I just read some comments on a NYT piece about Steve Jobs’ taxes. One of the reader commented, as many people like to, that taxes are bad because governments are simply inefficient and run by fools.

To me this implies the assumption that the government is run by “them” some other species of inefficient fools, while business and corporations are run by “us,” an different and efficient species. Anyone who has spent time in a corporation can tell you from personal experience that there is nothing necessarily efficient about them. How many pointless reports have you had to file? How much time have you spent “managing up,” soothing your bosses’ fears and insecurities, trying to read her mind to figure out what she wants?

Business thrives sustainably when it is meeing real human needs and when the human beings who make up the business recognize that business exists to serve human needs, not the other way round.

It is comfortable American “conventional wisdom” that governments are run by fools. For the past 20 years, Americans have been continually electing American governments who promise to do nothing but cut taxes/goverment (not necessarily the same thing as Bush fils has shown). Perhaps this conventional wisdom is widely accepted because the people of America no longer feel that the government represents them (not that it ever has really done a bang-up job of representing all Americans, to say nothing of the people who lived here before it was called America). Perhaps Americans have felt this way for so long that they have simply decided that government is for “fools” because it is too painful to accept what has happened.

Americans seem to feel like people from Jupiter landed here and elected their government while they were busy watching football. But Americans have elected and accepted this government. Government, like business, is nothing more than people and both institutions need our continued co-operation and consent to run and that is is up to people to change them. And this is absolutely possible.

In just one week, the world lost three amazing women: Wendy Wasserstein, Betty Friedan and Coretta Scott King. I’m sure there were many more amazing women who died that week as well, who did not have the fame each of these three had, but their lives were probably bettered in some way by at least one of these three. It made me think about the kind of backbone the leaders of civil rights movements have had. We now live in a time in which the corruption of governments, corporations and militaries, ‘authority’ in general seems so disconnected from the needs of people. It’s almost hard to believe that these systems depend on people’on human lives to operate.

Each of these women inspired me. They each had incredible strength of character to do things the way that seemed right to them, even when the environment they came from told them they were foolish or irrelevant. They did not write or organize for ego alone. They were willing to speak and live their truth for its own sake, which is probably what makes life meaningful.

I recently read Ghandi’s autobiography and I am reminded by this work and these women (especially Coretta Scott King), that the ability to change our world and our seemingly-deaf corporations and government is there, but that it begins first and foremost with ourselves. It is more helpful and meaningful to change our behaviours out of a commitment to our own integrity rather than hating what we wish were different outside of us. We do not have to co-operate with what causes us harm.

I am particularly saddened by Wendy Wasserstein’s premature death. First Gilda Radner, then Madeleine Kahn, now Wendy Wasserstein. I am about to make my first Off-Broadway appearance with my first play, and I am very conscious of the fact that women playwrights owe her a great debt. As involved as I was in feminist organizing in college and law school, I still often question whether or not the details of a uniquely female life will really be interesting and ‘important’ enough to include in my work. Reading Wasserstein’s work helps remind me that a woman’s life even feminist hopes are worth writing. It is the lives we don’t often hear about, even the mocked beliefs that are the most worth sharing’if they are part of an honest life, honest truth and, for me, heartfelt humor.

First there was class then race, then gender, then sexual orientation, then disability, then gender identity…you know the list. Identity politics gave us a structure for (post)modern progressive movement. It also gave us pithy politically-conscious conversation like ‘Speaking as a differently-abled, working-class, lesbian Latina sous chef, I would like to note that paprika is relegated to a mere garnish by the colonialist, imperial Europeans represented by the hard-boiled egg.’

Then in mocking response came Rush Limbaugh and the ‘Contract With America’ and a neo-conservative American political movement that took control of the US Congress and White House. The Left has been wringing its hands in despair ever since.

Does this simple 10 point process for creating a social/political identity sound familiar? The Left is more influential than it thinks.

1. Wake up and realize we’re oppressed.

   We’re the majority, yet we can’t profess our beliefs in public at any school. Can’t even put the Ten Commandments up on the wall at a Courthouse. Can’t preach the Gospel at our government jobs. A fearful society wants us to live dishonest lives hiding in the closet.

   We need to raise consciousness and show people the nature of their oppression. Even if we have to go door to door to do it.

2. This explains everything that bothers me about the world

   I’ve got a hammer and you look like a nail.

3. Create like-minded community

   I just don’t feel safe and welcome to be a Christian just anywhere yet. I need to live amongst those who identify as I do. We need to create our own tables at university and separate communities that support our politics. It’s a Christian thing, you wouldn’t understand.

4. Re-read culture

   We have to re-read history and create new forms of scholarship. Let’s re-interpret our texts to find the hidden ‘x’s. We can uncover the parts of our identity that have been lost by an oppressive society. Abraham Lincoln was a Christian! We can co-opt their signifiers! Glossy Bibles! Derrida for Christ!

5. The Personal Is Political

   Your personal life is up for discussion because it is political. This isn’t just a private matter anymore. You must ‘ID’ in public as Christian. You need to own your point of view in public so that people give proper credit to where it’s coming from. Whether you’re teaching school or running a government commission or chatting at the water cooler, you need to represent. It’s not enough to just live a Christian life Harriet Miers, we need you to make it political and shout it from the soapbox.

6. Where are you going to be when the revolution comes?!

   Who you’re sleeping with is our business. Now that the personal is political, your life is up for our evaluation. We will have to work to tell the difference between the folks who just hang out for the comfy community and belonging and those who are true Christians. We have to hold each other accountable for every detail in our personal lives. Unless it gives the other side ammunition. Did we mention that the political is personal too?

7. Coalition building

   To accomplish our political goals we have make inclusive, uplifting coalitions, reaching out to Evangelicals, Catholics and Mormon churches, all 1,200 Protestant denominations and many others. Yes, we didn’t always get along. But now that we’re oppressed and politics are so much more important, things have changed! It’s so much more cohesive to focus on what we have in common: Jesus and homosexuals.

8. Change through culture

   It’s important for young Christians to have role models in public. We will agitate and pray for representation in government and reach out through culture. We will create our own film festivals. We will take pride in Lee Ann Womack and Mel Gibson and all of our famous preachers and politicians.

9. Eat Your Own

   We will fight against tokenism. We don’t want to just have a symbolic Christian. We will work to make sure we get one who will shout their true identity and identity politics from the rooftops. The personal is political, remember? Harriet Miers understands that now.

10. Symbols of membership

    We can spread our ideas through cool tee shirts and slogans. This kind of stuff really lets people know we mean business and helps them find other Christians like them. A bracelet, button or even bumper sticker or a painted plate hanging in a wall bracket can help you feel less alone in the world and make political change.

    Of course there are sometimes people who just like to hang out for the cool music and fashion. But that’s a risk we have to take to be true to our identity.

11. Go to protests and rallies to find dates

    At the end of the identity politics arc: The political is good when it helps me personally.

Identity Politics Then and Now

Is it really that surprising that Arnold won the California recall election?

It’s just the lastest stage in an ongoing trend. It started with Reagan and then the Bushes and now Arnold. Each Republican figurehead seems to only need to be able to speak fewer and fewer words as they go along. This one can only say three words in a row. Truth is, Arnold doesn’t have to say much. It’s all about his image.

The recall election has proven that clear policy positions and debates and full sentences aren’t really necessary to hold a leadership position. We’ve already given up on people following through. Better to say less and mean it, than talk, talk, talk or whine, whine, whine.

Arnold means: ‘I am big, masculine, tough, self-made immigrant. Uh.’

He’s butch in a way people are nostalgic for. That’s the secret of Republican success. We want an authority figure who’s gonna get things done, kick ass, take no prisoners. Something that happens with hard, forceful consonants, or in three syllables.

People are longing for a time when one person’s toughness can just make it all go away.

‘I vill be daddy of California. I vill be tough and make the bad people and your budget nightmare go avay.’

That’s all he has to say. Sexual harassment? Isn’t that part of any A list action movie star’s compensation package? Sexual appetite only adds to daddy cred. Nazi father? It only makes him tougher.

But here’s the catch. We have to reap what we sew. And if we think that the new lowest common denomoinator in politics is Arnold Schwarzenneger, we are sadly mistaken.

It’s going to get much much lower.

A monster truck will be the next governer of California.

Who needs a person? They’ll just disappoint us. They’ll get corrupt, they’ll have affairs, they’ll lose their hair and muscle tone.

Arianna tried to paint Arnold’s Hummer as a giant liability. She couldn’t have been more wrong.

A car named for a blow job? Arnold should watch out. I’d say that’s California’s governer in 2006.

‘ heather gold, Oct. 2003 www.subvert.com

Just the other week, news broke that a San Francisco institution — Rainbow Grocery, a veritable shrine to progressive politics and guilt-free purchasing — was not selling Chanukah gelt, (chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil) because the bulk foods and packaged goods sections of the store had voted to ban products from Israel. One outraged Jewish customer wrote an email and then they told two friends and so on. The response has turned into a boycott of Rainbow.

The grocery store has since issued a statement saying that it has never had a ban on Israeli products. Whether the ban has been real or not I haven’t been able to confirm. But it’s set off an intense reaction from it’s Jewish customers that is very real. Rainbow was flooded with emails and phone calls, including one from a Jewish organization. The whole debacle illustrates the limitations of ‘all of nothing’ progressive political methods, and the growing difficulty of being Jewish and progressive.

Jewish identity is a tenuous thing in the Bay Area. It’s probably the most assimilated place in the country. The wonderful tolerance for difference and the tendency of people to come to the Bay Area to reinvent themselves has (among many other influences) led to the one American city without a visible Jewish neighborhood. At this point, it’s less subversive or likely to be out in San Francisco as gay than it is as a Jew. And that has a great deal to do with changes and cultures that people of Jewish-origin have set up for themselves in San Francisco. It also has to do with the unique Jewish anxieties about Jewish identity. Food is one of the few links that people like this often have left who are Jewish. And even that link is tenuous in San Francisco. It is easier to find food from Ethiopia or Burma or Nepal than the food from my grandma’s kitchen. In the absence of active, positive associations with Jewishness in ones life, it’s easy to connect with Israel as the sole way to identify as a Jew. And among those who do identify as Jewish in some way in San Francisco, many do not support the oppressive aspects of the Israeli government policies. They are also upset by the suicide bombings in Israel. But the progressive culture of San Francisco combined with the general invisibility of a Jewish middle in San Francisco, means that litmus tests are inevitable. You’re either completely against Israel or you’re not progressive. Rainbow just happened to focus everything on chocolate.

Is Rainbow treating this situation about Israeli products similar to choices about products from other countries? A large percentage of Israel opposes the occupation of the Palestinian territories. A large percentage of the US opposes the saber-rattling and likely war on Iraq. Will Rainbow divisions consider banning American foods as well? Or are they separating the producers of American foods from the policies of their current ruling government?

Maybe one reason I don’t feel outraged by either then ban or the Rainbow boycott is because I assume the intentions are good on both sides. Call me Anne Frank. I only wish that it were as easy to get enthusiastic about more pragmatic action that would bring us together, rather than a clear bright line, like a ban or a boycott, that asks people to take sides. This helps you feel good and righteous about your side, whatever it is, but ignores whether or not any of these actions is actually helping the situation in Israel and Palestine get better.

The ban on Israeli products and the boycott of Rainbow in response only offer binary options for people. “You’re with us or against us.” That’s exactly the kind of retaliatory approach that is continuing the carnage in Israel and Palestine. Why build or reinforce identity through victimhood?

I’d just rather focus on what we can all be for, rather than what we are against. And Rainbow is in a good position to do this because sharing food is one of the best ways to open people up and bring them together. Getting us more involved, rather than choosing sides, would likely make us all better customers and more effective politically. What happened to old-fashioned progressive active listening? Why not send food to Palestinians? Why not host local meals that bring us together and educate people about the conflict? I would be happy to have the first one. If we are going to make things better we have to know and hear each other. After all, it is said that the Oslo accords were reached, in part, because Rabin and Arafat were fed constantly.

Flaunting her strength: Brandi Chastain’s winning strategy.

Last weekend’s phenomenal Women’s World Cup match sparked debate both in Slate and between a group of men on a San Francisco-based email list. The debate wasn’t about the phenomenal match between the U.S. and China, it was about whether Brandi Chastain was trying to advance an ad strategy or personal branding in throwing off her shirt in victory when the U.S. won the game.

Feh. That’s all I can say to that kind of yammering which misses the obvious point of this enormously meaningful event.

It’s a thrill to see some women getting attention for being competitive, strong and elegant as opposed to just getting noticed for their choice of husband It’s all about context . Chastain wasn’t flashing her thong in private, she was flaunting her strength and victory in the face of everyone. Who could deny her what she wanted at that moment? Her winning kick gave her a throne of power women once only held on their wedding day.

Was it an obvious brand play? Would any brand have even considered such a blunt show of female strength as an important symbolic image to use if Brandi hadn’t given it to the moment? I think we’d be more likely to see a fresh-scrubbed face and ponytail. Ask Martina Navratilova how many endorsement dollars her strength garnered her. This was part of changing the landscape. Endorsers will be following Brandi, not leading her. The chick is hot.

I can hardly believe that no one is saying, “What an unattractive unladylike thing to do!” (Or as I once heard from my own mother after returning home from winter hockey season: “What is that lump on your leg?– “It’s a quadricep, mum.”)

In Chastain’s rippling, clenched fist, scream of joy we all felt the double thrill of last weekend: a victory in an important soccer game, and the beginning of the end of women having to explain away their strength.

By now, many of us have heard of Mark Bingham. He was one of the passengers on United Flight 93, the hijacked airliner that was crashed in a wooded area of Pennsylvania last Tuesday.

We have been soaking up details from the media coverage in our grief, trying to gain some sense of control in relationship to this event which has shown us how little control we may have over our destinies. A really unAmerican idea.

We take extra interest in the few who seemed to take some of the control back last Tuesday, on the one flight that crashed in an unpopulated area.

We know about Mark Bingham’s last minute phone call to his mother.

We know that he was a rugby player, and a public relations executive.

And as details come together, we know he looks like part of a group of passengers that may have successfully kept the plane from hitting its target in DC.

What most of us do not know unless we read the gay press is that Mark Bingham was an out gay man.

You also might not know that Jerry Fallwell, speaking on the 700 Club last week, said about gays and lesbians–along with feminists and abortionists, “I point the finger in their face and say you helped this happen.”

Mark Bingham, from every report and tribute, sounds like a stand-up guy. The kind of good-hearted and courageous person you want on your team.

Mark Bingham may have saved the White House. And may even receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. But he could not have served in the military. If he were one of us rather than one of the passengers on flight 93, he could not donate blood nor be conscripted should it come to that.

We’ve each got our own mental picture of what the moment of crisis looked like on flight 93. The scene makes it pretty clear that the passengers who attacked their captors had more pressing matters on their minds than Mark Bingham’s sexual orientation. Why does this country not yet understand that this would not be any different in war. The U.S. remains one of only two NATO members that keeps gays and lesbians from honestly serving their country.

Some may say that it’s irrelevant the sexuality of this man, hero or not. And that there’s no point in my bringing it up. Mark’s sexuality should be irrelevant, but to the U.S. Military it’s not.

September 11th changes everything, why not the status of gays in the military? Now, more than ever, we need Mark Binghams.

Maybe one thing we’ll learn from this tragedy, whether it’s from the terrorists or the Mark Binghams, is that it’s what you do, not who you are that counts.

The first loud clapping and hooting of the night happens as Susie takes the stage. She starts with her interest in connecting with the audience. What are their psychological histories and sexual fantasies? What brought them here tonight? Can she know them? Her performance begins as a conversation with the audience, and launches into a tale about her daughter who graduated from first grade tonight. Susie relates the profundity of love letters from a child who has just learned to write. One of her own childhood wishes, Susie has told her daughter she can write and draw in her room. Anything she wants, anything at all. But the result has been some expression she didn’t necessarily hope for. Like “mommy is a pig” scrawled across a recent set of proud drawings after some difficult parental moment. Susie laughs her infectious, delighted laugh and continues.

The audience is hushed and focussed intently on her anecdotes, delivered so personally and openly. Nothing about sex has been uttered, but the intimacy in the room is tangible. The audience would be satisfied with an evening of Susie Bright just like this.

She then talks about beginning a column again, which starts tomorrow for Salon. Her last columnist days were as a porn reviewer for Penthouse “the job that liberated me from doing buttplug inventory at Good Vibrations,” she says. She then proceeds to give the audience a preview of her first Salon column: a crisp, well-written, humorous piece that was spurred by a call from the Tom Snyder show shopping her for an appearance. Susie analogizes the process of getting auditioned by the show to familiar sexual and dating dynamics. Has she revealed too much information in her pre-interview? Her erotic philanthropy left her feeling used by the screeners of Tom’ s show. Rejection is rejection.

Next is a piece that stems from a guest spot she did on the radio show hosted by her favourite sex advice columnist, Dan Savage (otherwise known as Hey Faggot). One fan dials up to speak for stunned political lesbians who want to call her on her shit: “how dare you call yourself a lesbian sex expert when you’ve really been a bisexual breeder for years.” Susie pops off a glib, sexually detailed on-air response that ends the call.

But the caller’s challenge haunted her for several weeks. Then it hits her, she realizes her attraction to the caller. “I don’t wanna argue with the bi-bashers…” her voice drops to a secuctive drawl: “I want my mouth all over their blasphemy.” This is but the first of the revelations in this essay. Part theory, part observation, part personal reckoning, Susie just dives in to the morass of feelings, theories and hang-ups around bisexuality and sexuality in general.

I won’t go into all of the details of her insights and feelings, but I will just say this. Intense. Mind-opening. One of the most important thinkers in the queer community and the most honest sexual commentator in America. Check out the audio file. This is stuff worth hearing. I found myself testifying out loud behind my laptop in the balcony. “Damn girl you are on it.”

The final piece goes more emotionally into her bisexuality and the hurt, anguish, lust and joy of past loves and beddings with women and men, and thoughtful commentary on all of these, including that timeless question: are bisexuals traitors to the gay community? In the final Susie Bright analysis, bisexuality confonts all prejudices. ” Don’t talk to me about pride. Love has no pride and that’s the real banner the world marches under.”

Her prose and her delivery feel genuine, and she’s holding the audience in her hand now. Susie Bright has the rare ability to make people’s heads, hearts and genetalia connect. You gotta give it up for the girl. She dives into the shit. I think of Catherine MacKinnon who’s been privately criticized by her own feminist academic followers for years for the discomforting gap between her theories and her marriage to womanizer Jeffrey Masson. Susie Bright doesn’t start from theory though. She shows us that her, and our sexual choices are “personal. Not necessarily made by principle.” She starts from herself and doesn’t pose. That’s the intimacy. That’s the real erotica.

I live in San Francisco, where sex talk and personal therapy parading as performance art are as ubiquitous as facial piercing. What is harder to find is honest personal experience woven with insightful observation. Smartness is the biggest turn on of all.

Who decided that we liked being called bitch?

How do you write out your anger
and your positive alternatives
and your understanding
and the vulnerability that comes from learning to be afraid to walk to the supermarket alone.
And the hurt that grows from feeling that that’s just the way it has to be?

How do you scream out the love you have for living your own life?
How do you articulate the subtle frustration that mounts
when you swallow someone else’s ignorance?
when you answer to girl and
flirt to get that advantage you’ll need to make a change.