A Note To You Fine Bisexuals
My house is usually full of bisexual women… Which is to say that most of my close female friends are bisexual to one degree or another. I think that’s a good thing, as I’m happy that most of my friends are comfortable enough with their sexuality to be attracted to a variety of body types.
The problem is when they encounter a straight woman.
For straight women do exist, but often times the default thing my friends do when encountering a straight woman is to interrogate them: “Well, have you kissed a girl? I mean, how do you know? What have you tried?” And on one level these are legitimate questions… but on another level, it’s deeply exclusionary and insulting. Not only are you highlighting and questioning someone’s sexuality, pretty much flooding them with a spotlight that goes, “YOU ARE NOT LIKE US” – but you’re actually implying that hey, you don’t really know what you like, probably the reason is that you haven’t actually done it.
Questions which, if applied to a lesbian from a straight man, would most likely enrage them.
Look, folks – sometimes, you just know what you like, and you don’t necessarily have to experience something that sounds unappealing to see whether it brings you joy. And when you start making straight people feel like they’re just not trying hard enough, consciously or no, what you’re doing is the same BS that humans have done for thousands of years: creating a society where your needs are dominant, and anyone who’s different should be be closely examined to make sure they’re thinking straight.
I think part of the reasoning is, on an unconscious level, that some folks (not all!) think that if someone doesn’t share their sexuality, they can’t really support it. Also nonsense. You can be ramrod-straight and still voice full-throated support for loving homosexual relationships, just as a cisgendered male, I can never quite understand what it means to be transgendered but can be wholeheartedly behind transgender inclusion.
I know that in many kink circles, “being straight” is actually the exception. But don’t point it out as an exception. Be actually inclusionary, and go, “Hey, that’s cool” and don’t treat them like their heterosexuality is some sort of problem to be solved. It’s creepy, it often feels like they’re being hit on, and it’s distinctly confrontational and unfriendly.
You can go your own way. Let them go theirs.
This Would Make My Life Better If You Could All Understand This. Thank You.
Back when I worked for Borders, Microsoft somehow convinced us that a bookstore should sell Windows 98. This was a disaster.
Why? Not because it didn’t sell well. No, it was our top seller, at $89.99 a pop. We sold thousands of units! Judged in terms of “How much money people were giving us,” we were maxing out! We had $20k a week coming in the door! We were right, right?
Wrong. Judged by “how much profit we made,” we were losing our goddamned shirts.
Why were we going broke, even though thousands of bucks were coming in over the cash register? Because each copy of Windows 98 cost us $85. That’s right; though you were paying us $90 apiece, we had to turn around and pay $85 to our distributor. We were lucky to buy a coffee and a muffin off of each sale. And we couldn’t price it higher, because it was the hottest software in existence and if we tried to sell it for $100, we’d look like overpriced jerks.
In fact, it got worse. Because maybe we technically made $5 off of each copy, but realistically we’d had to pay for overnight shipping to have Windows 98 on the day that everyone else had it, or we’d look like chumps. So out of that $5 a unit, put in the cost it took to FedEx it to the stores overnight.
And then think about what happens when one asshole steals a copy of Windows 98. We still had to pay the $85 for that copy… and to do that, we’d have to sell another seventeen units just to break even. Assuming someone else didn’t steal a copy. Which, you know, they would.
So on the books, we had $20k a week coming in. In real life, we were actually losing money. We should have looked like overpriced jerks… Or just not sold Windows 98 in the first place. But boy, we sure looked like the heroes of the store until you actually checked under the hood and discovered that selling one $29.99 Tom Clancy novel was worth four $89.99 copies of Windows 98. (Interestingly enough, and nobody ever noticed this, the “Linux Distro” CDs were $29.99, and we made an astonishing $24 on each sale. Maybe that sounds exorbitant, but it’s how we made a profit despite this Windows 98 fiasco.)
This is what I want you to comprehend, my friends: the amount you pay to purchase an item has zero to do with how much money the people are making off of you. I hear all these idiots blathering away at how “rich” Amanda Palmer is, now that she’s got $1.2 million in Kickstarter funds and a best-selling album. And she’s already written about how little she may be making off of this after all her other expenses are paid for. But even if she hadn’t, you same idiots would be yammering away how “rich” Borders was from selling thousands of copies of Windows 98.
Yeah. We got a lot of your money. But we had other people to pay with that cash, and most of it didn’t go to us.
Please stop treating the world as though the person you gave your cash to had no bills to pay afterwards. They might be making a ton of cash just because you gave them $500. Or they might be handing 90% of that off to their suppliers. You can’t tell unless you know the business well.
Okay? Okay.
Portrait Of The Artist As A Degenerating Man
So I just got tagged on Facebook, as a reminder of what I used to look like in my PR photos for my poetry tour days:
This is what I look like now, as a quickie photo shot to remind conventiongoers what I looked like three weeks ago:
Let’s see: older? Yes? Fatter? Hell yes. Deprived of the hair I so desperately loved? Yes. Overcompensating with bright Hawaiaan shirt and a very stylish hat? Hell yes.
I much prefer the younger me. Even with that cocky, want-to-hit-him smirk and his terrible, terrible poetry. But alas, all I got is this me, so I do the best with what I can.
Let The Artists Choose Wisely
Whenever I went to a concert for a band I loved, I used to dream that the drummer would have a heart attack.
It was not a kind wish, but I could always see it in my mind: the drummer would be carried off stage at the They Might Be Giants show. There would be some concern. Then, because it was early in the show, John Flansburgh would call out plaintively: “Does anyone in the audience know all of our songs by heart on the drums?”
This is why I always tried to be at the front of the crowd at shows. So when that moment came – whether it was for They Might Be Giants, or Def Leppard, or the Circle Jerks – I could stride forward like a superhero and go, “Yes! I know all of your drum tracks by heart, O band I love!” And they would escort me onto the stage with a huzzah, as the crowd went wild, and they’d be nervous for a moment because they didn’t know how awesome I was, but then the opening riff of “Nobody Knows My Plan” would start up, a complex polyrhythm, and they’d see that I knew it totes well, and then wham. I’d be legendary.
Afterwards, I’d have drinks with them back stage and they’d clap me on the back and then whenever they came to town they’d see me in the audience and go, “Hey, Ferrett! It’s you! Hey, audience, this guy played a show for us once! Why don’t you come on up and do ‘Experimental Film’?”
Now, some of my musician friends had dreams where the drummer (or guitarist, or bass player) died, and the band said, “Hey, this is very sad, but we do need to continue the tour. Why don’t you quit your shit job and hit the road with us full-time?”
I never hoped for death because hey, I wasn’t a monster. I just wanted to jam with my heroes. But every last one of my musician friends had that dream.
And as it turned out, that actually happened once – God bless you, Thomas Scot Halpin, who got called up on stage with The Who in 1973 when Keith Moon passed out. (Seriously, read the Wikipedia entry on that day – it’s the most amusing story you’ll read all day today.) When my friends and I heard about Thomas’s great luck, we all envied him. Getting to stand up there with your idols and be a part of it? Awesome.
So it is with amusement that I note the criticism of Amanda Palmer, who has earned millions of dollars through Kickstarter and album sales, who is asking string and horn musicians to get on stage with her and play – gasp! – for free.
I’m not the biggest Amanda Palmer fan, but were I a fan, I’d be jumping at this like a shot, because it’d be fun. Yes, there’s some valid points to be made about “musicians should be compensated”… but if I were a cello player, I’d look at most of the bands I like and go, “Man, I’m never going to get to jam with Rasputina,” and feel bad. Yes, the musicians were paid, and that’s good, but if I ever wanted to be a part of that magic, then I’d be locked out.
What Amanda Palmer is offering is, well, fun. She’s offering the dream that I would have killed for as a young drummer.
And if it makes me happy, do I have to get paid?
And some call it exploitative, but it’s not the same as the writer-scams that permeate science fiction. When someone offers to publish your work for free, they always – always – claim that there’s a value for you in it, usually via dint of “exposure.” “This will be good for your career!” they say. “People will read it!” Except people actually won’t, since the publishers who don’t pay anything usually fail to attract good writers, and they lie to try to get your efforts to earn money.
Amanda promises nothing but fun. And that’s honest. And fair.
Look, as a writer, I’ve written for free. In fact, I did two months ago, when Nancy Fulda said, “Hey, I’m publishing a book with a lot of Nebula nominees in it, so we’ll have something to sign at the Nebulas.” She didn’t offer cash, I didn’t take it. When I got there, I paid to buy a bunch of books with my work in it, for fun. And I signed a lot of books, and it was a hoot, all without me earning a goddamned dime.
Admittedly, Nancy was not earning money off of this silly book… But even if she had, I probably would have joined in if it had seemed entertaining enough. Because as an artist, I can do stuff for free if it seems enjoyable. As a drummer, I’ve done free gigs for friends as favors, and let them walk away with the cash. As a writer, I do cons for free, appearing on panels and yammering away (and I’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t really help sell my stories). Certainly I’ve spent enough time blogging for free right now, with no advertising to pay for my bandwidth. Why?
Because it’s fun.
Now, if Amanda was saying, “Oh, you should do this because it’ll lead to other gigs!” then I’d call bullshit. Or if she was even trying to guilt her fans into to doing it, saying,, “San Antonio might get cancelled if one of you people doesn’t volunteer.” But no; she’s pretty clear that even the people who refuse her are perfectly fine with her. And you can talk about blah blah blah she’s a millionaire, but a) I suspect those millions look much slimmer after taxes and paying her core audience members and hotel stays, and b) if she wasn’t a ludicrously popular musician, then this wouldn’t be nearly as much fun to do. I mean, honestly, if this was Tricia Talloway, unknown musician with little talent, asking people to learn songs they had never heard for free, then I bet she’d have very few takers.
Fact is, 95% of the people up on stage are fans who already know the music enough to want to go, and the other 5% felt like it would be a lark. Same as, you know, flashmobbing or zombie runs or programming in open-source projects anything else like that. As long as Amanda isn’t lying about what’s there, I have no problems with her asking. And I have even fewer problems with people turning her down, because they think they should get paid.
Let the artists choose wisely, is my motto.
A Bunch Of Good Links To Read
Here’s some nice articles that have made me do the thinky-thing as of late:
“The First Meditation on Privilege” – Squid314, not quite happy with the metaphor used in my “Would You Like A Cup Of Coffee?” line, uses another metaphor to try to get across how annoying it can be to constantly be hit on by men. His metaphor has problems (as does mine), but it’s also an effective way of trying to get across another experience.
“The Omniscient Breasts” – a rather fascinating unpacking of what the male gaze is, and how it affects fiction, to the point where writing from the female gaze becomes seen as homosexual.
“I Am Not A Puzzle Box” – In which Naamah Darling does an excellent analysis/addition to someone else’s post on women’s sexuality and nice guys. Includes the boffo line: “To him, women are sex and sex is a prize. Prizes don’t get to give themselves away.” (Also, check out her Indiegogo campaign.)