Blogging While Feminist

More fun with sales representatives.

2011-02-19T13:26:00.003-06:00

This would have annoyed me far less if:

1) I had not spent two hours on the phone over the last two days with Travelocity, trying to get tickets reissued; and

2) I had not spent a lot of time last night and this morning (unsuccessfully) trying to get Verizon's live chat to start.

Mr. PF thinks I am being mean. I think I am finding humor in an otherwise extremely frustrating situation - no meanness intended (I worked as a telemarketer - I am never mean to people who do phone/internet sales).

***

Please wait for a Chat Representative to respond.

Thank you for contacting Verizon Wireless. My name is 'K', how may I assist you?

PF: I would like to find out about canceling my mobile broadband service. I set this up for my parents, and they have decided to purchase service through their phone company. Am I correct that the current billing cycle runs through March 12?

K: I will be happy to give you info on canceling a line.

K: To cancel here is your contacts to cancel and the fee to cancel before the contacts. $145.00/ (06/15/2012)

PF: (?) I'm not sure what you mean by "your contacts to cancel"?

K: I am sorry I mean contract*

PF: ... (what the heck?) (lightbulb clicks on)

PF: Oh, ok - so, the contract ends 6/15/12 and the penalty to cancel before then is $145.

K: That is correct.

PF: So I can arrange to cancel as of March 12?

PF: Or whatever date is the last day in this billing cycle? (second time asking that question - still no answer...)

K: You can cancel the line for no fee at the contract date.

K: 6/15/12

PF: (WTF?)

PF: (assumes patient "voice") I understand. What I'd like to do, though, is pay the fee and cancel the line at the close of the current billing cycle, so that I do not have to pay the monthly fee after this month. (holy crap.)

K: I am sorry to here that you want to cancel a line. If you want to cancel a line you will need to call into Customer Care at 800-922-0204 option 0. You can also call from your handset by dialing *611 option 0.

K: Is this ok?

PF: (fucking NO, it is not ok. Why couldn't you have just said that at the beginning of this little exchange?!)

PF: OK, thank you for your help.

K: Do you have anything else to assist with?

PF: No, thanks. (I'm not getting much assistance, anyway.)

K: I am glad I was able to give you info on the contract date, you were amazing.

PF: (you have no idea.)

K: Thank you for chatting with us today. I look forward to chatting with you again.

PF: (headdesk)

More on Egyptian Women's Organizing.

2011-02-18T12:13:00.005-06:00

Following up on my post from yesterday, I want to share this article that my colleague sent me. It challenges both Chesler's and my own assumptions about Egyptian women's organizing. I underestimated Egyptian women's interest in mobilizing for full representation in government and for dismantling patriarchy. Chesler assumed that women wearing hijab was in itself a symptom of their oppression, and that women were not fundamentally involved in the Egyptian revolution, and that they were not mobilizing in the ways noted above.

Here is the article, which you can also link to above:

Women revolutionaries hope for greater say in post-Mubarak Egypt
Jenna Krajeski

In the days following the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, Egyptians have begun to outline the characteristics of their ideal country. The “New Egypt” will be clean, it will lack discrimination, it will be corruption-free. The initiative is the beginning of a push for specific demands that were secondary to the removal of Mubarak during the 18 days of protests, and they signify the indomitable idealism and forward-thinking mentality of triumphant anti-government protesters.

Among these demands are women’s rights--a list including lack of sexual harassment, equal pay in the workplace, and representation in the government that were not articulated during the protests in spite of significant female participation. But will the unity--expressed in favor of specific women’s rights--exhibited during the protests themselves hurt women in their push for equality in a post-Mubarak Egypt?

The protests in Tahrir were an “incredible time” for women, according to Amal Abdel Hady of the New Woman Foundation, a nonprofit women’s rights group. The women in the square “represented all generations and social classes.” Still, Abdel Hady noticed that the media did not pay as much attention to them as they did to the men, leading to the perception that young men led the Egyptian revolution, with the female presence remarkable but less important. And “never mind the Egyptian media,” she said, which barely represented the reality on the ground, never mind the strong female role.

Abdel Hady is not the only one who noticed such discrepancies. Her colleague at the New Woman Foundation, Nawla Darwish, worries that because women were not organized during the protests, with specific rights in mind, women will not be served well in post-Mubarak Egypt. Historically, she told Al-Masry Al-Youm, women are commended for their participation in revolutions and then told to go home. Such a thing occurred in Egypt in the 1919 revolution, when women, who came out strongly against colonial rule, were largely ignored by the ruling Wafd Party. Is misogyny a stronger foe than Mubarak?

“We are living in a patriarchal society,” she said. And the values therein are strong enough to withstand even the groundbreaking protests of the 25 January revolution. The tokenism apparent in the representation of women in the Mubarak regime must be counteracted by a strong female presence even now that protests have subsided. The New Woman Foundation is working to collect testimonials from the women who participated in the protests, both as evidence and as a way to get women--many of whom had never been politically active before--to continue their involvement.

Nehad Abou El Komsan, chairwoman of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights, likewise lamented the representation, or lack thereof, of women’s involvement in the protests in news media, both local and international. “The culture of society makes people blind,” she told Al-Masry Al-Youm. Now that the protests are over and many different people are vying for political influence, “we must document the participation of women, not just perception or opinion,” Abou El Komsan added. “We must lobby for participation of women in all committees and procedures,” leading up to and during the elections and the promised revision of Egypt's national charter. No group now--not even those led by young people--are proactively making room for a female voice.

Whether or not women will have a larger role politically and socially in a post-Mubarak Egypt--and whether such a country will be more open to their rights--remains to be seen. Iman Bibars, the 60-year-old chairperson of the Association for the Development and Enhancement of Women, ran for parliament as an independent candidate in 2005. Her experience went beyond mere disillusionment. NDP officials and security threw out 3000 of the 5,920 ballots in her favor, she says, and prevented countless numbers of her supporters from voting at all.

This “bleak, oppressive” and unabashed display of their own corruption may have led to the downfall of the NDP, Bibars says. But the rights activist and former politician (who was, for a brief time, an NDP party member), who ran on a platform for the support of marginalized and impoverished Egyptians, as well as women’s rights, does not plan to run again. Instead, she told Al-Masry Al-Youm, the young people who led the protests should also lead the new government. Bibars admits that, during the revolution, she “was a follower, not a leader.” The young people, she says, “insisted, and they won--we should be there to support them.”

But the young people have so far made little effort to include women in their committees following the revolution. Abou El Komsan noted that out of 27 young people interviewed by talk show host Mona al-Shazly following Mubarak’s resignation, only one was a woman. This ratio is closer to the pathetic quota established by the Mubarak regime than it is to the inspiring turnout seen during the protests--and does not bode well for a strong female voice in the new government.

Women need to continue to speak out--for their own rights, in addition to the solidarity of the Egyptian people. Egyptian feminists are hopeful, but, as Abdel Hady said: “We are happy. But no sane person would be not worried.”

Stay tuned: Coming up next, a blog post on the difference between resistance feminism and submissive feminism and why the failure on the part of the first to recognize the second can screw up any hope of global alliance among feminists. This post will owe everything to Dr. Smadar Lavie.

Western Feminism Sucks (or, Phyllis Chesler's misreading of Egypt)

2011-02-17T15:38:00.020-06:00

I received an email from The Phyllis Chesler Organization, perhaps because they got my name from another listserv I'm on or a professional organization that I belong to. I admit to being shocked, though perhaps not surprised, by the email, which linked to this blog post: "Is the Arab Middle East Really Ready for a True Revolution?"

I think we can all see where this is going just from the title, hmm? But let's talk about it, anyway.

Chesler writes:
Is the Arab Middle East really ready for a true revolution? A genuine uprising in the Muslim world which does not focus on the issue of women’s rights is not much of an uprising and does not bode well for a true democracy, one defined by the rule of law, a constitutional system of checks and balances, a separation of mosque and state, freedom of religion, a free press, universal education, individual human rights and freedom.

I thought this was particularly interesting given the ENORMOUS involvement of women in the recent Egyptian revolution. This is the first problem with Western feminism: it consistently tries to define for everyone, everywhere, what "women's rights" are. Silly me - I thought that not having a dictator for a leader would be one of those rights of women - along with participating in a "true democracy" by forcing the bum out. And if we look a little deeper, we remember that Egypt is a country whose highly-educated, professional, working women led the struggle for an Islamic, patriarchal society, one in which they are better protected from gropings on the street and public transportation, and one in which they have access to health care, day care, etc., unlike the society they lived in previously that evidenced a separation of mosque and state. (I'll stop here because my knowledge of Egypt is minimal. This paragraph comes from my notes from a recent lecture on Islamist Feminism in Egypt by a well-regarded scholar on this very issue (whose information I will trust over Chesler's).)

Further, I found myself bristling at Chesler's implication that the Middle Eastern revolutions that have been happening recently are somehow fake and not revolutions at all. While I do understand her point in suggesting that women's liberation would be another, necessary, kind of revolution, it is unfortunate that she uses such dismissive language to talk about something that has been so important to men and women all over the world.

Moving on:

Miraculously, amazingly, a Saudi woman or a number of Saudi women have just launched a new and fabulous Facebook page. They call it Saudi Women Revolution. It features a white smurf-like figure joyfully throwing off her chains and has links to the Saudi women’s drive-in and to campaigns against child brides.

They are talking about arranging meetings in Jeddah and Riyadh.

Given what they know can happen to them: divorce, loss of custody, being honor murdered by their families, jail, torture (flogging), and murder (beheading, stoning), I must congratulate them for their awe-inspiring bravery. Alas, we do not have such brave women here.

I think it is great, as well, that Saudi women are launching a Facebook Revolution (though by no stretch of the imagination is the figure on the page a "smurf-like figure"). However, the above excerpt, taken as a whole, seems somewhat patronizing to me. I'm not sure why, exactly, but it has something to do with the last sentence - the notion that Saudi women are terrifically different from women in the West, that they are braver, better, stronger. (Where have we heard that before? Isn't what people say about those whose lives they could never imagine living? It's what White women have said to Black women, what Western feminists say to feminists of the Global South (not sure that makes geographical sense - I might not be using that correctly), what able-bodied people say to people with disabilities. It's not a good thing to say.)

It's also not true that there are no women "here" who are as brave, but perhaps that's an argument to get into at another time. I will simply say that such a statement smacks of romanticization.

Chesler goes on to detail heroic acts by Saudi women in the face of repression, punishment, and murder. She's right to note these acts. However, I wish that she would refrain from using language such as Saudi (and Iranian) feminists stir my imagination. They live as if they know that heroism is their only alternative. The first sentence presents Saudi and Iranian feminists (do they all call themselves "feminists", incidently? It is not appropriate to apply this label to other people who do not claim it themselves) as if they are important because of the impact they have on Chesler. And the second sentence is more of what I've said above - taking what is a life that has to be lived a particular way and making it into an extraordinary life because it seems so impossible to the viewer. The viewer's own beliefs and what they understand to be "reality" and "normalcy" figure heavily in this telling, so that the focus is less on the women and what they are doing and more on what Chesler thinks about them.

And at bottom, what bothers me about this piece is really the way that this story is about Chesler telling it. There are other ways to write about these women. Nowhere in the article does Chesler link to any organizations (other than the Facebook page)...or reference Middle Eastern writers...or place this movement into a larger context of women's reform movements in Middle Eastern countries. Chesler does a good job of sketching for us the dangers of challenging authority, and she gives us a sense of some of the challenges that have come before. Had she done more of this, had she talked more about the ways in which women covertly or overtly challenge authority, this piece would not feel that it is more about Chesler's feelings about these revolutionary women than it is about their accomplishments.

There is some of the same on the Saudi Women Revolution Facebook page. One presumably Western woman writes, "The world will know that all women will be free. America is next. We are behind you, my sisters." America is NEXT? Really? Does anyone else wonder what Saudi women might think about this comment posted on their Facebook page, apparently equating the struggles that American and Saudi women face? Another (Canadian) woman writes: "...I need to be able to read this! Please translate." Perhaps I am making assumptions, but why does she "need" to read what Saudi women are writing to each other? And why do they need to take time out of their revolution to translate?

I am skeptical of Western feminist discussions of Saudi and other Middle Eastern women's revolutions. It wasn't that long ago, remember, that Western feminists were leading the charge to bomb the shit out of Afghanistan, while Afghan women begged us not to. Western feminists - not all of them, but enough - continue to see Islam as always an oppressive force in women's lives rather than understanding the role of culture rather than religion in dictating women's repression or freedom. Now, I don't doubt Chesler's sincerity - or, for that matter, the sincerity of the other women posting on Facebook. However, being true allies means treating each other with respect and allowing each other to define our own issues. It means continuing to respect each other when we disagree. It means not singling out only those women who appear to fit the definition of Western feminism as the true revolutionaries.

Epilogue:
I thought that perhaps I was being too hard on Chesler. But then, I went to her site and read this. So, Chesler believes that women have not been as involved in the revolution in Egypt as they might have been - which is simply untrue, though the West did not run these stories and picture. She believes that their wearing of hijab is, in itself, oppressive and that it is the decision of the men in their families, though this is historically not the case in Egypt. And she reads photos of women in hijab in very powerful poses as, instead, women being oppressed and weak and in danger. This is more than Western feminist ignorance - it is Western feminist Islamophobic ignorance, and an almost willful misreading.

Further Epilogue:
I foolishly did not realize that Chesler was part of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Horowitz's gang of thugs does not represent mainstream (or radical) feminism - in fact, it tends to see feminism of any kind as part of a left-wing indoctrination conspiracy aimed at brainwashing college students. For the last few years, though, it has seemed to focus its efforts on fanning the flames of Islamophobia, as is quite evident from the other items on the site (and from the comments on those "articles"). Even so, I would not be surprised to find other feminists making the same claims that Chesler makes. Stay tuned.

I don't know if I've been living in the midwest for too long...

2011-02-16T21:26:00.002-06:00

...or if this publication has become more confrontational than it was ten years ago. I definitely felt more defensive when I started reading it today than I used to when I read it a decade or so ago, but of course that means reading it is a good opportunity for me to learn something.

Anyway, forgive my navel-gazing above and please check out the link to Race Traitor. I do think that there are some problems with this kind of approach, depending on what it is you want to accomplish, but then again, I always find their writing instructive and inspiring, and it reminds me both of the urgency of anti-racist work and also that doing the work necessitates struggle. It isn't supposed to be easy. If it were easy, it'd be done.

Vagina Monologues and Transwomen

2011-02-13T22:28:00.002-06:00

I try not to write here without first checking my facts, but this is going to be a kind of second-hand thing because I don't have access to the script I want to write about.

For the second year in a row, my students did a production of the Vagina Monologues, and they did an AWESOME job - it was completely student-run, student-directed, student-produced. This year, the director and I talked about the possibility of including the piece from a transwoman's perspective, "They Beat the Boy out of My Girl." I have not seen this piece, so I can't comment on it, but we were both glad that the Monologues have become more inclusive over the years of different perspectives around vaginas and that at least one trans voice has been added to the production.

However, according to the director (I did not have access to the V-Day scripts this year), this piece is only to be performed by a transwoman. I am guessing that this is to ensure that the piece does not turn into a mockery or a disrespectful portrayal, and that makes sense. At the same time, it is problematic for a college production, especially a small college at which there may be only one out trans student - or, perhaps, none. On such a campus, the question becomes whether to include a transwoman's voice or to leave her voice out. On such a campus, asking an out transwoman to perform this piece may cause her to be out in ways that she had not intended to be, and may suggest to the audience that the written script is, indeed, her own story. Asking a transwoman who is not out to perform, of course, puts her at risk of outing herself.

Other stories in the Monologues are performed across race, age, and other identities. The most problematic one for me is the birth monologue, simply because I often have the feeling that the performers have not witnessed a birth or given birth and that they are missing the significance of portions of the piece - and this sense of not being true to the meaning of the monologue is, in part, what I suspect Ensler wants to avoid when she says that only transwomen may perform the transwoman monologue. But I've seen pieces clearly written in a "Black voice" performed well and respectfully by White women; pieces written for lesbians performed well and respectfully by straight women; pieces written for survivors of sexual slavery performed well and respectfully by women who have never had these experiences.

I have no doubt that these parameters have been drawn to protect transwomen, and after reading that activist Andrea James is one of the people whose interviews inspired Eve Ensler to write this piece, I would even assume that transwomen were consulted about this policy. However, it does not work for all campuses, and as Ensler does not allow productions that add any new works, it seems likely that many campuses will decide to write and produce their own Monologues in an effort to include more and varied voices.

The Devolution of BRAVO.

2011-02-09T12:38:00.001-06:00

First, I have to ask: do you remember when Bravo portrayed itself as an arts network? That showed fine arts performances? That's where James Lipton's show came in, and they used to have art films, even, I think. And then slowly, very slowly, some reality shows would creep in, but they were always very clearly tongue-in-cheek, an opportunity for the educated elites to make fun of and be horrified by the stage mothers whose daughters compete in beauty pageants and that sort of thing. It was very clear that these occasional shows were MAKING FUN OF the people who consented to be on them, and because it was hard back then, in the earlier part of the first decade of this century, to imagine that anyone would really want to be on reality t.v. (other than very young people who hadn't figured out yet that what they put on the internet was permanent), it seemed ok to laugh at and be horrified by them.

And then, at some point, Bravo reinvented itself. It was no longer interested in the arts, although it let James Lipton keep his show because Lipton's leers and naked desire to be as sexy as his young male guests was something the audience could laugh at and be horrified by. Also, watching the actors talk about real things (as opposed to posing and trying to be cool on late night talk shows) was kind of fun, especially in the early years when they had serious, accomplished actors on the show rather than folks like Roseanne Barr, the cast of The Simpsons, Bon Jovi, and other performers who somehow seemed to bring down the level of the show.

Even though the network kept moving more and more in the direction of reality t.v. and offered less and less quality programming, the first episode of The Real Housewives franchise - in fact, that whole first season - continued to poke fun at the reality stars. It was clear that TRHs were women we should not take seriously, that their ostentatious wealth and plastic looks were presented as a farce. In the first reunion shows, Andy Cohen was clearly making fun of these women, and I even felt a little sorry for them because they thought that they were adored and admired, while we were really laughing. It didn't make me feel good to watch real people and behave this way. I felt like we were setting them up, but the show was addictive, and it was hard to look away.

However, now we are in quite a different situation. TRH franchise has changed its perspective, building an audience that loves - or hates - the characters, but that always takes them seriously. Andy Cohen has come out from behind the camera and is now part of the entertainment. No longer do we laugh so openly because the show no longer presents the women as a joke. Funny, yes, at times - but their ridiculous lifestyles are often taken for granted. We might think it's insane that Taylor spent over $50K on her little girl's birthday party, but it's not something we fixate on. We are more concerned about whether or not her husband deserves her. If we like a character, we are less likely to mind their obscene wealth or to think about how many people could be fed with the money they spent on handbags. We used to make these comparisons. When Teresa, who thinks it is icky to live in a house that someone else lived in previously, "writes" a cookbook, no one thinks, "hey, this chick knocks over tables and picks fights - she's unbalanced and has a mean streak and should not be a role model." Instead, her book becomes a best seller (despite the fact that she thinks "whole wheat" means "wholly made of wheat" (I am not kidding - look at her discussion of pasta in the beginning of the book). There are any number of women viewers who would be happy to curse me out for daring to criticize Teresa. Meanwhile, Andy has become a sort of charming (or annoying, depending on your perspective) referee who pops up at the end of the season (and in his own show on which he invites celebrities and RH cast members to talk about which RH they love or hate. However, he now takes the women seriously. I suppose this is preferable to tricking them into appearing in order to be made into a national laughingstock, but it reflects the reality that the viewing public also seems to take them seriously, to relate to them, to think of them as celebrities they can reach out and talk to (and they do - and unlike real celebrities, these women are much more accessible to their fans).

Meanwhile, Luann is doing a cameo on some crime drama; NeNe is trying to make a go of (poorly) interviewing celebrities; everyone and their dog is releasing singles. As a recent blog by a Bravo crew member noted, TRH franchise is about fantasy; Bravo is no longer showing us how distasteful conspicuous consumption is, but they are now packaging it as acceptable because, really, viewers, wouldn't you like to hang out with these lovely, interesting, rich ladies? And what is talent, anyway, when it comes to acting or singing? Isn't it really just about celebrity and marketing?

It is a long, long way from an arts network. A long, long way.

The DFL and Me

2011-02-08T22:01:00.001-06:00

This may be one of those situations that, if it were happening outside the U.S., would make me an Ugly American. I'm not sure. But let me preface this by saying that I've figure out how to vote in a few states - New York, Connecticut, and South Dakota - before I got to Minnesota. Each state has its own way of doing things - some states have you register to vote when you get your driver's license, and some states have helpful "how to vote" informative websites. I realize that election procedures are not consistent across state lines.

But I have to say that voting in Minnesota is unnecessarily confusing. Here, we have caucuses, and I've lived here for over three years, and I still don't know what the hell I am supposed to do at a caucus. I just want to go, vote, and come home. However, I admit that I would like to know what the caucus thing is all about. Once or twice, I tried to look it up on the state website, but I wasn't able to find enough information to fully explain it. So, when the DFL (and that's another thing - what's wrong with "Democrat"? Why do they have to be some special kind of Democrat unique to Minnesota?) called me last week to encourage me to attend the caucus, I thought, "wow, this is a great opportunity," and told the guy that I'd really like to understand what the heck a caucus was and how it worked and what I was supposed to do, and I asked if there was anyplace online where I could find that information. He acknowledged that, no, there really wasn't that kind of information online. He suggested that I could find out how it worked by going to a caucus. I pointed out that if they really wanted to encourage people to show up, they might consider making the process more transparent. He did not sound interested.

Now, all this time, I was really going nuts trying to understand why the DFL wasn't thinking about how to open up the process for new voters, particularly those of us from out of state. I was thinking, of course, about low voter turnout, assuming that this national problem was also an issue for the State of Minnesota. But I was wrong - somehow, with it's mystifying voting process, Minnesota still has unusually high voter turnout - nearly 80% in the 2008 national election, according to Wikipedia. So perhaps the DFL just doesn't need my vote?

Needless to say, I did not attend the caucus.

And reading this back over, I realize what I sound like: an angry New Yorker.

Mississippi Masala and telling the difference between Indian characters.

2011-02-07T20:22:00.005-06:00

Some of you might remember this film by Mira Nair from the early '90s. I keep coming back to it because, despite the lack of chemistry between Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury, it is a beautiful film. I have taught it before, and I am teaching it again after several years, and so I have been doing a little research on the history of Asian Indians in Uganda and in the American South. In the process, I found a couple of interviews with Mira Nair, and that made me interested in seeing what some of the actors thought of the film - especially given the lack of chemistry I mentioned above.

But I ended up finding something extraordinary, something altogether else. I found a couple of reviews by people who seem to have no clue how to differentiate between the characters of the film - and this is interesting given that there are no main white characters. Hmm.

What is particularly disappointing about this inability to tell one Indian character from another is that Roger Ebert is one of the reviewers. He writes: "The story continues in Greenwood, Miss., where the lawyer and his wife (Roshan Seth and Sharmila Tagore) own a shabby roadside motel." Um, no. It is made quite clear at several points in the film that the hotel is owned by their extended family who are doing them a favor by allowing them to live there. The lawyer and his wife, in fact, own a liquor store. That is also repeated several times. Ebert writes: "Within her own community, she [Mina] is considered too dark-skinned to make a desirable wife (her mother explains that if you want to catch a husband, you can be dark and rich, or light and poor, but not dark and poor)." In fact, it is not Mina's mother who says this, but the filmmaker herself, Mira Nair, in a cameo. Nair has three or four lines in the film; Sharmila Tagore, who plays Mina's mother, appears quite frequently and looks nothing like Nair. In fact, the two characters are at odds, with Nair's character saying nasty things about Tagore's character and Mina.

Surprisingly, The New York Times, too, seemed to have trouble telling the characters apart. Vincent Canby writes: "Near the beginning of Mira Nair's sweetly pungent new comedy, "Mississippi Masala," Mina (Sarita Choudhury) is driving a large, borrowed American automobile down a highway near Greenwood, Miss., arguing with her mother, who sits imperially in the back. Mina drives with the hapless self-assurance of someone who doesn't often get behind a wheel." In fact, it is not Mina's mother in the backseat but an aunt or other relative who does not speak English. Mina's mother speaks English for the entirety of the film, and also looks nothing like the actress in this scene.

Now, I admit that I have seen this film a minimum of 10-12 times, but even so - it makes me wonder why these reviewers can't tell the difference between these actors. I don't think it's simply that they weren't paying attention. I think it comes from not having had to make these kinds of distinctions.

Where I have been

2011-01-31T01:37:00.001-06:00

I've been here in the middle of a Minnesota winter, and people, I think I've been a little bit depressed. I'm not sure, but I have lost some of my energy and zest, and I think it has a bit to do with my medication. In any case, now that January is over and I am promised that the weather at least won't be any colder than it was last month, and also now that the school semester is in full swing, I am feeling much better.

Snow!

2010-12-12T23:21:00.002-06:00

We are snowed in; this is one of very few times in my life when I actually have not been able to leave the house because of the snow. In Buffalo, there were a couple of heavy snowstorms (and a couple of blizzards, including one that dropped 3 feet of snow on us in a day). In South Dakota, I got my car stuck in the ice in the back alley for a few hours - ok, not *snow*, but winter precipitation. But here, even though Mr. P eventually shoveled out the driveway (with much assistance from our neighbor, who has a snow blower), the street has not yet been plowed, and there is a large pile at the end of the block from the plows that came through that intersecting street. So, we are staying put until they clear our street.

It has also been brutally cold, and so I did not leave the house today. Tomorrow is likely to be slightly warmer (read: above zero), so Bean and I may play in our snow fort. Yes, tomorrow is a snow day, and it's the first one that matters to Bean and that he will remember. Hopefully, we will also put the tree up and make a real occasion out of it.

Wesleyan, Zonker Harris, and Uncle Duke

2010-12-05T11:46:00.002-06:00

When I was in college, my dorm (WestCo) had two huge festivals every year - Duke Day in October, and Zonker Harris Day in April. The festivals were based on drug experimentation during my time in the late '80s, and the dorm floors were decorated so that everyone coming through, but especially those taking psychedelics, would have an interesting experience. For instance, one floor put in black lights, covered the walls with paper and painted with fluorescent paint, and made highlighters available for drawing on the walls (or on skin). A common area was made into a womb, with mattresses and fabric walls. Tubs of oobleck were available to play with. The night before Duke Day, a group of students would pass out joints in the campus dining hall - an event called a "smoke out". To my knowledge, no action was ever taken by the authorities until my senior year (note that it was a first-year student who got busted - someone who had been told by the older students that nothing ever happened and it was safe to take a joint).

OK - so even *I* will acknowledge that it's difficult from a non-college student perspective to defend these festivals (other than saying that they were a hell of a lot of fun, and I'm glad I got to participate in them), and I'm not sure how it is that Wesleyan was able to stay more or less hands-off for a number of years. Shortly after I graduated in 1990, I heard that the festivals had been redesigned as music festivals, with no trace of the drug focus left - in fact, I remember reading something about the festivals specifically forbidding drug use.

But after reading Doonesbury this morning, and then googling and finding this, I have to wonder if the festivals were really as sanitized as I had thought they were. (The student blog, Wesleying, has put up a few posts, including some comments by alumni who also remember these holidays fondly.)

In any case, they seem to do it a little differently now, holding it on Foss Hill instead of inside West Co and in the courtyard. I'm sentimentally glad, though - and also surprised - to see that Wes is still using the same supplier for their dorm furniture (see the second picture). Despite renovations that supposedly included "better furniture" in 2005 or so, the furniture is exactly the same as it was '86-'90 (see photo 8).

TSA, Sexual Assault, and Opting Out

2010-11-28T14:14:00.005-06:00

Like a lot of people, I anticipate flying over the next couple of months, and so I have been following the TSA debates closely. I am planning to opt out because several folks have come forward recently to warn that the focused radiation on the skin that these new scanners use are likely to cause skin cancer in certain populations, including cancer survivors, people at risk for breast cancer, and children. That's two-thirds of our traveling group.

So, we are expecting the intrusive pat downs. And I'm frankly concerned about how this is going to be experienced by my 8-year-old child. I'm hoping that, if we explain everything ahead of time, and if the TSA agent also explains everything ahead of time (they are supposed to do so, but they don't necessarily do so), that he will take it in stride. I'm also concerned about just how intimate and invasive this touching will be. Despite the description the TSA agent gave to John Tyner, they really don't seem to be telling people exactly what they are going to do (check out the links below for examples). We are aware that they will be touching our genitals with their palms rather than the backs of their hands - but how many people expect this (note especially the discussion at the end re. the two levels of pat down - one standard pat down and one as punishment)? Or this? Or this? And how many people expect the TSA agent to put their hands inside the traveler's underpants?

Further, the TSA has now regrouped and is ready for the next John Tyners, arresting and threatening to fine anyone refusing to go through either the scan or the "pat-down" (scroll down to the bottom).

So we are faced with the "choice" of showing our naked bodies, including other intimate information that the scanners can see such as whether or not we are menstruating, whether or not we wear prostheses, etc., to people we don't want to show this to, OR we can submit to invasive touching that many people are calling akin to sexual assault. I find it interesting that those refuting this last statement on various blogs are responding by saying that the TSA agents don't enjoy this and don't intend it to be sexual assault. But, as with racism, intent is not really the issue. Legally, rape and sexual assault can occur regardless of whether or not the perpetrator thinks that that is what he's doing. There are many cases in which men have raped women and not thought that what they did was rape.

What is important is whether or not the person experiencing this experiences it as unwanted touching - which many clearly do, and it has serious ramifications, particularly for those who are survivors of past assault. This is not about Americans' prudish ways, and it is not about how comfortable individuals are with nudity. It is about simply being able to choose to whom and under what conditions we will share the intimate details of our bodies.

I am aware of my privilege operating here, as someone who has never been pulled aside for any additional screening beyond checking through my carry-on. I am aware that lots of people have been dealing with these situations for the last decade, at least. And so I feel uncomfortable at my own sudden outrage at this situation in which I must choose between two situations that I feel are violating. I should have been more outraged long ago.

***

If the recent news that Opt Out Day fizzled has left you feeling intimidated about opting out, you should read these two statements.

If you do fly and you experience anything you feel is inappropriate, here is one way to report abuse. And here is another resource.

(Just a last comment: As I have suspected, getting rid of TSA screenings in favor of private companies is not going to change a damn thing.)

How Privilege Works.

2010-11-06T21:48:00.003-05:00

I am not proud of these events, but they offer such a clear illustration of what it means to have privilege that I feel that I should share them with you.

The other day, I took Bean's hockey helmet to be fixed at a shop recommended to me by a friend. I am not an athlete, and when I go into sports stores, I always feel like a Grade A dork. I don't know the right lingo, I sometimes trip over things because I am flustered, and I generally feel out of place and anxious to leave. I also don't run into very many women in these stores, so that just adds to my feeling of not fitting in. But when I walked in the door, I was greeted very warmly by three friendly, male staff, who immediately got me what I needed and set to work adjusting the helmet. I relaxed and felt at home almost at once.

While I was waiting, a guy in the back mentioned Dunkin' Donuts coffee. As a transplant from the northeast, I was excited to hear mention of Dunkin' Donuts, which don't exist around here, as far as I can tell (well, except for one store, which you will hear about directly). This, with my new-found comfort, gave me the confidence to jump right into the conversation. Everything was going along well, and we were laughing and joking, until the young man in the back said, "there is one Dunkin' Donuts store downtown, and it's owned by this dirty little Asian man!"

This is the moment where I often find myself, when someone says something like this and expects me to laugh or to go along with the conversation. And this is the part that's hard for me because we had been, moments before, enjoying a moment of friendly chat, and now we were about to stop being friendly.

Keith Edwards of Men Ending Rape says that a well-placed, "Dude - not cool," can go a long way. That actually would have been perfect, except that I remembered it when I was back in the car.

As I stood there, looking at the ground and no longer participating in the conversation, I tried to figure out how to address the comment. Obviously, it was not a comment this white man would have made to me if I were Asian. Quite possibly, he would not have made it to me if I were a person of color but not Asian. It was one of those situations in which white skin signals common ground, and so people feel free to say things they otherwise wouldn't say. Also obviously (to me), he didn't mean anything by it. It was not unlike the way that people say "that shirt is so gay" while thinking they are not homophobic.

As I contemplated my options, I realized that what I have been teaching my students this semester about privilege is not quite accurate. I have been teaching them that privilege is not having to hear comments like that made about you and people like you. Certainly, that is part of privilege. However, what makes it so difficult for people with privilege to give it up is this next part: I realized that if I said anything, the nice exchange we were having was going to change. I was going to say something that would sit there like a turd on the floor, and they were going to stop joking with me, and I was going to then feel anxious and uncomfortable, just as I had worried I might before I entered the store. So my privilege in this situation was that, because I am white, I could walk into a store and have helpful, friendly staff see me as like them and treat me accordingly, and I could then choose whether or not to give up that genial relationship or whether to keep it.

I was not fully conscious of all of these feelings, including the fact that sports stores make me anxious, until I examined them in that moment of standing there and wondering what to do. So part of the privilege was also that lack of awareness of my own motivations and my competing desires (wanting them to continue being friendly to me; wanting to address the racist comment), and part of it was having the luxury of choosing whether or not to challenge the comment that was made at someone else's expense.

I am not proud to say that I did not challenge the comment in that moment. However, I did send an email to the store shortly afterward. Better late than never.

I know why Ginnie Thomas called Anita Hill (or, Credo Action is making a mistake).

2010-10-25T12:55:00.003-05:00

I have been puzzling it over for the last few days. I knew it had something to do with Thomas' political activities with the Tea Party, but I couldn't quite figure it out - was she actually trying to get an apology, for reals? Was there some demographic within the Tea Party who believed Anita Hill?

It took Juan Williams' firing and Credo to put it into perspective. As you all know, Juan Williams was an NPR journalist who was fired from his job there for appearing on Bill O'Reilly's show on FOX and saying that he feared Muslims getting onto an airplane with him and that it was important to cut through the "political correctness" around Muslims and to be honest about the level of threat that Muslims pose (read the Michael Moore piece I link to below - he does a good job of responding to this). I have never thought much of Williams as a journalist, and I won't miss him, but many have made the (correct) point that firing him for this was a bad publicity stunt for NPR to pull. As they explain, now there is evidence for FOX's favorite (and not at all hypocritical, right?) suggestion that NPR only hires those reporters who agree with their so-called left-wing politics. And this is exactly the kind of thing that can give that much more motivation to Tea Party folks to rebel against the current administration - just in time for the November elections.

So I had this all in the back of my mind this morning when I opened my email to find an appeal from Credo Action to sign a petition demanding that Clarence Thomas apologize to Anita Hill. I generally support Credo, and I am on their mailing list because I almost always want to sign petitions and send letters on behalf of the causes that they care about. But this one is a mistake, and I think it is exactly the reason that Ginnie Thomas called Anita Hill. Any public move to denounce Clarence Thomas again is going to do two things. First, it is going to add to the racial divide, real or imagined, between Obama followers (a multiracial group) and the Tea Party (also a multiracial group, but more white than not). This is ironic, because Clarence Thomas is Black, but it means that the Tea Party will back Ginnie Thomas (not Black) and not Anita Hill (Black). It is a clever way to hide race in a discourse that will be focused on 'that woman who says unspeakable things about another woman's husband' - that woman who is then, as scholars have written, herself tainted by the accusations of sexual harassment while her harasser is not. Second, it is going to add to the Right's furor over Juan Williams and perceived "political correctness" among progressives, as once again, it will argue, the "facts" are erased and the "radical" left is out to silence a different opinion (in this case, held by Ginnie Thomas). All of this will help their attempts to paint the moderate Obama as an extreme, radical socialist, and to whip voters into a frenzy, none of which will help progressive causes.

So, don't sign that Credo petition. And let's hope progressives can stay focused on the real issues for the next week.

Trip Down Memory Lane

2010-09-28T00:02:00.002-05:00

As Bean was going to sleep tonight, he asked me if we had had ice boxes instead of refrigerators when I was a kid. "No," I told him. "Grandpa had ice boxes, but we had refrigerators." "Did you have electricity?" he wanted to know. "Yes, we had electricity," I said. "You know, Bean, when Grandpa was a kid it was very, very different than when I was a kid. They didn't have television, they had ice boxes, they didn't have the same kinds of heat in their houses that we do. But when I was a kid, it really wasn't very different from the way it is now. We had television - ours was black and white, but there were color televisions then. We had telephones, but they were rotary dial phones" ("I know!" he said - "that is a very popular style for toy phones!"). "We had record players, not cds or mp3 players, and we didn't have computers."

"WHAT?!" he exclaimed. "No computers? How did you send email?"

"We didn't," I said. "We called people on the phone, and we wrote letters. If someone wasn't home, we called back later. Most people didn't have answering machines."

"How did you skype?!" he asked, floored that there was ever a time without instant and constant communication.

I didn't have the heart to tell him yet about Pong.

Black Hawk Down, Imperialism, and Shoe Shopping

2010-09-26T22:56:00.003-05:00

I stopped by the shoe store yesterday because I had a 20% off coupon and because my feet have been uncomfortable now that the summer has ended and I haven't been able to slip on my Tevas or Keenes every time I leave the house. While I was looking, mostly in vain, for a size 11 in just about anything, I overheard the younger clerk talking to a customer he knew about a paper he'd written for school. Apparently, his professor was "lying" to him and was "ignorant". The professor had apparently told this student that "there was imperialism in Black Hawk Down". The student "looked it up, and there wasn't."

I have to pause here for a moment. Had the student said, "I looked it up, and it was kind of complicated, and it was boring" - that would have been less bothersome to me. The idea that someone would think that this kind of question is one that they could look up and find an answer to easily, especially someone who is in college, is just sad, because it means that they (or their parents) are paying for an education that they don't even know they aren't participating in. And not *participating* in an education means not *getting* one.

Meanwhile, this guy went on to say that he had told this to his professor, and the professor had told him that he had to look for it in order to see it. He was so irritated that the professor was apparently lying to him and didn't know what he was talking about that he wrote a paper about how people are ignorant about imperialism. And got an A minus.

He went on to talk about an upcoming audition for a reality show, and getting an agent, and so on - his dreams beyond that shoe store, dreams that clearly, in his mind, were unrelated to college. So, when I went up to the counter to purchase my shoes, fully intending to give him a lecture about what research really entailed, I told him that I had overheard him talking about his paper and asked him where he went to school. It was one of the community colleges, he told me - "pretty boring," he said, with a lazy, confident smile. And I decided, as the other clerk and customer were watching me curiously, not to be that person, and not to make that scene. All I could muster was, "that's too bad," in my mother's voice. But he didn't understand that I meant it was too bad that he was not applying himself and taking advantage of his education, that it was too bad that he thought that research questions all had simple answers, that it was too bad that he saw a flaw in his professor's education but not in his own. He mostly thought that I thought it was too bad that his classes were boring, though the smile wavered a bit.

And I left the shoe store and gave Bean a version of my lecture, telling him that, while he would very likely have teachers and professors who were wrong, he shouldn't immediately assume that they were wrong if he found information that challenged what they said. Instead, he should first try to figure out if perhaps it was a more complicated subject than he had first thought.

Cool.

2010-09-05T17:06:00.002-05:00

This post prompted the following response, which I was going to post as a comment until I realized that it had become a blog post.

I think that what we understand 'cool' to be changes as we get older. I used to think extreme hair was cool until I met an asshole with extreme hair (who wouldn't talk to us because we didn't look cool, apparently) and a wiser friend said, "it's sad when someone's entire personality is their hair." I also used to think that people who went to things like Burning Man were cool, until I realized that attending an event does not make someone cool and that lots of people go to this kind of thing in the hopes that it will make them cool.

Most of the time, 'cool' seems to be about external things - hair, clothes, the kind of music someone listens to, maybe the kind of job someone has, etc. At the ripe age of 42, I've realized that cool, for me, is more about what someone *thinks* and what kind of person they are than what they look like and what they do. Of course, these things are more abstract and are not attached to specific acts or looks of 'coolness,' like smoking a cigarette or wearing black. But it makes sense that coolness should be abstract - it should be something you have to look for, something that you need to patiently discover in unusual places, rather than something you can buy at the mall, see at Burning Man, or find on Facebook or on television.

A moment of awe for cats.

2010-08-29T19:40:00.001-05:00

For two days in a row, I've seen a young, very fit, what I would call "brindle" cat coming up the neighbor's driveway with a chipmunk in its mouth. Maybe this is common cat behavior, but I'm quite impressed. I didn't think it was actually possible to catch a chipmunk. They seem to move so much more quickly than anything else, and I've never seen a cat with one before. Well done, cat!

Submissions sought for edited collection on Black Motherhoods

2010-08-24T15:11:00.001-05:00

CALL FOR PAPERS
Demeter Press is seeking submissions for an edited collection on Black Motherhoods

Editors: Karen T. Craddock, Nicole Banton and Saundra Murray Nettles

Pub Date: 2012/2013

This anthology will explore the multi-faceted expressions, experiences, constructs and contexts of black motherhood through an interdisciplinary lens. We invite submissions addressing the range of key factors that contribute to and are impacted by the notion of black mothering and black motherhood primarily through psychological, sociological, humanities and public health frameworks which include investigations of cultural, biological, socio-political, relational and historical perspectives that inform our thinking and practice as it relates to black mothers.

We specifically encourage offerings that amplify or redress black motherhood and constructs of identity, relationships, mental and physical health practice and policy, education, art/media and advocacy. Through this diverse exploration a deeper understanding and consideration about black motherhood will be expanded. This multi-disciplinary excavation of both long held and newly emergent ideologies of black mothering will allow a necessary space to examine the importance and impact of black mother(ing)(hood) in society.

A goal of this volume is to catalyze future expression, research and praxis while contributing to a variety of fields including cultural analysis, race/gender studies, and literary and art criticism. We look forward to including a range of academic writing as well as narrative essays and some creative works.

Suggested topics include but are not limited to:
identity development, psychological depression, resistance to marginalization, research and policy on reproductive rights, pregnancy, child birth and breast feeding, literary, media and artistic renderings of black motherhood, consideration of and comparison within the black Diaspora, social constructions of black motherhood and race, gender politics, personal narrative, ethnography, black mothering in diverse familial, social and professional contexts, lesbian black mothers, feminist theory, marital status and black motherhood, parenting/caretaking practices, childcare, trans-racial adoption, black adolescent mothers, role of black men, role of relationship among black women and influence on mothering, historical and contemporary treatments of black motherhood.

Submission guidelines:
Abstracts should be 250 words. Please also include a brief biography (50 words).
Deadline for abstracts is September 1, 2010
Accepted papers of 4000-5000 words (15-20 pages) will be due September 2011 and should conform to the Modern Language Association style
.
Please send submissions and inquiries directly to:
Karen T. Craddock, Ph.D. kcrad@brandeis.edu, Nicole Banton, Ph.D. nicban@ufl.edu and
Saundra Murray Nettles, Ph.D. srmurraynettles@gmail.com

Demeter Press
140 Holland St. West, PO 13022
Bradford, ON, L3Z 2Y5
http://www.demeterpress.org info@demeterpress.org

What I think about the so-called "ground zero mosque"

2010-08-21T13:14:00.002-05:00

I'll set aside the fact that it's not actually at ground zero. I'll also set aside the bizarre and ignorant posturing that Islam as a whole is somehow understood to be the equivalent of Nazism (I must have missed the attempted genocide of Americans?). I'll just say this: if you don't live in the neighborhood of ground zero, keep your big mouth shut. This is an issue for New Yorkers - the ones that live there, not the ones who feel like "every American is a New Yorker because of 9/11" (bullshit) - to decide without the "help" of national politicians who want to win elections.

Credit Union Woes

2010-06-19T11:34:00.003-05:00

For almost as long as I've been supporting myself, I have been a member of a credit union (CU)rather than a bank. I've been a member of at least four over the past twenty or so years; CUs were always smaller, more friendly, and more personally interested in me as a customer. Like food co-ops, they can operate at the bare minimum; for example, there was one CU in Buffalo that had a tiny office with very limited hours a few blocks from my house, and when I wanted to get cash, I had to either go there and write myself a check (after ensuring that they had enough cash on hand - larger amounts required prior notification) or go across the street to to co-op and write a check there (again, after ensuring that they had the cash to give me). It was all very crunchy and granola if nothing else.

Then, there are others, like the one in South Dakota, that don't seem much different from a bank in terms of their physical offices, only they don't charge you every ripstitch. Banking without fees!

When we moved here, we kept our South Dakota CU account for a couple of years. When we were in the process of buying a house here, though, we needed a local account. So, I looked up CUs, of which there are many in the Twin Cities, and started figuring out which ones were most conveniently located. The thing about CUs is that using ATMs at locations other than the credit union usually means a charge - there isn't often a network of free ATMs, depending on the size of the credit union. So I very carefully chose a CU that had an office close to home.

Now, overall, I like the CU. The people we met with to discuss services, loans, mortgages, and all that were lovely, and the office seemed professional. No, they didn't have safe deposit boxes, but then, I really don't have much to put into one, anyway.

My problems with this CU began almost immediately, however, and they have generally to do with the drive-through. One morning in late summer, I pulled up at the drive-through post and waited for the teller to signal that she was ready to help me, which is how drive-through windows had always worked for me in the past. I waited a while. Finally, I pressed the "call teller" button and heard, "We were wondering what you were doing!" I thought to myself, "hmmm....seems like good customer service in that situation would have been to ask, 'May I help you?' as soon as they saw me sitting there - but, whatever. No need to make a fuss." I completed my transaction and moved on.

Several months later, I stopped at the drive-through again. This time, I didn't waste time waiting to be greeted or asked what I needed. I was there to make a deposit, so I grabbed the tube, only to find that there was no pen. I called the teller, asked for a pen, and sent the tube back, empty. It came back with a pen. I signed my checks, filled out the deposit slip, put everything in the tube and sent it back. The teller told me, "you forgot to sign the deposit slip." So she sent the slip back to me, but in the meantime, she had taken the pen out. I sent the tube back a third time for the pen, and she sent me back my cash and a receipt - but again, no pen. I didn't need a pen at this point, but since my transaction at the supposedly speedier drive-through window had now taken longer than it would have taken me had I just gone inside, I felt it was my duty to point out that it would be helpful to leave the damn pen in the tube. (I didn't say 'damn'.) The teller responded by telling me that customers steal the pens from the tubes and so they did not provide pens.

At this point, I was ready to start yelling, so I pulled out, drove around and parked, and called the CU. The woman who answered was the same woman who had "helped" me at the drive-through. I asked to speak with her manager, she sounded scared, and she put the manager on. I explained the situation - that I thought it was ridiculous that they apparently had a policy of not supplying pens because customers took them - and tried to convey my amazement that they would withhold something so necessary and common-place. Doesn't *every* bank or CU provide pens? Even the bloody *post office* usually has a pen out on the counter! And so, I became that customer who must be dealt with in as polite a manner possible, even though the manager is thinking, "who is this loon who is so concerned about something so stupid?!" And I felt pretty stupid, taking this so seriously, as she explained to me that they do, apparently, try to provide pens, but that in the extreme cold, sometimes the pens explode in the tubes, requiring them to replace the tubes, and so they don't put them in the tubes in the winter months. (Why couldn't the stupid teller have just apologized and said so?)

I went back a couple more times to the drive through that winter (twice hitting my wheel on the extra-long cement island, and losing a hubcap), and each time there was, of course, no pen.

Finally, yesterday, a warm day, I decided to brave the drive-through once more. I opened the tube (there was a pen!), signed my check, and filled out my deposit slip the way I have always been taught to do - list the check amount ($25); give the sub-total ($25); list the amount being cashed ($25); show the total being deposited ($0); sign the deposit slip because I'm getting cash back. And I wait, and the teller's picture (the same teller from the pen incident) flickers over the screen long enough to say "hello" and "thank you" and then she's over and out; the tube is returned to me with - a receipt for deposit of $25 into my checking account. I say, "I was trying to cash this?" and there is no response - she's been off the line from the time she pressed "send." I press "call teller" and again she flickers over the screen, "yes?" I say, "I meant to cash this - that's why there is a zero in the total amount." Silence. Then, one final flicker "youdon'thavetofilloutadepositsliptocashachecksenditbacktome" and she's gone again - there is no conversation, no, "I'm sorry" or "in the future, you should do x, y, or z." Nothing. I get my tube back with my cash and she is done with me.

I know this is really a very little thing, but good customer service - competent customer service - really does make a difference. I don't like knowing when I leave the house that if I don't have a pen with me, I'll have to go inside. I don't like still not knowing what they want me to do when I want to cash a check (and I don't really like the idea of having to say my account number aloud outside when there are other people in the drive-through lane, which is what I assume would be part of the process). I don't like that the tellers can't be bothered to greet me when I show up. But more than everything else, I don't like that the CU employees don't seem to get that these are problems with the way they do business. That alone makes me wonder if I should find another CU.

The Onion does it again.

2010-06-10T21:19:00.002-05:00

This is not just a typically funny Onion article - this is a really clever piece that rips BP while offering a laugh (and a laugh is sorely needed right about now). I like the way it keeps us focused both on the enormity of the oil spill *and* on the enormity of BP's, well, bullshit.

On Jews and "Home."

2010-06-09T22:41:00.003-05:00

(I'm a little rusty, so bear that in mind, and I apologize in advance for that, as well as for the abrupt non-ending. But if I don't post this, it will be yet another deleted post. Just don't expect me to say anything new.)

Bfp writes of Helen Thomas: "She is not hating Jews or wishing death or violence on Jews as a people. She is offering a very pointed critique of occupation and violence that a Jewish nation/state is inflicting on indigenous populations." This is a crucial point. It is a mistake to dismiss her comments as anti-Semitic.

At the same time, the notion that Jews can simply return to their homes in Poland and Germany fails to recognize the reality of anti-Semitism and the legacy of anti-Semitism. Poles and Germans still own the houses and property of Jews who were dispossessed; they won't be giving them back anytime soon. Jews can no more "go home" to Germany and Poland than can a young woman "go home" to a parent who has raped her. Legally and physically, of course, Jews are able to travel to and establish themselves in these countries, and that is an important right and freedom that Palestinians do not have. Still, the meaning of "home" for any diasporic people is complex and difficult, and Thomas' comment, at best, did not recognize this complexity.

One of the stereotypes that has always followed Jews is the idea of Jews as having power to hurt others; for example, the sense many people (who are not Jewish) have that Jews are running the U.S. In the situation of Israel and Palestine, Jews do, in fact, have power, and Israel has used that power to hurt and oppress. But it is a mistake to imagine that Jewish people are therefore no longer oppressed or that they can return to the countries that tried to kill them and live safely.

I felt the need to say all of this, but I also need to say, now, that while I think we need to acknowledge this complexity, and while Thomas' comments need to be addressed so that this complexity is brought out, there is also something larger, here. Bfp gets at it in the quote above and in this post, as well. And so does Tony Klug's piece, "Are Israeli Policies Entrenching Anti-Semitism Worldwide?" Calling out Israel is not inherently anti-Semitic. Protesting Israel's abuses is, in fact, the moral duty of Jews as well as non-Jews. Just as we have worked to define "racism" and "homophobia" in ways that focus on institutionalized oppression rather than personal prejudice, we need to work on applying the same analysis to the concept of anti-Semitism. I don't believe that Thomas' comments were anti-Semitic, and while I am concerned that she made them, I am distressed that the larger point she was making is getting lost.

Further, perhaps like Klug, I worry that the rush to censure Thomas - and to force her out - is inevitably going to deepen the very real distrust and dislike of Jews in America and elsewhere. And it certainly won't help either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Which is harder - teaching someone to drive or to ride a bike?

2010-06-08T21:08:00.002-05:00

We are in the process of doing the latter - and I wish we'd started this process years ago. Because we didn't, we are just starting him on training wheels, and Bean is, quite understandably, nervous about the whole thing. Once he gets going, he enjoys it, but the journey to getting going is paved with arguments, tears, yelling, and endless, endless braking. It took us 40 minutes last night to get from the corner to our house. This is exhausting.

And he keeps saying, "If I were learning to drive a car, I wouldn't be so scared!"

Help keep ARM / Demeter Press going!

2010-03-07T12:02:00.002-06:00

From ARM Director, Andrea O'Reilly:

Good news: there has been a tsunami of support for arm. Hundreds of letters in, a fan of arm facebook set up already, dozens of mommy bloggers have blogged on it, a fundraising campaign already up and running, two media interviews. (details on all this wil be on arm facebook page and sent to arm supporters and members tomorrow) I am at loss for words to convey my appreciation for this outpouring of concern and outrage.

so yes we are resolved to keep arm/jarm/Demeter press going somehow/someway

...we are asking concerned individuals to do the following

1) Write a letter, however brief, to York officials listed in ARM closure email.

In 48 HOURS ARM has received close to 300 emails.

[The addresses (please cc arm@yorku.ca; aoreilly@yorku.ca):
Associate Dean of Research, FLAPS, Barbara Crow, bacrow@yorku.ca
Executive Officer, FLAPS, Felim Greene, fgreene@yorku.ca
Associate Dean, External Relations, FLAPS, Moghissi Haideh, moghissi@yorku.ca
Dean, FLAPS, Martin Singer, martin.singer@yorku.ca
Vice President, Research and Innovation, Stan Shapson, vpri@yorku.ca
Associate Vice President Research, Social Sciences and the Humanities, David Dewitt, ddewitt@yorku.ca
Vice-President Academic & Provost, Patrick Monahan, provost@yorku.ca
Director, Office of Research Services, David Phipps, dphipps@yorku.ca
President and Vice Chancellor, Mamdouh Shoukri, mshoukri@yorku.ca ]

2) Distribute widely the ARM closure letter; contact your local media. Join the "Fan of ARM Facebook Page"

3) Send to arm and myself any and all ideas/leads/contact for funding for arm/jarm/demeter press post York.

4) Please purchase a Demeter Press title from ARM/Demeter Press page with a cheque payable to Demeter Press. Or make a donation to Demeter Press.

We will certainly keep you posted

And thank you again for your email. It means a great deal to us at this difficult time

best

andrea oreilly and renee knapp

Dr. Andrea O'Reilly,
Associate Professor,
School of Women's Studies,
Founder-Director: Association for Research on Mothering,
Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, Demeter Press,
Co-Founder, Museum of Motherhood,
Co-Founder, International Mothers Network,
Editor, Encyclopedia of Motherhood, Sage Press, 2010.
York University,
Toronto, Ont.,
M3J 1P3
416 736 2100;60366
aoreilly@yorku.ca
www.yorku.ca/arm

Closure of the Association for Research on Mothering

2010-03-03T22:28:00.002-06:00

Please read the following and then write a letter of protest to the emails below. Please also forward to your networks - let's get this out into the feminist blogosphere. You should know that ARM has been publishing work by and about mothers of color, queer mothers, and mothers with disabilities; it has worked hard to support the work of all those who mother and who study mothering.

March 2, 2010

Dear ARM Members and Friends,

I am writing with some very sad news concerning the Association for Research on Mothering, The Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering and Demeter Press. Due to York University’s continued refusal to provide base funding to the association, its journal and press, we will be closing ARM May 1, 2010. The Executive Officer of the Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies (FLAPS) has assured us that all membership and subscriptions for 2010 and beyond will be reimbursed on a pro-rated basis.

Please find below information on 1) the context of; reasons for this decision; 2) whom to contact with your questions, concerns and comments; 3) the implications of such for ARM’s various research activities.

The Association for Research on Mothering was founded in 1998, its journal in 1999, and its press in 2006. Over these twelve years ARM’s accomplishments have been many and diverse including: 35 international conferences, including conferences in New York City and in Puerto Rico and one recently planned for Portugal in 2011; 22 journal issues and ten Demeter Press titles published (with another 15 Demeter Press titles in production or under contract); half a million dollars in external funding; a paid membership base of more than 500 individuals/institutions (including 110 library subscriptions) from 25 plus countries each year; a large and vibrant Australian “arm of ARM” (that has hosted 5 international conferences), ARM journals and Demeter press titles sold in bookstores across Canada and on Amazon; Demeter Press titles used as course texts in university classrooms across Canada and the United States; extensive media coverage including a front page story in the National Post in 2006; many national and international research projects and partnerships including the SSHRC funded project on Young Mothers and Empowerment Programming with ten research partners from 5 countries; co-producer of a documentary on the 21st Motherhood Movement; co-founder of the International Mothers Network (IMN) now with 120 members worldwide and co-founder of the Museum of Motherhood. ARM is recognized as the leading association and publication on motherhood worldwide and indeed as an important organization in Women’s Studies scholarship more generally. A Google search of the “Association for Research on Mothering”, for example, yields 225,000 hits while the “Canadian Women’s Studies Association”, (Canada’s only and long-standing national association of Women’s Studies) yields only 70,900 hits. That ARM, a relatively new research association and one focused specifically on the topic of motherhood yielded three times more hits than the Women’s Studies Association of Canada is indeed significant and speaks to the centrality and prominence of the association. For more information on ARM, its journal and press please visit our website at www.yorku.ca/arm.

ARM receives NO funding from York University though in recent years York has provided a small office for ARM and some teaching release for myself as director (and does provide accounting and financial services). ARM, as with all research associations and scholarly journals and as a nonprofit organization, requires some institutional support to cover its operating costs. Since ARM has received no institutional support it has incurred a deficit most years though in the last 4 out of 5 years ARM has made a small profit or broken even. In the last 6-7 years I have met many times with various university officials to request 20,000 dollars in institutional support either in the form of a grant or by covering some of ARM’s operational costs such as student wages, postage or printing or by providing an annual Graduate Assistantship. The answer has always been an emphatic no. In the fall of 2009 the situation reached a crisis point when the associate dean of research of ARM’s new faculty (FLAPS) froze our accounts as a result of ARM’s deficit and in the last three weeks has forced the suspension of all of ARM’s research activities including the cancellation of the May conference in New York and the production of the current journal issue and forthcoming Demeter Press title. With York’s refusal to provide some funding or to cover some of ARM’s operational costs and its recent decision to freeze our accounts and suspend its research activities, I see no other choice but to close ARM. I believe that ARM’s many achievements make ARM deserving of institutional support and have done my utmost to convince York of this but York remains steadfast in its argument that ARM must operate on a cost-recovery basis with no institutional support, (though York’s many research centres receive far more in university funding than ARM is requesting and do far less in research activities).

I ask that any comments or questions on the forced closure of ARM be directed to the following individuals (please cc arm@yorku.ca; aoreilly@yorku.ca):
Associate Dean of Research, FLAPS, Barbara Crow, bacrow@yorku.ca
Executive Officer, FLAPS, Felim Greene, fgreene@yorku.ca
Associate Dean, External Relations, FLAPS, Moghissi Haideh, moghissi@yorku.ca
Dean, FLAPS, Martin Singer, martin.singer@yorku.ca
Vice President, Research and Innovation, Stan Shapson, vpri@yorku.ca
Associate Vice President Research, Social Sciences and the Humanities, David Dewitt,
ddewitt@yorku.ca
Vice-President Academic & Provost, Patrick Monahan, provost@yorku.ca
Director, Office of Research Services, David Phipps, dphipps@yorku.ca
President and Vice Chancellor, Mamdouh Shoukri, mshoukri@yorku.ca

ARM, JARM AND DEMETER PRESS RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
Membership and Subscriptions:
ARM will no longer be accepting memberships or subscriptions for 2010 and beyond. All paid 2010 and beyond memberships will be reimbursed on a pro-rated basis

Conferences
The conference “Being and Thinking as an Academic Mother”, at Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Montreal, Canada, April 8, 2010 will proceed as scheduled

The New York conference “Representing Motherhood” May 20-22, 2010 is CANCELLED

The October conference “Mothering and the Economy; The Economics of Mothering” is
CANCELLED

The Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering
No more issues of the journal will be published. 2010 subscriptions will be reimbursed fully.

Individual copies of past journal issues may be purchased at a discounted rate until May 1, 2010. Details on website soon

Demeter Press
Past titles may be purchased at a discounted rate. Details on website soon.

A decision is pending on forthcoming Demeter Press titles. A full update will be sent in the next week or two.

The next several months are going to be challenging ones for the association and in particular for ARM’s coordinator Renée Knapp so I ask in advance for your patience and understanding.

Though I am deeply saddened that our beloved ARM must close, I will be forever grateful to the wonderful members of ARM for their transformative and groundbreaking research and activism on and for mothers and mothering around the world. Thank you!

Sincerely,
Dr. Andrea O’Reilly,
Founder and Director, ARM, JARM, Demeter Press
York University,
Toronto, Ont.,
M3J 1P3
416 736 2100;60366
aoreilly@yorku.ca
www.yorku.ca/arm

To the guy behind me in traffic this morning.

2010-03-01T10:41:00.002-06:00

Look, I'm sure you were in a hurry, and I can appreciate that you didn't like the fact that I was slowing down when you wanted to go faster as we exited the highway. What I saw that you didn't see was the truck ahead and on my right that was planning to turn left across my lane. I was turning left, too, and even if I weren't, the truck was blocking the right lane, so I had no choice but to stop, behind the truck and to the left, so that it could turn. Honking your horn at me is not going to make me play chicken with a truck.

I thought maybe you'd understand the situation after the truck turned, but no, you still found it necessary to drive up behind me after we'd all turned, honk furiously, and give me the finger as you sped away.

It is not my fault that you are in a hurry. Plan better next time. And please try to be less of an asshole.

Two years later...

2010-02-28T23:31:00.002-06:00

...so I've been teaching and talking and writing lately about the Great Blog Wars of '08, and I'm wondering where we stand. Specifically, I'm wondering where we stand on the girlcott of Seal Press. This is really bugging me, because in the interim, SP has launched their "Women's Studies series". What is the impact of this going to be on the discipline of Women's Studies a few years down the road? Meanwhile, the same few (fluffy, some of them) authors keep popping up with new books on SP's website.

On the other hand, I guess it's something that the covers of these books written by white women white women white women feature people of color...(that would be sarcasm, folks.)

2010 Obama Agenda Survey from the RNC

2010-02-19T18:52:00.000-06:00

I hate political "surveys" that distort meanings in order to elicit specific answers:

1) Do you agree with Barack Obama and the Democrats that taxes should be raised for the sake of 'fairness,' regardless of the negative impact it is likely to have on the economy?

2) Do you believe the federal government has gone too far in bailing out failing banks, insurance companies and the auto industry?

3) Do you support amnesty for illegal immigrants?

4) Should English be the official language of the United States?

5) Are you in favor of granting retroactive Social Security eligibility to illegal immigrants who gain U.S. citizenship through an amnesty program?

6) Are you in favor of the expanded welfare benefits and unlimited eligibility (no time, education or work requirements) that Democrats in Congress are pushing to pass?

7) Do you believe that Barack Obama's nominees for federal courts should be immediately and unquestionably approved for their lifetime appointments by the U.S. Senate?

8) Do you believe that the best way to increase the quality and effectiveness of public education in the U.S. is to rapidly expand federal funding while eliminating performance standards and accountability?

9) Do you support the creation of a national health insurance plan that would be administered by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.?

10) Do you believe that the quality and availability of health care will increase if the federal government dictates pricing to doctors and hospitals?

11) Are you confident that new medicines and medical treatments will continue to be developed if the federal government controls prescription drug prices and sets profit margins for research and pharmaceutical companies?

12) Are you in favor of creating a government-funded "Citizen Volunteer Corps" that would pay young people to do work now done by churches and charities, earning Corps Members the same pay and benefits given to military veterans?

13) Are you in favor of reinstituting the military draft, as Democrats in Congress have proposed?

14) Do you believe that the federal government should allow the unionization of Department of Homeland Security employees who serve in positions critical to the safety and security of our nation?

15) Do you support Democrats' drive to eliminate workers' right to a private ballot when considering unionization of their place of employment?

Jay Smooth on John Mayer.

2010-02-17T12:31:00.001-06:00

I can't seem to post the video itself, but click here.

In Honor of V-Day...

2010-02-14T00:31:00.003-06:00

...let me take this time to remind everyone that vulvas are not vaginas, and vice versa. If it helps, remember that all the outside stuff is part of the vulva - the vagina is an internal organ.

This public service message is brought to you by the fact that I just read an entire scholarly essay that used the word "vagina" to talk, really, about vulvas - so please, folks, knock it off. This is a simply appalling lack of basic anatomy knowledge.

Thank you, and have a lovely Valentine's Day.

I'm still here.

2010-02-10T21:26:00.003-06:00

I wonder how on earth I ever used to have time for a blog. Not only do I not have time to write, I also don't have anything to say. I've been keeping my head down and working, and as a result I'm meeting some deadlines but not very in touch with what's going on. Super Bowl? Olympics? What?

The 'wonders' of technology.

2009-12-24T11:29:00.005-06:00

I was visiting family out of state last week and wanted to check my Comcast voice mail. I dialed the number, hit the pound key, and entered my sooper seekrit password. Oops - wrong password. I tried again. Still wrong. One more time, and I had exceeded the number of invalid entries I am allowed. The nice computer voice told me that I was now locked out of my voicemail account and would need to call Comcast in order to reset the password.

Well, no big problem, right? Comcast sometimes takes a while to put you through to a live person, but it shouldn't be too difficult to straighten this out. So I call Comcast and get a live person surprisingly quickly. However, he tells me that I need a pin number in order to reset my password. Apparently, the FCC has assigned every line a pin number to make it easier to track down terrorists while the government is listening in on our phone conversations.

The pin number was mailed to my home at some point and is likely in file somewhere for safe keeping.

So I asked the Comcast guy if I could set up an account online without the pin number and get my voicemail that way; he said yes, so I got off the phone (because where I was visiting, there is a dial-up connection) and got online. Dial-up is, if you remember, painfully, painfully slow, so after some time, I was able to load the correct page and input the information in order to set up an account. However, after I had input my account number, the next screen told me that an online account had already been set up for me, and asked me to input my email. I did so, but the next screen said that that was the incorrect email. Over the next half hour or so (painfully slow dial-up, remember), I input *all* of my email addresses. No dice.

So, to recap, I was out of town and locked out of my voicemail; I couldn't reset the password without the pin number, which was in my house; I couldn't get into my online account because I didn't know which email address it was connected to.

So, I decided to try a live chat with a Comcast analyst. Here is the transcript (you can't make this stuff up):

analyst L has entered room

L>Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is L. Please give me one moment to review your information.

L>Good morning

PF>Good morning

L>I will be more than happy to assist you.

PF>Great!

L>the only thing that i would be able to do is reset it but you still would have to wait at least 45 minutes to get in

PF>Could you also help me with the online account so that I can check messages online?

L>yes

L>do you know the security pin on this account?

PF>I don't.

L>unfortunately i wont be able to reset the pin at this time. i would need the security pin, a secret question answered or either we could call you on your home phone but youre not there

PF>Can we do the secret question?

L>there isnt one set up

PF>OK. What about setting up an online account? Could I get access that way?

L>that would be using your email with your password

L>you can get them that way too

PF>Here's the problem. I tried to log in with my account number and phone number, but I didn't have a password, and when I tried to get help with the password, I found that none of my email addresses worked.

L>i can get you to the internet department who could help you set one up. you will need one when using our online services.

PF>That would be great.

L>ok...one moment and Happy Holidays to you!

PF>Happy Holidays to you, too!

analyst F. has entered room

L>Please wait, while the problem is escalated to another analyst

F>I am happy to assist you with your concern today.

PF)>Thank you.

analyst L has left room

F>How are you doing today?

PF>I'm good. Thanks for being there on a holiday!

F>Not a problem, we are working on holiday specially for you

F>I understand that you need assistance with your Comcast email account is that correct?

F>I can see here on your account that your Comcast.net email address is ...@comcast.net

PF>I don't use and have never used a comcast email address. I don't even know how to access that.

F>You need to use that email address in accessing your Comcast account

F>That is actually the email address setup when your service was installed

PF>So the service person set that up? How do I access that email?

PF>This would explain why I don't know the password, either.

F>You can just go to the Comcast.net website

F>You can just click on the Forgot Password link to setup your password

PF>But won't it send the new password to the comcast email address?

PF>Or will I need a pin number or something to change the password?

F>Yes, you need your security pin so that you can set up the password

F>If you do not have your security pin what we can do is just to resend it again to you through postal mail

PF>I don't have the pin, and I'm not at home.

F>PF we actually cannot reset your password with your security pin

PF>I understand that, but I was told that I could go online and set up an online account and gain access to my messages that way. I don't understand why Comcast would set up an online account with an email address and password and not give me this information?

F>Your Comcast email logins was actually given to you by the technician that installed your service

PF>ARgh. So, that is probably in a file drawer somewhere in my house.

F> if you are trying to access your voicemail messages, you can actually just access it from the phone

PF>Sigh. No, I can't. I tried that, forgot the password, and got locked out. At home, it's set to automatically call voicemail without me having to enter the password, so I never use it and forgot it.

F>With Comcast Enhanced Voice Mail, you will be able to access your mailbox and hear your messages - even when you're away from home. You can access your voice mail messages over the phone

PF>Are you able to reset the voicemail password without the pin number?

F>If you were lock out with your voicemail, Please allow the voice mail system to reset and try again within 30-45 minutes

F>Unfortunately we cannot reset it without the pin

PF>But if I remember the password, I should be able to log in in 45 minutes?

F>Yes that is correct

***

(I still can't remember my password, and I can't get into my voicemail until I get the pin.)

"The adventures of a sort of shiksa during the Festival of Lights," or "Hanukkah is getting the shaft again."

2009-12-12T22:17:00.005-06:00

Not only did Bean ask for (and receive) a Christmas movie for Hanukkah (which I'm never sure if I'm spelling correctly or not), and not only did we watch it tonight, and not only do we never get home in time to light the candles at dusk (we light them around 7 or 8) - but I'm eating pork. The theme here seems to be, just how bad can we be at this?

(Nevertheless, we are having fun.)

How I became disillusioned by a children's book.

2009-12-12T00:37:00.002-06:00

I was in Barnes and Noble tonight for an exceedingly long time, as my child played with his friend and I chatted with the friend's mom. We were having a good time, talking and browsing, and looking over the books that we'd read as children. As we looked, I came across The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett. The cover illustration reminded me of the book, Who's That Knocking on Christmas Eve, which Bean owns and which we love. So I picked up The Three Snow Bears and flipped through it. What I really like about Brett's books are the illustrations, so I spent some time enjoying them before I made it to the back flap, where I found the following:

"Jan Brett and her husband...traveled to Iqaluit...to meet the Inuit people, where wonderful experiences awaited them.

An Inuit family welcomed them, the mother wearing a beautiful warm parka she had made. In a school, Jan saw the many intelligent, proud faces that became her inspiration for Aloo-ki. And in a town called Pangnirtung, famous for its people's art, Jan marveled at images of Arctic animals in Inuit clothes and felt a door had opened."

I suppose this could be read in a positive way - "intelligent" and "proud" are certainly good adjectives - but to me, it comes across as othering. Compare the language above to that on the back flap for Who's That Knocking on Christmas Eve?:

"Jan Brett and her husband...went to Norway for her story, based on an old Norwegian folktale. They traveled all the way to the northern province of Finnmark, where polar bears live and the northern lights radiate across the sky.

Special thanks to the Brookfield Zoo...and to Dr. Lee Cera and the staff for their introduction to Kinapak the polar bear and for providing slides and photographs of Kinapak from his birth to the present."

Somehow, the animals and the zoo staff don't come across in quite the same way, do they? There is less a sense of "Wow, through the wardrobe door to magical adventures" in the second description, no? So why couldn't that first description have been written like this:

"Jan Brett and her husband...went to Iqaluit for her story, which was inspired by Inuit art. Jan sought to recreate in the story the richness of the art and handcrafted clothing that she had seen there, and modeled Aloo-Ki after the children she met at a local school.

Special thanks to the people of Iqaluit who welcomed Jan and provided her with such rich inspiration and ideas."

-1 degrees.

2009-12-10T23:46:00.002-06:00

Me: "It's minus one degrees!"

Bean: "What does that mean?"

Me: "It means it's one degree below zero. It's less than zero degrees."

Bean: "...how is that possible?"

My question exactly. How is it $%#*ing possible that it is so cold? And if it feels this bad now, how on earth are we going to last through February?

Non-disabled disability stupidity.

2009-11-28T23:16:00.003-06:00

On Facebook, one of my friends posted a link to this article from Fox News:
Paralympian Drags Himself to Plane After Airline Makes Him Check Wheelchair
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Kurt Fearnley
A paralympic champion who dragged himself through an airport after a budget airline made him check in his wheelchair has received an apology.

Kurt Fearnley had just crawled along a 60-mile jungle track in Papua New Guinea.

But when he arrived at Brisbane airport a few days later, Jetstar— an offshoot of Qantas airlines — asked him to check in his wheelchair.

The Australian budget airline offered him its own wheelchair, specially designed for planes, but told Fearnley he would have to be pushed by airline staff.

Fearnley, who won marathon gold in the Beijing and Athens Paralympics, was insulted at being asked to give up his independence.

He said the equivalent for an able-bodied person "would be having your legs tied together, your pants pulled down and be carried or pushed through an airport."

In protest, he rejected the airline's wheelchair and dragged himself through the terminal, in and out of the toilet, and onto the plane.

Jetstar has now issued an apology, saying any embarrassment and hurt was not intentional.

It said its policy for passengers in wheelchairs was for them to transfer to the airline wheelchair, which is more maneuverable on the plane, at the boarding gate.

Jetstar have now assured Fearnley they are working on an alternative boarding procedure for disabled passengers.

He said: "As long as that's going ahead, I'm more than happy."

Since the incident, a man from Melbourne has said he spent six days in hospital after he fell out of a Jetstar wheelchair while being pushed by staff.

Trevor Carroll, of South Morang, told ABC news he handed over his four-wheeled walking frame on a Jetstar flight earlier this month, but it was broken in the baggage hold.

The airline offered to fix it, but he had no way to get home.

The first commenter following my friend's link said this:

Hmmm. Not sure if I agree with the passenger. Sounds to me like the airline had a common denominator policy. I would love to have airlines accommodate my specific needs for travelling with a child (carseat, stroller), but they don't. I don't think they're trying to take away my rights as a parent. I think this passenger was offered a reasonable alternative and hasn't proved that the airline was acting in bad faith. I also think the passenger was childish in his response.

Another person commented, and this person - I will call her Clueless - came back and wrote:
...I think it's tough travelling with a small child. Much harder than if I had only myself to look after. The needs of parents with children are not akin to the needs of passengers who are travelling unemcumbered. That's where the airlines have to draw the line. It's up to the airline and overseeing agencies to determine what is safe and reasonable for all passengers and their staff while, at the same time, run a profitable business. I respect that every individual, not just those with disabilities, decides what is reasonable. But not everyone's own desire can be accommodated. What happens then? The airline can't control the passenger's emotions or thoughts, but they can provide reasonble physical assistance which they did. That's why I think this passenger was childish in his response. He was offered more assistance than I get as a parent travelling with a small child.

I was not the only one with my jaw hanging open. Someone else posted:
Having a child is not a disability. However much you might like some assistance with your child while travelling, you are not disabled.

And a second commenter also wrote:
...Adaptive equipment is very specific to the human using the tool. Aside from being humiliating and dehumanizing to have your gear taken away from you and be helped onto the plane, it's also insulting to have a spectrum of disabilities gathered up and placed in the same wheelchair. I have both a husband with a disability and a small child. And let me tell you, the airport is a million times more conducive to traveling with my small child than with my husband.

But Clueless didn't get it. She didn't understand what these two commenters had pointed out so well: having a child, having a difficult time traveling, is not a disability.

Clueless weighed in to say this:
I think anyone who thinks my situation with a toddler is less difficult than a disabled traveler is doing precisely what you seem to think I'm doing. You're being insensitive to my situation. I may not be disabled, but it is hard to me to travel with my toddler. Whatever your conclusions are; they're your conclusions.

Good for you if you can manage better than I and lots of other parents can. Good for the disabled people who understand that they have choices about what they do, like travel on an airplane when it's not the easiest thing to do. Good for people with disabilities and parents with toddlers who strive to do more than is easy. I think it's important to remember that this passenger has CHOSEN to get on planes and do all the things he is doing though disabled. He was never denied the opportunity; it wasn't as he wanted/needed it to be. That's my issue with his reaction. If he never given as much help as he was offered, I would be very upset. (This is why I get really mad at anti-gay measures. Give everyone the same opportunity. Once upon a time, my own marriage would have been unwelcome/illegal.)

So, essentially, the argument is:
1) Disability access is only important if Clueless is able to get the help she needs when she travels with her toddler on planes. (It's all about meeeeee!!!)

2) Having a disability is exactly the same as traveling with a toddler on a plane. To me, this really speaks of a particular kind of entitlement - the entitlement of being able to move easily through the rest of one's life, and then, when something or someone (like a small child and the airport security or an uncomfortable, crowded plane) slows you down and makes you dependent on other people, you think, "wow, this must be what it's like to be disabled! Hey, the fact that I'm experiencing this means that I *am* disabled! Hey, I want some of those special disability rights!"

3) If you choose to get on a plane or to do, really, anything, then you have only yourself to blame for flying in the first place if you don't get the accommodations you need. Except, of course, if you are Clueless, who seems to feel that choosing to get on a plane is something this guy could have easily not done - which would have meant a professional athlete no longer competing, but, you know, it's *his* choice to get on that plane. Her own choice to travel with her toddler? Not mentioned in the same way at all. And look, I've encountered the "you don't have to travel with your kid on planes" crap from the anti-parent, anti-kid crowd. And it *is* crap. If you are going great distances, most often, you're gonna need to fly, unless you happen to a lot of money and vacation time. So while Clueless certainly chooses to fly, I don't begrudge her that decision. I would never say that if she chooses to put herself and her kid on a plane, she deserves to be inconvenienced. No. I would say that airlines need to accommodate their passengers, period, END OF SENTENCE, whether than means finding a way to get my own elderly parents to their connecting flight or making sure that every body on the plane has adequate space and a seatbelt that fits, airplanes need to accommodate their passengers.

But I also wonder what is so difficult about travelling with a toddler that she feels she needs special assistance beyond the early boarding and gate checking of all kinds of additional luggage that the airline already provides? Ensuring that all bathrooms have a changing table would certainly help, but beyond that, I'm really scratching my head. I'm thinking that if Clueless is having a hard time traveling with a toddler on a plane, she probably is having a hard time parenting a toddler in general, and if this is the case, it at least makes some kind of weird sense out of her comments.

4) Everything needs to be exactly equal, everyone should be offered the exact same opportunities for assistance, regardless of whether some people already have more assistance and some people already have less. This is like saying to a starving person and a well-fed person, "here, you can split this sandwich." That is offering each the exact same opportunities for assistance, and it does not meet the needs of the starving person, but hey, on the face of it, it looks fair. The fact that Clueless was motivated to anger re. anti-gay marriage legislation, not because it's morally wrong to prevent people from getting married based on sexual orientation, and not because it violates civil rights to do so, but because her own marriage would have been illegal at some time in the past (It's all about meeeee! again.) and so she feels this one, further suggests that she is less concerned with righting serious societal wrongs than she is with where and how she is affected by these societal wrongs.

What I wanted to say, and didn't, is that it is exactly this kind of self-centered entitled bullshit that makes the anti-parent folks hate us. This is why even our allies sometimes get pissed off at us. Thank you, Clueless, for giving someone, somewhere, another reason to not want to support parents who need support.

In the end, her arrogant ignorance was too much for me. I suggested that she visit Bint and CripChick and educate herself. I hope she does.

What is it about "queer" that seems to invite "mediocre"?

2009-11-25T10:30:00.000-06:00

(If you have had this experience, then you know exactly what I mean, and I will not have to pull any punches. If you have not had this experience, then you'll probably get mad and leave me hate mail. If you are still reading after all this time, that is.)

I don't know why it is that people feel that having had a painful or meaningful experience entitles them to make some sort of bad art (poetry, music, whatever) about it and then blast the rest of us with it in the name of unity, but COME ON. For some reason, this seems, in my experience, to happen most frequently at queer-themed events. I think it might be because some people confuse the emotional impact of an experience with the emotional impact of art, and they think that expressing these strong feelings through writing or song will automatically result in art.

And you know, I encourage the expression of feelings and the creation of art, even bad art. I have written a lot of bad poetry, in fact.

But if you are going to perform, then please at least do us the courtesy of taking your art seriously enough to be somewhat good at it. Study it - don't just assume that anyone can do it and that what you wrote down at three in the morning or what you sound like when you sing in the shower is ready to be shared with the world.

Look, I'm not saying that people who can't sing shouldn't sing. I'm saying that if there is going to be a highly-publicized performance, please, can't it be halfway decent? If you are going to hang your painting in a coffee shop, can't it be informed by some knowledge of color and design?

I have never liked the way people use the word "gay" or "queer" to mean "odd" or "stupid." I for sure don't want to see it become shorthand for "mediocre".

Abortion truck fail.

2009-10-27T23:19:00.003-05:00

On my way to work, I drive past the local Planned Parenthood, the one which some idiot rammed his car into not to long ago (as in, INTO - he made eye contact with the receptionist and then drove the car straight at her, into the building). Today I left later than I usually leave, and so when I went by Planned Parenthood, I saw some activity there that I don't usually see. I noticed one of those obnoxious abortion trucks (though, I must say, this one did not have bloody pictures on it, unlike the ones that hang out in South Dakota) parked a few doors down, in front of the fake clinic.

For a second, I felt annoyed. Then, I decided to do something about my annoyance.
I pulled in right in front of the abortion truck, parked, walked up the block to Planned Parenthood, and wrote them a check right then and there. I contemplated telling the abortion truck people that they had motivated me to give money to Planned Parenthood, and I would have had they said anything to me, but they didn't, and I decided not to taunt them, both because I'm trying to be a better person than that, and also because I think they're often a bit unhinged and have proven themselves to be dangerous.

The elimination diet.

2009-10-23T21:42:00.002-05:00

So, have I mentioned that I am on an elimination diet? Well, let me tell you: I am on an elimination diet. I have been on this elimination diet for nearly six weeks, and I have two foods to re-challenge before I will know what needs to stay out of my diet for another 8 weeks, followed by more food challenges, and what I can eat. This has been a complicated process, involving a lot of thinking about food, and a lot of natural bologna with goat cheese on spelt bread sandwiches (which are really quite good, but getting a little old, after six weeks). I have discovered the fascinating world of wheat-free eating (if you are avoiding gluten, check out Arico brand cookies - they are excellent and only a little odd), dairy-free eating (my absolute, hands-down favorite fake ice cream is Coconut Bliss, which is made from coconut milk and other yummy stuff AND which uses agave syrup instead of sugar; corn-free eating (not really an issue, except for the corn syrup that shows up in places you wouldn't expect); and nightshade vegetable-free eating (which, combined with the wheat and dairy avoidance, means I can't eat Italian food, which hurts. Though I hear there is a product, "no-mato," that is an excellent tomato substitute.).

I suspect that I am sensitive to cheese and nightshades. Fortunately, I seem to be able to eat ice cream with abandon (which, in fact, I had to do - you have to test each food with about 5-6 servings). So whey is ok and casein is forbidden, or something like that.

I will re-test cheese and nightshades soon. I look forward to getting past the testing phase and being able to eat just a little less intentionally. I'm amazed that I'm making it through all the thinking about food without re-developing an eating disorder.

But on the plus side - I feel pretty good.

Officially tapped.

2009-10-20T23:43:00.003-05:00

It's finally happened. I have internet overload. I am exhausted by the amount of emails in my four email inboxes and Facebook, I have not been following anyone's blogging, and I certainly have not been posting. More and more, I am feeling the need to turn off the computer. The email balance has shifted from "a nice way to assist me in doing my work" to "a constant, droning buzz of communication that has reshaped the way I do my work, made me feel the need to be available to everyone 24/7, significantly shortened my attentional span and ability to concentrate, and greatly increased my workload." Meanwhile, there is little actual communication. When I do hear from a friend, I am too tired and busy to chat. And of course, I rarely talk to anyone on the phone.

I no longer look forward to blogging. I no longer enjoy it. I no longer have anything to say.

On top of this, I remember when email used to mean quick response time. This is no longer the case. We are all so overwhelmed with the constant flow that now, when I send a message outside of work, I often don't get a response for days/weeks. And, the same is true for my response time.

Why the hell are we doing this, again?

In the "smack your head" department...

2009-10-16T00:38:00.002-05:00

(Get out your bingo card...but seriously, this reminded me, as well, of the rabbi who refused to marry Mr. P and me (a memory I'd kind of blocked out). If we allow one person to determine the worth, merits, and legality of someone else's marriage, we have a problem.)

Interracial couple denied marriage license in La.
By MARY FOSTER, Associated Press Writer
NEW ORLEANS – A white Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

"There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage," Bardwell said. "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it."

If he did an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

"I try to treat everyone equally," he said.

Bardwell estimates that he has refused to marry about four couples during his career, all in the past 2 1/2 years.

Beth Humphrey, 30, and 32-year-old Terence McKay, both of Hammond, say they will consult the U.S. Justice Department about filing a discrimination complaint.

Humphrey, an account manager for a marketing firm, said she and McKay, a welder, just returned to Louisiana. She is white and he is black. She plans to enroll in the University of New Orleans to pursue a masters degree in minority politics.

"That was one thing that made this so unbelievable," she said. "It's not something you expect in this day and age."

Humphrey said she called Bardwell on Oct. 6 to inquire about getting a marriage license signed. She says Bardwell's wife told her that Bardwell will not sign marriage licenses for interracial couples. Bardwell suggested the couple go to another justice of the peace in the parish who agreed to marry them.

"We are looking forward to having children," Humphrey said. "And all our friends and co-workers have been very supportive. Except for this, we're typical happy newlyweds."

"It is really astonishing and disappointing to see this come up in 2009," said American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana attorney Katie Schwartzmann. She said the Supreme Court ruled in 1967 "that the government cannot tell people who they can and cannot marry."

The ACLU sent a letter to the Louisiana Judiciary Committee, which oversees the state justices of the peace, asking them to investigate Bardwell and recommending "the most severe sanctions available, because such blatant bigotry poses a substantial threat of serious harm to the administration of justice."

"He knew he was breaking the law, but continued to do it," Schwartzmann said.

According to the clerk of court's office, application for a marriage license must be made three days before the ceremony because there is a 72-hour waiting period. The applicants are asked if they have previously been married. If so, they must show how the marriage ended, such as divorce.

Other than that, all they need is a birth certificate and Social Security card.

The license fee is $35, and the license must be signed by a Louisiana minister, justice of the peace or judge. The original is returned to the clerk's office.

"I've been a justice of the peace for 34 years and I don't think I've mistreated anybody," Bardwell said. "I've made some mistakes, but you have too. I didn't tell this couple they couldn't get married. I just told them I wouldn't do it."

Politically Correct Atonement (Link)

2009-10-15T22:06:00.001-05:00

This is the funniest thing I've read in a while. (Green and Belle, you will appreciate it!)

On revising the Bible*.

2009-10-06T20:01:00.003-05:00

So I've seen the news that Conservapedia is editing the Bible to make it fit in with the twisted politics that Conservapedia espouses. In other words, Conservapedia is editing and rewriting the passages that have been understood to have liberal meanings.

And my big response to this is:

Yeah, and?

I mean, honestly, people? Do you think this is the first time that the Bible has been editing and revised? Do you not realize that the Bible has been mistranslated over and over again to suit a particular paradigm? Or that there are whole books that never made it into what we call the Bible because they were so radical (in other words, the collection of works into the Bible is *arbitrary*?!)

I'm just scratching my head, here - conservative Christians are revising the Bible and we are surprised? Even the most casual observance of conservative Christianity makes pretty clear that politics is what drives this movement. All these years, we've been saying, "hey, according to your logic, pork is just as sinful as homosexuality" - and it is - but have fundamentalists ever taken that seriously? No, of course not. Because it's not really about reading the Bible literally - it's only about reading the Bible literally if it supports their politics. The Leviticus stuff about homosexuality? That's all to be taken literally. But the minute you start talking about how "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God," then, THEN we have to hear about how the "eye of a needle" is really the name of a narrow passageway that is difficult - but not impossible! - to fit a camel through, and so this doesn't really have anything to do with money, at all. (I kid you not.)

And even if you've been completely unaware of this, you must at least know that Conservapedia doesn't actually provide factual information. Knowing that, why would we NOT expect them to revise the Bible?

Clearly, I am mostly aghast that anyone finds such behavior unusual or not in keeping with the conservative Christian movement.

*I don't actually know why I'm even capitalizing the "B" in "Bible". Perhaps it is because I'm irritated.

OK, a little more apparently needs to be said.

2009-10-02T23:59:00.003-05:00

Kate Harding said it here. But you should also read this, from California NOW's blog. I was sitting here, getting ready to go to bed, and then I read all these outraged statements from women I used to respect about how drugging and forcing a 13-year-old to have sex isn't really rape. No sleep now.

This is all that needs to be said about Roman Polanski.

2009-10-02T23:46:00.002-05:00

Check out Kate Harding, who reminds us that Roman Polanski raped a child.

Writers Needed - Independent Girls, Inc.

2009-09-15T12:32:00.000-05:00

Check it out:

Independent Girls, Inc. is a new nonprofit organization based in Florida , that aims to provide positive role models for girls, to get them thinking about goal setting and success, and to give them the tools to be self-confident, emotionally grounded, healthy, and independent. The main tool for doing this is a website, www.independentgirls.org (to be launched before the end of 2009). Each week the site will feature a different role model for girls as well as an article related to positive, healthy girls' development. The site will send regularly scheduled
e-mails to girls and parents who subscribe. Independent Girls' goal is to
create a counterbalance to the celebrity-saturated, image-based culture of 9 –15 year old girls by providing girls with the strong, positive female role models who are currently missing from teen media and by addressing issues germane to girls’ healthy development.

Independent Girls seeks people to write original content for the website and weekly newsletters. Writers will identify, research, and write about topics and trends salient to 9 – 15 year old girls, with an emphasis on what is important/necessary to becoming a healthy, balanced, emotionally grounded, confident girls. Additional emphasis will be placed on understanding popular culture and developing the critical thinking skills necessary to becoming media literate/savvy.

Weekly articles should provide girls with information about things that girls
deal with between the ages of 9 - 15, for example self-esteem, body image, puberty, bullying/ cyberbullying, healthy relationships, eating disorders, healthy eating/nutrition, exercise, time management/stress management, goal setting, leadership, cliques and popularity, frenemies, peer pressure, financial independence, internet safety, and media awareness. Articles should be between 250-500 words long; some topics may need to be covered in a series of articles. Articles should be informative and easy to read and, most importantly, must engage girls. Articles should answer questions that girls have (and perhaps even answer questions that girls didn't even know that they had).

The site will also feature blogs where writers can have on-going editorial columns about different topics.

Please contact Julie Simons if you are interested in getting involved with this project: julie@independentgirls.org/561-352-3511. Compensation will be per article published and will be based on both the length of the article and how ready for publication the article is upon receipt by Independent Girls.

Scary Black People.

2009-09-13T21:38:00.002-05:00

Because that's the theme of this week, isn't it? Whether it's our President who is called a liar in the middle of his televised address to Congress - and I don't remember that *ever* happening before, even to the latest Bush, who was lying nearly all the time - or Serena Williams, who so frightened the line judge that said judge said that Williams had actually threatened her life - it seems that when Black people speak, everyone else has a strong reaction. The reaction to Obama was simply, clearly, one of disrespect. The reaction to Williams was one of fear (because when Black women get angry, dontcha know, there's reason to fear for your life).

I'm disgusted. (And even more disgusted that John Effing McInroe had anything to say about Williams. Come on. The only *possible* response from McInroe would be something along the lines of, "Hey, that wasn't such a big deal. I've done worse.") What really chaps my hide is the notion that it's particularly unseemly because she is a woman.

But here's where it gets ugly. I looked up the story from Yahoo, just because it was there on my browser and it was accessible. Take a look at the link that the Yahoo story is directing readers to. The YouTube title is: "Serena Williams screams to Line judge "I would kill you" and later on goes away [HQ] US OPEN Kim Clijsters Semi-Finals Women." She didn't, in fact, threaten to kill the line judge. But it gets even worse: this is a video *response* to the event, so if you watch, you can see both the perpetuation of lies about Serena Williams *and* some good old American racism of all flavors. I don't advise watching or reading the comments unless you like high blood pressure. But the Yahoo "sportswriter" apparently felt that this was an appropriate link for readers to follow to get the "full" story.

If you're curious, here's a better link to the altercation.

Meanwhile, there are punishments for being an angry Black woman. Serena, I'm so sorry this is happening.

Crabs in a barrel.

2009-09-13T10:47:00.004-05:00

Tenured Radical has a post up about saying no to excess work in academe. It's a good post. I liked it, with the exception of the tiny little part where she writes:

If any attention is called by those who are working hardest to those who are making themselves unavailable, shrieks about academic freedom, child care, and commuting rend the land (despite the great number of people with small children, or who are in commuting relationships, who do manage to come to work.) At the risk of annoying the hard-working parents who do come to work and carry a fair load with the rest of us, I need to ask: if you have a child and I don't, and we get paid the same salary, why am I doing your work for you? I didn't have children because I wanted the time: instead, I got no child and I got no time. You get someone to help you navigate the nursing home, I'll end up with a big bottle of Klonopin mixed in a bowl of ice cream.

The implication, of course, is that it is the parents who are not pulling their weight (yes, I know she says earlier that most parents do come to work, but it is still parents who are the problem in this paragraph). This opinion is not limited to TR (who, in the comments, seems to feel less that it is parents actually not doing the work and more that she should be able to suggest, for the purpose of her argument, that it is parents not doing the work). Almost anyone, parent or not, has heard this idea in the workplace. Parents very often volunteer to take early-morning classes specifically to avoid being perceived as someone asking for special favors, though I've had colleagues who have had special arrangements made so that they could go home to care for their pet (which, by the way, is fine with me - but I think it's interesting that there is not a chorus, in these cases, of "why should I have to do your work so that you can go home to walk the dog?"). Or, as TR mentions, the commuters; I had a colleague once who lived a good hour outside of town. Had she been allowed to leave early to miss rush hour, we would have had to work later. (I was happy to do this, by the way, but she was not allowed to do so.)

In bringing in one of her reasons not to have a child, TR also trots out the old, I-made-the-choice-not-to-do-this-but-you-made-the-choice-to-do-it-so-why-should-I-have-to-accomodate-you-in-any-way? This is a common response to those of us struggling to balance parenting and working out of the home. I have been surprised at the vehemence with which people I would think would otherwise be sensitive feminists respond to this issue.

Don't be fooled. The issue is not that a few parents make a big deal out of needing to rush home to pick up little Johnny and therefore can't make a committee meeting. The issue is that, in academe, as in many other places, we are crabs in a barrel. We know, as TR has pointed out, that if one of us is working less than the others, someone else will have to work more to make up for this slacking. And so we watch carefully to see who is doing what and who is excusing what.

It isn't fair that parents get special consideration for their children's needs when others who need special consideration for a host of other needs don't get it. It's also not fair that mothers in academe are mostly adjuncts because academe isn't a place that accomodates mothers. Too bad, right? Guess we should have thought of that and elected either not to have children or found another profession. But I don't accept this response - I think we have a responsibility to change the system. Academic parents - largely mothers, I would hazard a guess - have forced the beginnings of a change in academe by at least making the problems of balancing academic work and parenting public. The literature itself has become a new field of study. People are paying attention to these issues, and while we have not necessarily made great strides - I can think of one person who has been made to give up her maternity leave entirely to chair her department and teach additional classes beyond her normal courseload - we have at least begun to take small steps.

The response to this, from some corners, is a great, wailing, "that's not fair!" And in some cases, it's not, and this should be rectified. No one should be able to use their children as an excuse to get out of work. But at the same time, hopefully, we're all here together in academe for the long haul. When my son is very young, I might ask not to teach a night class. When my son is a little older, though, I could teach a couple of night classes a semester. So why not think about rotating teaching schedules over longer periods of time, for instance? Not getting out of work - balancing the work, recognizing that people (not just parents) have different needs at different times. You write best in the early morning and have a book to finish? I can teach at 8am this year so you don't have to. And so on.

I don't really want to write about this next part, but it's happened so often that I feel the need to talk about it.

The conversation in the comments on TR's blog focused on parenting. She didn't like that. She felt the parents were "obsessing" and that this focus, when her whole post was almost entirely about something else, simply illustrated that parents insist on focusing only and always about their children.

She didn't understand the weight of what she had written about parents, which is why it became the topic of conversation. She totally missed that she had used the most pervasive negative stereotype, that stereotype that parents don't pull their own weight.

The reason I'm writing about this here is that I'm reminded of some of the huge feminist blow-ups that have happened when one person has pointed out that another person has said something offensive. You can go read the comment thread for yourself and come to your own determination. But I'm left with the sad awareness that someone whose blog I like thinks it's ok to make nasty asides about academic parents and feels that calling her out on this is selfish and blog-hoggy (I left 3 out of 46 comments) and in my case, a bully. It is also stunning to once again see that explaining why these kinds of comments are so painful for and detrimental to academic parents is often perceived as claiming parenthood as a privileged status.

Sigh.

Until we can learn not to scapegoat each other, whether we do so with real venom or with rhetorical flourish, for the purpose of making a larger point, we are not going to get anywhere with making any real change in our workloads - or anything else.

Internet v. duck-feeding

2009-09-12T22:28:00.002-05:00

Tonight we fed the ducks at the pond; we were heading out with stale bread when our neighbor stopped us, ran to his garage, and brought out a huge bag of corn to give us. So we fed the ducks with abandon.

Then we drove to the mall for underwear and socks.

The semester has begun, and I've been thinking about how to keep my calm, unruffled mind as I move out of the summer and into the hectic season of school. Already, there are reasons to be ruffled. Chief among these is that I have grown accustomed, through the magic of the internet, to getting immediate answers to all of my questions. Often, I will get responses to my emails before I've even logged out of my account. This tends to lengthen my email sessions, and it's not uncommon that I can sit down, intending just to send a couple of messages, and look up two hours later, having had entire conferences in that time.

Only now, I'm waiting for responses from several people who do not use email frequently, and it. is. excruciating.

But I'm trying to look at this as a gift. I do so much work on email that I am always, always accessible. I check it frequently because someone just might need my help, have a question, need something from me. There was a time when we did this in order to stay in touch with our students - but students no longer rely on email. And so I'm thinking that there is room to disconnect, just a little. It would be ok for me to not check my email the first thing every morning and the last thing every night.

And then maybe we could do our underwear shopping and duck-feeding during the day.

Great day.

2009-08-24T23:08:00.002-05:00

You would think that a day that included cat barf, cat pee, and ants would not be a great day, but you would be wrong. The main thing that made this day great was the 1.5 mile round-trip walk to the pool and back with Bean, and the way that the trees, especially the occasional birch trees, which always take my breath away, looked against the perfect summer afternoon sky. We had such a fun time that he hardly complained at all about being made to walk rather than ride in the car, and he didn't mind when I got cold and sat in the sun while he continued to splash and swim and play.

I can't emphasize enough what that walk did for me. It was a great lifting of spirits, which had not been low to begin with, but it was one of those moments when the natural world and the sense of the presence of a benign spirit connect with you so that you feel pure joy. It's hours later and I'm still ridin' that high.

Working my way through other people's problems.

2009-08-23T22:36:00.002-05:00

I came to two realizations today. Well, ok, one realization, because the first one is pretty obvious and I figured it out a while ago:

1) Don't post all your shit on Facebook. I am continually astounded by what my Facebook Friends are up to. People who are job hunting or will be, soon, post on Facebook about their annoying students. In detail. Others forward bits of private emails and also email messages from listserves. Why would anyone visit this trouble on themselves? Don't they realize that their future employers will not be impressed?

2) I recently spent time with a friend, and being with him made me feel very stressed out. I couldn't figure out why, because I had felt pretty great beforehand, but while I was with him, I was getting increasingly edgy and upset. I finally figured out that it was simply because *he* was so incredibly anxious and stressed - but in a low-key way, so that I didn't realize it at the time - that he was triggering all of my own anxiety. Once I realized this, I was able to let go of the accumulated stress and find my way back to my happy place. (No, I'm not a horrible person - he is just someone who carries around a lot of anxiety.)

Legs.

2009-08-18T22:54:00.002-05:00

We are now almost entirely moved into our new home. All that is left in the apartment seems to be cleaning supplies, a chair that is headed for the landfill, the pictures on the walls, and a few random items. Probably one or two carloads, altogether, if I include the stuff still in Mr. P's closet. Not too bad.

Meanwhile, the new place is cozy and comfortable and I really like it. But, as some of you know, I have a bit of a bug phobia, and our basement has a lot of spiders in it (little ones, at least). I even went to therapy a few years ago specifically to work on my arachnophobia, and I learned that it is an anxiety disorder and that using relaxation really helps (it does - I am in a much better, happier place than I was when I first went for treatment).

So I'm a teensy bit on alert here, but still quite comfortable.

However.

This morning I found six legs in the bathtub. They were not attached to anything. I don't know who they belonged to. Two were big and four were small. I really don't even like to speculate about this, and I don't feel much like using the tub. I imagine that there may have been an epic battle in the tub involving one or both of the cats, but again, really, it's probably best not to speculate.

Whole Foods boycott still misses the point

2009-08-14T00:33:00.003-05:00

You have probably heard about this already. Just for the record, I shop at Whole Foods all the time. On the one hand, I wish the boycott a lot of luck, and I hope that jerk, John Mackey, loses money (it's not lost on me that telling people to take responsibility for themselves and eat right conveniently puts money into his pocket, since eating right would mean eating organic, non-genetically modified, "whole foods", wouldn't it?).

But the larger problem here is that as long as we see food as a matter of individual choices rather than community responsibility, most people are not going to get the healthy foods they need. I had the chance to meet Winona LaDuke a while back, shortly after my breast cancer was diagnosed. (She said, "I bet you're eating organic *now*, huh?" And I was/am.) But I asked her, "How do we do this organic thing in the city, when buying organic means shopping at exclusive and expensive stores that are out of reach of most folks?" And she said: backyard vegetable gardens. But it became clear to me, after thinking about this, and about the time and space and knowledge needed to garden, and about the need for shared greenhouses, that this is really a community endeavor. We can't simply garden for ourselves any more than we can simply buy produce for our own families at Whole Foods. We need to find ways, as neighborhoods, to make healthy food available to everyone.

So, to get back to my hands - on the other hand, boycotting Whole Foods is really not as effective as is working toward other, community-supported, long-range solutions. It might make a difference re. health care, which is, of course, the sole purpose behind the boycott, but it doesn't solve these larger problems. Also, Trader Joe's does not have a great record re. unions, at least in MN (they were recommended as a place to shop during the boycott). Local co-ops may be the place to go, but they are financially out of reach for most people.

Thoughts?

I shoulda gone to art school...

2009-08-11T09:05:00.003-05:00

...or at least taken a class in color and/or painting. I'm trying to manage a couple of small painting projects before we move, and it feels a lot like trying to make up a song, like my brain isn't big or strong enough to manage the different colors/sounds all at once, especially when the paint swatches/notes are so very close in color/tone. Right now I've got this bright purpl-y thing going that was supposed to be much darker and with more brown in it. Maybe another coat or two...

And IKEA continues to confound me with it's impossible instructions. I consider myself to be fairly smart, and I decipher a number of these to put furniture pieces together. This hinge business, though, is a whole nother thing.

And, we're moving. So I'm off to grab a few more random things off bookcases and dressers, out of cupboards and closets. See you later.

So, What Is Feminist Mothering?

2009-08-07T09:15:00.000-05:00

My new post on Feministe.

I'm at Feministe this week.

2009-08-05T21:19:00.001-05:00

Stop by, and stay tuned for more posts...

The vacation thus far.

2009-07-19T23:20:00.002-05:00

We've been to New York and New Jersey, seen several friends and lots of family (and one performance of "Mary Poppins"), and had unbelievable cat drama that began within a few days of leaving and that seems to be continuing. As I write this, my friend is on her way to the emergency animal clinic with one cat who, my friend says, "sounds like she is crying" and seems to have injured her leg. Previously, my other cat gave this friend such a hard time when she tried to give her her thyroid medication that we had to call around - from the east coast - to find someone in the Twin Cities who could do this for her. (Thank goodness, we found someone.)

It has been a very exciting - and expensive - vacation. I think we will have to stay put after this. I'm hoping things will calm down because I am worried about my furry babies.

Other highlights:
* I rode the subway - by myself - for the first time in about a decade. They don't use tokens anymore. Who knew?
* I saw the new Harry Potter movie. It rocks. And I've hidden the people on Facebook who are complaining about how much they don't like Harry Potter and are not going to read the books or see the movies. Blah blah blah. I'm going to see it again.
* Bean met two very friendly dogs this week and has come a long way toward being less afraid of dogs. I also spent some serious thought considering whether or not we should get a dog. Perhaps my cats's issues are simply psychic freakouts about this possibility.

We leave tomorrow at 8:00 am. I'm up now, waiting to hear back from the vet. It's going to be a short night.

Christina Hoff (yawn) Sommers

2009-07-02T21:06:00.003-05:00

"All books have mistakes, so why pick on the feminists? My complaint with feminist research is not so much that the authors make mistakes; it is that the mistakes are impervious to reasoned criticism. They do not get corrected. The authors are passionately committed to the proposition that American women are oppressed and under siege. The scholars seize and hold on for dear life to any piece of data that appears to corroborate their dire worldview. At the same time, any critic who attempts to correct the false assumptions is dismissed as a backlasher and an anti-feminist crank."

Eyeroll. Yawn. More eyerolling. It would be nice if the Chronicle would stop soliciting anti-feminist diatribes from Sommers and Daphne Patai - whose own works on feminism are littered with inaccuracies and anecdotally-based conclusions - and would instead ask some actual feminist scholars to write about feminist scholarship. In the meantime, read Tenured Radical's excellent response.

U-Haul mystery.

2009-07-02T16:32:00.002-05:00

Some of you know that Mr. Plain(s)feminist and I are about to become first-time homeowners. That process might be something I should blog about at some point, though I suspect that most of my readers have already become homeowners and would not be surprised by the things that surprised us (such as closing costs - ouch!). Many of my friends are already on their second or third houses.

Anyway, in preparation for our upcoming move, I decided to pick up some file boxes so that I could unload and then get rid of some filing cabinets that we don't really need any longer. I had a really good experience with U-Haul boxes (sturdy and just the right size) the last time we moved, so I looked up U-Haul on the internet and set off for one not too far from me.

When I got there, the address was printed in big numbers on the building, and there were storage and U-Haul signs, so I knew I was in the right place. However, there seemed to be no front to the building. There were two doors; one was a heavy, single door, set between two loading docks, with a sign above it that read "Sales." The other was a heavy, double door, next to a dumpster, and opened onto another loading dock. Both were windowless doors that looked like employee or back entrances. There was one window in the building, but there was shelving set against it on the other side. Both doors were locked. I felt certain that I was at the back entrance of the building, but when I tried to drive around to the front of the building, I found that there was no way to get there. The driveway ended and was blocked by a large dumpster. The building itself was set on a block next to a railyard, and the street did not go all the way around the block so that the southern and western sides of the building were inaccessible.

I finally sat in the parking lot and called the number I had gotten off the computer, which remained busy each time I called. Then I called the number on the side of the building and got an answering machine. There were plenty of cars in the parking lot, so I assume that they were open for business. But how their customers were able to get into the building to do any business, I will never figure out.

Please welcome back to the blog...

2009-06-30T19:50:00.002-05:00

...my buddy Wide Lawns, whom I've been following for a couple of years now. I got crotchety and de-blogrolled her a while back when she overhauled her blog and changed its focus significantly, but she is a fabulous writer and she has won me back. Check her out.

Chapter 37, wherein I gross myself out.

2009-06-29T23:15:00.002-05:00

So, for the last couple of weeks, I have watched as hives on my leg grew larger and larger. They started out as two distinct red weals, not unlike the ones I had on the same leg during my chemo (Taxol) days. But then they got a little bigger and developed a red, raised ring around each with a paler center. I figured that I must be having a reaction to Tamoxifen, as "rash" is listed under possible severe reactions. I also suspected the raspberries and strawberries I've been eating with abandon, which have never caused problems before, but which are suspect fruit nonetheless.

Today, after determining that the spots were, in fact, getting larger and not fading away, I began to think that I ought to do something about them. First, I called my oncologist's office, and we discussed the possibility of my stopping the Tamoxifen for a week to see if what I had been calling a rash went away. Then, I went to see my healing coach (also an RN), who took one look and said, "That is not a rash. You need to stop diagnosing yourself and go to urgent care. Those look like bites, and they could be tick bites." Next, I had an appointment with my physical therapist, who also weighed in: "You've been having a lot of medications; you should see your oncologist and make sure it's nothing to do with those." So, I hiked across the hospital campus to my oncologist's office - which was, strangely and fortuitously, completely empty - and asked to see the nurse. The nurse took a look and got the NP, who took a look and said, "Tick bite. Go to urgent care." (They also reassured me that Lyme Disease would be easily treated since it had only been a couple of weeks since the red spots had shown up.)

I drove directly to urgent care and hung around until they opened. The nurse took one look and said...

...

..."ringworm."

UGH.

Disgusting.

And also, completely unexpected.

The doctor also took one look and said, "ringworm," though the ringworm test failed to show evidence of ringworm. So we did a Lyme Disease test, just to be sure. I expect a phone call in the next day or so with those results.

Meanwhile, I'm not allowing to go in the public pools (found this out a bit late, as I'd been in several over the last week and a half) until this clears up, and Mr. P. just had to wash the bed linens (for the second time this week - there was another vengeance cat pee recently).

At least it sounds like ringworm isn't actually a *worm*, which makes me feel a bit better about the whole thing. *shudder*

The MJ Furor.

2009-06-27T17:14:00.002-05:00

Seriously, this is bizarre. The fan frenzy surrounding Michael Jackson's death is turning friend against friend. One of my Facebook friends has been defriended by one of *her* Facebook friends - and called a "douchebag" - for not liking Michael Jackson. I have a suspicion that this is not an isolated incident.

I also think it's odd that we are surprised by the internet and Twitter traffic his death has caused. This is what happens when an icon dies. Had Twitter been around when Princess Diana died, it would have happened then, as well. Further, while I am in agreement with the lamentations about the state of journalism and of America's attention span as evidenced by the media focus on Michael Jackson rather than, say, Iran, I also don't think this is anything new. Has there been any noteworthy media coverage on the Congo, lately? No? Thought not. At least in this case, there is a particular news item that is overwhelming other news stories, and it is not simply that America doesn't give a shit.

Guest Blogging on Feministe!

2009-06-24T10:04:00.001-05:00

Wow, I am so excited - I was invited to guest blog at Feministe this summer! I will let you all know when this will be (now I have to think of something to write about...).

PSA: Stop Using Zicam

2009-06-20T10:41:00.002-05:00

I am a huge fan of Zicam, but I will now stop using it. Click for full statement:

FDA NEWS RELEASE

For Immediate Release: June 16, 2009

Media Inquiries: Siobhan DeLancey, 301-796-4668, siobhan.delancey@fda.hhs.gov
Consumer Inquiries: 888-INFO-FDA

FDA Advises Consumers Not To Use Certain Zicam Cold Remedies
Intranasal Zinc Product Linked to Loss of Sense of Smell
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today advised consumers to stop using three products marketed over-the-counter as cold remedies because they are associated with the loss of sense of smell (anosmia). Anosmia may be long-lasting or permanent.

The products are:
--Zicam Cold Remedy Nasal Gel
--Zicam Cold Remedy Nasal Swabs
--Zicam Cold Remedy Swabs, Kids Size (a discontinued product)

The FDA has received more than 130 reports of loss of sense of smell associated with the use of these three Zicam products. In these reports, many people who experienced a loss of smell said the condition occurred with the first dose; others reported a loss of the sense of smell after multiple uses of the products.

Raychel.

2009-06-20T10:27:00.002-05:00

This is a reminder that same-sex marriage is not the only, or even the most important, battle.

ETA: I am unable to confirm that the murder actually happened; there is apparently some suspicion that this is a hoax.

Fat and food politics for breast cancer survivors.

2009-06-14T09:42:00.003-05:00

I went to a sort of "spa day" yesterday that was held by my onc's office. It was lovely to have a positive, confidence-building experience like that with other survivors - we had healing touch sessions, massage, tai chi, etc. - but I am really rankled by the way that the issues of food and weight were handled. The nutritionist spoke in very vague ways about food, listing certain foods that had particular anti-cancer properties. That was helpful. What was not helpful was the following:

Telling a room of women of all shapes and sizes to "be as lean as possible without being underweight," which is a recommendation of the American Cancer Society. Here's the problem with that. The research on diets tells us that they don't work - including Weight Watchers. The vast majority - over 90% - of dieters (including Weight Watchers) gain all the weight back, plus more, within five years. Meanwhile, the stress on your body and heart of gaining and losing and gaining and losing weight is phenomenal. Heart disease is (I think?) the leading cause of death among women. Something to keep in mind.

Moreover, telling anxious women to lose weight (the nutritionist was rail-thin) without giving them some real guidelines for how to eat healthily and exercise sufficiently is just mean. And further telling them that the recommendation for daily exercise is 60-90 minutes a day is insane. How many of us would ever be able to do that? Most people would say, "I can't even come close to that - I give up." Further, it was unclear what she meant by "exercise," since one of the suggested activities to count into that 60-90 minutes was GARDENING. She also said that walking around in the office counted into that. So I think that the actual recommendation is for 60-90 minutes of ACTIVITY, and 30 minutes of aerobic exercise. But she was extremely vague and did not clarify this when asked. Perhaps she didn't know.

Finally, the food at this event was typical, midwestern lunch food - white bread, chicken, cheeses, green salad, and several pasta or other salads, with cake and brownies for dessert. How about using this as an opportunity to share whole foods and vegetables that women may be unfamiliar with? How about showing how delicious eating an anti-cancer diet can be?

What I came away with after her presentation were the (false) ideas that gardening is an aerobic activity; that Kosher meat is no different than conventional meat; that sugar is fine to eat in moderation (without any mention of paying attention to when you eat it and with what). I'm frustrated for the women there who are going to take this as true because the woman who said it has a lot of fancy certifications.

Working for Water.

2009-06-10T22:27:00.001-05:00

I just read this extraordinarily moving piece, and I wanted to share it with all of you:
"The Constant Potter".

Um, what should I call this? Celebrity news fail?

2009-06-05T14:54:00.003-05:00

The sentences in italics appear in the article as clickable links for more information. This is so blatantly bizarre that I will just leave you to it:

Kelly Clarkson: I'm Tired of Hearing "the Fat Joke"Us Magazine - June 5, 2009 6:07 AM PDT

Kelly Clarkson says she's tired of being bullied over her weight.

"For seven years it's been happening. It's like, 'OK cool, the fat joke,'" she said during an interview with 2Day FM's Kyle and Jackie O Show in Australia.

Look back at the weight ups and downs of your favorite Idol stars!

Despite the taunts, the American Idol champ says, "I love my body. I'm very much OK with it. I don't think artists are ever the ones who have the problem with their weight, it is other people."

See stars who underwent dramatic weight losses

Clarkson has also come under scrutiny over her sexuality. She says she doesn't care if people think she is gay.

Look back at the most controversial Idol contestants of all time
Her only gripe?

"The rumors are not helping me on the dating front!" she said. "I prefer the boys. I'm extremely flattered when I do get hit on by girls, and I think it's hot, but I'm not into it. I like boys."

Check out 20 unforgettable moments from this year's American Idol finale

She said she's in no rush to find Mr. Right.

"I'm only 27, not 40 and still single!" she said. "I enjoy being single, I love work and I think people are so passive with relationships and I'm not that person."

See which Idol stars have gotten married or had babies.

Added Clarkson, "I'm an extremist, I'm either in a relationship or I'm not. I'm honest about it and I'll tell people, it's just there's nothing to tell. I have a very good life."

Hell and back, and integration.

2009-06-04T20:07:00.003-05:00

In Reinventing Eve, Kim Chernik writes about the brave women who descend into Hel (one "l") and return (they wear a Hel-met - no kidding). In Surfacing, Margaret Atwood's main character "dies" and spends time in a world of the dead before coming back to her life, reborn.

It occurred to me today that I've been approaching living after cancer, living under the threat of cancer, all wrong.

I got a phone call this afternoon from my oncologist's office. When I heard, "This is Dr. X's office," my immediate impulse was to panic. 'Why could they possibly be calling me? They never do that. The only reason they could be calling now is to tell me that something is very, very wrong - right?'

In fact, they were calling to invite me to a special retreat for breast cancer and ovarian cancer survivors - food, massage, tai chi, and speakers on survivorship. All in all, a lovely day.

But the phone call still made the contents of my stomach sour. Thinking about cancer leads me down a path I don't want to go, and so I've tried to pretend it never happened - yes, I have these scars, but really, it's just a misunderstanding. Yes, I take these pills, but I am healthy, damn it. I hide from it and feel great, but every single time - *every* time - I am caught out by a doctor appointment, a change in treatment, a new celebrity who has been diagnosed, or, most recently, a new feature film about someone with cancer - I panic.

I'm tired of panicking. I feel like an animal that has been abused. I am cringing already, before the loud noise and the kick.

I think the problem is that I need to integrate this experience, somehow. I need to learn how to live with this in a way that isn't fearful, but that doesn't erase it, either.

So, despite my gut instinct to run screaming from anything pink, from anything at all suggestive of cancer, I think I will go to this retreat and try to figure out how to place these two worlds together and move forward.

For those of you who are thinking it's been a long time since I've blogged about cat pee...

2009-06-01T22:12:00.003-05:00

...guess what? One of the cats peed on the bed yesterday. As always, we don't know why. We suspect it is the same old recurrent problem, which her thyroid medication has seemed to help until now. However, since we spent much of Saturday afternoon outside with the neighbors, where the cats could hear and see us but couldn't be with us, it is always possible that this was a vengeance pee.

I keep thinking that I wish she could talk so that she could tell us, but it occurs to me that, cats being cats, being able to talk would not solve the problem. I'm sure she would either refuse to speak or else hurl Elizabethan curses at me. And if it *is* health related, she would be highly indignant at my inquiries as to the state of her bladder.

If you call yourself "pro-life" and you aren't protesting violence against clinics, then your name is a lie.

2009-05-31T18:59:00.002-05:00

It is not terribly surprising, though it is very frightening and very sad, that yet another doctor who provided women with safe and legal abortions has been gunned down by the so-called "pro-life" movement. There are a lot of people who call themselves "pro-life" and who genuinely believe in protecting all human life; these people very often do not push to hinder women's access to abortion or to legislate against it because they understand that women have always had abortions, whether they've been safe or not, and that women will continue to have abortions even if abortion is outlawed - in which case, many women will have lasting health problems and many will die. These truly pro-life people also recognize that the business of terminating a pregnancy, no matter how much it may trouble them, is only *their* business if it is *their* pregnancy.

But reproductive rights aside, what do you call a movement that knows its members are actively targeting and commiting acts of intimidation and violence upon those it opposes? Certainly not "pro-life." Video-taping Planned Parenthood workers and putting the license plate numbers of Planned Parenthood clients on the internet is intimidation with the threat of violence. Driving cars into clinics (which was, believe it or not, defended as a "non-violent protest"), shooting doctors, and other clinic violence is more extreme, but such acts are on the same spectrum of behavior aimed at forcing someone else to behave as you would wish them to.

If I sound a little less diplomatic than I might normally sound, it's because I am furious that people are still being told by their movement and their "churches" that pretend to honor God that violence is an acceptable response. And any members of this movement or these "churches" who do not actively and without qualification oppose such actions are part of the problem, and the blood is on their hands. This just confirms what many of us already knew: for many of these people, life is not the issue. The issue is control.

Yes, I'm looking at you, Leslee Unruh, Randall Terry, and others.

Are we back here again?

2009-05-28T21:54:00.003-05:00

Today, I was talking with Lesbian Mom A on the playground after school. Lesbian Mom B asked me if my family was a two-mom family. I said, "no." She asked if I was a single mom. I said, "no - I have a partner, who is male." "Oh," she said, because there was a "lesbian party" this past weekend that presumably I would have been invited to had I been a lesbian mom and had the Lesbian Mom Club known who I was. And I felt a little bit like this would have been the time to say, "but I'm bi!" except that it would have felt a little bit like asking the popular kid, who hasn't invited you to her birthday party, if you can come to the party. (Also, I couldn't process where she was going quite fast enough, so that we were past it before I figured out what was going on.)

I think it's great that some of the lesbian moms at this school have gotten together as a group for support and friendship, and I don't think that all lesbian gatherings must include Bs or Ts or Gs, necessarily, but when I first moved here, I was delirious at the notion of finding some LGBT parenting community. Instead, I found The Lesbian Mom Club - which, it seems, does not even include all the lesbian moms - it seems to be a club for the cool and popular. And, on top of this, it's totally backchannel - there's no mention of the group in the weekly announcements that come home from school, so either you are invited to take part or you're not.

So, instead, I'm finding my little community one person at a time, and I guess I'm a little resentful that in 2009 we are still doing the Lesbian Club thing and not thinking about what other LGBT folks - and allies - might be lingering around the outside of the playground, wanting to come in and be part of the community.

Is this true, or what?

2009-05-19T21:40:00.000-05:00

Read this.

It is decided (I think).

2009-05-19T20:42:00.003-05:00

I will be teaching Eclipse in my intro Women's Studies course next spring. I think the feminist criticism that I have read of the series - that Bella has no real character, that the gender roles are fairly pathetic, that Native Americans are used in a way that is fairly disrespectful to them as people and also fairly stereotypical, the clear messages re. abstinence and the eroticization of same, and a whole bunch of other things that I won't get into now because I don't want to post too man spoilers - is dead on. Still, I finished reading the series this afternoon and then spent an hour going back and re-reading parts of the novel I'd just finished. Yes, I rolled my eyes many, many times during my reading, but yes, it is good enough that I will go back and read it again, and I no longer have any qualms about having just shelled out $40 to buy the last two books in hardcover.

I am really looking forward to classroom discussion next year. There is a lot to sift through. By then, the second movie should have come out, so my class will be able to watch Twilight and New Moon before moving on to the third novel, which is, in my opinion, the best of the four (and also the one that is probably best suited for discussion in a classroom, just because there is a lot more going on, plotwise and in terms of character development, than happens in the other books).

A pretty good representation of "access".

2009-05-15T10:04:00.003-05:00

I had three thoughts when I saw this.

First, I thought, "this is why even a cursory knowledge of physics is important."

Second, I thought, "this is why people with disabilities should be included in every aspect of construction planning."

And third, I thought, "this probably represents the state of affairs re. disability access in the U.S. fairly accurately."

Appropriate behavior of medical personnel.

2009-05-13T22:41:00.004-05:00

I find it fascinating to observe how the medical staff relate to me as a patient. This week, I've had an interesting experience that I'm trying to figure out how to handle.

In the radiation treatment room, there is a small dressing area, around which one could, if one wanted, pull a privacy curtain. There are also gowns and towels. Because I only need to take off my clothes from the waist up, I never bother with any of this. I probably would if I still had the right breast, but since I don't, and since I'm going to walk 12 feet and then open the gown and remove the towel, it seems silly and actually somewhat complicated - I'd have to wrap and clutch or tie the gown, or hold the towel in place while hopping up on the table. I don't know if the female personnel have ever felt uncomfortable with this, but they are always busy doing whatever it is they do - readying the table for the next patient or for me - while I am getting dressed/undressed.

But lately, there is a new radiation therapist, and he is a man. That's not really an issue for me - but he's a man who seems to be in need of a clue.

The first time he was there when I was there, he came into the room after I was already on the table. While I was getting dressed, he turned away to protect my privacy. The second time, when I arrived, the privacy curtain had been partly pulled. I took this to be a reflection of the presence of the male therapist, and I thought about it, and I thought about my usual procedure, and I decided that maybe I needed to mention what would otherwise be an elephant in the room. So, I said to him, "Look, I really don't bother with the gown/towel. I hope that won't make you feel uncomfortable." He seemed surprised, and said, "Oh! Well, what about how you feel?" I said, "There's nothing there, so I feel fine about it."

Now, I can understand that this might not be how the average patient reacts, and I can also understand that he might still have felt uncomfortable, but from my perspective, at this point, this falls into the category of Not My Problem.

The reason I mention this is because I am wondering if this had anything to do with what happened next.

At the end of my treatment, the table I have been lying on, which has been raised, needs to be lowered so that I can climb down. I was lying on my back, and had brought my arms down across my chest, resting them while I waited to be fully lowered. And, as the table was moving, this therapist was holding onto the side of it in such a way that his bare forearm was touching my bare arm. It was not a case of "oops, sorry, didn't mean to brush against you." It was a constant presence. And it felt deliberate. It felt as if perhaps he thought it was a buddy thing - or a way to show dominance. I really don't know what it meant or why he did it, but I do know that he was aware of it, because we both glanced down to see that our arms were touching. It was not an inappropriate touch in that it was not sexual, but it seemed inappropriate for him to be touching me at all. I didn't fully get this until later - at the time, I was too busy thinking, "hmm, this seems odd," to react.

Now, as a patient, I get handled a lot. Some of this handling is unpleasant, such as when someone incompetent is drawing blood or taking my blood pressure. Much of it, fortunately - because this is certainly not the case for everyone - has been gentle and/or generally unremarkable. But never, with the exception of one clear violation years ago, has it been this kind of unnecessary touching.

There is no reason to touch the patient, particularly a patient in any stage of undress, unless it is medically necessary.

The next day, this same therapist leaned over me - not once, but two or three times - to check a measurement. He was standing on my right side and needed to lean over to see the measurement, but in doing so, he leaned ON me, not just brushing my body but actually LEANING on me.

At best, this seems to show disregard for me as a patient, wouldn't you say?

But there's more. I have a pair of wire earrings; these were sitting on top of my clothes on the bench. He saw them and complimented them, and remarked that he could probably make them himself. Hey - he probably could. I'm not offended by that. But he said this while holding them. He picked up my earrings without asking. Further, I found out today that - still without asking or even notifying me - he took one and made a photocopy of it while I was on the table with my head stuck facing the other direction. His plan, another therapist told me today, is to try to make a pair of earrings like mine.

More power to him. Had he asked me if he could photocopy the earring, I would have said sure. But he didn't - and so now, I think I will have to speak with his supervisor about the lack of respect and of good judgment this therapist has showed to me as a patient.

The skin-care regimen.

2009-05-13T22:18:00.003-05:00

According to my radiation oncologist, a new study has suggested that wearing deodorant/anti-perspirant is not an issue for radiation treatment (it used to be standard, I think, to tell patients not to use it if the underarm area was in the treatment field). Despite this, I have not been using it under my left arm; I think the sweat glands are not operating, anyway, which they told me would happen as a result of the radiation (wow - that means I will save 50% on my deodorant costs!).

At the beginning of treatment, I was given a special skin care cream (I think it's actually called "Special Skin Care Cream") to put on the irradiated area 4-5 times per day. Once my skin started to feel irritated, they gave me a more complicated regimen. Now, I put the cream on 2-3 times per day, and at night, I apply Pro-Shield (the same exact stuff I used to put on Bean to deal with diaper rash!), which is a sticky substance that you don't rub in. On top of the Pro-Shield, I put Adaptic strips, which are gauze strips that have been treated with some kind of greasy substance (feels a little like Vaseline). Then, on top of these, I put plain gauze bandages (not the kind that stick on). To keep all of this in place, I put on a tight-fitting tank top, which I then cover with a t-shirt to protect my sheets from all of these sticky, greasy substances.

It seems to work pretty well. It takes any sting out, and I think that the redness, which I notice is a bit more pronounced following treatment, seems to fade a bit by the next morning.

However, the left side of my chest and underarm is looking pretty ravaged. The skin seems to still be healthy - it's not like a bad sunburn where there's blistering and peeling, though I suppose that may come later - but many of the hair follicles have darkened, so I have basically a large red patch within which there are tons of darker little dots.

I do also feel the effects of the radiation internally; there is a tightening and some loss of range of motion, and some soreness (this is more occasional than constant). It's not permanent, but I'll need to stretch to get the range of motion back.

But only eight more to go!

(Edited to add: "ravaged" is a strong word to describe my skin. It's really not that bad. I think it might look startling to someone who was seeing it for the first time, but since I've been watching it gradually, it doesn't look so bad to me.)

All about radiation therapy.

2009-05-09T11:38:00.003-05:00

I have about 11 treatments left. I am getting red and oddly spotted. However, I'm still feeling pretty comfortable. I've been busy with work and neglecting my blog, but it occurred to me that I hadn't written about the radiation yet.

So, let me walk you through this process. First of all, a lot of people have asked me if I've felt sick from the radiation. No. The reason is that they are not irradiating my stomach. (I don't know if you automatically feel sick if your stomach is the target field - it probably also depends on the dose you are getting.) I've been going for about 4 weeks now, and so far, I feel fine. I have experienced some tiredness, but as I've also been burning the midnight oil a little too much, I'm not sure the tiredness is related to the radiation. Mostly what I notice in terms of this is 1) sleepiness, which is different from fatigue and which suggests to me that I need to get more rest, and 2) moments of slight fatigue, where I might decide not to stop off at the grocery store on the way home because I don't have the energy for that. This usually occurs at the end of the day, and it's not much different from my usual energy level at the end of the day.

I'll tell you more about how my skin has reacted in a separate post. I want to tell you more about how they actually do this.

First, they make a mold for you to lie in when you're on the table getting the radiation therapy; this ensures that you are in exactly the same position each time. I had no idea that this was such an exact science, but it really is, so being in the exact same position each time is important. I had to lie back on what looked like a plastic pillowcase containing some of those little beads that are used in certain stuffed toys and pillows. I put both arms above my head and turned my head to the side, and then they filled the pillowcase with air and moved the beads around so that it formed a supportive mold. We played around with this until they found one that was comfortable, and then the mold hardened; each day, when I go in for my treatment, they pull my mold out from its shelf and put it on the table for me.

Second, they take an exhausting number of pictures - a CT scan and x-rays. I say "exhausting" because that's what it is - I was about 6 weeks out from surgery, so I still had not gotten back my full range of motion, and it was uncomfortable (not awful) to have my left arm in that position. I had to lie still for an hour, so they didn't start treatment until the next day. They take the pictures and scans so that they can be sure you are in - all together now - exactly the same position each time. They also gave me a dot tattoo on each side and on my chest, which are further used to line me up each day. I didn't know these were coming and felt a little violated by them, particularly the very visible one on my chest, which looks like someone was throwing Sharpies and happened to hit me.

I do what is called "gaited breathing," which means that I hold my breath during the actual radiation therapy. When my lungs expand, the chest wall moves away from my heart, which allows them to prevent my heart from being exposed to the radiation. There are four angles from which the machine delivers radiation; each time lasts from 12 - 35 seconds, depending on the angle (and the temperature - it was really hot and humid the day I had to hold my breath for 35 seconds). If I can't hold my breath, the machine will stop because I will move out of target range. It's pretty cool.

I lie on my back on the table, in my custom mold, with a cushion under my knees. The machine fascinates me - it revolves around me to get the different angles. The whole thing takes about 10-20 minutes as long as I am in the correct position and they don't need additional pictures. They do take x-rays, I think once a week, to ensure that I am in - guess what? - exactly the same position. Last week, I was off by 4 millimeters because my lungs had gotten stronger from all the breath holding and so they needed to adjust my position. That took about an hour. While it was more comfortable than the initial session of picture-taking, I did get a crick in my neck from being still for so long (they gave me a stretching break about halfway through).

Every other day, they use what I think is called a "bolus" - this is a packet of something that they lay across my chest that draws the radiation to the scar.

There is a little curtain that you can pull for privacy, and a gown you can put on and a towel you can cover yourself with (you have to remove clothing from the area that is being treated). I don't bother with any of these things. I think that this threw the therapists, at first, but what's the point? It seems like false modesty, though I appreciate that this is available for those patients who need/want it.

End of Part I.

"Mother" is not code for "wife".

2009-05-08T21:26:00.002-05:00

On my drive home today, I was alternating between listening to Madonna's "Hung Up" for the umpteenth time (literally, because I keep playing that track over and over whenever I drive anywhere these days) and listening to the radio. Just as I was getting close to my exit, the radio djs read a letter from a self-proclaimed "mistress" who wanted to know if mistresses had any rights on Mother's Day. This woman had been seeing a married man for over a year and had had a baby by him, and she felt that she deserved some respect on Mother's Day and some of his time.

The response that I heard - I didn't listen for long, because I was close to home - was fairly predictable: men and women were FURIOUS at this woman and went on at some length to vent their spleen at her lack of self-respect (for getting involved with a married man) and so forth. The djs, of course, were supporting all of this.

I didn't have the stomach or the time to listen further, but I did briefly consider calling or writing in. If I had done, here's what I would have said:

Interestingly, none of your listeners seem to have heard the part where this woman mentioned that she is a *mother*. The holiday is Mother's Day - not Wives' Day. The fact that someone is a wife is not what entitles them to be celebrated on Mother's Day; the fact that someone is a girlfriend or a mistress has nothing to do with what kind of mother they are. We don't even qualify what kind of mother one has to be in order to get a card or flowers or a little attention. There are no "For a tolerable Mother" cards by Hallmark. All that is necessary for participation is that one has a child.

I'm also fascinated that what pissed off your callers was that this mother wanted to be recognized on Mother's Day and not that the man in question had cheated on his wife and was continuing to do so. For all of their righteous indignation about self-respect and responsibility, none of your callers felt it was important for the child of the mistress to be with his/her mother AND father on a holiday, and no one mentioned the negative impact on the children in both families that such a father might have. No one wondered if that father was paying any kind of child support or clucked their tongues about the model he was setting for his children. No, it was easier to deny the mistress' motherhood; if it was even remembered, it was conveniently minimized so that she could be more easily condemned.

So, really, your listeners, like society at large, don't actually care about mothers, not even on Mother's Day.

You would think that, by now, I would have come up with a response.

2009-05-07T19:50:00.004-05:00

Today, someone asked me if I was going to be ok. Last week, someone asked me what my prognosis was.

I know this is coming out of a place of concern, but what if my prognosis sucked? Do they think I would want to talk about it in the middle of the meeting (both of these instances occurred at meetings)? Or that I would want to share this personal information in the first place?

It has been suggested to me that I could say - with a smile - something like, "I appreciate your concern; you know, I just don't find it helpful to even think about questions like that."

But I wish I could come up with something that would also be funny. I suggested to a friend, who gets asked a lot about how she lost her leg, that next time, she should respond as follows:

Person: (Noticing missing leg) "How'd you lose your leg?"

My Friend: (Blank look...then, looks down; aggravated expression crosses face)
"Crap! I must have left it at the library just now! Gotta go!" (leaves)

I suppose this sort of thing is more easily done with strangers.

667th post.

2009-05-05T11:17:00.002-05:00

Too bad I didn't notice that the last one was the 666th, because then I would have had something to write about.

* All I can think about right now is that the smell of the freshly-cleaned catbox is nauseating. I don't know if I'm reacting to the smell of the Clorox or if Mr. P. did not do a thorough enough cleaning job. And the box is located unfortunately close to my desk.

* I have before me a pile of grading. I am making some headway. However, the fact that I have no room of my own makes grading at home difficult, particularly if anyone wants to use the living room or dining room, watch t.v., or, as so often happens, bang on all surfaces with large, inflatable, squeaky hammers that one has acquired at various fairs. At least certain persons with an affinity for such activities are currently in school.

* I wonder if anyone else enjoys shredding as much as I do? I have a little desktop shredder that is only supposed to go for two minutes at a time, so it's taken me months, but in about five minutes, I will be all caught up on my shredding. I love it. Shredding stuff makes me feel super-organized and about as OCD as it is possible to be. At this point, I am writing my social security number down on random pieces of paper so that I can shred them. Well, not quite. But almost.

Mother's Day Redux.

2009-05-02T22:28:00.002-05:00

I got this comment from A Little Gnocchi on my 2007 Mother's Day post:
"Well it is 2009 and your original post was 2007. I found it on page 3 of a Google search "alternative mother's day". The first page of the google search was all different types of flowers...I was looking for other stuff like these Diaper Drives for Mother's Day The focus of both drives being to help out families who are struggling with some of the basics that cost too bloody much: diapers for the young, tampons & pads for women, incontinence pads for the elderly or infirm."

And with that public service announcement, here, again, is Why I Hate Mother's Day.

Overheard at a 7-year-old's birthday party.

2009-04-27T23:46:00.001-05:00

A 7-year-old guest, anxiously asking the father of the birthday boy: "Is it ok if someone farts in here?"

New and improved hugs.

2009-04-26T23:46:00.002-05:00

I have it on good authority that hugging me is better now that there aren't annoying boobs in the way. The hugs are better from this side of the equation, as well. If you've hugged me both before and after, feel free to weigh in on this, ahem, *weighty* issue, but I'm going to assume that the hugs now are an improvement over the old ones.

Before I go to sleep and forget it all...

2009-04-26T00:29:00.004-05:00

because Twilight, the movie, is rather forgettable...

* Bella comes across, not as the woman in the book who is overcome by Edward's presence, but as simply, annoyingly, tongue-tied. This very quickly becomes painful to watch.

* None of the vampires, with the exception of Edward (barely) and Alice, look like I'd imagined them. This would be fine except that they mostly looked like those black and white postcards that add tint to blond hair and red lips. Not a good look, especially for Dr. Cullen. (Mr. P says: "Bela Lugosi meets Pleasantville.")

* The tree-climbing scene was stupid.

* The book, overall, doesn't translate well to the screen (because there's so little plot), so actually, I have to give the director and screenwriters credit for getting as far as they did with it.

* The scary vampires weren't scary (although all the vampires do seem to have scary hair). The filmmakers need to watch 30 Days of Night.

* The film did preserve some of the passion of the novel, but only some of it.

* I do not have a feminist analysis yet. I know there is a battle raging around this book, but so far, I've gotten as far as noticing the eroticization of abstinence (which, again, plays out much, much better in print than on screen). I also noticed that Bella's girlfriends pretty much disappear whenever any guy is around, and that's kind of sad - the only person she really connects with in the whole story is Edward. On the one hand - ugh. On the other hand - this makes both of them loners who find someone special in each other.

* The music was all wrong. Whiny, nasally boy "alternative" singers?! Really? A little goth would have gone a long way. It didn't have to be Bauhaus. Even Evanescence would have worked.

* I do like the complete reinvention of vampire legend. Why should Anne Rice have a patent? The book was pretty creative in playing with exiting vampirology, like the idea of what happens when they go out in the sunlight.

* I suppose I should be grateful that Edward doesn't morph into a Buffy vampire, at least.

* Despite all of this, I'm probably hooked for the series.

Things Annoying Me Today.

2009-04-25T18:03:00.002-05:00

1) The association of "trans" with "men" - not as in "transmen," but as in the idea that a transgendered person must, of course, be male. As in, 'oh, no, transgendered men are taking over Women's Studies!' As in, 'allowing trans people to use public bathrooms is the same thing as allowing men to use women's rest rooms!' What drugs is the internet taking that we are still having such difficulty with these issues?

2) That I have not, as I thought I might, gotten up early and finished all my grading.

3) That there is nothing good on t.v.

Guest post by Angry Lesbian Bride on getting married in Iowa.

2009-04-18T11:02:00.002-05:00

Dear Readers in Same-Sex Relationships,
If you are thinking of heading over to Iowa to get hitched, read this first.
PF

My wife and I were having our usual, lazy type of Saturday morning (possibly early afternoon) on April 4, 2009. We had slept to the point of sloth and risen only to cook and eat a huge breakfast together (hash browns, lattes, cheeseomelets and bacon). After we ate, I ventured out to get the newspaper. When I opened it, I did a little jig of happiness. My partner (let's call her B) now describes it as a victory dance/lap around the house in my bathrobe. I would maintain that she is exaggerating, but I do have a tendency to giddiness, especially when the happy event I'm experiencing is unexpected.

Just to add some perspective, it WAS love at first sight when we met in May of 2007. Just over a year later, on June 14, 2008, we held a modest, non-legal wedding in a park in Minneapolis. We had a huge number of attendants because all of our sisters and most of my wife's nieces were in our ceremony. I think our guests just barely outnumbered our wedding party, actually, but it was beautiful and perfect and we loved it. Our cake pretty much melted, but that's the only thing that really went wrong. Just in case you are wondering if you missed a court decision/law change, gay marriage is not legal in Minnesota. We live in South Dakota, so it really doesn't matter (legally) what we do or where, since the constitution here was (barely) changed by popular vote in 2006 to ban same-sex marriage, even though there was already a law banning it. I guess they just really, really wanted to be sure no recently-married gay or lesbian couples would be embracing and kissing on the courthouse steps in Sioux Falls.

What state you live in matters a great deal because in 1996, Bill Clinton signed into law the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), allowing states to ban same-sex marriages and to refuse to recognize such marriages performed elsewhere. I am curious to know if a legal gay marriage performed in, say, Connecticut, is recognized right next door in Massachusetts, where gay marriage is also legal, but no one seems to know and I'm betting it's not because of DOMA.

Clearly, however, my wife and I don't care about DOMA or anything else (although we do know we need to set up legal protections for each other and our theoretical children, especially when you consider that my parents are both homophobic lawyers). We choose to call our wedding a wedding and our life together a marriage, even though it has no legal standing anywhere. We have already loosely planned to take vacations/elope in the various states that it is possible, so when the state right next door suddenly allowed it, I hopped to attention and started planning right away, on the floor of our living room on April 4.

I thought it would be fun to write a queer guide to marriage in Iowa for out-of-staters like myself. Every state handles marriage differently, so you have to research a little bit to make it happen. I've already done that for Iowa, so why not share and help others out?

I thought "what could go wrong? It's the LAW. The SUPREME COURT of Iowa said so." I became the excited, jumping-up-and-down instant-wedding planner. B is naturally more cautious, and warned me from the beginning that there were bound to be problems.

I hope this isn't too tedious, but I'm just going to walk you through the whole thing so far.

We decided to get married in Des Moines, since it's the capital city and only 4 hours away by car. Also, if anyone we knew wanted to fly in, it would be easier for them there. I already had May 1 off as a vacation day. B thought she could get it off. We would leave in the morning in time to pick up our license and get married on Saturday, May 2, which is pretty much as soon as possible in the circumstances.

I googled LGBT organizations in Des Moines and found one that had a link to a wedding chapel.

I called the chapel and talked to the owner. We talked about the package we wanted, where the chapel is, email addresses, when I should call again to finalize, and what number to call on Monday to get the legal ball rolling. Elated, I hung up. B and I started sussing out other details, etc.

I called the Polk Co. Recorder on Monday, 4/6, to make sure that my Googled information was correct and that we had all of our ducks in a row. I explained the situation to the friendly woman on the phone and she put me on hold to check her information. I had the impression that I was her first same-sex questioner. After a brief time on hold, she told me:
-There is a three-day waiting period once the license is issued before it becomes valid.
-Don't forget your $35 check to us.
-Go ahead and fill out the application in front of a notary with your one witness as soon as possible. She would put it in the mail that day.
-Call on the 24th to see if that is the day it will issue. She had heard it could also be the 27th because of furloughs. (It turned out to be the 27th.)
-Pick up by 5pm on Friday, May 1, for your planned May 2 wedding.

We received, signed and sent back our contract for the wedding with the chapel. It's a 1/2 hour elopement package and we will probably have to pay for two witnesses, since no one we know lives in the area.

A few days later, we had our first possible roadblock when B found out that she couldn't get May 1 off from work. We emailed the officiant to see if she would be willing to pick up our license. She said she would, but I should let the recorder know so that they would allow it.

I called the Polk Co. Recorder on the 13th to check on the process and make sure our officiant could pick up our license for us. I spoke to the same, helpful woman as before. She was apologetic and told me that it might be sent back, since they were now being told, just as that afternoon, actually, that they were not to keep applications by same-sex couples that arrived before the 27th. I hoped that I concealed my dismay and disgust, and pointed out that I had been told, specifically, that it would be held. She apologized again. I asked for her name to make sure that, if I called again, I could speak to the same person, and she told me. She also said I could call the next day and speak to her supervisor. I said I would be on a business trip, but that I might be able to squeeze it in. After I got off the phone, I emailed the owner of the chapel and asked if, through no fault of our own, we couldn't marry on May 2, we could change our date without losing our non-refundable deposit. She said that would be no problem, which at least kept me from feeling that the recorder's office potentially owes us $150.

About 20 minutes later, a strange thing happened. My phone rang, and it was the same woman from the recorder's office, apologizing profusely and saying that, since I had called the week before and been told that she would hold our application, she would still hold it. In effect, making an exception for us. She clearly felt really bad about upsetting me before. (I did not yell, scream, or cry, but my voice may have wavered slightly.) I said a little prayer to the Midwestern Gods of Tact, Thoroughness and Reason, and thanked her, making a note of the fact that she told me to call again on the 27th and check on things. She also said it was fine to have our officiant pick up our license.

We booked the hotel suggested by the chapel owner. It was a good rate and a convenient location at a national chain hotel. The lady on the phone congratulated me and sounded really pleased when I told her we were eloping lesbians.

Yesterday, I was riding in a car on the way home from a conference (my business trip). I was with three colleagues. My cell phone rang, it was a woman from the Polk Co. Recorder's office. She is the supervisor of the woman I spoke to the first three times. I think she was the one calling me because her subordinate was afraid of me either yelling or crying. She said that they had just been informed that applications made before the 27th might not be considered valid later, so she is going to return our previous application and payment so that we can do it again. I would like to say that I kept my cool, but I burst into tears. I'm crying again thinking about it. I wanted to be mad about it, but both women from that office have been so thoroughly midwestern and kind that I can't hold a single drop of ire for them. We talked for a few more minutes, trying to figure out if there was a way to beat the three-day waiting period and still get married on May 2, but it isn't possible unless we manage to have everything signed before the post office closes on the 27th and that isn't possible because B works until about 5 without a lunch break and anyway how would I find a notary who works that late? The waiting period can be waived, but we would have to find a judge who would do it and appear in court during the week, which isn't possible since we both work full-time jobs.

One of my colleagues handed me a tissue as I tried to get my snivels under control and txt B about the situation. I realized that the only thing worse than a 6-hour car ride is one that includes a bawling co-worker, so I pulled myself together. The woman who handed me a tissue told me that she was a notary and she would do anything she could to help us. We talked about logistics, but I still can't find a way, short of time travel, to make May 2 work. I complained a little to B on the phone and she pointed out how little it matters that it be that particular day.

I tried to tell myself that it's not that much different from having your flight changed/delayed during a trip. You're pissed or sad (I tend to run to frustrated tears in these situations) because you had a plan for it to be one way, but it changes, and it's usually not anyone in particular's fault, so you just suck it up and chalk it up to another travel horror story you can tell later. However, as I thought about it on the 5 more hours I had before I got home, I realized that it's not like that, really. First of all, it's way more important, even if it is just symbolic. Also, it's more like if everyone got on the plane and was ready to go, and you got into your seat and did all of your settling in only to be singled out. Told that YOU are the one who cannot go to your destination on the day that you chose. Everyone else who sent in an application for a marriage license in Iowa last week can get married on May 2, just not us.

So, as pointed out in the Iowa Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage:

Child abusers can marry on that day, just not us.

Sexual predators can marry on that day, just not us.

Parents neglecting to provide child support can marry on that day, just not us.

Axe murders can marry on that day, just not us.

Additionally:

Other gay and lesbian couples who live there and can get their application in on the 27th or 28th (assuming they are not too swamped to issue licenses in a timely manner) can marry on that day, just not us. (which I'm cool with)

Now, I'm wondering if I can have the marriage license mailed to us, to spare our officiant a trip. I'm wondering if we should try to pick a new date. June 13 would be nice, since it's only one day off from our first wedding, but I don't want to schedule with the chapel and maybe have to change it later, again. By then, the new rules will have been in effect for about 7 weeks, so all of the bugs should have been worked out. On the other hand, the rules may have been changed again. The ability for same-sex couples to marry, in theory, can't even be challenged in Iowa now without a constitutional amendment, although I'm sure there areplenty of dedicated, homophobic lawyers combing the books looking for a different way to stop us. Fortunately for us, it is not very easy to change the constitution in Iowa. It would take a few years, at least.

Complicating matters is the fact that I'm supposed to hear about a job I applied for on April 27th. Of course, they would be insane not to hire me, since I am SO PERFECT for the job, but I was considering it lucky that two important things might happen in my life on the same day - our first marriage license and my first job in a new field. Now, I'm changing that to thinking that I shouldn't have to suffer disappointment twice, and maybe these hiccups in our wedding plans spell happy, happy news on the job front on that Monday in April. Or maybe I should just stop being so superstitious and grow up already.

I'm calling our officiant tonight, as planned in our first conversation. I emailed her about the problem yesterday. I'm just hoping I can keep from blubbering when I tell her we have to postpone.

Also, a friend of mine is planning her (straight, legal in South Dakota) wedding. I was already fighting slight annoyance that she can do that. Now, I'm afraid that if she starts nattering about her plans, her dress, how she wants us all to dance for her, I may cry or scream at her. It's not her fault at all. She doesn't even know about any of this. It's not my fault, either. I may just have to go lock myself in the bathroom until it passes or stick my fingers in my ears and say "lalalalala". I'm also knitting wedding garters for a childhood friend and my cousin. I'm trying to only put good thoughts into that work, but it's difficult.

Sigh.

Faceblogging.

2009-04-13T20:28:00.002-05:00

Plain(s)feminist is shake shake shaking her booty (I dug out all my disco cds and played them while driving around in the car doing errands).

Plain(s)feminist is despairing of ever getting Bean to finish his homework. (Fuck it. I'm going to bed in an hour and a half, and if it's not done, it's not done. (That goes for my own homework, as well.))

Plain(s)feminist is wondering how she can tell if the dark chocolate she bought that tastes good and is clearly more milky than the dark chocolate she bought that doesn't taste as good is still considered "dark chocolate," and who decides, and where the line is drawn.

Plain(s)feminist is things are looking up - Bean has brought his homework into the study and is DOING IT, RIGHT NOW.

Plain(s)feminist is out of ways to procrastinate and needs to plan class for tomorrow...

Spring Cleaning.

2009-04-11T22:07:00.002-05:00

This afternoon, I tried on most of my t-shirts and tank tops to see which ones look ok without boobs in them and which ones do not. The verdict:

*My "Got Breastmilk?" tank was too ironic, even for me; I used to get comments when I wore that one, anyway, and I'm not in the mood for the comments that are likely to come if I wear it now.

*Almost all of the pink and white shirts have to go. Because they are so light, and because most of them are designed to fit snugly, they are too revealing of the weird lumpiness near my left armpit. This means I have to give up one of my "This is what a feminist looks like" shirts, my Amnesty International shirt, my "Feminist" shirt, and my "I love my vagina" shirt. (I will admit that I haven't ever actually worn that last one, as it has been difficult to know the occasion that would make that shirt the proper choice of attire.)

*Even though I will probably never wear it again, I am keeping my Jay and Silent Bob t-shirt, which seemed like a good idea at the time.

*There are several shirts that didn't fit before but do now, and these happen to be some of my favorites, including my Dooce shirt and the one my roommate after college designed for her then-girlfriend's band.

(Oh, my god. I think this is the most boring post I've written in the three years I've been blogging. I'm not kidding about Facebook. Is this what it's come to?)

Anyone else feel like Facebook saps their blog creativity?

2009-04-11T22:05:00.001-05:00

I feel like I am so busy "liking" and "friending" and trying to be witty in my comments that I have nothing left for my poor blog. I can just imagine what it would be like if I tweeted...

Daniel Zamlen - missing. If you're in the Twin Cities, please help.

2009-04-09T20:49:00.001-05:00

The University of St. Thomas is requesting help over the next few days from anyone who is willing to volunteer to search for UST freshman Daniel Zamlen, who has been missing since Sunday. To help, go to room 154 of Murray-Herrick Campus Center on UST's Saint Paul campus, 2115 Summit Ave, between 9am-5pm today, tomorrow, and thru this weekend.

I am so excited - SPEAK! Radical Women of Color Media Collective

2009-04-05T14:50:00.002-05:00

I didn't know about this until now, and I'm really excited to order my copy - check out the list of contributors!!

Trans.

2009-04-04T11:57:00.003-05:00

I think this is the most intensely I have ever felt my gender and my gender presentation to be at odds. I say this having been mistaken in my youth for a boy, and having gone through a couple of periods (in college and grad school) during which I cut my hair quite short and was often called "sir". The grad school short haircut was a mistake - I had gone in to get a cut and had a disastrous miscommunication with the hairdresser, who cut my hair shorter than it had ever been before. After that haircut, there was a noticeable, confused reaction from people who saw me on the street and couldn't tell whether the close-cropped person in a bulky winter jacket was a man or a woman.

I have been surprised to find that I kind of like my new body, sans breasts. I feel somewhat streamlined. I feel comfortable. I'm still figuring out what clothes to wear - I had finally figured out "what not to wear," and now I need to rethink it all for a new shape - but it's also kind of fun to try on looks I could never wear before.

I've been wearing a lot of earrings and scarves this week, both of which signal my gender to people. The scarves help camouflage the absolute flat plane of my chest - they don't hide it, but I think they make it less obvious. The earrings make my hair look more intentional. Together, they look good, and I've been happy with how I look.

But yesterday, I ran out of clothing options, and I ended up wearing jeans and a fleece hoodie. I forgot to wear earrings. And I realized that I was a walking gender contradiction, at least to some people. I don't pass as a man, and my voice and my movements betray me as a woman, but upon first glance, I am sure that some people would mistake me for a man or would need a second glance to figure me out. Thankfully, I didn't think about this until halfway through the day, so I didn't spend all day worrying about whether or not people were staring at me.

I know that I'm writing about this from a place of privilege. My hair will grow back and it will continue to be a gender indicator that will allow people to easily read me as a woman. Or maybe I will get prosthetics and that will be their cue. Either way, this is a temporary state, but it's one that requires some thought on my part.

(Off-topic: Please welcome David Capogna to the blogroll.)

Teaching blog wars.

2009-03-30T00:21:00.002-05:00

I am curious to know if any of you who are teachers have taught about what happened with Seal Press, Jessica Valenti's books, and/or Amanda Marcotte's book. I'm going to be teaching a class that will look at conflicts in feminism/Women's Studies and where the movement/field is headed, and I'm thinking about looking at one or two of these moments. If anyone else has done this, I'd love to hear how you did it.

Facebook Fun.

2009-03-29T12:08:00.002-05:00

You know how Facebook will suggest friends for you? Lately, it's been looking like this on my Facebook page:

PEOPLE YOU MAY KNOW
Ginormous Asshole
Add as Friend
You and Ginormous Asshole both went to Random High School.

You know what I just realized?

2009-03-27T21:51:00.001-05:00

My surgery was eight years to the day from my miscarriage. There has got to be some meaning in that. I don't know what it is, but it seems meaningful to me, and not in a bad way.

The "f-word."

2009-03-22T14:47:00.003-05:00

7-year-old Bean has been hounding me for days to tell him what "the f-word" is. Apparently, the issue came up at his afterschool program, where the kids were working on a list of rules. Some of the older kids suggested that not using "the f-word" or "the bad finger" would be good rules; for the littler kids, however, this raised more questions than it answered: a bad finger? What could that mean? And what, on earth, is "the f-word"? (Some guesses: "fart" and "fool.")

So, finally, when he started asking me about it yet again and pleading with me to tell him what it meant, I sat him down.

"Bean," I said, "I'm going to tell you. But this means that I'm treating you like a grown-up, and you need to understand that you can never say this word at school or at afterschool program. If you feel like you want to say this word, you can go in your room by yourself and say it quietly. That's it. Because it is not a nice word."

"Okay," he said, seriously and expectantly.

"The 'f-word' is 'fuck'. Remember how I told you about the man putting his penis in the woman's vagina? That's called 'intercourse,' or sometimes, 'sex'. The word 'fuck' is a very rude way to say that. You might hear me and Daddy saying it sometimes, but it isn't nice and we shouldn't do it. Putting up your middle finger at someone - no, not that way, like this - means 'fuck you.' It is very rude and not nice and we don't ever do that. Okay?"

"Okay," he said, still serious. Then, thoughtfully, "You know, I bet I would've ended up saying it by accident, if I were just fooling around and saying silly words." (In fact, he has.)

So that's where we are. So far, so good.

Lost and Found.

2009-03-19T19:17:00.003-05:00

Tenured Radical writes about a stranger returning her lost iPhone; her story reminded me of the time I accidentally left my wallet in a rest stop women's room in South Dakota and got it back - in Omaha, Nebraska - by the end of the day. Here's what happened: I was taking Bean and my parents to the zoo in Omaha, and we were driving from Sioux Falls. When we got to the zoo, I realized that I didn't have my wallet (nor did I have any way to pay for us all to go to the zoo, which became a problem at first because my parents couldn't find their credit cards). I remembered putting the wallet on the window ledge in the large restroom stall where we had stopped on our trip down and called everyone I could think of to try to alert the rest stop staff to check the bathroom. I actually did get through to someone who searched the bathroom twice for me (it turned out to be the wrong rest stop, but anyway), but he couldn't find it. So, I called Mr. P., who had stayed home to work, gave him the task of cancelling all of our credit cards, and resigned myself to having lost the wallet.

About an hour later, I got a call from a good friend, who had gotten a call from a woman who had found my wallet on *her* drive from South Dakota to Nebraska. My friend had recently written me a check, so the woman who found my wallet called the phone number on the check. Fortunately, my friend had my cell phone number and was able to reach me; the woman had told her she would leave the wallet with a ticketing agent at the airport (she was in Omaha to catch a flight). So, when we were done at the zoo, we swung by the airport and picked up my wallet (with everything still inside).

An odd epilogue to this story:
My friend had gotten the name and number of the kind woman, and I called her a week or two later (after she had gotten back from her trip). Unfortunately, the gentleman who answered the phone was somewhat rude - I asked for the woman and he wanted to know who I was and what I wanted, and after I explained, he told me she wasn't home. I asked if I could leave a message, but he seemed confused and surprised that I was calling for this woman. In fact, he sounded a bit like he was trying to be funny, but he ended up exasperating me. I got off the phone and called her again some time later and left a message on her voice mail, thanking her and offering to take her to lunch if she were ever in the area, but I never heard from her.

ANYway. What are *your* unlikely lost and found stories?

Reconstruction thoughts.

2009-03-11T20:25:00.002-05:00

First - I don't miss my breasts. I'm not thrilled with the scars, mostly because right now they aren't scars but healing wounds, but I don't miss the breasts themselves. I'm considering not bothering with prosthetics, but I think what will most likely happen is that I'll buy a pair and wear them for special occasions, like dressing up. (This is less because I want to make any kind of political statement about breasts as accessories and more because I am extremely low-maintenance when it comes to my appearance.)

But second - it occurs to me that the only reconstruction options that were discussed with me were for female breasts. I wonder what my options would have been had I asked simply for a flat chest. Would there have been any additional options? Do men with breast cancer have any reconstruction done following surgery? I'm not sure that I would have wanted anything different than what I have now, or that I would have been a candidate for anything else, but it's interesting to think about how breast reconstruction options may or may not be limited due to assumptions about gender.