open forum
Janet Kuypers
JASON: We wouldn’t like dogs nearly as much if they didn’t coincidentally look like they’re smiling when their mouths are open.
JANET: Personally, I like the fact that dogs usually have their mouths open and their tongues hanging out. Not in a sexual sense, mind you, I just mean that I like the fact that dogs versus people can stick their tongues out and have it be no problem. I mean, when I see a dog with it’s tongue hanging out because it’s panting, I just stick my tongue out to the dog, because, you know, that dog is probably the only creature that would let me stick my tongue out without thinking that I was crazy. Does that sound strange?
GREG: Okay, now I’m really uncomfortable, cause I have many issues with dogs, due to being ]treed by a rotweiler as a tot and I’m feeling like you’re doing this just cause I’m a cat person, cause I think that people are like cats in that they have issues about parents (i.e. they view as a bit of a parental/pride leader, i.i.e. they are forever in adolesence much like MANY of my exes), and they are often conflicted about showing affection purr purr then runaway (much like MANY of my exes) and you’re trying to intimidate me ahahahahahaha!
JASON: I read about how recently, a man got arrested for child pornography. He was caught with a folder full of pictures of naked adult people (from actual pornographic magazines), and he had scotch-taped photos of children’s heads over the heads of the adults. He was tried for child pornography, he was found guilty, and he is serving a fourteen-year sentence. It makes me wonder. If I accidentally leave the bathroom unlocked and someone walks in, can I get arrested for flashing? Has our society gotten out of control, or are our bondaries good in our society right now?
JANET: Well, as I’ve always said, there is too much government intervention, see, that’s the beauty of Capitalism, but don’t tell Greg that or he’ll start bitching and bitching. Okay, it’s time for big bother to come in and take care of all the people who can’t take care of themselves at the expense of the people that WORK for a living.
JASON: (forcefully taking the laptop and interrupting): Yeah, but what about the subject I brought up? You’re obviously much more political about sexual/personal/body/gender issues than I. What do you think of this subject?
JANET: The fact that the government is telling this person that they can’t think about some subject that is illegal is what I’m talking about. Soon writers who writes about, or think about writing about, mass murders, will be arrested. Do we want to keep our freedom, or lose it, inch by inch?
GREG: Actually it’s worse than that. This guy had a roommate who was disgusted by his actual and fake child porn and posed (on his own) as an underage child and then turned the guy in so he was sentenced to JAIL for molesting a non-existant person, which has little to do with any economic system - in fact it has to do with concepts of personal freedom that have everything to do with everything but money save that those with cash makes the rules (the only economic reality I consider valid). I think it’s appalling that we now have postmodern sin. More than that non-existant sin, like conceptual sin, conviction of intent, which is almost more dangerous and vile than Salem (which is still our system of societal regulation and dangerous whether the the economics are capitalism or sumpin’ else).
JASON: But how do we reconcile our very liberal, very leftist views of the world with the fairly disgusting things we have to hold up to defend these views? We have to support 2 Live Crew to support free speech. We have to defend a guy who wants to fuck eight year old girls in order to protest government regulations. The ACLU has to throw free legal representation to the KKK to uphold their philosophical principles. Sometimes it actually occurs to me to be a little more conservative person than I am right now, just so I don’t have to constantly support and defend these things that, although I philosophically have to support because of our society and the right I believe exist for all of us, I personally can’t stand --make me sick - make me disgusted that I’m actually supporting them as a valid form of free speech. Janet, you must have some kinds of conflicts in your life. How do you deal with them?
JANET: First of all, the personal conflicts you see in protecting rights can be completely replaced with rights of the business person in the conservative party for protecting rights. The conservarive party was originally concerned with protecting all rights, but it developed that the conservative stance lost the protection of “personal” versus “business” rights, which has developed into our current dysfunctional/incinsistent two party system. Anyway... Yes, I see “personal” conflicts in letting people produce pronography that degrades women. But I’d prefer a system of government that allows me to protest that pornography than a system that allows no thoughts to exist, even if those thoughts were of pornography and protest to pornography. I’d prefer a system that allows me to show the world that I’m worth more than some servant to be used for men’s whims, I’d prefer that to banning ideas altogether.
GREG: Moving to a slightly humorous bent...if we are to regulate or rate dangerous speech, how much do we put in warnings before you are giving away the plot. And to make a huge leap, I would personally protest (with my dollars) any movie that has a trailer that gives away every key plot/laugh point in a film. The only thing worse is those damn TV movies that show upcoming scenes at EVERY commercial break (like all Hallmark specials). I think the Entertainment Industry needs to be made aware that we will go see a work of art without fully knowing what it will be. Now, I may be speaking from the disadvantage of someone who remembers every 10 second bit of film I see and piece together the rest. Do you know how many films have been ruined for me by giveaways? I think there should be a restriction to 30 secs of excerpts in previews, by law.
JASON: These are good points. I WOULD rather have the freedom to protest something than just simply banning something I don’t like... because the next thing that someone doesn’t like might be mine. Can we move to something personal?
What is the thing that scares you the most, personally? Not your phobias (haunted houses, spiders, enclosed spaces). What is the thing that scares you the most?
JANET: Losing control.
JASON: The thing that scares me the most. Something just flew across the room and I couldn’t tell what it was. Losing my mind. Losing my rational mind. Getting old and getting senile and losing myself and not realizing that I’m realizing it. That’s what scares me the most. Why does losing control scare you so much?
JANET: The worst times in my life to date were the times where I had no control over things that were happening. If I have control over things in my life, then I can safely determine what is happening in my life, and I can always state that I did what I felt what I needed to do at any given point in my life.
If I choose to give control to someone, well, that would be a choice of mine as well, and I would also be able to choose at any given point to take control back. But having no ability to control what I should be able to control - like going senile, i suppose, for instance, that scares me. Why do you ask?
JASON: I’m not sure.
I have never felt before like I’m OUT of control. It’s interesting. I make a lot of ‘poo-poo’ points about sexuality issues, gender issues, but there are certain things that stand out in sharp clarity in my own life ABOUT these things: one of them is right now, that I have never felt out of control of my own life, and I think a big reason is that I was a male growing up and you were a female. Every time I think someone is making up some sort of ungrounded criticism about some sort of issue in this country, some sort of solid example is brought up to remind me that it is NOT a made-up issue.
I was raised as a middle-class, middle-america, white straight male nerd. My thoughts, my ideals, my ideas, my philosophy, all reflects this. I don’t apologize for it, just like I don’t expect anyone from any other type of class, race, gender, or orientation different from mine to apologize for theirs. But I get a lot of shit about it. It’s something I work on.
JANET: You’re right. Although I’m not one to point out these kinds of things in such a crass way, I wanted to say, “oh, you haven’t had to ever relinquish control? Well, you’re not a woman.” I know that’s bad, but on some levels it’s true. And on another note, I’ve never said I was “out of control;” that sounds like I’ve gone crazy. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about feeling like you were in a position to relinquish your control. That’s much worse than being “out of control.”
And it’s okay that you’re a man, it’s not like you should feel like you should have to treat people differently or people should treat you differently, just because you’re a man, just like I shouldn’t go through that just because I’m a woman. But I wish there was a way I could show you how it feels, in that “sexist” sense, for instance, to be forced to relinquish control.
Actaully, it’s worse than going senile, because your mind is doing that to you. What I’m talking about is losing control, not because of your mind, but because of outside forces.
JASON: You can immediately tell in this typing-obsessed society of ours who the people were who were forced to take a typing class in 9th grade and learned the way their hands were supposed to curl around the keys on the keyboard and whose hands stay pretty still (in relationship to their wrists) when they’re typing, and which people just sort of picked it up as they got older and realized they were going to have to type more and more, the people whose hands go spinning wildly back and forth, left and right way beyond the keyboard, six inches beyond either direction. I’m not saying that one of these ways is better or worse. All I’m saying is that there was a certain point in American history where this wasn’t even an issue. The only people who knew how to type were in the steno pool. Now EVERYONE needs to know how to type, and and a lot less of those people actually get typing training.
You DO show me what’s it like to be a woman. You DO make me feel like what it must be like. Or do you not realize that that is what your writing does for me?
You’re right, I don’t feel like I need to apologize for the upbringing and genetic material I have. A lot of people in the poetry/literary scene certainly feel like I should apologize, though.
One of my most famous pieces, one of the most popular, was inspired by a black poet named Reggie Gibson. I really, really wanted to mirror his motivation, mirror his... ooh, how do I put this? His inner being. I want to do the things in the literary world that my heroes who are not straight white males do, that make me such big fans of them. They write from the gut. They write about their upbringing, they write about their race, they write about their class, they write about their parents, they write about all these things in the LAST thirty years of their life that make them what they are now.
And there’s something that I don’t think a lot of women/black people/gay people realize, which is that there ARE no cultural identities/common experiences/political points that a straight middle-class, suburban white male can make about where he came from. And so, I write about what I know. Which is why I write about hating Windows. And falling in love with art girls. And PacMan and Punky Brewster and all those other things. THIS is my cultural heritage, because I have been raised to be ashamed of every single white man who ever came before me. It’s a tough burden to bear. Even though white men still have control over the business industry, even though the straight white male still gets the good jobs and gets the power and money and decision-making power, that is NOT me, yet I still have to bear the brunt of them. It’s difficult, you know?
JANET: You know, I can tell you’re a NOVELIST. This started off as a one-sentence thing, you know?
I am glad my work “works” on some levels. But I wonder how much you really “understand.” That’s not a slam, just a thought.
I think it’s difficut to be whomever you are, no matter what category it is. Is it worth it to understand the plight of people who aren’t like you?
JASON: To me, it’s very much worth understanding the plight of people who aren’t like me. A big priority of mine, something that is very important to me, is understanding people and relating to them on an individual basis. That is, liking them or not liking them based on who they are as an individual human being, not as a member of a class or sex or race or gender. The more I understand about class and sex and race and gender, the more generalities I understand, and the more I can consciously not judge someone based on those things, but based strictly on their individual traits. On whether they’re a good person or a bad person.
