“I love Israel, but as a great fan of pluralist secular democracy, I don’t have faith in nationalist or tribalist solutions for the problems of oppressed and persecuted minorities; I have great faith…in a steadfast, absolute refusal to conflate government with religious principle or ethnic identity. I love Israel, but I am neither a Zionist nor an anti-Zionist; I’m a Diasporan Jew who isn’t willing to say that the history and culture of the Diaspora was merely a long prelude of weakness and misery leading to the founding of a Jewish state and the invention of Jewish military power – I think there are other kinds of power, there’s an alternative history of power to which Jews have made important contributions. Though I think nationalist solutions to the problems of oppressed minorities are usually mistakes, I love Israel, I am moved and excited by its culture, its meaning in Jewish history, but I’m critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people, I’m opposed to the occupation, the settlements, the barrier wall, and attacks on civilians, whether the civilians are Palestinian or Israeli. I love and admire the Palestinians but I believe that in the midst of their suffering some Palestinians have made their own terrible mistakes. I tend to believe that people make mistakes because of their suffering rather than some inherent evil. Threading through all of this error and anger, on the Israeli and Palestinian sides, I see histories of persecution, injustice and suffering in collision.”

Sadly, by morning, my title had been usurped by that stupid gamer forum. ::shakes fist:: But that’s okay, at least I got a screencap of my moment of glory. And with that, I hereby end my quest. This blog will now resume being a infrequently updated catalog of my dull academic pursuits and occasional forays into cooking. The end.

That’s right – yours truly is now number two, three, and four in the listings. At the end of this campaign, I hope to usurp the number one position from that stupid gaming forum. I wish the search terms had been “angry butch dyke,” because I always prefer “dyke” to “lesbian,” but whatever, I will take my Google popularity where I can get it.

As the self Google-appointed expert on being an angry butch lesbian, today I will be writing a critique of the site ranked right below me:

wikiHow: How to Be a Butch Lesbian

Before we get down to the nitty gritty, please be aware that you will be getting advice from someone who looks like this. So, in old school forum parlance, your mileage may vary.

Okay, so, generally this WikiHow isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever read on the internet, but as I once read a fanfic in which the cast of Law & Order: SVU were all 15 and went to a British boarding school, that’s not saying much.

First, I will take their quiz:

Why do you want to be butch?
To fulfill Google’s vision of me, clearly.

Do you feel attractive and natural in this look? Or is this just a cheap scheme to get women’s attention?
Hah! Wait, what? Have you been to a dyke bar lately? Every woman there–butches, femmes, and everyone in between–spent hours picking out the perfect outfit as a cheap scheme to get women’s attention. In the words of my hero, Effing Dykes:

When the first lesbian opened her eyes on the first morning of the dawn of the world, she put on a plaid shirt and walked to the first co-op, where the cute cashier promptly hit on her. They were fruitful and multiplied, and that’s where baby dykes come from.

If it weren’t for these cheap schemes to get women’s attention, there would be no lesbians at all.

Can you handle people knowing about your sexuality? How will others react?
OMG, what if they don’t like MEEEEE!1eleventy!

I would argue that most queers have to make the decision that visibility and honesty is more important to them than safety or acceptance, not just butches, although it is true that butch women take on a greater burden. Of course, the most flaming, twinkiest gay men also take these same risks, so this alone can’t define butch.

Develop more masculine mannerisms

The only part of this paragraph that I completely agree with is “Don’t slouch,” but that’s more of a general rule than a butch rule. And since my working definition of butch seems to be “I know it when I find it attractive” and I find slouching to be a total turn off, I will say that “don’t slouch” is a perfectly fine rule. The rest of the paragraph’s directive to mimic the movements of “popular guys” seems more appropriate for the Drag King Manual than butch instructions. Butch lesbians are cooler than men, therefore they don’t need to study men for tips.

Get some masculine clothing

Okay, I will second the importance of not wearing clip-on ties. The rest, WRONG. A true butch can wear whatever she wants and still be butch. I believe Yoda once said to Princess Leia, “Gold bikinis do not a butch make, but do not a butch unmake. From within comes the butch, not from without.”

Also, every lesbian wears t-shirts with cool designs on them. The butches cannot keep this one to themselves.

Shoes: You really only need 3 pairs: comfy shoes, dress shoes and boots

WRONG. A butch only needs her boots.

Boxers – No butch should wear girly undies.

WRONG. Butches can wear whatever underwear they want. Would you tell this woman “I’m sorry, but your fishnets aren’t very butch”?

No, you wouldn’t say that, because you would be too busy quaking in fear.

As an aside, we went to the opening match of the Toronto Roller Derby last night and it was super fun (except for the snow storm and the fact that the organizers only ordered one pizza at a time for a ravenous crowd of hundreds). I became totally obsessed with Land Shark (pictured above), who was the badass jammer for the Death Track Dolls. I don’t know if she would call herself butch, but at the arena there is a five foot tall photo of her with a mohawk and a face covered in blood, so… whatever she identifies as, she’s fucking hot.

So, returning to the topic of the post, the same rules apply to makeup and short hair. True butches can wear all the makeup and have as much hair as they want. True story: the butchest woman I ever saw was buying a latte in a coffee shop in Cody, Wyoming. She had long blonde hair and I believe she was wearing a pink cowgirl shirt. She also broke mustangs for a living and was 99% pure muscle. ROWR.

Be active. Try to get into a sport or just work out.

Pshaw. While I certainly enjoy a muscular woman, there is no butch imperative to be sporty. Eileen Myles is more butch than all of you, and she’s a chain-smoking poet.

You doubt me? Eileen Myles has been immortalized as a Celebrity Lezbian Fist. Have you been immortalized as a Celebrity Lezbian Fist? You haven’t? Then I’ve made my point.

Be chivalrous and gentleman-like.

Ugh, no, don’t do this. Chivalry=Misogyny. Women don’t like to be treated like small children who can’t take care of themselves. The world should dump “chivalry” in favor of “common human decency.” There’s nothing specifically “gentleman-like” about holding a door or letting a pregnant woman have your seat on the subway. Everyone should do this.

Finally, there are these final tips. This is a touchy subject, for sure, but as your friendly angry neighborhood butch, I am going to dive right in.

Don’t hate men or straight people. This makes you sink to the level of homophobes.

WRONG. I am so sick of this argument! Sigh… where to begin? Straight men have used their dominant position in society to oppress women and queers for centuries. Homophobia has led to queer men and women being beaten, imprisoned, humiliated and murdered. Hating your oppressor for treating you this way does not equal homophobia. I try not to feel hate, but I do feel anger, hence the “angry” in “angry butch lesbian.” When things like this stop happening, I will stop being angry. Which brings us to my final point:

“Angry lesbians” do not attract friends, get good jobs or get girlfriends.

LIES! Angry lesbians may never be popular with the dominant hegemony, however they certainly won’t have trouble attracting friends or girlfriends. Look at me, for instance. I’m totally angry–even Google agrees–but I have great friends and a great girlfriend. Some people even find my anger charming. But it’s not just me. Some women, like Diane Dimassa, have even turned their anger into an entire career. And all lesbians face job discrimination, not just the angry ones. The job discrimination, by the way, is part of the reason we’re angry in the first place.

So that’s it, that’s my advice from an Angry Butch Lesbian. You’re welcome. In conclusion:

As this marks the only time in the history of the world that I will beat out Lillian Faderman in Google search results, I felt it necessary to gloat.

In even more immature news, I added “Michelle Schwartz is an Angry Butch Lesbian” as both the title and alt text for the above screenshot in an attempt to bolster these results up to number one. Angry butch lesbian. Angry butch lesbian. Crawl me Google, crawl me!

For several weeks, a controversy has been brewing. Upset by the mere existence of the exhibit, a right-wing Catholic group stirred up some entirely disingenuous anger over the inclusion of David Wojnarowicz’s video “A Fire In My Belly.” The National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian chose to cave almost immediately to the pressure exerted by a hateful minority, erasing the pain and suffering of AIDS from history, and showing how little has changed between the creation of One Day, This Kid… and now. New York Times writer Frank Rich is absolutely right when he calls it gay bashing.

Now artist A.A. Bronson has requested that his work, “Felix, June 5, 1994″ be removed from the exhibit.

Here is the letter he sent to the Director of the National Portrait Gallery:

Dear Martin Sullivan

I have sent an email to the National Gallery of Canada requesting that they remove my work “Felix, June 5, 1994″ from the “Hide/Seek” exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. I had resisted taking this step, hoping that some reconciliation could be reached regarding the censorship of the David Wojnarowicz video, but it is clear that this is not coming any time soon. As an artist who saw first hand the tremendous agony and pain that so many of my generation lived through, and died with, I cannot take the decision of the Smithsonian lightly. To edit queer history in this way is hurtful and disrespectful.

yours truly,
AA Bronson
Artistic Director

Bronson was a member of the General Idea art collective in Toronto, along with Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal. Partz and Zontal died of AIDS in 1994. Their art, as well as the collective’s papers are housed by the National Gallery of Canada.

Cross-posted to the CLGA Engagement blog

As a queer woman, there was always one thing that I could own that I was certain no one would ever steal from me. Something that was so worthless to the rest of the world, I was positive the media empires would stay far, far away. That thing was “butch.” Butch as a concept is different things to different people. For instance, I have never followed strict codes of butch and femme or set rules for myself or others. For me, the power of butch was in its opposition to societal rules. In our backlash-filled times, the masculine woman is reviled. The woman with no interest in men is ignored. The woman who doesn’t cater to the male gaze, doesn’t stick to her assigned side of the gender binary, and doesn’t behave like a lady – that woman is garbage. And there’s power in that. There’s power in being outside of society. I reveled in my magical land of Gina Gershon movies, lesbian separatist road trips, and dykes on bikes.

But today, the world has tried to take this from me. Today, the world has introduced… butch furniture.

Butch furniture, you ask? Yes, says the New York Times. Butch furniture is when you sell a rusty metal cabinet for $13,500 or screw together some rough wood planks for $10,000. Butch furniture is made by men for rich people.

At first I thought they were just using the word “butch” innocently. Like, maybe after last week’s Men’s Fashion issue blew through five gajillion iterations of the word “masculine,” the editor picked up a thesaurus, saw “butch,” and went with that.

But no, they are using butch in the queer sense. Except there isn’t a lesbian or even a woman in sight. The article even goes so far as to quote someone as saying “One man’s butch is another man’s femme” [emphasis mine]. The author then sets the “butch” furniture in opposition to “sissy” furniture, with absolutely no understanding of the hateful, homophobic history of the word “sissy.”

Finally, and most enragingly, the author goes on to quote Judith “Jack” Halberstam as saying “It’s an old term, but it’s still brimming with meaning. Today, I would define it as a counter-gender identity.” Clearly failing to learn anything from that statement, the author ends the article with this:

Mr. Moss would agree. “I thought about this a lot,” he said. “I used the term ‘butch,’ versus ‘masculine’ or ‘tough’ or ‘manly,’ because what I mean by this is work that is stereotypically considered manly, but expressed by a personality that is stereotypically considered sensitive or feminine.”

In other words, an artist.

But only, of course, if you’re a man.

[This post also appeared on Shameless]

This is what it looked like when I sent it:

So it arrived at her local post office a few weeks later, but she could never pick it up, owing to the fact that the shithole post office in Brooklyn is only open weekdays from nine to five. Y’know, the same exact hours people are at work. So they informed her they sent it back. I had just about given up on seeing it again, being that it’s almost three MONTHS later, but today I got a package slip telling me to pick up my returned package at the post office. When I get there, they tell me I have to pay them another NINE DOLLARS to pick up the package I already paid them to fail to deliver.

They handed me a box that looked like it had been used for a game of soccer. Mind you, I had shipped this package in a Canada Post box that I bought for the purpose, so it wasn’t some crappy piece of weak cardboard. And I wrapped it and taped it and packaged it really well.

But this is what it looked like when it came back:

And this is what was left inside:

To say I’m upset is an understatement. It is hard work making those cats and it’s a labor of love. It takes me hours and hours and it’s not like I have a lot of free time. Y’know, I just wanted to do something nice for my friends and raise some money for charity and have some fun and this is just… so depressing and discouraging and miserable. And I had to pay $20 for the privilege.

I hate you, Canada Post.

I don’t think you’re a bad guy. Yeah, you’re big business and a Republican, a combination that would normally inspire a knee jerk reaction of the highest power from a pinko such as myself. You were the first, and probably last, Republican I ever voted for, and generally you’ve been okay. Maybe I’ve been fooled. Maybe you just seemed alright in comparison to the fascist rule of Rudy. Maybe I’ve misjudged you from the very beginning. But maybe I haven’t, maybe you’re not all bad. So Mayor Bloomberg, I’m begging you – if you really love New York and you want it to live forever as a place of importance and magic and inspiration, preserve and enforce the zoning laws that are keeping the city from becoming nothing more than a generic Midwestern mall.

When I was a kid, my mother would ask me if I knew why New York special. Her answer to this all important question was “Because no matter what you’re looking for, you can find it here.” It didn’t matter that other cities were growing in size or investing in fancy new waterfronts or shopping districts, they would never be New York, because none of them would ever have the diversity. My mother’s examples proving her theory were manifold. You want a rare orchid? The Flower District. Homemade ravioli? Little Italy. Rare books, Jewish deli, discount ballet tickets, imported Japanese mushrooms, the perfect cocktail dress or the best cheesecake you’ll ever eat? My mother knew where to get all these things. A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, my mother was particularly fond of the Garment District. Did you break the button on your favorite coat? You could find an exact match to replace it in the Garment District, and while you were there you could marvel at the stores selling nothing but lace, nothing but buttons, nothing but zippers, nothing but bolts of satin in every color imaginable. New York, my mother intoned with gravity, was ten years ahead of everyone else in fashion. New York had things you couldn’t even imagine.

Then, of course, the money showed up. Now, I’m sure there will be a whole host of people who will argue that New York was dead and gone in the Seventies. Or the Eighties. Or the Nineties. Or after 9/11. In fact, I can’t even pinpoint the moment things changed for the worst. The moment the balance tipped and there were more chain restaurants and ATMs and shiny glass condos than there were independent shops and marginally affordable housing. I don’t know when that happened exactly. All I know is that it happened and it, for lack of a better word, sucks.

Now, Mayor Bloomberg, I am not arguing for a return to the terrible riots of the Seventies or the poverty and the drug epidemics of the Eighties. I don’t think it was so bad to clean the peep shows out of Times Square and sell it off to Disney. I don’t think it’s so terrible that Tompkins Square Park got a new dog park and fewer smack dealers. I do have a sense of perspective about this seemingly endless gentrification, I swear, I do. But I also don’t think that letting Manhattan become a vastly overpriced playground for billionaires was a great idea, either.

I thought perhaps the bursting of the real estate bubble would lower rents and allow some businesses to hang on, but was dismayed to learn the exact opposite. Landlords are increasingly insisting on signing leases only with national chains, chains that are snapping up real estate while it’s cheap. Out go more businesses based in New York, in come more international conglomerates that you can find all over the world. By the time the economy picks up, the only thing left standing will be thousands of Dunkin Donuts kiosks. This shouldn’t be allowed, Mr. Bloomberg. You should be sponsoring initiatives to support New York business owners. You should be helping to keep New York from looking like just any overpriced mall. New York is famous for being different, not exactly the same.

I was infuriated to learn, Mayor, of your plan to force the Garment District into one measly building, crushing factory owners, seamstresses, designers and store owners. All for what? Another glass condo and another overpriced restaurant? What would New York have been without the fashion industry? Why would anyone even want to live in a city devoid of all personality or history, full of no one but the exceptionally rich and the exceptionally boring?

Stop this nonsense, Mayor Bloomberg, and save New York.

Sincerely,
Michelle Schwartz

I have been looking for an excuse to do some more feminist adbusting since Your Mom Had Groupies, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Thus, I present a new ad campaign that I like to call Take A Beach Stroll With Sally (Click the image to make it bigger):

Or, if you don’t feel like spending your day messing around with Photoshop, you can just tell Bacardi exactly how you feel about their new campaign.

EDIT: Sources in Israel (oooh, I love saying that) have informed me that this is an old campaign, dating from 2007 or 2008. They are not sure if it was dropped by the company or even if it was ever officially used by Bacardi. McCann Digital is an Internet exclusive ad agency known for its disgustingly offensive campaigns. McCann recently listed the ad campaign on Best TV Now, dating it as being from this month and listing the client that commissioned it as Tempo.

Possibly, and this is entirely my speculation, it was going to be submitted to the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Does anyone else have any clues? I, for one, would love to hear from Bacardi on the matter. Adbusting remains very satisfying, whatever the response.

EDIT: McCann has pulled the promotional minisite down and removed it from their website! Heh, feminists either crashed their site or… they feared the bad press. I wonder…

EDIT: An apology (Corporations apologize? I have never heard of such a thing!) from Bacardi can be seen in the comments. Also, the lovely Mir submitted her own ad-busted version of this ad, which I think is hilarious (and suffering from far fewer rage issues than my own: