Susie Bright's Journal

Mad Men, Ft. Hood, & the Stupak Amendment: Connect the Dots

 I can't be the only one to make the connection. 

For those of us who who are devoted to the American tele-novella Mad Men, the recent psycho-shooting at Ft. Hood had an eerie plot echo.
 

(Spoilers ahead).

In Mad Men, which takes place in New York of 1963, there's a fictional character named Greg, an aspiring surgeon who disgraces himself so badly in the operating room that he is forced to go into, shame of all shames, psychiatry. 
 

Since I've placed my life in the hands of a therapist more than once, this reaction came as a surprise to me! 
 

Yet among Greg's colleagues at the hospital, the psychiatry career path is considered a "fail." The deep background on Greg is that we already know he is a messed-up dude, a rapist with serious issues who is the LAST person you'd want to be talking to on a couch. 

As the season closes, we learn that Greg has joined the Army where they're desperate enough to take a loser like him and give him a surgeon's scalpel and a badge.
 

 He's so ignorant he doesn't have a clue that Vietnam is his imminent destination.

Meanwhile, in real life, Nidal Malik Hasan, the deranged Army psychiatrist who went on a shooting spree at Ft. Hood, also turns out to be… a failed surgeon. The detail that caught my eye was the anecdote revealed by his uncle, who said that Hasan went into psychiatry after he FAINTED in the O.R. during a routine childbirth. The sight of a baby emerging from a woman's vagina sent Nidal over the edge.

With that clue, something in me snapped.

This was a guy, who by all accounts so far, has never been on a date, and routinely complained to his mosque's imam that he couldn't find a woman "pious" enough to marry, a virgin who would wear a veil around the clock.

Hassan is being scrutinized for any potential ties to espionage, fanatical religious beliefs, and vicarious PTSD from treating so many broken soldiers.

 But this man's craziness is more clearly understood in the context of his severe and distorted sexual repression.

In the midst of this reality-fantasy convergence, another piece of patriarchal-creep rocked the country— this time, affecting more people than Ft. Hood and Mad Men's viewership combined. We witnessed the Orwellian "health care reform" process become derailed by what I call "The Stupid Amendment," a wildly successful Vatican intervention to make sure that whatever health care plan comes out of Congress, it will be engineered to control women's wombs. 

 In other words, health insurance for men, not for women. 

The Stupak Amendment is ostensibly about preventing women from using their insurance coverage to pay for abortion procedures. But making a rule that women's healthcare below the waist is subject to moral review is outrageous. 

Would any of these politicians consider making a health care exemption to the complications of a man's penis? His prostate? His semen? His scrotum? His urethra? Would urologists, like abortion surgeons, be treated like criminals whose entire knowledge base should be wiped out of existence? Would any man be put on parade to prove "rape, incest, or imminent death" in order to prove that he needed a procedure about ANYTHING?

"Pro-life" rhetoric is now used across the aisle, with even the President proclaiming that the federal government will never fund abortions. 

 

Afghanistan annihilation, yes! Abortion, no!
  
 

 Our war-lovin', misogynistic culture cares so little about "life" that the candlelight vigil for the Hasan's victims at Fort Hood had the air of a rote exercise. Here's Wade Goodwyn, from NPR, talking last week: 

The thing I was struck by was... that the vigil was a well-established routine. 

 

I mean, this was a pretty big moment for me, but I could tell that the attending crowd had done this before. 

And when we interviewed people, the soldiers and the families, after the vigil was over, they'd tell us, "I've been to too many of these already."

This country cares little about killing all life forms and even less about the welfare of its children. Our atrocious infant mortality rates, hungry children, uneducated children, children with birth defects and developmental disabilities treated like trash… my blood's turned cold.  Watching Congressmen gleefully cheer on the passage of the Stupak amendment, for me, was like watching Greg rape Joan— and worse, to witness her acceptance of it.
 

It reminds me of something I wrote in The Sexual State of the Union:

American boomerangs from "Fear of a Black Planet," a Youth Revolt, a genderfuck coup, to the opposite horror: that of a lone man with a big gun. 

Meet the older, privileged, "had-all-the-opportunities" kinda guy who comes equipped with a bomb, no dates, and a pathologically self-centered attitude. Oh, we'll wish he had only been in the Crips! If only he'd been a drag queen, if only he'd pierced his dick and gotten high on dope! Any of these would be preferable, a million times more humane. 

We can diss a counter-culture, but what are we supposed to do with a counter-human? We can't stand to look at the cult of alienated masculinity and wonder how we got here.

Penetrating Gay Porn with Jeffery Escoffier

This week on my audio show is part two of my discussion with sex historian Jeffrey Escoffier. We blurt out gay film secrets, discuss why straight male porn stars enjoy queer sex, how to achieve the perfect double-penetration shots, and the manner in which exhibitionists get ahead in the film industry.

Listen to Susie and Jeff's interview: LINK

Listen to the whole show: LINK

Get my In Bed audio show free for a month: LINK

 

Jeffrey wears many hats, but one of his most distinguished is as the editor of a reference book I use on a weekly basis: Sexual Revolution. It's a collection of the seminal (and ovulastic!) documents of modern sexual liberation: Susan Sontag’s "Pornographic Imagination,"  Al Goldstein’s notorious review of Deep Throat,  Anne Koedt’s classic "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm," Norman Mailer’s "The Homosexual Villain," Helen Gurley Brown, Lenny Bruce, Erica Jong, Lawrence Lipton, Masters & Johnson, Betty Dodson, Gayle Rubin, Timothy Leary, Henry Miller, Huey Newton, Sigmund Freud, Simone de Beauvoir— whew! I find new gems to mull over every time I read it.

Finally at the end of this week's show, in the "Try This at Home" mailbag, I get a letter from a listener who finds cheap thrills on freeway overpasses, and right in the middle of her dental checkups. Sexual revolution is indeed a guerilla enterprise!

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and requests for girly cards to susie@audible.com. (Episode 312, October 5, 2007)

A Show of Penises

I first met Jack Davis when I was a frequent visitor to a lesbian brothel commune in Santa Cruz, circa 1981. He lived in the basement.

The first time I visited Jack, he was crocheting a penis, and like everyone else who entered his lair, I was hooked.

Since then, Jack moved to San Francisco where his fiber arts are legendary. I'm just one of many collectors in his cult.

So far, I have a cunning Valentine-doily penis in black and red— and a big knotty bruiser pierced with many amulets, including an old-time New York subway token.

And yes, if you're nice to me, I'll let you touch it.

It's difficult for me when Jack has a show, because if I get around a new crop of his penises, I Want Them All. But I can't stay away... and I like to meet the other devotees!

Here,  Mr. Davis answers every question I have on my mind:

 
Why did you start making penises?

I got my M.S. in Art, focusing on Fibers in 1975. I was in college in the 60s, and graduate school in the '70s— and was influenced by the aesthetics of the period. Women in my weaving and textile classes were making wall hangings that looked like vulvas. I wanted to make things that would help men feel good about themselves, and at the same time I was coming out as a big fag.

A Show of Penises

Crocheted by Jack Davis
May 13 through June 10, 2007
Opening: Sunday, May 13, from 2:00 to 5:00 pm

Mark I. Chester Studio
1229 Folsom St.
San Francisco

 

How long does it take to make a penis?

Three hours for a simple one, up to several months for a complicated one.

Are they knitted or crocheted?

Crocheted. Knitting is done with two needles; crochet is done with a single hook.

What materials do you use?

I use yarns that are cotton, silk, wool and synthetic. Sometimes I recycle yarn from by taking apart thrift-store sweaters. A few yarns are hand dyed. Some penises are crocheted from found string.

In the past I have crocheted with sewing thread and colored telephone wire. Sometimes I use beads and other found objects for embellishment.

Are they cut or uncut?

All of the penises have foreskins.

How do you put one on?

You don't; they aren't penis warmers. They do open, however. There is a drawstring in each foreskin. So while they are not designed to be worn on a penis, you can put other things in them.

Did anyone model for them?

No.

What do you stuff them with for display?

I use plastic Easter eggs. They're the right size and weight.

How are your penises hung?

I use sturdy push pins in the back. It's easier than using nails. I usually hang them in a grid. There is a group of pink ones that I hang in a triangle.

How seriously do you take your work?

There's an element of humor in my work; how could there not be? Whenever I talk about my work with people, it isn't long before they start laughing about questions like, "How are your penises hung?"

But I do take my work seriously. It comes from being an art student for seven years. I use the word penis, instead of dick or cock, specifically because it's a more serious term.

Any interesting stories about your penises?

Tons.

One of the earliest stories occurred during my graduate exhibit. A straight male graduate assistant was taking a beginning art class through the university galleries. He stopped by my work, and picked up on of my penises to talk about it with his class. When he realized what it was, I guess he didn't want to be seen holding a penis, and dropped it instantly.

Back in the old days when I entered art shows using slides, there were several times when I was accepted into a show, but my work was rejected after it arrived. They realized they weren't crocheted abstract forms; they really were penises.

I once accidentally stabbed my finger with a fine-gauge crochet hook. Joe, my boyfriend at the time— and my roommate, Sue— took me to the hospital to have it removed. The emergency room staff couldn't believe I had been crocheting. They wanted to believe that my female roommate had stabbed me with what they assumed was her crochet hook.

What do people do with your penises after they buy them?

A friend of mine uses one for a change purse; it gets interesting comments in gay bars.

I know a lesbian who used one for packing.

My grandmother used to crochet cotton animals with a drawstring; you would put your little end pieces of soap inside one and use it to wash with in the bathtub or shower. So, yes, I know someone who uses one in his shower.

Some people put them on their altars. Since they have drawstrings, they lend themselves quite well as ritual objects. Some people put them among their plants.

But mostly people display them on a shelf or on the wall. They look good in a group. While there isn't a right or wrong way to display them, I prefer that people not put them in display boxes.

How many have you made?

Hundreds.

Do you sell your penises?

Yes. 

Do you exhibit them?

That's what it's all about.

Are you obsessed with penises?

Well, I am a fag.

Photographs by the illustrious Mark I. Chester, All Rights Reserved. More gallery penis portraits here.

Jack may be reached here, and of course, in-person at his opening is the very best!