In “Under the Dome,” a small town is put under a dome by aliens (not the illegal but the outerspace kind) and all anarchy is breaking lose among those who should be in charge. Part of this anarchy is a raping scene by officers of the law (they are mainly just in charge because they are friends with the son of the person who sees himself as the big cheese of the town) on a single mother. This mother also happens to be bisexual which seems to be one of the reasons for the rape – she is also promiscuous (if you like the social markers we put on women in comparison to men) and the raping scene is thus explained and mainly excused – it is not the woman that is married to a doctor with two girls who live in a nice house that is raped, it is the white trash bisexual woman who has been left by her husband and lives in a trailer park.

I know what King was doing here: he showed in another example how bad it gets when law is taken into the hands of a few irresponsible people, the horror that ensues when our lives are cut off from everything we knew before, the isolation, the need to overcompensate, the want for power in a world that actually has borders, anarchy in a community that will not punish evil-doers, etc. It is strange how we always come back to the same patriarchal narratives in the face of endgame stories. I mean sure, there is a female hero somewhere in here, there are “normal” people who do the impossible, evil dies in the end. But until we get there we have to wade through a (hi)story that tells us that this is the time where women are raped – logically, inevitably, historically explained and sanctioned – I don’t think so!

There are other narratives where rape stares the author in the eye (be it a fiction writer or the screenplay writer… narratives are not exclusive to literature, after all)… can you name a crime show where none of the female murder victims has also been raped? No, you can’t. A film/book about the middle ages when the young heroine does not violently lose her virginity to some aristocratic bastard that has to prove his manhood?… I could go on but indeed raping scenes seem to have entered every kind of adult narrative – and we are hardly shocked anymore (it sometimes seems that the most shocking rape stories on “Law and Order: SVU” are the ones that actually have male victims – and that is sad because it really is not more shocking because a) it is much less likely to happen and b) just because it is a man does not make it less okay – taking away someone’s masculinity is not more shocking than humiliating a woman by rape).

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that our society has to discuss the problem. Rape has been a problem for so long and it has not been taking seriously for so long that we have to point our finger at it and say: it is wrong! It is inhumane! It cannot happen again! And yet it happens. And it also happens in the narratives that surround us. And even though we sometimes think, yeah, that had to happen now, and we are disgusted by it, we should maybe sometimes stop and think if that was really necessary in that given situation… I am just wondering if our culture does not feed us too many of those scenes that seem to make the inevitable outcome a rape and thus feeding to an audience that is looking for excuses to do what they have just seen: raping a person just because he/she/it happens to be: gay, bisexual, transgender, trash, promiscuous, a prostitute, in a dark alley after sundown, competing in a beauty pageant, wearing a sexy outfit, turning you on… the list is endless.

I was actually shocked when not so long ago I watched a German tv show where there were actually people who met for a “date rape.” They actually called it that – I don’t know if they were not aware that the term has actually another, more gruesome meaning, or if they just didn’t care. So, a woman meets a man to get raped. They said that the people had a secret password if the woman decided that it got to rough… and I wondered: are you real? I don’t know if sites exist that help people like that to hook up, or if there are actually women who want to know what it’s like to be raped… I am too scared to look into it, actually. But the kind of message this is sending is clear: another excuse for something that has held women down, is still holding women down. It’s disgusting, people.

The bottom line: There is no excuse!

I hope you belong to the second category (wish you would, otherwise you would have turned away by now and walked away, right?). I myself am a lesbian (though it is not all that simple these days), and I guess, that qualifies me to say a few things about this (mind you, I am not calling myself an expert, there are certainly things I know more about than lesbianism, and there are certainly people who know more about lesbianism than I do, but bear with me).

I find it easiest to define a lesbian as a woman who says she is a lesbian. I think that is a good start especially in Western culture where every female celebrity is at one point “accused” of being a lesbian. I mean, certainly, we can all go around and say: “She’s wearing comfortable shoes, she must be a lesbian.” But again: not that easy, ’cause let’s face it, straight women have been seen wearing comfortable shoes and sometimes gay women wear high heels and this is messing with that theory (not to mention that some women even claim that high heels are comfortable shoes, but let’s not got there).

I am currently reading “Female Masculinity” by Judith “Jack” Halberstam and she is working with a methodology that she calls “perverse presentism” which I understand to mean that we should not equal every past term that has been used for a woman-loving woman to lesbian. She discusses some differences among “masculine women” and reintroduces such wonderful terms as “female husband” (and puts Anne Lister as example), or “mannish lesbian” (you remember Stephen Gordon from “The Well of Loneliness”?), and “the classical invert,” a term I especially like because it is to textbook-y while totally constructed. I think, this is all very interesting, though I don’t agree with Halberstam on everything she writes.

For me it is to the same degree fascinating as to what makes a lesbian as to how much energy we put into coming up with new categories among ourselves. I do agree that it is necessary to do so but I also think we are overdoing it a little (as with probably everything that has to do with identity).

We are all very fascinated by the question of who is a lesbian. Female celebrities are our preferred aim but who hasn’t had some suspicion about a co-worker, teacher, fellow student. Is it the walk? The clothes? The ring on her left thumb? Or simply the women she associates with? There are certainly ways to find out (stalking shouldn’t be one of them!) but the best way to make sure is to ask. You may think: “are you crazy? I am not asking her, that is way rude!” I would think it was way more rude to assume and maybe spread rumors than to ask and be sure and thereby killing the pink elephant in the room.

Yesterday I looked at some pictures of female actors (two Oscar-winners among them) and I thought: what would happen if any of these women came out as lesbian? Would it change anything (I am sure it would change something but what I am not sure)?  Let’s say Jennifer Aniston came out as a lesbian (I am using her here because I don’t think she is a lesbian, although I entertain hopeful fantasies of her playing one in a serious, yet witty movie one day). Whoa, Rachel Green is a dyke?, would that be what people thought? Would they blame it all on Angelina Jolie (which they usually do, though I would love to see the headline “Angelina made her gay!”)? Would they cheer her on and wish her more luck with the “fairer sex”? How would they react if she was dating a butch instead of the expected long-haired, long-legged model type? All interesting yet highly rhetorical questions.

Where am I going with this, you may ask. Well, hopefully toward an understanding that it doesn’t so much matter that you neighbors are a bunch of women-loving women who just want to bring up their kids in peace and quite. Or maybe toward an understanding that we are everywhere and you cannot escape knowing some of us. But mainly to tell you: we come in all sizes, shapes, heights, and weights. You may recognize us or you may not but don’t assume, don’t gossip, we tell you when we are ready and you can only be sure if /when we tell you.

And here’s some pictures:

Angie Harmon – not a lesbian.

Michelle Rodriguez – not a lesbian (as she likes to tell us, probably because she is asked the question over and over again).

Ellen DeGeneres – a lesbian (rmb: yep, I’m gay).

Angelina Jolie – a bisexual woman.

Kate Winslet – … (has anyone dared asking her yet?)

For a class I had to read Butler’s “Fledgling” which is also her last book and I pretty much ran through it in two days – notes and all. I was amazed, it was easily read and understood yet had such a wide range of important topics all well spelled out. Butler topics are most importantly race, gender, age, but she manages to put spaces of queer identity into the representation of sexuality. At least that’s what I read into it (I am actually writing a paper about it… hopefully until Tuesday).

“Kindred” is her first novel that was not part of a series. She wrote it while working on the “Patternist”-Series. It is the story of Edana – who’s always called Dana – who is pulled into a different time by an ancestor. Unfortunately the time is 1815, the place is Maryland (by then still a slave-holding state), and Dana is an African-American woman. She goes back in time to help mentioned ancestor who himself is the son of a slave-holder. She saves his life time and again and finally sees his daughter being born – the daughter who is also her ancestor but born by a slave.

But Dana is not only observer, she becomes a slave herself. She is beaten, she is abused (though not sexually), and finally has to make the decision to safe herself.

This is a powerful book where slavery is revisited through the eyes of a woman living in the 1970s. She herself is married to a white man in California. The book is in part Science-Fiction, in part historical novel. It is shocking, it is thrilling, and not an entirely easy read.

Unfortunately for me it does not really fit into the topic of my paper but I am still glad I read it. Octavia Butler had a rare talent and I will go on reading her books for the pleasure they give me and for the thoughts they evoke. Make sure to check her out.

Read On!

Today, as today is International Women’s Day, she had among others this video on her blog and I wanted to share it with you (and not just here but on my other blog, too) because it is important and as Dorothy Snarker says “awesome.”

Enjoy – and also think about a little:

Another one that I had to read – for one of my classes. The class is about post-modernist (and beyond) female writers and this one was rather hard to come by (note to amazon.de: order more!). This is unfortunate because it is really good, powerful, honest, full of memories that connect a generation (my generation) yet also experienced by an individual and through other indivuduals.

It’s the story of Jim/Elizabeth who uses and abuses drugs, works different jobs and travels from one end of America to the other. S/HE comes of age but is never educationally condescending toward the reader or her/his own experiences. One has the inkling that there are still a lot of mistakes for the main character (and his/her friends) to go through.

Mostly it is a marvellous time piece (maybe for me because I have forgotten so much of that particular time) about squatters, drugs, AIDS, sexual and gender inhibitions… it is also wonderfully American yet cosmopolitan.

For everyone who misses punx, and grrls, and abused youth.

But I was hopeful. I already had one course with the assigned instructor, the topic looks interesting and mixes at least a little with my major so all is good… well, usually in anthropology all is only good until you meet your fellow students, fellow anthropologists – well, they are anthropologists and I am an misanthropologist, meaning that I hate the lot of them (okay, that is not necessarily true but I cannot say that I met a single one that I liked especially either).

The first annoying thing was that there were simply too many of them. We were about 60 people in a room that was designed for 20. I was one of the first to arrive so I actually had the luxury not to end up sitting on the floor so that was good. When the instructors arrived (two of them still students but eager and willing to teach) they told us a little about the course, what was gonna happen during the semester and what we were supposed to do to get credits… and this is when pretty much everything went downhill and another reason to simply hate anthropologists. Because instead of the presentation/paper vehicle that has proven quite affective and never too much work they want us to do a short presentation (5 minutes) and a creative something… something like a song, a play, a blog, a something.

I see you nod your heads and think what a good idea this is. Well, it would be if those anthropologists were able to write a paper as of yet. Some of them are in the 5th semester and don’t even know how to write a paper and instead of teaching those kids the basics they are tought to sing a song about orientalism? I don’t know but the standards of learning in German universities once again dropped sharply. It is not the idea of something creative that is bad, it is the idea that by making us do something creative we actually learn something…

Anthropology claims to be a science… science is the wrong word but we only have the word “Wissenschaft” and that is most often translated into science. It claims to be an academical field but I cannot see the actual academic value of writing a poem for a class about modern orientalism. Maybe it is not that bad, maybe they pull themself together (maybe I will as well) and create something useful and good, something they can show to others so that they will be able to understand what Orientalism is all about (and maybe we need people to make the majority see that just because something or someone comes from the middle east it or they are not necessarily bad). But… I don’t know. I am highly suspicious of anthropology and anthropologists and don’t see the good in it yet.

I know I am being pessimistic – often, mostly – but most of the time it comes from experience and anthropologists have yet to positively surprise me.

Since I have to do something for this course to get my credits I will probably open another blog. One that actually tries to dissect things anthropologically… afterwards I will come here and mock it…

P.S.: Two week until the end of the semester and I flunked the course – that is I am not going there anymore. I can’t. Next time someone says something about doing a creative project instead of a paper I am going to turn and run right away and not wait until the last minute… although that probably sums up my work-ethic pretty good…

When I checked into this hostel the danish girl staying in the same room a me told me that everybody in that room was looking for an apartment in Berlin. No wonder I can’t find one. She also told me that she and her boyfriend had only been looking for ten days before they found one… which is depressive information altogether.

I guess, I was aware that Berlin is a place people like to come and live but I was not aware of how many people come here every year and from all over the world to stay here. And they seem to like it here, too. (Not that I do, I realized while in New Orleans that I really hate living in Berlin…) I don’t know why I am writing about this, it just makes me wonder if I should really return. Then again, what choice is there? Is abandoning my studies really a choice?

I have another “Sinnkrise” where I am not sure what to do, who to be, what to aim for or abandon. I love studying and I really hate looking for an apartment. As it turns out I am simply not good at it. Maybe I should pay someone to do it… anybody willing to do that?

What am I saying with this? I’ve been robbed. Here, in the hostel. Nothing of value was stolen, nothing of financial value anyways. But there were things, mere things, that I will miss from now on: the t-shirts that I have brought from NOLA last year, souvenirs. The t-shirt from my graduation of night school. My reclam edition of Shakespeare’s Hamlet with the autograph from Claire Stansfield (who played Alti on Xena)… 

I guess I would be pissed about this whole situation but I feel rather empty. I don’t usually have a high opinion of people as it is but something like this… I mean, it was just clothes mainly. Clothes that are too big for most people at that. My things, my belongings. They were mine. Someone else took them, I feel violated, and I keep looking around at people trying to disect who might have taken MY THINGS. I can’t, of course. It’s frustrating and it’s sad. I am sad.

Well, I am going home tomorrow. Staying here without any clothes seems senseless. Damn. And why is it always me these things happen to?

Coca Cola Light – or Diet Coke (wherever you live) – in Germany has a new cap and it’s pink. It is not really difficult to conclude why that is? Pink is for girls and so Diet Coke is for girls. If you look at the history of advertisement you will notice that it always has been. Remember when Paul Johansson (of One Tree Hill fame) was delivering Cola Light to what seemed like an all women secretarial office  in an early spot and drank the first one? I do.

Lately the in-the-flesh-women have been replaced by puppets-on-strings (don’t try to think about what that implies, it will only drive you completely mad). And now they drink the Diet Coke themselves.

But why, I asked myself, the pink cap all of a sudden. Well, if you got a coke for girls there must be one for boys, too, right? Right. Coca Cola Zero has with its very first spots made clear that this is a man’s drink. Men find their lives suddenly improved by drinking Zero (after having drunk it myself I still wonder if it’s really about zero sugar or rather about zero taste, but maybe that is just me – I am a purist by the way and only drink the original! from cans!) and they are allowed to dip gorgeous women into cream AND choco syrup.

So, to make sure everybody understood the gendered rules of refreshment the Coca Cola Company put a pink cap on their Diet Coke (I don’t know if they did that everywhere but maybe Germans need the visual more than other people, I don’t know). They don’t put blue ones on the male because… well, in the business of selling sugared refreshments (or non-sugared, I guess) blue stands for… PEPSI! And we cannot have that, obviously.

What I wonder about now is this: As a lesbian, which Coke am I supposed to drink? Certainly not the testosterone Coke (although I like gorgeous women dipped in chocalate and whipped cream, too) and as a baby dyke I cannot have pink anywhere near me, it does not go with any of my wardrobe… it’s a dilemma. Couldn’t they put out something with a purple cap?

I’ll be back with more gendered nonsense because – believe me – there’s plenty of it!

Germans are serious about soccer – maybe because they are not really good at anything else (or maybe just because they think they are good at it…). Well, the German team won their first game, everybody is really enthused and wants to watch every game – or at least every German game.

For me, it started to get annoying with everything that had a soccerball on it or the German flag. It was mostly advertising in the beginning, then the girls on the tv guides started wearing German tricots, and now there are flags all over the place (especially on cars). And everybody tries to involve you in a conversation about soccer. I usually look at these people really bored and say: “I don’t know,” “I don’t care.” And some people have the audacity to be insulted! I understand that people like to be part of a group and how nice it is in times when the world is in a crises (I am talking economy, here) to be proud of something that changes everybody into a mushy ball of nationalism – and everybody loves everybody just because 11 guys win a game for your very own nation.

Still, I think it is a little bit weird as those who are the most enthusiastic about it are those who usually would not raise their behind from the couch for their country and are constantly nagging about how everything is bad but have no constructive idea to change it. Add excessive beer drinking and you have an annoying nation of soccer madness.

This might seem strange to Americans. Americans bond over sports far more easily than Germans. With us it really only happens at world cups or European Song Contests and only if we have a chance to win (or think we have a chance to win). I myself like to stand outside a little, watch people, shake my head. I am aware that I am a party pooper but as I said I don’t like to be pressured, and I will not be pressured into being a soccer fan at the world cup when the rest of the year I don’t give a damn…