Korea Day #2

My second day in Seoul was my most eventful. I woke up that morning completely rested and ready to start exploring the city. My volunteer translator/guide wasn't available until late afternoon, but I looked forward to touring around a little on my own.


First stop was Insa-dong, a street full of antique shops, art galleries, and traditional Korean souvenirs.




Above is a picture of Buddhist monks buying something to eat.


This guy is pounding a mixture of rice and other things with a large hammer to turn it into a treat.



After looking around for a couple of hours, I walked over to Changdeokgung, one of the five palaces where kings of the Joseon Dynasty lived. This particular palace was built from 1405-1412.



The palace grounds had a one and a half hour English speaking tour that I went on.






The building structures were all very interesting, but the grounds as a whole felt very deserted, with vast spaces of sand and stone landscape along with mostly empty buildings.






Near the back of the palace was the Secret Garden, where the grounds became a little more lush.



After my tour, I met up with my guide Eun Joo to go to Deoksugong, a much smaller but well-landscaped palace.




After that, we headed to Sinchon, a college area where Butch Jamie would be shown.




Eun Joo and I went out for Korean BBQ, which is thinly sliced meat that you cook in front of you. Along with our meal we drank Soju, liquor made from rice that tastes similar to vodka but with less of a bite.


After dinner, we went to the theater for the Friday night screening of Butch Jamie, which was sold out. There I met a translator who would assist with the Q&A after the screening. The film seemed to be very well-received - I got a lot of compliments and thought-provoking questions, took many photos with fans, and signed several autographs. I sensed that this film meant something more to Koreans than it did in America where gay and lesbian issues have become more mainstream.

After the screening, a young lesbian come up to me and told me (in English, as many people speak at least a little English) that I am a butch role model for Koreans - a very flattering statement, however one with a lot of responsibility. I thought more about this afterward. I often wonder if I'm butch enough to really be *that*, whatever *that* is. However, I got an interesting Q&A question at my second screening a couple of days later where I was able to discuss my thoughts on the issue. Someone asked me - "What do you think butch is?" I told her that I will start to answer her question by saying what I think butch isn't - it isn't any one thing or set of things. I told her that while I identify as butch, part of accepting that label for me also means accepting the fact that I don't have to be *that*. I can be myself, whoever that is, without changing or modifying myself to fit into the category. So in essence, butch is what you make it.


After the screening we headed over to a club for Queer Night, which was organized by the festival. There I met several women who had seen the movie and we continued various conversations about sexuality and identity with one of the festival programmers translating most of it for us.



Things I learned today about Korea:

- It's considered rude to pour your own drink. Beer often comes in large bottles that you share with your friends and the idea is that you pour their glass when it becomes empty and you wait for them to do the same for you.

- You can drink alcohol outside on the street as well as in a cab - so liberating! My Korean friend told me that you can drink anywhere except in a stranger's house. "You mean you can't drink there because you broke in?" I asked. "Yeah," she laughed.

- While there is a gay and lesbian subculture in Seoul (bars, clubs, etc.), people aren't out to their families, co-workers, or many of their friends. Same-sex couples who live together do so under the pretense of being good friends. Queer sexuality is generally not discussed in public and one of the festival programmers wasn't sure how people would feel at my Q&A about asking questions for fear that they may out themselves (people ended up asking me a lot of great questions, which worked out well).

One guy asked me in the Q&A if I was a lesbian (I answered yes and was given some applause) and later a Korean butch lesbian told me that she was angry that he had done that. While the vast majority of the Korean audience already knows that I'm a lesbian, she thought it was an inappropriate question to ask me in public. I told her that it wasn't a big deal and that everyone knows in my country - my family, employers, all my friends, etc. She was a little surprised, but perhaps also a little envious. The U.S. seems to be a few decades ahead with gay and lesbian issues, although I do think Korea will eventually catch up.

It was late when I got back to my hotel and I had to wake up fairly early in the morning for an interview. I went right to sleep, amazed at how much ground I had covered that day.

Is Butch a Bad Word?

I found an article recently that reported how a poster advertising a gay and lesbian film festival in upstate New York got taken down from a public bulletin board because six employees complained that some of the titles were offensive. What was so offensive? Well, for one - Butch Jamie. The other films cited were Out at the Wedding (no idea why) and Itty Bitty Titty Committee (ah yes, titties. Gets them every time.) As one blog wrote - "it's questionable whether it was homophobia at play or just extreme lameness."

After the poster got taken down, gay activists got involved. As a result, the poster was then put back up but with certain words blacked out. It was a compromise of sorts, between freedom of speech and censorship. And I wonder - was "Butch" blacked out? No, it couldn't have been. Could it?

It's a minor incident - hardly worth getting upset over, but it's interesting to reflect on. I identify as a butch woman, many of my friends identify as butch, I make movies starring butch characters, and I probably say, read, write, or at least think about the word butch everyday. It's such a part of me and my world that I don't even think twice about it. But it didn't always used to be that way.

When I first moved to L.A. after college, I was 22 and well - it wasn't that long ago, but I was really young. The world somehow seemed new to me, and in a lot of ways it was. When you're in school, you're somehow taken care of. You have set goals, set priorities, built-in friends, teachers who are supposed to encourage and inspire you, help bring out your best and develop your abilities. You have authority figures who often strive to make everyone feel comfortable, safe, respected, and well cared for. You're given a lot of attention, and sometimes a lot of praise and recognition.

Then when you're out of school it's you who needs to start filling those roles of encouraging yourself, developing yourself, striving to make yourself feel comfortable and well cared for. You are for the first time, really on your own. No one really cares whether you're "on track" or "falling behind." Your boss doesn't care if you get enough attention or if you're growing and developing to the best of your ability. And no one really cares if you feel comfortable. Sure, there are some legal issues with sexual harassment and what not, but when it comes down to it, people generally don't consider your comfort something to be concerned with.

But for some reason, I did seem to be concerned with making other people feel comfortable. I seemed to be concerned with making other people feel comfortable with me, even though apparently, I wasn't comfortable with myself. I spent my college years being the biggest, baddest, butchest mofo that ever walked the halls (even if I did giggle like a girl). But in the first nine or so months that I was in L.A., I pretty much femmed it up. I didn't wear make-up or anything like that, but I did modify my wardrobe (and started using the word wardrobe). I worked as a receptionist for awhile at an editing facility, then as a client services representative at a post production house. I figured that especially since I worked with the public, it was somehow unacceptable for me to look butch. I was somehow unacceptable.

My clothing choices ended up not being just for work. It all started in the spirit of professionalism, but then it creeped into other areas of my life as well - when I went out to dinner, went to the movies, etc. It seemed easier to dress that way than to deal with people calling me "sir" or freaking out when they saw me in the women's restroom. So big deal, you might say. You dressed a little femme; so what? Well yeah - so what. Except I didn't feel comfortable in my own skin and in my own life. I felt I had to pretend to be somebody else in order not to offend people by my presence.

Then I worked with a butch lesbian at one of my jobs. She also worked with clients, but she dressed as her usual butch self. At first I was in awe of her - that she could wear that to work and nobody thought twice about it. But I figured - if she could do it, I could do it. So I started dressing the way I wanted to, and I started feeling more confident about who I was. And that was that.

Looking back, it reminds me of something I read in a book recently. It said "In your life, other people will see their own possibilities." It's interesting. We never really know the effect we have over the other people we meet and know in our lives, but the truth is - sometimes the simplest act of living an honest life inspires someone else to do the same.

Maybe the word "Butch" was blacked out on the poster. But it isn't in my life, in my films, and in my characters. I don't usually think about what it means for Jamie to be butch, but when I think about having that part taken away from her, I realize how important it is. That part of her - that part in all of us, whatever it may be, that needs to be embraced in order to feel comfortable with who we are. Ultimately, it's about putting our ideas about ourselves before other people's ideas about us. It's about living a life of honesty and truth where other people may be able to see their own possibilities.

June Cleaver Eats My Beaver

As I discussed in my blog last week, two of my shorts are now available for download from TLA Video on a compilation called Iron Girls 4. Last week I talked about my film Ballet Diesel, the butch lesbian with closeted girlie habits. This week I'll tell you a little about the other short on the compilation, Girl for Life.

Girl for Life is a comedic infomercial spoof that teaches butch women how to enter any women's restroom with "confidence and ease." It's based on real events in that restroom-gender-drama (i.e. people thinking I was a man) was a daily experience for me and I'm sure it is for many of you as well. I do have a minor role in the film, but I cast two of my friends in the leading roles - Karman Kregloe (in the photo below on the right), who now writes for AfterEllen.com, and Shannon Morris (on the left).


There used to be a quarterly queer screening series in L.A. called Film Fatale, organized by Rosser Goodman from KGB Films. In honor of their fifth anniversary they created the Filmmaker Five, where five filmmakers were selected to make a film under five minutes with $50 in only five days. The entire film was to be made in the five days - written, shot, and edited.

At the beginning of the five days, each filmmaker was given an image to begin their film with and an image to end their film with, both of which could be interpreted however we wanted. Five days later, there was a screening where the films played in a sort of loop, with one film's ending image being another film's beginning image, and so forth.

My film was to begin with June Cleaver and end with blowing bubbles. So I did what any other full-fledged dyke would do, and I made a T-shirt that said "June Cleaver Eats My Beaver" to start the film with.


At the end of the film, I had the character I played blow bubbles above the infomercial title card.

And now, six years later, you can watch it on your computer...


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A dyke, a wig, and a funeral

As some of you may know, I have a short film out now on The Ultimate Lesbian Short Film Festival DVD. The film is called Half-Laughing, and it's a dramatic story with streaks of satiric humor. It's about a young dyke who goes home with a shaved head for her grandfather's funeral only to confront her mother, who wants her to wear a wig.



The story isn't what I'd call autobiographical, but I did have a very surreal experience with a wig and a funeral at one point. The film is more interesting than what really happened, so here's the trailer if you haven't seen it yet:



Also, here's the behind-the-scenes video with interviews with some of the actors. We shot the film a few years ago, and I just finished putting these interviews together! Finally off my to-do list! :)