Marriage, shmarriage… (Carrie Prejean vs. Perez Hilton)
April 23, 2009
Legal same-sex marriage has come to fruition in some of our United States. Not because everybody believes that all people should be allowed to enter into a marriage contract with their person of choice and receive equal rights and privileges under the law alongside heterosexuals, but because some people do. And gay rights activists should be proud of their achievement, which seems to be growing and spreading into the most unexpected places. To recap: same-sex marriage is currently legal in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and will soon be legal in Iowa (April 27, 2009) and Vermont (September 1, 2009).
Connecticut? The stingy, puritanical state with the highest average rate of per capita income (as of 2007, according to the United States Commerce Department) and the low average rate of pre-tax income charitable giving (1.3 percent as of 2005 according to Forbes.com)? Iowa? The seemingly conservative state nestled snugly in the Bible Belt?
Of course, I’m generalizing, which is unfair. While some people who live in these states may be opposed to same-sex marriage, others are not…though neither belief can be said to define the whole state in question. What this legality means for American homosexuals is that they will soon be able to live in legal matrimony in four states where heterosexuals must – by law – tolerate them. This is progress and it is good.
Unfortunately - even though he might have good intentions - the celebrity gossip blabbermouth known as Perez Hilton has set this progress back a bit by refusing to exercise tolerance for those with a different perspective. Apparently it’s all or nothing with him. As a judge at the 2009 Miss USA Pageant on April 19, Hilton posed a question regarding same-sex marriage to contestant Carrie Prejean, Miss California. Here’s her response:
Well I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. Um, we live in a land that you can choose same sex marriage or opposite marriage and, you know what, in my country and in, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think that it should be between a man and a woman.
Needless to say, out-and-proud Hilton was not pleased with her response and responded by calling her a “dumb bitch” on his blog the following day. He later “apologized” for his attack saying that he was “just soooo angry, hurt, (and) frustrated by her answer.” He took down his initial post but has left this reminder of its sting:
Carrie Prejean, according to Perez Hilton
See, to me, that illustration is much more offensive than her remarks at the pageant. (I think that image implies that she may have gotten to the top of the pageant circuit by “alternative means.”) Let me explain how her remarks don’t justify the shock and disdain they were greeted by. For starters, it seems to me that Prejean championed the equal rights of homosexuals saying, “I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other,” referring to the choice of marrying a person of either one’s own or opposite sex. Furthermore, her personal belief that the word “marriage” is applicable to heterosexual unions ONLY is the majority viewpoint in this country, though it doesn’t mean that most Americans (Prejean included) advocate hatred. According to one recent poll, while 60 percent of the country is in favor of some kind of legal union between homosexuals, only one third of Americans support same-sex marriage. Even our liberal political pantheon (the Clintons, the Obamas, the Bidens, etc.) don’t advocate same-sex “marriage.” But Miss California: she’s the real villain? From where she stands, she has no ability to impact laws and amendments to the Constitution, crown or no crown.
This issue is truly semantic. As a non-Christian, should I transition the label of my union from “marriage” to “civil union” because I’m not religious, even though I am married to someone of the opposite sex? Marriage, shmarriage… It doesn’t matter to me what you call it; I want everybody to have the right to do it. I feel the same way about polygamy. As long as my tax dollars aren’t supporting the wives and children that a polygamous husband chooses to ignore financially – and as long as there’s no abuse involved, sexual or otherwise – why can’t polygamists have the “marriage” they want?
It seems that Hilton – who is himself the beneficiary of the free speech amendment as a blogger who often has less than eloquent things to say about people in the public eye – is not in favor of free speech for people who don’t share his opinions.
Or perhaps this whole thing is just a publicity stunt?
If that’s the case, and nobody’s feelings are really hurt, then this incident is upsetting me on several levels. In the first place, it’s taking attention from “real” news that’s more important: the state of the economy, women’s rights in the Middle East – and everywhere, new advances in the fields of science and technology, etc. The fact that CNN has devoted so much of its air time to this fiasco – booking Hilton on Larry King Live, for one thing – demonstrates once again the way this news network has devolved to tabloid journalism. (Good thing I don’t work for CNN, or it might have fired me for that declaration just like it did Chez Pazienza! Check out his blog. It’s definitely a better click than the one you might make to Hilton’s blog.) Hopefully this story will get lost in the haze of what CNN considers to be newsworthy: “Octomom” and her antics, tracking the outcome of reality television competitions, and the comings and goings of Sarah Palin and her daughter’s ex-fiance, to name a few of its hot topics.
But what REALLY bugs me about this is the fact that it forces me – a feminist blogger – to defend a beauty queen: a woman participating in a competition that reduces her to the status of an inanimate object. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not that kind of feminist. If Prejean is happy doing what she is, then I believe she should enjoy herself and I’m sorry that expressing her personal opinion may have cost her first place in the Miss USA Pageant. I’m the kind of feminist who thinks women should do whatever makes them happy without harming others: from raising kids to performing in porn movies to running businesses to running for President… But Prejean is not the person we should be listening to when we want to have a serious discussion about issues like same-sex marriage. She’s not qualified to make decisions about that for the mindless idiots who might hear her answer and agree with it because she’s very pretty! That spot should be reserved for somebody who has considered both sides of the argument and can render a “fair” decision, or at least for somebody who is prepared to answer the question with clarity. In a beauty pageant, the questions are a surprise.
Come to think of it, I don’t think Hilton should be the one to represent the gay community either. He’s definitely not qualified. And he’s made it his mission to “out” suspected homosexuals claiming that it’s their duty to be out and proud the way he is. There’s such a thing as personal privacy, Hilton. You’re not calling these alleged “closeted homosexuals” on their hypocrisy; you’re robbing them of their privacy. If I were a member of this community, I would resent the fact that Hilton has positioned himself as a gay crusader of sorts and despotically seized the spotlight as a representative of my cause. For me, this would be like waking up one otherwise average day to find out that I am being represented – as a feminist – by Ann Coulter. I don’t agree with anything she stands for – just the fact that she stands tall in her beliefs, so I would feel horrible if hers was the standard feminism by which mine was judged.
I aspire to live in a time and place where everybody can be who they are without criticism for it, and they don’t require the attention of others to validate their sameness or contrarily their uniqueness: where – as Gore Vidal envisioned – we will not be labeled as “homosexual” or “heterosexual” people for the homosexual or heterosexual acts we do.
Somebody whose take on same-sex marriage I would have liked to have heard perished on April 12 at the age of 58. Queer Theory “founder” Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick – who died from breast cancer (a disease that I’m convinced would cease to be the rampant epidemic that it is if it affected more men) - was apparently a straight girl like me, but one who posed interesting ideas about Jane Austen and masturbation, as well as insightful observations about the male characters in the works of Henry James, and more. Sedgwick thought that it is dismissive to read only heterosexual intent in the established literary canon, and reductive to assign the label “homosexual” to that same body of work. Instead, consider sexuality as if it were something elastic and something that has nothing to do with the words society uses to define it. The same thing can be said for gender: it doesn’t exist except for what we – as a collective society – say it means (masculine means strong/aggressive, feminine means weak/passive etc.). Sedgwick – having considered all of the relative social issues – is somebody I’d have liked to hear discussing gay rights issues, rather than the bland and beautiful Prejean or the offensive and rigid Hilton.
Perhaps Boy George said it best: There’s this illusion that homosexuals have sex and heterosexuals fall in love. That’s completely untrue. Everybody wants to be loved.
…even Prejean with her unattractive perspective. …even Hilton with his vulgar scribbles.
Did Susan Boyle have something to prove?
April 16, 2009
I’ve never seen American Idol or most of its counterparts. Let’s just say that reality television isn’t really my thing. It doesn’t make me feel good about myself to watch other people make fools of themselves before a large studio audience and the masses watching from home. I’m not “above” it; I just don’t like it. I take the contestants’ public humiliation personally.
I stumbled across the “singing sensation” Susan Boyle and her rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” on CNN.com while perusing the news. People have posted her Britain’s Got Talent performance on YouTube and the video has garnered more than 12 million views (as of 12 p.m. EST 4/16/09) in less than a week. Now, there’s talk of her winning the top prize in the competition and the possibility of her performing in person for Queen Elizabeth II as a reward. She’ll also cut a record, perhaps before she officially wins.
Why is this clip popular?
It’s a matter of opinion, but some say her voice is “extraordinary.” By that reasoning, millions of viewers have tuned in to listen, not to mock.
But I believe the real reason this video is popular is the same reason I shared it with my husband and watched it three times myself: joy! Oh, it is joyful! It’s a perfect, little narrative of an underdog rubbing smug spectator cynicism in their smug spectator faces. Boyle is set up to fail. She confidently marches out on stage and takes her place at its center. All eyes are on her - the self-proclaimed never-been-kissed, 47-year-old unemployed charity worker from Blackburn, West Lothian, Scotland, who lives alone with her cat. People in the audience roll their eyes and snicker thinking, “This old hag hasn’t got what it takes; just look at her!”
Just look at her.
Susan Boyle, Singing Sensation
It would seem that Boyle had something to prove: she had to prove that she could sing…well. Not just because she’d stepped up to the plate and promised that she could. Not just because all eyes were on her, by her own choice. The main reason she had something to prove to us – the viewers and consequently her judges – is because she is (arguably) ugly. “Just look at her,” we tell ourselves when watching the YouTube clip, feeling superior in our state of moderate attractiveness. “She’s too ugly to be a really good singer. Nobody has ever kissed her. Nobody ever will. And now, sadly, the whole world will know about this pathetic loser because she’s deluded enough to believe that she can sing. Hah! She should have stayed home.”
And then she did sing…and everybody – including the prejudging judges such as hateful Simon Cowell – melted into her song and forgave her for looking the way that she does.
When I shared the video with my husband, I cried. Oh, the joy of seeing and hearing Boyle’s prejudgers respectively drop their jaws and eat their words! “I like her,” my husband said. “I like her confidence.”
I realized that sometimes I forget that my husband, in his quietness, has the most noble thoughts of anybody I know. He never looked at Boyle and thought to himself, “She’s too ugly to sing.”
He never thought that the standards of beauty that keep Angelina Jolie in film roles and Jessica Simpson in a perpetual state of body weight scrutiny would limit this jolly woman’s vocal abilities. He never questioned her: if she claims she can sing, then she can.
I didn’t consciously prejudge her either, but I did find myself falling into the mob’s mentality, and all of the laughing and hissing and eye rolling convinced me that what was about to happen was going to be terrible – even painful – to hear. And then afterward, the mob would huddle together and say, “I knew she couldn’t sing. Just look at her!”
Just look at her.
We have become so conditioned to value a person’s worth by his or her appearance that we forget that vocal ability has nothing to do with hip measurements, skin clarity or fashion sense. Vocal ability has nothing to do with what’s on the outside and everything to do with what’s on the inside: the size and shape of one’s vocal chords and lungs, the size and shape of one’s heart… But American Idol voters often consider looks and not just talent when they vote. I can’t say for sure because I don’t watch, but from what I hear around the water cooler I have discerned that people watch the show to mock appearances more than to celebrate ability, raw and trained alike. And beauty standards are higher for women than they are for men.
My first reaction to Susan Boyle’s performance was smiles and tears. I was ecstatically happy for her: she proved the naysayers wrong.
But when the first judge told her that she had handed him the biggest surprise of the competition, I felt sick to my stomach, and that queasy feeling continues today. Basically, that judge was telling her two things: “You look like you can’t sing and if you didn’t surprise us with your good voice, we would laugh at you and consider you worthless.”
And if Boyle hadn’t wowed them all with her talent, and they had laughed at her instead of cheered, what would have happened to her? Would she have lost that self-respect, which my husband praised her for and which carried her to the competition and onto the stage in the first place? Would she have cried as the audience continued to laugh and jeer? Would she have traveled home to her cat Pebbles and gassed herself with her oven in a fit of self-loathing?
Somewhere, in that audience or watching on television or YouTube, there is a person (or two) who is less than conventionally beautiful and who additionally can’t sing well. What can that person do to prove his or her worth? Nothing?
The things I value in my loved ones can’t be performed on stage or seen on television. My husband’s ability to discern Boyle’s “best” quality is what makes him dear to me. And where I love, I find beauty…and he is beautiful to me because I love him.
Perhaps because she can sing beautifully, someone will kiss Susan Boyle sometime soon. But if she had failed on that stage and suffered our scorn and righteous indignation…then it’s doubtful that anybody would kiss her, isn’t it? That’s tragic. The real reason she should be loved by others is for her self: her confidence, her humor and her love for humanity.
I hope she knows that she had nothing to prove to us beyond the boundaries of her vocal ability; she only had something greater – something about her character – to prove to herself. And she proved she is brave just by getting up on that stage and singing, however skillfully (or unskillfully, if that’s your opinion). If people are tuning in to listen to her song in droves in order to experience vicariously the joy of her achievement rather than gawk at her “unlikeliness” to achieve it, then that’s a very good thing indeed.
Legal rape in Afghanistan?
April 9, 2009
When I go to bed at night, I have the luxury of falling asleep. I use the word “luxury” because this option is not always available for some women; and it looks as though married women in Afghanistan may be prohibited by law from falling asleep when their heads hit their pillows in the near future. There will be no “Honey, I have a headache” reprieve for these unlucky ladies, whether they have headaches or just say they do because they lack that special tingling sensation between their legs.
According to CNN and other news outlets, the Afghan parliament recently passed a bill – with good intentions - that may inadvertently harm the rights of women. “(C)ritics say the latest draft (of the bill) strips Shia women of rights as simple as leaving the house without permission from a male relative and as extreme as allowing a man to have sexual intercourse with his wife even when she says, ‘No.’
These critics wonder how what amounts to rape in marriage could be passed by parliament and signed into law by President Hamid Karzai.”
Last weekend, Karzai explained that key elements of the bill have been misinterpreted by western observers stating, “We understand the concerns of our allies and the international community. Those concerns may be due to an inappropriate, not-so-good translation of the law.”
That begs the question: what is there to misinterpret? Either husbands can rape their wives or they can’t according to law. There’s a clear distinction between the two.
Karzai also vowed to consider the bill against the nation’s constitution, which allegedly requires equal rights to both sexes. According to the Times Online, “(t)he Afghan Government is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which enshrines equality in dignity and rights regardless of religion or sex. Article 22 of the Afghan Constitution also explicitly reiterates the equality of men and women before the law.”
(Pause for hysterical laughter – the kind that makes you pee a little – and rolling around on the floor.)
Women do not exercise equal rights with men in this nation. If the Afghan government is even considering such a legal measure, then women are not on equal terms with men.
Let’s review the evidence, shall we?
Under the Taliban regime (1996-2001), women were not allowed to leave their homes without a male escort and girls were not permitted to go to school. While some things may have improved for women since the overthrow of the Taliban, Amnesty International (AI) reported in 2005 that “Afghanistan is in the process of reconstruction after many years of conflict, but hundreds of thousands of women and girls continue to suffer abuse at the hands of their husbands, fathers, brothers, armed individuals, parallel legal systems, and institutions of the state itself such as the police and the justice system. There are reported increases in forced marriages; some women in difficult situations have even killed themselves to escape such a heinous situation whilst others burn themselves to death to draw attention to their plight.” AI, which campaigns for universal human rights, found that violence against women in Afghanistan was widely tolerated by the community and widely practiced by men as recent as four years ago.
According to the Pajhwok Afghan News, as translated by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, in 2006 “(s)exual abuse, murder and other crimes of different types (we)re increasing in the Northern provinces of Afghanistan” where violence against women has reached levels as high as 80 percent of women being victimized.
Under the Taliban, women were required to wear blue burqas which covered their bodies from head to toe except for a net-like fabric that covered their eyes permitting them to see the world through a translucent barrier. According to the CNN article, those burqas are still worn today.
AI - which also proclaims on its Web site that many women’s rights advocates living in Afghanistan have faced death threats, kidnapping attempts, physical attacks and even death, while others have fled their homes – released a statement saying it is opposed to the “rape law” because it will “seriously undermine women’s rights for millions of Afghanistan women.” Reached for a comment, United States President Barack Obama called the law “abhorrent.” (I guess that lame reaction is better than saying the law is ”really, really bad.”)
Considering the other side of this issue means wondering who are these men who would benefit from such a law. What kind of person wants to rape another person? Is it something men are capable of on a large scale? When I think again about my own right to sleep, I think about how the sexuality I’ve experienced has mostly been based upon mutual enjoyment. Do men in Afghanistan enjoy having sex with women who don’t also enjoy the experience?
In Saudi Arabia, men and women are prohibited from mingling in public. Apparently that hasn’t kept men from trying to interact with burqa-clad women by commingling their dogs. As of July, 2008, the selling of dogs and cats as pets, as well as the walking of such pets in public places, is illegal in the Saudi capital city of Riyadh. In March, a Saudi court ordered the lashing and exile of a 75-year-old woman for mingling inside her home.
Perhaps, in Islamic countries where men and women are kept entirely segregated or where men cannot even see women, their sexuality has been warped to the point where they consider themselves entitled to sex even when subordinate females do not want it too. I’m just speculating, of course. But we do know that some people in these countries have access to the Internet; and where there’s Internet, there’s the capacity for looking at and downloading pornography, some of which is very degrading to women. Often times, such imagery reduces women to the status of inanimate objects. Sexuality, when it is forbidden, can often become corrupted by pornography-fueled imaginations; imaginations that later create insatiable appetites for sexuality that can be unpleasant for some.
The bottom line is that Afghanistan is not a happy home for most of its women, especially those who find themselves beaten or burned when they disobey their husbands or fathers. Legalizing spousal rape is only one more step in the direction of the total annihilation of women’s rights in this country.
If you value your unburned skin, intact bones, revealing clothing or right to a good night sleep, then help the cause to stop violence against women throughout the world. Act locally by volunteering to help at a shelter for homeless or abused women and children, just like my friend M****. Donate food so that they can eat well while they recover. Or – if you’re a busy working woman like me – make a monetary donation to AI by visiting its Web site.
I just made a $20 contribution. It’s not much but I feel a little better.
By the way - as I just found out on Feministing - spousal rape only became entirely illegal in the U.S. as of 1993. This issue affects more women than just those in Afghanistan and other Islamic nations.
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