Here's a story from today's New York Times about Brittany Novotny, a candidate running against Sally Kern to represent Oklahoma City in the U.S. House of Representatives.
[A picture of Ms. Novotny talking to Dorothy. The caption reads: "Brittany Novotny, Oklahoma's first known transgender candidate, on June 27 at an Oklahoma City gay pride parade.]
Select answers below the fold:
"Gay" Campaign? I'm really not clear what the author means here. Is it a reference to Novotny? Her supporters?
Ms. Novotny does not merely "identify as a heterosexual woman." She is a heterosexual woman. I don't see that "identify as" qualifier attached to other folks' sexualities, you know.
I don't care about Ms. Novotny's birth name. It's not relevant here. It's not relevant anywhere.
"Sex transition"? WTF?!?
-- I'll give the Times some credit, they did manage to find a picture of a politician campaigning. So, uh, bravo?
I get the impression that the use of "gay campaign" is meant to highlight fears of the "homosexual lobby." But why go there? Why qualify Ms. Novotny's identity as a heterosexual woman? It's hardly as if trans and gay are the same thing.
A few years ago, I was fairly active in an internet forum for folks working through/talking about gender transition. One of the bigger splits on the forum was between straight women and lesbian women (these are not the only two options, and there were also trans men present). Straight women and lesbian women do move in different circles, within different subcultures.
I'm a dyke. My partner is a dyke. This has nothing to do with my being trans, and I get really indignant when folks use my transsexuality to qualify my lesbian identity, or my partner's identity. Ms. Novotny is a heterosexual woman, and may well be straight (it's entirely possible to be solely interested in opposite-sex sexuality while still not being straight). She's not gay. I know I hate it when people imply that I'm kinda like a gay man. Ms. Novotny certainly isn't a lesbian, either.
This article is framing things on Rep. Kern's terms. Why? Unless the Times is also run by hate-filled bigots, there's just no need.
[Trigger warning for Gibson rantings of the usual multi-flavored offensiveness and for a picture of a scratch.]
So, I see that Radar Online has posted yet another recording of Mel Gibson ranting uncontrollably at his former partner, Oksana Grigorieva, where he reiterates his contention that if she is raped, it will be her fault, calls her a stream of misogynist epithets, and unleashes this gem: "I'm not giving you my house and you can rot unless you crawl back, suck my cock and say you're sorry, in that order! Do you understand me? You fucking offend my fucking maleness, my masculinity, my being, my soul!"
Yowza.
As heinous as these recordings are, I've listened to each of them because: A) I'm curious; and B) I often find it interesting what parts of celebrity outbursts get reported and what parts get left out (which is something I can only discern by listening/reading a transcript). Remarkably, the media has, for the most part, been uncharacteristically conscientious in reporting Gibson's threats of sexual violence, without couching them in victim-blaming or rape apologia.
Anyway, so I grab my lunch (homemade tuna salad on wheat flatbread, if you're interested) and head back into the office with the intent of listening to this hot mess while I eat, trailed by one doggie and three kittehs who are all desperate for my affections bites of my lunch. I push play on the recording just as Matilda and Dudley are coming through the door, which still has a pet-gate mounted on it, despite the fact we never use it, and, all of a sudden, Tils—who hates the sound of any electronic voice emanating from the computer, or coming through the phone—wheels on Dudz like he's the Devil himself (or, perhaps, Mel Gibson).
CLANG! goes the metal pet-gate.
I turn to see ten pounds of fuzz, all standing on end. Tils yowls at Dudley with an unearthly voice, to which he responds by running to his big pillow next to my desk and collapsing immediately into a submissive position. She walks up to him and HISSSSSSSSSES! I turn off the recording and tell her to be nice. She looks and me, looks back at Dudley, and gives him a low, menacing growl for good measure. He looks at me with an expression that seems to say, "What the fuck did I do?!"
I grab Tils and give her a big squeezy cuddle, and she spits at me and kicks away, leaving me with this:
Shitty picture taken with my phone of a long-ass bloody scratch across my chest.
This is only the beginning, Shakers. If Mel Gibson is not stopped, Matilda may unleash her fury onto the planet in order to stop him herself. And, frankly, I can't blame her.
Last night, I saw a trailer for The Expendables, which, according to the Big Leatherbound Book of Records I Just Made Up has more testosterone per frame than any movie ever produced in the history of talkies. (Only the silent film The Balloonatic has more.) I have but one question: Was Chuck Norris not available? I mean, how much time does writing shitty columns for WorldNetDaily really take out of a man's day…?
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Sylvester Stallone hang out in an empty Planet Hollywood church. They discuss an important "job" that needs to be done for "the Agency" for some undisclosed amount of money. It's a suicide mission, but Stallone's ragtag team of mercenaries will do it, dammit!—even though, as Token Black Guy Terry Crews explains during the Group Exposition Scene back at Mercenary HQ, "they've got a whole army…we got four and a half men." Token Asian Guy Jet Li doesn't think that's funny! But Jason Statham does! A white guy and a black guy teaming up to be racist bullies against an Asian guy shows how post-racial this shit is, yo. Oh no! It's a beautiful brown-skinned woman being held by swarthy anti-American types! Hopefully she won't have to make out with Sly Stallone who wrote this piece of shit die! Save her, mercenaries! There are scenes of the Expendables doing the "job." Things go boom. Men run around with machine guns. There is fist-bumping. And—wouldn't you know it?—these guys are RECKLESS! But damn if they don't get the job done! Sometimes you gotta BREAK THE RULES, amirite? HIGH FIVE! Oh Maude, it's Mickey Rourke! And Dolph Lundgren! (Victory!) And Randy Couture! And Eric Roberts! And Stone Cold Steve Austin! HOLY SHIT! This masterpiece should have a much cooler title than The Expendables to honor its amazing quantity of heroes—something like Roid Rage: The Revenge. More thing blow up. Cars crash through windows. Men grunt and scream and dive away from explosions and crashes that COULD HAVE KILLED THEM! Phew. Witty quips. They hate each other, but they're brothers, man. Legolas and Gimli Sly and Statham compare kill numbers and dispute the winner WHICH IS NOT CLICHÉD AT ALL. Coming to a theater near your ass August 13.
There is a longer trailer here with additional scenes of our many, many heroes kicking ass for America. Careful your sides don't split from the killer wisecrackery!
Okay, that was probably uncalled for. As a patriotic former Finnish resident, I just wanted to point out that Finland finished two places ahead of Sweden in Forbes Magazine's totes important pseudonon-scientific study of the world's happiest countries. Sweden finished at #4, behind Denmark, Finland, and Norway.
:cough:
Iceland finished in 23rd (I blame Halldór Laxness), but otherwise you might have noticed Nordic countries in places one, two, and three. Sweden, which is also a Nordic country, finished fourth. I'd blame gay marriage for Iceland's woes, but same-sex marriage is also legal in Sweden and Norway (Denmark and Finland only permit domestic partnerships). Forbes largely frames the Nordic countries' happiness as a by-product of wealth, which absolutely baffles me, particularly given the study's methodology:
"First [Gallup] asked subjects to reflect on their overall satisfaction with their lives, and ranked their answers using a 'life evaluation' score from 1 to 10. Then they asked questions about how each subject had felt the previous day. Those answers allowed researchers to score their 'daily experiences'--things like whether they felt well-rested, respected, free of pain and intellectually engaged. Subjects that reported high scores were considered 'thriving.' The percentage of thriving individuals in each country determined our rankings."
Rest. Respect. Comfort. Engagement.
I can see how income is correlated to those things, although per-capita GDP seems like an odd statistic to use (median income, anyone?). However, the causal relationship between wealth and happiness doesn't strike me as straightforward. Besides, the United States finished 14th. If it was really all about the Benjaminsgayly coloured bridges, you'd think the U. S. would easily out-happy a social democracy whacked out on salmiakki. Perhaps we should look more carefully at Forbes' throw-away line about the “Scandinavian”[sic*] countries taking care of people's basic needs.
A modest retelling of my 10 months in Finland might shed some light on the situation.
In late 1998, I began investigating the possibility of studying in Helsinki the following academic year. Being me, I decided to enroll on my own, as opposed to following a bizarrely isolated exchange program. So, I contacted the University of Helsinki to apply as a visiting student. The confusion began as soon as I was accepted:
'How much do I owe you, and where do I send the check? Do I need to draw funds from a Finnish bank?'
'What in God's name are you talking about?'
'Tuition. How much is your tuition.'
'What in God's name are you talking about?!?'
Once we got past that little inter-cultural barrier, the next thing to do was to find an apartment. I ended up finding a place in Kontula, on Helsinki's far eastern fringe. I paid around $180 a month for a room in a three bedroom apartment. Because my apartment was multiple kilometers from the city center, I was forced to take a five minute walk down to the metro station, which was next to the shopping center that included two grocery stores, a bakery, the local library, one of many local day care centers, a liquor store, and several restaurants and bars. When I was feeling lazy, I'd wait up to ten minutes for a bus to the station. There, I would wait another five minutes to board a train for the twenty minute ride to the city. There, I could purchase a monthly student transit pass, which ate another $30 out of my bank account.
When I started at the University, I was subjected to the horrors of UniCafe, the restaurants run by the Helsinki University student union. As you can see from today's menu, life was tough. At Porthania this afternoon, there was a choice between bolognaise with minced meat and grated cheese, soya and vegetable pan, and chicken waldorfs[sic] salad. These cost students 2 Euros 60 (including a beverage and unlimited bread, salad, and potatoes). Students who sprung for the fried salmon with white wine sauce coughed up 4 Euros 20.
One of my first activities at school was to meet folks at Symbioosi, the biology student organization. I was at one party with my fellow students when it was time for me to catch the last bus back to my apartment. As it turned out, the woman I was talking to also needed to catch the last bus back to her apartment. Unfortunately, she lived in what she described as an urban hellscape, surrounded by violent criminals, asphalt, noise, and the foul stench of dying hope. Let's just say it was surprising to learn that we both lived in the same complex. I would later learn that my friend's impression of our neighborhood were largely accepted as fact throughout the country. Our neighborhood was infamous. I was apparently living in some sort of Nordic Cabrini-Green.
A typical Finnish hellscape, showing the Kivikko neighborhood of Kontula, in eastern Helsinki. Note the ravages of urbanization.
The multiple kilometers of lit cross country ski trails don't show up on the above picture. Nor do the fields where I played pesäpallo with other folks in the neighborhood who ranged in age between about 6 and 60. I do recall taking batting practice on that field, though.
I spent a lot of time watching and playing sports in Finland. I certainly made a habit of watching sports on my many trips around the country on reduced fare train tickets (although even well off people didn't pay too much for public transportation). There were trains everywhere. After one of my friends from the US excitedly told some Finnish acquaintances that he'd never rode on a train before, I remember one of them looking at him and stating that she'd never rode in a car before, so there. And really, why bother with cars, what with the trains and buses, and bike paths connecting everything?
As I was in Helsinki for the better part of the year, I needed to go to the doctor a few times. I was really, really nervous about this, what with my American health insurance and all. However, given that I had the sniffles, I was managed to be seen by the doctor right away. For free. Without an appointment. This happened a few times, actually.
When I wasn't going to the Finnish film archives to see cheap movies, taking in concerts or museums at a student discount off of essentially nothing (or often times for free), I did make feeble attempts to socialize. I went to a few events organized by the Karelian osakunta. Given my Pohjanmaan (Ostrobothnian) ancestry, this made a great deal of sense (Ostrobothnia and Karelia are basically the Finnish equivalent of, um.... they're really different. During the 1930s, a handful of folks in Ostrobothnia kidnapped the third (ex-)president of Finland in an attempt to "return" him to the Soviet Union, or at least Karelia. It was sort of as if Tea Baggers accused Harry Reid of Communism, and then drove him to Massachusetts).
Owing to my limited grasp of the Finnish language and cultural differences, my forays with the Karelians were not smashing successes (although as I am from Minnesota, there was much talk of hockey). Mostly the Karelians seemed confused:
'I hear college students have it bad in the US.'
'Yes, college can be very expensive.'
'How small are your stipends.'
'What?!?'
'How much do American students get each month.'
'In America, we typically pay a good deal of money to study at college.'
'What?!? Yours is a bizarre country.'
'Indeed.'
--- Taxes in Finland are high. Very high. The government is big. Very big. While there's not socialism, Finnish society is most definitely flavored by social-democracy. The same could be said of the other Nordic nations. They also happen to have GDPs near that of the United States. Yet somehow, surveys of the Nordic nations show higher levels of rest, respect, comfort, and engagement than the US. Color me unconfused.
*Finland is not a Scandinavian country. It is, however, a Nordic and Fenno-Scandian nation.
Alright you Whonitarians, time to hold forth on the latest episode. Sorry about the delay; I wanted to watch it a second time, and then forgot to get it posted when I had. :)
Please note that this thread is specifically about Season 5 (reboot), Episode 12. Spoilers for anythe only remaining! episode are explicitly off-topic.
Note also that the comment thread may contain spoilers for any and all previous Doctor Who media.
My overview is this: Just what it says on the tin. There's a Pandorica, and it opens. More in comments.
Transformers 3 is being filmed across the road from my work. This is the sign they erected outside my building, lol.
"FILMING INVOLVING GUNFIRE AND EXPLOSIONS AHEAD. Do not be alarmed."
They aren't lying. Yesterday, we had to explain to clients on the phone hearing explosions in the background that war had not broken out in Chicago; it was only the filming of Transformers 3.
A bitch just caught up on the latest verbal malfunction by former GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin.
Refudiate-gate is all over Twitter and even the major networks are chatting about it.
Full disclosure – a bitch loves to fuck with the English language.
My friend Brother Rob Thurman is the reigning bitchitude champ of made up words…he’s known to issue forth made up words with such confidence that a body often thinks they’ll find that new word in the dictionary!
But there’s an art to made up words…a key rule that Palin mislooked or under-understood. One must use context when using a new word to ensure that people know what the fuck you are talking about.
Pause…sip coffee…continue.
For example, when first using “fuckeduptitude” I recommend placing it in a sentence that clearing defines what that shit means.
“Sarah Palin’s defense of drill baby drill, despite the current fuckeduptitude of the oil spill in the gulf, is yet another public display of ig’nance.”
Note – ig’nance is not considered a made up word…’tis more of a misspelling that I use ‘cause that’s how I like to say the word ignorance…and deep down in my heart of hearts I just KNOW Shakespeare would have adored that shit (wink).
FYI – when you Google "Sarah Palin refudiate", Google gently asks you whether you meant "Sarah Palin repudiate".
Priceless!
Anyhoo, Sarah Palin deleted her refudiate tweet and issued forth a new tweet-pinion…but her defense of making up the word refudiate guaranteed that the original tweet would live on in.
In the spirit of American independence, a bitch defends Palin’s right to make up words so that I can continue to do the same!
After all, this bitch wouldn’t want to get all hypocriticatopical on this shit.
Blink.
***Lawd, spell check is pissed off to high heaven at this post!!***
"For far too long white Americans have been told that diversity is something beneficial to their existence. Statistics prove that the opposite is true. New Hampshire residents must seek to preserve their racial identity if we want future generations to have to possibility to live in such a great state. Affirmative action, illegal and legal non-white immigration, anti-white public school systems, and an anti-white media have done much damage to the United States of America and especially New Hampshire. It is time for white people in New Hampshire and across the country to take a stand. We are only 8 percent of the world's population and we need our own homeland, just like any other non-white group of people deserve their own homeland."—Ryan J. Murdough, a Republican candidate for the New Hampshire State House and evident dipshit.
Yes, it's really time we white people of the US took a stand against all this oppression we're suffering.
Btw, I would pay good money to hear a reporter ask Mr. Murdough what the "statistics prove" about the benefit to brown people of diversity white people stealing away land from brown people upon which to build their "homeland" and enslaving brown people to create its economy and exploiting brown people to sustain its economy.
By now, you've probably heard of Sarah Palin's latest gaffe, which involved her creating the new English word, "refudiate." Not only did she say the word on a Hannity broadcast, but she decided to double down on her new special word by re-using it in a tweet.
As BlueGal points out, Palin responds defiantly by equating herself with Shakespeare:
"Refudiate," "misunderestimate," "wee-wee'd up." English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!
One thing that Sarah doesn't understand (NO WAY! THERE'S SOMETHING THAT SARAH PALIN DOESN'T UNDERSTAND?!?!?) is that there is quite a difference between a sniglet, something for creative and comedic value, and defending your getting a word wrong by claiming you just made a new one up for the betterment of the English language.
Liss said by email when we were talking about this:
Accidentally combining "refute" and "repudiate" is an easy mistake to make. But refusing to acknowledge that easy mistake and reframing it as evidence of her support for Shakespearean innovation is crass, coming from someone who actively plays to and exploits willful ignorance.
On the one hand, she panders to the idea of a "Real America" populated with small-town folks who don't take to those elitists intellectual types, where science classes ought to teach Bible lessons and sex ed should primary focus on not having sex, but on the other hand, she cloaks herself in a progressive literary tradition in order to avoid admitting a mistake.
What's consistently annoying about Sarah Palin is that she wants to appropriate the pieces of progressive concepts, whether it be feminism or living language, that suit her and reject everything else. No, not just reject it: Actively campaign against it.
See, school doesn't really matter because you could always fight back against those smarty-pants city folk by claiming you just coined a new word for the language! Whee!!
Had she not quit her Governor job to make shitloads of cash on the lecture circuit, maybe she could have introduced changes to the vocabulary section of the SAT's so that her constituents would have been allowed to just make up new words instead of do something silly like define what the words that are already in the language mean.
Wev - I'll just chalk it up as some more shit that Sarah Palin makes up. After all, it's nothing new for her.
Oh, and Sarah - "misunderestimate" is a truly shitty example.
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman (Liss) and a biracial queerbait (Deeky) telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
So, this afternoon, I'm out walking Dudley, and there's a woman ahead of me but on the opposite side of the road—she's also white and brunette, about the same shape and size, a few years younger than I. And there's a middle-aged white guy standing at the edge of his yard in a dingy white undershirt, leaning on his fence, watching her walk by. He wolf-whistles at her. She ignores him. "Hey you!" he shouts at her, and wolf-whistles again. She continues to ignore him. "Bitch!" he yells.
He turns his head and looks at me, then wolf-whistles. As flattering as it is to be wolf-whistled by a random dude I just saw shout a misogynist epithet at another woman, I ignore him. "Hey you!" he shouts. I turn around and walk the other way.
FAIR examines the thoroughness of U.S. media coverage of the ban by the lower house of France's parliament on the wearing of a niqab or burqa in public.
The NY Times, the LA Times, and the WaPo among them quoted the views of 11 named sources, 10 of them officials of the French government; 2 of the 11 were Muslim; only one of these voices opposed the ban.
Still, they did manage to include, if barely, supporters and opponents of the ban, government officials and clergy; Muslim and non-Muslim — oh, and CNN made sure we heard from a USian, non-Muslim woman: Mary Matalin, who, while favoring the burqa-ban, was very appreciative of a Muslim woman's veil
The veil is a beautiful thing. All my Muslim girlfriends say it's great. It's not only respectful and mindful of their religion, it's great for bad hair days. So we get that. But the full-face burqa, nyet.
So, that's everybody heard from, right? Well, except for Muslim women, of course. The people whose choice of dress and religious expression is specifically being limited by this law. No need to interview any of them. I mean, if their thoughts on this or any matter were of value, France wouldn't need this law to tell the silly twits how to dress themselves, n'est-ce pas?
For the record, I do think the burqa/niqab is a tool of the patriarchy/kyriarchy. So is passing a law, in the guise of support for women'srights, forbidding women to wear such a garment. So is a discussion as to whether such a garment should be banned which excludes the voices of the women who are targeted by it.
[W]hen you shared your result from "I Write Like" I got curious and tried out my own writing -- different types of writing yielded a different white male author each time. And when I saw a link on Tiger Beatdown that said that according to "I Write Like," everyone writes like a white male author, I decided to try it out with the famous authors themselves, because the experiment that Jonathan Bogart did used less than a dozen authors. My results were pretty depressing: few women, no authors of color. Here's the writeup I did of my experiment [...]:
I tried out 40 authors on this thing. I did twenty that were women and/or authors of color, and twenty that were white men. Here are my results.
Group One: Female authors and authors of color
1. James Baldwin (black man) ... James Fenimore Cooper (white man) 2. Mary Shelley (white woman) ... herself 3. Isabel Allende (Latina woman) ... Kurt Vonnegut (white man) 4. Maeve Binchy (white woman) ... William Gibson (white man) 5. Stephenie Meyer (white woman) ... herself 6. Madeleine L'Engle (white woman) ... J.D. Salinger (white man) 7. Flannery O'Connor (white woman) ... Chuck Palahniuk (white man) 8. Sylvia Plath (white woman) ... Chuck Palahniuk (white man) 9. Margaret Atwood (white woman) ... herself 10. Sandra Cisneros (Latina woman) ... Chuck Palahniuk (white man) 11. Laurence Yep (Asian man) ... James Joyce (white man) 12. Amy Tan (Asian woman) ... Dan Brown (white man) 13. J.K. Rowling (white woman) ... herself 14. Toni Morrison (black woman) ... David Foster Wallace (white man) 15. Maya Angelou (black woman) ... Ursula K. Le Guin (white woman) 16. Alice Walker (black woman) ... H.P. Lovecraft (white man) 17. Langston Hughes (black man) ... Margaret Mitchell (white woman -- the GONE WITH THE WIND author) 18. Zora Neale Hurston (black woman) ... Margaret Mitchell (white woman -- what the EFF?!) 19. Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Latino man) ... Mark Twain (white man) 20. Jhumpa Lahiri (South Asian woman) ... Dan Brown (white man)
Group Two: White male authors
1. Charles Dickens ... himself 2. Aldous Huxley ... Robert Louis Stevenson (white man) 3. George Orwell ... himself 4. Mark Twain ... himself 5. Edgar Allen Poe ... Charles Dickens (white man) 6. Orson Scott Card ... David Foster Wallace (white man) 7. Neil Gaiman ... himself 8. Douglas Adams ... himself 9. Dan Brown ... himself 10. Ray Bradbury ... himself 11. Philip Pullman ... H.P. Lovecraft (white man) 12. Terry Pratchett ... David Foster Wallace (white man) 13. Michael Chabon ... Kurt Vonnegut (white man) 14. Paul Auster ... Arthur C. Clarke (white man) 15. Gregory Maguire ... Dan Brown (white man) 16. Kenneth Grahame ... Lewis Carroll (white man) 17. Leo Tolstoy ... himself 18. Mervyn Peake ... Charles Dickens (white man) 19. William Makepeace Thackeray: Jonathan Swift (white man) 20. Thomas Hardy ... Mark Twain (white man)
In the first group, only four authors were recognized by the "I Write Like" statistical analysis tool, while in the second group twice as many authors were recognized. Furthermore, the authors recognized in the first group were all white women, despite my inclusion of authors of color who are both prolific and award winning. It creeps me the heck out that MARGARET MITCHELL was the result for Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.
Forty authors put into the program. Twenty six results given back. All white. Mostly men. And yeah, the takeaway from this could be that it's fun and amusing and very obviously not accurate, but I hope that what I'm conveying here is that this does matter. How many authors that aren't white had their body of work analyzed to help produce this fun little tool? How many women? "White and male" isn't the default setting for humanity, and it isn't the default setting for literature, either.
The creator of this meme doesn't see a problem with the fact that his list of authors consists of 37 white men and 3 white women. In fact, when called on it, he said "I *absolutely* will not add people into the database due to their race or gender. I will not search for lists of white, black, Asian, Hispanic, or any other types of people that you _took care to differentiate_."
Hm. Well, I don't need to search any lists to know that Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Isabel Allende, Jhumpa Lahiri, Zadie Smith, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, Louise Erdrich, and many others have distinctive voices worth sampling. I Write Like thinks that David Foster Wallace writes like Stephen King. I think the test would have been more accurate and more useful as well as more entertaining if it included a wider variety of strong voices.
If you had designed this test, who would you have sampled besides the Great Whites?
So. There are a lot of pernicious myths about friendships with and between women. (Requisite Caveat: That is not to say there are no damaging myths about friendships with and between men; I'm just not talking about those today.) These myths take many shapes and forms with specific details—same-sex friendship among women are inexorably plagued by jealousy and competition; same-sex friendship among women always involve hurtful gossip; opposite-sex friendship between men and women is never real, because there is always sexual tension (note the assumed heteronormativity of the "When Harry Met Sally" myth); opposite-sex friendship can't last long-term, because women and men are intrinsically too different, etc.—they always boil down to these two lessons:
1. Women can't be friends with women.
2. Women can't be friends with men.
In pop culture, these lessons are drilled into girls' heads in myriad ways: Stories of (straight) female friendship are driven by conflicts specific to (straight) womanhood—jealousy over the same man, unnavigable divides caused by divergent choices about career/marriage/motherhood, acrimonious resentments about choosing the same wedding day or venue or dress—and stories of (straight) opposite-sex friendships are framed as foreplay to a grand romance, whether the inevitable couple realizes soulmatery was in front of them all along (!) or whether the (straight) female character is a token among men (Leia, Eowyn, Sue Storm) who is eventually rewarded for her strength and bravery with the romantic affections of a (male) hero.
There is a lot for which to rightfully criticize Sex and the City, but it was remarkably transgressive in its ability to represent lasting (straight) female friendships among women who make different personal choices without ever condescending to make them bicker over a man, or irreparably ruin their relationships with one another in a fit of destructive jealousy, or viciously compete for the attainment of some arbitrary level of success. They each had their own objectives, pursued their own resources and romances. That is a rare thing on the pop culture landscape.
Rare, because we wouldn't want girls to get it into their silly little heads that they can have successful friendships with other girls. Or friendships with boys, for that matter.
What we really want is for female-people to retain a profound sense of insecurity in all their friendships at all times, so that they might never be confident and self-determined.
A world full of confident and self-determined women, bolstered by the security and esteem that solid and lasting friendships with people who share their gender and people who don't, would be a very scary thing—what with the likelihood of such a world being an inhospitable environment for a Patriarchy and all.
Thus does the Patriarchy endeavor to entrench at every opportunity the idea that female friendships damaged by gossip or competition or jealousy or betrayal were ruined because that's how female friendships are. Never mind that male friendships are destroyed over the same things. Never mind these are human failures, not female ones.
So divorced are we from the idea that these are the pitfalls of human friendships across every spectrum that even in feminist/womanist spaces, discussions of female friendships will frequently yield comments like, "Well, I have a hard time being friends with women because so many women are gossipy, competitive, jealous bitches."
No. So many people are like that.
That this woman can't successfully be friends with that woman does not mean women can't be friends. It means that those two women can't be friends.
And avoiding women to spend time exclusively in the company of men (who may be free of the stereotypes of relationship-destroying gossip, competitiveness, and jealousy, but aren't any more likely to be individually free of those flaws as are women) is no kind of solution—particularly when the sorts of men who court the friendship of women-hating women require a terrible bargain as the cost of their companionship.
Which may be one of many reasons that some friendships between women and men fall apart.
That this woman and that man can't maintain a friendship does not mean women and men can't be friends. It means that that woman and man can't be friends.
Among my friends are straight, gay, bi- and asexual cis and trans women and men of different colors. Some of these friendships are more than 20 years old. What makes them last is the willingness to see each other as individuals: When I am being an asshole, my behavior is not written off by my friends as the inevitable behavior that ought to be expected from any woman. It is addressed as assholery that is uniquely Melissa McEwan's, and thus has Melissa McEwan the ability to change.
Myths about female friendship exist so that we never have a reason to communicate: There is no point challenging someone's action if you believe it be the natural consequence of their intractable characteristics.
Thus is the most insidious female friendship myth of all that old familiar bit of ugliness that treats "women" as a word for a monolith with a predictable set of behaviors, thoughts, and emotions—and denies actual women their individualism, their humanity.
The truth is that excellent friendships are hard to come by and require effort to nurture and maintain. Most of the people any one individual meets won't be worth that effort, simply by virtue of the enigmatic combination of straightforward compatibility and mysterious chemistry. Some friendships will be finite, combusting spectacularly in a short space of time or fizzling almost imperceptibly into nothingness over time, and some will last a lifetime. Some friendships will be intimate and intense; some will be casual and easy; some will come and go, and come and go, a favorite song on a bad radio signal. Some will become romances; some will come from romances. The best of them will make you a better person. These are the boring realities of one of the most exhilarating and consternating parts of human connection.
Being a woman doesn't have a whole lot to do with it. It's what kind of woman one is that matters.
That is an inconvenient thought for an institutional oppression predicated on denying individualism and humanity.
Which makes just being friends with a(nother) woman a radical act.
Because the only app worth owning is finally here: Jay Leno's Garage!
So what if the new iPhone for will burst into flames if you accidentally pick it up with your left hand? Fire extinguishers are go! And this app is smokin' (pun totally intended)!
Stay up to date with Jay Leno's Garage, just like the iTunes store says! Things this app can do (besides make you totally irresistible to the opposite sex, like all good iPhone apps) which you cannot live without:
Look at hundreds of pictures (and video!) of a billionaire asshole's car collection!
Read blog posts about a billionaire asshole's car collection!
Pro-tips like how to chrome your shit up right! (Which is especially useful if you're a billionaire asshole.)
But this app isn't just for billionaire assholes. Get it even if you just like steam-powered fire trucks! Or denim!
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