Recently, when I was reading an article in the most recent issue of Kitchen Sink on guys who pretend to be gay to get women to warm up to them or to get free drinks and non-sexual gifts from men who are actually gay, I rolled my eyes a bit, thinking how opportunistic it is to use the marginality of others strategically to get what one wants (and apparently couldn’t get in spite of one’s privileged position as a heterosexual male). But now straight guys are feigning queerness in a way that potentially disrupts one of the most masculine institutions — the military.

Appartently, dozens of Italian men, typically known for their homophobic, machismo demeanor, are pretending to be gay to get out of mandatory military service. Taking advantage of the mandate’s exemption for gays, men are visiting doctors in droves to get someone to document that they feel uncomfortable being around other men in such close quarters, that they feel living circumstances might undermine their professional interest and focus on their military responsibilities, etc. And they appear to be succeeding.

But in the process of evading their responsibilities to the institutions of ”manliness“ and the military, are these men undercutting an oppressive culture of heteromasculinity? Or are they simply taking advantage of the suffering of other men (i.e., men who are forbidden from serving in the military based on their sexual orientation) for their own benefit, thereby preserving the privilege associated with heteromasculinity?

Laura Nathan-Garner

While it seems silly that the media loves to focus on whether prospective First Ladies are liabilities or assets to their husbands campaigns, what should we make of all of the hoopla over Mary Cheney’s participation in her father’s re-election campaign? Openly gay, Mary Cheney has stood by her Vice President father and actively participated in the promotion of the Bush/Cheney ticket. Given that the Bush administration has vocalized its support of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages, members of the queer community can hardly begin to fathom how Cheney’s daughter is able to reconcile her sexual orientation with her ardent promotion of the Radical Right’s agenda.

In fact, just recently, some concerned citizens launched www.DearMary.com, a site dedicated to urging Mary Cheney to convince her father to oppose the amendment and to focus her loyalties on the interests of the queer community.

Mary’s predicament is not one that most of us would want to find ourselves in for one reason or another, but it does raise some important questions: Does one’s first loyalty belong to his or her family or to the demands of identity politics? Is it even possible to make such a simple delineation, particularly when one’s family and upbringing constitutes part of one’s identity? And is it possible that neither Cheney’s family nor the queer community which wants to claim her as its spokesperson can actually lay claim to Mary’s identity since both oppose aspects of her identity and thus potentially preclude genuine self-actualization?

Laura Nathan-Garner

Call me crazy, but I really don’t understand the media’s obsession with the spouses of presidential candidates. (Maybe I should just say the ”wives“ of presidential candidates. After all, the husbands of presidential candidates don’t make it into the spotlight since female candidates rarely remain on the ballot past February).

Prior to Dean’s withdrawal from the Democratic race, we heard all about how his wife was a liability since she wasn’t on the campaign trail with him. Today, The New York Times features an article which questions whether John Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, is an asset or a liability to his run for the White House.

Sure, I suppose every intimate detail of a candidate’s life, ranging from Botox to extramarital affairs to the quality of his wife’s chocolate chip cookie recipe, is subject to scrutiny in determining whether he is fit to run the country. At the risk of being incredibly blunt and dismissive, who really cares? Or rather, why does the media try to make voters base their decisions on relatively trivial, personal issues?

I suppose that these types of stories keep The National Enquirer in business and give people something to talk about. But beyond that, such superficial details have little to no impact on one’s ability to lead a country.

On a related note, I wonder if the media’s portrayal of the wives of presidential candidates as caretakers, homemakers, party planners, entertainers — everything but policymakers —  reinforces the idea that women are expected to be wives first and foremost. I guess that by definition, that is what the title ”First Lady“ means.

But I wonder whether this tendency to focus on a presidential candidate’s spouse and children (remember those painful Saturday Night Live skits about Chelsea Clinton during the early 1990s?) reinforces the notion of the ”trophy wife,“ thereby making it that much more difficult for us to imagine a woman in the White House — as president. Maybe it’s time to start questioning the media’s tendency to question whether presidential candidates and their wives are indeed ”model Americans“ and worry a little more about what they will do for the country — and whether they can create a sense of belonging both in the White House and throughout the nation for a larger spectrum of people. Just some food for thought …  kind of like the chocolate chip cookie contest that dominated the 1992 presidential election.

Laura Nathan-Garner

Have you ever considered the composition of the self-selected group of people who visit and/or write for a given blog on a regular basis? The audience of various blogs on AlterNet.org, for instance, is probably quite different from the writers and readers of a blog featured on, say, the National Review website.

Undoubtedly, the similarities between the readers and writers of each of these blogs — as well as the differences between the audiences and writers of these two blogs as collective groups — become the basis for ”citizenship“ in their respective virtual communities. And in the process certain groups, perspectives, and identities get excluded or marginalized in the discussions that the blog features and facilitates.

Not surprisingly, such exclusion and marginalization produce a fair number of ”isms“ (yes, even members of the PULSE team and our readers are guilty of a case of the ”isms,“ even if it is primarily anti-Bushism). As Brooklyn writer John Lee recently divulged in ”Blogging While (Anti) Black,“ blogs such as Gawker and Wonkette seek to sustain an aura of hipness by joking about non-whites being second-class citizens. He writes:

Gawker is run by a New York Observer contributor named Choire Sicha … In an article covering the New Yorker Magazine Festival, Sicha reports that, ”around me the audience is white,“ although he also says that he sees people like ZZ Packer and Edwidge Danticat (of whom he says ”Edwidge is also adorable — you want to drive around with her in a giant Haitian-mobile and smoke a little weed“). Both of these women writers appear, at least to casual inspection, not to be white. In truth, there were several people at the three-day event who aren’t white, despite his claims, and whom he characterizes suspiciously by ethnicity. Sicha’s descriptions of non-whites seem to fall into the usual pattern of one part paternalism and two parts Maplethorpeian admiration.

Ana Marie Cox, a.k.a. Wonkette, is Sicha’s DC counterpart. Her mission: to plumb the DC gossip scene for any signs of life in a town where getting invited to a Beltway power party is harder than getting a reservation at Nobu during a Mad Cow Disease scare. For a city that arguably controls the fate of the known world, DC has a social scene that is only slightly more interesting than life on an Alaskan oil field — this city’s idea of a velvet rope is ten secret service guys standing in a row. Cox’s current main source of stories seems to be blog-refusnik Matt Drudge (oddly, she’s simultaneously constantly plugging rumors that Drudge is gay) …

Like Sicha, Cox injects ethnicity into even the most mundane occurrences. After a VH-1 Pop Quiz given to Democratic candidates about various music, sports and film icons, she declares ”Wes Clark: The whitest candidate in a very, very white field.“ Evidently, not knowing who starred in Total Recall or who wrote the Harry Potter books makes you white. Both sites seem obsessed with the eugenics of not just people, but ideas. But you don’t have to take my word for it, let’s examine some actual entries from the websites:

Proof Of Strife

Gawker: Jan 19: Media Bubble: Something Going On In Iowa?

Evidently there’s some sort of national holiday today? Also some election thing is going on in Nebraska or Iowa or some flat state. I didn’t really catch it.

There are many things one can say about Martin Luther King, and it’s fair game (though kind of poor taste) to poke fun at his alleged infidelity, but denying the holiday even exists is worse than marginalizing the event. He gave his life for what he believed in and there are still states and cities that refuse to recognize this federal holiday to make a direct statement about their politics. Gawker cast down its gauntlet in questionable company …

Wonkette: Feb 06:

Russell Simmons: Bothering the White Folks Again #

Lloyd Grove reports on Wednesday night’s Victory Campaign 2004: A bunch of liberal celebrities got together to bash Bush and showed PowerPoint presentations. Is there anything more politically inspiring? Way to excite the base, guys. Then hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons harshed everyone’s mellow, saying ”The shit y’all doing is corny“ and ”We are not included!“ That’s no way to get invited to the after-party, Russell. Can someone give him some ”bling-bling“ or whatever those people call it and tell him to be quiet?

Laughing at Russell Simmons is easy — he’s got that lisp, and a trophy wife who by our estimates costs him about $50,000 a day. However, there is a huge chasm between humor that’s good-humored and the wink-nudge barb that seems hip, but in fact serves to divide.

Gawker: Feb 6.

Too Black, Too Strong

Hey! It’s Black History Month! And it’s leap year, too, so we get a special extra day of blackness in the media. Here’s an in-depth report that I like to call ”Black History Month: What’s Up With Black People These Days?“ ….

… Well, looks like those are all the black people in the news today — one presentation of a marketing scheme in the paper of record and one gossip item painting an incredibly successful (if highly annoying) businessman as a buffoon. Okay, we’ll look for more black people tomorrow! Maybe Nicole Richie will slice someone up at fashion week.

Ummm, yeah. So next time someone tries to convince you that the internet is increasing our interconnectedness, think again. The internet may just be contributing to the maintenance of the barriers and stereotypes that keep us apart — though those barriers may now be more easily accessible to a larger number of people.

Laura Nathan-Garner

In perhaps the largest protest yet of President Bush’s support for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, thousands of queer couples from across the country flocked to San Francisco’s City Hall over the weekend to seek marriage licenses. On Friday, San Francisco Mayor Gavin C. Newsom instructed city and county officials to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, thereby giving thousands of couples an additional reason to celebrate Valentine’s Day.

Thanks to hundreds of city officials and police officers working throughout the holiday weekend without pay, over 2,400 same-sex couples have legally entered marriages with their partners since Newsom’s decree. However, despite the jovial mood on the streets of San Francisco, there is concern that San Francisco city officials are violating the terms of California state law that restricts marriage to a union between a woman and a man. City officials acknowledge that they may be forced to cease marrying same-sex couples at any moment when the state steps in, but until then, they are marrying as many couples as possible in the name of love and equal rights.

Although Robert Tyler, a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund said that San Francisco was making ”a mockery“ of what he called ”democracy,“ the significant number of people who have participated in San Francisco’s defiance of this law suggests that the problem might not be city officials and same-sex couples but rather democracy’s failure to practice what it preaches.

Protest of this magnitude proves that Bush & co. won’t have an easy time outlawing same-sex marriages as queer communities grow more determined to hold democracy accountable to all of its citizens. Given that these communities pay taxes and even register for the draft in accordance with the law, the ”because the law says so“ rationale for denying them the right to marry is laughable. The law of the land, after all, isn’t supposed to create two classes of citizens, but as of now, that is what the law seems to do. If California officials have any sense, they’ll recognize this — along with the marriages of thousands of same-sex couples.

Laura Nathan-Garner

With the Justice Department demanding that at least six hospitals hand over the medical records of hundreds of abortions performed there, the debate over partial-birth abortions appears to be heating up again. Although Bush signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003 into law in November, federal judges in Nebraska, New York and California issued temporary injunctions immediately thereafter, protecting physicians who perform this procedure until the courts hear both sides’ full arguments. Because they can be punished later for abortions performed during the injunction if the law is upheld, however, doctors are exercising precaution.

It is difficult to surmise whether such precaution is all for naught. Since the Supreme Court overturned a Nebraska partial-birth abortion law that failed to provide a medical exemption in Stenberg v. Carhart, and all twenty-one legal challenges to such laws at the state and federal level have succeeded, the law is likely to be overturned. But if one or two justices retire before the Court hears the case, the President’s judicial nominees could sway the vote.

What is at stake when the Court hears this case? More than the term ”partial-birth abortion“ might lead one to believe. By making the procedure seem wholly unnecessary, the ban appeared to be a negligible restriction on reproductive rights.  But it is telling that the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), which represents 90% of U.S. board-certified obstetrician/gynecologists, maintain that partial-birth abortion is not a medical term. Nevertheless, the ACOG assumes this legal term of art crafted by Congress refers to ”intact dilatation and extraction  .  .  .,  a rare variant of a more common midterm abortion procedure known as dilatation and evacuation“ which ”may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.“ Significantly, the law never employs these medical terms, leaving it open to the discretion of the courts to interpret.

Insisting that the partial-birth abortion ban ”is not required to contain a ‘health’ exemption, because . . . a partial-birth abortion is never necessary to preserve the health of a woman, poses serious risks to a woman’s health, and lies outside the standard of medical care,“ the legislation restricts this procedure across the board. While the law includes a nominal medical exemption if a woman’s life is at stake, its failure to do so for her health belies previous partial-birth abortion rulings. Moreover, since permissibility of exemptions must be determined by State Medical Boards, whose members are typically appointed by the governor, doctors in more conservative states may never obtain medical exemptions, threatening a right that many women and their doctors have taken for granted for more than thirty years.

Laura Nathan-Garner

It’s no secret that the institution of marriage is going through a transition. Only twenty-six percent of American households are comprised of a traditional family, including a married heterosexual couple and their children. Between Bush promoting ”healthy“ heterosexual marriages and abstinence among low-income Americans and calls for a constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriages, attempts to save this institution by resurrecting the 1950s are troubling — and oh so out of touch with reality. (And by the way, am I the only one who has noticed the double-standard in Bush’s promotion of ”healthy“ marriages for low-income Americans while his own brother, Neil, is caught up in a messy divorce drama, replete with adultery, an out-of-wedlock birth, and tons of riches?).

Initially an economic institution, marriage has only become a State-regulated institution in modern times. By attempting to respond to the transformation of this institution with more regulations, many conservatives are simply adding onto layers of contrived laws and social norms.

Scandinavia seems to have found a better solution, one which arose with the advent of gay marriage. In Scandinavia, marriage has essentially been deregulated, making love – rather than legal documents – the determining factor in defining the relationship between two people. As a result, all family forms (including out-of-wedlock parenthood and same-sex relationships) are legitimate.

With jobs and income guaranteed to all citizens — including children — each individual is independent. Consequently, people don’t have to feel obligated to get married. Since the government doesn’t condemn divorce and out-of-wedlock births, children born out-of-wedlock don’t suffer the stigma that their counterparts in the U.S. might. In fact, because parents are financially independent, they don’t bicker over many of the financial concerns that married couples here do, eliminating much emotional turmoil from the family.

With the U.S. economy in shambles and a wage gap between people of different genders and races, the economics of this model do not yet seem feasible. But if Bush spread the wealth and acknowledged the failure of contrived regulations to govern our desires, the U.S. could follow Scandinavia’s lead by deinstitutionalizing love and desire and enabling the expression of individualism. This may not be the most ideal solution. But it might be more beneficial for a larger group of people than political ploys to play ”marriage counselor.“

Laura Nathan-Garner

Recently, plans to build a new Planned Parenthood clinic in a low-income neighborhood in Austin, Texas, were halted when Browning Construction withdrew from the project right before building was slated to begin. Word on the street is that Browning was under significant pressure from pro-life groups, which had gained momentum when Bush signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003 a few weeks earlier.

In fact, according to Browning Construction worker Chris Danze, the company’s official justification for backing out of the project was that they feel that Planned Parenthood promotes ”sexual chaos“ and ”indiscriminate, unregulated, unsupervised sexual activity with no parental supervision or input,“ which Browning doesn’t want to promote.

Danze, who subsequently formed Texas Contractors and Suppliers for Life, hopes that Browning’s action will encourage other construction workers to abstain from condoning the pro-choice movement through their construction commitments. The group hopes to deter Planned Parenthood and similar projects from seeking their services in the future to the point of ensuring that such projects cannot find contractors, putting the health of thousands of men and women at stake. This development corroborates suspicion that the mounting pro-abstinence/pro-marriage campaign is working against the interests of lower-class women and men at the grassroots level, where corporate interests still dictate business and policy decisions — and apparently, reproductive health options.

Given that the majority of the services Planned Parenthood provides are basic health care and reproductive health care (most frequently, for women who can’t afford it)— not abortion counseling and procedures — there is far more at stake in this movement than the right to abortion. For women who cannot otherwise afford quality health care, the right to life might also be at stake.

It is worth noting, however, that the growing conservatism behind Browning’s decision has also mobilized pro-choice and women’s rights groups, who saw this as a wake-up call for just how far the pro-life/pro-abstinence movement is willing to go — and how much clout it is garnering. Thanks to a significant outpouring of support for Planned Parenthood, another construction company recently began construction on the site. But it is unclear whether such pro-choice/women’s rights groups have the clout and strength in numbers to keep this dangerous conservative tide at bay.

Laura Nathan-Garner

A decade ago, the first term of Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s presidency in Haiti was briefly cut short by a military coup. In the name of democracy, U.S. troops put Aristide back in power. But what has ensued in Haiti since that time has been anything but democratic.

After Aristide was elected to a second term, apparently all the power went to his head, as his response to threatened boycotts of last year’s legislative election demonstrated. Rather than confronting the reality that his party faced stiff opposition in the election, Aristide cancelled the election, dissolved the legislature and, in turn, gave himself the authority to rule by decree.

Not surprisingly, the Haitian people are paying a steep price for Aristide’s rendition of democracy. During the past few months, more than fifty Haitians have been killed, thanks to the street violence that is ensuing as Aristide’s opponents meet stiff resistance from pro-Aristide forces. As the Haitian people have learned, opposition to Aristide only increases his hold on the power that has gone straight to his head — and to the streets of Haiti.

What is the rest of the world doing while Haiti devolves into bloodshed and violence? In the U.S., the situation in Haiti rarely makes the news, and even when it does, the stories are brief. Bush is probably turning a blind eye to the situtation since the U.S. did, after all, help keep Aristide in power, thereby condoning his tyranny. But then again, Papa Bush also armed Saddam less than two decades before his son ravaged his country and ousted Saddam from power. Moreover, the U.S. is too preoccupied with Iraq and Janet Jackson’s breast to focus its attention on a Caribbean nation that isn’t exactly known as an oil hotbed.

Other Caribbean nations, meanwhile, are pressuring Aristide to speak with them and implement reforms. Their success, however, remains to be seen as violence and bloodshed become increasingly commonplace on the streets of Haiti.

With the next presidential election slated for late 2005, one question on nearly every Haitian’s mind is whether Aristide will call off this election as well. Given that Aristide’s revolution seems to be the only revolution from within that is succeeding, the best hope for the Haitian people to win back their democracy is to vote Aristide out of office as soon as possible. But 2005 seems to be a long time away when one cannot walk out on the street without wondering if she or he will return home alive. Perhaps the best solution for improving the lot of the Haitian people is to pressure Aristide and his supporters  to ensure that he begins implementing reforms in Haiti now to quell the violence caused by his leadership and to pave the path for Haitians to reclaim their democracy by exercising their right to vote in 2005.

All of this, of course, is easier said than done, particularly when the fate of the Haitian people relies so largely on the interest and power of one man. But since Aristide has successfully used domestic opposition to strengthen his hold on power time and time again, one can hope that he will begin to listen when foreign leaders get involved.

Laura Nathan-Garner

Speaking of queer lives for the straight eye, I found the following commentary, relayed by Patrick Letellier, to be both funny and disturbing at the same time:

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning … recently said to the press, ”I don’t hate gay people.“

Bruning uttered that reassurance as he backpedaled, er, clarified an earlier statement he had made. When he learned that a Massachusetts court had green-lighted gay marriage, Bruning said to an Associated Press reporter, ”Does that mean you have to allow a man to marry his pet or a man to marry his chair?“

Uh, yes, Mr. Attorney General, that’s exactly what it means. I’d like to introduce you to my Sealey Posturepedic husband — he’s the dark green recliner in the corner. And that basset hound next to the chair? That’s my ex.

Houston, we have a problem: It looks like some people still have an awfully long way to go before they come to grips with the fact that queers are people, too …

Laura Nathan-Garner

For many years, sexual minorities struggled with the lack of representation of their communities on television. Sure, there were Will and Jack, the two gay characters on NBC’s Will & Grace. But many queers were frustrated with the fact that Will was played by a straight guy (and hence didn’t seem all that convincing on the screen) while Jack epitomized every imaginable stereotype of gay men. And there have been shows such as Six Feet Under, which have featured queer characters. But up until recently, there have not been any mainstream shows that have represented and spoken to GLBT communities. In fact, it is questionable whether much has changed even with the arrival of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and more recently, The L Word.

But is the onset of such shows really empowering for these previously underrepresented communities? Yes and no. While the presence of shows revolving around the queer community is a positive step in disrupting an otherwise homogenous television culture, these shows fall back on old stereotypes, perhaps in order to win the viewership of straight men and women.

Queer Eye for instance, tells the story of five gay guys who are — surprise — into fashion and decorating. This seems to suggest that being a gay male is synonymous with being effeminate, which is something we’ve been hearing since the late 1940s. Sure, one could argue the fact that the gay guys on the show use their effeminacy to help make straight guys a little queerer, or a little more effeminate, by giving their lives a makeover. But the reality is that generally, this is done for straight men, not by straight men, to woo women. In other words, the show ends up bolstering stereotypes of both gay and straight men, where the former are cast as effeminate while the latter are cast as masculine, messy, and not all that in tune with their feminine side or the women in their lives — in order to preserve heterosexual relationships and heterosexuality more generally.

Somewhat similarly, The L Word, Showtime’s new series about lesbians, cast as the other side of HBO’s Sex and the City, also plays up femininity with several extremely attractive, skinny female characters. As Melissa Silverstein points out:

You’d think they had discovered something new. They tried to make these women seem like rock stars. I heard they even sent the stars on a lesbian cruise during premiere week. I couldn’t believe the press materials that I was sent by Showtime. So glossy. So expensive. So unlesbian. The pink materials with the actresses posed was ringed with many different L words – lush, lashes, lyrical, lofty, looking, loose, latent. One word that was very hard to find was the word ’lesbian.‘ It seemed as though they were trying to make The L Word stand for just about everything except lesbian.

Given that the majority of sex scenes on the show involve heterosexuals, the show seems to ensure that straight men and women don’t have to find themselves in an uncomfortable position. If the responses to the premiere of The L Word shared by Silverstein and her friends are any indication, the only audience that this show might appease consists primarily of heterosexuals.

However, it is important to note that The L Word is written and produced by two lesbians, which is an important step in ensuring that the queer community gains representation on-screen.  While Silverstein and others are skeptical of the way they have chosen to represent this community, it seems likely that they may have had to represent the lesbian community in rather homogenous — and heterosexual — terms in order to get their show airtime on a major network like Showtime. But the fact that these shows are the first of their kind is noteworthy, even if they don’t adequately represent the lives, interests and diversity of these communities. Perhaps future shows seeking to represent these communities will learn from the shortcomings of their predecessors and better speak to the complexities of GLBT communities without falling back on the terms defined by heterosexuality.

Laura Nathan-Garner

It’s no secret that the winner of the 2004 Presidential Election will be decided largely on the basis of identity politics. Everything from the corporate vote to the working-class vote to the female vote to the Jewish vote to the Latino vote to the Arab vote to the black vote is a concern of the candidates. Whether the candidates continue to pander to the interests of these contingencies once the election is over, of course, is open to debate.

But for now, it appears that even the Democrats are playing the race card to win votes — not from President Bush, but from each other. Alluding to comments Senator Kerry made in 1992, General Clark told two sets of predominately black audiences today that Kerry opposes affirmative action and has characterized it as creating ”a culture of dependency.“

Now standing on the defensive, Kerry insists that his comments have been mischaracterized and that he merely suggested that affirmative action needs to be mended. Kerry and his supporters have also argued that Kerry has consistently voted in favor of affirmative action in the Senate.

How much validity there is to either side’s story is certainly questionable. But even more disturbing is the way that the candidates are using the race question to further their own political aspirations rather than committing themselves as individuals to fostering a more genuine notion of humanity. But, unfortunately, when a mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue commonly referred to as the White House is at stake, people get a little power hungry. The bashing of one’s opponents that ensues is quite unfortunate since this tactic so often relies upon insulting the humanity of others. Is it any wonder why a host of ”isms“ persist today as we continue to struggle to forge a more inclusive, genuine notion of humanity?

Laura Nathan-Garner