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Tag Archives: gender and sexuality

movienotes: sense8

09 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in media

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gender and sexuality, television

sense8-12

This past weekend I finished watching the first season of Sense8 on Netflix and thought I’d share a few thoughts about what I enjoyed about it. And I did enjoy it overall. It’s not perfect in my mind (hell, point me to the cultural product that is?) but I really enjoyed getting to know the eight central characters as individual people over the course of the series, and the secondary cast as well.

For those who are unfamiliar with the premise of the show, it’s a psychological thriller / science fiction drama that is a kissing cousin of Orphan Black. As with Orphan Black we have a physiologically unique (evolved?) subset of human beings (or other species?) who have unique abilities and a shadowy group of powerful scientists with a vested interest in eradicating them. Sense8 posits a world in which groups of eight individuals are telepathically connected around the globe, sharing one anothers’ senses and being able to project into one anothers’ mental and actual spaces. They are able to share emotions, skills, memories, and real-time sensory experience. Sense8 follows one particular group of these individuals as they awaken to their connection, learn about and from one another, and strategize to escape the clutches of the Evil Scientists(tm) who seek to neutralize their powers.

A lot has been said about the global scope of this series, with its human diversity of many kinds (racial, gender, sexual, socioeconomic background and so forth). And that’s definitely there, much more so than many other mainstream shows. I was wary that “HEY LOOK WE HAVE DIVERSITY” would be where the series stopped, and was relieved that this type of tokenism didn’t ultimately overwhelm the individuality of the characters. Instead, identity-based diversity becomes the rich earth from which subtle individual difference grows, individuality that is informed by the characters’ divergent life experiences.  In some of the early episodes I felt like characters were being introduced with stereotyped shorthand, but they pushed through those narratives and came into their own complexity over time.

While on its face an action drama, in which the characters must successfully evade a powerful threat (as well as wrestle with some more personal demons, and localized aggressors), I would argue that Sense8 is in fact a romance. Relationship is at the heart of Sense8‘s power, and questions of connection and empathy, disconnection and loss permeate the season’s twelve episodes from beginning to end. Sure, our intrepid band of telepaths must battle opponents who seek to do them harm. But that story has been told a thousand and one times (probably more), a standard trope of the genre. It is in the relationship realm that Sense8‘s unique contribution comes into its own.

I really appreciated how the senseates’ connection to one another was not exclusive of other deep, deep emotional bonds. Wolfgang has a best friend whom he seeks to protect with his life; Will struggles to maintain a relationship with his father; Capheus feels keenly the absence of his sister (given up for adoption) and cares tenderly and fiercely for his HIV+ mother. The few scenes between multiply-traumatized Riley and her musician father are so heartbreakingly loving. And there are relationship struggles as well: Kala trying to decide whether to follow through with marriage to a man she is uncertain she loves, Sun sacrifices herself to protect the honor of her father and brother only to have second thoughts from jail.

Two senseates, San Franciscan hacker Nomi and Mexican telenovella star Lito, are in queer relationships with non-sensates, and those relationships are not treated as second-fiddle to the senseate connection. Nomi and Amanita are gloriously sensual and committed as a couple, their sexual desire for one another often fueling arousal among the other senseates without regard to orientation. Deeply-closeted Lito endangers his relationship with Hernando and Daniela, and ultimately must decide whether his love for them is stronger than his fear of being outed.

Interestingly, elder (and somewhat tedious) sensates appear to our intrepid band at various points throughout the season and almost always insist that self-sacrifice and disconnection (suicide, avoidance of others in the group) are the key to survival. Yet over and over again the Sense8 group chooses to reach out and support one another, and to refuse self-sacrifice if there is any chance at another way. The elders imply or outright insist that relationships make one vulnerable; Will and Riley, for example, are discouraged from pursuing a sexual relationship with one another because the older sensates feel it’s almost incestuous. Will and Riley (and the rest of their group) disagree, and it is ultimately Riley and Will’s fierce determination to remain in one anothers’ lives that routes the enemy at the end of season one. Working cooperatively (with one another and trusted humans) ends up strengthening rather than weakening their team.

The relationship-centric nature of this series, set within a rich tapestry of diverse cultural backgrounds and personal experiences that inform the characters’ morality and desires, was really good television and I feel like I’ll be mulling over the people it introduced me to for many a day to come.

booknotes: the sex myth

04 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in book reviews

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books, gender and sexuality

IMG_20150710_171202Rachel Hills’ The Sex Myth: The Gap Between Our Fantasies and Reality (Simon & Schuster, 2015) is released today in the U.S. I’ve had the privilege of watching this book grow into being on the Internet over the past half-dozen years and — full disclosure — in 2012 I became one of the over 200 interviewees whose stories form the backbone of Hills narrative. It was with some measure of bystander pride, therefore, that I cracked open the spine of my reviewers’ copy last month and sat down to read the final iteration of Hills’ research on the sexual cultures of our English-speaking world (primarily Australia, Britain, and the U.S.).

The Sex Myth is a book-length work of well-researched journalism, drawing from various disciplines — history, philosophy, psychology, sexology, sociology — as well as personal narratives gleaned from those one-to-one interviews to explicate what Hills refers to as The Sex Myth. Continue reading →

in which I write letters: “female patients ONLY”?? #wtf

25 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in think pieces

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gender and sexuality, i write letters, the personal is political

IMG_20150625_150212

Dear Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center,

I had an appointment at your radiology department this afternoon to follow up on a potential irregularity in my left breast (thankfully all is well!). Overall I had an exceptional experience: your reception staff, mammography and ultrasound technicians, and doctor were all courteous and professional. The decor was a little overwhelmingly floral, and was it really necessary to have that much pink in the color scheme — right down to the pink floral sticker they affixed to the relevant spot on my boob? But I can roll my eyes at those design decisions and get on with my day.

What I am uninterested in rolling my eyes at and moving on from is this:

IMG_20150625_145204Several years ago, when my wife had an appointment in your radiology department we happened to notice this sign in passing and found it troubling. I had hoped, upon my return today, to find that your policies and signage had changed — but had my phone ready to hand for snapping this picture if they had not. And here we are.

My problem with this sign and policy is quite simple: Male people (assigned and/or identified) can get breast cancer or experience other physical issues needing breast imaging services. Whether or not you provide those services to male individuals elsewhere, or make exceptions to the stated policy on a case-by-case basis, the sign is alienating. It is unwelcoming not just to men but to women (like me and my wife) who find spaces that are women-only by policy to be unwelcoming, uncomfortable spaces. To put it another way, I am more comfortable accessing healthcare in a place welcome to people of all combinations of sex, gender, and sexuality than I am seeking care in a place that explicitly states that it only welcomes certain types of bodies and/or identities to pass through its doors.

Given that our family’s health center, Fenway Health — a leading provider of respectful, holistic care to trans and genderqueer individuals — refers patients regularly to your institution for necessary clinical care, I would have expected better from you. I am disappointed that in 2015 you continue to use signage (and presumably enforce policies) that are so exclusionary.

I hope the next time I have reason to visit your radiology department I won’t have cause to pull my camera out of my messenger bag.

Sincerely,
Anna

movienotes: better than chocolate

05 Tuesday May 2015

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in media

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gender and sexuality, movies

So I’m probably the last bisexual lesbian in North America to watch Better Than Chocolate (1999), a delightful indie Canadian film that centers two adorable lesbian romances. When do people have the time and energy to watch movies after they’re no longer in school?! But while Hanna was off at a conference last week and I was feeling pissed off about the conservative pundits’ commentary on Obergefell v. Hodges I decided to finally sit my ass down and watch me ladies getting up to naughty, pleasurable things. Because I figure nothing says “bite me” in this context quite like just getting on with enjoying our civilization-destroying lives. Continue reading →

virtual book tour: ultimate guide to sex after fifty

02 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in book reviews

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gender and sexuality, sexuality, virtual book tours

Today, I am participating in the virtual book tour for Joan Price’s The Ultimate Guide to Sex After 50 (Cleis Press, 2015).

Price, author of the book Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud About Senior Sex (Seal Press, 2011) returns to book format with a compilation of advice and information drawn from her extensive web presence and experience educating others about the joys of life-long sexual pleasure. The eighteen chapters are thematically organized around such topics as “Sex With Yourself and Toys,” “You and Your Doctor,” and “Cancer, Cancer Treatment, and Sex”; each chapter has a brief narrative interspersed with anonymous quotations drawn from Price’s online discussions and breakout sections with advice from experts, case studies, and further resources. The back of the book provides a brief recommended resource section, though some of the subsections of the bibliography are sparse and the selection criteria is unclear — could she really only find one recommend resource on the subject of body image, for example? And no trans- or gay male specific sexuality resources under the LGBT heading?

My reader’s response to The Ultimate Guide was mixed. Setting my age aside for the moment, I did not feel like I was the target audience for this book. My crunchy granola queer feminist sex nerd attitude toward human sexuality was unevenly represented within its pages. I agree with Price’s premise that we must counteract our youth-centric culture with targeted sex-positive resources for those whose bodies and experiences are not shaped, for example, by the college relationship scene or decisions about whether or not to procreate (and how). Yet I remain unconvinced that The Ultimate Guide (or its like-minded successor) will be my resource of choice in thirty, forty years’ time.

Continue reading →

booknotes: babette

15 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in book reviews

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gender and sexuality, memoir, oregon

Ross Eliot with copies of 'Babette'

Ross Eliot with copies of ‘Babette’ (via GoodReads)

Back in the spring, I received a review copy of Babette: The Many Lives, Two Deaths, and Double Kidnapping of Dr. Ellsworth (2013) a memoir/biographical study by Ross Eliot. After six months of hectic life, I’m finally getting around to reviewing the book; my apologies to the author for my deleterious behavior.

In 1999, Ross Eliot was working odd jobs and taking community college classes in Portland, Oregon, when a member of the history faculty — Dr. Ellsworth — took an interest in him. In her seventies and living alone, Ellsworth was looking for someone to take up residence in a basement apartment and help out around the house, drive the car, and be a companion at meals as well as on frequent weekend excursions in exchange for room and board. Eliot accepted the challenge, and lived with Dr. Ellsworth, despite her many eccentricities, until a heart attack took her life in 2002.

Part memoir, part character study, Babette echoes such works as Alan Bennett’s essay “The Lady in the Van” (1989) or Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters (2005). Like its predecessors, Babette centers around the complicated, marginal life of an individual with whom the author had personal acquaintance — but whose personal life details elude complete or coherent understanding. All three of these narratives also involve troubling questions of ethical responsibility toward the stories of others, and challenging questions of power imbalances within such author-subject relations.

[mild spoilers after the jump]

Continue reading →

believing the unicorns [#bivisibilityday 2014]

23 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in life writing

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being the change, gender and sexuality

I was informed by the Internet that today is Bi Invisibility Day 2014.

So here I am. Being bi. And visible.

Like I am most days. Showering in a bisexual manner. Brushing my bisexual teeth. Biking to work bisexually. Bisexually offering reference assistance to researchers. Lunching on bisexually-approved pizza. Picking up my bisexual wife after work so we can indulge in public displays of bisexual affection.

A bisexual as seen in the wild, with fairy wand and rainbow scarf, which I wore to my grandmother's funeral because Grandma always loved a spot of color.

This is what a bisexual looks like.
July 2014

Though of course most people don’t know I’m being bisexually visible. People who see me on the street unaccompanied probably assume I’m straight (unless I’m on a street in JP, in which case they probably assume I’m a dyke). With Hanna, they probably assume I’m a lesbian. Because as a culture we read people according to the gender of their partners, and we humans with our funny little categories have a rough time understanding folks whose desires don’t map neatly onto the binary system of gender we’ve invented for ourselves.

I don’t really care, most days, who people think I fuck.

But here’s the thing: Because of biphobia I spent the first 27 years of my life thinking I wasn’t queer enough. Because I liked dudes as well as dykes, and people of all shapes, sizes, and self-presentations were equally likely to make my squishy bits a bit more squishy. Continue reading →

booknotes: ties that bind

21 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in book reviews

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gender and sexuality, memoir, the personal is political

Me, footnote hopping. The story of my life.

I found Sarah Schulman’s Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences (New Press/Perseus, 2009) reading The Tolerance Trap and requested it inter-library loan thinking it was going to be a study of the ravages of anti-gay animus within families. Instead, it is more of a philosophical-political reflection on the practices within families (and by extension within the wider culture) that create we queer people as a lesser group. Schulman draws powerfully on work done by feminist activists around domestic violence and the workings of other types of prejudice such as antisemitism to describe how queer family members are isolated and scapegoated within families — and how the social systems these families are a part of support that violence through passive bystander behaviors. She illustrates a lot of her observations with stories about her own family’s unwillingness to maintain positive connections with her because of her lesbian identity: parents who say in front of her that she was born “bad’; siblings who refuse to allow her contact with her their children.

Reading Ties That Bind was personally disorienting as an experience; I kept checking the publication date — really? 2009? — because so much of what she was describing felt like the climate of the 1970s and 80s rather than the early 2000s. Which is definitely a good reminder that our experience, as queer individuals, of homobigotry is far from uniform, and that our treatment at the hands of friends and family shapes how we interpret and react to the structural and more distant social inequalities that continue to color all of our lives. Because of my family’s support, and because of the social norms of my immediate community (expecting nondiscrimination), when I do encounter erasure or hostility I experience it as a departure from, rather than a reinforcement of, the morality of my people. That is, not only do I believe that there’s no reason to fear my sexuality would harm children, but all of my friends and family members would look at someone like they were right bastards for suggesting such a thing.

That kind of support, in turn, leads to resilience for those of us who have it: with our many-layered communities behind is, we aren’t isolated in the face of structural discrimination or individual acts of bigotry. For those whose families do disown them, as Schulman points out, the recourse is the much more difficult and contingent road of creating your own support system from scratch, always with the voices in the back of your head — the parental authorities of your childhood — telling you how worthless, how lesser-than, you are. Continue reading →

on being "brought out" [anniversary reflections]

07 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in our family

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gender and sexuality, holidays, the personal is political

It’s been roughly five years since Hanna and I started snogging one another.

And, well, other things. It all happened in a bit of a rush; I never was a very patient person once I’d finally determined it was time to do something new. And for us, apparently, the time for sexytimes was late June 2009.

So yay anniversary!

Image via.

This weekend I was reading The Tolerance Trap: How God, Genes, and Good Intentions are Sabotaging Gay Equality by Susanna Danuta Walters (New York Univ. Press, 2014) and was reminded of the now anachronistic corollary to “coming out,” that of being “brought out” into the queer community by one’s first same-sex partner. Walters writes:

Being ‘brought out’ has within it that dual sense of sexuality and community. One is ‘brought out’ by another queer person and simultaneously brought into the queer community … coming out in these earlier and sometimes explicitly political iterations was understood as both a process personal and social, both confessional and performative, narrating a ‘shared fate’ but also an ‘imagined community .'(70)

This got me thinking about my own experience of coming out / being brought out into self-awareness and visible queer sexuality. My attitudes toward coming out as a helpful narrative (for myself; for others) have fluctuated a lot over the years. On the one hand, I definitely experienced the silencing pressure of presumptive heterosexuality, experienced the feeling of being closeted. People assumed I was straight and I mostly didn’t correct them.

For twenty-eight years. Continue reading →

booknotes: paying for the party

23 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in book reviews

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education, gender and sexuality, sociology

Amanda Hess at Slate recently reminded me that I had meant to read Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton’s longitudinal, ethnographic study of a cohort of undergraduate women, Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality (Harvard Univ. Press, 2013). Armstrong and Hamilton’s research team spent a year in residence at “Midwest University” living with a group of first-year women assigned to one of the school’s party dorms; they continued to follow the cohort on their floor for five years — the typical four years to degree and one year after. What began as a study of young women’s sexual agency at a large public university quickly turned into a study of class, and how strongly pre-existing socioeconomic conditions in the lives of each student determined her trajectory through college and into her immediate post-college circumstances. Hess’ article at Slate highlights some of what the research team did discover about the sexualization of college women during their work; Paying for the Party delves into the class issues that define many young women’s path through university.

The central thesis of Party is that undergraduates at large state universities (the researchers hesitate to generalize from a single case study) are constrained by the available cultures of their schools — and often the specific dorms to which they are assigned — in ways that limit the ability of less privileged students to utilize college as a tool for class mobility.

What the researchers found was that the majority of students entered MU on course to take one of three readily-available “pathways” through the college years: the party pathway, the professional pathway, and the mobility pathway. The researchers acknowledge that other pathways exist, both at MU and elsewhere, but for the cohort they studied, these were the three dominant ways of approaching college. The dominant pathway was the “party” pathway; the elite and upper-middle-class women of the cohort arrived on campus with plans to strengthen their already-privileged social networks through the Greek system, tracked to areas of study that facilitated this way of life, and left college with low GPAs and degrees that would have been useless without their high-powered family connections and financial resources. Less privileged women who attempted to access the party pathway typically suffered a high loss of resources and low return. The party pathway also ruthlessly policed the performance of femininity according to a very specific set of elite standards which required money and time to cultivate and maintain.

In addition to the struggles of women on the party pathway who were unable to compete with the elite partiers in terms of time, resources, social connections, and conventional beauty, Paying for the Party also chronicles the way the party pathway culture encroaches on those beyond its borders. Even women who tried to follow the professional or mobility pathway found their efforts stymied by the dominant party cohort. The researchers argue that non-elite students need more robust support for non-party alternatives in order for college to be both cost effective and life enhancing.

There are limitations to the study. For example, I couldn’t help but feel that even taking broad social categories into account, the party/professional/mobility pathways schema left out crucial segments of the undergrad population. Perhaps because the research team chose a “party” dorm, or perhaps because they were at a land grant research university instead of a liberal arts college, they failed to identify the pathway that I and many of my closest friends were on: What I might call the “how to live” pathway. This is the pathway that treats learning as a goal in and of itself, and self-knowledge — as well as wider horizons — as a valuable part of the college experience on par with skill acquisition/job training. And it’s not a pathway exclusively available to the rich; I know students across the economic spectrum who used college as a step-stone to a meaningful life (not necessarily a well-heeled one). Armstrong and Hamilton hint at such rewards toward the end of the book when they profile a student who had limited economic resources, struggled in school, and yet one year after graduating is building a meaningful life for herself working as a ski instructor and living with her partner in the wilderness setting that drew them together.

They also suggest throughout the book that MU has other subcultures of students whose subcultures provide a robust alternative to the party pathway and help students succeed: the arts students, the African-American learning community, the LGBT group. But it seems that none of their cohort originally assigned to the party dorm found their way to these rich subcultures, a telling finding in and of itself that shows how segregated a campus can be, and how the crap shoot of first-year campus housing may make or break students. Particularly the most vulnerable ones whose families have little or no experience navigating higher education.

Despite the study’s necessarily narrow focus on its original cohort, I highly recommend Paying for the Party to anyone interested in higher education, economic inequality, and the ways in which gender plays out in specific ways in both social class and college contexts.

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"the past is a wild party; check your preconceptions at the door." ~ Emma Donoghue

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