Out of the Freying Pan and Into the Fire
Oprah just said that she doesn’t want kudos for admitting she was wrong because it was the only thing to do, and that was after cutting off Nan Talese mid-sentence. (Nan Talese is not the kind of person who is used to be cut off mid-sentence – she’s a Senior VP of Doubleday and owns her own imprint there). But Oprah is angry, and James Frey is starting to feel like the meat industry, I bet.
Frank Rich is angry, too, and just pointed out that being honest is usually the first step in any addiction recovery journey.
Stanley Crouch wants to know how much Doubleday had to do with coercing Frey into publishing it as a memoir.
And Maureen Down suggested Oprah cast Frey out of her kingdom.
A journalism professor (whose name I didn’t catch) just pointed out that when you doubt one memoir, you start to distrust them all; as someone who has put the truth of my life on the line, I really resent James Frey and even more the slick rationalizations of Nan Talese. Her attitude is exactly what sucks about the publishing industry.
Granted, our whole culture cries out for sensationalism: they don’t want to hear one woman’s story of pregnancy and childbirth; they want the post-natally depressed nearly-killed-her-baby mother. More than once members of the media (okay, including a producer from Oprah) stopped being interested in our story because Betty hasn’t had “the operation.”
So this is what I think: Nan Talese and Frey should figure out how much money they made from bullshitting everyone, and they should give it back. There are definitely 12-step programs that need funding and tons of individuals who could use some money to re-start lives that addiction has made a mess of.
And I know there are memoir writers out there that could use a grant. I just know it.
Too Much TV
Okay, so I’m watching way too much TV I guess, because I just caught Kirstie Alley’s most recent Jenny Craig commercial: she is walking down a dark street, alone, when a guy’s voice yells out, “Momma, you’re looking good!” (or some approximation thereof). And she says – here’s the red herring that made me pay attention – “Are you talking to me?”
And when he says yes, she doesn’t hollaback, oh no. She starts into a ‘Singing in the Rain’-styled dance number set to the tune of “It’s Raining Men.”
I guess this is the best you can expect from someone who has had bodyguards for so long she doesn’t remember how it feels to walk down any street alone (much less a dark, deserted one) and have some asshole decide that’s a good time to tell you how good you look.
Connecting being thin with “earning” this kind of bullshit, scary compliment loses her a few more status points. All kinds of women get harassed on the street – not just skinny ones.
Put On A Little Makeup (and Have a Coke)
I assume most people saw the Coke commercial where the woman goes into the barbershop and gets a man’s haircut, and I’m kind of surprised no-one told me about it – because the background music is Adam Ant’s “Goody Two Shoes” (and I’m a lifelong Adam Ant fan, for those who don’t know).
While I won’t bother to go into the myriad reasons Adam decided to sell a song for what I
assume are the big bucks now, I am pleased that the commercial is about some version of genderfuck, since Adam was one of the prettiest versions ever, in his day, and the lyrics are pretty a propos:
we don’t follow fashion
that’d be a joke
It's a Boy Meets Girl
It’s finally official, and I finally get to say it outloud: I’ve sold my next book, tentatively titled Boy Meets Girl, to Seal Press.
Their blurb:
•The author of MY HUSBAND BETTY writes about her husband’s crossdressing and the possibility of his undergoing a sex change, which frame her commentary on the pressures (both emotional and sexual) that traditional gender roles can bring to our relationships, marriages, and partnerships.
Thanks for all the support and encouragement and patience.
1/23/06 = #4
NCTE’s 52 Things You Can Do for Transgender Equality:
#4 Run for Office
The Mad-ness of Partners
I’ve been thinking a lot about the anger of partners.
I wonder sometimes about the correlation between anger & empowerment.
I’ve never been a plate-breaking type; I’ve never thrown someone’s stuff out a window. And I wonder, when I see the kind of rage that partners can kick up, what it is in their brains that allows them to go so out of control. I have a lot of anger; Betty sometimes says I’m one of the angriest people she’s ever met. But at some point in time, I found yelling and screaming at the injustice of it all was perfectly futile, so I (mostly) stopped doing it. That’s not to say I don’t rant – I’m a professional ranter, actually – but I stopped thinking that my ranting was going to change anything.
My mother always tells me that I spent more of my time convincing her of why I shouldn’t have to do more chores than it would have taken me to do them, and it strikes me that misplaced anger is a similar waste of time. If being angry or sad or screaming is not going to change the situation, then why keep doing those things?
But what I’ve noticed is the anger and sadness don’t satisfy people either. They stop being angry just at the thing that made them angry, and start spreading it around. In our case, we had to deal with an ex of Betty’s who not only targeted Betty, but me, and a friend of ours who introduced us, Betty’s parents, etc.
I’ve heard recently that one of the reasons therapists used to recommend divorce if one partner was transitioning is for fear the therapist, or doctor, might be sued by the angry partner. And while I can understand the urge of a partner who wants to sue a therapist for being “encouraging,” I don’t really understand the misplaced anger: the therapist didn’t cause the transsexualism.
A couple of weeks back I put up a post about having to decide what to do when you’re done crying, and sometimes I wonder if the crying and anger doesn’t continue for some people because they simply can’t face doing something, either because they don’t feel that they can do anything, or have generally felt unable to exert real power over their lives, or that they don’t feel up to following through on whatever decision they might make. That is, I wonder if they keep being angry and sad because the other emotion they’ll have to confront is outright fear.
Blog for Choice
Big shocker here, but this blog is most definitely pro-choice.
So what happens when a woman who is anti-choice gets pregnant and didn’t intend to? Sometimes, she goes an abortion at the very same clinic she was out protesting the day before.
It’s the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Let’s hope it stays that way.
Not Narnia
A reality TV show that featured a white, conservative, Christian town welcoming a gay family into their midst never saw the light of day.
I don’t think anyone should be surprised.
The Wrights – the gay family in question – have never gotten answers for why the show wasn’t broadcast, though they theorize that Disney, who are both the producers of the show and of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, might have pulled the show because they were simultaneously courting viewers for the Narnia movie.
Can I just say how much this makes me ill? I expect hypocrisy from television producers (and apologies upfront to any who aren’t full of shite) and I think anyone who doesn’t got hit with a naive stick. But mostly I’m tired of what people have made Narnia into – this behemoth of Christian Rightness.
Of course the people who produced it marketed it to Christians – it’s a family movie, there’s no cursing, nudity, and the morality works well within Christian morality. Lewis was of course a convert, against his own better judgement; his famous statement was that he became a Christian “kicking and screaming.” But the fact is he was a Christian, and while it’s highly debatable whether or not he intended to write an allegory – I’m of the camp that insists he didn’t, since he’s said himself that the stories started because he was simply havng a lot of dreams about lions – I’m very certain that seeing the Chronicles as simply Christian propaganda is missing so much of the point. And I mean that not just for the Christians and Disney producers whose hypocrisy pisses me off; I direct that as well to the kneejerk liberals who are demonizing the movie as if it represents all that is wrong with Christian Rightness.
It’s a little like faulting Nietzsche with the way fascists used his theory of the Ubermensch.
As I’ve said before, the gorgeousness of Narnia is not based in Lewis’ Christianity, but in his decency. In an era when we can’t even seem to like the French – the very same French who gave us the Statue of Liberty! – the story of Edmund seems a vital one for Christians and Americans to pay attention to. Sometimes allies are not allies; sometimes we have poked and teased and pissed off our allies so that they stop behaving like allies. And sometimes – even traitors can be redeemed.
The scene I was most pleased they left in – and most feared they would leave out – is the scene where Prof. Digory Kirke hoists Susan and Peter on their own illogical petard. If Lucy is generally truthful, and known not to be mad, then, he asserts: she must be telling the truth.
Imagine if the Christian viewers of Narnia heard that in respect to, say, homosexuality.
I like to believe that the real spirit of what Lewis put in those pages will be heard; maybe not by adults with ears closed by doctrine, but by the children who might see the movie and so pick up the books. There is so much more in the books, so much decency – and decency that is not easy to have, or express. Lewis’ decency – like Aslan’s – is all about admitting to yourself that you’ve been a prig and admitting when you did the shallow, selfish, show-offy thing instead of the right thing.
While it seems like the Narnia books might fulfill some dream of good propaganda by the Christian Right, a good book is never so predictable. As with any other good book, using it as propaganda will backfire; the real truth of a good story will have its day. After all, it’s not a tame book.
Still in all, my bet is that someone had something to say about a reality show which portrayed how a homosexual family found acceptance in a town that didn’t want to accept them. Blaming cynical advertising interests for such a cowardly decision feels good, but I’m not sure it’s the whole answer. And I for one want the whole answer, because it sickens me that the kind of crap on television can’t occasionally be offset by a show that actively created tolerance in its participants – and potentially, its viewers as well.
A Mystery
“We name and talk of a problematic “transvestism,” the desire to dress in the clothes of the other sex. We do not usually name and speak of the strong desire to dress in the clothes of one’s own sex. But why would most of us feel intense anxiety at dressing publicly in the clothes of the other sex? Does not our fervid desire to dress in their clothes of our own sex suggest a mystery to be explained?”
– Jonathan Katz, from The Invention of Heterosexuality