Salon.com Article: A Bisexual Woman Challenges The Stereotypes In The Lesbian Community About Being A Femme Or A Butch!
Lesbians are fat, ugly and can’t get a man
In the bigoted household of my childhood, dating women was unthinkable. Then I grew up — and did the impossible
“Most of them are homely looking, and usually overweight,” my mother explained. “That’s because when men don’t find a woman attractive, she’ll sometimes pair up with another woman instead. One ugly woman will easily accept another ugly woman. I guess they figure it’s easier than being alone.”
My mother was teaching me about lesbianism.
“And in every relationship between two women, there’s always a man and a woman,” she added.
“I don’t understand …”
She took a quick puff on her cigarette. “There are roles,” she clarified. “One woman in the couple is more like the man than the other. She’ll dress like a man, do things around the house that a husband would normally do. Like taking out the trash, fixing things, stuff like that. They live together like they’re married. But obviously, they’re not.”
I don’t remember what prompted the 12-year-old me to ask my mother about gay women right there in the middle of our suburban kitchen, in a cloud of her menthol tobacco smoke and the dust particles from a million decorative paper towels. I suppose I’d heard something on a sitcom. I know there was at least one episode of “The Facts of Life” in which Blair accused a girl of being a lesbian because she excelled at sports.
When I was growing up, homosexuals weren’t exactly a popular topic in our house. They seemed to make my father intensely angry. He reacted to certain kinds of men on television by flinging the word “faggot” like a circular blade from between his front teeth and lower lip.
But long before words like “gay,” “lesbian,” “faggot” and “dyke” made their way into our household — before my mother, books or after-school specials helped refine the concept for me — I had an innate sense of what homosexuality was. It was played out among my dolls.
Malibu Ken and Kissing Barbie were the best of friends. They’d met in college, long before she was a movie star and he, her agent. They agreed to raise children together, from two separate but neighboring addresses, but it was understood that Ken would never marry Barbie. That was impossible, you see, because Malibu Ken was gay.
Of course, my 9-year-old brain didn’t yet know that word, “gay,” and certainly didn’t understand the machinations of gay male sex. But here’s what I did know: Ken liked to spend most of his time at the beach engaged in horseplay with bronzed male surfers. Furthermore, I had watched every episode of “Too Close for Comfort” and digested the fact that “Monroe,” the third-floor tenant played by Jim J. Bullock, was a different kind of man. Much different from, say, my Budweiser-guzzling, fawn-shooting father who liked to spend weekends biting his fingernails and spitting them at Howard Cosell. I understood, instinctively, that Malibu Ken was like Monroe.
I also knew that Barbie’s loyal housekeeper, Olga, secretly had the hots for Barbie. Olga was one of those hollow, blown-plastic fashion dolls who came cheap at Woolworth’s, sold in a cellophane bag stapled to a small folded slab of cardboard. Olga had crayon-yellow hair and wore a look of perpetual surprise. I kept her in a polyester double-knit jumpsuit in an orange-and-green psychedelic print. She was hip for a housekeeper. She was from Europe.
I was clear on the fact that Barbie could never return Olga’s affections. Barbie was solidly asexual (unlike her eldest daughter, a 1950s hand-me-down Barbie who was most definitely heterosexual and a raging slut). Kissing Barbie had deep, unspoken issues that kept her trapped in near-frigidity.
Yes, even at 9, I understood all these things about Barbie, and about Olga, and Ken, but without the benefit of the appropriate vocabulary nor any concrete knowledge of sex.
As for me, well, I had good reasons for sticking with boys, thank you very much. Mom made it clear that being a woman choosing to be with another woman suggested a personal failure; a tragic “settling” to avoid a lifetime of sleeping single in a double bed, masturbating on sweltering summer nights, and in harsh winters, stroking the wiry hairs springing from one’s facial warts in a repetitive self-soothing motion. What woman in her right mind wanted that? Being a fat, frizzy-haired, gap-toothed, socially anxious misfit child and teen had been quite enough. I was determined not to carry this freakdom, this substandardness into adulthood. I planned to blossom in adulthood, to amaze everyone with my transformation. “My, didn’t you grow up pretty,” they might say. “You slimmed down real nice,” “You filled out in all the right places,” “You went from an ugly duckling to a swan!”
——–
It was the day after Thanksgiving. I was a young 20-something with an office job and two adjoining rooms in my parents’ lopsided 1880s house. A group of us were gathered around the dining room table playing Pictionary: me, my then-boyfriend Rob, my mother, my aunt, my sister, my brother, and a friend of my brother. My dad was sitting in a recliner in the next room, watching TV.
Someone brought up Madonna, and opinions began to flit back and forth across the table — she was a trendsetter, she was a skank. And purely as a joke (because while I dig Madonna, I don’t really diiiig Madonna), I said: “Well I’d do ‘er.”
That was all. I’d do ‘er.
Really, I was just kidding.
I think my mother, aunt and boyfriend all groaned. My sister, then in her teens, went stiff in her chair, palms flattened to the air as though pressing it away from her, and bleated: “I. Did NOT. Just. Hear that.”
The next thing I saw was my dad’s face, arms and torso flying toward me across the table, like an evil, angry, mustachioed Superman sans cape. His hands went for my neck, and as he groped for it, one of them pressed my windpipe and produced a weird sensation in my throat, like the bonging of a bell. My boyfriend immediately shot out of his chair and I remember his voice shouting, “Whoa, whoa, WHOA!” He tried to push my dad off of me; my mother and aunt struggled to yank my father back in the opposite direction.
And then Dad said, with stiff jaw and spittle forming at the corners of his mouth: “If you wanna be a fucking faggot, you won’t do it under my roof!”
And that was just a joke.
So it was far easier, far safer just to stick with dudes. And it wasn’t torture. I never went for grunting cavemen with jock itch, or any loping bad boy with a cigarette dangling from his lower lip. But I did like smart boys. Strange boys. Boys who dressed like New Wavers, boys with Apple IIs who probably wound up billionaires, boys who painted or played guitar, or raised all manner of small rodents.
I also pored over the bra section of the Sears catalog, trying to detect the dusky outline of a nipple beneath a layer of white lace. I kissed my friend Danielle on the mouth while role-playing “house” as husband and wife.
In my early 20s, I went to a lesbian nightclub called Hepburn’s in Philadelphia with some gay friends. Despite growing up in a house full of self-righteous bigots, I retained a socially liberal core. Like pancakes in a Teflon pan, my parents’ lessons had a tendency to smack the surface and slide right off again. So it wasn’t that strange to find me in a gay club. I rather enjoyed looking. And to my utter fascination, there were quite a few women there who didn’t look like lumberjacks. How could my mother have missed this?
A female ambled over to us. She was what you’d call “butch.” She thrust her face close into mine, scowling. “Are you gay?” she demanded.
I immediately felt foolish. The fact is, I didn’t know what I was. I dated guys because it was easier, but I felt like I could potentially be … well, anything. I was flesh and nerves and thoughts and emotions and electrical impulses. And in that moment, all of it was caught off-guard.
“I … I don’t know,” I stammered.
She shook her head and cackled.
She looked at my lesbian companion and said: “Certain people just have no business being here, ya know what I mean?”
To my dismay, my lesbian friend nodded.
——–
Ten years, several boyfriends and two fiancés later, I found myself an unattached 30-something woman in New York City. I opened myself up to dating again. And this time, I broadened my dating options to include women.
For a long time I felt like I wasn’t “allowed” to have a sexual and/or romantic relationship with anyone but guys unless I was willing to cut off all my hair, start listening to Melissa Etheridge 24/7, wear Birkenstock sandals and take up hiking. I’d also been under the mass spell that all females must prioritize their physical appearance in order to please men and stir envy in their fellow women, or otherwise be considered permanent outcasts.
But I began to recognize attractiveness in men and women I never would’ve considered attractive just a few short years before. I found more to be enchanted by. My mind exploded, as if I’d been living life from inside a tiny buck-fifty single-screen cinema, and was suddenly seeing the world on IMAX. My appreciation for the gorgeous variety and complexity of humanity was expanding.
At the outer reaches of my consciousness, there had long lurked a stubborn belief that enjoying the intimate company of a woman was a cop-out because you were fat, or hopelessly ugly. It was a surrender. My mother equated it to marrying a black man, like her fat sister Phyllis had done.
But if I were the kind of woman who settles, I could’ve settled for one of two men who wanted to marry me. And I could be getting halfhearted oral sex once every six years — provided I was willing to cover my entire crotch area with a huge swath of Saran wrap. Or I might still be pacing wildly from room to room in our Upper East Side apartment, at the height of a brain-searing panic attack, trembling and begging the gods to “Make it stop! Please make it stop! Oh dear god please, somebody help me!” and he’d be sitting at the kitchen table with his head bent over a map of an imaginary place, ignoring me completely, putting another tidy pencil mark on a nonexistent crossroads.
I ended those relationships, with good reason. That’s right, the fat girl did the calling off. It was the fat girl who willingly gave up a perfectly good, 32-inch-waisted Ivy League graduate with a handsome inheritance. The fat girl walked away from the chiseled, sexually artful would-be runway model (and yes, he was straight). Neither was as self-aware as I was becoming, and in both cases I ultimately didn’t feel we were growing together.
Nobody else’s “perfectly good” was going to be good enough for me. Not anymore. I listen to my gut now. Not to the twisted theories my mother used to parrot from god-knows-who. Not to the ads or movies or TV shows that tell me how I should look, dress, behave or spend, or who I should desire, pursue, fuck or fall in love with.
I had an instinct for certain things when I was a child. I understood more than I knew. I mean, my mom probably wouldn’t get this, but we’re all made of the same stuff, I think. Like a giant melted polymer mess in a vat at the doll factory. We don’t become an individual someone until we’re poured into a particular doll mold, and some line worker slips us into a pink chiffon dress or a pair of turquoise swim trunks, and maybe the marketing department gives us a name. But if that little doll-heart begins to glow from the inside, and the polymer begins to soften, and we begin to sense what we’re made of and can forget how we’ve been shaped or duded-up, should we be ashamed by who’s lighting us up?
News One Article: Montana Fishburne Cut Corners To Become A Famous.
The British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf is a great indicator of the shortening of America’s attention span. When it was first reported, no one could grasp the sheer magnitude of the destruction. Then when it became clear that this was the single most devastating man-made disaster in recent time we were shocked and angry. Then when a month later the rate of oil spilling in the Gulf hadn’t changed we were on to new news. We had given it our moment of emotion.
The same disproportionate greed and self importance that was clearly evident in the big wigs at BP that helped make this oil spill happen is the same that has been growing in all of what is our popular culture.
No this isn’t new. The spoiled bratty children of the upper class speeding through Beverly Hills in their over-priced, under-appreciated gifts from Daddy. They hide their inability to care about anything but themselves behind designer shades. What is new, and probably could have been predicted, is that one day one of these children of these self important people would actually take their shades off and admit that this is who I am, I am completely clueless and yes the world should truly revolve around me.
Enter Montana Fishburne. The daughter of one of the preeminent actors of our time, Laurence Fishburne. Her sense of self has evolved into a brazen disregard for her self respect, her family’s honor and the meaning of the word ‘decent.’ She clearly doesn’t see it this way. It’s just sex. Everyone does it.
Being an actor, I know about the pull of Hollywood. The draw is money and fame and power. There are TV shows dedicated to idolizing the lives of these people whom Hollywood deems much more important than the rest of us. These shows come on after the news where they have announced that oil continues to spill in the Gulf and the CEO’s of these corporations are off racing their boats. The covers of our newspapers are of wayward ingenues being arrested or going to rehab while the old news of troops being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan is pushed to page five.
Laurence Fishburne’s 19-year-old daughter Montana wants that fame and that power and she wants it now. She minced no words in explaining how impatient she is to get her career in Hollywood off the ground. “I’ve watched how successful Kim Kardashian became and I think a lot of it was due to the release of her sex tape.” On Monday August 8th Montana Fishburne, the daughter of Morpheus, will purposely release her alleged first venture into porn in the form of a sex tape.
As it turns out, Montana had allegedly been experimenting with prostitution prior to this sex tape while living in her father’s house. Now none of us know the details of that household and we can all speculate that there clearly is something amiss but just one quick glance at our popular culture across the board from an outsider’s perspective and you can start to understand how a 19-year-old living in Beverly Hills makes her choices about her life.
We have become accustomed to the term ’sex tape’ for quite some time now. There is no need to run down the many names of mainstream celebrities whose sex tapes “accidently” were released to the public. In many cases just in time to revive their dying careers.
Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton have successful careers even if no one can define what it is they actually do. Both get paid hefty appearance fees for showing up at night clubs. Kim graces the covers of big name magazines with regularity and Paris has repeatedly been a guest and co-host on The View and late night talk shows. She has also been in major commercials and we even listen to her thoughts via politics.
So really outside of our moral sensibilities and the complete disgrace of her father’s name, who are we to judge her on her decision to enter the porn industry to further her career? Based on the past say ten years, she is right. Clearly she doesn’t want to act so no need to waste any time with head shots and acting classes and auditioning.
What we’re afraid of is her being so forthright. It’s okay when celebs say, “oh I didn’t expect the tape to get out.” We accept porn stars as long as they don’t use their real names. Their stories intrigue us. But to shamelessly enter the industry and use her father’s name, well, that takes balls. The type of balls that can scare us all back into the Middle Ages.
Montana Fishburne has chosen “slut” as a career path. I just think she went about it all wrong. She could have whored herself out to some big name producer who would have given her at least 4th lead in his next film. Discreet and easy peezy. That’s the way the town is run. I have a friend who is a well-recognized actress. Even though she was a regular on a very popular TV show she would tell me how much she would have to make producers and even agents think that they actually had a shot of sleeping with her for her to even get seen for roles.
People whore themselves in Hollywood everyday. Montana Fishburne is in some sense just grabbing the reigns for herself to make herself shine in our eyes. She is the product of an ideal we have been breeding in this country for quite some time now. It’s called capitalism. It’s why banks can grow too large and fail. It’s why British Petroleum can cut corners in drilling procedures. Doctors will look past their oaths to administer powerful drugs to eccentric pop stars. Everyone wants immediate gratification. Montana just wants to feel good, now.
Today the oil spill was finally plugged. In short-term memory fashion, BP announced they’d like to drill again in the same area.
muMs is a New York based writer, playwright, poet and an actor best known for his role as Poet on HBO’s Oz.
ABC News Article: Laurence Fishburne Attempts To Block DVD Release Of Teenage Daughter Montana’s Porn Video!
When Dad’s Watching: Actresses and Sex Scenes
Laurence Fishburne’s Daughter Says She’s Following Kim Kardashian’s Footsteps with Sex Tape; Father Is ‘Very Upset’
Amanda Seyfried, Sienna Miller and Eva Mendes have all tried to shield their parents, especially dads, from watching their more intimate scenes. Even some actors, such as “Harry Potter” star Rupert Grint, have called the experience nerve-wracking.
As for the parents, the experience of seeing their sons and daughters nude (or nearly nude) on screen can be equally disturbing.
It’s no surprise then that Oscar-nominated actor Laurence Fishburne is upset by his daughter Montana’s decision to appear in a porn video. Nor is it likely that star of “The Matrix,” “What’s Love Got to Do With It” and “CSI” will be watching his daughter’s small screen debut next week.
The 19-year-old, who will star in a hardcore pornographic video with the tagline “An A-List Daughter Makes her XXX Debut” has admitted that her father is “very upset.”
“I heard that he’s mad at me, but I haven’t spoken to him yet,” she told TMZ earlier this week. “I feel pretty confident that I can work things out with him. I think he wants to support me in everything I do, and though he sees this now as a negative, I believe in time he will view it as a positive.”
According to TMZ, the actor’s friends tried to block the video’s release by buying up all the DVDs. Fishburne’s rep declined to comment.
Montana, who has said she is eager to break into Hollywood and become a star like dad, claims she is taking a page from Kim Kardashian’s playbook.
“I’ve watched how successful Kim Kardashian became and I think a lot of it was due to the release of her sex tape,” Montana said in a statement through Vivid Entertainment, which will release her tape Aug. 10. “I’m hoping the same magic will work for me. I’m impatient about getting well-known and having more opportunities and this seemed like a great way to get started on it.”
Vivid also distributed Kardashian and Kendra Wilkinson’s sex tape — but in both those cases, the celebrities claimed their tape was obtained illegally. Vivid claims Montana approached them about making her own porn.
Some are questioning Montana’s chosen path to stardom. Why not follow in the footsteps of her father, who gained notoriety with a small role in “Apocolypse Now” and worked his way toward critical success on the big and small screen and Broadway?
Bonnie Fuller, editor-in-chief of Hollywood Life is calling on Kardashian to speak out. “I think that Kim as a role model has a duty to speak out here and say this isn’t a valid career choice,” Fuller told Fox411.com.
ABC News: Heterosexual Professor Claims He Was Fired Because He Is Straight!
Buffalo College Professor Claims Discrimination Because He’s Straight
Dr. Csaba Marosan Says He Was Harassed, Then Fired in Retaliation From Trocaire College
A New York college professor who claims that he was discrminated against for being a heterosexual man and then fired for complaining has caught the interest of the state’s Human Rights Division.
(Courtesy Dr. Csaba Marosan)
Dr. Csaba Marosan told ABC News that he endured years of being ostracized by administrators at Trocaire College, a Catholic, two-year school in Buffalo, for not being part of their clique made up largely of younger, gay men dubbed the “Merry Men.”
The complaint filed by Marosan, a native of Hungary, also alleges discrimination based on his accent and his gender. His allegations were investigated by New York Human Rights Division, which has found probable cause that Trocaire College not only discrminated against Marosan, but fired him in retaliation for lodging the initial complaint.
“I want some changes in the school,” Marosan said. “I mean, this cannot go on.”
Marosan, who holds a medical degree in Hungary but is unlicensed to pratice in the U.S., worked at Trocaire, first as an adjunct professor then as a full-time faculty member in the school’s natural sciences department.
In his first complaint, filed with the Human Rights Division in April 2009, Marosan claims that the Rev. Robert Mock, dean of academic affairs for non-nursing studies, and Vice President Thomas Mitchell treated him less favorably than his female colleagues. Mock, according to the complaint, would poke fun at his customs, his clothing and his accent. In April 2010 Marosan amended his complaint to include allegations of discrimination based on his sexual orientation. The amendment came after Marosan was fired in February in what he says was retaliation for the first Human Rights complaint.
In the amendment, Marosan claims Mock and Mitchell “are known or believed to be gay or bi-sexual.”
“Mr. Mitchell and Father Mock have given preferential treatment to young and/or gay males,” the complaint alleges. “Father Mock formed a group called the ‘Merry Men’ where these young and/or gay males would socialize on and off campus, leading to preferential treatment.”
Marosan pointed to the promotions of two of the members of the so-called “Merry Men” who had less experience and education than anyone else in the department.
He claims he watched other men he believes to be gay as well as less-educated women be promoted to positions above him even though his superiors knew he was interested in a higher level teaching job.
“I have dozens of witnesses to situations I’ve been through there,” he said.
James Grasso, an attorney for Trocaire College, emphatically denied Marosan’s claims. He also couldn’t speak to Mock or Mitchell’s sexual orientation, saying only “those are private matters.”
“The college wants the case to be dismissed,” he said.
The college, in its formal response to Marosan’s amended complaint, says that he was never denied a promotion over anyone based on gender or sexual orientation and that Marosan never applied for the jobs he referenced that were filled by the other staff members.
Marosan, Grasso said, “never raised any of these issues … until the thought he was going to lose his job.”
Grasso paints an entirely different portait of the Hungarian doctor, one in which he had to be counseled by school officials in 2008 after administrators received several complaints from female students over “repeated and inappropriate and sexually laced comments in class” during the course of his lecture’s on anatomy.
But the state’s findings also noted that Marosan’s record showed no indication of a finding on the sexual harrassment complaint and that at least one of the student’s statements was found to have been coached by Mock.
Grasso also denied that Marosan’s termination had anything to do with his accusations.
“The primary reason he was let go was that the Middle States Association [of Colleges and Schools,] as part of their accredited process, came through and did an evaluation,” Grasso said. “And he didn’t hold what they determined was the preferred degree for the field he was teaching in.”
The association wanted all professors to have master’s degrees, he explained, and even though Marosan was an M.D., it wasn’t a U.S.-held title.
A spokeswoman for the Human Rights Division declined to comment on its investigation, saying the office was prohibited from discussing any case until a final ruling had been issued.
According to the probable cause finding, a public hearing before an administrative judge will be scheduled within weeks.
Though Marosan was let go from the college at the beginning of the year, he continues to draw a paycheck thanks to his union contract. But he is being paid a base salary, which Grasso says is in the “mid-30s.”
Marosan said he’s lost about 60 percent of his pay, since he’s no longer allowed to pick up extra classes, which brought his annual salary up to $75,000 or $80,000.
Though Marosan would like to be compensated for his lost wages, he said there’s a larger issue at stake of changing the way things are run at Trocaire.
“This is not about personal gain,” he said. “I will get what I lost either way. There is a court system for that.”
Associated Press Article: White Supremacist Couple Loses Custody Of Their Children Because They Have Nazi Names!
By BETH DeFALCO (AP) – 21 hours ago
TRENTON, N.J. — A New Jersey couple who gave their children Nazi-inspired names should not regain custody of them, a state appeals court ruled Thursday, citing the parents’ own disabilities and the risk of serious injury to their children.
The state removed Heath and Deborah Campbell’s three small children from their home in January 2009.
A month earlier, the family drew attention when a supermarket refused to decorate a birthday cake for their son, Adolf Hitler Campbell. He and siblings JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell have been in foster care.
A family court had earlier determined that there was insufficient evidence that the parents had abused or neglected the children. That decision was stayed until the appeals court could review it. On Thursday, the three-judge appeals panel determined there was enough evidence and that the children should not be returned.
The panel sent the case back to family court for further monitoring.
A gag order remains in place and the parties refused to discuss the decision.
Heath Campbell told The Associated Press last year that he believed the children were taken because officials felt they were in “imminent danger.” He accused the state of removing the children because of their names and said government officials were relying on unproven accusations made by a neighbor and by an ex-wife who charged him with abusing her years ago.
The children’s names and the birthday cake were not mentioned in Thursday’s ruling. The court found that there were myriad other reasons that proved the need for continued protection services for the children.
According to court records, both parents are unemployed and both suffer from unspecified physical and psychological disabilities.
The court found that both parents were themselves victims of childhood abuse and said neither “have received adequate treatment for their serious psychological conditions.”
Heath Campbell, 37, cannot read and Deborah Campbell dropped out of high school before finishing the 10th grade, according to court records.
In its ruling, the panel found the parents “recklessly created a risk of serious injury to their children by failing to protect the children from harm and failing to acknowledge and treat their disabilities.”
The judges considered a typo-riddled note signed by Deborah Campbell and given to a neighbor. In it, Campbell says that if she were found dead, her husband was to blame.
“Hes thrend to have me killed or kill me himself hes alread tried it a few times. Im afread that he might hurt my children if they are keeped in his care. He teaches my son how to kill someone at the age of 3,” the letter read in part.
Deborah Campbell later acknowledged writing the letter but claimed it was all a lie.
“She described her husband as ‘a perfect guy,'” according to court records.
The family made headlines when a ShopRite supermarket in Greenwich, near the family’s home in Holland Township in west-central New Jersey, refused to decorate a birthday cake with their son’s name.
A Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania wound up decorating the cake, but the resulting publicity put the family under media scrutiny. Heath Campbell said neighbors and others were harassing them, and local police reported a mailed death threat.
Gayblackcanada 