We Have to Stop Now

I've been fairly religiously watching the new web series We Have to Stop Now. It's about lesbians and therapy and is hilarious. It's on Jill Bennet's website, and I hope you'll check it out. The episodes are fairly short, and well worth watching.

Here's episode 1:

We Have To Stop Now: Pilot Episode from DynaKit Productions on Vimeo.

I've watched a few of Jill Bennet's other videos; she's got a vlog series called The Violet Underground. While I did really like We Have to Stop Now, I was a little saddened at the interview Bennet did where she and Dalila Ali Rajah discuss bisexuality. It was clear they were coming from a good place of trying to understand, but it was also hard to see them blithely trotting out a lot of the stereotypes.

That said, please check out and support We Have to Stop Now. I agree with Bennet that it's important to have media representations of all kinds of people and lives, and we can support those online.

The L Word and "Cheaters"

Okay, I'm watching the last season of The L Word in a serious procrastination effort. Yes, the show jumped the shark when Dana died, but yes we all still watch it because it's one of the only TV representations of lesbians. All that's been said before.

One thing, though, that's been driving me crazy about the show for years is that the idea of polyamory never comes up at all. You've got Shane who's happily sleeping with the entire female population of Los Angeles, and then bam she's in a relationship and that ends. She gets all tortured about it, sleeps with someone else, the relationship ends.

Then there's Bette, the "cheater" who "can't keep it in her pants even when she's in love." Bette, too, is in and out of relationships and can't help but fall in love with someone new when she's committed.

Both of these women would clearly benefit from some sort of open relationship situation and yet it never, ever comes up. It's just "oh, let's watch them torture themselves by trying to turn off their perfectly natural attractions to people other than their primary partners. Schadenfreude! Schadenfreude! Let's feel good because they're so bad at being faithful and we're better than that!"

Sure, it's typical of TV not to even hint at other options besides monogamy, but this is The L Word. It's queer TV that makes a point (however ham-handedly) to handle every issue that faces the women-loving-women community. To the point of absurdity. Where is the polyamory? Where's the compassion for those who don't fit so well into monogamy? Where is the workable solution?

Links Because I Read Too Many Blogs not to Share

I've been keeping up with my feed reader, so I've found some very interesting posts I'd like to share with you. I know I haven't been good about blogging this week. Too much school and an on the fly trip to NYC will do that to a person.

My Sexual Manifesto
Essin' Em shares her sex commandments, all of which I agree with heartily. I, too, have noticed that almost all the sex I've been having has been good. It's a wonderful change and without a doubt due to my better ability to communicate about what I want and ask how to please my partner, even after a brief acquaintance.

What Women Want and the Myth of the Psychic Lesbians
Greta Christina writes a spot-on post about how lesbians don't actually automatically know how to please every other woman because they've got the same kind of genitals. We're all different!

Is Sex Work Queer?
Jane at good girls don't asks if sex work is queer and grapples quite well, I think, with the question. I think that sex work CAN be queer, and that it's most exciting when it is.

I Need Another Word for Vagina
Found this via synthetic pubes. The title seems fairly self-explanatory.

Six Ways to be an Ally
Great post by Silvia on how to be an ally to women of color if you aren't one. I struggle a lot with how to deal with my own privilege, and I think this is a good, thought-provoking post on doing just that. Fires me up even more to do what I can to dismantle privilege in general.

On Being a Raging Lesbian

I write a sex column for my college newspaper. A few weeks ago I wrote an article about the proper use of condoms. I hear all the time about students who don't ever use condoms, or who do silly things like use one the first time they have sex with someone and then stop after that because "what's the point?" I wanted to talk about some of the difficulties people have using condoms and give students a few ideas about ways to address them.

I had recently started sleeping with a new guy, Z, who I have since been seeing a lot of. He was hanging out with a girl, a friend of his who he later slept with, the day my condom article came out in the paper. She was flipping through the paper and pointed out my article to him. "What does this chick know about condoms? I've heard she's, like, a raging lesbian."

Now, this is ironic because he, a guy, had just had sex with me the night before. She had no idea that we were connected in that way. He told me the story because he thought it was funny; we had used several condoms in the few days before the comment.

Now, this is not a girl I've ever met. I hadn't even seen her before he pointed her out to me in the dining hall a week and a half later. She doesn't run in my social circle; she doesn't know my friends. I had no idea, in fact, that she existed.

So it's weird that she thinks I'm a "raging lesbian." While the narcissist in me is delighted that strangers know and talk about me, the rest of me is puzzled and a little put off. It's hard to try and carve out an identity for myself. I want to be an activist. I want to be involved in the queer community. I want to be involved in the feminist movement.

But I suppose one consequence of this is that others will decide for themselves who I am. They'll label me, and I won't have any choice in the matter. In a lot of ways, my public identity will be decided for me, and a lot of the time it probably won't be positive. The things I'm working for are not exactly popular. They're controversial.

It's weird to have that start already. I'm still in college. I still think that most people here are or should be open-minded. Not so quick to judge. I suppose that's naive. I'm going to have to get used to the public identity that doesn't belong to me. I need to be solid in my own feelings about myself and sure of my personal identity so I can do my work, take the criticisms and snap judgments, and still feel like a person with my own life.

It's sad that it has to be that way, but I can take it as the way things are.

First Time

I sat on the side of her bed with my knees tucked up under my chin and watched the sun rise. She lived on the eleventh floor, and because the building was so far from the main campus, all I could see out the window were the sports fields and the river and the tops of a couple of tall buildings beyond the trees. It didn't rain that night, but it was cloudy and the sun made colors in the sky over the damp grass and dripping chain link fences.

M had turned off The L Word around 4:30 and she and J were trying to sleep. Poor J was curled up on the foot of the bed, not really able to fit. I had gotten myself out from under M's arm so I could sit up and look out the window. There was a pressure in my head behind my eyes, but I wouldn't sleep at all. The window was too compelling, and my brain was buzzing so I could almost hear it in my ears.

I had been standing at the window for a while when they woke up, glancing at the bed every few minutes before lifting my hands to my face to smell the novel spiciness on the tips of my fingers. That was one thing about M. You could always smell her. Even later, when we danced on an awkward club night, I could smell her through the press of bodies on the floor.

M didn't think we should walk home alone, so I went with J as far as the edge of campus. We grinned at each other a little bit sideways, and I apologized if we kept her up. "You don't mean that," she said, and smiled. I didn't think she'd minded. "I have a girlfriend" didn't mean she hadn't watched from her corner of the bed.

I stood for a minute or two and looked in the direction where she'd tromped off down the path. I was just breathing. My breaths had been shallow for months, my head pointed at the ground, and as I walked back across the empty campus to my room I finally filled my lungs. I smelled my fingers again, and the cold morning was like a seasoning for what was still there so strongly. I didn't want to wash my hands that day. Like the time in high school when I showed up to burgers with my friends and couldn't help but grin and announce "I smell like cock."

Before I took off my skirt and boots from the party and crawled into my bed, I scrawled a note on the white board outside my door. "Claire, don't worry about me. I got back okay. It's 7am now, and I'm going to sleep. I'll see you when I wake up." My sheets were so smooth, and my pillows so soft, and I smiled a little as I finally let go of my own head and let my bones sink downward.

My last thought as I fell asleep was excited, not foreboding. "I'll have to tell Morgan about this tomorrow."