A Modest Proposal/updated

PRIDE, Knicks, Shameless Lives, and Jeans

HAPPY PRIDE! There aren’t enough words in all the world’s languages to describe the impact, influence, joy, love, inspiration, beauty, and safety (among so many other things) queer people have brought into my life, and into our society. I feel most at home around queer people, who understand what it is to be on the wrong side of power and yet find a way to thrive, create, and become the very definition of excellence without support or understanding, and in fact against cross winds of sometimes lethal hostility from mainstream society. Thanksgoddess they have. Can you imagine taking fashion direction from a str8 m*n? Or if Sappho were a str8 woman creating poems about loving a m*n? I would not want to live in a world that hadn’t been written in part by James Baldwin and Lorraine Hanesberry. Sorry, no. There would be no self care without Audre Lorde, plus the technical mastery of her poems, plus the way her intersectional lens changed cultural critcism. Marsha P. Johnson changed the way the entire world thinks about and experiences gender. Our lives would be impoverished if they had never been. Also nobody is as witty as my gay male friends, except your gay male friends. And let me say a few more words that need to be said: Greta Garbo. Josephine Baker. Virginia Woolf. Eleanor Roosevelt. Yes, all queer. I hope your Pride is full of love, connection, and ecstatic repudiation of the current regime.

My interview with The Shamless Sex podcast is up and running. They’re calling it “The New Rules of Sex, Marriage, and Power” and we talked about so many things including “Not All M*n” which in my case is, “Actually yes, all m*n” because for me, it’s a year without m*n. We were fun, we were thoughtful, and I am so proud of the girls for keeping their pod going since (checks notes she doesn’t have bc she’s on a train) 2017?

This month, New York City has been feverish with both Pride and Knicks mania. The Knicks haven’t been in the finals since 1999. It seems everyone is wearing a Knicks cap or jersey in New York right now. It’s nuts. And with all eyes are on basketball (it’s sad if you don’t get the reference), I have a modest proposal. For years, the men’s league has been called the NBA, the National Basketball Association. This makes men’s basketball the baseline, and the WNBA, the Women’s National Basketball Association, the something-else. The not-baseline.

For the sake of balance and healing, I suggest we change things up. My husband and I had just sent our sons off to a New York Liberty game when it dawned on me: the women’s league should henceforth be called the NBA. The men’s league can be the MNBA, or just the MBA. What do you think? Could a change like making a woman’s the league the baseline create awareness around inequities? Could it be a step toward rebalancing our thinking? Should we start a petition?

In other NYC news, Americans wear jeans well and I think New Yorkers wear them REALLY well. I have been wearing them daily while home. Did you know that Pistola and Paige jeans (two of my favorites) are women founded companies? And that Mother, another of my favorites, was co-founded by a woman? This makes it so easy for me to wear women’s clothing brands. Also I heard about a fun woman’s clothing company called Feral Slvt. INTERESTING! Jennifer Raff what are those flats by a woman-owned shoe company you told me about? I want my followers to know a geneticist’s flat of choice!