Pants!

I am currently reading a biography of Luisa Capetillo, a late 19th, early 20th century Puerto Rican feminist and anarcho-syndicalist. She organized strikes, wrote books, and traveled to Mexico, Cuba and the U.S. mainland...but what do people remember most about her?

According to Luisa Capetillo, Pioneer Puerto Rican Feminist:

Historian Angel Quintero Rivera comments, "When we asked the old labor leaders about her, all of them -- without exception -- began by mentioning that she was the first woman in Puerto Rico to wear pants or pant-skirts."

Capetillo was even arrested in Havana for wearing pants and "Causing a Scandal"! Times have changed a lot: now they arrest you if you're NOT wearing pants. Can't people make up their minds?



In addition, Capetillo was also an outspoken advocate of free love.

So you'd figure this pants-wearin', free-lovin' anarchist would have been an early voice for queer rights, right?

WRONG!

Capetillo, in Mi Opinión, a book of essays on feminism, explicitly takes on lesbianism...as a social ill. If human beings practiced free love, Capetillo believed lesbianism -- and masturbation -- would disappear! Women would have a "natural" outlet for their passions, instead of needing to turn to other women or to the 19th century Puerto Rican equivalent of a vibrator (I imagine that would be a woodpecker). Lesbianism and jacking off were unnatural acts in her mind; sex was for reproduction, and was most naturally between a man and a woman.

Capetillo hated the hypocritical priests of the Catholic Church, but clearly her concept of love and sex was heavily influenced by religion. Capetillo's version of free love was serial monogamy.

Free love as defined as "straight people should be able to love who they like, one at a time, within marriage, with certainly no jacking off" seems...quite different from the definition I've acquired from watching PBS documentaries on Woodstock. But Capetillo's Puerto Rico was so prudish that her ideas were as shocking as a bare ankle.

I find it interesting that Capetillo was able to be such a nonconformist, but was still bound by her culture and early upbringing, to such an extent that her ideas on love would seem right-wing today. I think it illustrates how political discussions can be shifted so far off center that any opinion in the opposite direction looks extreme. Perhaps we should not hedge our opinions for fear of being ridiculed as wackos. Go out, wear our pants (or dresses), and not moderate ourselves to the point that we are actually supporting those who would oppose us.

"Transamerica": A Buddy Film for Lifetime Television

"Transamerica" is a very strange film. It is, on the one hand, a completely ordinary road trip/buddy film, starring a television actress and a young actor who kind of reminds me of Shawn from "Boy Meets World". On this particular hand (I think it's my left hand), "Transamerica" is about a very ordinary woman who just happens to be transgender. The movie details her journey of self-discovery as she travels across the United States with her long-lost son, Toby.

Toby is a very ordinary name, by the way. Or at least, hella white (maybe not?).

For an example of this hand, here is the synopsis from Rotten Tomatoes:

Bree is a perfectly adjusted conservative transsexual woman. Born Stanley, a genetic male, she's about to take the final step to becoming the woman Stanley always wanted to be -- until she finds out that she is the parent of a long-lost 17-year-old

Ok. Second hand.

Bree is transexual, and a woman, and conservative, but she is sure as hell NOT well-adjusted. Her every movement screams anxiety and repression. Felicity Huffman does a great job of playing Bree as a nervous wreck, rendered clumsy by fear of not passing.

Even worse off is her son, Toby. He's addicted to presciption painkillers, he was raped by his step-father, and he was picked up by the police for selling his body. His big dream is to be porn star. His biological mom is dead and his biological dad is a transwoman who lies to him and tries to abandon him after bailing him out of jail.



On the first hand, my left hand, Bree is perfectly adjusted and Toby is a Huck Finn-like teenage rebel. On my second hand, these two folks have huge, glaring personal problems. In fact, the more I think about this movie, the more Toby's numerous, long term, gay-for-pay issues overshadow Bree's.

I mean, Bree is doing pretty much ok by the end of the movie. She's had her surgery, and she's out of the back room of the restaurant, waitressing.

Toby meanwhile, is starring in "Cowabunghole", using the same breathy, seductive voice he used on his rapist step-father when he was forced to reunite with him. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: it's ALSO the same voice he uses on Bree, when he unknowingly hits on his biological dad.

Oedipus went through less!

"Transamerica" features a week of Lifetime movies' worth of horrible interpersonal issues...but somehow the tone remains light. It's not because the movie is funny, because it isn't really funny, except for maybe Bree's psychotic, eye-shadow overdosed mother. Who actually isn't funny either, because I know women like that, and they've traumatized me.

I guess how "Transamerica" manages to remain on that first hand is mostly via bright, feminine colors and jaunty country music. I don't even LIKE country music, and I still enjoyed those lively banjo tunes.



What else disturbed me about this movie? Well, there's this weird, freak show scene involving a party full of transfolks. It's really awkwardly inserted into the middle of the road trip, and it seems like it was put there because somebody told the director, "Hey! A lot of folks think transpeople are outlandish! Let's address this with an embarrassing party that totally freaks out Bree!" It wouldn't offend me, except that it's just soooo out of place, and the party-goers come off as jerks in comparison to the "stealth" Bree.

"Transamerica" is, overall, a very ordinary and generic film that just happens to be about a really screwed up teenage boy...and oh yeah, one of his parents is a transwoman. Who is also kind of screwed up, but not as badly.

I give it 2 stars.

1 star for "Felicity Huffman isn't a transwoman?!"
And 1 star for "Toby isn't that bad, either"

Skeletor Supports Homeless Queer Youth; Albany Does Not

My first post for the month of April allows me to introduce a new tag that I will, without a doubt, be using often: he-man!

Coming up this week is "Skeletor Saves", an auction of art based on "He-man and the Masters of the Universe"...and if that isn't awesome enough, it's for a good cause.



You see, for the first time in, let us say, forever, the lazy bastards in New York's state capital passed a budget on time. Of course, no good could come of this. I mean, it's the New York equivalent of hell freezing over. Surely the end times are upon us. All joking aside, Satan's minions in Albany all agreed that cutting half of all state funding for homeless youth was a GREAT idea.

Because you can't raise taxes for millionaires -- that would just be wrong!

The "Skeletor Saves" show's proceeds will go to the Ali Forney Center, a homeless queer youth shelter in Manhattan. Submissions include art by Helmut Lang, Phuc Van Dang, Marc Jacobs, aaaaand Buck Angel, who is more well known for his creative skills in other areas, such as your mom.

The show will be Thursday 4/7/11 from 6-10PM at Headquarters Studios at 385 Broadway, in Manhattan.

The inevitable video:



By the power of GraySkull!