Equal Writes

A Spring Lawnparties 2012 Preview / Feminist Critique by Vivienne Chen

When USG announced that rapper / actor / comedian / writer Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, would be headlining Princeton’s spring Lawnparties, online Prince reactions were mixed: everything from “Ugh, not another rapper” to “OMG YES BEST THING EVER” to “Wait, who?”

I happen to fall into the camp of people who not only have heard of Gambino previously, but who are pretty darn excited that USG is bringing him here. Disclosure: I may or may not have written “CHILDISH GAMBINO” several times on my Lawnparties survey.

But I understand some people’s frustrations. It is unfortunate that in the past we have diluted the quality of Lawnparties with one-hit wonder has-beens (see: Wiz Khalifa) instead of consistently bringing actual up-and-coming talent (see: Gambino). It is also unfortunate that we seem to have only two main genres representing headliners for the past few years: pop and hip-hop/rap. This doesn’t take away from the fact that Gambino is a talented artist (a mastermind, if you will).

EXHIBIT A: Freaks and Geeks (The only time poet e. e. cummings has been name dropped in rap history? I do believe so.)

While some may criticize the misogyny and gleeful vulgarity that seemingly comes with his territory of rap (a whole other post in it of itself), you can’t deny this guy’s rhymes are clever and his energy is exuberant.

But if you take a look at his other work, you might notice something rather peculiar about Gambino’s verse, which brings me to the main reason I’m writing this post:

EXHIBIT B: Bonfire

EXHIBIT C: You See Me (the smoking gun of all songs)

Childish Gambino, apparently, likes Asian girls. A lot. Enough to put something about Asians in almost every song in his entire album. And at a school like Princeton, though by no means UCLA, his racial comments on all ends of the spectrum (“I’m down with the black girls of every single culture / Filipino, Armenian girls on my sofa”) are going to catch people’s attention. So, let me just head off this discussion on one front.

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by Richard Gadsden

Early this month, a British morning show did an interview with Amanda, a young woman who had recently ended a 10-year relationship with a drum kit and was now in a long-distance relationship with the Statue of Liberty. I found out about the story—as well as the sexual orientation it represented, objectùm-sexuality—from a Jezebel post. The brief post wittily wrapped the story up as “a non-traditional twist on a very common story: High school girl falls in love with drummer because she likes his shape and recklessness, comes to her senses and ends up in a relationship with a solid woman.” I thought the whole thing sounded pretty funny, so I watched the video. And I had some thoughts.

My first impression was intense shock at the poise of the hosts. Maybe things are different across the pond, but the first thing I expect when I hear “talk show” and “anything even remotely outside normative behavior” is: cringe-worthy disrespect. So the fact that the hosts were able to introduce Amanda’s relationship with the drum kit without any jokes about beating or tapping was astounding to me.

The interview started with Amanda explaining that she was attracted to objects based on their different geometrical shapes. As far as the drum kit went, she didn’t anthropomorphize or name it. She did take it to bed, but, she said, “I just like to cuddle” and the drum was “just like a teddy bear.”

The Statue of Liberty was different. Amanda did think of the statue as feminine, even nicknaming it Libby. And her attraction seemed to go beyond the geometric. Of her feelings for Lady Liberty, Amanda said, “I just love the way that she looks and I love what she stands for. I love her history. I love everything about her!”

Overall, I found the segment a surprisingly balanced look at a type of non-normative sexuality that I, personally, had never heard of. Even the psychiatrist seemed hesitant to pathologize objectùm-sexuality. The first thing she said was “It’s not really a medical condition, it’s an orientation.” But what stood out to me the most about this segment was how resistant Amanda’s experience seemed from normative ideas about love and sex. To clarify, I don’t mean that Amanda herself resisted norms. What I mean is that it seemed nearly impossible to talk about Amanda’s sexuality in the ways we usually talk about sexuality.

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by Richard Gadsden

So, Matt Bomer came out, I guess…

As some of you may know, on February 11, 2012, Matthew Bomer, star of White Collar (a USA Network television series), received a Steve Chase Humanitarian award for his work with charities helping in the fight against HIV/AIDS. In his acceptance speech, Bomer thanked his “family: Simon, Kit, Walker, Henry.” Kit, Walker, and Henry are Bomer’s children. Simon Halls is the man with whom Bomer has been rumored to be romantically partnered. Hence, in openly recognizing “Simon” as part of his “family,” Matt Bomer, effectively, came out as gay.

At least, that’s how most of the reactions took it. E! Online’s report on this story is titled, “Matt Bomer Comes Out as Gay Man,” directly stating this conclusion, right off the bat. Huffington Post expanded that a little bit in their article “Matt Bomer Comes Out As Gay: ‘White Collar’ Actor Thanks Partner Simon Halls, Kids At Awards Ceremony.” Now, I’m not going to attempt to argue that Bomer is not gay; as far as I can tell, all the evidence suggests that he is. I’m also not trying to get into the argument about whether or not non-straight stars have a responsibility to come out and help break down the widespread assumptions of heteronormativity. (Though, I think those could be great discussions to have in the comments or elsewhere.) Rather, I’d like to take some time to problematize a couple assumptions I’ve seen in the discourse about Bomer’s coming-out and that I think pop up in discussions about sexual/gender minorities too often.

In the speech, Bomer did not explicitly state that he and Halls were romantic/sexual/domestic partners of any sort. If we know that Kit, Walker, and Henry are Bomer’s children (which isn’t entirely clear from the speech, but can be verified elsewhere), we only know that Simon Halls is someone else Bomer considers part of his family. It’s not even entirely clear that Halls lives with Bomer, let alone has anything to do with the raising of Bomer’s children. From this much information, the two men could be relatives or close friends. Immediately concluding that they’re together in some intimate way and parenting the three kids together actually involves a number of assumptions.

Even knowing that Bomer and Halls are raising children together tells us nothing definite about the nature of their relationship. As rarely as it’s discussed, it is, in fact, possible for two people who are not romantically involved to raise children together. We often think of a family as a man and a woman, in love, with babies. Opening that up to non-heterosexuals, we can conceptualize a family as two people, in love, with babies. But there are more, different types of families than those. What about grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins who live in the same household? What about intimate relationships between more than two people? What about parents who aren’t together?

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by Stephanie Ochoa

A common mantra of the body positivity movement is, “Everyone is beautiful.” While this idea sounds like a refreshing alternative to the body hate that accompanies overvaluing certain body types at the expense of others, I think that it actually feeds into the culture of female objectification and promotes an unhealthy sense of self.

Let me be nitpicky first. “Beautiful” is a superlative term. If we’re using it strictly in the physical sense, then by definition, not everyone can be beautiful! If everyone is beautiful, then “beautiful” loses its meaning. I understand that the spirit of the mantra is that there are different ways to be beautiful, such that one can be beautiful even if one doesn’t fit the cultural notion of what constitutes “beautiful.” But, even so, to say that everyone is physically beautiful is to say something patently, obliviously untrue.

Encouraging everyone to think of his or herself as beautiful is just another way to value appearance over any other personal quality, to hold style over substance. We women are caught in a double bind between being criticized for taking our looks too seriously and being dismissed if we don’t attain a standard of appearance that deems us worthy of consideration. How is telling everyone that they are beautiful going to help to get rid of this catch-22? Instead, I think it reinforces the idea that beauty is the personal quality that should take precedence in judging people.

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by Katharina Roesler

A few days ago, my friend Jane[1] and I were discussing a transgender boy she knows and the relationship he has been in since before his FTM transition.  Jane noted his decision to keep his genitalia “female” and asked, “When they have sex, does it count?”  I asked her to clarify and she said, “I mean, his girlfriend, does she think of him as a boy?  Does it count as (straight) sex?”

I have no idea how to answer these questions, and I am fairly sure that they don’t come up often in mainstream society.  This conversation made me wonder what Jane was taught in school, what most high school students learn.  Are students told about transgender people? About homosexuality?  What does the average American teenager learn about sex and sexuality in public school?

Surprisingly little, I have discovered.  According to the Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit organization formed under Planned Parenthood, 7 out of 10 US teenagers have had sex by their 19^th birthday.  This is less than in 1988, by the way.  Disturbingly, about one third of teenagers between 15-19 have not received any formal instruction about contraception.  46% of male and 33% of females haven’t received instruction about contraception before they first have sex!  And abstinence-only education has increased more than twofold since 1995, to one in four teenagers.

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by Briyana Davis

When I first saw “Shit Girls Say,” I didn’t get it. The video was just a guy in a blond wig, saying random things I’ve heard a lot of people say, including my parents, my brother, my uncles, and my grandparents. I didn’t laugh, but I didn’t really take offense either. I just found it confusing and subsequently didn’t wish to keep up with the slew of “Shit that X say” videos that followed.

That is, until “Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls” popped up on my tumblr feed. I immediately found it much more intriguing than the original. My first response: TOO REAL. But seriously. I’d heard these things before. I’d heard almost every single thing.

It starts off with a black girl, Chescaleigh, in a blond wig saying, “Not to sound racist…” in various locations.  Experience has taught me that anything started with this phrase is probably going to be racist. The “white girl” being portrayed in this video was saying things strikingly similar to things people told me back home. Throughout middle and high school I consistently yielded questions about my hair, cringed every time someone called something ghetto, and was told that I wasn’t really black. This video just captured so much of my life, in only two minutes.

This was the start of a new “Shit that X say to Y” trend, parodies of parodies if you will.

More and more of these videos are hitting the web and addressing “shit people say” with regard to many different identity categories. There is “Shit that Straight Girls say to Lesbians” and “Shit Girls say to Gay Guys.” After I posted “Shit White Girls Say…to Asian Girls” and “Shit White Girls Say…to Arab Girls” on my Facebook wall, a friend asked if I was just fighting stereotypes of these groups by stereotyping white girls. I responded by saying I didn’t seek to generalize or stereotype because I didn’t think all white girls said these things, but based on my experience, many definitely have. I share these videos with my friends (and my parents…my mom related to the hair questions in Chescaleigh’s video) because I think they’re great examples of microaggressive behavior. Microaggressions are small actions or comments that aren’t necessarily meant to be overtly racist (or sexist, or homophobic, or abelist, etc) but still are rooted in discrimination and often have negative effects. They include microassaults, microinvalidations, and microinsults. They’re generally not talked about because, if confronted, the perpetrator would likely claim that they weren’t being offensive, or the complainant is just oversensitive.

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