Dykes Against Softball

(Photo Credit: Associated Press, via)

A previously unknown organization, Dykes Against Softball, headquartered somewhere in the suburbs of Washington, DC, issued a communiqué this morning expressing surprise and gratitude to Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus for saying something sensible on the subject of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, pictured at left playing softball at the University of Chicago in 1993. The Wall Street Journal ran the photo on its front page earlier this week, a move that has been widely interpreted as suggesting that the unmarried Kagan is a lesbian. Marcus said she found the picture "charming" and thought it made Kagan look "like more of a real person and less of a brainiac." (The Association of Real Lesbian Brainiacs immediately denounced that statement as insensitive, but that is another story.)

She went on to say, "Memo to conspiracy theorists: Straight women can play softball, too. Sometimes a softball bat is only a softball bat."

In its communiqué, Dykes Against Softball praised Marcus for her perceptiveness and courage in publicly declaring that, contrary to popular understanding, softball isn't just for lesbians: "Coming in the wake of WaPo media critic Howard Kurtz's brave announcement earlier this week that he -- a straight male -- had his own long history of playing with the big ball, Marcus's column is another encouraging step forward in the painful struggle to undo the deeply rooted and -- to many of us -- deeply hurtful stereotype that lesbians love and excel at softball."

The DAS communiqué continues:

Lesbians come in all shapes and sizes and with varying degrees of eye-hand coordination and athletic interest. While it is true that softball has served as an important means of community-building for non-heterosexual women in a range of times and places, it is also true that many of us feel no connection at all to what some have termed "the lesbian national pastime." Some of us hate team sports. Some of us are terrified of gigantic balls being hurled through space by burly women with extraordinary upper-body strength. Some of us prefer the peace and quiet of the library or the relative safety of the pool hall to the loud, dusty world of the diamond. Some of us don't like to run in our high heels. Some of us think blue jeans accentuate our wide hips. Some of us would just as soon skip the game and go straight to the beer-drinking and the back-slapping.

DYKES AGAINST SOFTBALL is grateful to our heterosexual comrades Ruth Marcus and Howard Kurtz for their courageous contributions to the cause of de-linking lesbianism and softball. It is our sincere desire that this whole episode (which has commanded so. much. attention. that one might actually begin to think it fricking mattered!) might teach a valuable lesson about the dangers of stereotyping. We think every individual, regardless of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, size, or ability, should be free to play -- or not play -- any game, anywhere, any time. Just don't make any assumptions about what team you think we're on, because, you know, some of us girls are really not into the big stick.

Thank you for your attention. Now, can somebody tell us how concerned we ought to be about Elena Kagan's philosophy on executive power? Because, well, call us crazy, but we think maybe that's where some of these big stick issues might actually fricking matter!

The Kagan Litmus Test

Pity poor Jeff Sessions. As ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Alabama Republican will bear the enormous responsibility of determining whether Elena Kagan, President Obama’s latest nominee for the Supreme Court, is a lesbian. The White House has denied it, and friends of Kagan are now publicly declaring she is straight. (The friends include former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who resigned his office in the wake of a prostitution scandal. Who's next? Tiger Woods?) Nominees have not typically been grilled on their sexual orientations, though Clarence Thomas, you may recall, faced a few questions about some of his (hetero)sexual proclivities and behaviors when he was nominated to the court in 1991. Nonetheless, Sessions declared last year that he thought the American people would be “uneasy” with the prospect of a gay justice -- and now the president has gone and nominated a never-married woman who looks like she might know her way around the Dinah Shore Golf Tournament, if you know what I mean.

Not sure, Rox. Exactly what do you mean? I mean that the anxiety and speculation about Kagan are fueled less by her marital status than by her looks (and by looks I mean her size [short], her shape [round], and her appearance [sensible]). If she came closer to heteronormative standards of beauty (e.g., tall, thin, and fashionable), the buzz wouldn’t be, Is Kagan gay? It would be, Wow, she’s gorgeous, smart, and single. How can I get her? All of us – gay, straight, or unaligned – have internalized these standards, however uncomfortably or critically, and use them in making judgments about public figures, people whom we “know” only indirectly.

Even those of us who identify with Kagan in not fully conforming to gender norms (whether by nature, by choice, or some combination of the two) use our assumptions about her looks as the basis for imagining other possible points of identification or disidentification. The right decides that Kagan is a lesbian and wants to demonize her for it. Queers have a hunch she might be one of us and exert a bit of dyke pride and in-group humor to install her in a stereotype about lesbian culture: the Dinah Shore Golf Tournament. Similarly, our pal Tenured Radical, while seeking to dispel any crude linkage between a presumed sexual identity and the nominee's political or judicial inclinations, spins out a charming fantasy of homodomesticity involving herself as Kagan’s dyke husband, ironing and baking cookies for the justice. It sounds like the plot for a new and much improved Leave It To Beaver.

Richard Kim sensibly pointed out in The Nation the other day that Kagan, like everyone, is entitled to sexual privacy and that she is not “gay” in that “she has never claimed to be a lesbian, . . . she's never spoken out in the first-person as an advocate of gay rights, and . . . she has never publicly discussed a romantic relationship with a woman.” Kim continues: “Gay isn't some genetic or soulful essence; it's a name you call yourself -- and Kagan has not done that. So in my book, case closed. Elena Kagan is not gay. Is she straight? I don't know, and again, I don't care. Why does she have to have a sexuality at all?”

True, true, true, Richard, but if we lived in a fair and sensible nation Jeff Sessions, with his long record of racial insensitivity, would not be in the United States Senate, would he? But given that he is, and that he serves the sizable confederacy of dunces who would be made “uneasy” by a justice with Sapphic inclinations, the portly dykes of Roxie’s World feel obliged to help Sen. Sessions and the nation answer the burning question of whether Kagan is or is not a lesbian. This will be a challenging task for the gentleman from Alabama. I mean, it’s not as if he can come right out, as it were, at the confirmation hearings and ask her. He will need to be subtle and diplomatic. We propose, therefore, a series of questions aimed at gauging her preference on a range of cultural possibilities that will, we are confident, enable the senators to situate her precisely on one side or the other of the straight/gay divide.

Now, gentle readers, don’t get all up on us over our seeming to help the enemy or perpetuate damaging stereotypes in this little exercise. Our preference poll was devised by a couple of woman-loving wimmin who came of age at the same time and in a milieu similar to Kagan’s, except for the fact that neither of them is Jewish, they didn’t attend an Ivy League university, and they didn’t go to law school. Or end up as the dean of one.

Wevs, kids, the real point here is to imagine the hilarity that would ensue in the Senate hearings if Sessions and, say, Orrin Hatch would act as a tag team, running through this list of preferences in their most serious senatorial voices while Kagan, pausing for big gulps of water, carefully weighed each choice. The cameras whir. The klieg lights heat up the room, bringing tiny beads of sweat to the senators' foreheads as the nominee nervously fingers her high-femme pearl earrings. Close your eyes, darlings, and picture the scene, as Sessions and Hatch subject Kagan to . . . .

The Lesbo Litmus Test by Roxie's World:
Because We Know What Girls Who Like Girls Like

Sen. Sessions: Good afternoon, General Kagan. Now, where was I? Oh, yes: Martina or Chris?

Kagan: Martina, sir. No less an authority than, um, Billie Jean King has declared Martina "the greatest singles, doubles and mixed doubles player who's ever lived."

Sen. Sessions: Very good, madame. I yield my time to the gentleman from Utah.

Sen. Hatch: Thank you, Senator Sessions. Let's see, General Kagan. As you may know, I am something of a music fan -- more than a fan, actually, a professional singer --, so it falls on me to ask you: Opera or softball?

Kagan (Pausing for a drink of water): Well, I am a fan of music, too, senator, but I have to say there is nothing quite like a spirited game of softball to relax at the end of long day.

Sen. Hatch: All rightie then, I have a follow-up: Holly Near or Holly Hunter?

Kagan: That's a tough one, senator. Of course I admire Hunter's acting, especially her brilliant voicing of Elastigirl in The Incredibles, which, truly, is one of my favorite films, but I have to confess a sentimental preference for Near. I mean, Imagine my surprise . . . .

Sen. Sessions (Jumping in, nervously): General Kagan, if I may. This is enormously helpful to us, so if I could just interrupt to ask: Lily Tomlin or Lily Bart?

Kagan (Flush with excitement): Good lord, senator, are you serious? As if there is a choice to be made between a doomed fictional character surrounded by men who are pathetic or cruel and the finest comedic actress in the history of performance? Don't insult my intelligence, senator!

Sen. Hatch: I apologize on behalf of the gentleman from Alabama, General Kagan. Perhaps TV would be a safer subject: The L Word, General Kagan, or The View?

Kagan: I'm afraid I'm not familiar with The View, sir. Is that some Fox screaming head show? I don't watch those. I do, however, own all six seasons of The L Word. Jane Lynch did a couple of guest appearances as an attorney on that show. I like shows with, um, attorneys.

Sen. Lindsey Graham: Pardon me for interrupting, but I like attorney shows, too! You know, there's been speculation that I might be a little light in the loafers myself, so I think I will ask you a footwear question: Manolo or Mephisto, General Kagan?

Kagan (With a snort of contempt): Mephisto, senator. I am a woman of substance. I can't be tottering around this town in shoes designed to impede women's ability to do anything but be sexually available to horny lobbyists and --

Sen. Sessions: That will do, General Kagan. And speaking of getting around town: Subaru or Sienna?

Kagan: Seriously? Do I look like a minivan gal, senator? Do I? No, Subarus are fine cars: Solid, safe, good on the highway and at the hardware store.

Sen. Sessions: I think we've made great progress here, General Kagan. Just one last question, and I have to confess I don't really understand this one, but, as you know, these questions were supplied to us by a third party, so bear with me: Provincetown or Paris?

Kagan (With a broad smile): Ah, well, that's a trick question, senator, because the answer quite obviously is both. Sometimes a sensible woman has to say yes to everything!

* * *

Oh, we could go on, couldn't we? Audre Lorde or Audrey Hepburn, General Kagan? Dykes on Bikes or Kids on Trikes . . . ? But I think the point has been made, and the point of course is this: Sometimes a test tells us more about those who feel compelled to give it than those who are forced to take it. Indeed, sometimes we fail a test merely by deciding to give it, by imagining that we need to know some truth judged to be essential to a person's identity. Scholars of sexuality and gender have labored for decades to complicate the relationship between sex and truth, sexuality and identity. If we don't know by now that the crude binary of either/or is always a trick question wholly inadequate to conveying the complexities of who we are and what we do as sexual beings, then we just haven't been paying attention.

It's exam season in Roxie's World, and the evidence this week suggests that, when it comes to thinking sex, a lot of us just aren't making the grade.

For some excellent blogging on the subject of Kagan and the media hoopla surrounding her, in addition to the pieces by Richard Kim and Tenured Radical already mentioned, click over to gen/sex law bloggers Nan Hunter and Katherine Franke, who have been all over the story. (Those links are just to their latest contributions on the subject.) Historiann weighed in yesterday, too, with links to other posts.

Class dismissed, kids. Your summer course on sex, privacy, and the public sphere begins tomorrow. Start reading today -- You know there will be a quiz!

Happy Fricking Mother's Day

The salty women of Roxie's World honor Mother's Day with one of the many side-splitting bits from Betty White's flawless, hilarious appearance as host of Saturday Night Live last night. Here, the near-nonagenarian sits down with Ana Gasteyer and Molly Shannon for an episode of their pitch-perfect parody of an NPR cooking show, "Delicious Dish." (Can we pause briefly to say how utterly delightful it was to have so many of the veteran funny girls of SNL back together for last night's episode? In addition to Gasteyer and Shannon, we got to spend time with Rachel Dratch, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Maya Rudolph, and, my oh my, what wonderful company they were! Maya doing her killer Whitney Houston! Tina wisely not doing her already worn-out Sarah Palin and instead playing an earnest census worker trying to get information out of White's marvelously loopy old lady in a bathrobe! [Hulu has a collection of 19 vids from the episode up, including some that didn't make it to the show. We highly recommend doing some browsing there, perhaps while sipping a Mother's Day mimosa. You'll be glad you did.])

Anyway, this muffin skit, in which the three women deliver one deadpan double entendre after another, is a worthy successor to the insanely funny "Schweddy Balls" bit that Gasteyer and Shannon did with Alec Baldwin several years back. Who says fiber isn't funny? The regular gals of Roxie's World are here to tell you it is. Click on the vid, kids, and prepare to die laughing. Is there any better way to go?



Happy Mother's Day -- to all the moms, all the bonus moms, all the non-moms and anti-moms and the muffin-loving honorary moms. Hug 'em if you can, and send 'em a giggle if you can't. Laughs make the world go 'round, my sweet, funny, aging children, today and every day.

News, With Lesbian Tendencies

Item One: Bad Story, Funny Headline

Marquette Withdraws Job Offer to Lesbian Dean Candidate Jodi O'Brien

Which means, of course, that the all-important position of Dean of Lesbians remains vacant. Moose would like to apply. For the benefit of the good Jesuits of Marquette, we offer this link to a not-quite-current version of Moose's CV, where you will find, we promise, absolutely no "strongly negative statements about marriage and family" and, regrettably, no "vignettes on lesbian sex." (How did that happen? I said to Moose. Heck if I know, she replied. Blame it on Willa. She was just not into . . . vignettes.) (And, yes, Death Comes for the Archbishop fans, we know that, technically speaking, that isn't correct. Comic license, 'k?)

Item Two: Women's Basketball Coaches Still Prefer to Focus on the Family

We picked this up from Pat Griffin's LGBT Sports Blog by way of Nan Hunter. The Women's Basketball Coaches Association refused to screen the film Training Rules, a documentary about player Jennifer Harris' lawsuit against Penn State's legendary (and legendarily homophobic) women's basketball coach Rene Portland, at its annual conference last month in San Antonio. (The conference was held in conjunction with the NCAA women's basketball championship. Local coverage, from which we've borrowed details of the story, here.) The reason given for not screening the film is that Portland is no longer coaching. She resigned in 2007, after Penn State settled Harris' lawsuit -- Which of course magically resolved the issue of homophobia in women's basketball, so, please, sports fans, let's all just go back to talking about how married and religious and heterosexually reproductive everybody associated with this game is. That's not homophobia, dammit! That's just clean living and good advertising, am I right? Pay no attention to all those big-boned gals on the floor and in the stands. There are no lesbians here, do you hear me? Just, you know, burly girls with incredible strength and ball-handling skills who seem to prefer, um, the company of, uh, well, chicks, but, hey, look at those junior cheerleaders doing their little half-time show. Aren't they just adorable?

People, people, people, let me say it for you one more time, very slowly: Women's basketball would die without the participation and the support of lesbians. Don't disrespect or marginalize your talent pool or your fan base. Silence is homophobia by other means, especially when you go out of your way to promote the "family-friendly" qualities of your program and personnel. You may be a little more polite than the Rene Portlands of the world, but you are still sending a powerfully negative message to queer players and fans. And we think that is unsportsmanlike conduct, plain and simple.

That is all, darlings. Play hard, play fair, and give us a call if the Dean of Lesbians position is available at your school.

(Nuns cheer on the Mighty Macs of Immaculata University, which many consider the birthplace of modern collegiate women's basketball. No lesbians here either, of course. Photo picked up here.)

This Impossibly Beautiful Morning . . .

. . . happens to be my Aunt Katie's birthday. Katie loves growing things, and so we celebrate her on this lovely day with a snapshot of a pretty little something from the ridiculously large back yard. It's a rhododendron, in case you are wondering, and that is the limit of my typist's horticultural knowledge, so please don't ask for any further detail.

Happy birthday, beloved friend. May today's splendid sunshine be a harbinger of beauty and warmth for you in the coming year.

(Photo Credit: Moose, 5/5/10)

Days of Our Leaves

Or, Things We Learned Out of School

days theme sound bite Days of Our Lives sound bites

Click on that sound file, darlings, or my typist will feel that her long hours of trolling the Interwebs looking for snort-inducing tidbits for you are in vain.

First Things First: Our sincere apologies to Tenured Radical, who offered a wonderful post yesterday called “Like Sands Through The Hourglass, So Are The Days of Our Lives: Having the Courage Not to Go to Graduate School.” It’s chockfull of TR’s characteristically shrewd analysis and advice, though we would probably still tell the best and brightest to give grad school a shot, as long as they have their eyes wide open about the prospects for a tenure-track job at the end of the dissertation rainbow. I mean, heck, it’s not like the quote, unquote real world is chomping at the bit to hire English and history majors right now either.

Anyway, go read TR if you need to get your knickers in a wad over your future as an exceedingly well-read barista. We just riffed on her title because we are strict adherents to Rule #1 of the Blogosphere: Why go to the trouble to make something up when you can steal something from someone else? Also, TR's evocation of sand moving inexorably through the hourglass of spring made my typist realize that the clock on her academic-year leave is now truly, officially, sadly winding down. Yes, she will still have the summer free from teaching and most bureaucratic responsibilities to make progress on the long list of things she would assuredly accomplish over the course of this year. It was a totally realistic list that looked something like this:

Moose’s Sabbatical To-Do List

1. Lose 40 pounds.

2. Finish the Most Overdue Project in the History of American Publishing.

3. Organize study.

4. Get a handle on the difference between Digital Humanities and New Media Studies and decide which it is I now do.

5. Organize pantry.

6. Draft an outline and a couple of chapters on the Amazing Book on Blogging That Is Going to Transform the Humanities and Save the World.

7. Read Proust.

8. Organize shed.

9. Reduce carbon footprint.

10. Propose an MLA session.

She made progress on, um, a number of those goals and managed to check off a few other items that weren’t on her original list, as you can see:

Moose’s Sabbatical Got-Done List

1. Embrace fat acceptance, because, srsly, I am 50 + 1 years old, female, and I enjoy eating and drinking too much to subsist on salads and water for the rest of my life.

2. Survive three blizzards and ice dams without going insane.

3. Embrace disorganization, because it’s perfectly obvious that organization is a bourgeois plot to keep people from ever getting any real work done.

4. Get published in Inside Higher Ed, because academic punditry is really where it’s at.

5. Learn to be a dog person who doesn’t, for the time being, have a dog.

6. Read Clay Shirky, Donna Haraway, Marilynne. Robinson, Cary Nelson, Jaron Lanier, Patti Smith.

7. Fall, break wrist, and sit through meeting with dean with only brief pause for near-tears and confession of injury.

8. Imagine heaven, with dogs, and figure out how to write from there.

9. Stop having hot flashes. I think. For now.

10. When in doubt, take a walk.

So, what did Moose learn during her year, mostly, out of school? This is an important question, not just because there is pressure on academics to account for what they do with their quote, unquote time off these days, but because we’d like to help our pals who have upcoming leaves of their own – real-world buddies like June Star, blogospheric ones like Dr. Crazy – to make the most of their well-deserved respites from teaching. I asked my typist to come up with one last list, which we happily pass along -- and which we invite you to add to in comments:

Moose’s Mostly Serious Tips for Making the Most of the Days of Your Leave

1. If you only have a semester off and you have a choice, take the fall rather than the spring term. You can use the summer to settle into sabbatical time and feel truly away when fall classes begin. It will be easier to stay away from campus when that feeling has taken hold. In the spring, as the year winds down, certain tasks and responsibilities – reports, defenses, planning for next year – are going to demand your attention regardless of how disciplined you are about saying no in order to protect your time. I've gotten pretty good at that, and I still barely felt that I was on leave in April.

2. Get the hell out of Dodge. Even if your research doesn’t require you to travel to remote archives in exotic locations, try to spend some time away from home during your time off. Neither Goose nor I had ever done that before, but the seven weeks I spent in my undisclosed location in the fall were enormously beneficial. I rested. I detached. I did a kind of deep, concentrated reading and thinking that I probably hadn't done since I was reading for my qualifying exams. Could I have done all that if I had just hunkered down at home and resolutely ignored the distractions of my (wonderful) everyday life? Perhaps, but there is something to be said for breathing a different air and seeing a different sky. Try it if you can.

3. Allow yourself some – or many – moments of Zen. Ignore the to-do list and the pressure to produce, at least some of the time. Remember that non-doing is as necessary to your creativity and learning as doing is. Sabbaticals are all about getting off the treadmills of the usual routines. Give yourself permission to float or fly or nap or dream. My inspiration for this kind of creative (in)activity is, natch, Thea Kronborg, the protagonist of Willa Cather's 1915 novel, The Song of the Lark. In the middle of that big, busy book, Cather sends her fiercely driven aspiring opera singer to a remote part of northern Arizona, where she spends a great deal of time seeming to do nothing. In fact, the heroine is letting go of the mundane pressures of the ego and connecting with the unconscious knowledge she will need in order to become a truly great artist. Yeah, it all sounds kind of woo-woo and weird, but Thea ends up on stage at the Met. You could do worse than to emulate her process of discovery. Even a history geek or a humble lit critter can dream of being a diva, after all.

4. If you don’t have a blog, now is not the time to start one. If you do have a blog, set limits on the time you devote to it. Blogging is one of those activities that will expand to fill the amount of time available for it. Goose assures me that the time I spend typing for Roxie's World is time spent on fieldwork for the Amazing Book on Blogging That Is Going to Transform the Humanities and Save the World. In a sense she's right, but I've still tried to restrain myself some this year. I've been content to put up fewer or shorter posts in order to give greater priority to other kinds of work. We can't all be Historiann, who consistently manages to feed the horses, take a run, and get up a devastatingly smart blog post before most of us have sucked down our first cup of coffee. (Love you, girlfriend. Mean it!) Know your limits, and try to stay within them. Your audience won't desert you, because they love you, too, darling, I swear they do! Shut down that hit counter, and open that book! The blogosphere will be here when you get back.

The grains of sand are moving through the hourglass, my pretties, so we've got to go. Make sure to pass along your own brilliant advice for making good use of time off. What's worked for you? What hasn't? Do you recommend getting away, or do you have Goose's knack for closing the valves of your attention like stone and getting work done, no matter where you are? Wow -- And just to prove this topic is what's buzzing around in the hive mind today, we just this moment stumbled upon a brand new ProfHacker post by Kathleen Fitzpatrick called "How to Get More Than You Think Out of a Semester's Leave."

Goodness, we do have our paws on the pulse of the zeitgeist, don't we? Peace out, darlings, and take time to smell the roses. You will never regret it.

The Wise Little Visitor

(Sam in a Pool of Light that Looks Like a Magic Carpet, by the Back Door, Saturday Morning. Photo Credit: Moose, 5/1/10.)

Visiting Adorable Schnoodle: The Interwebs are boring this morning, and I don't know what to do about the oil spill or what to say about why the state of Arizona has clearly gone bat-$hit crazy. Can't we just go for a walk?

Currently Dogless Dog Person: Yes, we can. C'mon, little buddy. The sun is out, the breeze is blowing, and Roxie's trail goes on forever. Let's hit it!

That is all, darlings. Go outside and play, will you? The world and all its madness will be right here when you get back.