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sorcyressSo, there was this recent post on Shakesville, talking about some sort of controversy going on with Katy Perry appearing on Sesame Street. The gist of that appears to be that Ms. Perry appeared wearing a slightly but not overly scandalous outfit (her "dress-up" clothes) and so many many parents complained about OMG TEH BOOBIES that Sesame Street decided it will not actually put that clip on the air. The post itself is interesting, but completely tangental to what I'd like to talk about1.
Because, see, the author of that post linked to a 1995 song by Jill Sobule called "I Kissed a Girl", in reference to it being the song she was familiar with when people started talking a lot about Katy Perry and her 2008 hit by the same title. So, never having heard Sobule's song, I pranced off to YouTube, and found it to be a cute and sweet little folkish ballad about how nice it is to kiss girls sometimes.
Except for one problem. I am apparently very passionate about this, so I'm going to try and say it as clearly and as explicitly as I possibly can:
If you engage in sexual behaviors without first negotiating that they are acceptable to your partner(s), that is cheating, and you should feel bad.
Now, we don't know for certain that Jill, or her kissworthy companion (Jenny) don't have their relationships structured such that they can indulge in happily kissing each other as often as they want. It would indeed be a horrible oversight on my part2 to ignore the potential that Jill and Larry and Jenny and Fred are a happy little poly-web, and open to the idea of any of them kissing whomever, that they would like. However, I find this situation to be somewhat unlikely, especially in light of the second verse:
...guilt, huh Jenny? Why, what on Earth would you have to be guilty about, you are just at Jill's house and the two of you were kissing, and that's totally okay with your partner, right? ...right?
I am unimpressed.
And what this really did for me was click together a big problem I have with pop-culture. In Perry's "I Kissed a Girl", you have the chorus "I kissed a girl and I liked it, hope my boyfriend don't mind it" emphasis mine. In the video for The Dresden Dolls' "Backstabber", you have Amanda expressing anger over finding the names of other girls tattooed on Brian, and Brian expressing anger over finding the names of other boys tattooed on Amanda3, but Brian is completely fine with the idea of finding a girl's name tattooed on Amanda. In some poly relationships, you find the idea of a "One Penis Policy", that a female partner may have as many other female partners as she wishes, but only one male. In short, girls are allowed to make out with girls, and it will not negatively impact the established, heterosexual relationship(s).
To put it in a more cynical and bitter fashion, girls are allowed to kiss girls, because it's not like there could be any *real* feelings between women4. If two women are kissing, or dating, or having sex, that's not intimidating to the men in their lives because it is impossible for women to have intimacy with each other, or to fall in love, or to have the same kind of relationship that a woman and a man can have. A man's girlfriend becoming intimate with another woman is not problematic in the same way that woman becoming intimate with a man would be, simply because another woman is not seen as being threatening --there is no way a woman could present competition for a man's girlfriend in the same way a man could.
The idea that any affection between women is shallow, or without intimacy, or simply exists to make the men in their lives happy does a *terrible* disservice to women who are actually interested in relationships with other women. The bullshit idea that it's okay to cheat, so long as it's with another girl, takes away the legitimacy of actual intimate relationships between two women, which is cruel and unjust to all the women who are already struggling to have their relationships seen as legitimate in the first place. The concept does a horrible disservice to bisexual women especially5, giving a cultural implication that only their relationships with men can or should be considered valid, thus throwing into question their very sexuality, and adding to the problem of bisexual erasure. And even ignoring all that...
It is not any less cheating if your girlfriend makes out with another girl. It doesn't suddenly become okay to cheat just because the other person is the same gender as you. Cheating on a partner is always unacceptable, and it doesn't matter a whit who you cheat with, simply that you are breaking a negotiated boundary and that shit just ain't cool.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: Also tangental? The fact that I honestly, when first viewing the video and without reading the poster's commentary, thought that the problem was not so much in what Katy was wearing as in the fact that it opened with Elmo saying no, repeatedly, to her trying to play with him, and her insisting on playing with him anyways ("but you SAID we were going to play dress-up, c'mon"). This seriously creeped me out, in the same way that any instance where one person says no to a form of interaction and the other insists creeps me out, which is to say, a lot. Nevermind that Elmo was revealed at the end to have been playing all along, (they were playing tag, not dress-up), the audible nonconsent being ignored by Katy was seriously creepy.
2: Albeit something I am aware I should work on --unless given evidence otherwise, I do tend to assume relationships and people are monoamorous and closed.
3: In their defense, the girl name in question on Amanda is, in fact, "Amanda". So, there are two ways to take this --that Amanda Palmer is involved with another woman called Amanda, or that Amanda Palmer is involved with herself. I choose to believe that the first is more likely how the video is meant to be/generally is interpreted. If it's not, that I strike this as an example, and am suddenly left with an interesting introspection about whether the lack of "Brian" tattooed on Brian Viglione had to do with the genderswapped themes of the video (ie, playing with the idea that boys masturbate more than girls, so since Amanda is in the "boy" role, she is labeled as a masturbator), or something to do with Brian's own self-pleasure habits, which being a lady, I would never deign to speculate about, except to hope that through some twist of the world, I get to be a part of them.
4: I feel this is as good a point as any to point out that I think this is perfectly applicable to the idea of boys kissing boys as well, and that somehow being okay to the women they are involved with. It's just not the example I see cited in pop-culture and the real world over and over and over again. (Though I am led to believe that perhaps I would see it more often if I were more involved with the anime fandom? Unclear.)
5: And as someone who has been presented with a situation where I was allowed to make out with girls but not boys, it is a profoundly uncomfortable place to be in, to know that someone who is supposed to care about you doesn't actually believe in your attraction to the same gender. If you don't want me to have intimate relations with people I am attracted to, frame the negotiation as *that* ultimatum, instead of belittling my interest in girls by implying I can't possibly actually be interested in them in the same way I am boys.
Because, see, the author of that post linked to a 1995 song by Jill Sobule called "I Kissed a Girl", in reference to it being the song she was familiar with when people started talking a lot about Katy Perry and her 2008 hit by the same title. So, never having heard Sobule's song, I pranced off to YouTube, and found it to be a cute and sweet little folkish ballad about how nice it is to kiss girls sometimes.
Except for one problem. I am apparently very passionate about this, so I'm going to try and say it as clearly and as explicitly as I possibly can:
If you engage in sexual behaviors without first negotiating that they are acceptable to your partner(s), that is cheating, and you should feel bad.
Now, we don't know for certain that Jill, or her kissworthy companion (Jenny) don't have their relationships structured such that they can indulge in happily kissing each other as often as they want. It would indeed be a horrible oversight on my part2 to ignore the potential that Jill and Larry and Jenny and Fred are a happy little poly-web, and open to the idea of any of them kissing whomever, that they would like. However, I find this situation to be somewhat unlikely, especially in light of the second verse:
She called home to say she'd be late
He said he'd worried but now he'd feel safe
I'm glad your with your girlfriend
Tell her "hi" for me.
And then I looked at you, You had guilt in your eyes
But it only lasted a little while
And then I felt your hand above my knee.
...guilt, huh Jenny? Why, what on Earth would you have to be guilty about, you are just at Jill's house and the two of you were kissing, and that's totally okay with your partner, right? ...right?
I am unimpressed.
And what this really did for me was click together a big problem I have with pop-culture. In Perry's "I Kissed a Girl", you have the chorus "I kissed a girl and I liked it, hope my boyfriend don't mind it" emphasis mine. In the video for The Dresden Dolls' "Backstabber", you have Amanda expressing anger over finding the names of other girls tattooed on Brian, and Brian expressing anger over finding the names of other boys tattooed on Amanda3, but Brian is completely fine with the idea of finding a girl's name tattooed on Amanda. In some poly relationships, you find the idea of a "One Penis Policy", that a female partner may have as many other female partners as she wishes, but only one male. In short, girls are allowed to make out with girls, and it will not negatively impact the established, heterosexual relationship(s).
To put it in a more cynical and bitter fashion, girls are allowed to kiss girls, because it's not like there could be any *real* feelings between women4. If two women are kissing, or dating, or having sex, that's not intimidating to the men in their lives because it is impossible for women to have intimacy with each other, or to fall in love, or to have the same kind of relationship that a woman and a man can have. A man's girlfriend becoming intimate with another woman is not problematic in the same way that woman becoming intimate with a man would be, simply because another woman is not seen as being threatening --there is no way a woman could present competition for a man's girlfriend in the same way a man could.
The idea that any affection between women is shallow, or without intimacy, or simply exists to make the men in their lives happy does a *terrible* disservice to women who are actually interested in relationships with other women. The bullshit idea that it's okay to cheat, so long as it's with another girl, takes away the legitimacy of actual intimate relationships between two women, which is cruel and unjust to all the women who are already struggling to have their relationships seen as legitimate in the first place. The concept does a horrible disservice to bisexual women especially5, giving a cultural implication that only their relationships with men can or should be considered valid, thus throwing into question their very sexuality, and adding to the problem of bisexual erasure. And even ignoring all that...
It is not any less cheating if your girlfriend makes out with another girl. It doesn't suddenly become okay to cheat just because the other person is the same gender as you. Cheating on a partner is always unacceptable, and it doesn't matter a whit who you cheat with, simply that you are breaking a negotiated boundary and that shit just ain't cool.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: Also tangental? The fact that I honestly, when first viewing the video and without reading the poster's commentary, thought that the problem was not so much in what Katy was wearing as in the fact that it opened with Elmo saying no, repeatedly, to her trying to play with him, and her insisting on playing with him anyways ("but you SAID we were going to play dress-up, c'mon"). This seriously creeped me out, in the same way that any instance where one person says no to a form of interaction and the other insists creeps me out, which is to say, a lot. Nevermind that Elmo was revealed at the end to have been playing all along, (they were playing tag, not dress-up), the audible nonconsent being ignored by Katy was seriously creepy.
2: Albeit something I am aware I should work on --unless given evidence otherwise, I do tend to assume relationships and people are monoamorous and closed.
3: In their defense, the girl name in question on Amanda is, in fact, "Amanda". So, there are two ways to take this --that Amanda Palmer is involved with another woman called Amanda, or that Amanda Palmer is involved with herself. I choose to believe that the first is more likely how the video is meant to be/generally is interpreted. If it's not, that I strike this as an example, and am suddenly left with an interesting introspection about whether the lack of "Brian" tattooed on Brian Viglione had to do with the genderswapped themes of the video (ie, playing with the idea that boys masturbate more than girls, so since Amanda is in the "boy" role, she is labeled as a masturbator), or something to do with Brian's own self-pleasure habits, which being a lady, I would never deign to speculate about, except to hope that through some twist of the world, I get to be a part of them.
4: I feel this is as good a point as any to point out that I think this is perfectly applicable to the idea of boys kissing boys as well, and that somehow being okay to the women they are involved with. It's just not the example I see cited in pop-culture and the real world over and over and over again. (Though I am led to believe that perhaps I would see it more often if I were more involved with the anime fandom? Unclear.)
5: And as someone who has been presented with a situation where I was allowed to make out with girls but not boys, it is a profoundly uncomfortable place to be in, to know that someone who is supposed to care about you doesn't actually believe in your attraction to the same gender. If you don't want me to have intimate relations with people I am attracted to, frame the negotiation as *that* ultimatum, instead of belittling my interest in girls by implying I can't possibly actually be interested in them in the same way I am boys.