… unless you are having sex with them, in which case it wouldn’t be other people’s sex lives, it’s your joint sex life.
One of my personal heroes is Miss Manners, who is a billion times sharper, funnier and more progressive than people give her credit for. One of her books that was published in the 1980s had a great takedown for homophobia. Someone wrote in asking her what they could possibly be expected to say when introduced to a gay couple. After one of her perfectly curt answers (“How do you do? How do you do?”) she had a great line, which I’m paraphrasing since I can’t put my finger on: “I’ve come to believe there are only two kinds of people in this world — those who believe other people’s sex lives are their business, and those who know they are not.”
A non-comprehensive list of shit that is none of your business:
• Who is fucking whom
• Who likes what in bed
• How many people someone’s slept with
• What other people’s orientations are, if they’ve not felt like coming out and telling you. If they have, keep that to yourself unless you are really 100 percent sure that they are completely open and out. Don’t assume they are.
• Who might be trying to have kids, or, if they are currently pregnant, the circumstances behind which they got that way (planned? unplanned? fertility treatments? etc.)
Any that I’m missing?
or: one of the many ways in which objectified women in media can have a negative impact on real women
(this is probably really rambling and I apologize for it)
“Greek Comedies end with a naked dancing girl,” my speech teacher told us while we were doing a short section from Lysistrata during my senior year of college, “to celebrate the resolution to all of their problems in a way befitting of a show filled with sex jokes.”
Since we were only working on chorus sections, I was technically safe from risk of being the famous naked dancing girl of Lysistrata. But due to the fact that I was leading the dancing in the revel section of The Bacchae—another piece that we were doing as a part of our exploration of comic and tragic choruses—some of my peers started endearingly referring to me as the naked dancing girl of our piece. I didn’t mind at the time. After all, I wasn’t actually doing it.
At least, until our full-scale production of The Thesmophoriazusae during spring quarter. When I got called back for the actress who would play three characters—amusingly, something of a twisted maid, mother, and crone triad—I was introduced to Thesmo’s own naked dancing girl: Fawn. She was described as just “a dancing girl,” and I believe it might have also said that she was a silent role. Still, I can’t remember if I put two and two together and thought: “Hey, this must be Thesmo’s naked dancing girl,” or if I didn’t think it was going to be hard for me.
I didn’t know how difficult it would be until Grayson e-mailed me about costume comfort. “How much clothing would you be willing to remove? Would you feel okay in a bra and underwear on stage?”
Later, I got the script. Stage directions like “he fondles her” and lines like: “Oh, look at that ass!” were warning lights, bells and whistles, a terrible omen for times to come. “Danger,” a voice told me. “You are in over your motherfucking head. This is going to be incredibly difficult material. Danger. Danger.”
