Is Sarah Silverman a Lesbian?
I have to admit, I love Sarah Silverman. I think she’s hysterical. On a recent episode of the Sarah Silverman Show, she explores her sexuality. Sarah meets a friend of her sister, Tig, who is a lesbian. After revisiting the ends of past relationships, Sarah decides that she is a lesbian. After raiding her sister’s closet for “lesbian clothing,” and performing an angry folk chick song wearing flannel and a mullet, Sarah has the opportuity to kiss Tig. However, right before contact is made, Sarah turns aside and makes a face (She did this same thing when she was about to kiss a man, so her actions here are not homophobic). At the end of the episode, Sarah concludes that she is not a homosexual or a heterosexual (noting that she has failed at both), but a ME-mosexual, someone who is in love with herself.
What I find most interesting at Sarah’s identity struggle is that she feels that she has “failed” at being homosexual and at being heterosexual. What does it mean to fail at a sexual identity? Is it that she doesn’t feel attracted to men or women? Or is it the acts themselves that she cannot perform?
Sarah’s struggles with her sexual identity reminds me of many of the discussions we have had in class about who is and who is not a lesbian. Sarah’s insistance that she is, in fact, a lesbian even though she has not kissed a woman begs me the question: can lesbians have close friendships/attractions towards women that they have not acted upon (I mean, here, never having been with a woman). If we can claim a lesbian identity as a political identity, then does it matter what we do in bed? If we claim a lesbian identity, as Andrea Dworkin did, and then have a relationship with a man, will it affect our political identity as a lesbian? Some of our classmates seemed to think that if a lesbian has sex with a man, she is no longer a lesbian, but, to me, that is policing an identity that we don’t need to police — someone else’s.
Then again, if we are not going to police identity, what does it mean when heterosexual men claim that they are “lesbians trapped in a man’s body?” Is that mocking and problemmatic or does it lend more support to gay and lesbian rights?
For more on The Sarah Silverman Show:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Silverman
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_sarah_silverman_program/index.jhtml
Heteronormative Morning TV
In my house, every morning, we watch the Today show. The Today show appears to provide a mixture of news and cultural information to a wide audience (women, men, people who work and people who stay at home). Every morning, the Today show has a segment called “five things every woman should know.” Sometimes, this segment features fashion or health information, but, fairly often, this segment doles out parenting information (or information about children’s clothing).
I have a problem with the immediate construction of women as mothers/most important parental figure, for two reasons.
First of all, there is the automatic assumption that all women are mothers/want to be mothers. Not all women are capable of having children, and not every woman wants to have children. Motherhood is also not the only identity available to women (the Today show seems to think that all women are interested in fashion, health and children (and nothing else)), women can be business-oriented or money-oriented, too.
Secondly, there is the assumption that men don’t care about their children/want to be fathers. The fact that every woman should know about children’s back to school clothing has an automatic assertion that men don’t need to know about their children’s clothing. What are the “5 things every man should know?” How would they be different from the things women should know?
The way the Today show presents women revolves around the ideas that all women are interested in fashion, health, and childrearing (and only those three things).
The Today Show Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Today_Show
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032633/
The Mainstreaming of Transgendered Identity
Recently, there has been an influx of transgendered characters in fictional TV shows and transgendered individuals on documentaries. I think this is a good development. In fact, I find the mainstreaming of transgendered individuals to be a step forward in the right direction. The media is so powerful that it has the capacity to make people more confortable with people of different sexual orientations and gender expressions.
Take, for example, the appearance of gay and lesbian characters on mainstream television shows in the past 10 years or so. If we grow accustomed to seeing gay and lesbian characters on television, does that make us more confortable with gay and lesbian individuals? I think that the answer is yes, especially for younger viewers. I would argue that growing up watching more diverse characters on television makes people more tolerant. So, what does this do for transgendered individuals?
The transgendered character on tv’s All My Children introduces a transgendered character to the daytime viewing audience. However, Zarf (the character in question) is strange at best. From what I have seen, Zarf’s eloquent speeches about being in the wrong body is coupled with a very strange personality with multiple identities. Another show that is scheduled to air a transgendered individual showcases a transgendered (MTF) woman with her wife (they were married before the husband transitioned) with a family of Wiccans and a variety of differently-abled individuals. Do these portrayals of trans individuals help or hinder the transgendered case? Is any publicity good publicity?
This hearkens back to discussions we’ve had about radical lesbian feminists. If Andrea Dworkin and her anti-porn legislation (or bra burners or protesters) are the only face a movement has in the media, does that make them more legitimate or less? Is mainstreaming even a good thing? Are we trying to build legitimacy within mainstream society for lesbian/gay/transgendered identity or do we want to embrace the full spectrum.
Links to TV shows with transgendered characters/individuals:
All My Children: http://abc.go.com/daytime/allmychildren/index.html
