“take it from a girl who is already half angel” (required viewing)

8 Things Doctoral Students Should Consider When Starting Their Program of Study

1. This is one of the very few times in your career that a leader in your field will provide substantive feedback on your ideas before you submit them to conferences and journals.  After a professor returns an essay, take his or her words to heart and go back and REVISE the paper.  Many Ph.D. students treat final paper submissions as an endgame, when, in actuality, submitting an essay at the end of the semester is an EARLY step in constructing a research report.
2. At conferences, you are selling yourself (but not in a Pretty Woman way).  Every paper presentation is a sales pitch.  Even if your paper is a piece of shit, sell yourself.  Most people who attend conferences have no idea how to effectively present their ideas.  Many presenters read directly off a piece of paper (or worse, a COMPUTER screen) and make little earnest effort to LOOK AT their audience members.  Most get bogged down in boring details and, before they’ve even made it past a summary of their methods section, the panel chair has handed them a note that indicates they’ve gone overtime and need to end their presentation.  Be thankful that these people make the mistakes they do; this will make standing out in a GOOD way easier for you.  If you ENGAGE your audience by providing AT LEAST 90% eye contact and only focusing on 2-3 of the coolest aspects of your paper, you’ll leave them wanting more.  They’ll likely talk to their colleagues about you and your work.  Landing a tenure-track position is a lot easier when people are already familiar with your name, face, and scholarship.
3. Have a healthy attitude about the competitive aspects of doctoral study.  By the end of your second year, you’ll notice a few stars emerge in your cohort; you’ll also recognize more than a few people have sank to the bottom of the academic barrel.  The person you recognize as the most productive student in your program should be in your crosshairs.  Okay, maybe “crosshairs” is a little dramatic; but I encourage you to do all that you can to develop a HEALTHY and FRIENDLY competition with the leaders in your pack because the JOB MARKET is HIGLHY competitive. How many “top paper” awards have the most productive people in your cohort accumulated? How many papers have they submitted to peer-reviewed journals? How many essays have they had published? Have you held more or less positions on academic association committees? Answers to these questions will help determine how competitive you will be when you enter the job market.  If you aren’t one of the leaders in the microcosm of your program, you can’t expect to be highly competitive in the macrocosm of the job market.
4. Submit every paper you produce.  Even if you think an essay is a steaming pile of shit, submit it.  There have been times in my conference career that I’ve won paper awards for what I initially perceived to be lackluster scholarship; on other occasions, some of my most insightful work hasn’t made it past a division’s review process.
5. Don’t alienate yourself from your cohort.  Even if you really don’t like some of your peers, do your best to keep graduate student relationships amicable.  Members of your cohort are, in many ways, your trans-institutional lifelines.  You’ll rely on them for future panel participation, anthology offers, and job opportunities.  If you anticipate problems with somebody in your area of specialization, keep a friendly distance.  Doctoral programs are filled with a lot of smart people and STRONG personalities.  Not everyone’s going to get along, but there’s no point in demonizing people and developing enemies.  Avoid many of the traps your peers may set.  Don’t scapegoat the man or woman who over-contributes in a class.  Try to avoid negativity-based bonding.
6. Unlike faculty, your time at the university is TEMPORARY.  Your temporary status has benefits and drawbacks.  On one hand, you shouldn’t expect a faculty member to advocate on your behalf if it means betraying the confidence of another faculty member.  Faculty members and Ph.D. students spend roughly 4 years in close quarters; but they spend most of their careers with their tenured and tenure-track colleagues.  On the other hand, limited temporality gives Ph.D. students an often misunderstood and unrecognized power.  You can often challenge injustices in the system without much dire consequence; just keep your questioning and critique productive and don’t piss off anyone who might badmouth you to potential employers.
7. Split course readings into manageable chunks.  On average, you’ll read 150 pages in a class each week.  This reading will be much easier to knock out if you read 30 pages a day, five days a week.  I also recommend segmenting paper writing and stretching it out over a few weeks.  A 20-page paper is MUCH EASIER to write when you write one page a day, 5 pages a week, over the course of two weeks.  Your final product will probably end up being much more contemplative and polished than a report that was produced in its entirety a day or two before the deadline.
8. Don’t be embarrassed by what you don’t know.  When I was in school, I noticed a lot of Ph.D. students who were too ashamed to admit they were unfamiliar with specific concepts or didn’t fully understand a theory.  You should NEVER be reluctant to ask for points of clarification.  Conversely, many doctoral students make their peers feel ignorant if they don’t share an intimate knowledge of THEIR OWN area of specialization.  Don’t buy their bullshit.  Focus on your specialty and do all you can to understand and appreciate concepts that may be foreign to you.  Use seminars as a SPACE TO ENGAGE IDEAS THAT CONFOUND YOU.  Don’t pass up the rich opportunities of understanding that seminars provide.

Bend It Like Behnam

Jon Secada fans DO NOT fuck around! All two of ‘em will curse you out and call you names if you say anything close to mean about the two-time Grammy award winner.  Up until last Saturday, I thought Jon Secada was Neil Sedaka.  Turns out they are TWO separate artists with similar sounding last names.  WHO KNEW?!? I’ll tell you who knew: a MAJOR Neil Sedaka Jon Secada fan named Behnam.  Behnam is super pissed at me ‘cuz I posted the following video on YouTube, where, evidently, he oversees ALL THINGS Sedaka Secada:

A bit of background: My friend Phil and I decided to brave the mean, baby stroller-laden streets of the Grove for Saturday brunch.  Oh, what a gorgeous Saturday in LA! Phil and I agreed to sit outside and enjoy a relatively quiet, peaceful, and sunny brunch.  About 5 minutes after we sat at our table, a disembodied voice introduced Mr. Secada.  Phil and I felt bad ‘cuz the crooner took the stage with little-to-no fanfare.  Maybe one person on the overcrowded Grove cobblestone clapped.  We also chuckled ‘cuz The Grove isn’t an appropriate venue for a 2-time Grammy winner.  The Grove stage, after all, is where Dancing with the Stars dancers Derek Hough and Mark Ballas play with their band, the “BHB,” or Ballas Hough Band, formerly known as “Almost Amy.”  Let me put it this way, playing The Grove main stage would be beneath Real Housewives of Atlanta “singer” and wig “maker” Kim Zolciak, the voice behind “Tardy for the Party.”  Jon Secada playing The Grove is INHERENTLY funny.

So SEXcada takes the stage and sings an assortment of shitty Christmas songs.  They’re not shitty ‘cuz Jonny Sec’s singing them; they’re crappy because ALL CHRISTMAS MUSIC SUCKS—well, except for Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You.”  Phil and I thought Mr. Sedaca had a nice voice but the organizers had maxed out the volume.  Christmas music isn’t meant to be “turned up to 11”; nor is it meant to bass-rock the windows of your dining establishment.  Suddenly, our hushed brunch was transformed into an, as we perceived it, impromptu John Secada concert.  Saturday brunches are about nursing your hangover and trying to make sense of Friday night blackouts.  Saturday brunch is not supposed to feature John Secada singing Christmas music at maximum volume before we’ve even hit Thanksgiving.  The moment seemed utterly absurd and perfect to catch on my iPhone for later viewing on YouTube.

You would have thought I filmed a video, in which I screamed: “Jon Secada sodomized my dog and I want him to die! Fuck Jon Secada! And Neil Sedaka!” For the record, Jon Secada did NOT rape my dog and I don’t want him to die.  Just so we’re clear.  I don’t want to leave anything ambiguous in this post.  ‘Cuz Secada’s got people.  He’s got eyes EVERYWHERE! EVERYWHERE! F’ing EVERYWHERE!

A few days after my YouTube video was posted, I got a nasty message from Secada super fan Behnam.  Despite what his writing might lead you to believe, Behnam is NOT a 12-year-old girl.   He’s an adult, from Ontario; and Behnam’s got some pretty strong opinions about my video.  The subject of his email is “suck this” and it reads:

listen up dick head… it is cool with commenting on singers’ song and on any artists works…If you dare to receive comments on your stupid clip, you would not block comments and ratings…haha… you are just an asshole and you deserve to suck adam labert’s… remember Jon is not gay even though he has many gay followers…..we (Jon Secada) team has the power to block you as the user and remove your gay video…

As my eyes tripped over the guy’s horrific grammar, I got carried away by a surprising thought: There’s a whole Jon Secada team!?! Like Team America, World Police, but for Jon Secada? And this team has the power to “block me” and remove my “gay video”? I shouldn’t make fun; I should empathize with Behnam, a self-described “lifelong Secada fan.”  My video was to Behnam what 9/11 was to NYC; or what Proposition 8 was to marriage equality advocates; or what the Holocaust was to Jews.  Armed with fistfuls of unnecessary ellipses, Behnam filled my box with an assortment of unimaginative ad hominem attacks and poorly guised gay jokes.  (I wouldn’t recommend Behnam bringing Glambert fans into this debate; they’ll top his pathetic and raise it with five strains of crazy.  Go, Adam fans!)

Behnam has all the dedication of a Claymate or a Fanilow.  I suppose we all need our cause, which explains why I was calm and fair in my response.  I told him that the jokes in the video were more about the situation than they were about J. Sec.  I even ended my message with a generous “Peace, and happy holidays!”

Wouldn’t you know it? An hour later, I get a response from Behnam, in which he takes my kind gesture and bends it like Behnam.  Here’s a portion of his gripping prose:

People are more than welcome to post messages everywhere unless they respect the others with no harm… I just wanted to make this clear…We were very close to take a serious action on this clip as Jon and his family had also seen this, but I will pass your explanation to them to cool down the things…

I feel like a character in the Twilight saga! They were close to “taking serious action” against my un-actionable free speech?!? Say it ain’t so! And Jon Secada’s entire family is as infuriated as Behnam by my video.  At least Behnam, leader of the fearless and notorious Secada gang, has offered to “cool things down.”  ‘Cuz you don’t want to see the Secada hot! No HOT SE-CA-DA! Do not light that torch! Do not emblaze that firecracker! Too hot!

Here’s a video of Behnam interviewing SEXcada, who is MOST ASSUREDLY on the guy’s speed dial:

NOTE: I have nothing against Jon Secada.  This entry, like the aforementioned video, is intended to make light of a funny situation.  Any joke made at Mr. Secada’s expense is only meant to amplify the narrative.  I say this to tame the wild fires of other J. Sec fan death squad members.

UPDATE!!! Below you’ll find some equally delicious responses to THIS blog entry.  I’ll update with the crazy as it continues to roll in.

On Twitter, @J33R, a die-hard Secada fan read this entry and called me a “pathetic excuse for a human being.”

An Education in H8

During the last election, people who advocated against marriage equality ran a political ad, in which a little girl runs into her kitchen and screeches, “Mommy, Mommy, look what they taught me in school today! They taught me a prince can marry a prince.”  The Proposition 8 campaign used fear appeals to obscure the marriage equality issue. “Yes on 8” organizations unfairly convinced a number of California citizens that Proposition 8 was primarily about including gay themes in the curriculum of grade school children.

Many of us did our best to separate fact and fiction.  We had rational conversations with friends and family members; we explained that Proposition 8 was about marriage equality, nothing more, nothing less.  The California Faculty and Teaching Associations even made commercials explaining that the 8 campaigners were lying about how marriage equality affects curriculum.

The yes-on-8 organizers caught many marriage equality advocates in a rhetorical trap.  We spent so much time trying to convince people that gay themes wouldn’t be present in curriculum that many of us didn’t stop and pose the question, “Why SHOULDN’T gay themes be addressed in public schools?” There are several organizations AGAINST TRUTH in this country, and anti-gay movements are some of the most insidious.  They remove gay themes and men and women from history books, as if knowledge of gay people will turn people gay.  Many significant events in US history have involved gay figures and have involved the gay community.  Unfortunately, events like Stonewall and people like Harvey Milk are strategically and unfairly REMOVED from the canons of history. Moreover, acts of brutalization committed against gay students are not taken seriously. Faculty and administration turn a blind eye as gay kids are emotionally and physically tortured.

Today, I learned that a 16-year-old boy in my old school district was repeatedly beaten with a METAL PIPE by one of his peers.  “You’re not gonna’ be gay anymore,” screamed the pipe-wielding kid.  It took a neighbor with a shotgun to end the horrific act of violence.  The day of the bashing, the 16-year-old told school administrators, teachers, and his bus driver about his peer’s plan.  Despite the fact that everyone knew he’d have to ride the same school bus as the kid making threats against him, nobody at the school took any substantive step to intervene.  For more information about the story, click here.

Through our votes, we teach children that gay people are LESS THAN their neighbors.  We teach them that they don’t deserve EQUAL PROTECTION under the law.  We teach our kids that gay people should be erased from history and removed from the military.   This is the REAL “Yes on 8” curriculum.  Should we be shocked when our children brutalize gay kids? Should we act surprised when they follow the lead of adults and try to make their gay peers DISAPPEAR?

Where’s the “Mommy, Mommy” advertisement for gay kids, the ones who get beat with pipes on their way home from school? Where’s the “Mommy, Mommy” advertisement for Lawrence “Larry” King, the gay and possibly trans. kid who was shot twice in the head by one of his peers AT SCHOOL?

Black History Month does not transform the melanin in a kid’s skin.  My education in the Cy-Fair district focused EXCLUSIVELY on straight people, and I am NOT a heterosexual.  When I took French I and II, my ethnicity did not change, nor did my love of the United States waiver.  Teaching kids that gay people EXIST is a lesson in TRUTH.  Erasing gay people and themes from curriculum PERPETUATES A DANGEROUS LIE.  Of course, faculty and administration IGNORE anti-gay violence; they rigorously and systematically act as if gay people DO NOT EXIST.

“Mommy, Mommy, guess what I learned in school today,” indeed.

Adam 4 Self-Anointed Adonis

This Adam4Adam profile provides many LOL’s. I could spend an entry deconstructing and explicating the hilarity, but I think most of the humor speaks for itself. Of course, as a “tier two” model, I may just be jealous that he’s at a “high-end agency” and I only book print ads for Red Lobster, or as Kristen Wiig calls it, “The Lob.” The little girls on Jenny Jones who screamed, “Don’t hate! Don’t hate! Jealous!?!” grew up to be this guy.

Thanksgiving Topluck, er, Potluck

Come join Ragan Fox & friends for a Thanksgiving topluck–I mean potluck. Bring one food and drink item and all the hot tops you can fit in your clown car. To keep this party X-rated, “Showgirls” will be played throughout the festivities. Feel free to invite friends.

Contact me on Facebook if you want to join in on the madness.

WeHolloween

New Rule: If you voted FOR Proposition 8, you don’t get to come to West Hollywood for the big gay carnival and street festival.

Every year, WeHo throws one of the world’s largest Halloween parties.  Over 400k people attended this year’s festivities.  Many of the men and women who come to the event are straight people who don’t wear costumes and gawk at gay people.  I hate the boulevard party, ‘cuz the straight-eyes-on-queer-guys mentality makes me feel like I’m an animal at the zoo, or an exhibit at Big Gay Al’s Jurassic Park.  Many of the visitors stand mouth agape and crassly point at gay people kissing or holding hands.  Yes, I said POINT, as in stick their index fingers in the direction of gay people and shake their head from side to side, as if they can’t believe ACTUAL gay people exist and perform ACTUAL gay behaviors.

Media portrayals of gay people are incongruous with the lived experiences of my brethren, so let me clear up three misconceptions for the all the gawkers and pointers.

Misconception #1: The West Hollywood featured in the reboot of Melrose Place is nothing like West Hollywood.  IRL West Hollywood is home to TONS of gay people.  And when I say “gay people,” I don’t mean one hot blonde female who tongue kisses another woman at the end of a series premiere.  The gay people who live IRL West Hollywood have no desire to satiate your warped lesbian fantasy that features two scorching straight women finger fucking one another in a fire-engine-red Porsche.

Misconception #2: Gay people are not like characters from Will and Grace.  Gay people that you see at our festival do things like kiss and fuck members of the same sex.  We don’t disappear into a commercial break the second you might feel any homophobic discomfort.

Misconception #3: Gay guys are not your sidekicks.  This isn’t an episode of Sex and the City.  You’re not Carrie and we aren’t your collective Stanford.  Straight women who come to gay bars should understand that queer men aren’t secondary characters in the gay bar episode of their life narrative.  If you accidentally spill your drink on a gay guy, you should immediately run to the bar, grab napkins, and offer to clean up the mess you’ve made.  If you burn a hole in a gay guy’s clothes with your cigarette, you should offer to cut them a check for the damage you’ve caused.  And don’t expect to cut in line to use the restroom.  Your vagina isn’t Fubar’s answer to a Disneyworld Fast Pass.  While we’re on the subject, understand that most gay bar bathrooms are, in fact, unisex.  Don’t act shocked or put out that men use the door marked “women”; the symbol on the door also doesn’t transform your vagina into a one of those aforementioned Fast Pass cards.

Philosophical Perspectives: A Cheat Sheet

I spent countless hours in graduate school trying to distinguish between the four worldviews that shape understandings of and conversations about truth, being, knowledge and power; these perspectives include modernism, postmodernism, structuralism and poststructuralism.  My professors routinely told me that each philosophical perspective was too complex to explain in a single class period; each school of thought, after all, comprises nuanced, complicated treatises that defy tidy summarization.  TRUE DAT! Many basic conversations that might help students distinguish between the movements unfortunately ended with the “It’s complicated!” (and not in a Denise Richards way) refrain.  Understanding one of these worldviews requires a basic knowledge of all four, because rudimentary understandings each movement are best acquired when the four perspectives are placed next to one another.  I have devised a cheat sheet that I plan to start using in my rhetorical theory seminar.  Any one-page matrix that distinguishes between the four movements will be partial and the characteristics will be woefully under-explained.  The display is intended to start (rather than end) conversations about modernism, postmodernism, structuralism, and poststructuralism.  I’d like to refine the table, so feel free to visit me on Facebook and share your ideas about the display.

Modernism	Focus shifts from religious, faith-based truth to objective, rational, logical means to gain knowledge. Belief in an objective Truth that can be uncovered and discovered via inductive reasoning. Belief in a coherent worldview. Focus on the benefits of progress.
Postmodernism	Belief in multiple, subjective, competing, fragmentary truths that are constructed, not discovered.  Contradiction and ambiguity are acknowledged and celebrated. Focus on newer forms of media, like TV and internet. “Progress” narratives are used to justify cultural domination. Historical, religious, and other cultural discourses are about power, not truth. Discontinuity over unification (e.g., of the subject). Emphasizes how meaning is INTERconnected, INTERtextual, and INTERreferential.
Structuralism	Studies a field as a complex system of interrelated parts. 6 primary themes: 1) All systems have structures. Structures pave the way for shared meaning.  Meaning is in fact derived from relationships (i.e., functional differences) established by structures (e.g., a quarter is more than a penny and is equal to two dimes and a nickel).  2) Structure determines the positions of a system’s parts.  3) Focus on co-existence of elements, not change.  4) Structures reveal the “real” behind a façade. 5) Structures pre-date individuals, so people are more products of structures than structures are products of people. 6) Anti-humanistic insofar as the human subject is no longer central and is replaced by (or merely a product of) language structures.
Post-structuralism	3 D’s, 1 D: Difference= difference and deferral; meaning is trapped in a constant state of differences and infinitely deferred or suspended. 3 D’s, 2 D: Destabilizing the author: Reader perception trumps author’s intended meaning. 3 D’s, 3 D: Deconstruction: focus on hierarchical binary oppositions (e.g., male/female and speech/writing).  Deconstruct the set of assumptions that establishes one as superior to the other. Meanings are best (though never fully) apprehended through disruption, revaluation, and transformation of settled truths (e.g., identity and history). Individuals comprise and are constituted by conflicting knowledge claims/discourses.

October 2K9 Favorite Things

• “HOARDERS”: I am fittingly obsessed with A & E’s “Hoarders,” a program that chronicles people who compulsively purchase junk and obsessively cling to the figurative and literal trash they amass. Last night’s re-run featured a woman named Linda, who, because of a divorce, was being forced out of her home. BTW, Linda’s husband divorced her because he couldn’t spend another day living amid MOUNTAINS of old hamburger wrappers, sticky Big Gulp cups, and thrift store pick-overs. When Linda’s son pressures her to throw away an old 10-speed bike that’s been rusting and rotting away in the garage, Linda replies, “No, it’s a Schwinn! I can sell it!” He tries to convince her that nobody’s gonna’ buy a 1980 Schwinn 10-speed. “Keep it!” she screams. “Put it in the KEEP pile!” This. Show. Is. Heaven. My friend Beth Crosby and I are in a competition to see who can hoard the most by Sunday. Beth’s a fantastic sketch comedy actress, whose internet fame is booming. Beth may be a lot funnier than me, but I’m determined to out-hoard her. She may be days away from her big “SNL” break; but I’m gonna’ get the “Hoarders” gig; and when I get it, we’ll see who has the last laugh.

• YEAST RADIO: I recently revisited one of my favorite digital haunts, Yeast Radio, an always-entertaining podcast hosted by the fabulously brash Madge Weinstein (aka Richard Bluestein). Bluestein is the John Waters of podcasting and one of the key people responsible for discovering and popularizing Fox and the City. If you’d like to hear us interact, visit Yeast Radio and check out episode number 967. We discuss numerous topics, ranging from sexual acts of “space docking” to the “str8-acting” gay man paradox. BTW, if you haven’t already done so, nominate Fox and the City (foxinthecity.libsyn.com/rss) for Best Produced and Best LGBT podcast. Don’t nominate the show in anything but those two categories; nominations in more than these 2 categories will result in a thrown-out vote.

• IGOOGLE: I have recently discovered the awesomeness of igooge.com. igoogle.com allows gmail users to customize and personalize their own “home” site (not to be confused with a homepage). My igoogle site contains a preview of my gmail, outline of top news stories, to-do list, 5-day weather forecast, and variety of fun games. If you decide to start using the interface, be sure to play “Who has the biggest brain?” a fun, 4-part quiz that measures your intellect and compares it against your friends’. Conversely, I don’t understand all the Google Wave hype.  Wave’s currently in limited, invite-only preview. The problem with Wave is that the invites have been so exclusive that those of us who managed to get on the server have very few people with whom to interact. What’s the point of cutting-edge digital interaction when there’s nobody to talk to? Fail!

• KATHY GRIFFIN’S OFFICIAL BOOK CLUB SELECTION: I adored reading Kathy’s memoir. Her unique voice resonates throughout the gripping prose. My measure of a good celebrity autobiography is whether or not I can hear the author’s voice when I read. Not one sentence of this book escapes Griffin’s sublime cadence and intonation. I was particularly fond of the chapters where she narrated awkward and heartbreaking experiences with a child-molesting brother; reflected on the failed mechanics of her ill-fated marriage; and humorously recounted Andy Dick assaulting a university audience in Florida. The only lame part of the book includes a boring assortment of email exchanges between Griffin and Steve Wozniak. Overall, Kathy’s tale is a must-read for anyone who lives in my sexual and/or geographical neighborhood.

• EPISODES OF THE ORIGINAL “MELROSE PLACE”: I am perhaps one of the biggest fans of the old “Melrose Place.”  I’ve seen every episode of the first 5½ seasons four times and plan to buy the remaining 2½ seasons the minute they hit store shelves. I was obsessed with this show when it first aired and spent hours daydreaming of what it would be like to walk in Amanda Woodward’s heels (and Keds). Out of a profound sense of obligation, I’ve seen every episode of the show’s shitty CW reboot. The writing on the new show is ABSOLUTELY HORRENDOUS. First, you don’t START the series with a murder. You start with trite, everyday problems and spend the first two seasons WORKING UP to murder. Second, your bitchy vixen shouldn’t try so hard to be a bitchy vixen. Take a page out of the original MP playbook and make her cutting but misunderstood. Third, get rid of the “Tuesdays are a bitch” slogan in your ads. The original show used “Mondays are a bitch” as a tag and it worked because Mondays are notoriously difficult days. “Tuesdays are a bitch” only makes sense as an allusion; an allusion that ultimately fails because the reference flies over the heads of the new show’s younger target audience. Fourth, it’s hard to construct empathy for the character you’ve pushed into prostitution when all her johns look like they’ve fallen dick-first out of an Armani ad. When Sydney was a whore, she had to screw old, ugly, fat guys for her rent.  We all felt sympathy for Sydney because most of us related to screwing old, ugly fat guys and feeling really gross and remorseful the minute the dirty condom hit the floor.   Finally, the old show may have been over-the-top but at least the apartments were realistic interpretations of where people live in my neighborhood. NONE of the settings look the slightest bit real, nor do they look ANYTHING like the original apartments. I’m willing to suspend my disbelief and assume the building went through major renovations but the new building’s blueprint and basic architecture doesn’t even resemble the original. And the sunlight looks so fucking artificial! Throw me a bone. Give me something—ANYTHING—to make me believe even a semblance of the narrative and setting COULD BE real. I fear that even the upcoming addition of Heather Locklear won’t be enough to save this sinking ship. They should have brought back and focused on the original cast. They should have made an ADULT soap. Keep in mind, the most popular primetime soaps in US TV history (e.g., Dallas and Dynasty) featured ADULTS, not 20-something slackers and art thieves (so realistic!). Oh, and, given that they live in WEST HOLLYWOOD in the MIDST of the prop-8 era, could we get AT LEAST one major gay male character? Obama’s speech to the HRC had more heart and conviction than this sad parody of the real thing.  At least I have the old show to warm my heart each night.  15 years after the original first aired and it’s still one of my favorite things.

the eyes have it

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard colleagues and students say, “I saw you walking from one class to the next and you totally ignored me.” Just yesterday, one of my favorite Gender and Communication students told me that he tried to say hello to me a couple of hours before class started and I acted like he was invisible. “I turned to my friend,” he explained, “and asked, ‘Did he see me or was he focused on something else?’”

I know exactly when this behavior began. My freshman and sophomore years of high school were particularly difficult. Feminine manners of speech and movement made me a walking bullseye, a perfect target for the razor-sharp darts of homophobia that regularly flew across the hallways of Cy Fair High School. While most students welcomed bells that signaled the end of each class period, I feared them. Exiting classrooms meant entering halls, where countless peers yelled slurs like, “Hey, faggot!” “Hey, faggot!” was like my “Hello, Dolly!”

I developed elaborate strategies for navigating the common areas of my school. I kept my head down and never looked people in the eye, which must have been a tactic I learned while watching a television farmer from Australia interact with wild boars. “If you lock eyes with the pig, the beast’ll think you’re challenging it to a death match. Beware of angry, feral swine, especially charging male pigs and their puncturing husks.”

Years of intimidation and emotional abuse left their mark. Strategies devised to keep me safe in high school were internalized and now significantly inhibit my ability to communicate with people I enjoy. Yesterday, I finally made the connection between the repeated complaints I receive about ignoring people in halls and my experiences in high school.

This internalized behavior may also explain why I automatically turn the other cheek when I see a man at the gym or at a bar to whom I’m attracted. In high school, I constructed detailed sexual fantasies about many of the young men who brutalized me. I associated and to some extent continue to associate physical attraction with name-calling and spitballs.

My friend Peter recently told me that he used to have a hard time looking at men he found attractive. “Help me!” I cried. “I have that problem now and I know it’s fucking up my dating life.” Peter suggested that I treat eye contact like a game. “Make the other guy be the first to look away,” he guided. I love competition! In an effort to un-learn behavior I habituated in high school, I’m gonna’ take Peter’s advice and have Western-style stare-downs at the gym and bars. I’m gonna’ reclaim dignity that was stolen from me in the 9th grade! Look out world, I’ve got EYES and words sharper than husks of feral pigs.

BTW, happy birthday to Peter! Thanks for the fantastic advice. Oh, and, dear reader, if you’re a fan of Friday the 13th, Peter wrote this braziliant book. Peter’s only fault is thinking that he can out-bottom the king of bottoms.