All Right Kid Thinks The Kids Are All Right Is All Right

Yes, we’re all waiting for the Prop 8 decision to come out later today. In the meantime, let’s go back to the ongoing discussion about The Kids Are All Right. Over at Moms and Bombs, Kellen Kaiser asserts, “I’m ‘all right’, I don’t know about the rest of them,” and offers her opinion as the daughter of lesbian moms. We cannot expect her to represent the opinion of all children of lesbians—but I think she raises some good points about the use of what some feel is an overused cliché about lesbians sleeping with men:

After watching this movie it becomes clear that Mark Ruffalo’s character has lost the battle. . . . Seducing lesbians isn’t a great idea, this movie says, it won’t end well for you. This is because Julianne Moore’s character doesn’t actually turn straight, as she stresses to her long term partner, Ms Bening, once the affair is exposed. She reiterates this fact, that she is gay, to the donor when he proposes actually making a go at being together romantically. Yes, she slept with a man but this doesn’t change who she is. . . .

As to why she sleeps with a dude in the first place and of all dudes, that guy? Well, her sleeping with a a woman wouldn’t have worked as a plot device. If she had an affair with another woman it would have been a much more significant threat to her relationship, she might have actually left her partner for another woman. Whole different movie, way more depressing (see real life). The dissatisfaction Ms. Moore’s character is experiencing in her relationship is what leads her to cheat. It being with a man makes the whole thing less heartbreaking really.

Kellen also comments on the arrogance that some straight men, including her own father, exhibit by believing they can turn lesbians—especially femme ones—straight. To her, that is the core of what the movie is about: “A weakened lesbian relationship that when exposed to patriarchally endorsed seduction temporarily falters but struggles along, and the kids are supposed to be okay throughout.”

She also observes—and it’s a great point I haven’t seen made elsewhere about the film:

It’s a movie that made me appreciate the butch women in my life. The ones who have had to deal with men who thought they could bed their women, who played the role of “daddy” by being my protector and champion, responsible stable figures in my life, who have shown my younger brother how to be strong and soft at the same time. I want to see more of these kind of women on film. Ms. Bening does a great job of beginning.

Hear, hear. No matter how one personally identifies—butch, femme, or anywhere in between—it’s good to see representations of all the possibilities. The media has very often shied away from showing butch women, though they seem to have fewer qualms about showing effeminate men. But that’s a whole separate post for another time. . . as is a post about how butch moms (and even us middle-of-the-roaders) challenge preconceptions about what children will learn from a parent of any given gender.

Stay tuned . . . and hang on to your hats today, folks. It’s going to be a fun one.