this grey spirit

So right now you’re probably sitting at home, and if you’re at all interested in any of the wonderful 8 leads (Sandra Bullock, Sarah Paulson, Cate Blanchett, Rihanna, Mindy Kaling, Anne Hathaway, Awkwafina, and Helena Bonham Carter) of Ocean’s 8, then you’re wondering if it’s worth seeing. 

I think it is.

It’s quiet, understated, and it surely passes the Bechdel Test 8 times over. So why is it important? What does it offer us as a society today? 

It’s literally a blatant metaphor for female friendship. Hell, Anne Hathaway outright states, “I don’t have a lot of female friends,” when her dopey character rises to the occasion and solidifies this group of 8 women. 

This movie is not in any way a part of its predecessors, but it is a movie written, performed, and produced in the glare of the #MeToo movement and the Time’s Up initiative, and it is beautiful. 

There is no threat of male violence; there is no threat of male takeovers; no mansplaining; there’s men in it, yes, and they get good comedy timing like the women, but they are not threatening. In fact, at one point Sandra Bullock states that no men could be involved in their heist. Not for any reason other than she wanted some solid females involved. If that is not a meta self-referential callback to “50/50 by 2020″ or inclusion riders or equality itself, I don’t know what is. (Sandra, Mindy, and Cate were all original signers of the Time’s Up letter published on January 1st this year). 

The men got 3 movies. Now, it’s the women’s turn. They will take those 8 spots and they will get the job done without any threats, conflict, or bullshit. 

One could argue that the movie does not feel as thrilling or on-the-edge-of-your-seat satisfying because of this lack of conflict.

But I think that’s the point. There’s no conflict because the women work together. They’re stealthy, careful, cunning, and they are ready to get shit done. And they can get shit done because they have come together to do it. There’s no weak link or “catty” (kill me, honestly) fighting. These women all want the same thing, and they all support each other and work together to put one man in jail. 

In the era where it seems like every single day I am bombarded with the threat of physical violence by any man that walks through the door of the place I work, this was a reprieve. This was a place where I felt calm, loved, surrounded by women who were smarter than everyone in the room. They nodded to Anna Wintour and the Kardashians and the Hadids and Taylor Swift and their business ideals, and they did not bash them. They coexist, ready to be a part of the plan and to get their own shit done at the same time. 

And that’s why I think this movie is so important. It’s about female friendship and it’s about getting everyone (men, women, people) involved in that comfort and love and support so that maybe one day, like these characters we can pull the greatest heist of all: the time to hold the screen’s attention for an hour and forty minutes without a threat of sexual or physical violence in a crime-driven film. Or to hold that hour and forty minutes of safety in, you know, life itself. 

Cate Blanchett wearing leather pants

Cate Blanchett doing the hair flip thing when she takes off her helmet

Cate Blanchett in that velvet green blazer

Cate Blanchett and all of her suits

Cate Blanchett

in the red dress

Finally saw Ocean’s Eight and omg it was so lovely! The movie is basically the “be gay, do crimes” meme come to life and it is beautiful. 

I specifically mean that Cate Blanchett in all those outfits is beautiful and could take all my money and I’d say “thank you.”

Cate Blanchett rides a motorcycle. TWICE. Whoever the wlw in the test audiences were, I salute you.

Bisexuals have a very distinct culture! A lot of it didn’t come to mainstream consciousness (i.e. The Straights didn’t bother to notice it) till the 90s, but it for sure existed prior to that! There’s been a plethora of scholarship on the culture and the nature of bisexuality. I’ll recommend you a few things if you want to explore it further:

Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life by Marjorie Garber

Oscilliation: A Life-Stories Analysis of Women WhoExperience Bisexualityby Irina Dimitriade

Bi America by William Burleson

Plural Desires: Writing Bisexual Women’s Realities by Karyn Sandlos

And the Introduction to the History of Bisexuality by Steven Angelides. The full book can be bought on Amazon here.

Love letters Hans Christian Anderson wrote to Edvard Collin contain elements that appeared in The Little Mermaid, which he was writing at the same time

Several people who knew James Dean have talked about his relationships with men 

Letters and poems allude to a romance between Emily Dickinson and at least two women 

Nikola Tesla was adverse to touch. He said he fell in love with one women but never touched her and didn’t want to get married 

Freddie Mercury is well known for his attraction to men but was also linked to several women, including Barbara Valentin whom he lived with shortly before he died. Friends have talked about being invited into their bed and walking in on them having sex (documentary Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender) 

Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera are two of the best-known activists who fought in the Stonewall riots

Florence Nightingale refused 4 marriage proposals and her letters and memoir suggest a love for women 

Leonardo da Vinci never married or fathered children, was once brought up on sodomy charges, and a sketch in one of his notebooks is 2 penises walking toward a hole labeled with the nickname of his apprentice 

Condivi said that Michelangelo often spoke exclusively of masculine love

Jane Austin never married and wrote about sharing a bed with women (Jane Austen At Home: A Biography by Lucy Worsley)

Hatshepsut took the male title Pharaoh (instead of Queen Regent) and is depicted in art from the time the same way a male Pharaoh would have been

For starters, when she becomes ruler of Egypt she can no longer carry the title Hmt nswt wrt (Great Royal Wife - there’s no such thing as ‘Queen Regent’ in Ancient Egypt) as that is a lesser title to the one of Pharaoh. She was married to Thutmose II before she came to the throne thus making her title ‘Hmt nswt wrt’ and when she ascended to the throne as regent in place of her infant son Thutmose III, she could take the title ‘nsw’ ‘King’ as a woman. 

Note at this point in Egyptian history, the title of pr-aA (the word we all know as Pharaoh) was not yet in use, in fact it doesn’t come into use until c.1200 BC (I think Akhenaten is the first one to use it…). Hatshepsut is a good 200 years before this point (c.1473-1458 BC). 

However, in Middle Egyptian (the form of Egyptian Hieroglyphs at the time) when writing a noun that is specifically gendered (as ‘nsw’ is male) the pronoun, regardless of the gender of the person using it, must agree with the noun (unless you’re saying something like nsw=s ‘her king’ in which case it doesn’t). So when Hatshepsut describes herself as the ‘nsw’ she uses the =f pronoun which is male. These are the grammar rules of Middle Egyptian. Elsewhere, when the word isn’t as specifically gendered she uses =s ‘she/her’ and uses that more often than not. People also overestimate how much of the decision making regarding texts used on temple walls were dictated by Pharaoh. 99% of the time they had very little input in the types of texts that went on the walls as it’s standard and formulaic language and texts (Pharaoh really only did the design layout kinda thing and said who they wanted it to be dedicated to) so the architects would just instruct the artisans to inscribe them. Hatshepsut would in no way dictate the usage of pronouns in specific religious texts. These are set things, having been written hundreds of years before. She’s not altering them, they’re just copying up texts that already exist onto the walls. This is also why they’ve got male pronouns. 

Take for instance the text where Hatshepsut is spoken of as being born of Ra and thus has divine right to rule Egypt. This was done a) to shut up those who would seek to overthrow her because she was a woman and because her son was 4 years old (seriously if you don’t think the nobles were super excited at an opportunity to get on the throne because they can discredit the widow and kill the only son of the last king you need to do some more reading on Egyptian political intrigue. It’s like Game of Thrones but with more sand and about the same amount of incest) b) sA rA (son of Ra) is another formulaic phrase that is set in gender. All kings are ‘sA rA’ so she isn’t going to rock the boat and suddenly change all the religious rules as well as being a woman on the throne. Oh boy is that a sure fire way to get yourself assassinated. She wants to present herself as a legitimate ruler not a ‘hey let’s change all the things’ (If you know of Akhenaten then you’ll know exactly what happened to him with regards to changing stuff. It didn’t end well.)

As for being depicted as male, there’s one thing people need to understand about Egyptian art; it’s extremely rigid in its conventions. This is why Akhenaten (whom I’d actually more seriously lean towards as a Genderfluid individual) and his art style was so shocking to the Egyptians. They had very set ideas of how someone should be portrayed. So when it comes to the ‘nsw’ there are set rules that have to be followed: must be portrayed as a fit young man (regardless of age. Ramesses II was still depicted this way even when he was 80+ years old), must have the iconography of kingship (nemes headdress, crook and flail, bulls tail, false beard), must never be depicted as old or dead (oohhhh boy this is a no no). People like to jump on the false beard thing, but in truth no king of Egypt had a beard. They all had the false beard as a sign of ‘wisdom’ so this being unique to Hatshepsut isn’t really a thing. It’s a universal Pharaonic art convention. Just like they all have the nemes headdress. 

I don’t like taking down posts like this because it makes me seem like a joyless killjoy that wants to stomp all over LGBT individuals in history because they deserve to be heard and spoken about. Too long have we ignored them in history. But this is not the intent here. When there is an LGBT individual, like Alexander the Great, I’ll yell it from the rooftops. What we see with Hatshepshut is a misrepresentation of the narrative by those who have very good intentions, but do not understand the context they’re working with. Time and again Historians warn of modern bias and the application of modern sociological terms to the historical record. We should try to avoid it because it distorts the record and the voices of the people in the past. We can say ‘Evidence suggests that Akhenaten may be what we’d term today as a genderfluid individual’ but we can’t say ‘Akhenaten is genderfluid’ because that’s a certainty and without direct evidence to say he was that’s a misrepresentation of the data. Hatshepsut appears to change gender pronouns, which in modern sociolinguistics would suggest that she was not cisgender. However, context, which unfortunately most people will not have because they don’t actually read Middle Egyptian (yeah yeah I’m a nerd) won’t know of the specific grammatical rules that govern the language and therefore see the evidence presented before them as ‘not cisgender’ rather than ‘Middle Egyptian is an absolute dick when it comes to set genders and formulaic language and you must always assess the context before making a definitive conclusion’