If A Lesbian Fell In Hollywood, And No One Were There To Hear Her, Would She Make A Noise?

July 29, 2010, 12:44 pm

Our friend at Historiann meditates today on the practice of women’s history and why feminism matters. “Women’s history,” she writes, “is a large and rich enough field that there are histories of women that aren’t particularly feminist, just as the history of women has expanded far beyond the history of just feminist women to include the histories of women who lived before the invention of feminism as a political movement as well as women who weren’t feminists or even worked actively against feminism.” But, she asks: “What would happen if we just stopped writing it? Who in the larger historical profession would notice, or care, or complain?” The answer is not women would care, but feminists would care. “Feminists are the ones who would care if women’s history ceased production. Whether or not they’re women’s historians, feminist historians would notice.”

Tie a thread to this post and run it through the blogosphere to Bully Bloggers where, after several days of silence, the comments section of Jack Halberstam’s post on Lisa Cholodenko’s icky lesbian movie “The Kids Are All Right.” Interestingly, this post, on an academic blog that doesn’t often attract people who don’t get it, has become the site for a polarized conversation about what a “lesbian” movie is supposed to do for either a “lesbian” or a “mainstream” audience; what constitutes a “lesbian stereotype;” and whether it is acceptable for “lesbians” to criticize other “lesbians” for representing a film about a depressingly conventional film as a political triumph over a homophobic movie industry. A critical theme of Halberstam’s review — one that seems to be lost on hir critics — is that this movie might be about lesbians but that doesn’t make it progressive, nor does it represent a cheerful perspective on the state of the lesbian bourgeoisie.

Who notices that there are so few movies that choose gay and lesbian subjects that we over-invest in the ones that do as progressive and/or high art, whatever their flaws? To paraphrase Historiann, queer people do, that’s who.

Not surprisingly, those of Halberstam’s critics who believe the movie is “good” because it is “realistic” (i.e., represents their reality, and I say that with no sarcasm) also miss critical moments of racism (not to mention the ugliness of Nic’s anti-feminist dominance of Jules) in “The Kids Are All Right” that others of us find agonizing. They view the depiction of upper-middle class life in Los Angeles as “mainstream,” when in fact the vast majority of GLBT people, like all other Americans, are too poor to afford sperm donors, much less one non-working parent to take care of the kidz. These critics also perceive parenting as a burdensome but socially necessary task for which it is noble to sacrifice the personal and sexual happiness of all adults, straight and gay. The other big problem with these critiques is the assumption in many of them that if Halberstam doesn’t get it that sex dies in long relationships, and that people with jobs and children are too tired to do the nasty, ze has never been in a long-term relationship, doesn’t parent, and knows nothing about the “mainstream.”

Well, take that, why don’t you? The assumption that people who do not parent and do not commit to long-term monogamy have no authority to speak to or about those who do replicates the $hitty, narrow politics of the movie. It’s not that lesbians committed to monogamy and child-rearing necessarily have bad politics. But they do when “seeing themselves” in popular culture excuses a range of other sins, like not seeing other people who aren’t like them. And when they can’t perceive that a movie script is sexist, racist, classist and often clunky, actually they do have bad politics, as well as bad taste.

Concluding where I began, Historiann (who does not reveal the nature of her sexuality, her relationship or her parenting status on the blog, and is a pretty radical feminist) has a similar issue with mommy bloggers (which will be revealed in the winter issue of the Journal of Women’s History — reserve yours now!)

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Anonymous

"Historiann…has a similar issue with mommy bloggers"

I for one, can't friggin' wait to read it.

GAA
MrB

Excuse me,

Where is Bishop Berkeley?

Oh… Sorry.
Historiann

Wow, TR–taking it to the mat! Thanks for the link.

Once I saw that line about the "d!ck up my butt" in the review at BullyBloggers I decided that I didn't really need this movie in my Netflix queue. (I missed that in your review, TR!)

Hollywood seems to have fallen in love with lesbians only since they became "moms" and some of them started having sex with men. Gee, I wonder why that is?

Time to rent The Killing of Sister George.
Kate

To paraphrase, you say that not all lesbians in committed relationships with or with hopes for kids have bad politics, as those with the bad politics of it tend to be the defenders of the film who see themselves depicted on screen. And that, to me, was a huge part of why I disliked the movie. I'm a dyke, about to buy in to some level of convention by getting legally married, with plans for children in the hopefully shorter term future. And that is (part of the reason) I hated this movie. Sure, some of it was painful on this "I can see myself as one of those characters" kind of painful, but on a number of political levels I was disgusted. This is who I am supposed to be? Not as personas or characters, but as political figurations, my masculinity always already lesser than the straight white male, only winning through conventions of homonationalism (as Puar herself described the triumphant end of the movie) qua marriage.
I mourn the loss of queer politics. I resent having to enter the institution of marriage in a legal figuration in order to guarantee my partner's rights as parent to the children I hope to bear and/or adopt. And while I do see social reproduction as an ultimate goal of society in general, it is based in a deeply sociological perspective and not in the individualistic choice to become parent or not. The film assimilates those who share some aesthetic with me, and for that, I am angry.
ComradePhysioProf

Our friend at Historiann

Our friend is Historiann!
ComradePhysioProf

OK. Now that I'm done being a dick and I actually read the blog post, I have a substantive comment.

a similar issue with mommy bloggers

Trolling mommy bloggers is the oldest trick in the book. But it is rewarding: when they go shitnuts, they go *shitnuts*. I'm looking forward to Historiann's article.
Anonymous

This is a note I wrote to the producers of the movie:

I have to tell you that movie was so awful and offensive I can't easily express my disgust without using profanity. There were so many awful and stupid things in the movie that I can't list them all but the part where she opens the mans pan…ts and looks in awe at the wonder of his penis was absolutely so over the top ugly that it makes my skin crawl just thinking about it. You could have made a great film about diversity and how gay families are wonderful and awful and interesting and banal, just like every other family. The story of how the women decided to have kids, how they decided to do AI instead of going with a friend, telling the stories of thier pregnancies. Instead you chose to reinforce the myth that all a lesbian needs is a good f*ck to make her happy. I'm sorry but there's just no other way to say it. I can't believe anyone would go along with this junk.
Were there ANY gay families involved in the making of this movie?
And what about that business of them watching gay male porn? Where did that come from? That was really sick!

I hope this film closes fast before too many people see it and all the straight men decide to go out and find a lesbian to convert.

And don't bother telling me that the girls end up together in the end. There was too much damage done before that to be fixed.
Yuck.See more
Anonymous

re: "non-working parent to take care of the kidz."

i thought feminists were supposed to see that childcare is work even if it not waged.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1017309464 Greta L Ferkel

Could Badges become a new form of academic currency as suggested in this article?
huntbull

Wheeler is suggesting that while “badge” systems might have some problems; that in discussing them we ought to focus on the learning and the real needs of students, rather tha some ideal that much of the world cannot afford. My goodness…what radical stuff!

pcncarolina

Radical indeed! But is the current state of affairs with college-level education the fault of institutions or the so-called national accreditation agencies that force schools to include non-core courses in their curriculum? I wish someone could explain why a student who wants to be a world class chef has to take English Lit, Algebra, etc. I’m sure I’ll receive the usual puffy response of “they need a well-rounded education” but that line is wearing thin with our youth who are strapped with ever increasing education costs. It would have been cheaper for my daughter to have lived in France, Italy, or Spain to study Culinary Management than to have done so in the US.

dcoffice10

So in favor of just taking the required field of study courses, students should skip the basics? To think a puffy response of “they need a well-rounded education” only confirms your lack of understanding of the big picture. And if your daughter really wanted a culinary management degree, CIA, Johnson and Wales and other like programs might have been more appropriate than a 4 year institution. Blaming non-core course work is lame and will not change the cost of a 4 year degree from an accredited institution.

jlbarcelona

Thanks very much for this article. I have posted a link on my Google+ and linked in pages as I think it will be of great interest to my Europe-based colleagues and translation clients who work in development and education.
http://twitter.com/cindaleigh Cinda

Badges…the Scout’s approach to education credentials. Makes a lot of sense to me, when more expensive time-consuming options are just not feasible. Learning objects > badges > certificates > degrees…the new order for global education?
chelita007

This is very true. As a profesor of law in Mexico I see an urgent need for a series of new competencies in law student to help them confront recent changes to the judicial system. Curriculum reform is so politially charged that to up date legal education to the current state of affairs will take ten years. Courses offered by goverment institutions and lawyer organizations are mostly unaccesible to students because priority is given to key goverment actors and are also costly. Badge centered online education might just what law studeent need in order to obtain a law degree and learn what they actually need to know to be useful under the current state of the legal system.
harbitk

In some ways badges and certificates might be a path to a degree. A young person with little money and not wanting to go thousands of dollars in debt could get a free or low-cost badge or certificate that leads to a good job. After a few years of saving money this person could start a degree program in a Community College then transfer to a University. … That’s how I did it and paid for it myself without the debt.

In this present economy many employers would rather employ a certificate holder at a lower wage than a person with a 4-year degree at a higher wage.
3rdtyrant

After idiotic assertions like “the tyranny of the diploma,” it hardly surprises me that there are people who are ready to dive in wholesale to this trend. I have to agree with Marcuse that “an economic system that encourages its young men and women to tailor their educations to the needs of the marketplace, irrespective of their hopes and ambitions, is an economic system that should be roundly condemned. A nation that discourages the study of Art, Music, and the Humanities is a nation that will inevitably find itself populated by unthinking dolts and automatons.” So, we move from the so-called tyranny of the diploma (from that crazy BYU guy in the last article about this topic) to the tyranny of a bunch of people who are behaving like human robots–trained to do a specific job and not to think outside of the narrow requirements of that one cog-area of the great machine. Are we really ready to surrender to people who don’t see that a good mind in a good citizen, regardless of that person’s employability (because a problem solver will find a way to make a living), is always superior to the bleak picture painted by Kurt Vonnegut in his “Harrison Bergeron.”

I am not unsympathetic toward the plight of the Rwandans, where something is better than nothing, information and knowledge-wise, but are we relegated to this kind of thinking in the US? Must an open society rely on better cogs in the machine of commerce, or has all the virility of this once imaginative, inventive, and productive culture been spent on celebrity worship, mediocrity, and crippling debt?

The answer isn’t to create human robots, the answer is to find what worked in the past and use it. Old ideas are not bad because they are old,but because they are misunderstood, often abandoned, or just not tried, they are therefore branded by dolts who misunderstand them as failed ideas. A good idea misunderstood and misapplied is an indictment of the understander and applyer, not of the idea, and these badge-cheerleaders need to assess the long-term quality of their imagined “solution.”

dcoffice10

Excellent points, may I borrow them in my advocacy efforts for the humanities?
tardigrade

There’s more than one way to create a human robot. And there are many as equally bad consequences as robothood that our current system perpetuates.

If I had been able to apprentice in the molecular gerosciences when I was 14, I would have come to university later in life to study STEM, humanities, fine arts, law, and economics out of sheer love of learning (and the occasional need to develop skills which I’m lacking).

Given the hell of a mandated “liberal arts” / “general education” degree before having the opportunity to specialize (and it seems likely that at this point, over 20 years later, I’ll never find entry into the discipline I craved entry into from pre-teen years), I cannot think of the circumstance in which I would willingly set foot in a classroom after this meaningless degree is completed.

“the answer is to find what worked in the past and use it”

I agree that this is AN answer.

ftuer

I strongly agree with the comment that a “path” towards education would serve many people (young students, lower-income students, working students) a whole lot better than the current systems in the USA (where I teach now) and in Canada (where I taught before). Over 10 years I have seen a lot of students who would have done better, been more engaged, and stayed in school longer if they had started out on a more gradual path, and this applies to those who were great students in highschool. The way it works at present makes students feel like failures if they don’t go to a 4 year school or if they have to leave prematurely. There are multiple benefits in terms of finances and psychological adjustment. My daughter is a National Honor Society student aiming to be a veterinarian but she will still be 17 when she enters university this fall. Part of me would really prefer her to do a vet tech program first and work in a vet office to see if she really wants to go for that profession, but she would never consider it because of the stigma associated with 2 year education, especially in Canada.
On the other hand, I often think we are in danger of becoming too narrow and becoming “training” centers. As an HR prof. Iknow there are much cheaper and effective ways to provide training than 4 year university. I believe that part of the solution to ensuring that we don’t produce students with a narrow mindset is to work more collaboratively with the other disciplines in curriculum design. For instance, how are work and workers portrayed in art, in music, and in literature. The book “Remains of the Day” is a great source for looking at Job Characteristics Theory and discussing why occupations that appear to be subservient labor are a great source of job satisfaction to those who choose those occupations. I’m covering Management History this week and we’ll be talking about the management issues involved in building the pyramids, the great cathedrals, and the Great Wall of China; management history does not start with F.W. Taylor and Principles of Scientific Management (although when we get there, we’ll be talking about the world as it was in 1911 when he was doing his research and writing this seminal work). The implications of changiing to such an approach are that instead of having separate Gen Ed. classes, liberal arts becomes integrated into each course. What that means is that there has to be a new balance between covering the discipline content and adding in broader context. There also have to be rewards for integrating the liberal arts into your course.

Last but not least, I attended a workshop on Adaptive Design in education last fall, on how postsecondary educations (and organizations in general) can make changes and the big takeway was that instead of thinking about how to accomodate specific disabilities, work on changes that will remove the barrier not only for persons with that disability but also for a whole range of other people e.g. those big buttons for opening doors don’t just work for folks in wheelchairs, they also work for those of us with our hands full or who have less strength than we used to. I’m suggesting a similar approach: rather than developing specific educational solutions for developing nations we should ask the same question – how can changes in education that might arise out of specific situation benefit a wider population.
jefftylerpmp

I see dual higher education tracks here; the executive track with a broader based education, and a specialty or emphasis based education for the professional. I believe colleges and universities are currently equipped to adjust to these dual-tracks. It will be a matter of curriculum adjustment as well as faculty assignment based on Research-Qualified or Professional-Qualified.
dwheelermd

I appreciate the thoughtful comments and also it’s good to know I am reaching readers outside of the United States–that is one of my goals. — David L. Wheeler
savetheacademe

Thank God you posted, after reading pcncarolina…..

YES, a chef too should be exposed to literature and learn mathematics!

Last night my son who is in HS told me that a good portion of the kids in his honor’s bio class have “made up” their data for their science fair project…..they didn’t see why you actually had to “do the experiment” when they can probably find details about the experiment on line. When we cut down everything to utilitarian, pragmatic uses……..why bother?

Its a sad place we are in right now…….so much information, so little knowledge and wisdom…..
paulderb

It just costs too much for a degree that might be useful. This will become an economic issue very quickly. Just as universities pay adjuncts to teach and full professors to research, badges may fill an economic gap for people who–like the universities themselves–can’t afford it all.

Real middle-class income is dropping too fast to prevent a market solution from stepping in, and markets overseas are both appealing to universities and demanding of a palpable return on the education investment.

The badges will probably start out with a discount-store brand image until resentment builds up among a burgeoning population of un- or under-employed degree-holders trained to be managers with refined sensibilities. The first MIT or Stanford-issued badge will probably release the floodgates and start to transform the current educational model, especially beyond our shores.

The well-read chef is the mark of a society that values reading…not one that charges a lot of money for a degree. And that society is rooted at home and in middle and high school, not in college.
bcbailey64

As a staunch internationalist and as an educator, I LOVED this article and what it stands for! I had no idea of open educational reources until I started my MA 18 months ago – I would have been for this idea in 1994 when I first discovered how the Internet could be used in education…if I’d known about it. Never too late to jump on the bandwagon. This article offers compelling reasons to be supporting open educational resources and alternative approaches to higher education credentialing. Nothing less than then the future of the world depends upon it. No, I’m not exaggerating in the least!