Defending Gays from Marriage?

Barack Obama's decision not to defend DOMA is a big step forward for proponents of gay marriage, but not all queer people are that invested in the outcome.  Some gay activists support equality generally but think that marriage is an intrinsically heterosexist or destructive institution and don't want queers to buy into it.

If you're interested in thinking and talking about this issue, you should come by the YPU debate "R: Abolish No Fault Divorce" tonight.  Don't be put off by the topic or by the fact that the guest is from *shudder* Focus on the Family; the YPU picked this topic to have a debate about the goals of the institution of marriage and whether it's desireable for everyone.  I know that Marian, one of the people scheduled to speak, is giving a very liberal, anti-marriage speech.  She's excellent and sure to be thought-provoking, so it will be worth waiting through the (probably offensive) remarks of the guest to hear her.

The debate starts at 7:30 in WLH 119.  If you have any questions about format or asking questions, post here or grab me at the debate (I'm the one with very curly brown hair).

Study Abroad Warning

While looking for a public health internship for the summer (and I'm still looking, so feel free to leave tips in the comments), I was scanning through a list of internships offered by a U.S. Government office that has operations internationally.  All the placements were either in Washington D.C. or Uganda.

Uganda, I thought.  Isn't that the place where homosexuality is about to be punishable by death?

The email I got from the career services people made no mention of the danger, and neither did the website of the program.  If I didn't keep up with gay rights news, I might have applied to intern in a country where my bisexuality made me guilty of a capital crime.  When applying to study or work abroad as a queer person, I am the only one responsible for guaranteeing my safety.  Although Yale restricts travel according to State Department guidelines, there are no additional warnings for students who may belong to groups in acute and specific danger in certain regions.

Yale certainly can't cover every contingency -- I doubt they should warn everyone that students with albinism should stay out of Burundi and Tanzania -- but it would be great if the careers office had a one-sheet handout of known dangerous countries for out students and some links to reliable, frequently updated gay travel guides.

Until Yale offers support, it's essential to do research and make sure queer friends working or studying abroad have done their homework.  A bisexual friend of mine was planning to spend this semester studying in a fairly progressive Middle Eastern country.  I asked her if she planned to closet herself on facebook, and she told me she had decided to leave her data up, and see how it went.

The country where she had planned to study was Egypt, so the point turned out to be moot, but it was important that someone bring up that danger to her early in the planning process.  It would be great if the warning came from Yale.

Pippin's Sexcapades made me Squirm

I spent my last week at Yale before summer break working on Pippin, the Dramat's commencement musical, and, although I'm certain that there's an interesting discussion in the gender roles intrinsic to the costume shop (after an afternoon spent alternately doing delicate stitchery and draping chain with a hammer and a vise, my boyfriend exclaimed "I have the best butch girlfriend ever!), I'm more interested in talking about what happened onstage.

Pippin, the show's protagonist, is a young man who becomes increasingly dissatisfied with everything. He loses interest in sex as a means to fulfilment after his participation in a raucous, but empty, orgy which occurs in the first act. As part of the choreography, Pippin is lifted by four male dancers and is briefly lowered onto a series of dancers who lie under him in a very mechanistic interpretation of the sex act.

In the original choreography, all the dancers that Pippin had sex with were female, and lay flat on their backs, until Pippin was lifted off them and they hurried out of the way of the next girl. But sometime between early rehearsals and the performance, one of the female dancers was swapped out for a male dancer, who lay on his stomach while Pippin was lowered onto him.

The dance as a whole was not strictly heteronormative. The pairings of dancers in the background were f/f as ofter as m/f, and were sometimes m/m/m/m, but it was the anal sex acted out by the protagonist that got the biggest audience reaction during performances. At every show, the m/m sex act got an enormous laugh, while the m/f pairings passed unremarked.

Sitting in the audience, I felt vaguely uncomfortable. But I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the appropriate response would be. There's something wrong when its only the gay encounter that reads as a joke, even if the entire sequence is played for laughs. At the same time, I don't know whether the real solution is to insist that homosexuality be treated as identical to and interchangeable with heterosexuality.

What reaction would you have to Pippin's encounter? What would you hope to see from an audience?

I HATE packing....

I do....I think the first reason is because I get really really frustrated! I'm sitting on a tiny open space on my bed completely surrounded by clothes and shit! It´s taking over, my chances of winning the battle against fabric and old homeworks do not look promising.

In addition, my roommate who emerged victorious two days ago is now watching a movie on her computer on her empty, bare bed...

I also don´t like packing because it seems so...final. It´s odd, because I also feel like I just moved in yesterday, and while I will be back at Yale in the fall, it´s scary how time passes by so fast.

It also reminds me of the fact that others are leaving. After lunch, I bumped into a couple of friends that will be leaving in the next couple of minutes, call me emotional but I am the saying goodbye type, I like to acknowledge that we won´t see each other for a while, that I´ll miss them and that I hope they take care...

Seniors however, are the worst. I hate and love them. I hate them because I love them. And although I wish them the best always and am happy that they have successfully finished their Yale careers, I´ll miss them, and it makes me sad.

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On the other hand, I like packing (not actually! just metaphorically) because it also means that I just finished a year here that was well-lived. I met a lot of people, and have really begun to consolidate my new friendships, it´s a process, of course, but we´re getting there.

It also means that a new thing begins---namely the summer, and going home will be very very interesting. And eventually next year will begin, I´m very very excited =)

I guess the final message is, to everyone thank you for a wonderful year, the people that read and contribute on this blog are mainly to blame for my amazing year.

I love you all.

and if I survive packing and being home, see you all (or most of you...tears) in the fall!

Learning Vulnerability

Today, I spent what seemed like an eternity doing the final viewings for digital video. (It was four hours) I was the last undergrad to go. I realized about half way trough the class that I'd neglected to come up with a title, and settled rather quickly while watching clips of 'the student body' on 'RJM'.
My video was me, and the sides of me that only make appearances on special occasions, like drag ball, or spider ball. Oh the balls! wait...that doesn't sound right. No matter.
I've got no problem dressing up. I love when I get to be Roman and I love when I get to be Jules (which is what I have named by femme alter-ego). Really though, I just like being Me, track suit wearing softee that I am.
But this video was really hard for me to shoot and edit. I knew going in it wasn't going to be a walk in the park, but still. I couldn't figure out how to shoot party or night scenes as Roman or Jules without looking like a complete weirdo, and the lighting was hard.
But really the struggle came when I had to sit down and edit it. Sure, I had made cameos in my other videos but here I was literally staring myself in the face. More specifically, I was staring at myself three times over.
This was my well intentioned but perhaps poorly implemented attempt to tell a part of my own story, my own journey you might say.
When it came time to show our rough cuts (it did not help matters that I was down to the wire for time), I was so nervous I didn't want to watch it with my professor and TA. Maybe I was worried about the fuzzy line between critiquing my video and critiquing me. Mostly, it felt weird to let people so intimately into my head. Here are the things that I think and feel everyone, enjoy. It turns out, it went quite nicely. My TA made a joke that I missed because I was too busy vibrating anxiously. My professor pointed out some of the really well put together moments (ie, the ones I spent the most time on because i too was really excited about them). In short, I survived it, and came back to make some edits. This round of editing was easier. Thank God.
When we showed the final, my professor and TA were the only people who spoke, which I am unsure what to make of. I mean....comment on something really surface, like the sound levels or something. Anything than sit there staring at the screen, because I don't know how to read that.
Anyhow, during my professors comments, she said something along the lines of the 'party' section seems like it was intentionally created in place of something else (yeah...I couldn't figure out how to successfully shoot a party scene) which keeps people at a distance (which I like) but choosing to put real photographs there instead (hooray for facebooking for class) gave it a sense of vulnerability (i added a picture from senior prom for good measure). and i kind of just kept nodding because i was like "yes, ive shown it. i feel it. lets move on".

I was a huge cry-baby as kid. Cryin Ryan. Of all the things you can rhyme with my name, that's what stuck. I reacted very strongly to everything generally. Then, over the course of my development, I learned, got trained, what have you, to fight that impulse. And as I got really good at it, I swung too far to the opposite direction. I was really emotionally detached from things, or I still had those responses but I exerted a lot of energy to contain them, which, as you might expect, was no fun. One result of this has been to keep people at arms length. (This is a successful physical metaphor, because holding someone away from you on straight arms is way easier than doing it with bent arms- at which point they would be closer than arms length, but I digress). It turns out, your friends don't like it when you do that. So, as any good pendulum will, I've tried to swing back to some kind of balance. A place where I can be vulnerable without being frail.

So I realized, my final video, kind of like this blog, was a window that I opened onto myself. Now, people are welcome to see if they feel like it. Maybe even poke around some. I'm not opening any doors yet, and I imagine that's what you save for your nearest and dearest, but it's progress.

WELCOME!!!!

Welcome all to the Sappho Blog!

Feel free to look around, read and enjoy.

Through this project, we will attempt to convey a part of the essence of the queer women's community at Yale as best we can. This blog is meant to provide a safe creative space for queer women to talk about what's on their minds. This includes anything, from what we think about a class, to a family situation, sharing a poem, a picture or a song, anything...really.

As a reader, we ask that you treat the posts being shared with utmost respect and appreciation for the writer and the community as a whole. We encourage you to comment on posts, give feedback and share your own stories.

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If you are interested in becoming a contributing writer of have comments/questions/suggestions, please e-mail sappho.blog@gmail.com.

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With nothing left to say, you are left with the amazing women that make up this beautiful community. May you find wonderful things in their contributions and their view of the world.

Sapphic love from...

The Writers of Sappho Blog