I'm packed, but I still need to clean the litter boxes.

And it's only 10:30, which means that this week's getting up at 5 to catch a cab will involve having had slightly more sleep than last week's getting up at 5 to catch a cab. And at least this time, I expect not to have to deal with what one fellow participant on my trip to Mexico called "assplosions." (I will leave that to your imagination - but just imagine that happening fifteen minutes before the taxi is due to pick you up. Oy.)

Also, I'll be at my destination city before lunch, so I'll have plenty of time to nap. In theory, anyway.

I am bringing the following reading material:

My Lesbian Husband - Barrie Jean Borich
Nin - Cass Dalglish
Mothering, Sex, and Sexuality Issue - Journal of Assoc. for Research on Mothering
Virginity Lost - Laura Carpenter
Female Circumcision - Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf
Conquest - Andrea Smith
Creating Significant Learning Experiences - L. Dee Fink

The first two are my fun reading. (I wanted to bring, but couldn't fit, Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory, Ed. Melinda L. DeJesus.) The next four are my course books for class this fall, and I'm bringing them so I can plan. The last one is to help me plan the course - we'll see whether or not the learning experience I create is significant.

There are also a couple of file folders of various articles and notes to myself that I will also be using in the course. Planning a course can be a lot of fun, actually, and I'm kind of looking forward to it. What remains to be seen is how much work will actually get done in a hot, humid house surrounded by family members and a Bean who will want to sit on my lap for the duration.

Now, to clean the litter boxes.

Happy Vacation!

P.S. I will upload the rest of the NWSA trans panel post soon. Being on vacation is a good excuse to get stuff like that done. Basically, it's living in the other room on my flash drive, and I'm usually too lazy to get it and bring it back in here, or too forgetful to get it when I've had the flash drive in here in the first place. OK, *now* to the cat poop.

Things I learned in Mexico.

*Pepto Bismol is my friend. Truly.

*Taking migraine meds at a high altitude will make you feel stoned. Even when you don't want to be.

*Americans really are arrogant and entitled. Pointing out the window at the "funny" signs/stores/etc. is a mild example. Asking the taxi driver if his kids go to school is a more serious one.

*Taking toilets seriously is a good idea. Dry (composting) toilets are an excellent invention. Keeping paper out of the sewers isn't a bad idea, either, though I'm not sure it doesn't pose more public health problems. At any rate, I think we're adopting a "if it's yellow, let it mellow" policy in the Plain(s)feminist home.

*My mind is still blown by the existence of homes in which you have to walk outside to get to the kitchen or bathroom (not privvy, but actual bathroom. With running water.) and restaurants which, when you walk around to the back, do not have a back wall. And none of these are overrun with bugs, either. (I know this is common in the U.S. Southwest, as well, but it was new to me, and pretty darn cool!)

*Until now, I haven't properly appreciated Emiliano Zapata.

*There is a radical contingent in Catholicism that might just save the whole thing. (Their existence made me feel better about the annoying, arrogant "Christian" missionaries who flooded the airport.)

*I haven't lost my aptitude for / enjoyment of languages. I really liked trying to learn and pronounce the phrases I needed to get around. (Even if I *had* figured out how to order my dinner, and Halfie offered to order it for me, and I let her. Hmph.)

*The airport bus to Mexico City is a luxury bus, with drinks, even. And video screens for movies.

*It is possible to shower with a cockroach and not mind it.

*Sweetbreads for breakfast - and not the American kind, but actually sweet. breads. - are a wonderful thing, rivaled only by coffee and croissants in Montreal.

*Club music is waaaayyyy better in Cuernavaca than in most U.S. clubs I've been to.

*Taking pictures of people's front doors/laundry/poverty is rude. So is taking pictures of anyone, even your friend, without first asking permission.

*...once you've been there, you have to go back.

I've never really been, but I'd sure like to go.

I'm going to Mexico in a couple of days. I will get the other half of the NWSA piece up later this month, or before I go if I get a chance. I'm going a little crazy getting my stuff together for my trip.

But I did want to post about a weird thing that keeps happening. I'm not going on vacation. This is a work thing, and I'm going to be meeting with local folks for most of the time and hearing about the work they are doing on behalf of women and indigenous communities. I will see some beautiful places, yes, but this is not a party, and I will not be on a beach somewhere. I expect to be completely overwhelmed by the poverty I will see first-hand, and to be very moved by and empathetic toward the struggles that people will be sharing with me. I expect that it will turn my little U. S. American world upside down, and that my frantic shoe-shopping right now (because I don't have any shoes that I can walk in, which in itself speaks volumes about privilege, doesn't it? That my shoes are not made to walk in?) will very shortly seem entirely frivolous. And on an even more selfish note, I expect to feel confused and frustrated and stupid because I am a U.S. citizen who doesn't speak Spanish who is immersed in someone else's culture that I don't really understand and in which I am sure to make mistakes. So, yeah, while I'm sure it will be enjoyable at times, this is not me going on a touristy vacation.

So, first, when I tell people I'm going to Mexico, they all say, "Great! You must be so excited! That's going to be a blast!" and I say, "Well, no, I mean, yes, I am excited to go, but I don't think it's going to be 'fun,' exactly," and I explain why. Which totally brings them down. And then I try to cover over the awkward pause by explaining that I'm running around like crazy trying to find appropriate clothes, at which point they helpfully suggest "shorts and a tank top!" And then I have to say, "no, that's not really appropriate for where I'm going; we've been told to dress more modestly and not to wear those things." And then they get defensive, and tell me that the organization planning my trip, which is actually headquartered in the area I'm visiting (has been there for many years) and has an excellent reputation (locally and internationally, in fact), probably just doesn't know what the local standards are for dress. Because, you know, when they/their boyfriend/their cousin's best friend went to Mexico, they all wore shorts and tank tops, and it was just fine.

As my (well-traveled) friend pointed out to me when I shared this story with her, "There's a reason Americans have the reputation they have."

So anyway, I'm off to pack, and I will see you soon.

Dreger and Bailey and NWSA - Part I

As promised, part one of my post on the two NWSA panels that dealt with the Bailey/Dreger controversy. This would have been live-blogged, had the internet been working in the conference center!

The first session was an untitled paper session that included the following presentations:

"Intelligible Citizens and Aberrant Examples: A Judicial Rendering of the Female Body in the Canadian Courts" – Caroline Alexandra Hodes, York University

"The Politics of Inclusion and the Boycott of Michfest Performers" – Jo Trigilio, Simmons College

"Activism in the Bailey Transsexualism Controversy Compared to Intersex Patients' Rights Activism" – Alice Dreger

"Toward an Ethics of Exemplarity? Transgender Critiques and the Ambivalence of Anti Representation in Queer Theory" – Shifra Naomi Diamond

I am going to focus on Trigilio's and Dreger's paper's, because those are the ones I took the most notes on. Trigilio's paper is not about Bailey nor Dreger, but it was a very interesting paper (hence my note-taking).

Trigilio gave a brief history of the beginning of the conflict over trans at MichFest in 1991. Her focus was the Boston Dyke March and its relationship to the boycott of MichFest. Specifically, she centered on the issue of whether or not boycotting performers who performed at MichFest was a successful strategy, sharing the case history of Bitch, who had been invited to perform at the Boston Dyke March in 2007 but who was then uninvited after making statements supporting the MichFest’s "women-born-women" policy and performing at MichFest – despite the fact that the boycott against MichFest performers no longer existed at that time. Trigilio suggests that "boycotting MichFest is a legitimate strategy," but that "boycotting MichFest performers is not." Trigilio goes on to say that the "targets of our boycotts…ought to be the institutions, not the individuals." She points out that we allow racist, sexist, misogynist performers to continue and we buy their cds, yet we boycott musicians who are fighting these systems. Why is this?

Trigilio underscores the importance of organizing around intersections rather than around single-identity issues. She states, "intolerance of divergent views will not lead to inclusion but to factionalism."

She further notes that MichFest performers are often not successful in the mainstream, and that they themselves may also be genderqueer or may not support the MichFest "women-born-women" policy. She raises the question of whether hurting the careers of genderqueer women really does anything to further the cause of gender inclusion. Further, she asserts, such boycotts have the opposite of the intended effect: in addition to hurting these women’s careers, they also result in a "backlash [of] fans [who develop a] rigid identity politics, even though they had never done so" before. (In other words, the boycott merely makes fans of a boycotted performer more loyal to the fan, and may help that fan to develop rigid, exclusionary identity politics based on what they see as an unfair targeting of a beloved performer – PF)

Trigilio suggests, "instead of a boycott, support events that are striving to be inclusive."

(Y’all, I loved Trigilio’s paper, partly because it touched on some of the issues I’ve written in my own work, but also because I thought it was good, practical strategy – if the goal is inclusion, we need to think about strategy that will promote this inclusion, not that will hurt people who are already pro-inclusion or that will spur a backlash.)


And now for Dreger’s paper. Dreger gave an overview of the beginning of the intersex rights movement and also of her analysis of the response to Bailey’s work. She notes that the "Intersex rights movement has been one of the most successful patients’ rights in history," and while I don’t have this in my notes, I believe that she attributed this to strategy and to the ways in which ISNA and others have worked with the medical profession.

Dreger then gave a recap of her earlier paper on Bailey, in which she took on the role of an investigative reporter, and, "after a yearlong investigation of this matter…concluded that the charges were groundless." The mistake, she said, is in the notion that "marginalization means legitimacy." But, she argues, "identity politics do not transfer into believability."

(In other words, simply because transactivists are up in arms, that does not mean that anything improper has occurred – PF)

Now, that's about all the notes I took during Dreger's presentation. I'd read her paper prior to attending the conference, and I was interested to hear if she had since realized exactly what she had done by taking it upon herself to be that investigative journalist. She doesn't seem to have done so. So, I'd like to offer some of my immediate responses to her article, which can be found here. I think there are critical issues that need addressing, and doubtless others have already addressed them, but the one that I had an immediate response to regards the IRB. For those who have not read Dreger's article, let me explain that the Institutional Review Board is a committee at every academic institution that determines whether or not research is ethical and under what conditions it may continue. Every researcher must go through the IRB for permission. Bailey apparently felt that since what he did in The Man Who Would Be Queen was not strictly science, he was not bound to any ethical guidelines whatsoever. Here is the problem that Dreger does not seem troubled by and does not address, and this is what I would like to focus on.

The fact that Bailey's work was not found to be in violation of IRB guidelines does not make it ethical. Since I got involved in doing oral history in the '90s, there has been a debate between oral historians and others who do life story interviews and the IRBs at their home institutions. Basically, the issue is that, first, IRB guidelines have been set up to protect the participants of scientific studies, in both the natural and social sciences. We don't have to look far to see why this might be necessary. Consider 20th century experiments with orphaned infants that involved dropping babies – we hope, onto soft surfaces, at least – to study their physical reactions (that arching of backs we see in infants who feel physically unsupported). Or, consider the Tuskeegee experiments, in which Black men with syphilis were purposefully left untreated (while being told that they *were* receiving treatment) in order to study how long it took for them to die, and what effects the syphilis had on their bodies as minds as they did so.

Bailey's work, as described by Alice Dreger, offers evidence that interviewing that occurs outside the parameters of the research the IRB was created to supervise can have a profoundly negative, harmful effect on its subjects. Dreger states correctly that historians, esp. oral historians, were exempted by the national policy-making body that set the rules for the IRB. In a clarification of the IRB purpose, it was stated that the IRB was never meant to govern such research, presumably because it doesn’t involve such risk for participants. While many historians, particularly oral historians, were doubtless pleased at this clarification (which makes the research process much easier), as a sometimes oral historian, I believe that we absolutely need to be governed by, if not the IRB, then some larger body that will ensure that our research is ethical. And in fact, there does exist such a structure of which Dreger is apparently unaware - she does not mention that oral historians have their own set of very complex, ethical guidelines for their work. If Bailey's personal interviews and what we might call writing from life were not governed by the IRB, then they should have been governed by the ethics that govern oral historians.

For example, Bailey has been accused of sleeping with one of the women he interviewed. He denies this, but in Dreger's long discussion of the charges raised by transwomen against Bailey, she writes that he told her that even if he had, it would not have been in violation of IRB guidelines. This may be true. However, this does not mean that such an act, if it occurred, is ethical. Rather, what it suggests is that the IRB does not effectively protect research subjects from exploitation by the researcher. In the field of oral history, this would not be seen as harmless but as a serious transgression and perhaps* exploitation of the subject by the researcher.

Dreger's apology – and I was not expecting, from the way that she has positioned herself in this debate that it would be an apology, but it is, if not necessarily for his conclusions then for his behavior and his research method in The Man Who Would Be Queen – lets Bailey off the hook. She does not acknowledge that a scientist who writes a non-scientific-method-produced book for a popular audience will be perceived as having scientific authority, nor that a researcher who is writing in another discipline (in this case, I argue, something akin to oral history) still has a responsibility to conduct vetted and ethical research.

Moreover, her apology goes well beyond championing the causes of academic freedom and civil discourse. Instead of simply focusing on the actions of some transactivsts that, I agree, went beyond the bounds of what is acceptable (primarily, in my estimation, the use of children), Dreger felt the need to serve as judge and jury for all the charges against Bailey. In this, she overstepped her bounds. One of the problems is that Dreger's 62-page document does not take seriously the impact that Bailey's work, poorly-researched as it is (another issue that might have been resolved with IRB involvement), has had on real people. It does not address the larger ethical issues that are at play when a researcher interviews, during the development of personal relationships in some cases, real people. Bailey was not, as far as I can tell, steeped in the guidelines of oral history. As an outsider unfamiliar with Bailey's work, just from reading Dreger, I have the feeling that he went into this book thinking that, since he was just going to write about people he knew, he didn’t need to take an ethical approach or think seriously about how he worked with them and what impact he had on their lives. Responsible oral historians would know that these are issues that must be considered. I have no doubt that Bailey might well be a well-meaning guy who didn’t think – and still doesn’t think – he did anything to violate IRB guidelines or that he needed to follow them for his work. I'm sure he doesn't understand the impact he has had. Perhaps he even thinks he's helping. But intentions are meaningless when it comes to research, and that is largely why IRB is necessary.

Thus, I am unconvinced by Dreger's clearing of Bailey. Moreover, reading it disturbed me greatly. It was not a document about academic freedom; rather, it was a document that seemed intent on downplaying the impact that Bailey may have had, on his subjects and on policy and scientific thought more generally, as well as on proving that the people who perceived Bailey as a threat were simply acting out for some inexplicable reason. This is not a strike for academic freedom, but rather a strike against academic responsibility. (Julia Serrano made some of these same points here.)

Part II to come (with links to papers!)…

*I say "perhaps" only because of the possibility of there being a pre-existing relationship between the researcher and subject. Bailey used this possibility as a way to assert that all physical relationships between researchers and subjects were ethical; I am stating that many, perhaps most, would not be. (The fact that Bailey would say such a thing – which Dreger asserts, in her article, that he did – suggests volumes about how he views the vulnerability of the subject to the researcher, which is to say, he does not view them as vulnerable at all – and this, in itself, is a huge problem.)

Well, I did need a lift...

Apparently, some of Bean's friends have seen the new Iron Man movie, or at least they've seen the commercials and heard the Black Sabbath song. Bean came home singing, "I - am - Iron Man - kick me in the balls and I'll still stand!"

So, first, we had to explain what "balls" were, and he didn't believe us, so he started smacking them to prove that it really wouldn't hurt, and Mr. P had to intervene and have a longer discussion with him. Then, once we had established that one should not smack or otherwise traumatize one's balls, we had to explain that songs with the word "balls" in them are not songs to be sung outside of one's own room. (This proved a challenge, though he's taken lately to replacing "balls" with "head." I still think these are unnecessarily violent lyrics for a little boy to sing, but hey, it's an improvement.)

As part of my push to get him to stop singing about being kicked in the balls, I had the distinct pleasure of getting to introduce Bean to the Black Sabbath original. Which is seeming a lot less cool tonight than it did yesterday morning, as we have since listened to it at least 15 times. And in addition to the Black Sabbath version, we've also listened to several "Chipmunks" versions, as well as the parody, "I am Santa Claus," which is really quite clever, and maybe even better.

As a result, all of these songs are now ringing in my head, and I am beginning to hate Ozzy.

I have clearly been living in the midwest for too long.

This will not be my last post because I have promised to blog about the Bailey panel - and I will. But after that, I am not sure.

I have been involved in - not directly, but present for them, often commenting on the threads where they explode or on second-tier-out threads - quite a few blogwars. And I've been present at quite a few IRL wars. It used to be that the rage from these things could fuel me for several days. It used to be that I'd jump right in with the best of them, so anxious to prove that I was right about whatever it was (and I'm sure some of you are thinking, "WTF? PF, you did that just yesterday!").

But I'm back now from an annual conference I've been attending for a decade, and this time, I saw it with new eyes. I saw people treat each other so shittily that one of my students was sorry she had come. I saw students and faculty, both, leave rooms in tears. And mostly, what I saw was a complete lack of willingness to communicate honestly, to give the other person any room or benefit of the doubt whatsoever.

What distresses me is not so much that I saw this happen at one particular panel. What disturbes me is that I saw this happen repeatedly - at a panel, at a business meeting, in a social setting.

What the hell are we doing to each other? Is this what feminism/Women's Studies is supposed to be about? This is not productive. It sure feels good to vent, but if what we want to see happen is a change, then this is not the way to do that.

The result that I see is that those who were present at some of these events will not be returning - and this group of non-returnees is a diverse group that cuts across race and class and ability. (And several others I know, also a diverse group, who did not know about these events, had a grand time and will be back, and that's great - I'm happy they had a good time.)

This is one thing that is not the fault of the NWSA as an institution. This is the fault of people who come to the organization expecting it to meet their emotional needs.* And I know this, and I have been one of these people, and we cannot expect all of the practitioners of our discipline to meet our emotional needs.

Somewhere in the past week, I lost the stomach for all of this. I don't think fighting each other is getting us anywhere, not anywhere at all. And I can't seem to find any feminist discussion online that isn't, at some point, about the fighting - even dependent on it.

I'm tired, and I feel like I'm wasting my time fighting with people who I ultimately have more reasons to agree with than not. I'm wearing myself down instead of using my powers for good. So I'm not sure at all that I want to continue this blog in this incarnation.

Maybe tomorrow or in a few days I'll get over this funk, but for now, I expect to begin a serious blog hiatus after one or two more posts.

*Thanks to my airport buddy for pointing this out to me.

Bailey, Seal Press, NWSA, etc.

This is a teaser post, because I am far too emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted to write tonight. I did attend both the session at which Alice Dreger gave her paper as well as the session by trans activists/scholars on the "Bailey Brouhaha," as it was called in the session title. Andrea James, Elise Hendrick, and Kristina Rose presented on this latter session, which was organized and moderated by Joelle Ruby Ryan, and their papers were absolutely excellent. I, for one, learned a lot. And it's worth saying that, while there was all kinds of drama and throwing under buses and other lovely professional behavior almost everywhere else at the conference, it did not happen at either of these panels (unless it happened in the last ten minutes - I had to leave to give my own presentation).

Also, I got to hang out with Anxious Black Woman, and we got to do some radical drama making. Well, she took the lead, and I followed, but we did at least do something, however small, about Seal Press.

Oh, and the NWSA's Delegate Assembly recommended that we approve the formation of a brand spankin' new Trans Caucus, and I believe it was passed unanimously. History in the making, folks.

There's lots more, all to come.

Off to NWSA.

If you'll be there, too, drop me a line.

Hirshman.

Sometimes, when people get it wrong, they get it so wrong that there's almost nothing left to say.

Thankfully, BFP knows just what to say (click below to read the whole thing):

Modern feminism is irrelevant to most women (not just women of color) or women *think* it is irrelevant not because women are just stupid and can’t figure out how sexism sucks–but because feminism has left the majority of women in the cold and made itself accountable to Washington politicians, 501c3 rules, elite conferences of which you must already be a part of or aware of feminism to know about and attend (and which I admit fully to attending and supporting), and exclusive listserves that make decisions for all women but are accountable to no one, etc.

This is not a movement.

I repeat, this is not a movement.

It’s an exclusive networking club.

And no woman, of color or otherwise, owes her allegiance to an exclusive networking club simply because she has a vagina and the exclusive networking club members have vaginas.

Calls for Queer / Mothering / Queer Mothering Papers!

And I certainly hope some of my favorite bloggers will submit their work:

Call #1:
QUEER PARENTING
edited by Susan Driver and Zoe Newman
collection of essays to be published by Demeter Press fall 2009
A proliferation of experientially based essays, media stories, documentary films, television profiles, photographic essays and do-it-yourself manuals featuring lesbian mothers and gay dads have emerged to mark out cultural discourses in which to understand lesbian and gay families. But while these images and narratives enable positive representations that counter invisibility and marginalization, they often work to delimit transformative mode of thinking and acting beyond normalizing categories. For LGBTTT2Q communities in Canada, the US, and Europe, family has been a site of struggle and invisibility, and has also been constructed as a site of transformation and pride, sometimes with the result that we have sidelined interrogations of how 'queer families' are normative and exclusionary. It is those troubling, ambiguous and unintelligible subjects that do not fit neatly into parental discourses that need to enter into public dialogues as part of a comprehensive project of queering parenting.

This book adopts a range of critically queer theoretical perspectives to rethink the parameters of parenting and family beyond heteronormative boundaries. Our goal is to engage with difficult knowledges and changing embodied parental experiences that include dynamic gender and sexual arrangements as they are lived through multi-layered racial, national and class relations. Rather than list those identities that fit into a queer paradigm we encourage a more pliable framework that explores the institutions, languages and contexts of parenting, complicating the ways powers shape alternatives to white middle-class heterosexual nuclear formations. Our interest is in fostering interpretive work on parenting that bridges articulations of intimate subjectivity, and analysis of broad social and historical forces that cumulatively impact what can be done and said in the name of diverse family relations.

We hope to include a range of styles of academic writing, and encourage interdisciplinary modes of analysis. The following topics interest us but they do not exhaust the horizon of our search:

Transgender parenting within and beyond bi-gender mother and father roles
Transnational queer parenting or transnational and queer critiques of the family
Affective/psychic/embodied transformations of queer parenting
Queering public/private and national boundaries of reproductivity
The status of 'queer' as a strategic and heuristic tool of family life
Parenting and sexualities
Media representations and spectacles of queer families
Alternative visual and artistic depictions of family life
Racialization of queer family discourses
Queering family law
Queer interventions with reproductive technologies
Reflecting on gay and lesbian self-help parenting texts
Community based queer family activism and organizing
Commodification of queer parenting and queer families

Deadline for papers is October 31, 2008. All papers must be MLA format (7000 word limit).

Please submit inquiries and complete essays to both: sdriver@yorku.ca and znewman@yorku.ca


Call #2:
Dyke Moms, Donor Dads, and Reconceiving the Queer Family: An Anthology You're an out dyke about town. You meet someone, shack up, get a cat. You survive the non-monogamy negotiations and a renovation, get jobs in your fields, do lots of therapy, and decide it's time to expand beyond your twosome into the world of parenthood. Being enterprising women with a solid do-it-yourself streak, you decide to forgo the impersonality and expense of a sperm bank and ask Tony, your gay friend from college, to donate some sperm to the cause. What could be simpler? A few months, a few syringes, some egg white and folic acid, a bit of awkwardness, and baby will make three.

Uh, make that four. Or five. Or maybe six. Because Tony (who, oddly, didn't just miraculously vaporize as soon as the child was conceived) has a mother and a partner, both of whom want a relationship to the child. Like it or not, baby's made something a lot more than what you bargained for. But what?

This anthology, to be published in Spring 2009 by Toronto's Insomniac Press, will explore, through personal essays and first-person accounts, the phenomenon of lesbian couples (and the occasional single dyke) who choose a male friend or acquaintance, rather than an anonymous sperm donor, to father their children.

Submit!
With no clear models to follow, this new version of the queer family is creating its own. That's where this anthology comes in. We are seeking stories that are funny, touching, heartbreaking, provocative, thoughtful — and very, very relevant to the new queer (and queer-positive) family.

We are looking for creative non-fiction and first-person accounts by lesbian mothers who have chosen known sperm donors in order to conceive; gay and straight men who have become sperm donors to lesbian mothers; their partners, their children, and other invested parties.

Submissions might explore (but should not be limited to) the following issues and themes:

When baby-making doesn't take or takes too long; dealing with infertility, miscarriage, or even routine insemination is difficult enough for the average couple, so what happens when the donor also becomes emotionally involved? What happens when negotiations break down?

Can his parents come to visit? Is it rude to insist they stay in a hotel? With new family configurations come new questions of etiquette. How to deal gracefully (or at least sanely) with an often unexpected extended family.

The other mother: What happens to the experience of non-biological mothers when a biological "Dad" is also part of the picture? Non-biological mothers in lesbian partnerships have long had to deal with issues of belonging and recognition in a society that is slow to recognize them as parents. Non-biological moms talk about the processes and challenges of claiming their roles as primary parents.

"Daddy" doesn't mean what it used to … How does the choice to become a donor redefine circles of gay male friends and the identities of gay men? From sperm count and motility to number of children fathered, the "donor" phenomenon has sparked new concerns and conversations among gay men.

My husband is sleeping with lesbians! What does it mean when your partner is the father of the new baby — but the baby isn't yours? From straight women who never thought they wanted kids to gay men who must put up with their boyfriends' new "focus," the new "donor" family has far-reaching implications.

What if the birth changes everything? The donor who didn't want to be overly involved is smitten with "his" new son or daughter. On top of figuring out how to live with a newborn, the new moms must find a way to negotiate the demands of a relationship they didn't realize they were entering into.

Gay divorce: What happens to the donor if the moms split up? What happens when the relationship between moms and donor deteriorates?

To submit, send two double-spaced hard copies and an electronic copy on disc (in .rtf format) to the address below. Submissions should not exceed 15 pages or 7,500 words. Please left-justify your submission and use a serif font (e.g., Times New Roman) in 12-point size. Please include your name, address, telephone number, email address, and a brief bio (100 words). Submissions will not be returned. Emailed submissions will not be considered.

Deadline for Submissions: September 15, 2008

Contact us: Chloe Brushwood Rose & Susan Goldberg, Editors, Reconceiving Anthology
c/o Dr. Chloe Brushwood Rose
Faculty of Education
York University
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3
Canada
reconceivinganthology@gmail.com www.insomniacpress.com


Call #3:
The Future Landscape of Sexualities (deadline: June 20, 2008)
** */thirdspace: a journal of feminist theory and culture*/*/* /invites contributions for its forthcoming issue on The Future Landscape of Sexualities. Recognizing the central role which discussions of sexuality, identity, and culture have played in recent feminist scholarship, this issue will consider how sexuality informs gendered identities, as well as nodes of power including, race, class, ability, age, culture, nation, and religion. What does the future hold for human sexualities and sexual identities? How might current practices, assumptions, power relations, and identities shape these future sexualities? What new forms might sexualities evolve into in the future? How might these future sexualities transcend/reproduce current definitions of, and ideologies concerning, sexuality and sexual identity? Possible topics include:

· future utopic and dystopic sexualities
· role(s) of technologies (reproductive, virtual, synthetic) in the evolution and expression of sexuality
· the evolution of sex work
· queer sexualities
· inversions and convergences of sexuality and identity (including female masculinities and male femininities)
· the future of 'normative' masculinities and femininities
· sexualities and colour, sexualities and dis/ability, sexualities and age
· depictions of future sexualities in fiction, film, music, and art
Papers that ground speculation about the future with historical analyses of past transitions in sexualities are also welcome.

We welcome submissions from a wide range of disciplinary and geographical perspectives. Submissions from researchers working within, or among, the disciplines of geography, sociology, literature, area studies, cultural studies, film/media studies, art, history, education, law, and women’s/gender studies are particularly encouraged.

We accept the submission of work from scholars of any rank or affiliation, and encourage submissions from emerging feminist scholars, including graduate students.

All submissions to the journal must be submitted electronically through our online submission process. All submissions are peer-reviewed by established, senior feminist scholars. For more information on our publishing policies see: http://www.thirdspace.ca/journal/about/editorialPolicies

To submit: Please follow our online submission process at http://www.thirdspace.ca/journal/about/submissions**

** Deadline: June 20, 2008 **

For more information, please contact us at info [at] thirdspace.ca


Call #4:
Reconciling Art and Motherhood

For centuries, mother artists were an oxymoronic concept. And yet, they existed, carving out unique spaces for themselves in an often unwelcoming profession, amid social pressures and financial hardships. Long denigrated as a viable topic for artistic practice, motherhood is gradually gaining credibility and increasing its visibility in contemporary art. Mary Kelly, Sally Mann, Renée Cox, and many others in recent decades have paved the way to combining this life-altering social role with a successful career. Institutions, however, are so slow to change that, as in centuries past, motherhood can still serve as a detriment in both the art world and academic communities.

Submissions are sought for an anthology to be proposed, tentatively titled Reconciling Art and Motherhood. Essays by artists and art historians will explore how individuals have integrated experiences of motherhood within their work. While recent related anthologies, such as Bee Lavender and Maia Rossini’s excellent Mamaphonic (2004), most often have favored writers over artists, this anthology seeks to highlight exclusively a range of visual artistic practice. The following topics, among others, are encouraged: readings of the maternal body in contemporary art; historical examinations of artist-mothers; artistic documentation of aspects of motherhood and/or childhood; the embrace of motherhood in artistic/art historical practice; the problematics of motherhood as a theme; the delicate balance of maintaining family and producing / writing about art; making motherhood a "legitimate" topic for artistic production; issues of motherhood and family leave in the artist's workplace; the implications of intentionally avoiding motherhood or mothering-based art; artist "success stories" in the face of adversity.
If you are interested in submitting to this anthology, please send an abstract by September 1, 2008.

Submit to: Rachel Epp Buller, Bethel College, rachel@ddtr.net
Subject line: Artist Anthology Submission
Deadline: September 1, 2008, for initial abstract
Include: Title, Abstract (200-250 words), Name, Institutional Affiliation, Address, Phone, Email Address, Brief Bio (50 words)

Why I don't get it.

But I have trouble understanding how any woman, including those who didn’t support her, cannot empathize with the sadness of women who supported her at Clinton’s loss.

Answering for myself...first, because there is little about Clinton that bears any resemblance to feminism, unless by "feminism" we mean "white, middle-class, imperialism," which I do not.

Second, because of the things that were said by the Clinton campaign and by some of her more vocal supporters over the course of the campaign. When the racist comments came out of the Clinton campaign, that is when her campaign, for me, stopped being revolutionary. There is nothing revolutionary about trying to step on someone else in order to get to the top. I have trouble seeing past the racism of the Gloria Steinems and the Robin Morgans. And very often, what I hear from the white women I know who supported Clinton, is that there *was* no racism in the campaign.

So yes, I have trouble understanding this sadness, because in order to understand it I have to frame the whole situation as one in which racism isn't a big deal, as one in which women of color simply do not exist.

Second, in order to understand this sadness, I would also have to frame the whole situation as one in which biology is the only thing that matters. Electing a woman president is only radical if the woman herself is radical. I don't care how many yahoos you find who say that America isn't ready for a woman president. It wasn't radical to appoint Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, either (and you know who were, for the most part, the ones having a conversation about whether or not it was? WHITE PEOPLE! Black lawyers were fit to be tied as White people put this man up and argued it was a strike against racial injustice to appoint him!).

And while HRC and Thomas are clearly worlds apart, you cannot selectively pick and choose among Clinton's accomplishments and leave out the yucky bits. Yes, she gets points for some of her wonderful work on behalf of women, but she also loses points for her war vote and for many of her foreign policy positions.

For my part, I cannot understand why seeing Obama as the nominee would bring any feminist anything but joy. Had Clinton won, this feminist would not have felt that women as a group had made a step forward. But because Obama won, I feel that all of us Americans have moved forward, and this has a lot to do with the kind of campaign he ran and the kind of presidency I believe he will have.

Edited to add: two other posts on this issue that I really like:
ProfBW's and BFP's.

Drinking the Weight Watchers Kool-Aid.

Now, I like Weight Watchers. Of the "diets" that are out there, WW is pretty clearly one of the best, and when I'm on it, I generally eat a lot more healthfully - lots of veggies and fruit and lean meats and dairy, and probably less of the non-nutritive stuff than I would normally eat. I like that it's not about deprivation, and I like that it lets you set your own goal weight and doesn't tell you that you're supposed to be able to squeeze into your jeans from high school. I also like that it encourages baby steps, so that everyone who tries it can find ways to succeed, whether that be eating a more balanced diet or increasing exercise or whatever.

But where I always run into trouble with Weight Watchers is here: when you are focused on losing weight, it is awfully hard not to fall back on destructive stereotypes about fat - and about fat people.

For example - at a recent meeting, our leader asked us why we thought it was that people ate so much on holidays. I raised my hand and said that I thought it was because so many of us deprive ourselves the rest of the year and see the holiday seasons as a time to indulge and treat ourselves. She looked at me somewhat incredulously and said, "who deprives themselves? Who are these people you're talking about? I don't see anyone depriving themselves." She said this with such scorn in her voice, scorn that betrayed her disgust at people who don't control their eating.

Readers, I was taken aback. First of all, when you think of the people you are close to, do you not, like me, think of many who refuse dessert, or who will only order it if someone will split it with them? People who leave perfectly delicious chocolate mousse cake on the plate rather than eat the last bite? (And we know there's a power and control thing going on there, too, right, with some folks? That eating two bites and leaving the rest for you?) People whose talk of food is peppered with value judgements: "I was so good this week," or "I'm going to behave and say no and have a glass of water instead."

Second of all, I was a little freaked out by her tone, which seemed to imply that it would be better for these fat folks to deprive themselves a little than to commit the sin of eating too much.

I have heard that in L.A., it's possible to take driver ed classes that focus around a theme - you can be in the environmental concerns driver ed, or the driver ed for 12-steppers, or what have you. I guess what I'd like to find is a feminist Weight Watchers, one that doesn't feel the need to find answers to obvious questions. Why do people eat so much over the holidays? Because it is the one time we feel we are not only permitted to eat all the foods we like, but we are also encouraged to do so. Because food is social. Because it feels good to eat and to share good food with people we like and love. It is not a complicated question, and while we may want to eat less or more healthfully, the answer does not need to put anyone down in order to be helpful.

There are certain comments and suggestions that I like to say come from drinking the WW Kool-Aid. You can tell if someone has drunk the Kool-Aid because they say things that just do not make any kind of logical sense. For example, I have heard WW leaders tell groups that exercise will make them less hungry. Well...yes, in the sense that right after an intense workout, the last thing I want to do right away is eat. I want to drink a bottle of water, and then I want to take a shower, and so I won't be hungry for a little while. But in general, exercise makes us hungrier because our bodies need more fuel for the work they are doing. Telling people that exercise will help to quiet their appetite is just setting them up for failure and self-blame.

Something else that I see as an outgrowth of WW Kool-Aid indulgence is pushing unhealthy foods on people in order to help them to stay on their "healthy" WW plan. For instance, I know a lot of WW members who make cake with a can of diet soda instead of oil. Um, that's great, in terms of keeping the points down on the cake. But diet soda isn't good for you. Sucralose and other sugar substitutes are, in fact, potentially dangerous (you don't even need me to link - just google this yourself and you'll find all kinds of horror stories). So recommending that we bake with Splenda so that we can lose weight always sounds, to me, like recommending that we dust our cheeks with lead (thanks, Zula!) so that they'll be nice and rosy, while we meanwhile slowly poison ourselves.

Finally, I would like to see WW stop repeating the same stupid "science" that is floating around out there, like the idea of this "obesity epidemic." Newsflash: when you change the guidelines of what constitutes "obesity" so that more people are now termed obese, this is not an epidemic. That is like annexing Canada and then stepping up the birth control advertisements in an attempt to slow the tremendous population growth (apologies to my Canadian readers).

I have a fantasy of leaving copies of "The Strange History of Suzanne LaFleshe" in Weight Watchers weighing-in rooms across the country - of becoming a Johnny Appleseed sowing self-content and self-love. There is a place for Weight Watchers, certainly, but there should be a place in Weight Watchers for feminists who aren't fatphobic. (And yes, I think you can be in Weight Watchers without being fatphobic. Sounds contradictory, I know, but I think it's possible.)

Hillary feminists and Obama feminists.

So, hopefully we won't need to be talking about this for too much longer (if Hillary concedes and releases her delegates, that is, but that remains to be seen), but I was explaining this to a friend the other day, and I thought it was a helpful way to understand it. I used to think it was a generational divide, and certainly, it does sort of seem to play out that way, in general. But then I realized that it has less to do with generation and more to do with what kind of feminism one subscribes to. If you see gender as the central feature of feminism, then you are likely to be a Hillary supporter. If you see race, class, and other issues as intertwined with gender and equally important to your feminism, then you are likely to be an Obama supporter.

I think that's a pretty good description of the division.

Meanwhile - is it wrong for me to be thinking about how effing revolutionary and awesome it will be to have a Black First Family?! So much, so much will be different from here on out.

Working on my smile.

If I don't know you and I pass you on the street, chances are, I try to flash you a friendly smile. The thing is, when I do this, I seem to have some problem coordinating my mouth muscles, and so what you get can best be described as an "mmmf" face, the sort of face that Charlie Brown makes when he is eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and grunting in assent.

When I see someone I know, I'm freed of my muscular paralysis and able to give that person a genuine, open-lipped smile. Why I can't do this with people I don't know, I'm not quite sure, but I suspect that it has something to do with feeling awkward.
(Sometimes, when I pass large groups of teenages, I forget how to walk and have to concentrate really hard. This doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to, but it does still happen occasionally.)

I'm pretty sure that these are the physical manifestations of intense self-consciousness, and they are difficult to overcome.

So, while my "mmmf" face may possibly still be a friendly face, I'm working on a simple smile, not even a full-force, tooth-showing smile, but just a slight upturn of closed lips. I practiced it in the mirror - I don't have to put forth much effort for it to look real, but because this particular smile feels so unnatural to me, not being my regular, without-thinking smile, I need to work on it. It actually looks fine, but it feels like it looks ridiculous, and I have to keep checking the mirror to make sure it doesn't.

(I've tried the teeth-together smile with lips bared, which some people can pull off quite well, and this actually feels very comfortable on my face, but unfortunately, when I do this, I look like a maniacal beaver readying for the attack.)

Please tell me that I am not the only one who has this sort of problem.

I am supposed to be doing something else right now...

...but I had to stop to say, "Holy crap!"

When Ferraro first came out with her problematic comments about race, I wasn't quite convinced that they were racist. Silly me. How very wrong I was. This newest piece certainly provides the context for those earlier comments, and it removes any benefit of the doubt I had been willing to give her. All I can say now is

1) I so regret having worn a Mondale/Ferraro campaign button back in high school;

2) in contrast to Ferraro's attempt to speak for American women, of the feminists I know, only a couple still support Clinton at this point, and the vast majority are just appalled at the blatant racist comments she has made;

3) the fact that White people are afraid to say something because they feel they will be called racist does not automatically mean that they are being treated unfairly, nor is this a recent outcome of the Obama campaign. Hello? It's called entitlement, and it's about having become accustomed to saying racist things and not being called on them because I didn't mean anything by it! I'm not racist! I don't see color! Everyone is white to me!;

4) it is disingenous, at best, to accuse Obama of playing the race card when he was forced to give a speech on race relations in America (but nonetheless, did so with a heckuva lot more grace and honesty than we've seen from any major candidate, ever, thus far);

- and -

5) You know what? Yes, sometimes, White people, we may get called out for racism when, in fact, we have not been racist. That can and does happen. But you know what else? What happens far more often is that White people get called out for racism and refuse to recognize that what we did was genuinely racist - even if we didn't mean it to be! - as we have seen with Ferraro yet again.

I am going to go make a donation to Obama's campaign, now. Was that the effect you were hoping to have, Gerri?

Thanks to Angry Black Woman for the link.

Rachel Moss and WisCon.

I don't even have to type anything. Just go read this. And then check this out.

On blogs gone private.

Can I just say that it is enormously annoying to go to a blog that I've been reading for months or years and find that it suddenly has gone private, without a by-your-leave or anything? And that it would be nice if people who wanted to do this would instead put up a page on the blog that says "Gone private. If you want an invitation, contact me at blahblahblah@email.com." And then take down the other stuff and start up a new site for your private blog. Because seeing "It doesn't look like you have been invited to read this blog" just hurts my feelings.

Skippy, I'm lookin' at you.

In search of Skinny Chips.

I was looking forward to finding a few of these for the weekend, and now I cannot find them. Anywhere. I have been calling grocery and natural foods stores all morning.

Have you seen these chips?

Another way to help women in the Congo.

To donate money directly to Panzi Hospital in the DRC, go here. Be sure to select "Panzi Hospital" under "purpose." The Panzi Hospital is the ONLY working hospital in the area. See also this piece by Eve Ensler on the work of Dr. Denis Mukwege at the Panzi Hospital.

How to Help.

I'm coming out of seclusion long enought to say that, if you are horror-stricken by the events of the past weeks and months and years and would like to help:

1) you can send a donation to the American Jewish World Service. The AJWS is working in Darfur and Burma.

To urge Congress to increase economic pressure on the Burmese military regime - which is preventing desperately-needed aid from reaching the people - go here.

To urge Congress to provide funding for peacekeeping in Darfur - in the SIXTH YEAR of the genocide - go here.

2) you can make a donation to the Red Cross to aid survivors of the Chinese earthquake.

3) you can organize to help women of the Congo. Anxious Black Woman has posted a list of businesses profiting off of the rape and abuse of women there, as well as of companies that do business with those who profit off the rape and abuse of Congolese women. The second list has some very familiar names on it, including Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and several computer manufacturers. As she says, "So, basically, as you can see, we're all implicated in this DRC conflict...Somehow, as democratic citizens, we must yield our power through our dollars and our votes."

In case you're missing that - when we purchase computers and cell phones and televisions and cameras, we are directly supporting rape and torture of Congolese women.

What are we going to do about that?

ABW also links to a petition put together by Tasha at Sowing Circle - please take a look.

Finally, you can donate to CARE, which has staff in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and is working to help survivors.