BarbieBack Mountain

Back in the day, when I were a lad, girls were supposed to play with dolls, and boys were not. My dad once bought me an Action Man, but I didn't have much interest in soldiers. I liked Subbuteo.


The main game you got to play with Action Man was dressing him up in different clothes, which didn't strike me as an important part of war.

(Do you remember that scene in Kelly's Heroes where Clint Eastwood and Donald Sutherland argue about what shirts they should wear when they ambush the tank? No. Because it didn't fucking happen.)

Girls, of course, had Barbie, and Barbie had a boyfriend Ken.


Now, is it me, or does he look a bit... you know.. gay?

And then there was this fella. Who's he? Is he Barbie's new love interest? Is he there so girls can play "Barbie dumped Ken"?


This is Allen. If you look at the packaging, he's Ken's "buddy".

That's right, they even put it in inverted commas.

And all of Ken's clothes fit him.

I'm not sure I like where this is going....

Oh My God
is nothing sacred!

Normal?

"It may be normal, darling; but I'd rather be natural."

The Queerness of Everything

I wrote back in August about meeting the universe halfway and my unexpected discovery of the application of Queer Theory to science, technology and innovation.

Since I grew up as the child of someone who was very preoccupied with being normal (whatever that was) and nowadays I try to earn a living encouraging clients to subvert hierarchies, change the rules, and turn (selected bits of) the world upside down (in a responsible manner), this speaks to me on several levels.

It's probably the beginning of an answer to the question "What do you do?" I hate it when people ask me that question, because I find it very difficult to answer honestly.

This morning, somebody by the name of Sarah Dopp showed up in my RSS feed, talking about gender and menus.

There’s a longstanding argument that “male” and “female” are a biologically-defined and relevant way to split our population in half. But if you’ve ever met a feminine man or a masculine woman, you know that these categories are way too rough to mean anything more than a stereotype sometimes.

It goes deeper than that... you may have noticed this in cities and among young people — there’s also a growing presence of folks whose genders you just can’t identify. Some of them, if you ask them respectfully, will tell you they feel like both genders. Or neither gender. Or a gender that needs a new name. They might answer to both “he” and “she,” or they might prefer something different. They’re in-between, and that’s where they belong.

Just for a minute, try to imagine yourself in the shoes of someone who has spent a lifetime feeling just as uncomfortable in the men’s locker room as in the women’s locker room — for whatever reason. Imagine having to dress in clothing that just feels wrong to you, everyday, because you know it means you’ll be treated better than you would if you wore what you like. I

magine walking through the world knowing that everyone’s first assumptions about how you see yourself, who you love, and what feels right for you are completely wrong. Now imagine signing up for a cool website, and then being required to select an option from a drop-down menu that doesn’t include anything that represents you.

If you don't know what this means, don't worry. I don't either. But it's a comforting un-knowing that I'm going to sit with over Christmas.

Gordie Is Calling In Gay

I'm "calling in gay" today, because I support civil marriages for same-sex partnerships.

Not just because I want everyone to experience true love that lasts for ever. (That might take a little longer than equality.) I also believe in mortgages and tax and insurance, and saying who your next of kin is.

I also believe in freedom of religion, so I'm not asking anyone to stop condemning people to hell if that's where they truly belong. Just let's go down the Town Hall first, ok?

Proposition 8: The Musical

You know what really pushes my homophobia button?
(Apart from Catholic priests with halitosis, I mean...)

Musicals.

Showtunes.

Broadway musicals have to be the least sexual musical genre ever invented, and yet gay men simply adore them... (rolls eyes)

So it was a real test of my commitment to equality and diversity that I sat through "Proposition 8: The Musical". And you know what? It's bloody funny.



What would Jesus do? Support gay marriage? Or give up shrimp cocktail? You'll have to watch the movie if you want to find out.

Glowing Green Bunnies! Glowing Green Bunnies!

This is Alba, an albino rabbit who looks normal in normal light, but glows phosphorescent green in the dark. She is the subject of the brilliantly titled chapter I wanted to read in that book about Queering the Non-Human (education is such fun!)

Alba

Alba was designed by Eduardo Kac, a Brazilian artist, and Louis-Marie Houdebine, a French geneticist. The rabbit's DNA was modified by the fluorescent protein EGP, a synthetic variant of a naturally existing gene from the jellyfish Aquaria Victoria, which was introduced through zygote micro-injection.

Apparently, Alba's "rabbit remix" was part of Kac's investigations into Telepresence & Bio Art, and she is supposed to entail some kind of statement about hybrids and creativity and integrating into society. I'm not so sure about it, especially since I read that the scientists involved fell out with the artist and claim that the publicity pictures of Alba were Photoshopped to make her green glow look stronger than it actually was.

Two Disapproving Rabbits

I realise that the queer sensibility tries to "ungird" and de-stabilize our sense of what is and isn't "natural". But I also thought that identity politics was about not letting other people define our identities for us? Genetically manipulating an animal, and then manipulating the photographs of said creature, doesn't really symbolize liberation and diversity to me.

God, as I understand Her to be

My Queer Studies

I hope you'll excuse me for deviating from my normal standards of trivia and frippery to discuss something that matters to me.


Some of you know, and some of you don't, that I've been working on a PhD thesis, and a fine old mad-making piece of merriment it has proved to be.


I've been researching Lloyd's of London: how the insurance industry negotiates contracts, and the difficulties of designing an electronic environment to negotiate in, instead of doing everything face to face in this fine, shiny building on the corner of Lime Street.

Over the weekend I discovered an important concept that explains something what I've been trying to explain. To my surprise, the insight comes from Queer Studies; specifically, it comes from the insights we get once we stop thinking about nature and culture as fundamentally separate, and look at meeting the universe halfway: how we perform the world into existence by the ways we study it, interpret it, and try to change it.

So there you have it: the application of Queer Theory to the insurance industry. For example, performing New Orleans into existence, again, after Hurricane Katrina. (That seems to be a very slow project.)

I shouldn't allow myself to get distracted, but there's another chapter in the same anthology called 'An Unfinished Conversation About Glowing Green Bunnies'. I mean, that's got to be worth a read, hasn't it?

Beth Ditto

I approve of this.
I really think it ought to be encouraged.

Queer Love

A piece of helpful advice from Jane Shilling in the Times today.

If the great question of this (and every other) age is,
“How do you find somebody to love?”
it follows that the other great question must be,
“How do you dispense with them when love has run its course?”

How nice: a considerate lover who thinks long term.
But that was not the helpful advice. This was:

'Women', says Ms. Shilling, 'are queer cattle'.

This had never occurred to me before.
I shall certainly bear it in mind in the future.