Call for Essays: Here Come the Brides: An anthology about lesbian marriage

One of the Ms. Magazine editors and a Ms. blogger have joined forces to edit what sound like a fascinating anthology about lesbian marriage. The call for essays is below, and you can find more information at their blog.

Call for Submissions: Here Come the Brides! The Brave New World of Lesbian Marriage (Seal Press, 2012)

2,000-4,000 words

Editors: Audrey Bilger and Michele Kort. Audrey Bilger is the Faculty Director of the Writing Center and Associate Professor of Literature at Claremont McKenna College. Michele Kort is Senior Editor at Ms. magazine, a freelance writer and author of three books (including Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro).

The Book: Same-sex marriage is obviously a hot topic these days, and we want to look specifically at the lesbian side of the equation. Given the secondary status of women throughout much of the globe, bonds between women—particularly intimate connections—can redefine the political landscape as well as the domestic realm. Anna and Eve don’t get as much press as Adam and Steve, but they’re potentially more threatening to the status quo.

The anthology Here Come the Brides will primarily cover legal marriages, but also lesbian commitment ceremonies in locales where the legal status of gay marriage is still up for grabs. We hope the book will be able to represent a diversity of points of view in terms of race, class, ethnicity and geography, and incorporate transgender perspectives. Although the book will be generally upbeat about lesbian marriage, we’d also like viewpoints from those who are opposed to either being married themselves or who have issues with the institution or the politics of same-sex marriage.

We’re looking for a variety of material: primarily first-person essays, but also secondhand observations, bridesmaid/mother-of-the-bride/etc. stories, and even analytical pieces (as long as they’re written in an accessible style). We’re open to graphic essays/cartoons as well, and we’re eager to see lesbian wedding ephemera: great photos, invitations, newspaper wedding announcements, vows, guest favors.

Needless to say, we’re looking for terrific writing—colorful, moving, funny, surprising, insightful. We can imagine essays that cover a lesbian marriage from soup to nuts, but we think it’s more likely, given the word limitation, that it might be best to focus on a certain aspect of lesbian marriage or of your particular wedding—at least as an organizing principle. Here are some questions to think about; perhaps one or more will inspire a resonant tale:

What made you decide to get married?

How significant was legalization in your state/country in your decision?

How/who popped the question?

What trepidations did you have about marriage?

What does marriage mean to you? What doubts do you have about the institution?

How is marriage the same/different for a lesbian couple?

How did your families handle the news? Was there any particular joy or heartbreak about someone who did or did not support your wedding?

What was the planning process for your wedding? Was it a fancy affair, or just a trip to the courthouse?

Did you have a best man/woman or bridesmaids/bridesmen?

Do you have children, and were they involved in the wedding?

Do you have a good story about your wedding outfits? About the ceremony/reception? Who did you invite?

If you’re an interracial couple, did that bring out issues beyond your lesbian connection? Same question if one or both of you is transgender.

Was your wedding traditional—or did you purposefully try to “queer” it?

Did you write your vows? Did you put out an announcement in the newspaper?

Did you go on a honeymoon?

What do you call your spouse?

How has lesbian wedded life met/exceeded/confounded your expectations? Does your relationship feel different since you married?

Has marriage made you more/less radical about LGBT issues?

Deadline for submissions: January 30, 2011.

Please consider running your ideas past us before you plunge into writing. We also encourage early submissions.

Please email inquiries and submissions to: abilger[at]cmc[dot]edu

Looking forward to hearing from you!

President Obama: It Gets Better

One of the first things President Obama's done in a while to make me happy that I voted for him:



Also, a compelling feature by Peter Baker in this past week's New York Times Magazine assuaged a wee bit of my presidentially-motivated ire. You can find the online version of it here.

And, obviously, thanks to Dan Savage for starting all of this.

Secretary Hilary Clinton: "Tomorrow Will Be Better"

Secretary Clinton (then candidate Clinton) was one of the reasons I started this blog two years ago. I'm so pleased to see she hasn't changed:

Secretariat: The Horse and The Housewife

I've got a new film review of Disney's Secretariat up over at the Ms. blog. Here's a snippet:

If you love horse movies, then you’ll probably love Disney’s newest, much-hyped Secretariat, which fits firmly in the genre of other recent triumphant equine epics–Seabiscuit (2003), Hildalgo (2004) and Dreamer (2005)–with one notable exception. Despite the film’s plethora of close-ups of the stallion’s deep, soulful eyes and its re-creation of some of Big Red’s most thrilling races, Secretariat isn’t really about the horse; instead, it’s a thinly-veiled ode to equality, courage and how a housewife becomes a savvy businesswoman in the eyes of her family and a nation.

Don’t get me wrong, Secretariat is still the star of his own movie; after all, he is a racing legend, something that the heavy-handed Biblical comparison which opens and closes the film strains to remind us. But the film’s ultimate goal seems to be to tell us the back-in-the-barn story of Big Red’s legacy, which goes something like this, “Behind every great horse, there’s a great woman.”

Click here to read the rest!

For Colored Girls

I'm really looking forward to seeing Tyler Perry's new film For Colored Girls--hope it lives up to Ntokage Shange's brilliant For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf from which it's adapted. The film has an incredible cast, including Janet Jackson, Loretta Devine, Kimberly Elise, Thandie Newton, Phylicia Rashad, Anika Noni Rose, Kerry Washington, Whoopi Goldberg and Macy Gray.

Privilege and Passing: Root Post Redux

So, earlier this week my first post went up at The Root, a "daily online magazine that provides thought-provoking commentary on today's news from a variety of black perspectives" that I've been following for quite a while. I was thrilled to finally post there, and I hope to continue to write for them. You can find my first post, and the accompanying thriving-but-contentious comment section, here.

In the essay, I write about unintentionally passing (for white and straight) and the associated privilege(s) that passing "allows" me. What's interesting is that I specify in the post that it's usually those who are not people of color themselves that mistake me for white (or, occasionally, Latina or Israeli, the latter mostly because of my first name), and yet many commenters felt inclined to assure me that I look black to them. That's fine, and I actually appreciate that some people recognize me as black, as I have never felt particularly included by black culture (with a few exceptions). However, many people do not realize I am black when they first meet me (and they certainly don't peg me for a lesbian at first glance ). What these moments of misrecognition beget is situations of (white) (heterosexual) privilege. The questions I'm asking then is how to mitigate the privileges I'm given upon first impression and whether it is even my responsibility to do so.

Privilege is, in a way, even more insidious than outright racism because it's so easily glossed over and so often completely subconscious. For example (somewhat over-simplified but illustrative): as a biracial femme lesbian who looks white, middle class and straight, I have never been harassed by a stranger on the street due to either my race or my sexuality. The thing is that most people who might find my race or sexual orientation threatening don't recognize me as different from the rest of white, straight America. But I'm as gay as these women (who, adorably, are all look-a-likes of a male, teenage pop star) and as black as, say, Obama, regarding whom countless commentators asked if America was "ready for a black President." (I'm not saying that Obama isn't black or that biracial individuals aren't black; I'm just trying to make a point about the way visibility and privilege merge.)

In any case, despite the autobiographical format of my essay at The Root, I'm actually not overly concerned with how these factors affect me as an individual. I'm more interested in how privilege, especially privilege that relies almost entirely on visible identity markers, functions for those of us whose outward appearance doesn't match our actual identities. In what situations are you only how others perceive you rather than how you perceive yourself?

(As a postscript, it is worth noting that the question of the relationship between visibility and identity is especially trenchant today, on the anniversary of September 11. How often in the past nine years have those who appear Middle Eastern or Muslim been judged based on what they look like rather than who they are?)

Rizzoli and Isles

So I've been trying to work up the energy and find the time (classes just started and there's always a week or two adjustment period when a new semester begins where you seemingly have no time to do anything but read and prep your lectures/discussions/in-class exercises...things'll settle down, right?) to compose a post about TNT's new original series Rizzoli & Isles, which is just winding up its first short (10 episode) season. If you're interested in checking it out, I'm pretty sure TNT has all but a few of the episodes available for viewing online.

In any case, Rizzoli & Isles is a little bit like Cagney and Lacey met a G-rated version of Sex and the City and had a love child that watched a lot of Charlie's Angels growing up. A crime show boasting two female protagonists, a detective (Rizzoli, played by Angie Harmon) and a medical examiner (Isles, played by Sasha Alexander), who are close friends (so far so good) and incessantly talk about men (ay, there's the rub), Rizzoli & Isles definitely breaks The Bechdel Rule. Not to mention that the actual solving of crimes seems to take second shrift to the show's desire to create as many touching, personal moments between its two eponymous heroes as possible (suffice it to say, that while I consider many of my female friends to be near and dear to my heart, I do not go everywhere with them or find myself having sleepovers with them every other night). And yet, despite it's near absurdity, I am absolutely in love with this show.



In lieu of a post where I actually try to parse my rationally-suspect love affair with Rizzoli & Isles, I'll leave you with a list of links about the show. In the interest of selfishness, this will also be a convenient placeholder for me to come back to when I find the time to craft a real analysis, one that, I hope, will get to the heart of why recent crime shows with more than one female lead continually seem to falter (Women's Murder Club, Law and Order: Trial by Jury, and the UK's Murder in Suburbia, to name a few) and what TNT might be trying to do differently with Rizzoli & Isles.

And now, the links:

NY Times: An Unlikely Pair Bond on the Homicide Beat
LA Times: Television review: 'Rizzoli & Isles'
USA Today: 'Rizzoli & Isles' commits the ultimate crime of tedium
Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: TNT, USA launch women against crime
AfterEllen: "Rizzoli & Isles" is TV's first lesbian buddy cop show (it just doesn't know it yet)