Hell in a Handbag

Spike Lee is among millions who hate George W. Bush. Recently he called Bush America’s worst president in history, who is “taking us to hell in a handbag.” Much as I love anyone who slams Bush, I had to crack up at the notion of George tucking America into a Burberry handbag and trotting them all into the chaos of the Middle East, Katrina, and loss of civil liberties. How elegant, and oh so queer. Maybe it is a manbag?

I’ve neglected my blog in favour of following the dramas of other’s blogs, notably Feministing, who were involved in a blogger Brouhaha this week led by Ann Althouse, a self-described feminist who attacked Jessica of Feministing for posing in a picture with Bill Clinton where you could see her breasts. Covered, by a modest shirt. A woman with breasts! You don’t say!! While clinging to right wing “feminist” rhetoric, she proceeded to attack Jessica based solely on her looks and not her incredible work in blogging about international women’s issues. As it happens, Feministing is one of my favorite blogs right now. It’s got a perfect mix of humour and news that makes you want to whip out an AK-47. Plus it’s one of those refreshing feminist chronicles from a younger perspective, while I admire older feminism, things like anti-porn, anti-sex, anti-lesbian, anti-S/M feminists piss me off.

Either way, the comments threads went down in Blog history, eventually getting coverage from dozens of other blogs and Salon. All because of boobs.

What pissed me off the most was the way Althouse slammed Feministing as an unfeminist blog, based on boobage and her own twisted ideals of feminism. There were complaints about a t-shirt bearing Feministing’s logo (it’s a shot of boobs!!! Um, yeah, t-shirts are often chest shots because they cover your CHEST!). There were complaints about Feministing using Mud Flap girls for their logo (ignoring the fact that the girls are giving the finger).

I’m tired of people telling me what’s feminist and what isn’t. I consider myself a feminist. Yet I’m aware that several things about myself make others question my politics.

1. I am butch. I do not wear dresses, ever. I buy from the men’s section. I like femmes. I sometimes walk around with a banana down my pants. But my masculinity does not detract me from the struggles of women all over the world.

2. I like sex. I like all kinds of sex. I like vanilla sex. I like rough sex. I like BDSM sex. I like roleplaying sex where someone really does pretend to be a dude. I like porn. I like straight porn and gay porn and ridiculous stories about things I would probably never do. My favorite porno is the comic Convent of Hell about Satan having group sex with a bunch of Nuns. Maybe someday I will roleplay Satan/Nun sex. Who knows? But liking sex and penetration and porn and SM does not make me any less feminist. Having a fist or dildo up me doesn’t make me any less upset about women having lower wages or the fact that the female population is not adequately represented in politics. Although I admit it does distract me for a half hour or so.

3. I have boobs. BIG boobs. After Celexa they are C-cups pushing D-cup. I show them off sometimes. Sometimes I run around at Pride with my shirt off, because I can. I’ve had them in two films of mine (for which people assume every film I ever make has my boobs in it, uh, no. Ten of twelve videos are boobless.). Sometimes I wear tight t-shirts, both because I like how it feels and because it shows off my breasts. Sometimes I have cleavage revealling tops. Whatev. It doesn’t make me less feminist, less butch, less anything. It makes me a woman who likes my body. And having boobs doesn’t mean I like being sexually harrassed, doesn’t mean I’m looking for something sexual with anybody. It means I have breasts, and if you’re lucky you can meet them face to nipple.

4. Um, I actually can’t think of a fourth one off hand. I eat eggs. I hate my period because it seems useless considering I won’t have kids. I listen to Eminem sometimes. Sometimes I have sex dreams about him. Whatever.

So, yeah. What else has been on my mind?

OH, I know, one thing has been pissing me off for years. I am a filmmaker/video artist. I am also queer. I am also mixed race. And for some reason, EVERY FUCKING time I am curated, it is either in a First Nations exhibition or I am asked to curate some goddamn Queer Native programming. I do not want to be constrained curatorially by my ethnicity or lesbianism or both. I am tired of being Canada’s token red dyke. Go find some other red dyke to be your token. I am tired of first nations people getting freaked out by my frankness about sexuality. I am tired of queers assuming I only think about race when I’ve only made two videos explicitly about race and racism. Please, someone ask me to curate, like a fisting program, or an experimental program, or anything. My favorite curatorial experience was when I had carte blanche to put together something for Video Out’s collection and focused on the theme of low budget personal videos. That kicked ass, and it was an awesome program that I am still very proud of, even though few people saw it because it wasn’t Aboriginal Queer Thirza doing her ghettoized thang.

Take your fucking ghetto and fuck off you fucking fuckers.

OOOOH! ONe more thing that pisses me off. I LOVE Courtney Love. And people bash her, say she’s a skank, say she killed Kurt, say she’s a druggie (and how many male rockers are druggies? Hmmm). Once in my feminist class I mentioned my love of Courtney only to be totally slammed by a MAN who inturrupted me and went on and on about what a bitch she was, and refused to let me finish my sentence about why I think she rocks. Man, if I didn’t have Live Through This when I was a queer teen in Saskatoon, I would have died. She made me feel like I could rebel, and I did.

I felt like I was in the minority of women who thinks she’s cool, but then I came across this article from Margaret Cho’s Blog about people, even feminists, talking shit about Courtney. Margaret, you rock, and Courtney, keep on ROCKING man!