A gigantic welcome to all the new members

[Zerbie]

Hi everyone!

(Really sorry to post a mass note like this, but I"m totally swamped and have finally figured out that if I keep waiting to respond to everyone individually, I'm going to wind up ignoring all of you . . .)

So instead, here is a great big WELCOME! to everyone who has recently joined. I'm glad to see you all here, and look forward to spending more time readin' and responding to your posts in the future!

[Lydia]

Lol, I should have thought of this.

[tdogg]

(Great idea Zerbie!!)

Yes, from someone who is fairly swamped too - A HUGE WARM WELCOME TO ALL OF YOU NEWBIES AT SOULFORCE FORUMS!!

Hope you are all here to stay and looking forward to getting to know y'all better!! Welcome!!!

T-dogg

[Zerbie]

Bumping this, 'cuz there are several new people here again this week who I have not "spoken to" and I'm not gonna reply individually at the moment because I'm so tired my head is going to fall on the keyboard if I don't log off soon. . .

So, again, WELCOME to all the "newbies!"

We're glad you're here!!!!

[Jennifer5]

I add my WELCOME!!!!, so sorry that I haven't had more time... hope to get to talk to all of you soon!

[m~dgray]

Hi to everyone

I've never tried this Soulforce forum before. It seems quite a bit more friendly than the SNL list I wrote to sometimes and always used to read.

The fun thing that I'm up to as a hobby that has only a tangential connection with Soulforce is enjoying "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit," largely because of actor Mariska Hargitay, who I consider talented and gorgeous. I've decided to do a research project partly about her and her family: mother Jayne Mansfield and father, Mickey Hargitay (Mr. Universe) who just died. Mariska was only 3yo when she and her two siblings were in the back seat of the car crash that killed their mother, Jayne Mansfield. If looking closely, it's easy to see Mariska Hargitay's resemblance to her mother. Quite interesting what type of 2006 Golden Globe winning actor Hargitay is turning out to be--with her femininity quite understated in relation to her mother's "blonde bombshell" flaunted femininity. Interesting also what the SVU actor has done with herself gender-wise with two hyper-gendered parents (feminine and masculine to each of their extremes).

(UPDATE: What did you think of the 2010 SVU Lesbian episode, when Hargitay turns on the radical Lesbian in-your-face routine, in order to nab a hate-murderer? I thought it was very hot stuff).

Here's how I am relating it to my ongoing, neverending Soulforce ethnographic work: doing a study of women who were variously publicly traumatized as little girls. From my filming days of soulforcees as a video ethnographer, my eyes and lens automatically gravitated to the sidewalk sign-holding children of Christian fundamentalist gender and sexual supremacists. Some 7 years gone by now, many of them, especially the girls, are becoming of age so that I can speak with them as women who were put on public display by their gender and sexual supremacist elders.

Every frame of video of them I've shot bothers me; much more today than when I originally filmed them. Just as the mental imagery does of a 3yo little girl, the youngest, in the back seat of the car when her famous mother was killed in a crash. (While I filmed I didn't feel--I was on the job being objective--rationally minded. That's the dilemma with being a participant-observer ethnographer; by working/filming, I'm always at a specific scientific distance. Years later, now as I review the video footage I shot, in private at home, it's quite emotional for me to watch--more and more as time goes by, and each time I view. I am more in the moment reviewing the film than I was at the moments of filming). My angle of looking at it is through a lens of feminist consciences and research methods combining gender, age, circumstance, and public trauma. Again, I am studying women . . . this time, ones who are post-traumatized and were originally publicly traumatized as little girls.

Hope to have some interesting chats with you here.

Kindly,
m~d

PS--Jennifer5, thank you very much for the e-birthday card in August.

[Zerbie]

I'm off to write papers for class - so bumping this another time to welcome all the various new, new members.

Hello! Hello! Hello! And welcome all!

Please keep posting!

[Britt.]

Welcome everyone. Like Zerbie, I don't always have time to read everything. This thread is a good idea. Hi everyone

[Zerbie]

Greetings once again to everyone who recently joined.

Like Maruti Das has said - we ARE here reading your posts and welcoming you in our hearts (and speaking for myself, things got waaaaay busy this fall and I had to force myself not to spend as much time posting on here.)

So once again, a hearty WELCOME to all of you who have recently posted introductions! I'm glad you're here, and look forward to having the time to converse some more.

Please keep on talkin'!

Zerbie

[BruceChris]

A beautiful woman, a well rounded human being, with just a touch of Ann Bancroft (And, no, I don't mean Mrs. Robinson!)

EDIT: And I also love Olivia Benson. It's hard to tell the difference when I've never seen her offstage.

P&L, BC

[marutidas]

Namaste, My name is Maruti Das, and
Welcome to Soulforce.

You will find many kindred spirits here.
There are so many new arrivels, I cant say hello to you all.

With closed palms I bow to the divinity within you.

[BruceChris]

---------------------

[m~dgray]

Speaking of leaders, or rather the prospect of there being true ones, President Bush has 417 days left in the White House.

(Update: After watching the 2009 movie, "Amelia," which depicts Gore Vidal as a child who knew Amelia Earhart, I began studying his most recent quotes. Though he's now an octagenarian [over 80yo], Vidal is as politically radical as ever. When asked about the current state of US politics he stated (a few years ago) that Dick Cheney should be impeached 1st, then G.W. Bush. I also found it encouraging that he was with a same gender partner for 53 years, until the death of the other man).

Love to ALL, m~d

[m~dgray]

It's been so long, years, since I've posted to any of the Soulforce forums that I am unsure if this will go through to folks. If so, I have a film to recommend and want to detail it for those who cannot gain access to it. Kindly, m~d

[HELENz]

Great idea.

Welcome all!

[BruceChris]

Has anyone, EVER, heard of a man dressing up as a woman, so as to assault a girl in a woman's bathroom???????????

BruceChris

[m~dgray]

Warmest Greetings, BruceChris,

(FYI--about a week ago, I posted a response to your 2005! response to one of my long missives. Gee it only took me 5 years to do so ::blushing purpled::. Wouldn't you know it, the post evaporated into the ether & I was too exhausted to even attempt to rewrite).

You've posed a very interesting question and I do have an answer: yes! Someone has cross dressed, a man in women's clothes, in order to murder. It's Brian De Palma's (1980) "Dressed to Kill," starring a completely nude and voluptuous 49yo Angie Dickinson and a brilliant performance by Michael Caine as her psychiatrist. Since I do not want to 'spoil' the classic film, I can't write who's the actor that cross dresses to kill whom.

Within the friendly parts of the TG constituency (note I deliberately resist the word 'community', since time has proved to me it is anything but one), film depictions of loony or crazed TG characters bring out the wrath of those who speak to one another or write.

Primary examples of negatively stereotyping TG or TS characters, if it can even be qualified as 'stereotyping' per se, are 'Roxy' in "Basic Instincts," (Sharon Stone's live-in girlfriend who liked to watch; and, the biggie of all time, the TS wannabe abductor-murderer of women whose skins he was using to sew a woman's bodysuit for himself, in the ever so classic, "Silence of the Lambs"--starring one of the most famous out Lesbians of our generation, Jodie Foster, and one of the finest British actors who made the character of Hannibal Lecter all that it still is now: Sir Anthony Hopkins.

The reason I write with definite doubt that either of the latter two films were actually stereotyping is because in order to be stereotyping the characteristics being displayed have to already be strongly associated with the GROUP of people they are being attached to.

For instance, stereotyping a woman as hysterical is playing right into the old myth that women had "wandering wombs" which made them act hyper-emotionally or hysterical. Women were even diagnosed with "Hysteria" in early 20th century psychiatric medicine. Women have been type cast as being hyper emotional in contrast to equally type cast men who are portrayed as callously reasoning, emotionally distant and unfeeling. These are gender stereotypes being played out. A similar sort of stereotyping happens that is highly racist (across many ethnicities). Note, how Clint Eastwood, in "Gran Torino" is cast deliberately as a primary bigot! Hardly a word exudes from the character he plays that isn't supremacist. But, by doing so in the context of this film's brilliant plot, Eastwood's bigotry is revealed to be so totally obnoxious and toxic to HIM that this is the film's great achievement. (In his character's case, he's a WWII veteran who's still anti-Asian at the very least). His neighbors are Asian. His neighborhood has turned into "the hood" loaded with minority-statused youths acting out violently--which Eastwood's character is opposed to THEM DOING. However, the plot starts to twist considerably when Eastwood's character becomes openly protective of his Asian neighbors.

The film should be a classic and withstand the tests of time because it is literally like a snap shot of inter-generational variations that are truly being played out in too many sectors of US society today. Classist stereotyping is also a central theme thread throughout the film. For instance, the Asian teen boy who's been set up by a gang to steal Eastwood's character's classic Ford Gran Torino, is playing right into that ghetto minority-statused teen stereotype who is a thief associated with a gang of teen thugs up to no good. But, his sister turns those stereotypes upside down while she's interacting with Eastwood's character, ball-busting his pre-conceived notions of 'All Asian People's' characters.

I've waxed on as usual... which is why I won't write often on any of the forums here or elsewhere. However, you posed a GREAT question, BruceChris. I went off associatively after answering that question. But to wind up my actual answer: "NO WAY, I DO NOT KNOW A MAN OR WOMAN WHO HAS CROSS DRESSED IN ORDER TO ASSAULT A WOMAN OR ANY ONE OR THING ELSE."

I know the filmography of such a portrayal, however ("Dressed to Kill," 1980, is the most classic depiction I know about, of a man dressing as a woman for the specific purpose of killing a woman). And, let's not forget that in "Basic Instincts," there was a woman who kind of cross dressed in order to murder a man detective. More of a disguise, but still with gender leanings (because her disguise remained as a woman but also as a cop who could easily be assumed to be a guy).

Waxing on, your question is so infectious, Shakespeare's "green worlds" are much more fascinating gender benders to consider; because in them men actors playing women, cross dress as men who, by so doing, are able to transcend the Renaissance roles of women to become as influential or powerful as men! (Thinking of the most well known example of a man actor playing a woman, going into a forest with their chamber maid in order to transform into a guy & rescue her sweetheart from having to cut a "pound of flesh" out of himself, to pay a debt to a merchant, in "The Merchant of Venice." But, that's double reverse gender bending! Guys playing gals (because there were no 'known' women actors in the 1500's doing Shakespeare's plays) DRessed As Girls (hence, the word DR.A.G was Shakespeare's plays' written costume instructions' anagram & could have originated from the great playwright).

My point is that even in some of the most choice classic stage plays of all time, cross dressing is used as a means to create fantasies that have eventually become actualized. Obviously, Shakespeare knew tons of guy actors who dressed as girls on stage. All of his gender benders were done in order to provide women with equal power as men.

When Gene Hackman does it in "The Bird Cage," and Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon cross dress in the all time Bill Wilder & I.A.L. Diamond classic, "Some Like It Hot," it's hilarious comedy precisely because they are not trying to be women. They are only wearing gender variant disguises in order to escape unwanted attention (in the latter instance, being gunned down by the Chicago mob).

Thanks for offering a scrumptious question. Very kindly, m~d (michael~deborah Gray)

(...nso, BruceChris, when & where do you want to discuss that commonality, I believe you mentioned in 2006?, we may have--likely for very different reasons--for having chosen to expose ourselves with double 1st names? Name the Soulforce forum, I'll join you, whenever and if ever you're game).

[Unmasked]

Hello and welcome to Soulforce. I kind of flit in and out of here, but I'm always happy when I check in and see new faces and good discussion.