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Men Can Respect Lesbians, Too

This regards Joey Cody's article on her experiences at the Atlanta Lilith Fair ["Grrls Just Want to Have Fun," Vol. 9, No. 32]. I found Cody's article to be amusing and insightful, but at the same time several of her statements seemed to me unfair to males and their capacity to appreciate and respect both lesbians and McLachlan. I had the pleasure of attending the Nashville tour stop of Sarah McLachlan and her gang of gal singers and I enjoyed it immensely. I did not go, as Cody would have us believe, either to ogle McLachlan nor to satisfy a voyeuristic urge for lesbian exhibitionists. I went to hear great music and enjoy several artists whom I admire. This would seem to refute several of Cody's contentions.

First Cody implies that all men understand lesbians as sex objects or fantasies of some kind: "Oh sure, there'd be chicks making out and that's always cool, but would the few brave men daring to desecrate the proceedings be horsewhipped?" On the contrary, there were many males in attendance at the Nashville show and, as far as I could see, they were accepted warmly by the female audience members, both straight and gay. Furthermore, there were straight couples and even gay male couples. (I would assume these fans don't fit into Cody's category of horny lesbian-watchers.) In other words, it was not a strictly lesbian crowd as it apparently was in Atlanta. Admittedly, the Lilith Fair has been a big draw for the homosexual community and this only makes sense considering that so many of the artists involved are proponents of gays or gay themselves. But that does not mean that the entire project should be characterized as being exclusively for lesbians. If I understand it correctly, McLachlan has considered allowing male performers at the festival, but nixed the idea (thankfully, in my opinion) because it might have tainted the original project. She conceived Lilith Fair as a celebration of women in music, and for that I am grateful.

As far as Cody's comments on McLachlan herself are concerned, I strongly resent and dispute her assertion that men cannot appreciate McLachlan artistically. Regarding her male friend's asinine description of McLachlan as "hot," Cody writes, "You just don't, can't know, unless you've ever blubbered hopelessly into your pillow, clutching your hands over your world-weary chest and broken heart, playing Fumbling Towards Ecstasy over and over and over..."

In fact, I have felt many of those things while listening to McLachlan's music. I have both Fumbling Towards Ecstasy and a y-chromosome. So much for the idea that men are capable of only a prurient interest in Lilith Fair. So much, also, for the lofty ideals which are supposed to be propounded by authentic egalitarians (read feminists) who should surely be on their guard against all forms of chauvinism, including that against males. That would include refraining from making unfair assumptions about the capacity of males to understand or appreciate women on any level deeper than the surface.

Greg Jinkerson
Nashville

How Unbiased is the Fort Sanders Forum?

Thank you Mayor Ashe—your appointed and unbiased "Fort Sanders Forum" has compromised the historic integrity of the Fort Sanders neighborhood and the City of Knoxville as a whole! The Texas development corporation JPI has very efficiently bulldozed any historic significance of the Fort Sanders neighborhood between 11th and 12th Streets along Highland Ave. We just can't wait to see the "mid-rise student apartments." (YEAH, RIGHT!)

The Fort Sanders Forum is our mayor's "response to differing opinions about development in the historic neighborhood." Therefore, the soundness of conclusions which concern the historic neighborhood are based on the opinions of "residents, businesses and other Fort Sanders neighborhood stakeholders" (12/18/98).

Hypothetically, the Fort Sanders Forum's decisions concerning this historic neighborhood of Knoxville are accordingly unbiased. Thus, the Forum's conclusions and the mayor's decisions will lack an ulterior motive and will represent the optimum concerns of all Knoxville's residents.

In an earlier news release (08/25/98) by the mayor's office that identifies the actual members of the Fort Sanders Forum, there are only two members of the Forum identified as being actual "Fort Sanders residents"! All other members on the Fort Sanders Forum are identified as being representatives for a particular group. (i.e. University of Tennessee President, Fort Sanders Property Rights Group President, Fort Sanders Hospital, Cumberland Ave. Merchants Association, etc.)

(Hummmm, isn't that stacking the deck against the individual residents?)

The mayor's motives in his selection of the specific members of the Fort Sanders Forum need to be evaluated. It doesn't take a rocket scientist or nuclear engineer to figure out that the selection of the specific members of the Fort Sanders Forum were not beneficial to the historic significance of the Fort Sanders neighborhood, nor to the majority of individual people in Knoxville!

Stephen M. Olah
Knoxville

Special Bonus Letter!

Gosh darn it, we do love getting mail from our readers but we just can't print it all. Sometimes the missives are unsigned, run too long, don't relate to any of the issues we usually cover, or verge on the loopy. Rather than let these bits of personal expression go unread, we will now start posting them here. Enjoy!

Parking By Loest

Re: "Park It", by Jack Neely, Vol. 9, No. 12. Congratulations on a well-written and balanced analysis of Knoxville's "parking problem". I have an observation on one reason, small but perhaps significant, why more people don't like coming downtown. All the parking meters along Union, and across from Krutch Park on Market St., are for 1 hour only. How many people are going to come downtown on professional business, or for lunch, when they have to go back and feed a parking mter two or three blocks away before they can finish?

In the Old City, out of all the parking meters within a block of Jackson and Central, I counted 21 two-hour meters, six one-hour meters, and unbelievably, two 24-minute meters, all in a retail area. Now who can shop or dine in less tha 24 minutes? Even 60 minutes is too short a time. What if you are there for an all day celebration? Maybe I'm missing something, but this strikes me as nothing but sheer stupidity by whomever installs meters. Coming in from the suburbs and parking, to find that your meter only allows you 24 minutes, is enough to make a saint curse. I expect some of them go back to the suburbs and tell all their friends that every meter downtown is 24 minutes. Perception is important, and repeated negative impressions have an effect out of all proportion to their actual frequency.

Granted, parking meters are only a fraction of the available parking, but it is symptomatic of a city government that just doesn't get it. Two-hour meters are better than 1- hour or 24-minute ones if you are only going to be in town less than a couple of hours to visit an attorney or accountant, eat or shop, but that's all. Why, in heaven's name, don't they just make them all 7 hours (or however many hours will fit on the meter dial), like Savannah? It passes belief that our city government can be this ignorant.

There was also one glaring omission—the homeless. This isn't strictly a parking issue, but it does affect downtown retail business adversely. The low level of retail foot traffic downtown is not explained solely by a lack of parking. I suspect this factor was left out because it isn't strictly a parking-related issue, and it would complicate the article, but it needs to be discussed, nevertheless.

More than almost any other city I've ever visited except San Francisco, the homeless and aggressive panhandling are a major feature of downtown Knoxville. Even San Francisco is no worse, and it is subject to some unusual factors (lack of inexpensive local space for housing the homeless is one) that don't apply here. I can walk all over Manhattan and never get panhandled.

I work in the 600 block of Gay Street in Centre Square II. Panhandlers often sit on the landscape wall beside the building and accost every person who walks by. You can't avoid them. Krutch Park is less attractive to many because of the homeless either panhandling or sleeping on benches. It is difficult to walk two blocks in Knoxville without getting panhandled at least once or twice, depending on the time of day. Homeless people occasionally shout gibberish at me, prevent buildings from toppling over onto pedestrians, direct traffic, point at people walking by, stare at the sky, and other nutso stuff. Now, I've worked downtown for some years and am used to it, but that isn't the point.

Suburbanites are not used to it. Many retired people, especially older women, are afraid of the homeless. One panhandling or nutso experience, and they simply won't come back. They don't have several years experience with them to let them know the homeless are pretty much harmless, and no more than a small bother. They don't know that many of the homeless aren't panhandlers. Many other visitors simply hate having to say no to a panhandler every block or so. Religious panhandlers in the old city have sometimes come in large numbers and openly tried to convert people having a cup of coffee outside coffee shops, driving away paying customers. I am occasionally bothered by panhandlers when I eat outside at Tomato Head. Many people would just rather not have to deal with it.

Some will feel I'm insensitive to the plight of the homeless. Whether they are right or not doesn't matter. Explain it to those who wonjt come downtown because of them. Few other cities have this problem, so obviously they have done something about it. Why don't Knoxville government officials ask these cities what they did? Space in Knoxville outside the downtown business and entertainment area is cheap. I see no reason why shelters cannot be located well away from retail and entertainment business areas, and the homeless transported there. Sure, some people will object no matter where we place them. There have to be better places, though, than downtown.

UT School of Architecture dean Marleen Davis has shown that the commercial footprint of West Town Mall and downtown Knoxville are virtually the same. I suspect the homeless are responsible for a measurable decrease in entertainment and other business downtown, relative to what it might otherwise be. If you disagree, or think the homeless have a right to panhandle, ask yourself: How do you think it would affect business at West Town Mall if a few score homeless and panhandlers circulated daily inside the mall and outside in the parking lots, unrestricted? What do you think would be the merchants' reaction if someone put a homeless shelter in the mall?

Robert Loest
Knoxville