Yesterday the comedy team of "Moakler and Lewis" appeared to give a lil presser about Prejean's future with their organization:
Boy, they are NOT happy with her one damned bit! And they roundly scold NOM as well, especially Maggie Gallagher directly- gotta find text of Lewis' remarks...
So it has come down to this: The Donald is the one to decide.
He's gonna hold his own press conference this morning.
One wonders if Carrie has her newest bud on speed dial in case she has to "phone a friend"...
Off to make popcorn!
A flier from the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival for the 2009 event reached my inbox on Monday, May 11, 2009:
The link to the website is here, and the "buy tickets" link is here.
Of course I couldn't go in August even if I wanted to go, because I'm a pre-operative transsexual/transgender woman. Even if I were post-operative, I could get in, but I wouldn't be welcome.
And that's because the festival creator and organizer -- Lisa Vogel -- is a proponent of the womyn-born-womyn philosophy of many second wave feminists, so she and the festival consider me a kind of minority womon she wants to exclude from the festival:
"Since 1976, the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival has been created by and for womyn-born womyn, that is, womyn who were born as and have lived their entire life experience as womyn. Despite claims to the contrary by Camp Trans organizers, the Festival remains a rare and precious space intended for womyn-born womyn."..."I deeply desire healing in our communities, and I can see and feel that you want that too. I would love for you and the other organizers of Camp Trans to find the place in your hearts and politics to support and honor space for womyn who have had the experience of being born and living their life as womyn. I ask that you respect that womon born womon is a valid and honorable gender identity. I also ask that you respect that womyn born womyn deeply need our space -- as do all communities who create space to gather, whether that be womyn of color, trans womyn or trans men... I wish you well, I want healing, and I believe this is possible between our communities, but not at the expense of deeply needed space for womyn born womyn."
--Lisa Vogel, as quoted in a 2006 press release from the Michigan Womyn's Festival
Embracing the full diversity of straight, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex women within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community, and within broader society, just hasn't been timely in this, or any other period of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival's thirty-something year history.
So, Where will I be in August? It'll be Autumn in San Diego, no doubt, as the Michigan Womyn's Festival is a seasonal occasion I definitely won't be attending.
I'm game for this meme Courtney posted over at Feministing, where she listed the four most overrated and the four most underrated things related to feminism. What about when it comes to the queer community and politics?
Here are my lists; feel free to share yours in the comments.
Overrated
- Marriage
- Politicians' promises
- The gay-straight binary
- Dieting/starving/fat-shaming/being thin
Underrated
- Local organizing
- People who work to prevent and ameliorate queer homelessness
- Feminism
- The opinions of people without a lot of money
I posted these lists at Bilerico this morning, an;, and there were a few questions about what I meant on a couple of these items. I do have to say that writing in list form instead of my usual 2000-word essay format means that some precision will be lost. :)
About the gay-straight binary, I responded to a commenter:
I meant that the idea that gay people and straight people are two different camps with no overlap and no space for anyone else.
So I mean that the line isn't as powerful and rigid as some people think it is. Bisexuality and straight dudes who give hand jobs and people whose sexuality changes over their lives and lesbians who date men occasionally and all that exists.
And about marriage:
As someone else in a committed relationship with a non-American, I'd say that I do have some investment in legal recognition of same-sex couples.[...]
But, you're right, I do regularly denigrate the importance of marriage because I think that that's an institution that has far too much power and that that power comes at the expense of women and people who don't live in traditional relationships. Part of the Religious Right's argument against same-sex marriage is that marriage is very, very important. So important, that the fact that people are divorcing more and marrying later than they were in the 1950's (i.e., "marriage is under attack") is supposedly responsible for increased crime, the black/white income gap, unhappiness, poverty, even the financial crisis.
I think that the gays follow by saying that marriage will be a solution to all our problems, everything from bullying in schools to HIV/AIDS to poor self-esteem among LGBT people. And it's taken a disproportionately large amount of the resources from the movement as well.
So, when I'm saying that it's "overrated," I'm not saying that it's unimportant. I'm just saying that people stress it a lot more than they should.
DOMA's a good example. The rhetoric coming the Religious Right in support of that law was the whole "marriage is the foundation of society," "if marriage is destroyed, Western civilization ends," etc. Even if we were to agree that same-sex marriage is an attack on marriage, I'd still tell them to chill out, that marriage isn't the center of the universe.
The point of posting these lists isn't to say that I'm right and everyone else is wrong, but to get people thinking about where are priorities are and where they think they should be.
$13 - General Admission - Standing Room Only $35 - General Seating - Reserved Seating $75 - VIP Seating - Front Row Seats, Lounge with sparkling wine and VIP Bag Get your tickets online at www.strutpdx.com, or visit the following locations to purchase your tickets TODAY: IDOM - 1600 NE Alberta Popina Swimwear Boutique - 4831 Nct-us-swimwear-pg-7.html">Popina Swimwear Boutique - 4831 NE 42nd Avenue Sofada Boutique and Show Room - 2937 E Burnside BRO Office - 310 SW 4th Avenue, Suite 730 (9am-5pm, Monday - Friday) (click hyperlink for hours information) Want to attend STRUT but can't afford the ticket? Contact Andrew Hogan at andrew@basicrights.org to sign-up for a volunteer shift today! We're ready to STRUT, are you?
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