Jill Rants and Raves

Lesbians/Sex/Dirty Politics/Adolf/Bush - enough keywords?

I can't make up my mind what to write - should it be back to my great discourse on love, lesbians, sex, and the screwy ways we fuck it all up? Should it be about my organic farming, dog loving, combustible, horse whispering friend GR, who commented yesterday on a discussion he had with some friends about who was worse: Bushie Boy or Adolf? Is this a serious debate, I asked him, with as much sarcasm laden British acid as I could muster. Maybe I should pick up where I left off about England's current love affair with CCTV and the way in which the cameras are being installed in towns around the UK so that when you drop a french fry - a 'chip' to us in the old country - a disembodied voice crackles out of a lamppost ' Pick up your chip. Yes, you, in the hoodie' As you swirl around, at 2am in the morning, the voice booms 'Yes, you! You are being watched. Pick up your chip and put it in the waste canister 200 yards to your left outside the Marks And Spencers in the Town Square'.

I, of course, wouldn't be walking, on my own, through the darkened streets of Leicester or Dover at 2am with a bag of chips. 'Hey Rover, go get the chip, boy' I'd say, as my trusty mutt chomps it down in one fell swoop. Then I wouldn't be able to resist giving the lamppost the big finger, as Rover lifts his leg and dribbles a golden shower down it's polished cast iron base. 

I'm simply not built for conformity. I wish I were. Life would have been so much easier.

Not only are the cameras in Britain being installed by the thousands, day by day, the really disturbing thing is that it isn't an all powerful government that is demanding them - it's the citizens themselves. Do you know, that in England, we already have city departments called 'anti-social behaviour units'? This is not the Soviet Gulag we are talking about. This is the little country, to the east of Ireland, that you go on vacations to - with all the pretty hedgerows, and quaint villages with names like Little Bugger On Wye and lanes and cream teas and old stuff, really old stuff.

But not to be outdone by the Europeans, our very own nanny state, Berkeley-On-Bay is doing it's best to eliminate anything that could conceivably look like a homeless person, or a social outcast. Mayor Tom Bates has proposed a menu of 'quality of life' codes including making 'prolonged sitting' a violation and banning smoking on major streets. As Bates so thoughtfuly states - 'most homeless people smoke' therefore hey presto, you ban smoking and sitting and the homeless...poof....gone away....

You know what? This is a man who stole thousands of free newspapers the night before the election because the paper endorsed his opponent, then brought in code to make it a violation to steal newspapers - you gotta love the way he works. But I don't. Taking this position though, has ensured that my big issue here in Berkeley - building the new animal shelter - with money that I raised by leading a successful bond campaign in 2002, will get no real, genuine support from Bates. I once took a major donor to visit Tom. This person wanted to commit a quarter of a million dollars to the new Shelter, once it was built. Tom kinda grimaced at the idea of philanthropy towards domestic animals and asked this donor whether they would give a bundle to his wife's current project. Yup, an all around ethical guy.

Ooohhhhh....I'm getting all riled up. I'd better get back to lesbian stuff. I know I've been on a bit of a rampage recently. But bottom line is - being a woman who loves other women is one of the most amazing, fucking astonishing, bloody brilliant experiences. That's it. There's nothing like the passion, the intensity, the knowledge of who she is and what she needs. There. I feel better already.

Reward for goat killer!

So, for those of you who told me that my story on the goats was too graphic - you can safely read on....
I was so disgusted by the crime I called Sgt Dave Cronin, the acting chief of Oakland Animal Shelter - an aside here: I think Police Departments should get out of the business of running animal services - so I called Dave and left him a message that I was raising money to up the reward money offered by the Shelter which had been reported in the press as $500.  I was also a bit bummed that Cronin had made what I thought were lip service statements about violence to animals and had not shown the outrage I was certainly expecting over a crime like that.  I also called the press.

Two days later, a new article has appeared - the reward money has grown to $21,000, and I'm pretty damn proud that I raised $6,500 of that, from individuals who feel as angry as I do about it. And the new comments by Cronin are strong and forceful - as they should have been the first time around. Read the article.

So, here's hoping that, at least in this case, hurting animals stops right here.

Goats R.I.P

So, Oakland. a California city with some major problems - high murder rate, low rate of solving violent crime, police department disconnected from the community, cronyism in the council chambers and in city government, an educational system taken over by the state, a struggling downtown, an animal shelter where a whistleblowing employee accused a man due to be promoted to Director of massive abuse, what else? Oh yeah, the most hideous Temple sitting on the hillside, which emits a neon blue glow, courtesy of the Mormons, and a new mayor, Ron Dellums who will, without question be good for this once grand city - it is, in spite of the above a pretty incredible city and has lower property taxes than my own strange city, Berkeley - anyone seen the story about Berkeley's Housing Authority and the admission that this was a department about as corrupt as it gets....right on oh liberal bastion of the world whose populace spends more time worrying about everything else but their own failing environment, rampant development, and backroom Sacramento style politics.

Ok, that's the background....here's the goat story. Across the Bay Area, thousands of goats are used by cities and park districts to be organic weedwhackers. They clear all the brush in various parts of open space and near to residences and public property. They are fucking cool. I love watching them, the goatherders and their border collies do much better than their human counterparts with a bunch of gas and noise spewing machinery.

So, who would take a .22 caliber weapon and shoot 15 of them to death - baby goats in a pen and adults - while they are chowing down on foxtails, broom and thistle? What stupid crass ugly piece of shit human being did this? And why does the Oakland Police department make the statement that they doubt they will have any luck finding the perp? I am asking everyone I know to make a contribution to a fund offering a reward to bring this whacko to justice. 'Cos, you know what? It isn't the last time this gun wielding Second Amendment protected American will kill.  Killing one goat is fucked. Killing 15 is the mark of a sociopath, and next time it could be from a freeway overpass at passing cars, or in your local schoolyard.

Of Marija, Mastiffs and other wonders of the world

Photo credit where due first: This image is from the Official Marija Serifovic site.
Cool looking mastiff. Too bad it has a hunky chain around it's neck and badly cropped ears. I guess no real questions remain about Marija Serifovic's sexual orientation - she's a suit wearing dog lover in Serbia. This is esentially a universal statement made by butches accross the western world. And now I can create a whole fantasy about Marija and her commitment to animal rights in Serbia.

Which brings me to an interesting story from Belgrade, where the first protest for domestic animal rights took place on April 27 this year, when a petition was handed to the government calling for the end of the slaughter of cats and dogs in Serbia. Complaints about animal shelter conditions and abuses by the local 'dogcatchers' were made. Hey, just like here.

And another thing - I am grateful to be corrected about my assumption that Gunther, the chicken hunting dachshund, is living in a liberal Berkeley home. His co-owner tells me that in fact, Gunther's residence is in Albany and that his home includes an owner somewhere to the right of centre, if still to the left of Genghis Khan.
This is good news all round. Nick, the liberal in the nest, is still trying to persuade me that Gunther is going to become something other than just a barky, hunting daschhund. He made reference on our walk the other day to his aspirations for the aforementioned badger dog to be more like a border collie. But then, as I've said before, Nick has a 'Got Pug?' bumper sticker on his Subaru - yup...Albany....Subaru....pretensions to owning a border collie...it's all a bit much....

As to Marija, she is a 23 year old Serbian butch with a huge mastiff and a large number of women throwing themselves at her. Boy, that sounds just perfect. I had contemplated moving back to Berlin for a while, but now I'm going to Orbitz to check on flights to Belgrade, which is a gorgeous city, where I will start an animal rescue revolution and pretend that I'm not middle aged.

a non conforming way of life

Having been called a pornographer on a number of occasions and one of my books accused in one notorious piece of journalism, of being an example of 'how quickly a culture can coarsen itself', it isn't a surprise that I'm drawn to the transgressive, to the edgy, to current street savvy fashion or music.  Or that I'm attracted to those who slip across the line between good girl/bad girl. Especially if she is wearing heels.

Susie Bright described my work (and life) thus:

"If Jill had not come of age in the era of women's and gay liberation, she would have been attracted to whatever were the most subversive and disarming politics of the time. Her portraits of so many unusual women are inspired by her natural outrage towards hypocrisy, stereotypes, and against the individual being swept under the rug.
   
    Jill's Jewish family's direct history with the Nazis, her early embrace of the civil rights and feminist movements, and even her love of the most rebellious kinds of American and British pop culture have all added up to Jill's interest in making images that make people pause, incite them - and sometimes, make them laugh in delicious recognition.
     She's a firebrand, a political participant and innovator. Her sense of the history of the world, and how she wants to influence  it, is her driving force. Her interest in radical lesbian sex has to do with her most passionate beliefs, about her family, about freedom from oppression, about the revolutionary value of integrity and creativity, democracy and diversity."   

Using transgressive art, which intends to shock and confront traditional cultural morals, one hopes to subvert the very foundations of predominant cultures. On the surface we've done that -  images echoing the controversial photos published by Susie Bright and myself in 'Nothing But The Girl' 10 years ago, are all over sites like myspace or flickr.  Given that the one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, and one of the most dominant forces in cultural, economic and political life - Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation - owns myspace, who has subverted whom?

One might think the subversion is now reversed. What once was seen as a fuck you to the dominant culture, is now reaping billions of $$$ in profits for corporations who despise the alternative cultures they have so co-opted.

My take on it? They may be making a profit, but we are winning this war - the 'war' being waged by the violently hypocritical fundamentalists in Amerika. We have changed the world we live in, as our imagery, humour, words and ideals are being absorbed into the skin of the American psyche. Far from coarsening the culture, we have enriched it, saved it from itself.

Truthfully, I woulda loved to see some of the profits, but I've never met a coin I didn't turn away from in favour of telling it like I see it. Oh, well can't have it all. I regret it all and nothing at the same time.

Lesbian Root Canal

There's something claustrophobic about being a dyke, ya know what I mean? In particular there's something stifling about being part of a community that simultaneously espouses liberation while practising self confinement, which pats itself on the back for not aping heterosexual culture but which yearns for every 'privelege' ascribed to straights, which talks a good line about autonomy while creating ever more ways of strapping each other to a metaphorical dentists chair and doing root canal on one another. The lesbian habit of making one out of two perfectly viable individual human beings is driving me crazy.

I, by the way, am perfect. Well, except for my special skill, which is over-analyzing, making someone feel as if they are under an endless microscope. This, if nothing else, is why therapy has been damn useful. Who knew I was this bad? Don't all put your hands up at once.

But in spite of my flaw(s), I am not a merger, nor an acquisition, which is another reason some of my fellow lesbians are making me wanna run away. I don't want to have the same friends (though I'd like you to like them and for some of them to think you are a fantastic person and vice versa), I don't want to share all the same interests (though a love of animals, the outdoors, movies and good sex is pretty much obligatory. After all, I like a woman who is different from me, not a mirror image), I don't want you to love my family as much as I do (getting on with them, enjoying a meal at a Berlin sidewalk cafe would be cool), and I'd like you not to drive a Subaru because the local dealership has been advertising in every gay newspaper in the area, and please no khaki shorts and wanting to go on a cruise with 2000 other lesbians. Why would you go to the Greek Islands with a boatload of women who get entertained on board by lesbian comedians, hosted by lesbian celebs, and cruised by other lesbians in khaki shorts. WHY?

Here's a question. Can one plug in a vibrator in the cabins on a cruiseship? And what happens when 1000 vibrators all get turned on at once on big boat. It just goes humming down the Amazon, I guess. Or are some of you tut tutting and getting all uppity about sex toys?

Look, here's the thing. I'm a career lesbian, right? Never slept with a guy, never really dated a guy, except Richard, who came out to me as gay after we went out. He is the editor of an incredible, if completely obscure poetry journal.  We both worked as ushers at the local Odeon Cinema in Richmond, Surrey when I was still in my teens. He's still queer, so it wasn't just going out with me.
And I'm stuck with lesbians. I'm crazy about women, though not so much about wimmin.

But this 'identity' which is like a yellow raincoat that you can never take off, makes me want to run away sometimes. Badly.

It's why I value my straight or queer friends, my men friends and my two brothers so much. It is a fucking relief to be on vacation from 'the life'. And I'm now on a total roll about this....but this is getting pretty lengthy....more another day on why straight, lesbian, queer or bisexual women - any woman, in fact, who is determinedly opposed to being anyone's personal project or property is wildly exciting to me....

Girls called Susie

Well, I'm definitely back. There's a pile of bills on the dining room table, the skies are grey and the Pacific breezes are stupidly cold. My dogs are acting like they prefer Susie, my ex, who house-sat for me, Joe, the cat with the shaven tail is way over excited to have me home, and scratched my nose in the middle of the night, and Berkeley is looking and feeling pretty dull right now.

It's a strange thing to say - this was the first visit to Europe I have had in many years where I simply did not want to leave - I learned a lot, I loved spending time with my amazing niece, Jenn, I had a great time with another of my exes named Sue (this is a pattern of mine, and I'm going to try to avoid it in the future - no more Susie's), and her new gal, Charlotte.  And the other amazing thing - the flight was easy, going through security was easy, customs, immigration was easy, easy, easy. What is going on here???

And when I got back and checked voicemails, one large familiar voice from Adelaide stood out. Suzy, another ex (I am not kidding by the way) was calling to ask if I would please come to Australia for her 50th birthday in September. This is all feeling too bloody good.  At least I cried in therapy yesterday, otherwise I would have thought I was living someone elses life.

One more little London note. Actually two. First, my dear friend from the past, Tom Robinson, once a rock star and now a really really nice guy with two kids and a great radio show on BBC, emailed me a list of his current fave music which I am avidly downloading, and if you haven't listened to Lily Allen - DO IT NOW,  and secondly, it was pretty amazing to meet up with people who I haven't seen in years who confirmed what I already knew, but needed to have verified - you know, like I couldn't work it out for myself. There really was open hostility, aggression and even hatred towards me within the 70's and 80's feminist movement - and for women like me, who stood up for the right of others to self identify - whatever that fucking identification happened to be. Perhaps you think I've already been tough on proscriptive feminists from that era. You know what?  They got off easy.

But as I'm not a vengeful type I'm going to do what I've always done. Get working, get out with my camera, start taking photos again, take the photos that some people get distinctly uncomfortable about. The best revenge is the one that makes you feel fabulous about yourself.

The sun had better come out soon.

Serbia Rocks

On Monday I head home to dogs, more dogs, cats, and the delicious sensation of sleeping with Roo tucked up close to me while Slim the delinquent cat, pounces on her whenever she dares move. I have definitely missed all the fur I live with while in Europe.

But let's look on the bright side - I got to witness the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest on TV last night. Held in Helsinki, where, bless their hearts, they made a big production of and threw a great party for this nutty event, which the Europeans - now numbering something like 42  countries - think is a world affair. This is like the American attitude to baseball's World Series which could not have less to do with the world.  When I got home from an evening out, in a feminist time capsule -  I'll bore you with that story later in the week - my London flatmate Sharon and her girlfriend Kate were laying entwined on the worn maroon sofa, hollering support every time Serbia got the big votes, and rooting for the United Kingdom entry to get no votes at all, as punishment for it being the worst Eurovision Song entry in living memory.

Sure enough, the big voice from Serbia, Marija Serifovic, wearing a white shirt with top button breezily undone, black tie, and Dolce and Gabbana suit, and surrounded by a bevy of what looked like Hooters Girls, won the contest. To be honest, this competition leaves me chilled - last time I watched, Abba won - but I'm just a bit amazed at what I've been coming across on the web today. A few YouTube videos reveal that Marija has been making  a pretty steady transformation from plumpish overdressed femme onstage, to potential rude boy in the last few months, and the online blogs and comments about her have begun to take a nasty turn. Is this a lesbian star in the making, or just a cute marketing ploy? And is the growing hostility about her looks a reflection of this shift?

But, I'm supposed to be packing to head home tomorrow, and I still have to buy some vegetable pate, so I'm off into the rain again, and I'll worry about Marija later.

London Tails 2 Butches

Well, it's Friday, and as I anticipated, London has begun to make me jittery. Even though the rain has stopped (for now) and the skies are merely overcast and not downcast. Even though I have nothing planned except my usual purchase of a pair of yellow stitched DM's from the only store in London that still sells Docs made in England. Aside from that I see my group of friends with whom I seamlessly pick up conversations we left off a year or two ago. Things are familiar, my room in the flat is as I left it. All I have to do when I arrive is to hang photos of the new animals in my life, unpack my clothes, make the phone calls and start my social update. Like downloading a current version of iLife.

But, for all my utter lust for London, I reach saturation point so fast, it takes even me by surprise. And it's then that I start the common (to me) refrain in my famously busy tweaking brain 'What If'. I probably shouldn't have promised Sharon that I would clear out the hall closet of some of my boxes, packed like time capsules a number of years ago. And perhaps I should have just thrown out the datebooks from 1977 to 1988 instead of leafing through them. Sometimes I do wonder whether my escape to California was just a rebellion against my endlessly busy brain. I have forgotten 80% of the details of a life that appears to have been fuelled by an inability to sit or stand still, and I get exhausted just re-reading it.

There is no key to my running away more pronounced, than my efforts and failures to be a 'success' within the community where my heart and lusts resided. My lesbian feminist neighborhood, the 1980's equivalent of todays' online scene, where everyone knew exactly who was dating (we never called it that, we were crassly debating who was 'getting off' with whom) - consisted of various tribes which took their loyalty from the part of London they lived in, whether they were 'working class' or not, whether they were friends with someone you had 'shagged' and dumped, or whether, as in my case - they approved of my ever increasing desire to move feminist culture into the media mainstream.

But my disassociation comes from a deeper place - and I think it may be hard for people to understand this and to comprehend why I keep obsessing about this (it's Ok, I know I'm intense and obsessive). Not being able to 'be' truly who I am and was, from the earliest, in my heart and in my social identity was like a pillow stifling,  like fingers around the throat choking, like a constant closed circuit TV camera trained on one's most intimate thoughts and sensations.

More on Britain's love affair with the invasive and dangerous expansion of closed circuit tv as a means of social control another day.

London is full of incredibly good looking butch lesbians. On my way back from Joe Allen's, an old haunt of actors in London, I see her - leaning against a lampost, legs crossed, on the phone to the woman she will probably push up against a wall later that night, her blue jeans ripped above the knee, her DM's scuffed, and that little grin teasing across her face. What is it about that instant recognition of a tribal mate? She looks up, and nods in my direction. I lift my head in that imperceptible way as if to say 'yeah, you too', and I walk home with my short friend Roy.

Recognising each other is just one part of the puzzle though. Whether you understand or not, I don't care. Because when you are like me, it is only when the 'femme' woman who identifies you as the object of her desire, looks at you, claims you in a public space, that you begin to exist in the world in a particular way. It has nothing to do with whether you are a professor of biology at an ivy league school, a business owner of a major media company, a famous actress presenting the Oscars. Until Portia de Rossi puts her hand on the back of Ellen's neck, it is not 'real', somehow. Those who are like me - you'll understand. The rest of you - read a great blog someone referred me to by Julia Watson - and apologies to Julia for selecting some small parts.....Julia's homage to butches is a beautiful piece.

She writes: "It’s the written language of her body that reads, “this is who I am, this is the way that I am comfortable, and if that makes you uncomfortable, that’s your deal.”

I love the confidence, and if you throw in the occasional moment of aw-shucks bashfulness, that melts me to my core. I love the smirk. I’m talking about a particular kind of masculine energy residing in a female mind and body, and the way that turns traditional conceptions of what it means to be a man or a woman upside down. I’m talking about the underlying strength of character required to live and present as a butch woman not only in mainstream society, but also in a gay community that all too often fails to appreciate them. I’m talking about the power that comes with unabashedly just being who you are, even when it’s not the popular thing to do. I love the way a butch can walk into a room and command the attention of everyone in it. I love that uniquely self-assured way of moving through the world and the safe haven I’ve found again and again in those arms.

But what I really want – what I really crave… is that thing. I want a big, butch… brain. I don’t think there is anything sexier on the planet than an intelligent, articulate, well-mannered butch, a gentledyke who knows when to take, and when to yield .....and in an L World that all too often seems to offer no place of honor, if any place at all, to my beloved butches – consider this testament a love song."

I'll be back in California on Monday, and then I can start missing London all over again, And I will.

London Tails Part 1

I arrived in London during the Snooker World Championships. Surprising as it may seem, this is a huge deal in Britain, and the colored balls being knocked around on the green baize was mesmerizing enough to make me want to lay on the sofa, a bowl of sticky toffee pudding and custard, in my hands, watching tv coverage of this 'sport'. Thankfully, the Championship ended last night at 1am, and I am now back to my usual restless self, walking all over the city, soaking up the vibrancy of my neighborhood just east of Soho. I love my hometown, and it sometimes does surprise me that I haven't moved back. Mind you, I have avoided a British winter for over 10 years snd this could play a small part (you think?).

It is Spring and I have already immersed myself in my favorite things - walks on Hampstead Heath with surrogate dogs, as mine are happily in Berkeley (and Oscar is with his original mom up north), trips to the National Film Theatre and the Embankment with my buddy Roy, a visit to the Family Records Centre with old friend Sharon who showed me how to look up Birth, Marriage and Death info on relatives I never knew I had (this is a lot more fun than it sounds, actually), and making plans to see all the people who have known me since I got my first pair of oxblood coloured DM's in 1976. I have had my first fish n' chips with mushy peas of the visit, and have already consumed bread and butter pudding, rhubarb crumble and a spotted dick pud (for those who don't know, don't ask).

Tonight I head off for dinner with Julie Parker, who was part of the historic trip to Dublin that Gay Sweatshop Theatre Co. made and which I wrote about in 'Rainy Day Blogs'. I had written that Julie had snuck off to eat Mars bars while the rest of us were in the clutches of an American member of our company who had us all eating brown rice and tamari for weeks on end. Hard to imagine that I had agreed to that. But Julie admitted the other day that it was far worse than I imagined, and that she and Helen Barnaby had in fact, indulged in Beef and Ale Pies, pints of Guinness in addition to the Mars bars, while I chewed on cold rice and sipped sparkling water. She will be buying dinner tonight.

All in all a good trip to London. I am not homesick for California yet, but probably will be by Friday. Tomorrow, I'm going to comment on an amazing blog about 'butch' identity that I read on the internet, so for those of you sick of my travelogue...stay tuned!