Sunday, February 03, 2008
Hello, Media?
They are not "suicide bombings" if they aren't suicides. Women used "unwittingly" to deliver bombs aren't committing suicide. They are being murdered.
Heterosexuality, intercourse, and rape.
A commenter at Heart's writes:
"...the relationship I have with my current partner is the first one where we have not been physical. And in fact, it’s the first relationship where I have known true intimacy. What the patriarchy thinks of as intimacy is only a shadow of what my partner and I have. More is conveyed in the simple touch of a hand or in a look than can ever be done with genital contact.
My previous sexual experiences can best be described as a series of rapes. They were with men who all were completely dominant over me. The sex just reinforced that dominance. That’s what sex is: a means to control and subjugate wymmyn. It’s a form of abuse, plain and simple. The worst part is, they were all rapists and didn’t even know it. My heart weeps for the wymmyn those men ended up with. They’re rape victims. All heterosexual wymmyn are."
I can understand trying to find ways to relate to each other that are not "male" or that do not involve treating the other person like a sex object. But this comment - and another commenter who immediately agreed that all heterosexual women were rape victims - makes me wonder what the goal really is, here.
Radical feminism has always sought to explore healthy feminist sexuality without tones of "male sexuality." Radical feminism generally opposed pornography and tried (unsuccessfully, but it was a sincere effort) to draw a line between "erotica" and "pornography," with the distinction that the latter objectified women. (As we know from the history of legislation surrounding pornography, there has never been a commonly-agreed-upon definition for "pornography" that tells us, when we look at a picture, whether or not it is pornographic. The same is true for "erotica." When I was in college in the late '80s, some of us distinguished between the two as erotica being "sensual" and pornography being "sexual" - a popular distinction during this time - but feminist theorists generally gave up on this distinction because it was still too muddy.)
But what I see in this comment does not seem to be about developing a feminist, woman-centered sexuality. True, it is about developing intimacy, and people do often embrace celibacy, alone or with partners, in order to put their energies into something else, whether that be spiritual or emotional or whatever. I think developing this kind of intimacy should be respected. It isn't easy, and I think it's great that people can do it and want to do it.
However.
When someone moves from saying, "I was dominated in my relationships with men"* to saying, "all heterosexual women are rape victims," and in the context of promoting a celibate life, then I have to wonder, first, if the goal is to eradicate sex from relationships because of a belief that sex, itself, is harmful to women. "Sex" hasn't been defined here, so I don't know if we are talking about penetration, orgasm, or what. And, too, when we talk about "all heterosexual women," we need to remember that the same variety of sexual experience applies. Plenty of heterosexual women don't have intercourse but have other kinds of sex. Are they rape victims, or are we only talking about intercourse? Is the assumption that heterosexual women never want to have sex of any kind with their partners? That they are never freely able to make decisions about their sexualities and sexual relationships?
There's a really good argument to be made - and Andrea Dworkin made it, in Intercourse - that we as a culture have constructed violence and force into heterosexual intercourse. Here is how she supports this claim (and in this next part I am actually drawing from Laura Carpenter's work, but the following paragraph is from Dworkin): we think of virginity loss as only happening in relation to heterosexual intercourse, which is, as sex goes, a male-defined act. It is "male-defined" because it is dependent on the penis: we know it has occurred only if a penis has entered a vagina and ejaculated. Whether or not the woman orgasms is immaterial.
Dworkin reminds us that we think of virginity loss as something that happens in one, forceful moment; we accept that it involves tearing and pain. We never question this reality. But Dworkin points out that vaginal walls stretch, that over time, they can accomodate, and that we *could* think of first intercourse as a gentle process that occurs over time. We don't. That tells us something about how female and male sexualities are perceived in our culture, and about how men and women are perceived in our culture, and about the ways in which female sexuality and experience is already defined for us, before we even get to explore it for ourselves.
So there is good reason to challenge patriarchal notions of sexuality. I would even go so far as to suggest that there is a "gray area" - that there is, in fact, cultural coercion - operating on women in regard to sex in general. Intercourse is central to the notion of heterosexuality, which is not to say that there aren't many heterosexual people who have more enlightened perspectives on their own sexualities and who can make honest choices to engage in whatever kind of sex they want to engage in.
I'm not saying that intercourse is rape. I am saying that the fact that we assume, as a culture, that it is inevitable that a woman will engage in this kind of sexual practice; that the fact that we assume, as a culture, that virginity loss must be painful; that the fact that we assume, as a culture, that female pleasure doesn't matter, but male pleasure does, in determining whether sex has been had - all of these things add up to a loss of some agency, a loss of some options, on the part of women AND of men. And there are, therefore, times when intercourse is culturally coerced (not unlike Rich's notion of compulsory heterosexuality).
But even given that, that is a huge step away from claiming that all heterosexual women are rape victims, which is something that even Dworkin didn't claim. Such a claim mimimizes the reality of rape and the agency of women who have taken risks to explore and defend their sexualities. It suggests that there is no difference between consensual sex and the actual brutality of forced sex. It also posits, once again, the notion that women who are not heterosexual are, simply by virtue of their sexual identity labels, free of rape (not true - rape occurs within women-women relationships, and women who love women are still raped by men). Finally, it suggests that men exist in all of this only as a harmful force, that men who have sex with women are always raping them because men+sex=rape. (As an aside, this is not a real helpful construction for those of us who work with boys and men to take leadership in stopping rape and sexual assault.)
None of this is feminist (nor, sadly, is it original). This commenter is really quite revolutionary - building a relationship on an emotional connection rather than on sex is radical and inspiring. But it would be nice if the justification for that act could be in the good that comes out of it, and not in the assumption that one experience is universal, nor in identity politics posturing.
*I'm using quotation marks here, not to quote verbatim, but to quote approximate ideas. I'm also not quoting the commenter's spelling of "woman" and "women," because I wrote like that for while and I find it annoying now.
"...the relationship I have with my current partner is the first one where we have not been physical. And in fact, it’s the first relationship where I have known true intimacy. What the patriarchy thinks of as intimacy is only a shadow of what my partner and I have. More is conveyed in the simple touch of a hand or in a look than can ever be done with genital contact.
My previous sexual experiences can best be described as a series of rapes. They were with men who all were completely dominant over me. The sex just reinforced that dominance. That’s what sex is: a means to control and subjugate wymmyn. It’s a form of abuse, plain and simple. The worst part is, they were all rapists and didn’t even know it. My heart weeps for the wymmyn those men ended up with. They’re rape victims. All heterosexual wymmyn are."
I can understand trying to find ways to relate to each other that are not "male" or that do not involve treating the other person like a sex object. But this comment - and another commenter who immediately agreed that all heterosexual women were rape victims - makes me wonder what the goal really is, here.
Radical feminism has always sought to explore healthy feminist sexuality without tones of "male sexuality." Radical feminism generally opposed pornography and tried (unsuccessfully, but it was a sincere effort) to draw a line between "erotica" and "pornography," with the distinction that the latter objectified women. (As we know from the history of legislation surrounding pornography, there has never been a commonly-agreed-upon definition for "pornography" that tells us, when we look at a picture, whether or not it is pornographic. The same is true for "erotica." When I was in college in the late '80s, some of us distinguished between the two as erotica being "sensual" and pornography being "sexual" - a popular distinction during this time - but feminist theorists generally gave up on this distinction because it was still too muddy.)
But what I see in this comment does not seem to be about developing a feminist, woman-centered sexuality. True, it is about developing intimacy, and people do often embrace celibacy, alone or with partners, in order to put their energies into something else, whether that be spiritual or emotional or whatever. I think developing this kind of intimacy should be respected. It isn't easy, and I think it's great that people can do it and want to do it.
However.
When someone moves from saying, "I was dominated in my relationships with men"* to saying, "all heterosexual women are rape victims," and in the context of promoting a celibate life, then I have to wonder, first, if the goal is to eradicate sex from relationships because of a belief that sex, itself, is harmful to women. "Sex" hasn't been defined here, so I don't know if we are talking about penetration, orgasm, or what. And, too, when we talk about "all heterosexual women," we need to remember that the same variety of sexual experience applies. Plenty of heterosexual women don't have intercourse but have other kinds of sex. Are they rape victims, or are we only talking about intercourse? Is the assumption that heterosexual women never want to have sex of any kind with their partners? That they are never freely able to make decisions about their sexualities and sexual relationships?
There's a really good argument to be made - and Andrea Dworkin made it, in Intercourse - that we as a culture have constructed violence and force into heterosexual intercourse. Here is how she supports this claim (and in this next part I am actually drawing from Laura Carpenter's work, but the following paragraph is from Dworkin): we think of virginity loss as only happening in relation to heterosexual intercourse, which is, as sex goes, a male-defined act. It is "male-defined" because it is dependent on the penis: we know it has occurred only if a penis has entered a vagina and ejaculated. Whether or not the woman orgasms is immaterial.
Dworkin reminds us that we think of virginity loss as something that happens in one, forceful moment; we accept that it involves tearing and pain. We never question this reality. But Dworkin points out that vaginal walls stretch, that over time, they can accomodate, and that we *could* think of first intercourse as a gentle process that occurs over time. We don't. That tells us something about how female and male sexualities are perceived in our culture, and about how men and women are perceived in our culture, and about the ways in which female sexuality and experience is already defined for us, before we even get to explore it for ourselves.
So there is good reason to challenge patriarchal notions of sexuality. I would even go so far as to suggest that there is a "gray area" - that there is, in fact, cultural coercion - operating on women in regard to sex in general. Intercourse is central to the notion of heterosexuality, which is not to say that there aren't many heterosexual people who have more enlightened perspectives on their own sexualities and who can make honest choices to engage in whatever kind of sex they want to engage in.
I'm not saying that intercourse is rape. I am saying that the fact that we assume, as a culture, that it is inevitable that a woman will engage in this kind of sexual practice; that the fact that we assume, as a culture, that virginity loss must be painful; that the fact that we assume, as a culture, that female pleasure doesn't matter, but male pleasure does, in determining whether sex has been had - all of these things add up to a loss of some agency, a loss of some options, on the part of women AND of men. And there are, therefore, times when intercourse is culturally coerced (not unlike Rich's notion of compulsory heterosexuality).
But even given that, that is a huge step away from claiming that all heterosexual women are rape victims, which is something that even Dworkin didn't claim. Such a claim mimimizes the reality of rape and the agency of women who have taken risks to explore and defend their sexualities. It suggests that there is no difference between consensual sex and the actual brutality of forced sex. It also posits, once again, the notion that women who are not heterosexual are, simply by virtue of their sexual identity labels, free of rape (not true - rape occurs within women-women relationships, and women who love women are still raped by men). Finally, it suggests that men exist in all of this only as a harmful force, that men who have sex with women are always raping them because men+sex=rape. (As an aside, this is not a real helpful construction for those of us who work with boys and men to take leadership in stopping rape and sexual assault.)
None of this is feminist (nor, sadly, is it original). This commenter is really quite revolutionary - building a relationship on an emotional connection rather than on sex is radical and inspiring. But it would be nice if the justification for that act could be in the good that comes out of it, and not in the assumption that one experience is universal, nor in identity politics posturing.
*I'm using quotation marks here, not to quote verbatim, but to quote approximate ideas. I'm also not quoting the commenter's spelling of "woman" and "women," because I wrote like that for while and I find it annoying now.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Warning: rambly post.
No, seriously, this is just a long ramble, and there isn't any neat coming together point. If you are in search of something meaningful and profound, turn back now.
So, I'm going to Las Vegas. For a conference. And here's the thing: one of the bragging points about this conference site, according to the folks putting on the conference, is that it's a NON-GAMING HOTEL.
"The fuck?"* you may ask, incredulously, as I did. But yes, this is a selling point.
Now - what is the point of going to Vegas if not to gamble? I'm not going to see Cirque du Soleil, which I can watch on t.v. any time I want, but which I really have no desire to do, anyway. I'm not going to see Barry Manilow, though a friend of mine was really disappointed that he won't be there then and so is going to see Cirque du Soleil. I'm going to the conference, and I'm bringing $20 or $40 that is set aside to be turned into quarters and fed to the gods of the slot machines.
Is this a feminist thing or is it just a confusion about entitlement and individual rights? I mean, I know that addiction is addiction, and I don't want to make people feel that they can't come to the conference because they can't be tempted, but I'm doubtful that gambling addictions among the membership is the reason for this. It may be that this group of feminists doesn't want to support a hotel that supports gambling and thus feeds off of others' addictions, and I can respect that, but at the same time, I'm not really convinced that this is the same animal as, say, avoiding non-unionized hotels. And plus, it's VEGAS. It's not like the conference is in Windsor or Niagara Falls or someplace that doesn't have a reputation for gambling (and prostitution, for that matter).
Feminist circles - at least some of the ones I travel in - are known for trying to accomodate everyone's needs. (Aside: Doesn't that sound a lot nicer than saying something like "Feminist circles are known for policing everyone's behavior?" Because at least in this case, I think it's really about trying to meet needs of a vast and diverse group.) In the NWSA, for example (not the conference that is happening in Vegas), there are always struggles between different constituencies. The Disability Caucus gets pissed off when Caucus business meetings are scheduled for early in the morning because many of the people who have disabilities have ones that are worse in the morning - more painful, more flare-uppy, etc. The Disability Caucus also points out that people with disabilities need to stay in hotels rather than on college campuses, so that they have (hopefully) easy access to sessions within one large and accessible building and so that they have air conditioning (not available on college campuses in June). This is a moot point now, anyway, since next year, the conference will move to the fall and will always be held in hotels, but still, holding the conference at hotels has angered the Women of Color Caucus and others who point out that this is far more expensive than staying on campus and that many WoC are priced out of attending at all. There are always some sanctimonius vegetarians/vegans who complain about the food available - ok, I know, this is really harsh of me, but fer crissakes, the world does not cater to most of us, and if you're going to attend a conference at a hotel, you should expect that it will not have much in the way of vegetarian/vegan food because, really, WHERE IN THE COUNTRY HAS MUCH IN THE WAY OF VEGETARIAN/VEGAN FOOD?! Not many places. And this is not the NWSA's fault.
OK, so I've gotten off-topic, but the point is, it's one thing to try to accomodate everyone. I think we *should* try to accomodate everyone, not just in feminist circles, but in general. I mean, that's part of respecting each other, isn't it? And the concerns of the Women of Color Caucus and the Disability Caucus are valid concerns (and they are exempted from the next sentence). But I also think that there's a point where some people begin to demand for themselves an experience in life that most people simply do not have. It seems to me to be a kind of arrogance to go to Vegas and insist on staying away from even the hint of gambling, or to go to New Orleans and complain that there is a lack of vegetarian food (I'm reaching, here, but you all know what I mean, I hope), or to complain about the service in the hotel restaurant at all (it's a freakin' hotel restaurant, and you are not so special, so just sit tight and wait). Or to claim that being asked not to wear perfume so as not to aggravate people with environmental sensitivity challenges one's identity as a person who has a particular scent. I've heard feminists say/do all of these things.
What I'm really getting at is that some feminists use feminism for their own purposes of entitlement. This is certainly not unique to feminists - I mean, the Christian Right does this all the time when they claim to be an oppressed group that is offended by a particular book in a library or Halloween parties or the fact that December holidays other than Christmas do exist. Instead of recognizing that there are lots of other people around who also count, they make it all about them and cast everyone else as the oppressor. But when feminists do it, it particularly peeves me, because I would like for feminists to be above reproach. And we're not, of course, because no one is, but I would still like for us to be.
But see, I think when you're trying to live out a principle, one of two things happen. Either you get frustrated because you feel that while you are trying very hard to be sensitive to all these other folks, no one is paying attention to who *you* are and what *your* needs are, so you get to a point of saying, "heck with this, I'm forming my own group to focus on people like me" - or you end up saying really preposterous things in the service of protecting some other that everyone but you recognizes that you see as other.
I sometimes think that, as feminists, we have too many rules about what we can do and say and think in order to be *good* feminists. I've just been pointed to a blog discussion from last August that I mercifully missed the first time around, and about halfway through the several hundred comments, I realized that the core of the whole debate was in the definition of "feminist," and that half the commenters were leaving it open to people to decide for themselves whether or not they fit under that moniker, and that the other half not only knew damn well that they were defining the term very specifically so as to leave out a good number of people who described themselves as feminists, but they were also being passive aggressive and not saying this straight out until well on into the fray. And that's where I just threw up my hands in disgust and heard myself saying "blah blah blah" as I was reading one of the more obnoxious posts about what feminism IS and what it ISN'T, which was based entirely on that commenter's personal taste but being presented as solid fact. And further, the very fact that someone had dared to ask questions about feminism that these commenters didn't approve of was seen as encroachment on their territory as feminists. So in this case, the very claiming of "feminist" as an identity label was being approached as an entitlement, as something that various people felt they had the right to control.
I told you there was no neat coming together point here.
*My friend's mom reads this blog, or at least she used to, and whenever I swear here, I always think of her and kind of blush.
So, I'm going to Las Vegas. For a conference. And here's the thing: one of the bragging points about this conference site, according to the folks putting on the conference, is that it's a NON-GAMING HOTEL.
"The fuck?"* you may ask, incredulously, as I did. But yes, this is a selling point.
Now - what is the point of going to Vegas if not to gamble? I'm not going to see Cirque du Soleil, which I can watch on t.v. any time I want, but which I really have no desire to do, anyway. I'm not going to see Barry Manilow, though a friend of mine was really disappointed that he won't be there then and so is going to see Cirque du Soleil. I'm going to the conference, and I'm bringing $20 or $40 that is set aside to be turned into quarters and fed to the gods of the slot machines.
Is this a feminist thing or is it just a confusion about entitlement and individual rights? I mean, I know that addiction is addiction, and I don't want to make people feel that they can't come to the conference because they can't be tempted, but I'm doubtful that gambling addictions among the membership is the reason for this. It may be that this group of feminists doesn't want to support a hotel that supports gambling and thus feeds off of others' addictions, and I can respect that, but at the same time, I'm not really convinced that this is the same animal as, say, avoiding non-unionized hotels. And plus, it's VEGAS. It's not like the conference is in Windsor or Niagara Falls or someplace that doesn't have a reputation for gambling (and prostitution, for that matter).
Feminist circles - at least some of the ones I travel in - are known for trying to accomodate everyone's needs. (Aside: Doesn't that sound a lot nicer than saying something like "Feminist circles are known for policing everyone's behavior?" Because at least in this case, I think it's really about trying to meet needs of a vast and diverse group.) In the NWSA, for example (not the conference that is happening in Vegas), there are always struggles between different constituencies. The Disability Caucus gets pissed off when Caucus business meetings are scheduled for early in the morning because many of the people who have disabilities have ones that are worse in the morning - more painful, more flare-uppy, etc. The Disability Caucus also points out that people with disabilities need to stay in hotels rather than on college campuses, so that they have (hopefully) easy access to sessions within one large and accessible building and so that they have air conditioning (not available on college campuses in June). This is a moot point now, anyway, since next year, the conference will move to the fall and will always be held in hotels, but still, holding the conference at hotels has angered the Women of Color Caucus and others who point out that this is far more expensive than staying on campus and that many WoC are priced out of attending at all. There are always some sanctimonius vegetarians/vegans who complain about the food available - ok, I know, this is really harsh of me, but fer crissakes, the world does not cater to most of us, and if you're going to attend a conference at a hotel, you should expect that it will not have much in the way of vegetarian/vegan food because, really, WHERE IN THE COUNTRY HAS MUCH IN THE WAY OF VEGETARIAN/VEGAN FOOD?! Not many places. And this is not the NWSA's fault.
OK, so I've gotten off-topic, but the point is, it's one thing to try to accomodate everyone. I think we *should* try to accomodate everyone, not just in feminist circles, but in general. I mean, that's part of respecting each other, isn't it? And the concerns of the Women of Color Caucus and the Disability Caucus are valid concerns (and they are exempted from the next sentence). But I also think that there's a point where some people begin to demand for themselves an experience in life that most people simply do not have. It seems to me to be a kind of arrogance to go to Vegas and insist on staying away from even the hint of gambling, or to go to New Orleans and complain that there is a lack of vegetarian food (I'm reaching, here, but you all know what I mean, I hope), or to complain about the service in the hotel restaurant at all (it's a freakin' hotel restaurant, and you are not so special, so just sit tight and wait). Or to claim that being asked not to wear perfume so as not to aggravate people with environmental sensitivity challenges one's identity as a person who has a particular scent. I've heard feminists say/do all of these things.
What I'm really getting at is that some feminists use feminism for their own purposes of entitlement. This is certainly not unique to feminists - I mean, the Christian Right does this all the time when they claim to be an oppressed group that is offended by a particular book in a library or Halloween parties or the fact that December holidays other than Christmas do exist. Instead of recognizing that there are lots of other people around who also count, they make it all about them and cast everyone else as the oppressor. But when feminists do it, it particularly peeves me, because I would like for feminists to be above reproach. And we're not, of course, because no one is, but I would still like for us to be.
But see, I think when you're trying to live out a principle, one of two things happen. Either you get frustrated because you feel that while you are trying very hard to be sensitive to all these other folks, no one is paying attention to who *you* are and what *your* needs are, so you get to a point of saying, "heck with this, I'm forming my own group to focus on people like me" - or you end up saying really preposterous things in the service of protecting some other that everyone but you recognizes that you see as other.
I sometimes think that, as feminists, we have too many rules about what we can do and say and think in order to be *good* feminists. I've just been pointed to a blog discussion from last August that I mercifully missed the first time around, and about halfway through the several hundred comments, I realized that the core of the whole debate was in the definition of "feminist," and that half the commenters were leaving it open to people to decide for themselves whether or not they fit under that moniker, and that the other half not only knew damn well that they were defining the term very specifically so as to leave out a good number of people who described themselves as feminists, but they were also being passive aggressive and not saying this straight out until well on into the fray. And that's where I just threw up my hands in disgust and heard myself saying "blah blah blah" as I was reading one of the more obnoxious posts about what feminism IS and what it ISN'T, which was based entirely on that commenter's personal taste but being presented as solid fact. And further, the very fact that someone had dared to ask questions about feminism that these commenters didn't approve of was seen as encroachment on their territory as feminists. So in this case, the very claiming of "feminist" as an identity label was being approached as an entitlement, as something that various people felt they had the right to control.
I told you there was no neat coming together point here.
*My friend's mom reads this blog, or at least she used to, and whenever I swear here, I always think of her and kind of blush.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Marriage advice.
Yet another friend/student/acquaintance (does it matter? if you're reading this and think I'm talking about you, I'm probably not - that's how often I hear this news) has decided to tie the knot. After far too short a time dating, in my opinion. And frequently, at far too young an age.
What is it that explains this mad rush for the altar? What makes people decide, "hey, this one is different, I love him/her, we're getting married - NOW"? It isn't so much that they all go for the ring as it is that they seem to have an urgency about it.
And so I say, "hey, that's great, I'm glad you're happy, congratulations." And I mean it, sort of. I *am* glad that they're happy, and that they've found someone they see as a soulmate. I'm glad that they feel part of someone else and that they are loved and loving.
But what I don't say, and what I also mean - and if you are planning on getting hitched at some point soon, you might want to skip this part or risk having your bubble burst or getting pissed off - is that it's damn stupid to marry someone you've only been dating for a few months or a couple of years.
I didn't used to feel this way, but I've seen a few too many divorces on the heels of marriages after short courtships (and this goes for both different- and same-sex couples). RIGHT on the heels. In fact, so soon after that part of me wonders whether or not the "happy couple" should return their wedding gifts.
I think getting married puts tremendous pressure on a relationship, and that this pressure is exponentially greater 1) the shorter the length of time the couple has been together, 2) the younger the couple is, and 3) the less the amount of shit the couple has been through together. (If you're already living together, that helps some with 3, because living together can count as going through shit.)
And I also notice that, very often, this rush to the altar occurs simultaneously with other big changes - say, graduation from college, or the recent break-up of a previous relationship (yes, they happen that quickly). It's as if these folks are thinking, "My life is uncertain now. I need to do something to make it feel more stable and less out of control."
I just don't think that marriage is the answer, at least not if what you're looking for in marriage is stability and permanency.
Or, to put it another way, I've come to feel that marriage isn't something we should look at as the preferable way for young people to "begin" their lives together. I think we should look at it as a way for people to formalize, if necessary, a connection between lives that have already been lived together for some time.
What is it that explains this mad rush for the altar? What makes people decide, "hey, this one is different, I love him/her, we're getting married - NOW"? It isn't so much that they all go for the ring as it is that they seem to have an urgency about it.
And so I say, "hey, that's great, I'm glad you're happy, congratulations." And I mean it, sort of. I *am* glad that they're happy, and that they've found someone they see as a soulmate. I'm glad that they feel part of someone else and that they are loved and loving.
But what I don't say, and what I also mean - and if you are planning on getting hitched at some point soon, you might want to skip this part or risk having your bubble burst or getting pissed off - is that it's damn stupid to marry someone you've only been dating for a few months or a couple of years.
I didn't used to feel this way, but I've seen a few too many divorces on the heels of marriages after short courtships (and this goes for both different- and same-sex couples). RIGHT on the heels. In fact, so soon after that part of me wonders whether or not the "happy couple" should return their wedding gifts.
I think getting married puts tremendous pressure on a relationship, and that this pressure is exponentially greater 1) the shorter the length of time the couple has been together, 2) the younger the couple is, and 3) the less the amount of shit the couple has been through together. (If you're already living together, that helps some with 3, because living together can count as going through shit.)
And I also notice that, very often, this rush to the altar occurs simultaneously with other big changes - say, graduation from college, or the recent break-up of a previous relationship (yes, they happen that quickly). It's as if these folks are thinking, "My life is uncertain now. I need to do something to make it feel more stable and less out of control."
I just don't think that marriage is the answer, at least not if what you're looking for in marriage is stability and permanency.
Or, to put it another way, I've come to feel that marriage isn't something we should look at as the preferable way for young people to "begin" their lives together. I think we should look at it as a way for people to formalize, if necessary, a connection between lives that have already been lived together for some time.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Things you should know about.
1) A new mothering blog, this one on Black mothers in academe. Sekile (in Rochester! Near my old stomping grounds!) writes: "I've recently jumped on the blogging band wagon. My decision to blog is partially for personal reasons, needing a place to dump/reflect on my realities as a mother and an academic. However, I also have done some preliminary research on the intersection of black women, mothering, and academia and hope to continue in this direction this year. There is some emerging literature on black women in the academy as well literature on mothering in the academy however the realities of black women who choose to mother has been given little attention. Anyway, my hope is that this forum will allow me to be less splintered in my life by blending both personal and professional. The blog is bare
bones right now but I hope to add resources and other elements as it matures. In the meantime please spread the word to women who may be interested in it or my research. By the way, I'm also interested in hearing from black women who choice not to mother as well, your voices are just as valuable to me as I gain deeper understanding of Black women's realities on college campuses."
2) You know how much I love overhearing funny bits of other people's conversations? At least as much as Green loves seeing people trip. So I was thrilled to find My Pointy Ears Are Up, and since Pinky appears to be here in town, I'll have to watch to see if I'm ever quoted. (Psst - Pinky! Update!)
3) Spread the word about the NWSA Women of Color Leadership Project (and apply!).
4) I also discovered Double Hoo today. I don't know what a "double Hoo" is, but I'm sure if I read enough posts, I will figure it out.
5) The fact that I was able to do this is a privilege. Don't think I haven't been thinking this all day, or that I'm not trying to figure out where exactly this expense is going to be made up (thank goodness for my job, for interest-free credit cards, for overload courses, and for Mr. P's freelance work). But this week, my cat's trip to the vet ended up costing me the equivalent of one month's rent.
bones right now but I hope to add resources and other elements as it matures. In the meantime please spread the word to women who may be interested in it or my research. By the way, I'm also interested in hearing from black women who choice not to mother as well, your voices are just as valuable to me as I gain deeper understanding of Black women's realities on college campuses."
2) You know how much I love overhearing funny bits of other people's conversations? At least as much as Green loves seeing people trip. So I was thrilled to find My Pointy Ears Are Up, and since Pinky appears to be here in town, I'll have to watch to see if I'm ever quoted. (Psst - Pinky! Update!)
3) Spread the word about the NWSA Women of Color Leadership Project (and apply!).
4) I also discovered Double Hoo today. I don't know what a "double Hoo" is, but I'm sure if I read enough posts, I will figure it out.
5) The fact that I was able to do this is a privilege. Don't think I haven't been thinking this all day, or that I'm not trying to figure out where exactly this expense is going to be made up (thank goodness for my job, for interest-free credit cards, for overload courses, and for Mr. P's freelance work). But this week, my cat's trip to the vet ended up costing me the equivalent of one month's rent.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Kitty update.
Thanks to all who have expressed kind wishes for my cat (and sympathetic wishes for me). As a recap, she has been peeing outside the box, licking fur off her tummy (which I'm told can be a form of self-comfort in the face of stress, perhaps induced by moving and by the lack of Mr. P's presence for most of the fall), and she seems to have some kind of urinary tract something or other.
I managed to get her back to the vet's for the follow-up appt. this morning - which took two hours - without her peeing in the cat carrier (!).
They aren't convinced that she has a UTI, though they are keeping her on the abx (they did a culture, and it didn't grow anything, but they think it might just be difficult to grow. Huh. So much I don't know about medicine.). She has had bloodwork and x-rays, and she will be having an ultrasound this afternoon to make sure that she doesn't have a mass in her bladder.
Meanwhile, there are plans to put her on kitty anti-depressants. (Stifling negative thoughts, taking vitamins, and fighting for social change just doesn't work so well for kitties.) On the drug information the vet gave me, it reads "has been used in animals for separation anxiety, for inappropriate urination in cats, for feline lower urinary tract disease, and for obsessive grooming behaviors."
Doesn't that sound perfect? Happy pill, indeed!
I managed to get her back to the vet's for the follow-up appt. this morning - which took two hours - without her peeing in the cat carrier (!).
They aren't convinced that she has a UTI, though they are keeping her on the abx (they did a culture, and it didn't grow anything, but they think it might just be difficult to grow. Huh. So much I don't know about medicine.). She has had bloodwork and x-rays, and she will be having an ultrasound this afternoon to make sure that she doesn't have a mass in her bladder.
Meanwhile, there are plans to put her on kitty anti-depressants. (Stifling negative thoughts, taking vitamins, and fighting for social change just doesn't work so well for kitties.) On the drug information the vet gave me, it reads "has been used in animals for separation anxiety, for inappropriate urination in cats, for feline lower urinary tract disease, and for obsessive grooming behaviors."
Doesn't that sound perfect? Happy pill, indeed!
Thursday, January 24, 2008
3 Hours and $230 later...
...my cat has antibiotics for a perceived UTI; my gym bag, blankets, and iRiver arm band have been thoroughly sprayed with Nature's Miracle and are in the wash right now; all bags of any kind have been put in closets to deter anyone who thinks the litterbox is not a good enough place to pee; my windshield has a nearly full-length horizontal crack in it, which is what happens, apparently, when it's -9 degrees and you put the heat on full blast to keep your cat from freezing; there are still bloodstains on my white down comforter, on the couch, and likely other places that I have not yet discovered; one of us will have to wrangle the cat twice a day for the next week to give her the medicine, and by "one of us," I mean "me," as Mr. P is heading out of town for a week; and I missed getting to tuck in Bean because I was sitting in the vet's (cold) office.
But the cat is purring contentedly on my lap...
But the cat is purring contentedly on my lap...
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
How is it that we still don't get this? Feminism, Lesbianism, Class, and Race.
Various blogs I've read lately have had one or another version of the "gender v. race" discussion. It so happens that I'm reading lesbian feminist theory of one kind or another for class, and so the ways in which white feminists and feminists of color are missing each other (actually, it's more like feminists of color are speaking directly to white feminists, who are looking somewhere above their heads while having their iPods blaring, is what it looks like to me, sometimes) are pretty much whacking me over the head, at the moment.
For this class, I've asked my students to read a number of texts that discuss lesbian identity and feminism. The two I'm thinking about right now are Gloria Anzaldua's (I'm not sure how to insert accent marks in Blogger without first writing this in Word, so I can't spell Anzaldua's name properly) Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza and Dorothy Allison's Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature.
So what hit me once again as I was reading just now, and what's consequently sent me to the noisy row of computers from the nice, quiet spot where I was reading and contemplating, is the context in which these two women talk about themselves as lesbians and talk about what "lesbian" means.
(Bear with me - the ramifications for feminism, more generally, will become clear.)
Dorothy Allison writes:
"I have known I was a lesbian since I was a teenager, and I have spent a good twenty years making peace with the effects of incest and physical abuse. But what may be the central fact of my life is that I was born in 1949 in Greenville, South Carolina, the bastard daughter of a white woman from a desperately poor family, a girl who had left the seventh grade the year before, worked as a waitress, and was just a month past fifteen when she had me. That fact, the inescapable impact of being born in a condition of poverty that this society finds shameful, contemptible, and somehow deserved, has had dominion over me to such an extent that I have spent my life trying to overcome or deny it. I have learned with great difficulty that the vast majority of people believe that poverty is a voluntary condition."
What this means is that for Allison, CLASS is the central fact of her life. Not gender. Not being a lesbian. She writes about race and gender and sexuality and the way that they all intertwine with class in her life. She says, a bit further on:
"Traditional feminist theory has had a limited understanding of class differences and of how sexuality and self are shaped by both desire and denial" - and quite a bit later - "My sexual identity is intimately constructed by my class and regional background, and much of the hatred directed at my sexual preferences is class hatred - however much people, feminists in particular, like to pretend this is not a factor."
And, by the way, she's talking about hatred directed at her S/M sexual preferences by lesbians, not hatred directed at her lesbianism by the straight community or the larger patriarchy.
What does it mean for feminism that this lesbian activist, who was out in far more dangerous times than these we live in now, still saw class as the fundamental aspect of her identity? That she still saw herself as oppressed by class within feminist communities that were trying to challenge the patriarchy and create something new that was woman-centered and therefore healthy and safe and empowering for women?
Then I think of Anzaldua. Anzaldua's writing about lesbianism is woven so closely into writing about cultural identity that it is difficult to pull out a thread that focuses just on lesbian identity. When I first read this book in graduate school, I tried to do exactly that, to pull out the theory on the "pieces" of identity that I found most interesting. I think I must have believed it was possible to do that, and this is a major problem among white feminists, that many of us still believe that our identities are separate pieces, that gender is the same for all of us. As one commenter posted recently at Belledame's about Black feminists who were protesting Gloria Steinem's NYT piece on Clinton and Obama, "when they stop being oppressed for being Black, they'll still be oppressed for being women." (Which is a deeply problematic statement anyway, as several people pointed out - I mean, when is this day coming when racial oppression will suddenly end? And in what universe is it possible that one form of the intertwined, institutional oppressions will be extracted and eradicated? Oppression doesn't work that way. And neither do most people experience their identities as separable.)
So the point is, if you read Anzaldua, you see via the contrast one excellent example of how white feminism has defined lesbian identity as a sort of stand-alone concept, as something that, by virtue of its whiteness, is focused on the individual and on the individual's ties to a political community that replaces blood family. Also by virtue of its whiteness, this version of lesbian identity is primarily occupied by gender, because awareness of race doesn't really enter into the picture. White lesbian feminists have absolutely tried to address issues of racial oppression, but what I'm talking about is a fundamental lack of awareness of how race functions.
So: How do we define women's issues? How do we define feminism? If we include as women's issues those that involve individual rights (such as abortion) but not those that also involve family and community and culture (such as poverty, lack of access to health care, sovereignty, etc.), then we are defining White Middle-Class Feminism.
For this class, I've asked my students to read a number of texts that discuss lesbian identity and feminism. The two I'm thinking about right now are Gloria Anzaldua's (I'm not sure how to insert accent marks in Blogger without first writing this in Word, so I can't spell Anzaldua's name properly) Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza and Dorothy Allison's Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature.
So what hit me once again as I was reading just now, and what's consequently sent me to the noisy row of computers from the nice, quiet spot where I was reading and contemplating, is the context in which these two women talk about themselves as lesbians and talk about what "lesbian" means.
(Bear with me - the ramifications for feminism, more generally, will become clear.)
Dorothy Allison writes:
"I have known I was a lesbian since I was a teenager, and I have spent a good twenty years making peace with the effects of incest and physical abuse. But what may be the central fact of my life is that I was born in 1949 in Greenville, South Carolina, the bastard daughter of a white woman from a desperately poor family, a girl who had left the seventh grade the year before, worked as a waitress, and was just a month past fifteen when she had me. That fact, the inescapable impact of being born in a condition of poverty that this society finds shameful, contemptible, and somehow deserved, has had dominion over me to such an extent that I have spent my life trying to overcome or deny it. I have learned with great difficulty that the vast majority of people believe that poverty is a voluntary condition."
What this means is that for Allison, CLASS is the central fact of her life. Not gender. Not being a lesbian. She writes about race and gender and sexuality and the way that they all intertwine with class in her life. She says, a bit further on:
"Traditional feminist theory has had a limited understanding of class differences and of how sexuality and self are shaped by both desire and denial" - and quite a bit later - "My sexual identity is intimately constructed by my class and regional background, and much of the hatred directed at my sexual preferences is class hatred - however much people, feminists in particular, like to pretend this is not a factor."
And, by the way, she's talking about hatred directed at her S/M sexual preferences by lesbians, not hatred directed at her lesbianism by the straight community or the larger patriarchy.
What does it mean for feminism that this lesbian activist, who was out in far more dangerous times than these we live in now, still saw class as the fundamental aspect of her identity? That she still saw herself as oppressed by class within feminist communities that were trying to challenge the patriarchy and create something new that was woman-centered and therefore healthy and safe and empowering for women?
Then I think of Anzaldua. Anzaldua's writing about lesbianism is woven so closely into writing about cultural identity that it is difficult to pull out a thread that focuses just on lesbian identity. When I first read this book in graduate school, I tried to do exactly that, to pull out the theory on the "pieces" of identity that I found most interesting. I think I must have believed it was possible to do that, and this is a major problem among white feminists, that many of us still believe that our identities are separate pieces, that gender is the same for all of us. As one commenter posted recently at Belledame's about Black feminists who were protesting Gloria Steinem's NYT piece on Clinton and Obama, "when they stop being oppressed for being Black, they'll still be oppressed for being women." (Which is a deeply problematic statement anyway, as several people pointed out - I mean, when is this day coming when racial oppression will suddenly end? And in what universe is it possible that one form of the intertwined, institutional oppressions will be extracted and eradicated? Oppression doesn't work that way. And neither do most people experience their identities as separable.)
So the point is, if you read Anzaldua, you see via the contrast one excellent example of how white feminism has defined lesbian identity as a sort of stand-alone concept, as something that, by virtue of its whiteness, is focused on the individual and on the individual's ties to a political community that replaces blood family. Also by virtue of its whiteness, this version of lesbian identity is primarily occupied by gender, because awareness of race doesn't really enter into the picture. White lesbian feminists have absolutely tried to address issues of racial oppression, but what I'm talking about is a fundamental lack of awareness of how race functions.
So: How do we define women's issues? How do we define feminism? If we include as women's issues those that involve individual rights (such as abortion) but not those that also involve family and community and culture (such as poverty, lack of access to health care, sovereignty, etc.), then we are defining White Middle-Class Feminism.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Am I really gonna hafta hear "if he were white" all spring?!
Listen: I'm not a fan of politicians. Politicians spin truth, to put it nicely. They do what is politically expedient to do. And I don't like the feeling I've had (and I'm not alone) that Hillary assumes (and that the DNC assumes) that she'll be the Presidential candidate next fall because she's the institutional candidate, the one who represents the status quo for Democrats.
But tonight I wandered over here, where, in the comments, I got to hear a "feminist" try to defend Hillary with comments about how, "if Obama were white," he wouldn't be drawing anyone's interest, and where I got to hear another commenter attribute Hillary's viability as a candidate to her husband. I mean, is there anything more racist than suggesting that a man only got where he is because he's Black? Or more sexist than saying that a woman wouldn't be a strong candidate without her husband? (YES, I know that we're talking about Bill Clinton. NO, I'm not saying he has nothing to do with her popularity. But let's remember, Hillary Clinton is also probably the Most Hated Woman in America, and a huge part of that is due to her husband. So, a little perspective, please.)
Let's remember that, whatever we think of them as candidates, these are Senators who have actually accumulated some degree of experience, power, money, and prestige on their own. If we're going to discredit them, can we do so because they're too conservative or because they have rotten voting records or because they're saying stupid things and acting like asses? And can we leave the racism and the sexism out of it? In liberal circles? Please?
But tonight I wandered over here, where, in the comments, I got to hear a "feminist" try to defend Hillary with comments about how, "if Obama were white," he wouldn't be drawing anyone's interest, and where I got to hear another commenter attribute Hillary's viability as a candidate to her husband. I mean, is there anything more racist than suggesting that a man only got where he is because he's Black? Or more sexist than saying that a woman wouldn't be a strong candidate without her husband? (YES, I know that we're talking about Bill Clinton. NO, I'm not saying he has nothing to do with her popularity. But let's remember, Hillary Clinton is also probably the Most Hated Woman in America, and a huge part of that is due to her husband. So, a little perspective, please.)
Let's remember that, whatever we think of them as candidates, these are Senators who have actually accumulated some degree of experience, power, money, and prestige on their own. If we're going to discredit them, can we do so because they're too conservative or because they have rotten voting records or because they're saying stupid things and acting like asses? And can we leave the racism and the sexism out of it? In liberal circles? Please?
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Self-Righteous Racism (and Minnesota Nice)
Here is a tale of much fucked-upness.
So, I get home from work today, and my Downstairs Neighbor (DN) is waiting for me. She asks if I've heard from LandLord (LL). I have not. She gives me a *look* and says, "well, she's called me three times to tell me my car is parked in front of the neighbor's house. It isn't. I told her the first time it was your car."
Let me back up. Between us, DN and Mr. Plain(s)feminist and I have four cars. Now that Mr. P is living here, both of our cars, and one of DN's cars, are on the street in front of our house, because LL has not yet fixed our garage doors, which stopped opening last month. So, for the past week or so, Mr. P or I have been parking in front of the house next door. I've felt badly about it, but it couldn't be helped; there is no other place to park. I mean, no matter where I park, it will be in front of someone else's house, and I figured that it was temporary, and that the garage would be fixed soon, so it wasn't too big of a deal.
NextDoor Neighbor (NXDN) has "issues" with her parking space, and is very uncomfortable with anyone parking in front of her house. She hates to use her garage, you see, and was clearly beside herself that anyone would park in front of her house. Anyway, I had no idea that she was so upset until today, when I heard that she had been calling LL to complain. Rather than come next door and knock on the door and ask us if we could please park down the street a little further, she called LL. (When I spoke with NXDN today, she suggested that perhaps I wasn't used to living in the city and didn't understand city etiquette, which entailed not parking in front of someone else's house. I pointed out that I'd lived in several cities, and that where I was from, when a neighbor had a problem with another neighbor, they would go next door to discuss it with them.)
Let's examine this, shall we? What kind of privilege does one need to have to not think that maybe calling someone's landlord to complain about them might have consequences for the tenant? And further, what would make someone call the landlord rather than just calling the next door neighbor?
When NXDN called LL, she mentioned the green car, which was mine. DN has a green truck. LL called DN to complain about her green truck. DN told LL it was my green *car* and not her green *truck*, and that LL should call me. LL didn't. Then she called DN twice more over the next several days to tell her to move her car (which was not parked in front of NXDN's house). Meanwhile, when DN calls LL, LL doesn't return her calls. When I call, though, LL returns my calls immediately. And while LL doesn't get most things fixed promptly, she does seem to make an effort to fix the things *I* call about. (DN's garage door didn't get fixed until *I* called about it.)
While I was talking with DN, then NXDN, then DN again, I later learned, LL was on the phone, now finally having decided to yell at Mr. P, who reminded her that if she'd fix the garage door, we wouldn't have this problem (which shut her up).
So the consequence of NXDN calling LL, in this instance, is that DN, one of the best neighbors I've ever had, and a friend, was blamed for my error and is now beside herself, sick of the shit and ready to find another place to live.
You know, I get the territorial behavior over the parking space. I get that NXDN wants things to be the way they always have been, and that she is threatened by people who obviously don't seem to know the rules of her neighborhood and who are messing up her evenings by forcing her to park in the garage, which she's afraid to do at night. I get it because I am exactly the same: I want my parking space, and I don't like parking in the garage, and I feel annoyed when people do little things that make me change my routine. I want my things where I want them, and I want other people to respect my space. And I know that this is petty.
And I also get that she, too, knew that this was petty, and that this is why she called LL instead of tracking me down. It was easier and less direct to call LL than to confront me. It's like when the people down the hall are having a large party and someone calls the police instead of telling them to turn down the music. No one wants to be the "turn down the music" neighbor.
And I get, as well, that in her comfortable life, NXDN didn't think about what it might mean to call the white landlord of a Black tenant to complain about something. She saw "her" space with my car in it, she noticed that DN occasionally parked far enough back that, when I parked behind her, I was in front of NXDN's house. She felt angry in the way that only privileged people can get angry (and I know this, because I've been there, too); angry about something to which she felt entitled but which was not actually hers - there's no law that governs the street - that was suddenly taken away from her.
So NXDN has her parking space back, and DN is in the process of deciding how long to stay here.
Meanwhile, DN offered me her parking space for tonight, so that I could move my car from in front of NXDN's house. (What was that about etiquette?)
So, I get home from work today, and my Downstairs Neighbor (DN) is waiting for me. She asks if I've heard from LandLord (LL). I have not. She gives me a *look* and says, "well, she's called me three times to tell me my car is parked in front of the neighbor's house. It isn't. I told her the first time it was your car."
Let me back up. Between us, DN and Mr. Plain(s)feminist and I have four cars. Now that Mr. P is living here, both of our cars, and one of DN's cars, are on the street in front of our house, because LL has not yet fixed our garage doors, which stopped opening last month. So, for the past week or so, Mr. P or I have been parking in front of the house next door. I've felt badly about it, but it couldn't be helped; there is no other place to park. I mean, no matter where I park, it will be in front of someone else's house, and I figured that it was temporary, and that the garage would be fixed soon, so it wasn't too big of a deal.
NextDoor Neighbor (NXDN) has "issues" with her parking space, and is very uncomfortable with anyone parking in front of her house. She hates to use her garage, you see, and was clearly beside herself that anyone would park in front of her house. Anyway, I had no idea that she was so upset until today, when I heard that she had been calling LL to complain. Rather than come next door and knock on the door and ask us if we could please park down the street a little further, she called LL. (When I spoke with NXDN today, she suggested that perhaps I wasn't used to living in the city and didn't understand city etiquette, which entailed not parking in front of someone else's house. I pointed out that I'd lived in several cities, and that where I was from, when a neighbor had a problem with another neighbor, they would go next door to discuss it with them.)
Let's examine this, shall we? What kind of privilege does one need to have to not think that maybe calling someone's landlord to complain about them might have consequences for the tenant? And further, what would make someone call the landlord rather than just calling the next door neighbor?
When NXDN called LL, she mentioned the green car, which was mine. DN has a green truck. LL called DN to complain about her green truck. DN told LL it was my green *car* and not her green *truck*, and that LL should call me. LL didn't. Then she called DN twice more over the next several days to tell her to move her car (which was not parked in front of NXDN's house). Meanwhile, when DN calls LL, LL doesn't return her calls. When I call, though, LL returns my calls immediately. And while LL doesn't get most things fixed promptly, she does seem to make an effort to fix the things *I* call about. (DN's garage door didn't get fixed until *I* called about it.)
While I was talking with DN, then NXDN, then DN again, I later learned, LL was on the phone, now finally having decided to yell at Mr. P, who reminded her that if she'd fix the garage door, we wouldn't have this problem (which shut her up).
So the consequence of NXDN calling LL, in this instance, is that DN, one of the best neighbors I've ever had, and a friend, was blamed for my error and is now beside herself, sick of the shit and ready to find another place to live.
You know, I get the territorial behavior over the parking space. I get that NXDN wants things to be the way they always have been, and that she is threatened by people who obviously don't seem to know the rules of her neighborhood and who are messing up her evenings by forcing her to park in the garage, which she's afraid to do at night. I get it because I am exactly the same: I want my parking space, and I don't like parking in the garage, and I feel annoyed when people do little things that make me change my routine. I want my things where I want them, and I want other people to respect my space. And I know that this is petty.
And I also get that she, too, knew that this was petty, and that this is why she called LL instead of tracking me down. It was easier and less direct to call LL than to confront me. It's like when the people down the hall are having a large party and someone calls the police instead of telling them to turn down the music. No one wants to be the "turn down the music" neighbor.
And I get, as well, that in her comfortable life, NXDN didn't think about what it might mean to call the white landlord of a Black tenant to complain about something. She saw "her" space with my car in it, she noticed that DN occasionally parked far enough back that, when I parked behind her, I was in front of NXDN's house. She felt angry in the way that only privileged people can get angry (and I know this, because I've been there, too); angry about something to which she felt entitled but which was not actually hers - there's no law that governs the street - that was suddenly taken away from her.
So NXDN has her parking space back, and DN is in the process of deciding how long to stay here.
Meanwhile, DN offered me her parking space for tonight, so that I could move my car from in front of NXDN's house. (What was that about etiquette?)
Saturday, January 12, 2008
5 Things.
Katie tagged me for this, but I'm going to do it a little differently and just list regrets/non regrets rather than listing exactly five of each:
Things I Regret
That I have let fear hold me back in various areas. For example, in college, I never auditioned for any plays because I felt so overwhelmed by the near-professionalism of the students I saw in the Theater Dept. I didn't even know how to prepare for these kinds of auditions, and those kids seemed to have been doing it for all of their lives. I didn't take any film courses because I felt really embarrassed about admitting that I needed help with some of the basics - like, I didn't really know what to DO, and the people who took those courses intimidated me. I also regret that it took me until I was in my late thirties to be brave enough to perform at coffee houses. I do regret that my move to the midwest has meant that I only see my family a few times a year. (On the other hand, they've all rooted themselves on the east coast, and they could always move here if they wanted to...)
Things I Don't Regret
That I kept plugging away at this academic thing and didn't stop applying for jobs, even though I also don't regret that I simultaneously ventured into more creative work when it seemed that a teaching gig might be out of reach. I don't regret at all, even for a second, moving here to take the job I have currently, which I love. I don't regret having a kid.
Tagging: Ren, Green, and all the lurkers who email me that they read my blog but who don't comment.
Things I Regret
That I have let fear hold me back in various areas. For example, in college, I never auditioned for any plays because I felt so overwhelmed by the near-professionalism of the students I saw in the Theater Dept. I didn't even know how to prepare for these kinds of auditions, and those kids seemed to have been doing it for all of their lives. I didn't take any film courses because I felt really embarrassed about admitting that I needed help with some of the basics - like, I didn't really know what to DO, and the people who took those courses intimidated me. I also regret that it took me until I was in my late thirties to be brave enough to perform at coffee houses. I do regret that my move to the midwest has meant that I only see my family a few times a year. (On the other hand, they've all rooted themselves on the east coast, and they could always move here if they wanted to...)
Things I Don't Regret
That I kept plugging away at this academic thing and didn't stop applying for jobs, even though I also don't regret that I simultaneously ventured into more creative work when it seemed that a teaching gig might be out of reach. I don't regret at all, even for a second, moving here to take the job I have currently, which I love. I don't regret having a kid.
Tagging: Ren, Green, and all the lurkers who email me that they read my blog but who don't comment.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
A response to Steinem (on Clinton).
Nope, it's not mine. Go here. Excerpts:
"Yesterday morning, Gloria Steinem, influential second-wave feminist, weighed in at the New York Times with an opinion piece titled “Women Are Never Front-Runners”. I guess we can tell where she stands in this debate.
(Incidentally, if women are never front-runners, than how did Clinton get as far as she did on the “inevitable pseudo-incumbent” campaign she’s been running that made her the front-runner for most of last year? I find the headline of this piece to be a wee bit of hyperbole.)"
...
"Though she writes, 'I’m not advocating a competition for who has it toughest', Steinem opens her article with the observation that 'gender is probably the most restricting force in American life'. She continues by implying that the race barrier has largely been resolved, because 'Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women'."
...
"Steinem further suggests that negative treatment (or impossible expectations) of Senator Hillary Clinton stem exclusively from a sexism 'as pervasive as the air we breathe'. She notes that a fictional Achola Obama (who, unlike Senator Obama, doesn’t seem to have achieved anything more than state legislator) would not be seen as electable while Senator Barack Obama – by virtue of his gender, says Steinem – is. Not only does this ignore the very 'un-electable Obama' argument that has been a core component of Clinton’s stump speeches, but Steinem carelessly paints all criticisms of Senator Clinton with the same sexist brush. She notes 'Clinton could not have used Mr. Obama’s public style – or Bill Clinton’s either – without being considered too emotional by Washington pundits'. But, Hillary Clinton has tried: notably in Selma, Alabama earlier this year, when Clinton and Obama delivered back-to-back speeches in neighbouring churches. Obama’s speech was generally heralded as rousing and inspiring. Clinton’s was not criticized as being 'too emotional', but too robotic and fake. In fact, I suspect that Clinton can’t get away with Obama’s or Clinton’s style of speaking not because she’s a woman, but because she’s simply not that charismatic a speaker."
Oh, and if you go over to read the whole thing, skip the comment that completely and utterly misses the point...
And while we're at it, check this out: Hillary isn't the first woman to run for President. I can't believe I forgot about Shirley Chisholm (embarrassed).
"Yesterday morning, Gloria Steinem, influential second-wave feminist, weighed in at the New York Times with an opinion piece titled “Women Are Never Front-Runners”. I guess we can tell where she stands in this debate.
(Incidentally, if women are never front-runners, than how did Clinton get as far as she did on the “inevitable pseudo-incumbent” campaign she’s been running that made her the front-runner for most of last year? I find the headline of this piece to be a wee bit of hyperbole.)"
...
"Though she writes, 'I’m not advocating a competition for who has it toughest', Steinem opens her article with the observation that 'gender is probably the most restricting force in American life'. She continues by implying that the race barrier has largely been resolved, because 'Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women'."
...
"Steinem further suggests that negative treatment (or impossible expectations) of Senator Hillary Clinton stem exclusively from a sexism 'as pervasive as the air we breathe'. She notes that a fictional Achola Obama (who, unlike Senator Obama, doesn’t seem to have achieved anything more than state legislator) would not be seen as electable while Senator Barack Obama – by virtue of his gender, says Steinem – is. Not only does this ignore the very 'un-electable Obama' argument that has been a core component of Clinton’s stump speeches, but Steinem carelessly paints all criticisms of Senator Clinton with the same sexist brush. She notes 'Clinton could not have used Mr. Obama’s public style – or Bill Clinton’s either – without being considered too emotional by Washington pundits'. But, Hillary Clinton has tried: notably in Selma, Alabama earlier this year, when Clinton and Obama delivered back-to-back speeches in neighbouring churches. Obama’s speech was generally heralded as rousing and inspiring. Clinton’s was not criticized as being 'too emotional', but too robotic and fake. In fact, I suspect that Clinton can’t get away with Obama’s or Clinton’s style of speaking not because she’s a woman, but because she’s simply not that charismatic a speaker."
Oh, and if you go over to read the whole thing, skip the comment that completely and utterly misses the point...
And while we're at it, check this out: Hillary isn't the first woman to run for President. I can't believe I forgot about Shirley Chisholm (embarrassed).
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Flyin' the friendly skies.
- According to the helpful Northwest phone representatives I spoke with when I was stuck in Detroit during snowstorms a couple of weeks ago, when you are in airline representative holding hell trying to rebook, you should REMAIN SILENT and NOT SELECT ANY NUMERICAL OPTIONS when you get the automated response system. That will bump you immediately to the customer service queue. Also, according to me, if you are using your cell phone during a time of mass flight cancellations and delays, you should immediately hang up and use the dedicated phone lines that you might be able to find in the terminal. They will put you right through. If you stay on your cell phone, however, you will either get bumped off the line repeatedly or wait on hold for the better part of an hour.
- What is the deal with airlines who change their policies about carry-ons from the airline's general policy without noting this in the reservation information? It's always been one briefcase/purse plus one carry-on. I intensely dislike being told upon boarding that I can only carry on one bag, total, and that I need to gate check one of my bags, especially when one bag holds my computer and wallet and the other holds my dvd player, tissues, gum, water, and child-quieting-candy. And when I tell the flight attendant that I need to get on and move the contents of bag 2 into the bags of my travelling companions, I don't appreciate the lecture about how I should have done that before I got on board. Though I did feel badly about making a bit of a scene. Sorry about that. Not your fault, I know, but your airline kinda sucks and should have handled it better.
- A special circle in hell should be reserved for people who put their seats back in coach. There is No. Room. for this kind of behavior. And when I tap you on the shoulder to ask you to please move your seat up because you are knocking the laptop off my kid's tray table, do not ignore me as I tap and "Ma'am?" you and be an ass about it. Just because you're seated directly behind First Class does not entitle you to take up my space. Also, guy in back of me? I totally support you. The gate attendant should not have told you he was going to gate check your bag and then left it there. I'm glad someone picked it up and brought it back to you. The fact that I didn't chime in with a "heck, yeah!" when you pointed out that this was not cool was only due to the fact that everyone on the flight seemed tired and grumpy, and I felt a bit intimidated about speaking up. But I think everyone there had your back.
- Another special circle in hell should be reserved for gate agents who do not announce gate changes. I mean, really, what is up with that? We are all sitting there quietly waiting our turn to get on a plane, and some of us have been there for a long time, so even if you've had a busy day, please, announce the damn gate changes. We're not all watching the boards. Some of us are trying to sleep/read/contain our kids. FWIW, the phone representatives think you suck. The one I spoke with, the one who could hear you announcing that customers should call the phone representatives to rebook, pointed out that she'd been a gate agent for five years, and that she always had to stand there and rebook until the line was gone, and that she was never allowed to tell customers to call the 800 number. She was more than a little pissed about that.
- If you are going to sell $2 half-cans of Pringles and $5 snack boxes, then at least have the decency to have change available. There is just no excuse for that.
- What is the deal with airlines who change their policies about carry-ons from the airline's general policy without noting this in the reservation information? It's always been one briefcase/purse plus one carry-on. I intensely dislike being told upon boarding that I can only carry on one bag, total, and that I need to gate check one of my bags, especially when one bag holds my computer and wallet and the other holds my dvd player, tissues, gum, water, and child-quieting-candy. And when I tell the flight attendant that I need to get on and move the contents of bag 2 into the bags of my travelling companions, I don't appreciate the lecture about how I should have done that before I got on board. Though I did feel badly about making a bit of a scene. Sorry about that. Not your fault, I know, but your airline kinda sucks and should have handled it better.
- A special circle in hell should be reserved for people who put their seats back in coach. There is No. Room. for this kind of behavior. And when I tap you on the shoulder to ask you to please move your seat up because you are knocking the laptop off my kid's tray table, do not ignore me as I tap and "Ma'am?" you and be an ass about it. Just because you're seated directly behind First Class does not entitle you to take up my space. Also, guy in back of me? I totally support you. The gate attendant should not have told you he was going to gate check your bag and then left it there. I'm glad someone picked it up and brought it back to you. The fact that I didn't chime in with a "heck, yeah!" when you pointed out that this was not cool was only due to the fact that everyone on the flight seemed tired and grumpy, and I felt a bit intimidated about speaking up. But I think everyone there had your back.
- Another special circle in hell should be reserved for gate agents who do not announce gate changes. I mean, really, what is up with that? We are all sitting there quietly waiting our turn to get on a plane, and some of us have been there for a long time, so even if you've had a busy day, please, announce the damn gate changes. We're not all watching the boards. Some of us are trying to sleep/read/contain our kids. FWIW, the phone representatives think you suck. The one I spoke with, the one who could hear you announcing that customers should call the phone representatives to rebook, pointed out that she'd been a gate agent for five years, and that she always had to stand there and rebook until the line was gone, and that she was never allowed to tell customers to call the 800 number. She was more than a little pissed about that.
- If you are going to sell $2 half-cans of Pringles and $5 snack boxes, then at least have the decency to have change available. There is just no excuse for that.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Why everyone is not entitled to an opinion about everything.
UPDATED - SEE BELOW.
Actually, the title of this post is about a larger issue, something I've blogged about before - the notion that one is not entitled to believe something abjectly stupid. I mean, I can't prevent you from having an opinion, and I certainly wouldn't try to stop you from proclaiming your ignorance to the world, but I don't think that having a brain gives people an automatice right to hold opinions about things about which they know nothing. Or, to put it another, perhaps clearer, way - I don't think you are entitled to be listened to or respected simply because you have an opinion. All opinions are not created equal.
What this post is really about, though, is the case in point: Elaine Vigneault's opinion of depression and anti-depressants.
Sometimes the watch words are phrases like "I believe." When someone says "I believe" or "my belief is," it can preface almost anything - it can be an informed opinion based on research, or it can be a suggestion that dinosaurs didn't exist, or it can be an explanation of personal faith, or what have you. I note this only because I found the phrase noticeable in this sentence:
"my belief is that depression is a normal state of being, a state some have called the human condition. Not all people are depressed, but such a significant portion of highly intelligent people experience symptoms of a 'disease' called clinical depression that I believe that depressive habits of thought are common enough and safe enough not to warrant a disease classification."
This is not a new idea, certainly, this notion that "if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention" (see? it's even a bumper sticker!) or that intelligent and creative people are particularly upset about the state of the world and so take to their beds in a kind of melancholia.
But it's also not an accurate definition of "depression." Depression is not dissatisfaction with the world. It is not outrage. It is not sadness. If you imagine depressed people as revolutionaries (which she does - see below), then you're not getting it. Depressed people, people who are depressed enough to go on anti-depressants, often don't make it out of the house. These are people in pain.
Here's the quote:
So, first, Vigneault has a theory about depression (kind of like Elaine Showalter has a theory about chronic fatique syndrome, eh? And not a bad analogy, at all, in terms of the effects these kind of ignorant assertions have on other people's lives). And second, she's basically giving the finger to all the people who are so depressed that it's an effort to get out of bed, the people who think seriously about swerving into oncoming traffic to just make it stop. You know, because the rest of us need their pain so that they can lead us. And third, she's saying that if your anger is turned inward, it's your own damn fault: you could control this if you wanted to and were motivated to do so.
One of my favorite bloggers is Heather Armstrong, who has written frequently about her struggles with depression and her near death from it - and the salvation that has come to her from her meds. Recently, she posted a link to her husband's reflections on living with someone with chronic depression. It's funny that I happened to read this just after reading Vigneault's Tom-Cruise-like response on Feministe. Jon points out that people who make these kinds of comments are really, really not helping: "Stop being an arrogant know-it-all. You aren’t right. You are wrong. If someone tells you they need help, your opinion means less than that of professionals. Stop being ignorant. Stop being obstinate."
Vigneault comes to her postions from her own experiences: she is "seriously against anti-depressants myself because of my own experiences with them and how they fucked me up." OK, that's fine - I have zero problem with that, and most people, I would guess, have zero problem with that. The problem comes in when the leap is made from "they didn't work for me" to "they are horrible and don't work for anyone." She says "my opinions about depression come hard earned." Only her opinions come hard earned, I guess - no one else, in the history of time, has ever had a different, valid, opinion based on experience (forget about research).
She also self-righteously defends her position that anti-depressants are universally dangerous by painting herself as a martyr: "Suffering is the human condition. I choose not to medicate." Which again suggests that her understanding of what depression can become for some people is seriously lacking. Again, it's not that there's a problem with her personal choice not to medicate. It's that she is dismissive of everyone else.
Look - I am skeptical when it comes to the medical monster that is our health care and pharmacological system. I have had anti-depressants practically forced on me and refused them all the same. But I would never take my own experience and decide that it is universal and that everyone else is completely deluded, which is what Vigneault is doing here (to a commenter who says that anti-depressants helped them, she replies "I’d argue about whether they really did the trick or if you just believed they did..."
And, to come back to Elaine Showalter - it's really, really uncool to use the term "hysteria" when talking about treatments for depression or about any health issue, particularly one that predominantly affects women.
This is where I was originally going to end this post, but something's been nagging at me. When I read Vigneault's blog and she expresses her frustration with the negative responses she's been receiving to her comments, I have to wonder if she honestly thinks that this is simply an issue of people not wanting to hear what she's saying and therefore shutting her down. I think she really doesn't get that what people are reacting to is not a criticism of "big pharma" or a healthy suspicion of the diagnosis of an illness and the effects of its treatment, but rather the fact that she comes across as determining for everyone else, for all time, that depression is not a mental illness and that anti-depressants cause brain damage and don't work (oh, and also, that therapy doesn't work, either). It's one thing to launch a criticism - it's another to insist that your criticism is valid because everyone else is just like you.
And if there's one thing we know for sure about brain chemistry, it's that everyone is different.
UPDATE:
Elaine Vigneault responds, sort of. Here's my comment in response to her:
"Well - it's true that I did not make the reference to Cruise to paint a flattering picture of your argument. I think he was wrong about much of what he said about depression and anti-depressants. However, like it or not, state it or not, you are in agreement with Tom Cruise. He says the exact same things you do about depression and anti-depressants and psychology. So why do you see it as name-calling when I point this out? About the only difference between your two positions is that you focus on social change as a response to depression (when you're not denying that it exists, because the way you describe depression bears little resemblance to serious depression) and he focuses on vitamins and Scientology.
As for proving that depression is a mental illness, as you know (because you mention it), the DSM does that quite nicely, whether or not you choose to agree with it. And yeah, psychology isn't a perfect science, nor is it unbiased. But the fact remains that, according to the professional, expert, and research community that has the qualifications to determine these things, depression is a mental illness, and you can argue this until you're blue in the face, but it won't change this fact. Even you, yourself, say above that "we don’t have a clear understanding of depression and other mental illnesses" - which is true, both in that we don't have a clear understanding of what causes them and how they work and how to treat them, AND in that depression is a mental illness.
But now it sounds, from what you say above, that part of your issue is that you want to be able to say you're depressed without having to also be perceived as disabled or as having a mental illness. Which opens up a whole 'nother area of discussion.
In my post, I did, of course, make other criticisms of your argument - which you have not addressed - beyond the five words that you quoted and offered as an example of how I wasn't criticising your points..."
Actually, the title of this post is about a larger issue, something I've blogged about before - the notion that one is not entitled to believe something abjectly stupid. I mean, I can't prevent you from having an opinion, and I certainly wouldn't try to stop you from proclaiming your ignorance to the world, but I don't think that having a brain gives people an automatice right to hold opinions about things about which they know nothing. Or, to put it another, perhaps clearer, way - I don't think you are entitled to be listened to or respected simply because you have an opinion. All opinions are not created equal.
What this post is really about, though, is the case in point: Elaine Vigneault's opinion of depression and anti-depressants.
Sometimes the watch words are phrases like "I believe." When someone says "I believe" or "my belief is," it can preface almost anything - it can be an informed opinion based on research, or it can be a suggestion that dinosaurs didn't exist, or it can be an explanation of personal faith, or what have you. I note this only because I found the phrase noticeable in this sentence:
"my belief is that depression is a normal state of being, a state some have called the human condition. Not all people are depressed, but such a significant portion of highly intelligent people experience symptoms of a 'disease' called clinical depression that I believe that depressive habits of thought are common enough and safe enough not to warrant a disease classification."
This is not a new idea, certainly, this notion that "if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention" (see? it's even a bumper sticker!) or that intelligent and creative people are particularly upset about the state of the world and so take to their beds in a kind of melancholia.
But it's also not an accurate definition of "depression." Depression is not dissatisfaction with the world. It is not outrage. It is not sadness. If you imagine depressed people as revolutionaries (which she does - see below), then you're not getting it. Depressed people, people who are depressed enough to go on anti-depressants, often don't make it out of the house. These are people in pain.
Here's the quote:
"My theory is that many people’s depression is anger turned inward. Anger is a powerful emotion that can be both destructive and constructive. Anger that is unjustly aimed inward becomes debilitating depression, but justified anger aimed outward towards things like injustice can be a powerful motivator. I think if more people embraced this view and used their anger as a motivator, we’ve have a revolution and possibly a better world.
There’s a saying, “if you’re not mad as hell, you’re not paying attention.” And another one “ignorance is bliss.” I think both are true. I think happy people are people who wear rose-colored glasses and don’t see reality clearly. That’s not to say happiness is ignorance; I’m saying that constant bliss can only be achieved through drugs, ignorance, or some other form of blurred reality. Occasional bliss is available for anyone willing to accept it: puppy pictures, flower bouquets, a compliment to or from a stranger, a familiar tune, a tickle, a love note, a memory… But constant bliss… that’s not real.
So, anyway, I just think we should be really, really careful about medicating the depressives, because they could be future revolutionaries and powerful dissidents who we need to lead the changes to our social world." (see comment #106)
So, first, Vigneault has a theory about depression (kind of like Elaine Showalter has a theory about chronic fatique syndrome, eh? And not a bad analogy, at all, in terms of the effects these kind of ignorant assertions have on other people's lives). And second, she's basically giving the finger to all the people who are so depressed that it's an effort to get out of bed, the people who think seriously about swerving into oncoming traffic to just make it stop. You know, because the rest of us need their pain so that they can lead us. And third, she's saying that if your anger is turned inward, it's your own damn fault: you could control this if you wanted to and were motivated to do so.
One of my favorite bloggers is Heather Armstrong, who has written frequently about her struggles with depression and her near death from it - and the salvation that has come to her from her meds. Recently, she posted a link to her husband's reflections on living with someone with chronic depression. It's funny that I happened to read this just after reading Vigneault's Tom-Cruise-like response on Feministe. Jon points out that people who make these kinds of comments are really, really not helping: "Stop being an arrogant know-it-all. You aren’t right. You are wrong. If someone tells you they need help, your opinion means less than that of professionals. Stop being ignorant. Stop being obstinate."
Vigneault comes to her postions from her own experiences: she is "seriously against anti-depressants myself because of my own experiences with them and how they fucked me up." OK, that's fine - I have zero problem with that, and most people, I would guess, have zero problem with that. The problem comes in when the leap is made from "they didn't work for me" to "they are horrible and don't work for anyone." She says "my opinions about depression come hard earned." Only her opinions come hard earned, I guess - no one else, in the history of time, has ever had a different, valid, opinion based on experience (forget about research).
She also self-righteously defends her position that anti-depressants are universally dangerous by painting herself as a martyr: "Suffering is the human condition. I choose not to medicate." Which again suggests that her understanding of what depression can become for some people is seriously lacking. Again, it's not that there's a problem with her personal choice not to medicate. It's that she is dismissive of everyone else.
Look - I am skeptical when it comes to the medical monster that is our health care and pharmacological system. I have had anti-depressants practically forced on me and refused them all the same. But I would never take my own experience and decide that it is universal and that everyone else is completely deluded, which is what Vigneault is doing here (to a commenter who says that anti-depressants helped them, she replies "I’d argue about whether they really did the trick or if you just believed they did..."
And, to come back to Elaine Showalter - it's really, really uncool to use the term "hysteria" when talking about treatments for depression or about any health issue, particularly one that predominantly affects women.
This is where I was originally going to end this post, but something's been nagging at me. When I read Vigneault's blog and she expresses her frustration with the negative responses she's been receiving to her comments, I have to wonder if she honestly thinks that this is simply an issue of people not wanting to hear what she's saying and therefore shutting her down. I think she really doesn't get that what people are reacting to is not a criticism of "big pharma" or a healthy suspicion of the diagnosis of an illness and the effects of its treatment, but rather the fact that she comes across as determining for everyone else, for all time, that depression is not a mental illness and that anti-depressants cause brain damage and don't work (oh, and also, that therapy doesn't work, either). It's one thing to launch a criticism - it's another to insist that your criticism is valid because everyone else is just like you.
And if there's one thing we know for sure about brain chemistry, it's that everyone is different.
UPDATE:
Elaine Vigneault responds, sort of. Here's my comment in response to her:
"Well - it's true that I did not make the reference to Cruise to paint a flattering picture of your argument. I think he was wrong about much of what he said about depression and anti-depressants. However, like it or not, state it or not, you are in agreement with Tom Cruise. He says the exact same things you do about depression and anti-depressants and psychology. So why do you see it as name-calling when I point this out? About the only difference between your two positions is that you focus on social change as a response to depression (when you're not denying that it exists, because the way you describe depression bears little resemblance to serious depression) and he focuses on vitamins and Scientology.
As for proving that depression is a mental illness, as you know (because you mention it), the DSM does that quite nicely, whether or not you choose to agree with it. And yeah, psychology isn't a perfect science, nor is it unbiased. But the fact remains that, according to the professional, expert, and research community that has the qualifications to determine these things, depression is a mental illness, and you can argue this until you're blue in the face, but it won't change this fact. Even you, yourself, say above that "we don’t have a clear understanding of depression and other mental illnesses" - which is true, both in that we don't have a clear understanding of what causes them and how they work and how to treat them, AND in that depression is a mental illness.
But now it sounds, from what you say above, that part of your issue is that you want to be able to say you're depressed without having to also be perceived as disabled or as having a mental illness. Which opens up a whole 'nother area of discussion.
In my post, I did, of course, make other criticisms of your argument - which you have not addressed - beyond the five words that you quoted and offered as an example of how I wasn't criticising your points..."
Monday, January 07, 2008
Probably not an original post about the Iowa primary.
First off, as Donna Brazile so beautifully said, Hillary is the "establishment candidate." That's my issue with her - a vote for her is, more or less, a vote for the status quo. She is the face of liberal feminism, not revolutionary - and certainly not radical (by which I mean *real* radical, not what-passes-on-the-interweb-for-radical) - feminim. She's not revolutionary in any sense of the word, except that she happens to be a woman. And because of this, she is also, methinks, the DNC's candidate. So what happened in Iowa means a lot, because it just may mean that the DNC will wise up this time around and not appoint a boring, same old same old, non-risk-taking, non-revolution-making candidate. (And the other candidates should totally jump on this "establishment candidate" label - that is something that all of us recognize about her, I think, even the people who are pulling for her, that she is establishment all the way.)
And second, the fact that Barack won was such a refutation of all the people I would otherwise respect who say annoying things like, "oh, America isn't ready for a Black president, so we should vote for a sure thing like Hillary/Edwards/Biden," or "electibility is the thing." Um, yeah - Obama's looking electable now, isn't he? So now can we move past these pathetic attempts at strategic voting and focus instead on rejeuvenating the electoral process and getting behind the best candidate, whomever that may be? Because I don't want an "electible" president. George W. Bush was an "electible" president. I have seen a lot of awful people get elected to various positions - you don't have to be good to be electible. I want a GOOD president, dammit.
And third, if folks like Barack and John McCain have good showings in the primaries, it will perhaps help to change the political machine that seems so bent on cranking out the most unimaginative and uninspiring "leaders" that can be found. I can't tell you what a refreshing change it is this year to actually see some impressive folks in both parties. I'll even go out on a limb here - and I'm probably out on this limb by myself - and say that it isn't so much Barack's blackness that makes him so historically important and so important for our country, but rather it is his politics, both some of his political positions and his manner of politicking, that make him stand out as the watershed candidate. (When Charlie Rose talked about this historical moment we find ourselves in and called Barack the historical change candidate, I was pissed at first that he didn't also see Hillary as a historical change candidate, because of course, she is one, as well, as is Richardson, for that matter. But the more I think about it, the more I see her establishment politics as taking away from her monumental role as possible First Woman President, just as Clarence Thomas and Condoleeza Rice have estranged themselves, by their politics, from their historical roles (at least, this is so in my own little head. I do not presume to speak for Black community).)
And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go take a shower and wipe off the feeling of "ick" that's come from having seen Mike Huckabee on Craig Ferguson and having found him eminently likeable. ZOMG. Scary.
And second, the fact that Barack won was such a refutation of all the people I would otherwise respect who say annoying things like, "oh, America isn't ready for a Black president, so we should vote for a sure thing like Hillary/Edwards/Biden," or "electibility is the thing." Um, yeah - Obama's looking electable now, isn't he? So now can we move past these pathetic attempts at strategic voting and focus instead on rejeuvenating the electoral process and getting behind the best candidate, whomever that may be? Because I don't want an "electible" president. George W. Bush was an "electible" president. I have seen a lot of awful people get elected to various positions - you don't have to be good to be electible. I want a GOOD president, dammit.
And third, if folks like Barack and John McCain have good showings in the primaries, it will perhaps help to change the political machine that seems so bent on cranking out the most unimaginative and uninspiring "leaders" that can be found. I can't tell you what a refreshing change it is this year to actually see some impressive folks in both parties. I'll even go out on a limb here - and I'm probably out on this limb by myself - and say that it isn't so much Barack's blackness that makes him so historically important and so important for our country, but rather it is his politics, both some of his political positions and his manner of politicking, that make him stand out as the watershed candidate. (When Charlie Rose talked about this historical moment we find ourselves in and called Barack the historical change candidate, I was pissed at first that he didn't also see Hillary as a historical change candidate, because of course, she is one, as well, as is Richardson, for that matter. But the more I think about it, the more I see her establishment politics as taking away from her monumental role as possible First Woman President, just as Clarence Thomas and Condoleeza Rice have estranged themselves, by their politics, from their historical roles (at least, this is so in my own little head. I do not presume to speak for Black community).)
And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go take a shower and wipe off the feeling of "ick" that's come from having seen Mike Huckabee on Craig Ferguson and having found him eminently likeable. ZOMG. Scary.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Holidaze.
Not the most original title for a post, but here I am, back home, and overwhelmed with all that the New Year is hurling my way. Nothing bad, just the usual work that I need to get caught up on after two deliriously blissful weeks off. The fact that I have been sick for the whole time - and that I had to spend the night before Christmas Eve in a hotel in Detroit due to snowstorms that caused me to miss my connection - did little to dampen the sheer pleasure of reading (books! Several of them!) and of watching t.v. (whole seasons of shows!) and of knitting (a scarf (re-knit about four times until I got it right) and two dischcloths!) and of eating (many boxes of cookies!) and of playing in the snow with Bean (!). The only things I did not get to do that I had been looking forward to doing were:
1) going to the gym (due to my cold); and
2) going to the coffee shop with my laptop and deleting all my old emails.
(This last may not sound like a big deal to you, but as a card-carrying OCD'd person, lemme tell you, the thought of that makes my eyes roll back in my head and my tongue to loll. In a good way.)
So, I read not only some of the books I received for Christmas -
- which included Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (which I enjoyed; in addition to it being a great read, Ellen Forney's illustrations are awesome (and you know what, I recently discovered that we actually went to college together, although I'm pretty sure I never knew her while I was there. At the same time, however, I do, have this nagging feeling that we may have been in the same small Lesbian Studies class...) and Daisy Hernandez and Bushra Rehman's
Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism (which, so far, I'm kinda "meh" about - when I finish it, I'll have to write more about it) -
- but also some of the books I gave as gifts, including Ryan Knighton's Cockeyed: A Memoir and Firoozeh Dumas' Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America.
I even made it through another third of the The Book That Would Not Be Finished, also known as Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia on the flight home. I've been reading this book off and on, mostly off, since August, and I just finished the India part, which I think I liked better than the Italy part, even though some of her descriptions of self-sacrifice for religious rapture were a bit off-putting. I'm a few pages into the Indonesia stories, and I suspect that, despite how unmotivated I've been to finish it, it will end up being a book I will recommend to others. Heck, I recommend it now. Go read it.
The book I meant to bring with me to read but forgot at home is The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon. If someone had said to me, "hey, you should read this book. It's about a guy who set himself on fire when he was a kid," I'd probably have said, "no, thanks." But I found it in the memoir section of a great used bookstore and had to buy it. During the same week, I also bought Barrie Jean Borich's My Lesbian Husband at the original Amazon Bookstore. I picked up this book purely by chance; it did not seem on the surface to be something that I would necessarily want to read, only because I've read so many books already that seem like they could fit under the title of "My Lesbian Husband,", like, wow, yet another book about lesbian relationships, or maybe another about a lesbian couple in which one had transitioned - not uninteresting or unimportant topics at all, but just ones I had read a lot about already. It just didn't grab my interest, but I picked it up, anyway, and I opened it up to page 118 and I read these sentences:
Readers, I was blown away by this prose. And I bought the book purely because of those lines. I have no idea whether or not I'll like the book, but I couldn't ignore the beauty of Borich's writing.
I also mentioned t.v. watching. I finally got to see the second season of Weeds, so now I'm only one season behind. Hopefully, the Season 3 DVD will be available shortly. (I'm hearing good things about The Wire, now that the series is about done, so I'll have to start watching that, now, too. Apparently, I can get it from On Demand.) I also saw the first season of 30 Rock, which I had zero interest in before, and which I can't get enough of, now. And of course, I watched the obligatory several episodes of The Sopranos, because that's just good television.
Bean and I and a few others got to sled in the backyard and have snowball fights, the latter of which also involved a lot of laughing and tackling and falling down in the snow. Delightful times!
Also, because my folks still have a dial-up internet connection, I got to play many, many games of Solitaire and Golf while waiting for various pages to load.
So it was a good, restful, even productive two weeks (I even did some planning for this semester), but now I am hit with that bad feeling one gets when one returns from a vacation. Like, "Holy Shit, I have a lot to do!!!"
So today's plan, now that it's almost 1:30pm:
1) Get dressed.
2) Hit McDonald's.
3) Go to the office to do a couple of quick things that can only be done there.
4) Go grocery shopping.
5) Come home and watch t.v. while making lists of things I will commence doing tomorrow.
Happy New Year, y'all.
1) going to the gym (due to my cold); and
2) going to the coffee shop with my laptop and deleting all my old emails.
(This last may not sound like a big deal to you, but as a card-carrying OCD'd person, lemme tell you, the thought of that makes my eyes roll back in my head and my tongue to loll. In a good way.)
So, I read not only some of the books I received for Christmas -
- which included Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (which I enjoyed; in addition to it being a great read, Ellen Forney's illustrations are awesome (and you know what, I recently discovered that we actually went to college together, although I'm pretty sure I never knew her while I was there. At the same time, however, I do, have this nagging feeling that we may have been in the same small Lesbian Studies class...) and Daisy Hernandez and Bushra Rehman's
Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism (which, so far, I'm kinda "meh" about - when I finish it, I'll have to write more about it) -
- but also some of the books I gave as gifts, including Ryan Knighton's Cockeyed: A Memoir and Firoozeh Dumas' Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America.
I even made it through another third of the The Book That Would Not Be Finished, also known as Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia on the flight home. I've been reading this book off and on, mostly off, since August, and I just finished the India part, which I think I liked better than the Italy part, even though some of her descriptions of self-sacrifice for religious rapture were a bit off-putting. I'm a few pages into the Indonesia stories, and I suspect that, despite how unmotivated I've been to finish it, it will end up being a book I will recommend to others. Heck, I recommend it now. Go read it.
The book I meant to bring with me to read but forgot at home is The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon. If someone had said to me, "hey, you should read this book. It's about a guy who set himself on fire when he was a kid," I'd probably have said, "no, thanks." But I found it in the memoir section of a great used bookstore and had to buy it. During the same week, I also bought Barrie Jean Borich's My Lesbian Husband at the original Amazon Bookstore. I picked up this book purely by chance; it did not seem on the surface to be something that I would necessarily want to read, only because I've read so many books already that seem like they could fit under the title of "My Lesbian Husband,", like, wow, yet another book about lesbian relationships, or maybe another about a lesbian couple in which one had transitioned - not uninteresting or unimportant topics at all, but just ones I had read a lot about already. It just didn't grab my interest, but I picked it up, anyway, and I opened it up to page 118 and I read these sentences:
"When I asked Linnea what does it mean to wear a ring of promise, I did not fail to see her bright and beckoning face, did not fail to know that I was more than a boozy blaze of a girl imagined by a famous alcoholic homosexual who died too young, did not miss the fact that Linnea was no stock-studio savior positioned in the back of a cutaway cab. She was real husband material, reaching for ways greater than words to say she loved me. It is just that I wanted to know who would write the story of this tempered metal I should wear so close to the skin. The ring was not an idea that Linnea and I imagined between us."
Readers, I was blown away by this prose. And I bought the book purely because of those lines. I have no idea whether or not I'll like the book, but I couldn't ignore the beauty of Borich's writing.
I also mentioned t.v. watching. I finally got to see the second season of Weeds, so now I'm only one season behind. Hopefully, the Season 3 DVD will be available shortly. (I'm hearing good things about The Wire, now that the series is about done, so I'll have to start watching that, now, too. Apparently, I can get it from On Demand.) I also saw the first season of 30 Rock, which I had zero interest in before, and which I can't get enough of, now. And of course, I watched the obligatory several episodes of The Sopranos, because that's just good television.
Bean and I and a few others got to sled in the backyard and have snowball fights, the latter of which also involved a lot of laughing and tackling and falling down in the snow. Delightful times!
Also, because my folks still have a dial-up internet connection, I got to play many, many games of Solitaire and Golf while waiting for various pages to load.
So it was a good, restful, even productive two weeks (I even did some planning for this semester), but now I am hit with that bad feeling one gets when one returns from a vacation. Like, "Holy Shit, I have a lot to do!!!"
So today's plan, now that it's almost 1:30pm:
1) Get dressed.
2) Hit McDonald's.
3) Go to the office to do a couple of quick things that can only be done there.
4) Go grocery shopping.
5) Come home and watch t.v. while making lists of things I will commence doing tomorrow.
Happy New Year, y'all.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Things I've done since I've moved here that I couldn't do in South Dakota.
Since I moved here, I have:
1) Had my hair cut well by two different people. (This is a curly thing.)
2) Gone to the Somali mall to buy awesome scarves for $5 or $10 each.
3) Eaten delicious Ethiopian food...from the co-op!
4) Noticed that there is a pollution report on the Weather Channel's "Local on the Eights."
5) Driven past five different museums.
6) Seen an African-American fathers' demonstration against gun violence.
7) Had the option of buying whole, organic, locally-produced foods in great varieties and quantities at any one of a number of stores. (Which is why I'm spending too much on food.)
8) Finally tried White Castle. (Verdict: OK, but kinda soggy.)
9) Seen many, MANY liberal bumper stickers. (God, I love this place.)
10) Had an abortion. (Just kidding!)
1) Had my hair cut well by two different people. (This is a curly thing.)
2) Gone to the Somali mall to buy awesome scarves for $5 or $10 each.
3) Eaten delicious Ethiopian food...from the co-op!
4) Noticed that there is a pollution report on the Weather Channel's "Local on the Eights."
5) Driven past five different museums.
6) Seen an African-American fathers' demonstration against gun violence.
7) Had the option of buying whole, organic, locally-produced foods in great varieties and quantities at any one of a number of stores. (Which is why I'm spending too much on food.)
8) Finally tried White Castle. (Verdict: OK, but kinda soggy.)
9) Seen many, MANY liberal bumper stickers. (God, I love this place.)
10) Had an abortion. (Just kidding!)
Ah, ye of little faith...
...that means you, Skippy! I got my birth certificate in the mail today. So I can toodle on down to the driver's license place tomorrow and hopefully not wait in line for too many hours. And I can also start the processing on my passport.
...aw, crap - which means I need to look good tomorrow for my pictures because I am vain. And I was counting on skipping the shower and wearing my weekend clothes. Darn it!
...aw, crap - which means I need to look good tomorrow for my pictures because I am vain. And I was counting on skipping the shower and wearing my weekend clothes. Darn it!
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
The Nuns put the Toilet Seat on Upside Down.
When I moved into this apartment, one of the neighbors on my street told me that two nuns had lived here previously. And in general, they kept things in fine shape. But when we moved in, I took an instant dislike to the toilet seat, which is one of those squishy seats that collapses while giving a long, hissing sigh when you sit on it, and that makes the whole experience far more intimate than it need be. (I like my toilet seats firm and aloof, thank you.) Even worse, the squishy seat had palm trees on the lid. (I generally prefer my toilet seats to be sans decoration - though I will admit that I would buy this one if I were willing to spend $30 on a toilet seat, which I am not.)
Back in September, after much careful deliberation and even some measuring (which was difficult to do while Bean was methodically sticking his head through every display toilet seat), I purchased a brand new toilet seat, one that neither collapses nor hisses. Well, tonight I finally got around to getting it out and putting it on.
But first I had to get the old one off. And let me tell you, if you're ever in the position of installing a toilet seat, and you wonder, "hmm, does the flat part of the nut (the screwy on thing, for those who are wondering, as opposed to the thing that looks like a long screw, which is the bolt) go on the top or the bottom?" - it goes on the TOP. The reason for that is that if you put the flat part on the bottom, when the next poor sucker goes to remove the nut, they will not be able to gain any purchase whatsoever because there will be nothing to grab as they won't be able to get their fingers into the tiny space between the flat part and the toilet, and they will be laughed at by their children because they are lying on top of the toilet with their heads hanging down between the toilet and the wall, trying in vain to see what the hell is under there so that they can grab it with pliers and unscrew the bolt from the top. And meanwhile, they will be wondering, "what the hell is this sticky stuff that is on my fingers??" and fighting the urge to wash their hands every two minutes.
I did manage to get the seat off - no thanks to the nuns - and now my bathroom has no inappropriate palm trees nor rude toilet seats.
Plus, I even bought a little rug for the floor. I could live in there. Which might be a good thing, given my last post.
Back in September, after much careful deliberation and even some measuring (which was difficult to do while Bean was methodically sticking his head through every display toilet seat), I purchased a brand new toilet seat, one that neither collapses nor hisses. Well, tonight I finally got around to getting it out and putting it on.
But first I had to get the old one off. And let me tell you, if you're ever in the position of installing a toilet seat, and you wonder, "hmm, does the flat part of the nut (the screwy on thing, for those who are wondering, as opposed to the thing that looks like a long screw, which is the bolt) go on the top or the bottom?" - it goes on the TOP. The reason for that is that if you put the flat part on the bottom, when the next poor sucker goes to remove the nut, they will not be able to gain any purchase whatsoever because there will be nothing to grab as they won't be able to get their fingers into the tiny space between the flat part and the toilet, and they will be laughed at by their children because they are lying on top of the toilet with their heads hanging down between the toilet and the wall, trying in vain to see what the hell is under there so that they can grab it with pliers and unscrew the bolt from the top. And meanwhile, they will be wondering, "what the hell is this sticky stuff that is on my fingers??" and fighting the urge to wash their hands every two minutes.
I did manage to get the seat off - no thanks to the nuns - and now my bathroom has no inappropriate palm trees nor rude toilet seats.
Plus, I even bought a little rug for the floor. I could live in there. Which might be a good thing, given my last post.
Monday, December 17, 2007
The real truth about being a single mom.
I realize that, in some ways, this post title is horribly offensive since, although I am living here alone with my kid for several months, I am not a single mom. Further, the topic I'm going to address is not the first thing that comes to mind for the single moms I know (childcare is generally the first thing, simultaneously with or followed closely by money, sanity, and sleep).
But what I wanted to talk about today is what I've learned about being a full-time employee and a full-time, sole parent. When I started out a few months ago, I wondered what would be different, other than less sleep. One of the main things that I found was that, after the initial period of abject panic, I learned to live with the constant threat of - and experience of - chaos. There is a physical sensation that comes with this. It's a sort of inner tightening, as if all of my organs are tensed, ready to react with lightening-quick efficiency should I suddenly have to sprint the several miles from work to my son's school. For the first couple of weeks, I would have daily freak-outs that lasted fractions of a second, during which I would forget what day it was and not know where Bean was at that moment. By the time my body knew to start feeling sick, I would have remembered and everything would be fine.
It was these brief moments of panic that I noticed most, initially. And then, as I got into the routine and got used to the fact that Bean might get sick or the sitter might cancel or anything could happen and my meetings/classes/etc. would have to accomodate his needs, I began not to have the panic attacks. I became able to function with the uncertainty and the chaos. I was much more tightly-wound, but functioning.
And then, over the last several weeks, I've started to notice another pattern. When you are working all the time at one job or another, something has to give. Usually, the first thing is sleep. Exercise goes. Eating well goes. I've been there before, and while it was disappointing to see my muscle tone disappear, it wasn't a new experience.
But lately, I've lost something else, something no one ever told me about and something I never expected.
I've lost the time to go to the bathroom.
I'm not sure how this happened. I will probably end up with kidney failure soon, but essentially what happens is, whether I'm sitting at my desk, driving to pick up Bean, or running errands, I do not have time to go - and so I don't. I have on several recent occasions noticed at around 3:30 that I had to pee when I arrived at my office that morning but still haven't gone. Or, I'll need to pee when I leave, hop in the car, pick up Bean, stop to go grocery shopping, pick up and eat dinner at the store, drive home, get him ready for bed, and notice, oh yeah, I still haven't peed.
I don't think I've made any big changes to my diet. I just think that, as one becomes accustomed to functioning - and functioning well on little sleep - when pressed, one can also go without other essential bodily functions.
Maybe this is one for Morgan Spurlock?
But what I wanted to talk about today is what I've learned about being a full-time employee and a full-time, sole parent. When I started out a few months ago, I wondered what would be different, other than less sleep. One of the main things that I found was that, after the initial period of abject panic, I learned to live with the constant threat of - and experience of - chaos. There is a physical sensation that comes with this. It's a sort of inner tightening, as if all of my organs are tensed, ready to react with lightening-quick efficiency should I suddenly have to sprint the several miles from work to my son's school. For the first couple of weeks, I would have daily freak-outs that lasted fractions of a second, during which I would forget what day it was and not know where Bean was at that moment. By the time my body knew to start feeling sick, I would have remembered and everything would be fine.
It was these brief moments of panic that I noticed most, initially. And then, as I got into the routine and got used to the fact that Bean might get sick or the sitter might cancel or anything could happen and my meetings/classes/etc. would have to accomodate his needs, I began not to have the panic attacks. I became able to function with the uncertainty and the chaos. I was much more tightly-wound, but functioning.
And then, over the last several weeks, I've started to notice another pattern. When you are working all the time at one job or another, something has to give. Usually, the first thing is sleep. Exercise goes. Eating well goes. I've been there before, and while it was disappointing to see my muscle tone disappear, it wasn't a new experience.
But lately, I've lost something else, something no one ever told me about and something I never expected.
I've lost the time to go to the bathroom.
I'm not sure how this happened. I will probably end up with kidney failure soon, but essentially what happens is, whether I'm sitting at my desk, driving to pick up Bean, or running errands, I do not have time to go - and so I don't. I have on several recent occasions noticed at around 3:30 that I had to pee when I arrived at my office that morning but still haven't gone. Or, I'll need to pee when I leave, hop in the car, pick up Bean, stop to go grocery shopping, pick up and eat dinner at the store, drive home, get him ready for bed, and notice, oh yeah, I still haven't peed.
I don't think I've made any big changes to my diet. I just think that, as one becomes accustomed to functioning - and functioning well on little sleep - when pressed, one can also go without other essential bodily functions.
Maybe this is one for Morgan Spurlock?
Sunday, December 16, 2007
We blend.
Two days after Thanksgiving, I put up my Christmas tree. Over the next couple of weeks, I put up all sorts of decorations, because finally - finally! - I have a space large enough to actually put all the crap away so that when I decorate, it doesn't look like a pile of papers and boots with a Christmas card lying on top. Now I actually have something close to the "Christmas in every room" theme I've always wanted.
The menorahs - and there are several - are sitting out in the dining room, next to the Santa Claus village; there's another on the living room mantle, above where the stockings are hung. You see, we blend.
I've been told that blending holidays is confusing for children. I think this idea is based on the notion that what we want to be teaching kids is to follow only one tradition, and so we don't want to contaminate, say, Hanukkah, with Christmas. Well, fair enough - it does seem unfair to Hanukkah that we celebrate it next to a Christmas tree. And Christmas has become, simply, "Capitalism," and as such, it's pretty hard to avoid, and it does overwhelm a little holiday like Hanukkah.
But on the other hand, my general approach to religion is that I do pretty darn much what I want to do, picking and choosing the traditions I like, the ones that I find meaningful, and tossing the others. As a blended family, it is not important to us that Bean pick only one tradition. We are not teaching him to follow only one tradition. We will probably start sending him to religious education in one of the synagogues at some point, but that is not because we want him to practice only Judaism - that has more to do with wanting him to know what Judaism is (because he won't get that through osmosis here) and with wanting him to know what it means to Judaism to be a Jew, so that he'll have that as he figures out, later, who he is. But my message to him is always that God is bigger, that faith is bigger, than the boxes marked "Christianity," "Judaism," etc.
And if what I want is for him to be an educated "free agent," then blending is a great opportunity to learn about different religious traditions.
So as for this idea that blending causes confusion - you know, I find that just a little bit offensive. It implies that I want to prevent my child from being exposed to different traditions, which I know that many parents do with the excuse of "rooting" their children in their own faith. They want their children to learn only their own tradition, or to learn just enough about other traditions that they have a vague knowledge of them but not so much that they might actually choose to follow those other traditions. It implies that there's something wrong with challenging organized religion, and to be honest, maybe it's my location over the last several years, but I'm still shocked and amazed that at this point, people still find it surprising that many folks create their own rituals and celebrate all kinds of traditions. I'm also shocked and amazed at how far some people have their heads up their own asses when they argue that saying "Happy Holidays" is anti-Christian or that Christmas is the only holiday in December (yes, some people actually argue that point).
The comment also frustrates me because there is also a hint of the need to keep Jewish children Jewish - and frankly, these approaches always make me want to run screaming right out of Judaism and take my kid with me (and from the other blended families I've talked to, I think many people share this reaction).
The thing is, really, that there's nothing confusing about blending if that's simply what you do. It's like, I grew up in a home in which God was never mentioned. We had no religion. That was not confusing for me in the least. But other people, people who grew up with religion, were perplexed by this. They could not fathom such a thing. To us, though, it was absolutely normal.
So I guess that's really my issue - I don't accept that my choice to celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas is confusing. It may be confusing for others, but that's not my problem: it's theirs.
(This has been a bit of a ramble. I'm rusty.)
The menorahs - and there are several - are sitting out in the dining room, next to the Santa Claus village; there's another on the living room mantle, above where the stockings are hung. You see, we blend.
I've been told that blending holidays is confusing for children. I think this idea is based on the notion that what we want to be teaching kids is to follow only one tradition, and so we don't want to contaminate, say, Hanukkah, with Christmas. Well, fair enough - it does seem unfair to Hanukkah that we celebrate it next to a Christmas tree. And Christmas has become, simply, "Capitalism," and as such, it's pretty hard to avoid, and it does overwhelm a little holiday like Hanukkah.
But on the other hand, my general approach to religion is that I do pretty darn much what I want to do, picking and choosing the traditions I like, the ones that I find meaningful, and tossing the others. As a blended family, it is not important to us that Bean pick only one tradition. We are not teaching him to follow only one tradition. We will probably start sending him to religious education in one of the synagogues at some point, but that is not because we want him to practice only Judaism - that has more to do with wanting him to know what Judaism is (because he won't get that through osmosis here) and with wanting him to know what it means to Judaism to be a Jew, so that he'll have that as he figures out, later, who he is. But my message to him is always that God is bigger, that faith is bigger, than the boxes marked "Christianity," "Judaism," etc.
And if what I want is for him to be an educated "free agent," then blending is a great opportunity to learn about different religious traditions.
So as for this idea that blending causes confusion - you know, I find that just a little bit offensive. It implies that I want to prevent my child from being exposed to different traditions, which I know that many parents do with the excuse of "rooting" their children in their own faith. They want their children to learn only their own tradition, or to learn just enough about other traditions that they have a vague knowledge of them but not so much that they might actually choose to follow those other traditions. It implies that there's something wrong with challenging organized religion, and to be honest, maybe it's my location over the last several years, but I'm still shocked and amazed that at this point, people still find it surprising that many folks create their own rituals and celebrate all kinds of traditions. I'm also shocked and amazed at how far some people have their heads up their own asses when they argue that saying "Happy Holidays" is anti-Christian or that Christmas is the only holiday in December (yes, some people actually argue that point).
The comment also frustrates me because there is also a hint of the need to keep Jewish children Jewish - and frankly, these approaches always make me want to run screaming right out of Judaism and take my kid with me (and from the other blended families I've talked to, I think many people share this reaction).
The thing is, really, that there's nothing confusing about blending if that's simply what you do. It's like, I grew up in a home in which God was never mentioned. We had no religion. That was not confusing for me in the least. But other people, people who grew up with religion, were perplexed by this. They could not fathom such a thing. To us, though, it was absolutely normal.
So I guess that's really my issue - I don't accept that my choice to celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas is confusing. It may be confusing for others, but that's not my problem: it's theirs.
(This has been a bit of a ramble. I'm rusty.)
Friday, December 07, 2007
Driving Hazards.
When I move to a new place, one of the last things I get around to doing is updating my driver's license. If it's just a matter of a new address, I've been known to go years (I think four years is my record, and I only updated it then because I'd lost 40 pounds and bore no resemblance to the original picture and was too vain to keep it any longer). Moving to a new state, though, requires additional annoyances. In the state of Minnesota, one is required to take a test in order to get a license. I did not know this. I had passed by the office in the strip mall with the large "Driver's Licenses" sign several times, and on this Monday, I had an hour and figured I might as well take care of it.
The clerk was a far cry from the slightly insane, overly friendly women I remembered from South Dakota. This clerk reminded me of DMV clerks from my New York days - gruff, uninterested in his work (can't fault him there), and of few words. He directed me to my testing station and wished me a surprisingly-sincere-sounding "good luck."
I sat down in front of number 25, touched the screen to begin, and started my test, confident that my 19 years of driving would stand me in good stead. No, not just confident - I was arrogant. I was sure that whatever they'd throw at me, my years of experience would more than equip me to handle.
Good think I didn't have to take a driving test: I missed about seven questions. One or two were in error - I had known the answer and accidentally chosen the wrong one. The rest were real mistakes - things having to do with the exact number of feet one must leave between oneself and, say, a school bus (I still don't remember).
I ended up scoring an 86 on the test, which I was a little indignant about. However, after I had filled out my paperwork and gone to wait for my eye exam, I learned from an enthusiastic and very friendly young man that 80 was passing, and I felt relieved that I hadn't missed any more of the questions. (The young man told me he'd waited ten years to get his license, and I wish, now, that I'd asked him about that, because that's interesting: Why ten years? What was keeping him from getting his license all that time?)
When I was finally called up for my eye exam, I was asked to present a birth certificate - which I didn't have on me. It had never occurred to me, stupidly, to ask what paperwork I might need to bring (although I've never needed a birth certificate to get a license, at least not in recent memory). They told me to come back with it and to bypass the line. I had been there for an hour.
I came back later that afternoon, armed with a copy of my birth certificate. The line, by this time, had gotten quite long, and I felt anxious about cutting in front of all of those people (but I did it anyway - I'm not crazy, and besides, Bean was with me. If we'd had to wait in that line, people would have been asking me to go ahead of them just so they could hustle us out the door faster.).
My birth certificate copy is not "official." This means it does not have a raised seal.
Thankfully, the unofficial copy still has all the pertinent information, so that when the driver's license people turned me away, I could go online (here is a good site for U.S. folks, if you need to do this) and find out to whom I should write.
I joked with a friend that I'd be sunk if the birth certificate people needed a copy of my driver's license - and as it turned out, they do require a copy of a photo ID. I'm wondering if the fact that my driver's license has a different address and state on it than my check and mailing address does will cause me problems.
So, now I wait. If I get the new, official copy of the birth certificate within 30 days, I don't have to take the test again. Cross your fingers.
The clerk was a far cry from the slightly insane, overly friendly women I remembered from South Dakota. This clerk reminded me of DMV clerks from my New York days - gruff, uninterested in his work (can't fault him there), and of few words. He directed me to my testing station and wished me a surprisingly-sincere-sounding "good luck."
I sat down in front of number 25, touched the screen to begin, and started my test, confident that my 19 years of driving would stand me in good stead. No, not just confident - I was arrogant. I was sure that whatever they'd throw at me, my years of experience would more than equip me to handle.
Good think I didn't have to take a driving test: I missed about seven questions. One or two were in error - I had known the answer and accidentally chosen the wrong one. The rest were real mistakes - things having to do with the exact number of feet one must leave between oneself and, say, a school bus (I still don't remember).
I ended up scoring an 86 on the test, which I was a little indignant about. However, after I had filled out my paperwork and gone to wait for my eye exam, I learned from an enthusiastic and very friendly young man that 80 was passing, and I felt relieved that I hadn't missed any more of the questions. (The young man told me he'd waited ten years to get his license, and I wish, now, that I'd asked him about that, because that's interesting: Why ten years? What was keeping him from getting his license all that time?)
When I was finally called up for my eye exam, I was asked to present a birth certificate - which I didn't have on me. It had never occurred to me, stupidly, to ask what paperwork I might need to bring (although I've never needed a birth certificate to get a license, at least not in recent memory). They told me to come back with it and to bypass the line. I had been there for an hour.
I came back later that afternoon, armed with a copy of my birth certificate. The line, by this time, had gotten quite long, and I felt anxious about cutting in front of all of those people (but I did it anyway - I'm not crazy, and besides, Bean was with me. If we'd had to wait in that line, people would have been asking me to go ahead of them just so they could hustle us out the door faster.).
My birth certificate copy is not "official." This means it does not have a raised seal.
Thankfully, the unofficial copy still has all the pertinent information, so that when the driver's license people turned me away, I could go online (here is a good site for U.S. folks, if you need to do this) and find out to whom I should write.
I joked with a friend that I'd be sunk if the birth certificate people needed a copy of my driver's license - and as it turned out, they do require a copy of a photo ID. I'm wondering if the fact that my driver's license has a different address and state on it than my check and mailing address does will cause me problems.
So, now I wait. If I get the new, official copy of the birth certificate within 30 days, I don't have to take the test again. Cross your fingers.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Mommy meme: Leslie Bennetts
1. Why did you decide to stay at home with the kids or go to work. Was it a choice?
Yep, they are choices, but I think it's important to not that for the majority of women, it's not ONE choice and it's not exclusively between staying home and not engaging in waged work or working full-time out of the home. The vast majority of women work, and most mothers work, even if they are "stay at home moms." Many SAHMs work at home - the SAHMs I knew in SD had part-time careers (doula, photographer, website hosting, etc.).
But anyway, I stayed home full-time for about eight months because I wanted to do the whole attachment parenting thing, I wanted to quit my boring marketing job, and I wanted to have time to finish my dissertation. (I did the first two things on my list - the third took an additional year.)
Then I went back to work, on a part-time basis. I don't remember why exactly I made that decision at that point, but I do remember that I was ecstatic to be working - teaching! - again. Probably it was a professional decision - I knew I'd be applying for teaching positions, so it made sense to be teaching. But also, I really disliked being a SAHM, and I treasured the intellectual stimulation of working.
Now I've made the decision to work full-time, and that has taken some getting used to. I'm glad I had the privilege of being able to wait until Bean was older to do this, though I also feel as if I'd spent the last several year locked in a cage, and am only now beginning to feel free again. That was not a function of mothering but of 1) working in a job that had no future and in which I felt I could not do all that I was capable of doing, and 2) not knowing if I'd ever be able to find a job that would fulfill my creative and intellectual desires.
2. Leslie Bennetts claims that there's a stay at home movement that is encouraging more women to return to the home, even women who are poor. The work vs. home argument used to be just about white upperclass women. Is it spreading?
I think she's right that the movement is encouraging women to return to the home, and I would add this movement likes to argue that women's pay is so little anyway that it would just about pay for daycare, a work wardrobe, and travel to and from work - so why bother? This is such a problematic argument. First of all, it assumes that money is the only benefit from work, and while I haven't read Bennetts' book, Bennetts notes here some of the other benefits that working gives women. Second, it not only accepts but seemingly condones the fact that women are paid - what is it, now? $.74? - to men's dollars. How interesting that the movement is not to push for pay equity so that women can be independent and plan for a secure future that includes health care and perhaps even a pension. Instead, it pushes for increased dependence on men (you know, assuming one even has a male partner to make all those big bucks in the first place).
And then, too, the work v. home argument was NEVER just about white upperclass women, not really. True, white upperclass women were the only ones who had the luxury to choose to work or to stay home. But all other women felt the lack of that choice and very often tried to pattern themselves after the wealthy women who stayed home, because that was what "true womanhood" looked like.
I think what we should be asking, rather than is the SAH movement spreading, is whose interests are best represented by this movement? (Hint: NOT the children's!) I'm not saying that SAHMs are pawns supporting the patriarchy. But I *am* saying that, as Bennetts points out, these decisions are not merely individual choices - there are larger social issues to consider.
3. Which of Bennets's arguments are most convincing? Which least convincing? Which did she miss?
That I cannot say, as I have not yet read the book.
4. Did your mother and grandmothers work outside the home? How did that turn out for them and for you?
That second question sounds a lot like Dr. Phil, and not in a good way. I want to respond with, "It worked out JUST FINE for me. Watch what you say about my mama!"
My mother and grandmothers did not work outside the home after their marriages, as far as I know, except for my mom, who did try to re-enter the work force on several occasions and was not able to due to ageism and other problems that come up when you try to re-enter the work force after years of being out of it. This is usually the place where people - well, my students, anyway - often insert a comment about how glad they are that their moms stayed home with them and how their moms are wonderful, self-sacrificing people, etc., etc. I will instead say that my mom did sacrifice a lot, but I don't think that's a good thing. I know that she would have been a lot happier had she not been a housewife, and my brother and I would have been stronger for having to cook dinner once and a while.
5. Bennets said in an interview that she wants this book to be a one-stop resource for women to gain all the information they need to decide whether or not to return to work after having children. Did she succeed?
See number 3.
6. One of the women Bennets quotes says that she felt ostracized from the stay at home moms at school when she was working. Is there a divide between working women and those who stay at home? How can we bridge it?
I think the divide has been mischaracterized in the media - I don't think it's so huge, and in fact, there's been a lot of research that comes to exactly that conclusion. This doesn't mean that individuals won't feel out of the loop, but it does mean that there's a lot more support among mothers for other mothers than we tend to consider.
7. Did you prepare in your education for paid work? Why or why not? Do you wish you had done differently?
Yes, because I always assumed that I would need to - and should - take care of myself and contribute financially to my household. Is this a serious question? Are there really people out there (who aren't obscenely wealthy) who think they won't ever have to work, that they are immune from divorce, death, health emergencies, etc.? No, I certainly do not wish I had done differently.
(OK, wait - I just dredged up a childhood fantasy of being the woman in the Calgon commercial who gets to take a bubble bath in a gorgeous, palatial Romanesque bath. I did think, when I was twelve or ten or something, that being a housewife meant getting to lie about in baths all day, and so I did for a time plan to do that. I think it would've gotten boring, though. That, and my fingers would get pruny.)
8. How do you divide the domestic labor in your relationship? Did you always do it that way? Is it working?
Not very well. I do most of it (well, right now, I do all of it, but that's because Mr. Plain(s)feminist is not yet living with us - I assume he's doing his own housework where he is living). Over the last several years, I was working part-time, and I think that became reason for me to take on a larger share of the housework. However, now that we are both working full-time, that will be changing.
I tag Amy, if she wants to do it (if you do, let me know, and I'll link - if not, s'ok).
Yep, they are choices, but I think it's important to not that for the majority of women, it's not ONE choice and it's not exclusively between staying home and not engaging in waged work or working full-time out of the home. The vast majority of women work, and most mothers work, even if they are "stay at home moms." Many SAHMs work at home - the SAHMs I knew in SD had part-time careers (doula, photographer, website hosting, etc.).
But anyway, I stayed home full-time for about eight months because I wanted to do the whole attachment parenting thing, I wanted to quit my boring marketing job, and I wanted to have time to finish my dissertation. (I did the first two things on my list - the third took an additional year.)
Then I went back to work, on a part-time basis. I don't remember why exactly I made that decision at that point, but I do remember that I was ecstatic to be working - teaching! - again. Probably it was a professional decision - I knew I'd be applying for teaching positions, so it made sense to be teaching. But also, I really disliked being a SAHM, and I treasured the intellectual stimulation of working.
Now I've made the decision to work full-time, and that has taken some getting used to. I'm glad I had the privilege of being able to wait until Bean was older to do this, though I also feel as if I'd spent the last several year locked in a cage, and am only now beginning to feel free again. That was not a function of mothering but of 1) working in a job that had no future and in which I felt I could not do all that I was capable of doing, and 2) not knowing if I'd ever be able to find a job that would fulfill my creative and intellectual desires.
2. Leslie Bennetts claims that there's a stay at home movement that is encouraging more women to return to the home, even women who are poor. The work vs. home argument used to be just about white upperclass women. Is it spreading?
I think she's right that the movement is encouraging women to return to the home, and I would add this movement likes to argue that women's pay is so little anyway that it would just about pay for daycare, a work wardrobe, and travel to and from work - so why bother? This is such a problematic argument. First of all, it assumes that money is the only benefit from work, and while I haven't read Bennetts' book, Bennetts notes here some of the other benefits that working gives women. Second, it not only accepts but seemingly condones the fact that women are paid - what is it, now? $.74? - to men's dollars. How interesting that the movement is not to push for pay equity so that women can be independent and plan for a secure future that includes health care and perhaps even a pension. Instead, it pushes for increased dependence on men (you know, assuming one even has a male partner to make all those big bucks in the first place).
And then, too, the work v. home argument was NEVER just about white upperclass women, not really. True, white upperclass women were the only ones who had the luxury to choose to work or to stay home. But all other women felt the lack of that choice and very often tried to pattern themselves after the wealthy women who stayed home, because that was what "true womanhood" looked like.
I think what we should be asking, rather than is the SAH movement spreading, is whose interests are best represented by this movement? (Hint: NOT the children's!) I'm not saying that SAHMs are pawns supporting the patriarchy. But I *am* saying that, as Bennetts points out, these decisions are not merely individual choices - there are larger social issues to consider.
3. Which of Bennets's arguments are most convincing? Which least convincing? Which did she miss?
That I cannot say, as I have not yet read the book.
4. Did your mother and grandmothers work outside the home? How did that turn out for them and for you?
That second question sounds a lot like Dr. Phil, and not in a good way. I want to respond with, "It worked out JUST FINE for me. Watch what you say about my mama!"
My mother and grandmothers did not work outside the home after their marriages, as far as I know, except for my mom, who did try to re-enter the work force on several occasions and was not able to due to ageism and other problems that come up when you try to re-enter the work force after years of being out of it. This is usually the place where people - well, my students, anyway - often insert a comment about how glad they are that their moms stayed home with them and how their moms are wonderful, self-sacrificing people, etc., etc. I will instead say that my mom did sacrifice a lot, but I don't think that's a good thing. I know that she would have been a lot happier had she not been a housewife, and my brother and I would have been stronger for having to cook dinner once and a while.
5. Bennets said in an interview that she wants this book to be a one-stop resource for women to gain all the information they need to decide whether or not to return to work after having children. Did she succeed?
See number 3.
6. One of the women Bennets quotes says that she felt ostracized from the stay at home moms at school when she was working. Is there a divide between working women and those who stay at home? How can we bridge it?
I think the divide has been mischaracterized in the media - I don't think it's so huge, and in fact, there's been a lot of research that comes to exactly that conclusion. This doesn't mean that individuals won't feel out of the loop, but it does mean that there's a lot more support among mothers for other mothers than we tend to consider.
7. Did you prepare in your education for paid work? Why or why not? Do you wish you had done differently?
Yes, because I always assumed that I would need to - and should - take care of myself and contribute financially to my household. Is this a serious question? Are there really people out there (who aren't obscenely wealthy) who think they won't ever have to work, that they are immune from divorce, death, health emergencies, etc.? No, I certainly do not wish I had done differently.
(OK, wait - I just dredged up a childhood fantasy of being the woman in the Calgon commercial who gets to take a bubble bath in a gorgeous, palatial Romanesque bath. I did think, when I was twelve or ten or something, that being a housewife meant getting to lie about in baths all day, and so I did for a time plan to do that. I think it would've gotten boring, though. That, and my fingers would get pruny.)
8. How do you divide the domestic labor in your relationship? Did you always do it that way? Is it working?
Not very well. I do most of it (well, right now, I do all of it, but that's because Mr. Plain(s)feminist is not yet living with us - I assume he's doing his own housework where he is living). Over the last several years, I was working part-time, and I think that became reason for me to take on a larger share of the housework. However, now that we are both working full-time, that will be changing.
I tag Amy, if she wants to do it (if you do, let me know, and I'll link - if not, s'ok).
Monday, November 26, 2007
Just posting to say I'm still here.
I'm on my way to bed, but I thought I'd check in first. I spent my Thanksgiving driving back and forth to SD and recovering from a killer migraine. (Note to self: find new doctor and get prescription refilled.) Even though Bean drove me crazy for all of yesterday, I spent today missing him horribly, and was thrilled to come home from my night class and find that he had fallen asleep before dinner and slept until just that very minute, so we had a late dinner together before I packed him back off to bed. He has his first loose tooth, which he finds alternately extremely exciting and extremely painful. I remember the sweet agony of that tooth twisting in its socket, not quite out but almost, so that it kept catching on everything. And I remember the softness of the hole it left, with just a tiny bit of the sharp new tooth poking up.
I also remember Bean's very first tooth coming in, and the one that's coming out now may, in fact, be it (but I think, actually, it's the one next to his first).
I have to research how much the tooth fairy leaves these days. It's gotta be more than the fifty cents I used to get.
I also remember Bean's very first tooth coming in, and the one that's coming out now may, in fact, be it (but I think, actually, it's the one next to his first).
I have to research how much the tooth fairy leaves these days. It's gotta be more than the fifty cents I used to get.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Plain(s)feminist, driving around lost.
When I first moved to Buffalo from my much smaller hometown, I was driven (pun intended) to misery by the traffic. I had been used to a much easier pace - to being able to drive roughly 30 miles an hour even during "rush hour." But when I moved to Buffalo, I quickly discovered that driving during rush hour meant sitting still for long periods, then quickly accelerating when the car ahead of you moved forward (because if you waited, someone else would try to cut in front of you), and then immediately stopping short to avoid hitting the car in front of you, which had suddenly stopped.
It took me a full year not to think about it all. the. time.
Also, it was easy to get lost in Buffalo and the surrounding towns, because whoever planned the layout was determined to keep the people of color out of the white neighborhoods and so everywhere you went, it was like a maze. (I don't know if that's actually why the cities were so oddly designed, but I do know that that's the reason the metro (underground train) was never completed.)
So the great thing about living here, even with the huge increase in population density I'm experiencing in moving from Tiny City to Bigger City, is that rush hour traffic is really not so bad, and most streets are laid out in a clear grid. This means that, while I do get lost, I can generally find my way again. And I'm almost never sitting in traffic.
Only sometimes...not.
Friday I spent about an hour driving (er, sitting) in rush hour traffic on the highway trying unsuccessfully to find a flu shot clinic that would take both me and Bean. I followed the Health Dept. website's guide and used Google Maps to get directions, which I followed to the letter, until I had that experience that some of you will recognize, in which I realized I was clearly not on the same road that the directions thought I was on. At that point, I had no choice but to give up in disgust, as it was past the clinic's closing time, anyway. So I headed back home, unshotted. During much of our drive in somewhat tense conditions - because I had no clue where I was going and there was a lot of traffic in all directions - Bean WOULD NOT SHUT UP, so that I was pretty sure I was going to end up sobbing in my car by the side of the road, banging my face on the steering wheel like Don Music.
On Saturday morning, I was willing to have another go at the flu shots, especially since Bean was in that narrow window between colds and I wanted to catch him while he was healthy. After plying him with pancakes, I headed off toward what I thought would be the nearest clinic (not the same one from the day before). We got hopelessly lost (took the wrong damn county road, and by the way, would it hurt to actually NAME roads?). It took me an hour just to find the place, and another 40 minutes just to get in. Bean then tried hiding under the chair, but by this time I was in no mood, and we both got our shots (and Bean, surprisingly, did quite well after the initial hiding reflex).
On Sunday afternoon, Bean had a birthday party to attend. I'd known about it for a couple of days, and I'd also known that I should probably look up the address online so I would be able to find it. However, I was either too lazy or too convinced of my own ability to find things (after all, I'd managed to find clinic number two, hadn't I?), so I didn't bother. Bean took forever to get ready, and I was watching the end of a movie, so we didn't actually leave until shortly after the party had begun (it was scheduled to go on for three hours, so I figured it would be ok to be a little late). I kept reading the invitation and looking at the map, and I had no clue where the place was, so I called the house and got directions before heading into downtown in rainy snow during a hockey game.
Apparently, the people hosting the party weren't sure how to get there, either, or maybe they just had a wicked sense of humor, because instead of sending me along the river, which would have been the simplest, most straightforward way to go, they had me drive through the heart of downtown in all the hockey traffic. Twice. I had to call three more times before I found the place. An hour later. For the record, it was probably a seven-minute drive from our house.
Bean, for his part, was great, and only blamed me once for not having gotten directions online. And he had a fabulous time at the party.
It took me a full year not to think about it all. the. time.
Also, it was easy to get lost in Buffalo and the surrounding towns, because whoever planned the layout was determined to keep the people of color out of the white neighborhoods and so everywhere you went, it was like a maze. (I don't know if that's actually why the cities were so oddly designed, but I do know that that's the reason the metro (underground train) was never completed.)
So the great thing about living here, even with the huge increase in population density I'm experiencing in moving from Tiny City to Bigger City, is that rush hour traffic is really not so bad, and most streets are laid out in a clear grid. This means that, while I do get lost, I can generally find my way again. And I'm almost never sitting in traffic.
Only sometimes...not.
Friday I spent about an hour driving (er, sitting) in rush hour traffic on the highway trying unsuccessfully to find a flu shot clinic that would take both me and Bean. I followed the Health Dept. website's guide and used Google Maps to get directions, which I followed to the letter, until I had that experience that some of you will recognize, in which I realized I was clearly not on the same road that the directions thought I was on. At that point, I had no choice but to give up in disgust, as it was past the clinic's closing time, anyway. So I headed back home, unshotted. During much of our drive in somewhat tense conditions - because I had no clue where I was going and there was a lot of traffic in all directions - Bean WOULD NOT SHUT UP, so that I was pretty sure I was going to end up sobbing in my car by the side of the road, banging my face on the steering wheel like Don Music.
On Saturday morning, I was willing to have another go at the flu shots, especially since Bean was in that narrow window between colds and I wanted to catch him while he was healthy. After plying him with pancakes, I headed off toward what I thought would be the nearest clinic (not the same one from the day before). We got hopelessly lost (took the wrong damn county road, and by the way, would it hurt to actually NAME roads?). It took me an hour just to find the place, and another 40 minutes just to get in. Bean then tried hiding under the chair, but by this time I was in no mood, and we both got our shots (and Bean, surprisingly, did quite well after the initial hiding reflex).
On Sunday afternoon, Bean had a birthday party to attend. I'd known about it for a couple of days, and I'd also known that I should probably look up the address online so I would be able to find it. However, I was either too lazy or too convinced of my own ability to find things (after all, I'd managed to find clinic number two, hadn't I?), so I didn't bother. Bean took forever to get ready, and I was watching the end of a movie, so we didn't actually leave until shortly after the party had begun (it was scheduled to go on for three hours, so I figured it would be ok to be a little late). I kept reading the invitation and looking at the map, and I had no clue where the place was, so I called the house and got directions before heading into downtown in rainy snow during a hockey game.
Apparently, the people hosting the party weren't sure how to get there, either, or maybe they just had a wicked sense of humor, because instead of sending me along the river, which would have been the simplest, most straightforward way to go, they had me drive through the heart of downtown in all the hockey traffic. Twice. I had to call three more times before I found the place. An hour later. For the record, it was probably a seven-minute drive from our house.
Bean, for his part, was great, and only blamed me once for not having gotten directions online. And he had a fabulous time at the party.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
The State of Things.
1. Clearly, I am being kept too busy to blog. I'm not sure how permanent this situation is. I don't feel good about it.
2. The people downstairs have been having headaches daily for some time. This past week, I have been having headaches daily, as well. After the people downstairs called the fire marshall and found that there were no fumes anywhere that could be causing these headaches, I can only conclude that it's the dry air, and so I purchased another couple of humidifiers, which I will try tonight. Wish me luck. Waking up with a headache every morning sucks. If it works, I'll at least have a suggestion for the people downstairs.
3. I've gotten somewhat used to my schedule and I'm a lot more used to being the perpetual Parent on Duty.
4. I finally made it to the Mall of America - loved it. Can't wait to go back. They had a J.Jill just down the way from Nine West - what could be better? And sharks! The mall has a freakin' aquarium! I am SO going back.
5. For the first time ever, I'm thinking about having a holiday party. You know why? Because for the first time in 15 or so years, I actually have some space to do it! This is not a huge place, but I feel like I've moved out of the hall closet into an actual home.
6. Sunday nights still make me depressed. Even though I love my work-at-home Mondays. Go figure.
7. Monday night babysitting is still a hassle. To recap: the first sitter I hired back in August never showed up. The second was fabulous, but when hockey season started, she had to quit. Since then, I've patched things together thanks to a couple of former students and to visits from family members. I just hired a neighborhood kid to sit for the two remaining uncovered Mondays, and if this all works out, I will be delirious with relief.
8. The neighborhood is a bit Stepford - I went to a "First Friday" get-together and was a little freaked at how close knit everyone seemed to be. Not that that's a bad thing - just that it's not been my experience for the past 15 or so years.
9. Bean is awesome. He loves school and aftercare, and he almost never has screaming fits anymore. In fact, he's pretty fun to hang out with.
10. I do miss Mr. Plains(s)feminist - can't wait till he moves up here.
2. The people downstairs have been having headaches daily for some time. This past week, I have been having headaches daily, as well. After the people downstairs called the fire marshall and found that there were no fumes anywhere that could be causing these headaches, I can only conclude that it's the dry air, and so I purchased another couple of humidifiers, which I will try tonight. Wish me luck. Waking up with a headache every morning sucks. If it works, I'll at least have a suggestion for the people downstairs.
3. I've gotten somewhat used to my schedule and I'm a lot more used to being the perpetual Parent on Duty.
4. I finally made it to the Mall of America - loved it. Can't wait to go back. They had a J.Jill just down the way from Nine West - what could be better? And sharks! The mall has a freakin' aquarium! I am SO going back.
5. For the first time ever, I'm thinking about having a holiday party. You know why? Because for the first time in 15 or so years, I actually have some space to do it! This is not a huge place, but I feel like I've moved out of the hall closet into an actual home.
6. Sunday nights still make me depressed. Even though I love my work-at-home Mondays. Go figure.
7. Monday night babysitting is still a hassle. To recap: the first sitter I hired back in August never showed up. The second was fabulous, but when hockey season started, she had to quit. Since then, I've patched things together thanks to a couple of former students and to visits from family members. I just hired a neighborhood kid to sit for the two remaining uncovered Mondays, and if this all works out, I will be delirious with relief.
8. The neighborhood is a bit Stepford - I went to a "First Friday" get-together and was a little freaked at how close knit everyone seemed to be. Not that that's a bad thing - just that it's not been my experience for the past 15 or so years.
9. Bean is awesome. He loves school and aftercare, and he almost never has screaming fits anymore. In fact, he's pretty fun to hang out with.
10. I do miss Mr. Plains(s)feminist - can't wait till he moves up here.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Racism.
So, I've moved to a lovely duplex, and we are lucky enough to have terrific neighbors. They are quiet, they don't smoke, and when they play loud music, which is seldom, they play music I like. Also, they're nice people - they let me use their washer when mine wasn't working, their little girl is very sweet to Bean, and I've had several nice chats with them. They are also clean freaks and they put me to shame (I was just down there, and I feel like I need to clean the house again, even though I just cleaned it yesterday).
Our landlord, however, does not treat them very well. When I moved in, Landlord told me, with her hand held to her mouth to indicate that she was telling me a secret, that they were Black.
We all know what this means, right? When someone tells you in a stage whisper or in some other way that communicates pretend secrecy that someone is Black (or gay, or whatever), what they're really saying is, "and you know how they are." Or, "watch out - we're likely to have a problem." Or, when it comes from a landlord, "let me know if there are any problems."
And, sure enough, Landlord has not been as receptive to their requests for repairs and maintenance as she appears to be to mine. Now, it's true, I don't call her nearly as much as they do, and they have a lot more complaints than I do. But even so, it's not like they don't have valid concerns. And it's disturbing that they can call a number of times because their washer is acting up and get no response, but I can call once about my washer and have the maintenance guy over to fix it the next day.
This is a pretty clear example of white privilege, isn't it? Especially because I would have been totally unaware of it had I not struck up a friendship with the neighbors, had they not informed me of their unanswered calls.
The question has been what to do - how do we handle this situation? For the moment, I've called to report the things that they're concerned about - to work the system, in other words. But it doesn't feel right to either of us. On the other hand, challenging the landlord doesn't feel like a very productive move (for either of us), either.
What would you do?
Our landlord, however, does not treat them very well. When I moved in, Landlord told me, with her hand held to her mouth to indicate that she was telling me a secret, that they were Black.
We all know what this means, right? When someone tells you in a stage whisper or in some other way that communicates pretend secrecy that someone is Black (or gay, or whatever), what they're really saying is, "and you know how they are." Or, "watch out - we're likely to have a problem." Or, when it comes from a landlord, "let me know if there are any problems."
And, sure enough, Landlord has not been as receptive to their requests for repairs and maintenance as she appears to be to mine. Now, it's true, I don't call her nearly as much as they do, and they have a lot more complaints than I do. But even so, it's not like they don't have valid concerns. And it's disturbing that they can call a number of times because their washer is acting up and get no response, but I can call once about my washer and have the maintenance guy over to fix it the next day.
This is a pretty clear example of white privilege, isn't it? Especially because I would have been totally unaware of it had I not struck up a friendship with the neighbors, had they not informed me of their unanswered calls.
The question has been what to do - how do we handle this situation? For the moment, I've called to report the things that they're concerned about - to work the system, in other words. But it doesn't feel right to either of us. On the other hand, challenging the landlord doesn't feel like a very productive move (for either of us), either.
What would you do?
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