Went to the Move Against AIDS benefit last night, and danced with my Witches of Eastwick team. I'm happy to announce that we made, I think, $5000 among the 12 of us. Theme for the evening: the inevitable Madonna remix. Both Danny and Junior dropped theirs, and everyone else played their Beyonce or Britney 3rd wave. The crowd was mixed, by interest and generation, between miserable raver types in costume with the freak flags, gay men in groups dressed smartly, assorted dance groups in matching shirts, and everyone else - a mix of ages, races, most everyone dancing, no one too ridiculously flashy club. The Javits Center is uniquely un-ideal as a dance venue - hard floors, enormous ceilings and big empty space in which the bass decay was so long that it was one big, ugly rumble. my ears felt it, for sure. Still, people were delightfully non-complaining, even with long coat lines and a weird VIP room (for those raising over $250, free beer!).

I was caught in this line of thinking that's been bothering me lately. I get really mad when people commit the fallacy of logic that feminism = woman, that men can't be feminists (and I know many who self-identify as such, so I'm not calling this a universal) and that in orde to be engaged with the fight for equality from some standpoint, you have to be in that standpoint. My brand of feminism means equality, which means for race, gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, and anything else. It's not easy, and of course I get caught up in anti -ism thinking that makes me question myself and where my bias/fear/insecurites come from, but I try to do that conciously. Well, I guess my thing is that because I'm a woman, it most directly catches me when someone says or does something that is ugly towards women in general or a woman in particular (when it seems motivated not be individual traits, but by the blanket bias against gender). I would imagine that it's likewise for people living with the reprocussions of other traditionally disempowered groups.

My brain freeze, as thinking last night is, 'hey, I'm not gay and I don't even know anyone who has had or does have HIV/AIDS, why does this matter to me?' because so much of the rhetoric and stage performance was about that, but it comes back to that vague universal desire for people to be safe, able to get what they need, and able to experience happiness. My fear is, do I spend too much time thinking about gender because of self-interest, when there are other things out there more pressing?

That said, I read that A Love Supreme is 40 years old this week.

IN OTHER NEWS: if you're into the pressures of classical music stardom, check out this unusual Times piece, The Julliard Effect, which is exactly the type of reporting about music and culture that I'd like to do.