Have you read The Ethical Slut? It's the bible of the polyamory set written by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy. It's a classic and a must-read if you want to date, or even just sleep, around. A newly expanded edition just came out, and this morning I noticed an interview with Dossie Easton on the Tina Brown-run news and blogging site, The Daily Beast. I'm not sure if that means The Beast is edgy or Poly has gone mainstream.

I read it years ago and definitely tried adopting all the self-empowerment principles contained within but I never really got good at it. I agree on a philosophical level that love is for sharing but the only time I've managed multiple girlfriends is when I'm just casually dating. And by casually dating I mean blindly getting into relationships with people I just wanted to sleep with. My downfall is brunch. Do not go to brunch with someone you sleep with if you want to remain single. I know most people will tell you the rule for keeping things casual is no spending the night. But we're lesbians, gimme a break, it's hard enough not to move in together immediately let alone pull your knickers on at 4 a.m. and call a cab. If you don't want to get involved don't succumb to the lure of eggs benedict.

You love brunch. We all do. It's a gay thing. Brunch is a way to extend the party from the night before and better yet it's how you get away with drinking before noon. But it's also the cause of what I like to call the accidental lesbian relationship.

Accidental lesbian relationships are extra tricky to get out of because you spend most of the time you're in one denying it and by the time you admit you want out you've already adopted a dresser drawer at her place.

Read the rest of it here

Even the Independents and the GOP were embarrassed by much of what went on during the recent Teabagging protests. I am trying to keep a sense of humor about what looks like a lot of racism and the desire of a bunch of morons to revive the Confederacy. While I love a good grassroots campaign, it's kind of hard to take the teabagger protests seriously when they were so heavily populated by far right wing nuts who don't mind embarrassing themselves.

The very protesters who were attacking Obama's policies are the people benefiting from the administration's tax plans. We all know things are dire, but King George the III isn't actually oppressing his colonial subjects. Their claim of "no taxation with representation" shows they didn't get what the original Boston Tea Party was.

From the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum website:

"On May 10, 1773, the British parliament authorized the East India Co., which faced bankruptcy due to corruption and mismanagement, to export a half a million pounds of tea to the American colonies for the purpose of selling it without imposing upon the company the usual duties and tariffs. With these privileges, the company could undersell American merchants and monopolize the colonial tea trade."

After that went down, the colonists finally got sick of being screwed by England. They wanted to sell their own damn tea and gain independence, so they protested by dumping tea in the Boston harbor. And so a revolution got started. Hello, at least do a Wikipedia search or watch an old School House Rock before you start mucking up history.

I can't see any reason to criticize this administration before we've even given it a chance. The fact is that the Obama administration hasn't raised taxes at all in the three months they've been in charge. They have in fact lowered the tax burden on the working families and people who need it most. Thanks to President Obama and Democrats in Congress, the people protesting have all gotten tax cuts.

How'd it feel for you to get two new states on our side within the same week? I had a raging case of PMS which made me so emotional about the whole thing I was just stupid. My girlfriend called me to say hi on the morning of the Vermont decision and I answered the phone crying. Add to this that last week I wrote a mushy, lovey-dovey letter to her, and in one of those terrible email snafus we've all had, I accidentally forwarded it to my friend Grace Moon. It wasn't just lovey, it was chock full of those little animated gmail emoticons. I mean the really sappy ones. It was full of all the hearts and flowers and little smileys kissing each other. Ugh. Any reputation I had as being reasonable is shot now. I give up.

The Iowa and Vermont decisions are happy ones, and ultimately not surprising. Vermont was early to allow civil unions and Iowa might be smack dab in the mid-west but the state has a reputation for being fair-minded and taking the constitution very seriously. And it was Barack Obama's win in Iowa in last year's election that secured the presidency for him. We like you Iowa. Thanks.

Because precedence is what gets these court cases rolling, and Vermont and Iowa have now set legal precedence, we may actually see a series of states legalizing marriage in rapid succession. Ultimately, you can't argue with the Constitution, which clearly states that citizens can all expect equal protection under the law. No state Supreme Court has ever ruled marriage unconstitutional, it's the crazy wing-nut voters that get all high on God and start getting marriage bans on ballots.

Connecticut, Massachusetts, Iowa, Vermont--you've got four whole states you can get married in now. You better hurry if you are eyeing Iowa though, the same kinda crazies that got Prop 8 on the ballot in California and then, to everyone's dismay, got it passed, are gearing up to get a constitutional ban on gay marriage rolling in Iowa.

The difference, though, between the California Prop 8 debacle and the wing-nuts wanting a ban on the ballot in Iowa, is that getting a constitutional amendment passed is a much more arduous process than it is in California. Because it's more time consuming and has to be approved by two sessions of the state's legislature as well as by the voters, Iowans wont be voting on an amendment like Prop 8 for at least three years. And it's those three years that are going to make all the difference.

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that I break down and finally buy a Hitachi. It's grey outside my girlfriend is 900 miles away and what else is a girl to do?!

I did an episode of here! tv's The World According to Josh and Sara a while back. Those two are so fun. I just love them and we had a really great time. It's definitely worth listening to if you have some time. I think it runs about 20 or 30 minutes.
You can listen to the show by clicking the pic or clicking this link

Here is a link to my new column on shewired


The other day I watched my girlfriend take a pen out of my hand and stick it, next to two other pens, in the breast pocket of her smartly-fitted plaid shirt. She did it out of politeness, knowing full well that had she left it in my hand it would have ended up rolling around in the bottom of my giant handbag and by the time we'd gotten to our favorite cafe it would be impossible to find. For a quick second I wanted to tease her about having pens in her front pocket but her braininess is why I fell in love with her and that little visual reminder just made me melt.

There's a trend toward anti-intellectualism in this country, we all know about it, and it isn't groundbreaking to point it out. I mean, yawn, whatever that's tired and I sort of feel stupid for even saying it. But its ubiquity is starting to bug me. Remember how Obama's education was the target of much criticism during both the primaries and general election, as if being well educated is a bad thing. Remember how the GOP kept saying there was no-way Obama could relate to the "working man"? If I were the working man I'd be insulted that the political party that claims to represent me assumes me to have a 4th grade education. Although, judging from the Joe the Plumber guy they might be on to something.

All the hokey mispronunciations and other random stupid Bushisms the country enjoyed over the last eight years were glamorized because it made him seem just like a normal guy... well, a normal dumb guy. Anyway, Bush went to Harvard, which sort of looks bad for Harvard. They should have at least taught him to pronounce nuclear.

Go HERE for the rest

I was wearing the same shirt in parts 4 - 8 so I thought we'd skip ahead to a new outfit!

Hey Ho. Now we're getting somewhere. I think there are 10 of these in the series so far. In this one I've got some serious bed head going on and I have no idea what we're talking about. Do you?


You can find everything else we've done at Velvetpark

Maybe I should start putting these up in random order?

My new column is up on shewired



March is Women's History Month, a time when we're encouraged to look back and acknowledge the important contributions women have made to society throughout history. Which is a fine activity and all, but it doesn't do much in terms of alleviating the burden that systematic discrimination has put on us over the years.

This recession is impacting women especially. There's a lot of conflicting information to dig through--the first reports claimed that men were losing jobs at higher rates than women, due to the high rates of job losses in construction and manufacturing, two fields that are largely male dominated. As job losses in those sectors continue some researchers have even speculated that women may eventually make up a greater percentage of the overall workforce. That sounds like positive thing until you take into account that even if more women remain employed they are still earning far less than men overall.

Consider for a moment that in California 68 percent of minimum wage workers are female, there are more female than male borrowers holding sub-prime mortgages, and women and children in developing countries are being hit harder by higher food prices and the slowdown in markets for exports. This recession is killing women. We're poised to make up a larger percentage of the workforce but only in lower paying occupations.

The path to true economic equality is radical change that starts with the way we view gender and how we raise our children. For years studies have shown that boys and girls are encouraged differently in elementary school. Boys are encouraged to be more aggressive in class, are called upon more often and are challenged by teachers in ways that girls are not. Boys are praised for speaking up; girls are praised for having nice penmanship and manners. This disparity in earning potential is something we start setting up our kids for from day one.

But I'm starting to see actual change happening. Let me tell you why a generation from now things are going to look completely different.

First, we have a President who actually understands there is a problem and is taking steps to fix it. One of the first things Obama did after he was sworn in on January 20th was sign the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act a bill that ensures employers are better held accountable in cases of discrimination. The bill was named for Lily Ledbetter, a supervisor at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.'s plant in Alabama, who sued for pay discrimination near the end of her 19-year career there. By the time she retired, Ledbetter made $6,500 less than the lowest-paid male supervisor.


Read the rest of it at shewired

It's 2000 degrees kelvin in this cafe and I want to simultaneously throw up and cry. And all the food is vegan. Sigh. And they are playing reggae. Williamsburg.

There's a new video in the web series I've been doing with my girlfriend up on velvetparkmedia.com

There are about nine episodes up now. We've started to have a little more fun with them; less feminism 101 and more talking smack about queer life. Let me know what you think!

Here's a link to my new column up at Shewired.com. It's on Daphne Merkin's piece in the NY Times magazine on lesbian aesthetics. It was a terrible column. They couldn't find a person on this planet who understands less about lesbians.

This is Merkin:






Link to the Butch Fatale Times column I'm referring to

And link to one of my favorite older Merkin pieces called Our Vaginas, Ourselves where you will learn too much about what's under Merkin's merkin.
Betty Dodson ripped her a new one for that last article. I love Betty. Here's a link to a Susie Bright blog with Dodson's complete response.

Recession Hangover

Since the beginning of our current financial meltdown people have been speculating about what types of economic and social changes the recession might spur. Even a country as obstinate as ours can't suffer an epic fail like this one and come through without some little spark of enlightenment, right? I don't know about you but I'm kind of hoping for a massive do-over.

OK, so this week GM said they need more cash or they'll have to file for bankruptcy. Honestly how do CEOs not know that the way their companies operate isn't tenable? The fact is that they do know, and they just don't care. No one in charge anywhere was giving the slightest thought to what happens next. So now SUVs are collecting dust on dealership lots all over the country. Maybe our "bigger is better" mentality will be one of the first things to get the boot. Smaller, cheaper, more economical cars make more sense. If the industry puts effort into developing them and we start buying them that might be one change that sticks.

I can't figure out why the automakers aren't more embarrassed to have screwed up so badly. Obama should force all the troubled corporations to hire lesbian consultants to come in and teach CEOs to process and talk about their feelings. Think about how much better they'll all feel. And that will surely make them more productive. Once they learn to communicate, we can teach them other important lesbionic skills like how to live communally, make dairy-free chocolate pudding, decoupage their office furniture and undo bra straps one-handed.

Another positive recession side effect is the possibility of less suburban sprawl because home prices have tanked. Suburban sprawl isn't particularly healthy for anyone. People may say they like living in less densely populated areas but it just makes them lazy. When you live in far away suburbs you can't walk to anything. Filling up every bit of land isn't healthy for wildlife. Sprawl lowers water quality because we have to pipe water in to far away areas. There's more pollution per person and sprawling development uses up more land per person than we actually need.

Of course I'm sympathetic to families struggling to pay mortgages on homes that are worth less then they paid for them; but the bloated real estate market was encouraging all sorts of unnecessary development. All the little subdivisions of housing that have sprung up everywhere aren't going to fill up. The value of that real estate isn’t what people had been thinking it was, and, now that potential buyers understand they wont be able to quickly sell their homes at a profit, those areas are going to seem less attractive.

All of this means more people will live closer to cities. Cities with thriving urban centers attract people and when people are attracted to a city it stays alive. City planners will have to think about how to keep the culture alive so people will continue to live there. Plus, living in cities is greener. I know it doesn’t seem like it would be; cities make you think of crazy pollution and overcrowding. But because we take mass transit and live in small spaces, New Yorkers have about a fourth of the carbon footprint of everyone else. Its all the commuting in giant cars that is bad for us. And really, driving two hours each way to work in your giant car and then driving thirty miles to some huge warehouse store on the weekend to buy a bunch more stuff than you need just doesn't make sense. I'm sorry but there are only so many books on tape you can listen to in your car before you have a psychotic break and start shooting people on the freeway.

All of this sudden dialogue about the economy boom and bust should have started before everyone lost their jobs and houses. Don't you just want to roll your eyes at, for instance, the fact that a good percentage of Californians were more interested in keeping gays from getting married than they were in the fact that their state was completely busted? How boring of them. But here we are now and since we're all just unemployed and sitting around in stained bathrobes swigging out of gin bottles anyway we might as well start figuring out how to make things better.

I'm writing a weekly column at shewired.com about the economy, politics, and current events. The first one can be found here.

This column is from February 6th but now that we're up and running I'll keep you current.

Yes Chicken Little, the sky really is falling. Unemployment is at its highest point in twenty-six years. Money is so tight that in a counterintuitive move even the unemployment office had to lay people off. Now the entire country is having a going out of business sale. It really hit me when my girlfriend and I spotted "Everything Inside 70% Off" signs in the windows of all the fancy shops in Soho. When the Prada boutique looks like a 99cent store, something's not right.

In a Washington Post column on February 4th President Obama tried to clue us in on the need for immediate action. In his eloquent, if preachy, writing style Obama made a plea for money to fund energy research, schools, and rebuild the country's roads and bridges. He took to the editorial pages as a way to reach out from behind the Democrat-Republican grudge match that's fucking everything up. What a relief to know that in times of crisis our Commander in Chief is writing in WaPo and not reading The Pet Goat to school children.

With more jobs disappearing every day, the White House team is feeling the pressure. They've even sent Michelle "The Closer" Obama on a little federal agency schmooze tour to get this thing moving. BTW: can someone make the First Lady a superhero costume? I hear Miuccia Prada has some free time.

If all you know about the economy is that it now takes twenty minutes to get a decaf grande low-fat no-whip latte in the afternoon at your local Starbucks, then stick with me. I’ll help you navigate the murky waters of this recession.

It all started with this thing called the lending bubble. People who didn't really have money to lend were loaning it to people who didn't really have the money to pay it back. It seemed OK for a while because all the borrowing and lending was just theoretical numbers but as soon as someone wanted to actually see some tangible munnies it fell apart. It was a little bit like a worldwide version of Bernie Maddoff's Ponzi scheme. People at the top were making money and the people at the bottom saw it and thought that if they got in they would make money too. Eventually so many people wanted to get in on the game that when it all crashed it took the rest of us down with it.

So what happens next? Well, because it's funny, let's compare the US economy to a poorly working digestive system. Right now the country has IBS and the stimulus bill is like an 820 billion dollar Fiber-One bar.

Obama wants to load up the constipated economy with lots of it-does-a-body-good kind of stuff--programs designed to get things moving again. But the Democrats and Republicans can't agree on where the money should go. They are like different organs in the body competing for nutrients.

In the US when you hear politicians talk about pork, or pork barrel spending what they mean is federal funds directed at private companies as a way of paying back constituents for their support, it's used interchangeably with the term earmark. Well here's where things get complicated. Everyone knows pork is bad for the digestive system but in the case of the stimulus bill neither party can agree on what qualifies as pork.

In general the Democrats want to fix things by spending money on social programs as a way to shore up everything on a national level. For instance if we spend money creating schools more teachers will have jobs and more children will have access to education. And children who have access to all the things they need will grow up to be more productive adults and everyone will be happy, the end. It sounds perfect but some people don't like the idea that they have to pay money in taxes to support things they don't care about, ie: education.


Read the rest of it at shewired

Hey all, there's a whole series of videos at Velvetparkmedia.com that I started with my girlfriend back in December. Since this site is new Im going to post some older stuff from around the web here for a few weeks until we're caught up and you can peruse all this fun stuff all in one place. Love, diana

This video was the first one in the series. I'll post the rest of the throughout the week.