Sixième

Friday was a harbinger of empowerment. I attended San Francisco's Critical Mass which haphazardly intersected up with the trans-march at two different points during the evening. I have never seen as many people riding together on bicycles as I did yesterday. There were literally thousands of us maneuvering through the tightly packed lanes. We started at the northeast end of Market street and proceeded to ride on a roundabout route through downtown, along Broadway, through a couple of tunnels, over to the Mission and Dolores Park where we had our first encounter with the trans-march, and finally after a loop through the Haight we met up with them again.







I then joined the trans-march. The route circled through the Castro, went down Market and then back to Dolores Park. The Trans March is a grassroots community building political event, celebrating and welcoming transgender people of all types, and their supportive allies. The march was meant to demonstrate Trans visibility, inclusiveness, and civil rights. The march marked the start of Pride Weekend in San Francisco. The theme of this year's march was "Marching for a Gender Inclusive ENDA", The objective was to bring a focus on transgender civil rights and to encourage the support of the broader LGBT ‘community.’ The keynote speaker for this year's event was be Donna Rose, the former HRC board member who resigned over the exclusion of Trans=people from the 2007 Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).







There were so many immaculate, customized bicycles and beautiful people to look at it was practically overwhelming.

Ccinquième(s) et un

Gender Guesser. I came across this online application that supposedly guesses the "gender" of the individual who wrote whatever text you enter into the system. It is highly problematic for a plethora of reasons, the most obvious of which includes their lack of distinction between sex and gender. They also profile "female" writing as weak and fiction-like, while they profile "male" writing as strong and nonfiction-like. It is apparent that their methods are inherently flawed as their historical frame of reference is the British National Corpus, which like most literary canons writes out the female by normalizing the male. Additionally, access to resources and institutions has historically favored males. The except below interests me because it reinforces the importance of subjectivizing maleness/masculinity, and subsequently rescinding the normative/hegemonic position they hold.

In particular, we find significant differences between male- and female-authored documents in the use of pronouns and certain types of noun modifiers: although the total number of nominals used by male and female authors is virtually identical, females use many more pronouns and males use many more noun specifiers. More generally , it is found that even in formal writing, female writing exhibits greater usage of features identified by previous researchers as "involved" while male writing exhibits greater usage of features which have been identified as "informational". Finally, a strong correlation between the characteristics of male (female) writing and those of nonfiction (fiction) is demonstrated.

For further reading, check out the full paper.

Ccinquième(s)

I moved my stuff into Bus Stop House at 2332 Fulton [& Stanyon] San Francisco, CA. I had quite an enjoyable evening. There was some bomb-ass food at the potluck and I met so many excellent new people. We made some scrumptious wheat flour pancakes this morning and French-pressed a like 3 pitchers of Fazenda Esperança.



View Larger Map

Wrote out some more questions for my interviews. Let me know what you think.
________________________________________________________________

Do you think there are specific symbolic practices, rituals and discourses which effectively promote bonding of identity-based groups in opposition to a hegemonic social order? Do these promote an internal equality or serve rather as merely a mythical rhetoric within that oppositional discourse? For example: patriarchal dynamics within queer contexts, authentic versus inauthentic aesthetics of queerness, etc.

Does this sort of nationalism of the sexual subaltern, the sexual ‘other’ in some ways promote the hetero/homo binary that queer theory seeks to dismantle?

Does the ‘shock’ aesthetic of queer direct action pose a serious threat to the status quo or act as merely another disruptive spectacle amongst many? For example, during the carnival atmosphere of pride parade.

While the purposes of the solidarity of the signified in a political context might be to remain as a permanent site of contest , those that view, understand or receive the event may well opt to understand those involved as constituting coherent subjects with fixed unquestionable identities based not on an opposition to intersectional hegemonies, but on their coherent ‘disruptive’ aesthetic. That a coalitional group can be read against their intentions shores up potential identitarian subversion, and forecloses the possibility for those who cannot affiliate with the presumed identities from joining that seemingly unified coalition.

What are your thoughts on the argument that males are no less gendered than females or that masculinity is no less a social construction or performative masquerade than is femininity?

Is this complacent with the assumption that men and women are equally installed into symmetrically gendered positions?

Does the social and symbolic process of gendering sexed bodies maintain unequal and asymmetrical relations of power?

To leave masculinity unstudied is to leave it naturalized and thus render it less permeable to change. A ‘gender studies’ that focuses on masculinity can designate the critical process by which males learn from feminism in order to subvert the perpetuation/reproduction of normative/hegemonic masculinity.

How might a pro-feminist reconstitution or reconfiguration of male subjectivity proceed? I would argue that it must begin with prefiguring a variable masculine aesthetic that can operate either independently from or in conjunction with the phallic male body. This initial recognition of a variable masculine aesthetic as separate from the phallic male body allows for interrogating hegemonic/normative organs operating with outside and through the body. Only then can the body be reinscribed with what Lee Edelman calls, “A category-subverting alterity within the conceptual framework of the masculine.”

Is there an aversion to penetratrability or to vulnerability associated with masculinity? Does this prevent self-identifying men from embodying feminist struggles?

Catherine Waldby writes that “anal eroticism carries disturbing feminizing connotations” in our society. Could the male anus have the potential to become a site of significant disturbance and deconstruction of hegemonic/normative masculinity? I believe it could because it allows access to the vulnerable interior space. It deterritorializes male bodies and masculinity, extracting and projecting sexed and gendered bodies from patriarchal, normative histories.

It is the constitutive relationship between misogyny and homophobia in the formation of the ‘properly’ phallic, straight male subjects that makes the link between feminism and queer theory crucial for those interested in de-forming and transforming masculinity.

Quatrième et deux

FIX PUSH



Love it.

Also, this is sort of eerie, but really funny: Made: I Wanna Be a Hipster.

Quatrième et un

BIKE RIDE!

Riding the hills of San Francisco on a brake-less track bike geared at 49x17 is incredibly dangerous, hard, and fun.


View Larger Map

Kentaro showed me around Oakland and Berkeley. The town are weird little suburban-ish enclaves of hippie-dippy types, liberals and breeders. It sort of reminds me of Vermont. There were all sorts of quirky stores selling items ranging from strange to useless. The Berkeley campus is beautiful. Its the perfect amalgam or "mash up" of classical institutional architecture and nature. We had some excellent pizza after hunting unsuccessfully for the vegan donut shop. Kentaro had to go to work so I followed him back into the city.





I then decided I wanted to go to the Golden Gate Bridge. There were some seriously fucking steep grades on the way there and back. check it out:













As they say out here on the west coast, it was a "hella tight" ride.

Quatrième

On Saturday I went to a weekly Gay shame meeting where I found out about the Worst of SF 2008 Awards Ceremony. The info on it is as follows and the photos are below. It was quite fierce.

Mission Statement: To raise awareness and galvanize San Francisco communities that are inspired by local current and critical issues by use of targeted, public action.

Awarding Those Responsible for Destroying SF Neighborhoods!

WHO: a coalition of social awareness groups concerned about the on-going destruction of San Francisco's low and middle class neighborhoods through real estate speculation. Coalition members include: Gay Shame, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Queer Anti-Displacement Coalition, A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, Freedom Socialist Party, Radical Women, Pride At Work, CitiSTOP, St. Peter's Housing Committee, Castro Residents for Fair Housing, Brass Liberation Orchestra, Tenant Attorney Phil S. Horne, Activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca, members of the Harvey Milk Democratic Club, and representatives of the San Francisco Community Land Trust.

WHAT: Mock, outdoor public awards ceremony to "honor" greedy landlord speculators most responsible for the gentrification and destruction of San Francisco's communities. This is done with a spirit of community, FUN, and the opportunity to deliver a spectacular, FREE public show. We encourage "campy" themes and attitudes: (i.e.) drag outfits, colorful costumes, fierce attitudes, and outrageous behavior. The event will be filmed by a documentary filmmaker, which will be shared through internet distribution and local screenings in order to raise awareness.

WHEN: Saturday, June 21st at 8:00 p.m.

WHERE: Harvey Milk Plaza at Castro and Market in San Francisco (

WHY: To stand up against gentrification by landlord speculators who are destroying our neighborhoods and communities.









XO
MC