toads and gender: guest post

In November, as I have brought to the attention of everyone I have talked to in the past month, I adopted a toad. I am just pleased as punch about this. She is a lovely toad, though understandably a little skittish. I think she needs a little more living space, and maybe a rock to burrow under and a bit of hollow log to hide in. I am doing my best to help acclimate her to her living space.

One funny thing I have noticed about toad ownership is the way people perceive toad gender. If I refer to a toad as “he,” the conversation continues as normal. If, as in the case of Jhumpa Lahiri (my toad), I refer to the toad as “she,” almost universally the response will be:

“You can tell if it’s male or female?”

Now, I have no idea how to tell the sex of bufo americanus. I bet, if I checked around, it wouldn’t be too difficult to find the answer to this question. For now, and for the foreseeable future, I have no real intention to do so. First of all, I have given this toad a human name. To the best of my knowledge, and even to the best of my conception of the natural world, frogs and toads do not, when left to their own devices, have human names. “She,” to the best of my perception, is not aware she has a human name. I project a personality on my toad. Frogs and toads, and nearly the entirety of life on our planet (and presumably the universe) do not have personalities. Central to this word is its root, “person,” and at the risk of being tautological in order to drive home a point, personality implies personhood. I don’t mean to tear down the idea that animals can have emotion, expression, abstract thought, and even dignity, because I accept that they can, and even assign these to pets I have had and known. But these are not people. Isn’t it arrogant to hold the primacy of human beings so firmly as to assume that our perception of the world is the only one? I love meerkats; I hate the show Meerkat Manor, the one where Sean Astin prattles on and on about how one animal is feeling about missing a meal, or how one is unrequited in her love for another. These are human emotions you are presenting as fact, or worse: as science! At best, I have to imagine the “personalities” we project on the animals around us are imperfect metaphors. So please don’t try to contradict the narrative I have chosen for my toad, because her life is completely unaffected by the social construct of gender.

And speaking of this construct, what is it about frogs and toads that lead people to assume they are male? Questions over gender only arise when the gender presented is female. Yes, the sex of an amphibian would be an interesting discussion I’m sure. But if you were really asking after sex, you would question my assumption of masculinity as well. You’re questioning my gendering of the toad, which you had already determined in your head the other way when you heard the word. I discussed this earlier today with my friends Chris and Sam, and came up with a short list of assumed genders in our society:

dogs: male
cats: female
cars/transportation: female
hurricanes: female (traditionally; this persists even though half of hurricanes now have male names)
fish: male
whales: female (“thar she blows!”)
bears: male
peacocks: female (ironic, since the sex is in its name)
eagles: male
trees: male
flowers: female
oceans: female
mountains: male
anything that could be described as “a beauty:” female
anything that could be described as “ornery:” male

I know I’m missing a bunch here. Hooray for gender roles!

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What Would Tyler Durden Do?

So, here's the thing: I like to punch boys. Consensually, of course--I have never struck anyone in anger, but occasionally I'll say to a guy friend, "Wanna fight?" and then we step outside. Bareknuckle boxing, if you will. Always below the neck--my friend Chris wanted the face to be inbounds, but I said, “There’s a pretty boy I’m trying to mack it to.” And he understands that kind of thing.

The first part of my pugilistic impulse is: I like violence. I mean…in order to fight I have to be in the right mood. A very specific mood. The first time, you see, I was bored. Restless. There was a party going on at my house and I’d snuck off to someone else’s, suddenly feeling itchy somehow, like something was rattling around inside me. As is often my problem, I wanted to feel wild, like an artist, a Hemmingway type, a lion. By this point I was done with binge drinking and was taking a serious break from random sex. A physical fight suddenly seemed the way to feel less…trivial. More primal. Less bourgeois. It's exhilarating, really.

There is the therapeutic part, where I can get out all my anger and frustration, both at myself and others. It's definitely cathartic.

And then, of course, there's the part where I identify with male roles, and want to believe I can roll with the boys. But I don't want to win. The reason I fight boys and not girls (aside perhaps from girls not seeing getting pummeled as a good time) is that with boys I don't have to hold back. I don't have to worry about hurting them and I don't worry about them hurting me. That's the point.

I want to know how much I can take. I want to know I'm tough.

I tend to play the Strong Woman role, and sometimes I feel guilty because I'm worried it's all just a front. So yeah, getting "beat up" (but not really) by a guy proves that I can handle getting beat up. Basically: There's no fear he let me win if I don't win.

However, I do walk around acting as though I could take just about anyone. The really good fights (which are 3 out of the 5) had carefully chosen partners, and two of them in particular were the kind of guy who in general looks like he'd win a in a fight.* But this weekend I somehow, drunkenly, ended up in a faux-wrestling match with a guy who does not come off as particularly butch. I not only lost, I ended up on my knees, hitting his arm and croaking "Safeword! Safeword!" because I did not think he actually wanted his headlock to make me pass out, especially as the party was otherwise quite civilized.

[Okay, I'm going to get sexually explicit and reveal some stuff here, so if you think that kind of thing should be embarrassing then please don't read. Really, I'm only embarrassed to reveal things about myself when I think that other people think I should be. People tend not to like casual TMI. So be gentle.]

This reminded me of an occasion on which a guy had me, well, tied up. I'll spare you the details and skip ahead: afterwards, I said something about how I could've gotten free if I'd wanted to. My gentleman friend, almost offended, argued that had he actually wanted to restrain me against my will, he would've been able to. This gave me pause. Powerlessness is, of course, the fantasy...Dan Savage says we fetishize what we fear. But I suppose that integral to that, for me, is the idea that being forced couldn't happen to me for real. And the unsuccessful wrassling with my friend this weekend (he was gay, so don't mistake it for foreplay) bummed me out slightly because part of me wants to know that I could fend a guy off if I had to. Of course, there's a difference between hitting an attacker and running and actually sticking around for a fight. But I still sometimes think about the fact that most of my guy friends could easily beat me to death, could easily kill me with their bare hands.

So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to head off and buy a gym membership. Maybe some kickboxing classes will cheer me up.




*As much as theatre folk can look that way.
**Probably accurate.

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C U Next Tuesday (This Tuesday)

I CANNOT tell you why I was thinking of this today, but: I love the word cunt. I wish I could remember the moment when I first learned the word. (It may well have been from my mom.) While I basically think women can use it with impunity (haven't totally thought that through yet, there might be exceptions), I was wondering to myself what the circumstances are in which it's acceptable, to me, for a guy to use the word. Any guy I actually know can probably use it with impunity-- I think they've earned the right. If you're my friend you probably have credentials as a non-misogynist--perhaps you need them to even WANT to be my friend, if that's not self-aggrandizing. And I can imagine, again under certain circumstances, a guy I've just met actually endearing himself to me by saying "cunt," but thinking about it I'd have to already like him.

Here is my favorite instance of a guy saying the word:

In 2004, when the RNC was in New York, my friend Jake and I went to a trivia night at a bar downtown. We joined the team of these four boisterous Australian guys and this one woman from Texas. They were all very nice, but the Aussies were giving the woman a (friendly) hard time, I suppose because she was blonde and was showing (seasonally appropriate) cleavage, decorated by a cross pendant. While she and I had gotten into a little conversation about our differing views on reproductive rights, we were both respectful and listened to each other so I bore her no ill will, and felt a little annoyed at the Aussies on her behalf. So I leaned over to her and said, "You should just say the word 'cunt.' That always shuts guys up."

This was the wrong thing to say.

She was deeply taken aback, and insisted that if I had self-respect I would never use that word. I could NOT seem to get us out of this conversation--I tried to argue that I was coming from a different context (no man had ever called me that in anger), so while I understood her discomfort with the word, it had different ramifications to me. Et cetera. But she would brook no dissent. She was appalled that I would use the word and kept trying to talk me out of it, and I was a little too surprised to realize I should just change the subject. This went on until it was finally time to leave, and as soon as we hit the pavement, Jake said:

"That woman was a cunt."

And I remembered why I have loved Jake since 8th grade.

Of course, it's not all wine and cunty roses. I have one boy-related cunt anecdote that still makes me kind of upset, but it's not the standard kind. In high school, I was on the fencing team. It was co-ed--our league play was divided by gender, but in practices we all fenced each other, so it was really like one team. We had this one away game where the judge HATED us. Don't know why, but she made all sorts of bullshit calls to our detriment, I'm pretty sure we lost and we were all really pissed. Afterwards, while we hung around waiting for the coach to herd us back on the bus, she passed by us. We glared silently, and once she was out of earshot I said, "Cunt."

There was this guy on the team. He was the child of someone famous and seemed to pride himself on being an asshole, but he was smart and often funny so I liked and respected him alright. He stared at me and said, with great authority, "Girls can't say that word!"

I was stunned, I said nothing. But that was the prevailing high school attitude--BOYS could use the word (though they didn't much) but not me. Which, I suppose, is why so many of us feel that it's empowering to reclaim it. Lots of men think of it as the worst thing you can possibly call a woman* and, at least to obnoxious adolescents and their ilk, the idea that a girl might steal it from them, might be as vulgar as boys were allowed to be, might have the power not to be ashamed of their own anatomy, is truly horrifying. Not just horrifying: it infringes on their territory, robs them of their weapons. Who are these uppity bitches thinking they can take what's ours? This guy knew what he was doing, but he also meant what he said. Back then I knew what I believed but had no idea how to explain it, even to myself, so shocked silence and a profound feeling of betrayal--he was my teammate, I'd thought we were in this together--were the only responses I had at my disposal. These days I would probably just say, "cunt cunt cunt cuntycunt cunt."

All that being said, at this point it's just a word. A word I like a lot. I don't think I'm taking a feminist stand each time I use it--and, now that I think of it, I tend to save it for when it is really the perfect word--but the fact that it has this Reclaimed By Feminists status makes it less awful to say in other contexts. I might refer to someone as a cunt, but since I like the word, and after all cunt means vagina, it doesn't seem that harsh to me. It's stronger, and perhaps more specific, than calling someone a dick, but it's in the same family. Also, in the realm of the physical, I hugely prefer it to "pussy." In addition to being a really silly-sounding word, "pussy" seems to describe an object, something that is done unto--"cunt" is always a subject, something that takes on the doing itself, thankyouverymuch. I've relaxed on my revulsion towards "pussy"--mostly now I think of it in terms of the actual anatomy, probably due to a stage manager I worked with who asked, "how's your pussy?" when I had a UTI, and once advised me to roll my boxer shorts down a little "towards your pussy." So it took on the anatomical meaning, and cunt was the sexual beast between my legs. But, what with some guys' understandable reluctance to say "cunt" to a woman in bed, I'm pretty much fine with both. But cunt will always be more fun to say.

And I love guys who love when I say it. I had a long flirtation with someone at college (I do wish he'd just made out with me at some point, but I think of him fondly nonetheless) who was pretty cool--he for one thing thought it was hot that I'd played rugby. (When he found this out he got a grin on his face and said euphemistically, "That's...pretty cute.") Anyway, we ran into each other towards the end of our senior year when we were both wrapping up our theses and I asked if he'd finished yet. He said yes, so I shook my head at him in mock jealousy and said, in a low voice, "Yooouuu cunt." He said, "Did you just call me a cunt?!" I had, and he laughed. "That's awesome."

I agreed.


*Which it might well be, again it's all contextual.

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Gender, Booze, And Song

More karaoke last night, this time at the Bar We Always Go To--they're now doing it once a month. It was fun, and I sang "Wicked Game" (now one of my standard jams), which went over well partially because it's perfect for my voice, but also the MC said she'd never heard a woman sing that song. She seemed quite impressed--she mentioned it several times. Later, Guy Who Blew Me Off* complimented me on the choice.

I then chatted with Guy I Shouldn't Hook Up With** about the fact that I drink whiskey and that this makes me cool. I confided in him that I decided (years ago) that I would train myself to like whiskey in order to impress boys...and that it was way easier than I expected and now Jack on the rocks is my favorite drink, which is slightly unfortunate because it's not as cheap as well vodka.

The point being: yay, hooray, for occasionally feeling that minor manifestations of my gender issues can be appealing to other people. For while singing sultry male songs and drinking macho drinks makes ME feel sexy, and is SUPPOSED to make other people think I'm sexy, I rarely have a clue how things actually play out.

Or is it laughable that I think of singing Chris Isaak and drinking whiskey as expressions of gender identity?


*He needs a better nickname. I still think of him as Monday Guy but since we hooked up a month ago that no longer really makes sense.
**There were way too many Persons of Interest at this bar last night, but that's a different story.

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Mythbuster: U.S. Off Of My Clitoris!

I just now went on a bit about Betty Dodson. One aspect of her Bust column that particularly irks me (other than an aforementioned anatomical nick-name) is her dismissal of vaginal orgasms. Maureen Dowd, too, talks about women trying to have "male orgasms"--ie, vaginal orgasms, achieved purely through penetration. Dodson, more so than Dowd*, seems to have flipped things over, implying that if vaginal orgasms are "male," clitoral orgasms are "female."

I'll tell you a story. Freshman year I separated my shoulder (yay rugby!) and went to the hospital. I think this put me on some kind of list. Two separate times, I got a call from a man claiming to be from that hospital, wanting me to be part of a Kinsey-esque survey about my sexuality. Honestly, I have no idea if he was legit, and he said one or two things that seemed unprofessional or weird**. But I realized I didn't much care--you may not have realized this about me, but I don't mind talking about sex. (I have to actually think someone is interested, but if there's no fear of TMI I can go on about such things forever.) One thing annoyed me, though: he made me choose between clitoral and vaginal stimulation. At first I refused to make Sophie's Choice, but he pressed and I reluctantly had to go with clitoral. Which I guess is true IN THAT I can get off from solely-clitoral play more reliably than solely-vaginal play. BUT I think I maybe prefer penetration, once I've been warmed up. (TMI? Just checking.) On the subject of how to tell a guy how to get you off, one Six Feet Under character put it pithily: "Lick my clit while you finger me." And few people can argue. But how many women are content to stop there? Don't most straight women still want some train-in-tunnel action?

Thus, the myth: that ANY kind of orgasm is superior to ANY OTHER kind of orgasm. So, it's a myth that, in every case, oral pleases the woman while penetration pleases the man, and it's a myth that a woman who can't come from penetration is somehow sexually remedial. Come on, people, we gotta depoliticize this shit. One of the reasons feminists tend to hate on Freud is that he derided clitoral arousal as neurotic (his thinking being, the clitoris is like the penis, so women who prefer clitoral stimulation just haven't resolved their penis envy). But is it any less tyrannical to flip that around?

To return to Bust, every issue contains a "One-Handed Read," ie a short piece of erotica intended as masturbation fodder. Sometimes, these stories involve a man going down on a woman and asking nothing in return. Which is the fantasy of many, to be sure, but it leaves me cold. "Needs more cock," I say to myself, as though tasting a soup. I mean, I've got lady parts on hand at all times--have clit, will travel. If you're painting me a word-picture...you gotta throw me a bone.

(Badum-ching.)


*Quoth Maureen, "I think it took a really long time for women to realize that the superior kind [of orgasm] is the kind you can actually have."
**For example, upon learning I masturbated regularly, he concluded that my sex life "wasn't doing it" for me. Which is bizarre coming from a guy--don't y'all famously masturbate no matter what? And I believe statistics show that people in relationships jerk off more than single people, regardless of gender, so you'd think someone doing a survey would know that.

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Skate Fast Good, Fall Down Bad!

As some of you know, I have a passion for roller derby. This is not the kind of derby like that in Roll Bounce or whatever--it's the kind from A&E's Rollergirls. Seeing that show a few times whilst in Texas is what got me into it, and when I returned to the Republic of New York I googled the shit out of that sport. No, sadly, I am not a practitioner--I wish! But as I am without time or talent, I must be content to cheer from the bleachers. Which, this Saturday, I did--Championship game! And my favorite team, the Bronx Gridlock, won it all, in a very dramatic game with a miraculous near-comeback from the Queens of Pain--it all came down to the last 2 minutes.

For those unfamiliar, there was an article in the Times on Saturday. I think it's ok, but it makes it sound like it's not a sport, and that the crowd is men who come to gawk. Make no mistake--these women are ATHLETES. It's like rugby on skates, plus fishnets and make-up. Rugby without any assumptions about sexuality. To cite the interview with derby girl Penny Larceny:

Derby originally appealed to Penny as an opportunity to be more social and feminine. Unlike some incoming skaters, Penny had already pursued other aggressive and physical activities such as kickboxing and martial arts, but viewed derby as a way to "reclaim certain girl traits without trading in power. Skirts and makeup to go along with skill and strength, instead of replacing it."

This is the kind of thing I love more than anything. The, "Look, we can be badass and powerful AND be girls!" There's nothing sexualized about a derby match, but the women clearly feel sexy and strong, and there's a lot of individuation--everyone's uniform is a little different, everyone has their own style and personality. There are women of all sizes and shapes (though unfortunately the league is mostly white), and they all have their own strengths.

So yeah, this last game was INCREDIBLE. Bronx was killing Queens, and in the second half Queens was slowly closing the gap but clearly didn't have enough time on the clock to catch up--until Suzy Hotrod... ...scored an incredible FOURTEEN POINTS IN ONE JAM. The score was 93 to 90 Bronx, 1:13 left to go, and all the Bronx jammers were in the penalty box, so Queens was skating unopposed! But then Brigitte Barhot got out of the box and managed to keep Queens at bay! The whole crowd was on its feet.

Another cool part of the game was an exchange I had with my friend Dael:

Dael: Who's the leader of the E Street Band?
Susan: Um, Bruce Springsteen?
D: No, of the actual band.
S: Oh, I dunno. Max Weinberg? Stevie Van Zandt? Those are the only names I know.
D: Who's that guy sitting up there behind us?
S: Oh my god that's Stevie Van Zandt*.

Yep, this guy:

...whom you may also know as Silvio from The Sopranos, was there in all his head-wrapped glory. He was on his own at first but some off-duty derby girls came and sat with him, and he seemed to be very nice. So, that's how cool derby is-- The Boss's right-hand man is a fan!

As you should be, too.

*Full disclosure: I actually went around calling him Steve Zahn most of the night.

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[Some kind of clever title about Halloween and gender roles]

Guess what this post is about!

I've talked about this a lot (in my life, not on the blog). What first put it in my head was Social Psych class sophomore year--every year our brilliant professor assigned a Day of Non-Conformity, in which we all went about doing Non-Conforming things and wrote a page about our experience. He then distributed compiled anonymous snippets of our responses, so we'd get a sense of how it affected people. Well, this happened to coincide with Halloween, and one girl wrote about how Halloween costumes exaggerated gender roles. She wasn't talking about sluttiness, but rather femininity--she dressed as a fairy, and other girls went as ballerinas and whatnot, while guys often wore macho costumes like superheroes.

I read this and thought about all my friends, and what they had worn. Male costumes included: Ziggy-era David Bowie, Barbara Bush, and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro. Female costumes included: all four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Splinter, and a pirate (which I took way too seriously). Some friends' costumes were femme, but didn't particularly emphasize the fact--the female vampire was a vampire, and female. Etc. So my basic conclusion was: I love my friends.

As for my costumes, they tend to be fictional characters who are somehow bad-ass. Usually physically (Xena, American Maid) but sometimes brainily* (Daria, Carmen Sandiego). This year my costume is uncharacteristically "cute," but I love it nonetheless, as the music video the character's is very uplifting. We are all that little bee girl. But the outfit I'm copying is that of a 10-year-old...and guess what, I'm a little older than that. I feel basically naked in the get up, but whatevs. I'm not sure how I feel about the "slutty costumes" issue. I find them lame, but that might be because I'm so into Halloween--I don't like it being used as JUST an excuse to dress slutty. My roommate was explaining** that costumes can be slutty if they're also somehow clever, and I think that's probably my stance: there's nothing wrong with wanting to look sexy, but be original at least! French maid: bad. Slutty Ghostbuster: awesome (especially on a man, which is where I saw that.) I mean, I'm annoyed by straight-from-the-wall-at-Ricky's outfits to begin with, whether they're slutty or not, so that's my bias. So if your French maid costume is HOMEMADE, I'd probably be ok with it. And if you made your own Slutty Ghostbuster, that's extra awesome.



*Yes yes Steve, not a word, I know.
**I think, it was to someone else so I missed half the conversation but she should still get the credit.

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Internalizing. You know, the way drinking arsenic is like internalizing.

As part of a recent post, I went back and read the Amazon online excerpts of He's Just Not That Into You. As you may remember, I took particular exception to the notion that women should never ask men out because if a man is truly into you, he will ask you out. Always. In a timely fashion. Quoth Greg Behrendt:

Many women have said to me, "Greg, men run the world." Wow. That makes us sound pretty capable. So tell me, why would you think we could be incapable of something as simple as picking up the phone and asking you out? You seem to think at times that we're "too shy" or we "just got out of something." Let me remind you: Men find it very satisfying to get what they want. (Particularly after a difficult day of running the world.)

As I said in my previous post, this is very annoying because most of the guys I know often DO feel nervous and shy, and generally think that asking a girl out is scary*. (That passage is also annoying because he's like "aw gee, men don't rule the world, we're not that competent!" and then uses men-ruling-the-world to support his argument.) Maybe it's a generational thing--Behrendt is 44--but as I've said, I know many couples in which the girl made the first move, many guys who are gun shy when it comes to the daunting Ask Her Out thing, and many guys who find it very cool when girls get the ball rolling.

BUT. In rereading all this, I seem to have internalized it. Yes, Susan has a crush, and her crush is flirting with her, and her friends are urging her to casually suggest the time-tested let's-get-coffee-sometime. But if he were interested in more than just flirting, wouldn't HE have made such a suggestion? This is sort of a workplace crush, and I am sort of higher-status, but just nominally. BUT STILL. Please give me your thoughts, and be brutally honest.

A little context: he is age-appropriate and may or may not know how hot he is.



*Because they are normal human beings and asking someone out is, in fact, FRICKIN' SCARY.

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