, as children do, and comparing things like how many siblings they have, how many times they’ve been on an airplane, and how old their Mommy’s are. Obviously the above comment came from Bassie’s pride at totally rocking that last category earlier in the day. Glad to be of service. This also follows closely on my explanation to her, earlier in the week, that, although now she simply blames me for keeping her from doing things she wants (like drinking a can of Sprite at bedtime), as she gets older, she will grow more and more thankful for being able to use me as an *excuse* not to do stuff she doesn’t really want to do anyway, as in “Oh, I would love to tip cows with you tonight, but my *mom* (make sour face) said I have to be home by 9:30″.

improxploitation April 11, 2007

So my newly formed (and beloved) iO team had rehearsal last night. And we were given some advice: don’t knock girls around on stage. It may look fun, it may even seem fun, but the audience will turn on the guy who does it, and you will never get them back.

So our first reaction was: “No way! That couldn’t be true! It’s so FUN!” But, inclined to believe a rather experienced improv coach, I guess I have to accept that this is true.

However, it contradicts some advice given to me by another very seasoned improv coach (this one, not incidentally), a woman, which is this (paraphrase): “Stop trying to prove that you’re a strong woman; everyone loves to watch people get victimized on stage!”

So which is true? Is there a way to convey to the audience that you are the master of your own victimization, therefore avoiding creating an aggressor? I was recently in a scene where I was acting victimized, and the guy just kept being very nice and reasonable, and I continuted to act victimized. He stayed clean, and we got laughs, so maybe…

“i feel like i don’t even have any parents” April 9, 2007

Bassie never ceases to impress me with her ingenious and inventive guilt-eliciting techniques. This one was an attempt to get a more satisfactory and therefore labor-intensive bedtime out of me. Why don’t you just guess if it worked…