Ilyka Damen

A Generation's Heart Torn Out

2008-01-24T22:37:00.000-07:00

I torment The Youth of Today with my old-ass music and observe that it's Not Good when our youngest and brightest are struggling like this. This is not what a country with a future looks like.

Which Americans? Which Feminists? Which Women?

2008-01-24T03:48:00.000-07:00

I had to sit around thinking about this post for awhile because I knew I was not getting something.

I'm a slow learner, but I've learned this much: I've learned not to draw from that itchy, uncomfortable, this-feels-wrong feeling the automatic conclusion that the stimulus must be wrong. I've learned to consider that it might be me who is wrong.

So, this post at La Chola: I didn't know what to do with it besides share it in the Google Reader, because I hoped to come back to it. I think I will just take you through what I thought at first to what I think now, and if we're lucky, what I think now will evolve into what I think later, and it will improve with more time and more thought. Why not? Most things do. Okay? Okay:

Why the particular emphasis on “Muslim countries”? Does Ms. Pollitt think that “Muslim countries” are particularly hostile to women’s rights for some reason?

At first, I thought, well, hell, BFP: Don't you know how many right-wingers like to attack American feminism on that basis?--That "American feminists" don't care, don't do enough for, don't mobilize as quickly in response to, the problems of women in "Muslim countries?" Don't you know how often we hear that? Hell, I started receiving hits on an old post at Pandagon just this weekend over that. The post from which my work was linked was titled, "Iran Oppresses Women--American Feminists Silent." So American feminists get this all the time. What are we supposed to do, ignore it? Let that meme propagate unchallenged?

That was my first thought.

My second thought was, "Of course BFP knows this happens. She never said it didn't happen. Why are you responding to that? Why aren't you addressing what she said?"

My third thought was, "Wait, what'd she say again?" Because ADD.

I had to read that post several times and then let it bake in the rusty, unevenly heated oven of my mind. And finally it occurred to me: "If feminism is FOR WOMEN--not just American women, not just white women--then women in Muslim countries are right there in women's conversations; not being talked about, not being lectured at, but being talked with and listened to. They're THERE, if feminism is working right--and thus there is no need for American feminists to write letters showing how much we care about them. They can write their own letters if they want to. Or they can be smart like American white feminists ought to have been and realize that you don't ever win anything playing purely on your opponent's terms."

The opponent's terms here are:

1. Women in Muslim countries need American feminists to do things for them.
2. Women in Muslim countries are unable to do things for themselves.
3. Women in Muslim countries lack their own feminisms and need American feminists to show them how it's done.

And, of course, the real idea behind this particular wingnut criticism:

4. This would all work out just grand if we enlightened Americans went into Muslim countries and showed them how it's done. Forcibly.

Yeah.

If I could pick only one thing I ought to have recalled back when I was thinking "we'll just FORCE Western democracy on folks across the globe" was, God forgive me, a good idea--if I could pick only one thing to have remembered, here's what that one thing would have been: I would have recalled that most of the Western democratic benefits I personally enjoy did not come from Republicans or conservatives.

Wasn't Republicans who ensured my reproductive rights.

Wasn't Republicans who founded the ACLU.

Wasn't Republicans who came up with Miranda rights.

Wasn't Republicans fighting police brutality.

Wasn't Republicans securing my right to vote.

None of the things conservatives and/or Republicans (they are not necessarily identical) want to export to these poor picked-on (by whom again?) "Muslim countries" are things they themselves had shit to do with--and in fact, they're things conservatives have traditionally opposed. Women don't need reproductive rights because it's God's will if you have a baby. People don't need civil liberties because you should trust the state to look out for you. People don't need Miranda rights because only hardcore criminals benefit from them. Police don't need the hassle of investigation because their jobs are very hard, you don't understand. And women don't need to vote because look at all the stupid ways they vote OH HEY LOOK, IT'S ALL ABOUT ME AGAIN.

There's no need to go sending a damn letter with a billion women's signatures on it to prove American feminists care about all the bad things going on in those crazy mysterious "Muslim countries." Repeat! There's NO NEED. What we "American feminists" NEED to do is stop playing defense. We need to stop accepting the dishonest terms being bandied about by utter jackasses with selective recollections of basic ninth-grade history.

We need to go on the offense and ask, "What have American conservatives done for the women of their own country?" We can win that one and easy, because guess what the answer is?--"Jack shit" on a good day, and "the high hard one without so much as a reach-around" on a bad day--and lately, we've had more bad days than good.

Finally, we, American feminists, for lack of a better term, need to quit thinking of other women on the globe as Far Away and Over There, as women to be talked about but never to. Yeah yeah, I repeat that a lot, but I run out of clever ways to write it, and it's true.

If Muslim women had been properly acknowledged and listened to from the start, we wouldn't be hearing this criticism because our critics wouldn't know where "American feminists" left off and "Muslim women" began. There would be no "American feminist" label with all the assumptions wingnuts tack onto it. An American feminist in the conservative view is white, heterosexual, cisgendered, unattached, middle- to upper-class, college-educated, abortion-obsessed, insular, grasping, selfish, and shallow.

And if there were such a label, it would be so obviously crafted by wingnuts and it would so obviously fit no actual people that--just as we do with swamp creatures, dragons, and wicked witches--we could, as grown women with some sense, ignore the whole damn thing.

Instead, we're ignoring each other. Perhaps this should end.

UPDATE: Magniloquence kindly emailed to say I would really like this post at Tiny Cat Pants, and as usual, Magniloquence was right. Oh, now, don't fall over dead and make me send the paramedics! I like this particularly:

. . . isn’t this the way we do it? We refuse to pay attention to what folks are telling us about their experiences, convinced as we are that we treat everyone the same, completely willfully unaware of how assinine that is.

People don’t want the right to be like me (or you, rather, because, let’s be honest, sometimes it’s good fun to be like me). They want the right to be respected on their own terms for being themselves.

Yes! Is that so crazy? I don't think that's so crazy.

Magniloquence also tells me that there are many d00ds crying butthurt in the comments to that post, something about how the marginalized are obligated to make sure they phrase everything Just Right. Yes, yes, I know: That AGAIN.

Anyway, I throw that out there for those of you who have been wondering when I was going to get back to my usual shtick of picking on the d00ds, but I am busy today. Perhaps you could gently assist the be-penised over at Tiny Cat Pants yourself? Or if you're not feeling that generous, I hear you. Me neither, at least not today. If you prefer to just point and laugh and groan and eyeroll, please consider this safe space in which to do that.

Sacramento Doesn't Get Many Love Letters

2008-01-22T11:12:00.000-07:00

So I'm linking this one. Sacramento is the city my family moved to from New Jersey when I was just out of kindergarten and I am childishly pleased to see someone appreciate it. Angelenos can call Sacramento "Cowtown" all they want to; what would they know? They live in the smog capital of the U.S. The lack of oxygen affects their brains.

(Still recuperating over here. More later in the week, I hope.)

I'm Getting a Cold and You're Getting a Link Roundup

2008-01-19T11:23:00.000-07:00

Damn it, I was just applying my frustrated maternal instincts to worrying about Nezua's health, and now I've got to worry about my own. Don't tell me you can't catch colds over the internet! I knew something didn't feel right when I was working out yesterday but I put that down to a combination of, ah, hormones, and my foolishly having let three days elapse since the last workout. Now here I am chugging green tea and, as cocaine once was to Lindsay Lohan's nose, so Zicam is to mine. I repeat: DAMN IT.

Let's get this done so I can get back to bed, huh?

The Unapologetic Mexican: Nez releases his introductory video for the MTV Street Team '08 project (Digg it here, kplsthx), chills with some brainy dude with fabulous hair, and proves that there are in fact ways to make pussy jokes that don't demean women. (Hint to the guys: Make yourself the true butt of the joke, and even feministy crabasses like myself will laugh at it. There! You're welcome.)

The Hathor Legacy: "Dear Target shoppers: We here at Target won't deal with any nontraditional media outlets who are not James Lileks, so take your outrage over this ad and shove it." Oh well, the Target near me sucks anyway. Nothing's ever in stock and all the employees have that "please kill me" look that brings the whole store down, not that I blame the employees so much as the management for that, but you know what I mean: It's frustrating and depressing to shop there. So now I just won't! Thanks, Target!

My Private Casbah: Two excellent posts examining class privilege, and one righteous rant:

You know, people with disabilities really take a lot of shit off of people. We put up with the casual use of words like "retard", "nut job", "lunatic", "vegetable", every damned day. We generally don't go around blowing up any nursing homes prisons just because we know how inhumane they are even though some folks have no problem with this sort of "direct action". We put up with shitty housing, illegally inaccessible government buildings, and condescending store clerks every effing day. We are raped and told that it was our own fault. Yet, we still put up with that shit.

Many of us just don't have the energy to fight every instance of injustice that we personally experience. Taking on the entire ableist system is more than most of us are willing to do. But here's the thing: Why should we have to do it? Why aren't YOU people fixing yourselves? Why should we have to stop you from trying to eliminate us completely?

The thing that's amazed and often horrified me in online discussions of Katie Jones' "Do Not Resuscitate" sign is how often people will quite glibly determine what is "best" for Katie based on what they would want done if they were in her shoes.

Stop and think about that for a minute.

I like to think (let's pretend I'm younger and a lot more fertile here for a moment) that I would never have an abortion outside of a very, very few extenuating circumstances. Yet I support safe, legal, accessible abortion for all women. What if I said instead, "Well, I'd never want one--the very contemplation of having one fills me with horror--so you don't need one either?" That's right! I'd be a fervent anti-choicer!

I do two things with respect to abortion: (1) I keep in mind that there are some things one can only know through direct experience, so for all I say "I would never," the fact is, I don't actually know what I'd do if I had an unplanned, dubiously-desired or not-desired-at-all pregnancy. I couldn't know until I got there. And (2), I keep in mind that not everyone is me, not everyone wants what I want, not everyone thinks what I think.

This is my polite way of saying that "I would rather be DEAD than live like that" is a shit argument, okay? You don't actually know what you'd rather, it's a grossly offensive sentiment to harbor about people with disabilities, and not everyone is You, Wonderful You. It's a shit argument. People need to stop making it.

La Chola: For Allies: How "Gender Trumps Race" Plays out in the Real World:

I just wanted to point this out so that those who are committed allies to women of color can see plainly and clearly what women of color are talking about when they say that they have serious issues with how they are written out of ‘feminism’ and ‘justice’.

Speaking purely from my own experience and no one else's (I can't emphasize that enough), what I have found is that women written out of feminism and justice are usually perfectly willing to tell me why this is so--if I listen. If I ask the question honestly, or better yet, if I take the time to go looking for the answers myself, I WILL find the reasons. It's when I enter into my query with the (unstated, often suppressed or camouflaged) aim of arguing women of color out of how they feel or what they believe that my problems arise.

I saw a white person online recently complaining that all s/he ever got told was to listen to people of color, and that was terribly unfair, because this person had So Many Good Ideas! about how to fight racism! Well, the analogy is not perfect (no analogy ever is), but I would suggest that white feminists flip that complaint around to see how it fits: How do we feel when men complain that they have such good ideas about how to fight sexism, but instead we keep telling them to start by listening to women--and our insistence that they listen more and talk less is so unfair to men? "Cry me a river, dude," is normally my response to that one.

And via La Chola again, more on life on the border:

The trip to Mexico was a privilege, not only because I literally learned the privilege that my passport afforded me, but also because I returned fundamentally changed. I thought I knew much more than your average American about the special relationship between the Southwestern US and Mexico. I grew up in the Bay Area of California, where Cesar Chavez was loved almost as much as Martin Luther King Jr. I grew up knowing about migrant labor and how the growing seasons all along the West Coast, from Oregon to Baja, complemented an itinerant, agricultural workforce. I thought I knew, since half the cities I could call to mind were Spanish – San Francisco, San Jose, Modesto, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and Los Angeles. I somehow knew as a child that Anglo-Californians were interlopers on an already-occupied land.

I thought I knew, but since the passage of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) things have drastically changed in the US and Mexico, especially for the working poor. The Mexican economy has tanked, and for working-class Americans, by 2000 NAFTA accounted for a job loss of more than 400,000 American manufacturing jobs (probably many, many more by now). But more significantly, when Americans found new employment, they made only 77% of their former wages. Wages in the US are now at their lowest in terms of buying power since 1955. In Mexico, the situation is much worse.

Zuky: Repost--Eight Images
You don't have to be a brilliant photographer yourself to enjoy this collection of images. I will sneak you in one here just to tempt you to view them all:

Mmmmm!

Green is the New Red: Movement Watch: Grand Juries Against Puerto Rican Activists:

According to BreakAllChains, in one recent case the FBI claimed to be investigating “the extremist group: The Welfare Poets.” The Welfare Poets is a collective of artists and activists.

The danger of grand juries is that they’re a legal black hole. The government can haul in activists, question them about their political beliefs and political associations, and throw them in jail if they refuse to cooperate. Even if activists walk in the grand jury room, but don’t answer questions, it still creates mistrust among other activists because grand jury deliberations are secret

Your tax dollars are hard at work subpoenaing social workers, graphic designers, and "artists and activists." Do you feel safer?

Writeous Sister Speaks: Gloria Steinem: Mis Dos Centavos. Out of all the excellent coverage of Steinem's atrocious op-ed, I am most partial to this post by Aaminah Hernandez:

The most obvious, to me glaring, proof that Steinem is making a sweeping statement about the feminism of women who don’t vote for Clinton is in this statement:

“…some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age. “

To me, this reads as

a) young women aren’t radical enough (i.e. not “feminist” enough)

b) young women live in a fairytale land where they “hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system” so they are simply not as smart as the rest of us (i.e. not “feminist” enough)

c) young women aren’t showing proper appreciation for the efforts of the older feminist waves by not supporting a woman for president (i.e. not “feminist” enough)

d) thank God for the older, radical, feminists who can save the young women from their misguidance by voting Clinton into office

e) women of color do not exist and have no reason to feel a squeeze between supporting a candidate of color versus a female candidate

f) heaven forbid a woman is voting based on actual politics and chooses to support a white man instead of the colored or female candidates - because then she is just a flat-out traitor (Considering how many people, including Steinem, who have said this race shouldn’t be about race or gender, it is amusing how race and gender is all they want to talk about and how clear it is to women that voting in another white man is a glaringly bad decision because for the first time we really have choices!)

Aaminah is persuasive and compelling here. Don't miss out!

Donna Darko: Third-wave Feminism. Donna looks at the formation of the third wave and contrasts it with mainstream feminism now. I winced to read it, but that was not Donna's fault. No excerpt because you really do need to read the whole thing with this one.

Finally, Jill of Feministe has an exciting new gig at Alternet. And not to diminish the significance of that achievement, but I have to take a moment now, before I run out of steam here, to defend Jill's taste in music.

Feminists, lay off bashing the pop divas. REPEAT: LAY OFF THE POP DIVAS, especially if they sing better than the Indigo Girls, WHICH THEY DO, OKAY, IT'S NOT EVEN UP FOR DEBATE.

First of all, there is nothing wrong with Mariah Carey that really good material can't fix. Mariah with 90% of her catalogue is a technically gifted singer with, as a commenter piggybacking off Dorothy Parker put it, a range of emotions that runs the gamut from A to B. But Mariah + the right song = chills up spine. And hell, YOU try packing convincing emotion into most of the pablum masquerading as pop music today. You aren't going to do any better at breathing new life and sincerity into cliché than Mariah does.

Second of all, everyone is allowed at least one Beyonce in her life. My Beyonce is named Britney Spears and she's not at her best right now, okay, but BACK OFF. Don't make me start crying.

Third of all, Shakira is amazing and that's final.

You know what all three of those women have in common? I mean, besides that they're all beautiful women of color?--Their presentation and style are full-on feminine. Why the fuck does a woman have to act like a man to get any respect from the indie music snob crowd? Or commit terrible crimes against innocent consonants like Natalie Merchant? Your rules SUCK, music snobs, and they aren't even particularly feminist. There can be ways for women to express themselves in music beyond PJ Harvey and Chrissie Hynde and Beth Ditto. Fucking accept it.

UPDATE: In fact, some diva nostalgia might be just what the doctor ordered.

Yes, AGAIN with the short-shorts.

Google Can Stop Casting my Age up to me Any Time Now

2008-01-18T13:43:00.000-07:00

Search term: "lionel ritchie song i had a dream i had an awful dream."

No, no, no! AweSOME. He had an AWESOME dream. I had to hear about that awesome dream at least 50 million times as a teenager, via the radio or MTV, so I can see how "awesome" became "awful," because you know something?--It kind of was.

And yet I still like the damn song, even though it is pretty wretched. Let's have the Lionel I prefer for an antidote, huh?

Nothing wrong with short shorts. Those can make a comeback any time.

Heroes: Not on the Fence

2008-01-17T15:57:00.000-07:00

I love you, Eloisa Tamez:

Tamez owns three acres of land along the Texas-Mexico border where the Department of Homeland Security would like to build a border fence. The property is a remnant of a 12,000-acre grant from Spain to her family in 1767, before the United States even existed.

"It is my history. It is my heritage," Tamez said.

This week, the Justice Department began legal action against landowners and municipalities who have refused to give government surveyors access to their land.

Tamez expects she will be sued sometime soon, but she is not intimidated.

Asked how long she will fight, she said, "As long as I have to."

Michael Chertoff, the Secretary of Homeland Security, said the fence will not be stopped by opponents like Tamez.

"Can we simply abandon an enterprise because it is a problem for a particular individual?" Chertoff told CNN. "I don't think I can accept that."

Hmm. I expect internet libertarians will be all over that last assaultive statement on civil liberties just the way they were all over Kelo. What? What's everybody laughing at?

(More here. Also related.)

Remember: It Is Better to Look Good Than to Feel Good

2008-01-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

Whole thing, read, right now, you know the drill. But I'm not kidding:

From a feminist point of view, I think that most women can fake it pretty well. I know exactly ONE person (and I’m not married to him*) who has ever caught on that I was having a struggle when I wasn’t deliberately revealing that information. It’s terribly damaging to women that we are so conscripted by a system that insists we keep up appearances. It forces us into a sort of coy mental health minuet that delays necessary assistance, often until it’s far too late.

There are certain culturally agreed-upon behaviors that women must engage in, not to make themselves feel better, but to make everyone else feel better. I have always gotten up and gotten dressed. I never go without make-up. If I did, the signal I would be sending is that I am so depressed, I have actually stopped caring if I am sexually attractive.

THEN the system takes notice.

I think the only thing I'd add is that it's even worse on other class and race levels--I can't imagine what someone who needs help, but knows that asking for that help might bring the full force of ICE down on not just her own head but the heads of others close to her, must feel like in this broken system. The point, however, is that this system fails all of us in a million different (but preventable) ways, and then it distracts us from that point with its unceasing broadcast of the not-so-cleverly-coded message that all would be well if we would Just Try Harder.

Now add on the backwards idea that if we'd just fix the outside, the inside would magically realign to match the outside, and there you have it: A proven recipe for disaster. And this happens again and again, even though if there's one thing disasters seldom are, it's pretty.

Awesome stuff, Genni. Thank you for putting it out there.

Huh

2008-01-13T02:39:00.000-07:00

This old post is still getting hits. And it's getting a particular kind of hit: Google searches on the phrase "feminized men."

Mind you, when I say "Google" I don't necessarily mean google.com. A lot of these hits are from google.co.uk, which makes me wonder what the hell is up with you people. I mean, it was only last year your judges stopped wearing powdered wigs, if my understanding is correct.

So my advice is, don't go throwing a fit because you hooked up with some fellow who uses moisturizer. And Brit dudes, don't go freaking out because your buddy reapplies deodorant in-between soccer riots and pub stops. Y'all place a respectable second in the origination of "feminized men." France places first.

And you know something?--There's nothing superficially wrong with a man who smells good.

NOTHING.

Inspiration Week: CLICK

2008-01-11T09:04:00.000-07:00

I got it!

I got it, I got it, I got it!

I've gotten it before and then forgotten it. Gotten it and then talked myself out of believing it. Gotten it and then puffed myself up in vanity for being so smart; forgotten it and then beat myself up for being so dumb.

Oh, but it comes back to you and then you can sing. Now you remember. Now you see it--and how nice it is to see it again! Not sad but bittersweet: You had to see it again, had to re-see it. Bittersweet that you forgot, bittersweet that you got distracted.

It's okay. It's back now and you could use the reminder, and you can trust it.

Women, this is what we do not get told and this what we variously get and forget:

We can trust ourselves.

We are not always stupid; sometimes if there is a thing we are not getting it is because we do not have all the information, and sometimes that information is cunningly hidden from us just to make someone else feel smart.

We are not always depressed (except when we are, not backing down from that one, sorry); sometimes if we are down it's because we're in an environment that would bring anyone down who spent any time in it.

We are not always our own worst enemies; sometimes we're simply pitted against each other for the sport and delight of others.

We are not always poor analysts, we do not always make bad decisions, we do not always choose poorly; sometimes we're simply stripped of the tools to do any of that right at the door. You know, for security. So it will stay a safe space.

We are not always high-strung, too emotional, needlessly inflammatory, or overly argumentative; sometimes we're just struggling to say something we worry won't be received well, and our anxiety about that becomes fear becomes anger.

And of course sometimes none of this is true and sometimes we really are a mess, but listen:

WE CAN TELL THE DIFFERENCE.

There's a little sensor in your bones and it stores all the times you thought you were stupid, but only because someone wanted to feel smart at your expense. It stores all the times you thought you were hopeless, but only because you were forced into a hopeless situation. It stores all the times you were set up to be jealous, all the times someone confiscated your toolkit, all the times you were told to calm down by the same person who enraged you to begin with.

That sensor KNOWS.

It will sound an alarm whenever a situation, place, or person matches something in the database a little too closely. When you heed that alarm and adjust the way you know from experience you have to, when you heed that alarm and do what you need to do to survive--

--that's when you get it.

When you don't--

--that's when you forget it. And shit becomes enormously confusing from that point on until the next click, until the alarm goes off again only this time, you ACT.

I love the click. I hate getting to it, it's often grueling, and damn I wish that light could just stay on all the time, but I love the click: Right, recognize this. Seen it before. Should have seen it here earlier. Shouldn't have disconnected the alarm. Won't do that again. (Oh, yes you will.) Well, no need for more of it; out ya go. That's better. Where were we?

Thank you to the people who helped me reach the switch today.

OH SWEET ROASTED RED PEPPERS WITH GARLIC, THE STUPID

2008-01-09T15:27:00.000-07:00

I interrupt Inspiration Week to say a few things:

First, some folks need a history review.

Second, I refuse to draw conclusions about "what I can expect a male candidate for President to do for women if elected," from "what a male candidate for President says about Senator Clinton," because there are these things called platforms on which I'd rather base my expectations. Doesn't mean I endorse or approve of everything being said about Senator Clinton right now, doesn't mean I don't hate what the pundits are putting her through either.

Third, if you ask me (and I realize you did not, but when has that ever stopped me?), those tears were phony as hell. Just because Maureen Dowd happens to say so in her typically fluffheaded, spiteful way doesn't mean there aren't others of us saying and thinking the same damn thing. And you know something? We are also women.

Fourth, if you took Pinko Feminist Hellcat out of your feed reader, it's time to put it back in. That has nothing to do with the rest of it--or does it? I report, you decide.

We now return you to your hastily scheduled Inspiration Week.

Inspiration Week: Truth-tellers, Patient and Impatient

2008-01-09T06:11:00.000-07:00

Personally, I need both, sometimes at the same time. There are pluses and minuses to both approaches.

An impatient truth-teller is great, because that person is usually so fed to the teeth with having the exactsameconversationoverandoveragain, ohwhenwilliteverstop, that s/he will probably aim for blunt, concise, and devastating. When you only get one shot, or rather when you only want to have to take one shot, you don't fuck around. I have no patience myself, so I'm sympathetic to the urge to just quit fucking around.

And then again, an impatient truth-teller is more prone to spraying the place indiscriminately, kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out. Plus, the problem with being so damn devastating is that people wind up crawling away from you all devastated-like. I'm not saying they don't sometimes deserve all that and more; I'm just saying.

The impatient truth-teller can also attract a nice crop of people trying to do the internet equivalent of suicide-by-cop:

IMPATIENT TRUTH-TELLER: --bunch of assholes, and I--

[Someone with a frequently updated MySpace page comes barging in]

MYSPACE USER: I can't believe you just called me an asshole!

ITT: Huh? Who the fuck are you?

MYSPACE USER: And you won't stop swearing at me!

ITT: I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to--

MYSPACE USER: Now you're silencing me! My voice doesn't matter to you!

ITT: Do I know you?

MYSPACE USER: And DISMISSING ME! You really are the meanest meanie in all of Meanville! And now I am become the saddest sadster in Sadtown!

ITT: Look, I have no idea what you're doing here, who you are, or why you're upset. I was only trying to tell these assholes over here that--

MYSPACE USER: I can't believe you just called me an asshole again! [runs off to alert 400+ friends to the meanness]

Not that the patient truth-telling approach is without its own problems. The risk you take with patient truth-telling is that some folks are going to wind up conditioned to having their hands held, their dribbly chins wiped, and their nappies changed all the time; and the first person who kills this dream by saying "Clean up after yourself, Mr. Toddler," is going to hear like all this whining and crying and complaining, because Mr. Toddler was SO certain that learning would always be sweet and free and easy.

But then again, you can't rush learning, and everyone's speed is different. Someone's got to take the time and make the effort or we'll only wind up with a world full of insufferable little smartasses who think they know everything because damn it, they were in the gifted program--and if the vision of that future doesn't make you stop to give thanks for all the dumbasses among us, I don't know what will.

It would be a pretty barren landscape without the patient. In the end, all you'd have left would be 8,736,450 nation states, each home to exactly ONE impatient truth-teller apiece--or to rip off P.J. O'Rourke, a bunch of The Republic of Me and You and I'm Not Sure About Me's.

Sometimes the impatient truth-tellers get to clean up after the patient truth-tellers by taking Mr. Toddler out to the woodshed. And sometimes the patient truth-tellers wind up having to educate--gently!--the shattered victims of the impatient truth-tellers.

If anyone is fixing to get all upset about anything I've said so far, it may soothe you to know that I've been guilty of every behavior catalogued here: I have needed my hand held and my chin wiped. I have hurt innocent bystanders in the course of shooting my mouth off. I have been too patient with people who didn't deserve it, to the disappointment and frustration of friends who had Mr. Toddler's number long before I did. And way too many times to count, I have needed my conscience and my thought processes kick-started by someone all out of patience with the same old shit.

I don't say that to make this all about me; I say that to ward off complaints that I'm overgeneralizing or setting up a false binary like, oh, I don't know, "popularizers" and "purists," say, because the truth is that everyone has a little of each of these characters in them and it's all really a spectrum anyway. I've been all those people sometimes in the same conversation, and sometimes more than one of them at once, and sometimes I haven't fit neatly into any of those roles but have just sort of muddled along in the middle. And I'm sure you have too.

I wouldn't even be writing this right now if some very impatient truth-tellers hadn't kicked me in the ass, hard, over some horrifically stupid ideas I once held.

And I wouldn't be writing this right now if some very patient truth-tellers hadn't endured all my petulant little tantrums, either.

I owe both. And worse, I owe too many of them--too many to link right now. For today I think I'll just point you to some mostly patient, occasionally impatient truth-telling going on over here, with bonus cute dog pictures.

Thank you, everyone who told me the truth even, and especially, when I wasn't too eager to hear it.

Inspiration Week: Blackamazon on Sex

2008-01-08T12:44:00.000-07:00

I don't have a lot of flowery introduction for this post because you don't gild a lily:

I guess where i want to start is where I always end up starting and half finishing and failing for the past two years.

Responsibility ,accountability , and mystery.

But the big one for this entry is mystery .

Glamour ( I just quoted Glamour on this blog help us all) has this survey and it shows up every three or four months in the other magazines as well , touting the " sexual standards /Shocking thing 78.6 percent of women/ what's totally normal"

And it bothers me because once again something very intimate and personal is being normalized
First of it presents sexuality as this great mystery that needs to be unraveled by public vote. Not to mention it concentrates on doing so in a manner that emphasizes you not being " out of the norm" No seriously it's called the do's and don'ts of sex.

On one hand it's trying to convince you that your sexual expression is normal by emphasizing the fact it's not unique?!

I guess why is every one trying to convince me ( I am still young enough to be in most youth target audiences ) that sex is no big deal , no mystery, that long as we cover condoms and consent it's AOK.

Mystery.

This is why I don't talk about sex on mainstream feminist blogs, or even on this one. What is mysterious is powerful.

And the attempts to demystify sex, to, as Blackamazon says, "cover condoms and consent," to reduce the whole thing to dos and don'ts--well. I understand the motivation 99% of the time. If you want to reduce the incidence of sexually-transmitted infection, good practical knowledge about the best ways to prevent infection is important to get out there. If you want to reduce the incidence of sexually-transmitted infection, destigmatizing the having of one is important to get people treated; we don't want people with STIs isolated by shame, keeping their conditions secret and perhaps furthering their spread.

If you want to reduce unwanted pregnancies, knowledge about contraception is vital to disseminate. If you want to reduce unwanted pregnancies, reproductive rights are vital to secure.

We want people to be happy and healthy and having lots and lots of Dr. Ruth-brand Good Sex(TM), right? So we've got to educate them!

Knowledge is power, and let me be clear: I am all in favor of knowledge, education, and the widespread availability of both.

Sex can be a problem, sex can cause problems, and we need solutions for those problems and people need to be able to use them effectively.

What I don't want are sloppy attempts to use one power--knowledge--to whittle down another power, mystery--the power of sex--and force it to manageable scale. I would rather we encouraged people to grow bigger rather than encouraging them to see sex as smaller, and no, I don't even know if that really makes sense.

I just know I grew up with all the knowledge, all the tools, all the access, all the education--and my early sexual experiences still knocked me flat on my ass, and I don't mean in bed or during. It was as if I'd been taught how to use a cap gun and then someone handed me a rocket launcher.

"So let's see I just kind of pull back on this bit and--"

BLAM!

I made mistakes, because everyone does. But Blackamazon has something to say about that, something that makes me wish I could fiddle with time and space so that I could have been reading her twenty years ago:

Petit explain this to me, what the heck is with everyone ratcheting DOWN the stakes. Self care sexual care big fucking deal

and you know what we'll make mistakes.

and they'll be serious one.

Isn't it bad and wrong to be convincing people that being healthy and RESPONSIBLE is no big damn deal.

As if self care isn't hard?

OF course it is

but

here's my shocking belief

WE'RE WORTH IT!

She gets me every time with that.

Thank you, Blackamazon.

January 7-13 is Inspiration Week

2008-01-07T19:23:00.000-07:00

Says who?--Says me.

I have to redirect some energy, and when it came right down to it, I couldn't think of a better way to do that than to give thanks for some of the work out there that has inspired me. I don't really care if some folks think this is a trite and useless exercise; this is how we roll here in the Clown Posse, and I think maybe we can squeeze one or two more in the car yet, so feel free to hop in.

I started thinking about this while reading this beautiful post of Al's, which I found via Creek Running North (see comment number 25 in this thread). First of all, I love Al for having thought this whole "blogging" thing through way more thoroughly than I ever did, not that that would be difficult to do considering I never thought it through at all, but, well:

When I began writing online I had a lengthy chat with myself regarding the things I would, and would not do. Given the context and power of the net, two things were central for me. One, I was not going to needlessly kick the underdog. My own sense of self worth is not predicated on my ability to socially eviscerate a "likely" suspect. I'm sure you will all agree, in cyber land, the role of societal gate keeper and bully, is played out all too often, in the same cruel, humanity redcuing ways.

Now as you know my own sense of self worth IS predicated on my ability to socially eviscerate a likely suspect. So why am I praising this? Because it inspires me to stop being like that. There are good, moral reasons for not being like that:

Telling someone newly HIV infected and dealing with crystal meth issues, for example, that "maybe Darwin was right" and it's all a matter of will power, addiction is bullshit, blah, blah, blah, may garner temporary credence among the obnoxiously vapid set who regulary reach Nirvana wagging a finger from behind cover of a computer screen, but it also has some very real damage potential to human lives.

No, not because you have hurt another's feelings needlessly and for sport, but instead because you may have actually silenced a voice. One that belongs to a person you would have no way of knowing what it may have taken for them to even get to that point. The point at which, without so much as a thought beyond your own readers perception of you, you cleanly knocked them down. But hey, it no doubt got a laugh, and your attempt at sarcasm may have fooled a few into perceiving you as witty. Thanks, but I'll pass. And whenever the chance presents itself, I'll relish in calling you on your oh so brave admonishments.

I try not to silence voices, but no doubt I often do anyway. The only voices I'm actively interested in silencing, though, are the ones that make people I love cry. One fool's learning curve should not leave skid marks on another person's heart.

This is the part of Al's post that got me in the heart:

The English was awkward and halting, but the description of the night she left her life and husband behind, was none the less potent. An abused woman, living in poverty, her story is a dime a dozen. For the drama queens among you, sorry, there was really no water shed event, no final bone shattering beating. Simply, this random woman who none of us would give passing glance to on the street, finally decided she had enough.

For whatever reason, and through that odd combination of luck, fate, and circumstance, that womans resolve found its way to a helpline linked on the pages of my site. Twenty minutes later, with a single bag, her daughter, the family cat, and the phone number and address of a shelter they would spent the night at, she walked out of her house, doing what had to be one of the hardest things she had ever done, and ventured into the world head first and with a very uncertain future, alone.

I see the stagnation in parts of the blogosphere as a failure of imagination, a failure to imagine what blogs can do. No, I am not a blogging triumphalist. Yes, I am aware (albeit far too recently for a woman my age, who by now ought to know better) that other parts of the blogosphere are amazing testaments to what blogs can do. I am merely saying that if you think all they're good for is achieving ego strokes and ad revenue, perhaps you should think again. Let your imagination take you beyond AdSense and Technorati. Read what inspires you. Read a little something whenever you can that lifts you up instead of bringing you down, and remember to give credit where credit is due.

Thank you, Al.

How Many?

2008-01-07T16:45:00.000-07:00

Too many to count.

You know, it isn't true that privilege and entitlement don't lead to mistakes, or at least it isn't true for me. They lead to my making mistakes all the TIME.

For example, I thought that if people would just make honest attempts to link to each other and engage with each other, everything would be okay--because that's how it works out for my privileged, entitled ass 99% of the time. But that was a mistake, and I see now a clarification is in order:

If when you read "linking to and quoting" you wind up doing "cherry-picking, appropriating, and reframing;" and if when you read "engaging in dialogue with" you wind up doing "what about the white ladies, don't you think you're being unfair to us? WHAT ABOUT OUR MOVEMENT?"--just don't.

It's the equivalent (and bless you R. Mildred for nailing this) of having a bunch of certified Nice Guys decide to "link to" and "engage" feminists, just to whine about all that pussy in lockdown they aren't getting. Well, whine about while simultaneously scorning and rejecting as not good enough, because after all, a Nice Guy doesn't want that stank feminist pussy, he wants Hott Gurl pussy; but it's the feminists fault that he isn't getting any of that, so it's the feminists at whom he whines the most.

I see no parallels to the present situation at all, but that's only because I've had myself blinded in order to preserve my sanity. Thank heavens I touch-type! I hope this is legible for y'all!

Anyway, that kind of engagement doesn't help--and that's putting it way too mildly.

But hey, at least it's civil and that's what matters around here, or so I am told. Now give me my motherfucking civility award.

Starting Now, Actually

2008-01-06T23:01:00.000-07:00

Better late than never.

Fun for the Whole Fam Damily

2008-01-06T16:05:00.000-07:00

Unpack it--if you can!

You're Right! They'd Be Better off Dead!

2008-01-06T05:23:00.000-07:00

I can't believe what I'm reading, and I mean that in every sense:

AIDS Patients Face Downside of Living Longer

No, FOR REAL.

Mr. Holloway, who lives in a housing complex designed for the frail elderly, suffers from complex health problems usually associated with advanced age: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, kidney failure, a bleeding ulcer, severe depression, rectal cancer and the lingering effects of a broken hip.

Those illnesses, more severe than his 84-year-old father’s, are not what Mr. Holloway expected when lifesaving antiretroviral drugs became the standard of care in the mid-1990s.

The drugs gave Mr. Holloway back his future.

But at what cost?

That is the question, heretical to some, that is now being voiced by scientists, doctors and patients encountering a constellation of ailments showing up prematurely or in disproportionate numbers among the first wave of AIDS survivors to reach late middle age.

1. I have taken the liberty of revising the links in the first paragraph; in the Times, they direct to health.nytimes.com. After reading this article, however, I wouldn't trust the Times to explain a paper cut. You'll see why shortly.

2. Emphasis mine. Relax! "At what cost?" is a question only heretical to some. And you know who those "some" are, don't you? That's right: A bunch of nasty narrow-minded purists who think life matters.

There have been only small, inconclusive studies on the causes of aging-related health problems among AIDS patients.

But don't let that stop you from asking the tough heretical questions.

Without definitive research, which has just begun, that second wave of suffering could be a coincidence, although it is hard to find anyone who thinks so.

Instead, experts are coming to believe that the immune system and organs of long-term survivors took an irreversible beating before the advent of lifesaving drugs and that those very drugs then produced additional complications because of their toxicity — a one-two punch.

That seems plausible. I can see the correlation, also known as the indication for more non-small, non-inconclusive studies.

The Multi-Site AIDS Cohort Study, or MACS, will directly examine the intersection of AIDS and aging over the next five years. Dr. John Phair, a principal investigator for the study, which has health data from both infected and uninfected men, said “prolonged survival” coupled with the “naturally occurring health issues” of old age raised pressing research questions: “Which health issues are a direct result of aging, which are a direct result of H.I.V. and what role do H.I.V. meds play?”

The MACS investigators, and other researchers, defend the slow pace of research as a function of numbers. The first generation of AIDS patients, in the mid-1980s, had no effective treatments for a decade, and died in overwhelming numbers, leaving few survivors to study.

Yeah, and about that. See, I wouldn't call that so much "a function of numbers" as I would "a failure of public health," for which failure older people with AIDS are now paying the price. THERE, fuckhead. There's your fucking story.

Mr. Holloway is uncomplaining even in the face of pneumonia and a 40-pound weight loss, both associated with his cancer treatment. Has the cost been too high? He says it has not, “considering the alternatives.”

I guess we count Mr. Holloway among the non-heretics, then. Imagine thinking your life has value! Imaging preferring being alive to being dead! Crazy!

One 69-year-old member of the group, for example, has had several heart attacks and triple bypass surgery, and his doctor predicts that heart disease is more likely to kill him than AIDS.

My grandfather had several heart attacks and bypass surgery, with his first surgical intervention occurring when he was 61. He's dead now, of, yep, another heart attack. Maybe the last 20+ years of his life weren't worth the hassle, though. Maybe he should have just, you know, died the first time.

At Rivington House, a residence for AIDS patients on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Dr. Sheree Starrett, the medical director, said that neither heart disease nor diabetes was “terribly hard to treat, except that every time you add more meds there is more chance of something else going wrong.”

If this is an actual quote and not some horrible misrendering out of context, then even though she's got "Dr." in front of her name and I don't, I feel safe calling this doctor an idiot. Heart disease IS hard to treat. Diabetes IS hard to treat. I listen to cardiologists and endocrinologists struggle to keep arteries patent and hemoglobin A1c levels below 6.5% five days a week. It's hard for the patients, it's hard for the health care providers, and holy shit, the medication complications are just insane.

Furthermore, "heart disease" is a blanket term--it could refer to atherosclerosis, prior myocardial infarction(s), valvular disease, congestive heart failure, arrhythmia, hypercholesterolemia--I haven't covered even a fraction of the possibilities here, and of course it's possible for multiple cardiac problems to exist in combination. No. No physician in her right mind would say all that was not "terribly hard to treat," but it's a useful quote if your premise is that everything would be simpler if only patients with AIDS would stop living already.

Statins, for instance, which are the drug of choice for high cholesterol, are bad for people with abnormal liver function, also a greater risk among blacks.

Oh, I skipped that part! I skipped the part where the reporter made sure to mention how much riskier it is to get the AIDS, and the AIDS-related complications, and complications that may be related to AIDS or may be related to any number of other factors, we don't know because the only studies to date have been small and inconclusive, if you're black. I am not really sure why that was brought up, but it is first mentioned here:

Cardiovascular disease and diabetes are associated with a condition called lipodystrophy, which redistributes fat, leaving the face and lower extremities wasted, the belly distended and the back humped. In addition, lipodystrophy raises cholesterol levels and causes glucose intolerance, which is especially dangerous to black people, who are already predisposed to heart disease and diabetes.

Just so you know.

Many AIDS patients have end-stage liver disease, either from intravenous drug use or alcohol abuse.

Nothing else causes end-stage liver disease--not primary biliary cirrhosis, not portal hypertension, not certain medications, not nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, not genetics--nothing. It has to be something You, the Naughty Person with AIDS, Did to Yourself, so either you shot up or you drank too much. Would it be heretical to ask whether you should still be here?

Among Dr. Starrett’s AIDS patients is 58-year-old Dominga Montanez, whose first husband died of AIDS and whose second husband is also infected.

“My liver is acting up, my diabetes is out of control and I fractured my spine” because of osteoporosis, Ms. Montanez said. “To me, the new things are worse than the AIDS.”

Of course they are, but you see, it's the AIDS we're concerned about here. We'd be fine with your continued existence, Ms. Montanez, if you just hadn't gotten that dirty old AIDS.

There are no data that compare the incidence, age of onset and cause of geriatric diseases in the general population with the long-term survivors of H.I.V. infection. But physicians and researchers say that they do not see people in their mid-50s, absent AIDS, with hip replacements associated with vascular necrosis, heart disease or diabetes related to lipodystrophy, or osteoporosis without the usual risk factors.

But they do see them with the usual risk factors, and some of those risk factors are quite common in the United States, and yet no one's written "Sedentary Diabetics Face Downside of Living Longer" yet.

You know, I get it. I get what the article was trying to say, I think, but it's just said so callously, so ineptly, and so inaccurately that I'm going to laugh extra hard the next time some wingnut starts raging about what a liberal paper the NYT is.

An Open Letter to Sweating Through Fog

2008-01-05T18:38:00.000-07:00

Dear Sweating Through Fog:

I began to leave this as a comment, but it grew too long and I realized that it was not really about you to begin with. It is about a trope I would like to see die, one which no amount of defining, describing, and debunking seems to be able to kill.

I do not kid myself that this will be effective in killing it either. I offer it here only in the hope that it might at least maim it a little.

*

You wrote:

Here is what is happening. In the view of ideological leftists, the sin of privilege - particularly that of a white, heterosexual American male - can never be washed away. It is a permanent defect of your soul. It means - to ideologues - that you have no moral worth. Despite what they say, no amount of “unpacking”, no amount of insight, no amount of loyal "ally work" can regain your humanity. In their eyes, your privilege means that that - now and forever - you have nothing of value to say. Your experiences are of no consequence. Your views are always empty. While you might be trotted out on occasion as part of a show-trial illustration of remorse, once that is done you need to shut up and move to the background. Once you are privileged, you are free only to agree.

This is a common misconception, I think--and I think you ought to recall here, as I do, that you admit right up front that this isn't a topic with which you are very familiar, nor even one you care to educate yourself about:

I don't really care about feminism, and I could care less what Jessica Valenti or the various WOC bloggers that are involved in this controversy think. What interests me is Hugo's attempt to add his voice to the mix, by trying to convince both sides that there is room for both in his big-tent view of feminism. And I care very much what Hugo thinks, because he is clearly a decent man, and a deep thinker.

See, that's privilege in action: The feelings of white feminist women?--Not important, not worthy of consideration. The feelings of women of color?--Not important, not worthy of consideration. The feelings of a fellow Christian white male?--So important, it's worth it to you to disregard entirely those with whom he engages. Except, of course, to misinterpret what they're trying to say in what has to be one of the most misguided "fiskings" I've seen recently on these internets. To return to your post:

In the view of ideological leftists, the sin of privilege - particularly that of a white, heterosexual American male - can never be washed away.

As a Christian feminist myself, I do understand the urge to draw parallels between original sin and privilege. They are not dissimilar at first glance, but a better metaphor here would be something more like fish in the sea, or maybe even those dumb old Palmolive dish soap commercials: White privilege is what white people are soaking in. It doesn't make sense to talk about "washing it away" anymore than it makes sense for schools of saltwater fish to "wash away" the sea.

You can't go back and erase the subjugation of indigenous peoples by whites, you can't go back and erase slavery, you can't go back and undo genocide--and neither can I, and neither can Hugo. We exist in an environment that has historically favored white people, and we can't change that history. (The present and the future, now, are another matter.)

Is this so far-fetched, so loony a concept? I don't think that it is. I think it's just acknowledging the reality of existing circumstance.

It means - to ideologues - that you have no moral worth. Despite what they say, no amount of “unpacking”, no amount of insight, no amount of loyal "ally work" can regain your humanity.

This, this right here, is what I mean when I say "a common misconception"--because this is patently untrue, and yet I hear it all the time. The most recent example I can think of occurred at Brownfemipower's, where a commenter basically asked, what do you want white people to do? Kill themselves? And with regards to the book discussion that doesn't interest you, but on which you nevertheless feel perfectly entitled to comment, that same sentiment has been expressed as, what do you want white feminists to do? Refuse book deals? Stop speaking at all?

This sets up a demonstrably false dichotomy: White people must either obliterate themselves, or content themselves with eternal, subhuman, racist asshole status. Oh, the humanity (that white people are losing, boo-hoo)!

I say this is demonstrably false because the very conversation you reference, this conversation at Hugo's that was so dehumanizing to Hugo, includes arguments made by white people; you cite them frequently throughout your own post. You quote a comment left by Tom of the blog Automatic Preference; Tom is a white man. Your next blockquote is from a comment by Theriomorph; Theriomorph is a white woman. You then cite a comment by R. Mildred; by now you should not be surprised to learn that R. Mildred is a white woman. And if any one of those three white people you quoted has ever felt dehumanized by people of color, I have not heard of it.

But it does happen that the white people you quoted stand in solidarity with women of color, and this brings us to your next point, which, again, I see made by so many, so often, that I beg you not to take this personally:

Once you are privileged, you are free only to agree.

I am free to argue with a neurosurgeon about the best way to repair a cerebral aneurysm. I am free to argue with a homeless person about the best way to stay safe on the streets. I am free to argue with an astronaut about the best way to prepare for outer space travel.

I am free to argue all these topics, but it should come as no surprise when other people, every bit as free as I am, think me a jackass for doing so. I'm not a neurosurgeon, I am not homeless, and I am no astronaut. I don't actually have a shred of authority to invoke in any of these discussions.

And as a white woman, I don't have a shred of authority to invoke in any discussions of racism as it is experienced by people of color, either. If a woman of color says to me, "What you are doing right now is silencing me, what you say here is patronizing, I experience it as dismissive," I am free to argue with her, all right; but Theriomorph or Tom or R. Mildred are also free to say, "Hey, Ilyka, stop that. You're being a racist douchebag. You can do better than this."

Now if I have any sense at all, I'll listen to Tom and R. Mildred and Theriomorph when they say that--but what would be even better than that would be if I resolved to listen to the woman of color who raised that concern with me in the first place. That woman is giving me the invaluable gift of the benefit of the doubt; I owe her, not the other way around! The bare-bones minimum I can do is listen to her with humility, listen to her in love.

Yes, what would be best would be if I did not need to hear criticism of myself solely from other white people in order to understand. What would be even better would be if I saw in people of color the same humanity you so passionately defend provided it belongs to Hugo, and not to those nasty leftist ideologues about whom you have bothered to learn absolutely NOTHING.

(And, Hugo, what would be even better from you would be if you would learn to discern when the devil's whispering in your ear, and stop thanking him for doing that.)

Unsurprisingly, Sweating Through Fog, your erroneous conclusion follows naturally from your erroneous premise:

So as a privileged person, Hugo has no basis from which to persuade feminists about anything.

The problem is not that Hugo is a privileged person. The problem is not who or what Hugo IS. The problem lies (pardon the Catholicism a moment) in what Hugo has done, and in what he has failed to do. The problem is that Hugo is not listening. I will note wearily here that this is a longstanding problem, Hugo-wise; and again, one shared by pretty much every white person on the planet; and finally, one that is seldom relieved by enablers whispering, "It's hopeless, you'll never please them, you can't win, just kill yourself, Whitey."

What if, instead of white feminists closing themselves off from discourse they deem unproductive ("unproductive" appears here to be synonymous with "uncomfortable"), they eagerly assumed the roles of pupils instead of demanding always the roles of teachers?

What if white feminists tried listening?

But I forget myself! You don't care about any of that. You only care about Hugo's humanity. You know what, dude? I think Hugo's humanity is going to be just fine, if by "just fine" we mean "expansive and all-consuming to the point no one else can have any." So do not fret. Be of good cheer!

Sincerely,

Ilyka

Read it--and Please, No More Centering the Damn House

2008-01-05T16:20:00.000-07:00

Donna is right (free advice: Donna is usually right): Post of the year by Brownfemipower:

Because in doing anti-racist (etc) work, differences between participants must be acknowledged, respected, honored and negotiated with. And eventually, as an act of solidarity, all those who are different from each other, but committed to each other through their differences, will either burn the damn house down and give the land back to the original inhabitants, or find some new place to build a communal living space together. All those who used to live in the Master’s house will know without fucking asking that inviting slaves to live in the house is not an option, not when there’s only one master bedroom and one master bed.

The market knows that when we need each other instead of it, it’s life will come to an end. It knows this, and thus has a vested interest in preventing that Great Reconciliation from even being imagined.

And:

A person who is not a part of Lorde’s movement, but possibly may *think* she is, is the person who would say there’s no such thing as a master’s house, that the master’s house is big enough to hold everybody, that we shouldn’t be targeting the master’s house because the master will get mad at us and then we’ll never get into the house ourselves, that the master actually really loves us all and will stop whupping our asses if ever we’d learn to get along, that things aren’t really that bad outside the master’s house, that the master only cares about keeping women out of his house and only women’s labor was used to build the damn thing to begin with, that the *real* problem is all the jealous slaves who stand outside the master’s windows staring in, not leaving the poor master alone, that if we could just be *happy* for the master when he has a good crop, things would be so much better for all us. (and no, I am not in any way insinuating, suggesting, or otherwise implying that jessica or amanda et al are ‘the master,’ so chill out).

This person doesn’t recognize that the point has never been the master’s house, except in the most general sense. The point is the slaves. The point is justice for the slaves.

Read it all, absorb it, breathe it in like good clean air.

And an Admin Note!

2008-01-01T01:02:00.000-07:00

Boyfriend is taking me to a resort outside Ruidoso for a couple of days, neat neat neat. I am too excited about it, actually. I never go anywhere and I ain't had a single day off from work since last Christmas, and that vacation I spent with my parents. While I do love my parents very, very much, it isn't the same as a proper adult vacation, you know?

I will turn comment moderation off while I'm gone so y'all don't get hassled. (Genni! If you see anything super-shitty posted here, can you oblige me by deleting it mucho pronto? Everyone else!--If you see anything super-shitty posted here, can you please not feed the trolls? I don't get very many trolls, as a rule, but the ones I do get are hungry, oh so hungry. Please be spiteful and starve them to death. It's how I would want things.)

Happy New Year, everyone!

Obsolescence and a Wish for the New Year

2007-12-31T23:36:00.000-07:00

All right, we certainly cannot call this a comeback. I have not been able to get into the swing of things, into the groove of regular posting, and the more I try to wail and whine about that, the more I realize . . . it's for the best.

So many people say it better and earlier.

I will have to use something Theriomorph said as a jumping-off point, but please, do read her whole post. It is one of those lovely posts you can look at with the narrow view and say, "This is about just this one thing, about which I do not care," and brush it off.

Or, OR, if you have any sense at all, you read it and you say, "Oh, this is initially prompted by this one thing, but then it becomes about so many other things, I cannot take them all in."

That is, it is my very favorite kind of post: One you can think over slowly. But to return to my point, this:

One of the largest tools I came away with was an understanding of the notion of ‘gatekeeping’ I mentioned earlier. The notion that as a white woman, I have basic opportunities others do not.

I have less privilege than many people, and more than most; and the privilege I do have I can use - to put it in comic book terms - for good or evil.

If I have power (to hire, fire, incorporate the ideas of others, supervise, train, teach, support, mentor, speak in public, disseminate ideas), I can use that power to challenge racism and create opportunities for people of color who were not asked to speak or lead, as I was.

If I am given the opportunity to be the gatekeeper, I can, very simply, hold that gate open instead of closed.

I can do this without loss of personal benefit.

Everyone gains if I do this. Everyone.

Right and exactly. My feeling (and I'm betting Theriomorph's, too) is that ideally the time comes, sooner rather than later, when privileged white women don't have to hold open that gate because we have any number of cisgendered/"disabled"/of-color/queer/working class women clamoring to hold open that gate themselves. And my hope is that it goes exactly this simply:

"Hey, let me hold that open for a few."

"Sure thing!"

THE END.

I am thinking that will be the best day of all.

Yes, hold it open while you have the power to do so! That is better than slamming it in another woman's face. But if someone else steps up to say "Here, let me get that," then me personally, I'm more than happy to get out of the way. And lately I've been feeling as though I may as well just get out of the way.

Now DON'T, for the love of humanity, feed me a bunch of reassurance that my voice is still important or any such crap. It will not have the intended effect, because (1) I selfishly do still think my voice is important, or at least, important enough to spit onto a free blog (and how important is that relatively, mmm?), and (2) I am not feeling sorry for myself, honest I'm not, and you would know if I were, because of all the ear-splitting WHINING that would be going on.

Listen: I am pleased as punch to have my sense of self put into perspective--and here I didn't even have to pay for it! Who can complain about free? My sense of self is something I struggle with and something I often inflate. I get into more trouble thinking that I am very important, or that people depend on me, than I ever get into from thinking "Eh, maybe I'm not all that," or "Someone else will handle it, and probably do a better job of it besides." I realize that can sound like a beautiful excuse for plain laziness, but all I can say there is, if you've ever known an obsessive-compulsive, you know all too well how relieving and peacemaking it can be to hear one say, "Maybe I don't have to do this job."

Maybe I can do a different job: Maybe I can play a supporting role, maybe I can simply cheer on those who say it better.

There is something else Theriomorph said in her post that speaks to the post I thought I would write at year's end. That is:

. . . to practice the simple, simple solution of shutting up and LISTENING to what people are saying, and incorporating that feedback into the work.

Ai ai ai OUCH! Ow! There!

Why do we, feminists and pro-feminist allies, not DO this?

Because I had this whole ramble stored up in my head about how abstraction is going to kill us all--or rather, misuse of abstraction is. But the idea that one can--

--read a book about

--read several studies about

--watch a film about

--attend a seminar about

--take a class about

--and know, really know in one's bones, how life is for those whose lives are not ours--well, it's offensive. Don't get me wrong: Books, films, classes, these all help. These are all necessary. We'd never have any idea what any of us were going on about without tools like those. Shared symbols, shared languages, shared concepts all ideally lead to shared understanding. But it's ultimately incomplete, and this is the question I asked myself for all of 2007:

"Why don't we believe each other?"

That is THE question I'm left with: Why the fuck don't we listen to each other? Why the fuck don't we believe what we each have to say about our own lives? If this woman says "I had a bad day at work," why do we have to go into all the ways her story proves that her work itself is wrong? Why can't we say, "Oh, that's horrible! I'm glad you're okay?" Why does there have to be this whole "See, I told you! I told you no good would ever come of stripping--" why's there got to be the same useless shit I used to get from Mormons twenty years ago? Why? Why, exactly? What purpose does this serve?

And if women of color say, "This is my experience trying to participate in discussions on mainstream white feminist blogs," why's any white feminist got to argue with her that--

--no, wait! White feminists don't even do women of color the courtesy of arguing! In fact, the hard ugly truth is that, as a group and in general, white feminists pay more respect and more attention to wingnuts, men's rights activists, Christian fundamentalists, and other avowed antifeminists than we do to women of color. Oh but YES, yes we do. And there's no other word for that besides sickening.

I know the name of the guy who founded AutoAdmit, I know the names (or at least the handles of) the guys behind 4chan. But the women of color you disagree with, the women of color who speak up because they care about women's rights, because they share a handful of beliefs and principles with you, because they actually think you might listen?--They get labeled "some critics." Or they're referenced obliquely with "it has come to my attention." Or they're alluded to with a billion shitty little dodges you wield like so much internet Wite-Out, brand-name reference intentional.

My meager hope for 2008 is that we will learn to trust each other to speak the truth about our own experiences. My meager hope is that we will listen to each other the same way we demand men listen to us. My meager hope is that we will model the change we want to see in the world. If we can't do that, we can't do anything. I don't CARE how many states have anti-abortion laws on the books just waiting for the repeeal of Roe v. Wade; if we can't even trust each other to tell the truth about how life is for us, we can't do shit.

I Also Don't Give Lectures on Particle Physics, If You Were Wondering

2007-12-27T12:10:00.000-07:00

I've known people, dead and alive, with alcoholism.

The dead ones are dead because they believed what all the nonalcoholic drinking people in their lives told them about alcohol: That having one or two drinks after dinner was as simple as having one or two drinks after dinner, and then not having any more. But this was not true for them. For them, having one or two drinks after dinner meant having all the available drinks in the house after dinner. And the next morning. And the next evening. And hey, screw dinner.

They're dead because the people around them trying to help were ignorant. The people around them told them various things: Just pray. Use willpower. Shame yourself out of excessive drinking. I know one case of a nonalcoholic trying to help an alcoholic in which the nonalcoholic's brilliant solution to the alcoholic's drinking problem was to send that alcoholic over $300 worth of megavitamins.

Ignorance kills.

The alcoholics I know who are alive are alive because they found other alcoholics who understood what they were going through and were able to talk to them and reach them in ways that nonalcoholics were incapable of doing.

I don't understand the uncontrollable urge to drink. For me drinking is very controllable--I may do more of it than I ought to, but there's never been any question for me about who decides when and how much I drink; I decide that. Sometimes I set out to drink a lot, have a glass of wine, realize it doesn't taste good to me for whatever reason, and then, check this out, I don't drink anymore wine that night. For the alcoholics I have known, it doesn't work that way. If I understand what the alcoholics I have known are saying to me correctly, it's more like a compulsion, an itch to be scratched: Must have more alcohol. I feel that way about cigarettes, and I can dimly remember jonesing a few times for pot when I was out, but booze? No. I don't get that one.

So guess what I normally do on the subject of alcoholism? I SHUT THE FUCK UP.

I don't understand people with depression issues, either. I don't understand why they can't just be happy, or at least be happy more often than they are depressed. I don't understand what's so hard about getting out of bed. I don't understand what it's like to feel flattened by life--except one day out of the month when whatever combination of hormones my body cocktails up turns me into a morose motherfucker. But you know, that's one day a month only. I can stiff-upper-lip my way through one day a month.

What I'm fairly certain I could not do is stiff-upper-lip my way through all the days of the month feeling like I do on that one day. I'd kill myself, if I could find the energy to bother, which I probably couldn't. I'd probably just drift along feeling miserable until I quit bothering to clock in for work . . . drift along until I was evicted . . . drift along on the streets until God knows. I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it would be bad.

But my limited ability to imagine what it must be like to deal with depression is not the same thing as my actually having depression, so generally, on the subject of depression, I SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Don't read books about how medicating depression is all one huge scam from Big Pharma, and then lecture people with depression about the best way to treat their depression.

SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Don't read .PDFs on the internet about depression and then lecture people with depression about what you learned in thirty minutes with Acrobat Reader.

SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Really, really don't then condescend to people with depression that what they put into their bodies is their business, really, but you don't have to approve of it. No, you sure don't! But if what people put into their bodies is truly their business, why are you still talking?

SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Ignorance kills people every day, but you're still talking, because no one's going to tell you what to approve or disapprove of!

I for one am not telling you what to approve or disapprove of. I'm only telling you to

SHUT

THE FUCK

UP

Personally, I'd Skip This One If I Were You

2007-12-27T01:54:00.000-07:00

My beef with the "list n things about yourself" blog meme is that it forces me to the uncomfortable realization that I am not nearly as fascinating as I think I am. And no way do I have a story to top this one:

The part of the dance where we were all grounded, dancing on the floor: that part went well. Then we slowly built up to the section where I had to stand on the chair. I was hoping that if I found the right spot to stand on, just the right spot, I would be able to balance and support my partner while she stood on her chair…

So we took each other’s hands, and I glanced down cautiously as we both stepped up–

And the chair wobbled so violently I let go of her hand and stepped right back down.

Okay, I didn’t quite step; I more tripped down and luckily landed on my feet. The rest of the dancers snickered as they continued the dance. I’m sure that somehow my very brown face found a way to turn very red as all the 8th graders in the gymnasium EXPLODED in laughter. (We didn’t have an auditorium.) My partner, rather than do her part of the dance without me, decided to point and laugh at me while she was up in the chair. At that point I wanted to knock over her chair, but there was a dance to finish. So once that portion was over, I danced in tears while I realized people kept laughing and laughing, and I couldn’t figure out why until we finished our number and began taking our chairs offstage.

Read to find out the why. I have to say that if I were Sylvia's age, tactfully stated here as simply Much Much Younger Than I Am, I would NOT have the nerve to post that. I may still be sulking over events from junior high, actually. Woman has courage to spare.

And now, the rules:

1) Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
2) Share 7 facts about yourself.
3) Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
4) Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Hoo boy:

1. Growing up I had such a Pollyanna view of the world (I know, I know, massive privilege) that when I first heard these lyrics from The Clash:

Kick over the wall
Cause governments to fall
How can you refuse it?
Let fury have the hour
Anger can be power
D'ya know that you can use it?

--I thought they were being sarcastic. They couldn't be serious! Everyone knew that only flowers and puppies and rainbows and hemp could ever bring whirled peas. Anger was for fat old white men. This was what growing up in the 1970s as a Mormon could do to a person; also, let's not forget that I was very stupid. OH HAI, BRAINROT.

2. I learned about sex in the second grade from a girl I'll just call Dirty Daphne. You know every elementary school had That One Kid; Dirty Daphne was That One Kid, the one your mom told you to stay away from.

Anyway, she told me and my friend Magdala all about how adults Did It. And Magdala and I were skeptical. The next day we confessed to each other that we'd each gone home and poked around and . . . and Dirty Daphne just had to be wrong about the mechanics of it all. She just had to be. Because yeah, there was sort of an entry down there but OMG, NO WAY, because neither of us could admit so much as a fingertip into it. I don't think it ever occurred to either of us that maybe that was because we were all of seven years old.

Dirty Daphne's early tip-off made things awkward for me three years later, when my mother determined that I should have all the facts. By then I'd had three years of scouring encylopedias and medical books and anything else I could get my hands on, so if there was one thing I was in possession of by then, it was the facts. And not just the basic facts; I knew all about sexually transmitted infections and could explain everything from ectopic pregnancies to premature ejaculation. But there was no stopping my mother, who had determined that this was her responsibility to explain to me, no matter what all I thought I knew.

What she ought to have told me was how powerfully all those nerve endings could mess a person up. Which brings me to:

3. The only time I got heavy into using PGP encryption was when I was conducting an affair in an office in which it was widely known that the boss of the mail server snooped. And I only used PGP because I knew it drove this guy NUTS.

The guy I was carrying on with--the two of us weren't saying anything that outrageous to each other in these emails because duh, company email? So there wasn't anything in these emails the snoopy admin guy shouldn't have seen, and it would have done me no harm for him to have read them, but I used PGP anyway because it was so satisfying to see him stomp into my office, open his mouth to ask why the PGP, shut it again, go red in the face, mutter something unintelligible by way of excuse, and stomp right back out. He couldn't say anything, see, because then he would have had to admit to reading emails, and the head guy at this office frowned on that, even though every admin with access to the mail server does it.

My advice: If you're going to fuck someone you work with, use PGP. It's fun for the whole dysfunctional office family! They'll know you're fucking, but they'll never be able to prove it!

4. I sometimes reference on this blog an abusive ex-boyfriend, but I'll give the guy one thing: He taught me to cook. That's a life skill. I could have done without all the other shit that came with that, but at least I can feed myself stuff besides burritos and ramen now. So thanks for that, asshole.

5. There's not one commercially produced CD in my (admittedly meager) collection that I can play all the way through; there's at least one song I loathe on every single disc. I love iTunes for letting me get around that problem, but I wish it had been available 20 years ago, back when I had the time and the inclination to be obsessive about music, because now I don't care. I like plain old silence better than any music.

6. When I first moved to Arizona from California, around the age of 12, I was so freaked out by the whole thing that I developed horrible insomnia, and damn if I don't still have it. I used to crawl into bed and go right out before that. I can still fall asleep fast if I go to bed when the sun's coming up, but that's no way to live, believe me.

7. I have no ambition and (discounting a phase in my teenage years when I had the usual embarrassing teenager dreams of being a rock star) I never have had. I don't see why I have to be anything special, I don't have the talent to be anything special, and as for materialism, there's no point to my acquiring lots of stuff when I'll only lose most of it (and I will). I just want enough money to keep afloat, and I have the nerve to think that achieving this shouldn't be as tricky for people to do as it is.

And now for seven fresh victims! This is the fun part:

Donna
Sheila
Wolfa
Shannon
Michele
Genni
Sheezlebub

I Know I'm Not the Only One Ready to Kiss off 2007

2007-12-25T01:16:00.000-07:00

All y'all in the southern hemisphere: Don't forget your sunscreen! All y'all in the northern hemisphere: Stay cozy. This might help:

Now you, 2007: I don't ever want to see your face again. And thank goodness, in another week or so I won't have to.

Happy week of relative peace and quiet, everyone!

Grumbles

2007-12-22T15:17:00.000-07:00

Damn, I don't feel like working today. I should be glad to have a job at all, I know, but sometimes this one gets to me all the same. Like:

--I'm sick of reading complaints by xenophobic transcriptionists about health care providers for whom English is a second language. In my experience those health care providers dictate waaaaayyy better than most native speakers. An ESL provider, if I may generalize a moment, is more likely to enunciate carefully, speak more slowly, and have better grammar. They make my job easier in every way. Meanwhile, I have some surfer-dude-turned-physical-therapist for whom English is supposedly his first language, and I can't understand a fuckin' word he says BECAUSE HE MUMBLES. Native speakers are careless with the language is what I say. I'll take that nurse practitioner from Pakistan any DAY over a native fum-fuh'er. California, you may know how to party, but the speaking NEEDS WORK.

--How come when everyone's bitching about rising health care costs, and how universal health care would bankrupt us all and screw the economy, and just DAMN those smokers, DAMN those fat people, DAMN those single mamas, damn damn damn all the sick and the injured--how come when all that's going on, no one ever mentions the apparently OVERinsured yuppies who present to the ERs and urgent care clinics for--well, here's a brief list: Blisters, bruises, paper cuts (I jest not!), runny noses (not a cold, mind you), superficial scrapes, and all manner of other shit my mom used to just spray some Bactine on and/or hand me a bottle of Neo-Synephrine for? I'm not talking complicated shit either, where the patient is a diabetic or otherwise immunocompromised. I'm talking about "Ashley was running and she tripped and scraped her knee" and the wound is smaller than a dime in circumference. I seriously just did a 3-1/2 minute report on a teenager with a blister. No, that's all. Just a blister. Are Band-Aids that hard to come by? Why aren't we bitching about these people? WHY? By God, I'm going to start!

* Please, please, please, health care providers, learn this and love it and most especially live it: MOAR WORDZ != MOAR SMARTER. Saying shit like "lungs are clear to auscultation bilaterally, without the presence of wheezes, rales, or rhonchi," just makes you sound like a dimwit bureaucrat, especially when you get so you like the sound of "the presence of" so much that it becomes a verbal tic you start using in every other sentence. Omit needless words! "No evidence of" or "no evidence for" is okay. I have word expander entries for those. Every medical transcriptionist does, because that phrase actually MEANS something--it means "this could exist, but I can't say so definitely right now and I don't want to get sued if I'm wrong." It's the malpractice-suit version of a cross to a vampire. But I will cut off my own fingers before I submit to making an expander entry for "without the presence of." THAT'S ENOUGH WORDS NOW. You go sit by the ESL providers until your English improves.

* White women health care providers! Most of you, the ones I transcribe, are between the ages of 30 and 60. WHY DO YOU STILL SOUND LIKE ALICIA SILVERSTONE IN CLUELESS? Knock that shit off! It wasn't cute for you to affect that Valley Girl speech pattern back when you were rushing sororities in college, and it truly is not cute now, when you're supposed to sound like a competent professional who knows her shit, rather than like a bimbo who "doesn't speak Mexican." If I'm in a clinic with chest pain, BELIEVE ME, I don't want Cher Horowitz hooking me up to the heart monitor.

In This Vale of Tears

2007-12-20T12:58:00.000-07:00

Personal shit going on. Can't blog. Can barely function. DO NOT WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT, so let's don't.

Here, read this. Partly thanks to the aforementioned personal shit, it made me melancholy. Nothing wrong with that--I won't say anything puerile about laughter and tears being two sides of the same coin, but, well, let's just say I love this post with all my heart and Sylvia/M, you should freewrite more often:

Sometimes it’s easy to take yourself way too seriously while having sex. I dread waking up next to someone who’s thinking “circle left, forward right, and this is how I make an orgasm” when I really want to be close to them. To wake up spooning. To feel them exploring my body — I mean, sometimes it’s not important if I get off. If I get off many times but don’t feel close enough to give an expression of mirth, then that’s my cue to leave. Laughter’s not mandatory for all sexual encounters, but it’s required for intimacy.

I can’t imagine a great sexual experience without laughter having something to do with its execution. Because being able to laugh with someone, at someone, to someone — that’s a hell of a connection.

You'll go read the whole thing now if you know what's good for you. Don't cross me today! Or next week. Or the week after that one, either.

Email Blues

2007-12-16T17:33:00.000-07:00

Both BFP and Nezua have admitted to struggling with email. Brownfemipower:

6. I have a profound inability to manage my email. I currently have over 700 unopened emails in my inbox. People often wonder why I have so many email accounts–that is why. I get up to about 500 unopened emails–and I get beyond overwhelmed, and say fuck it. The account is lost, there’s nothing I can do about it, time to get a new one. A friend promised to help me figure out the email thing during the upcoming break–we’ll see how that goes. Hopefully, this time, i won’t need to switch email accounts.

Nezua:

i am really hating email lately. it should cost money to send an email. maybe that would cut this nonsense down. we send far to many and far too much. made communicating easier? hell no. it makes it a nightmare. in a day i can get three important emails and they can be drowned by a billion. i flag juicy ones, i highlight them, i perm their hair and paint their toes red and still they get buried. and it just depresses me to think of leaping in after them and digging through all the rinds n shit. but i’m feeling bad for all these forgotten or delayed connections.

I might as well pile on. I realized last year that the last time I could truly say I loved email was about ten years ago, when I knew all of six other people who had it. I could handle six email correspondents, especially when a couple of them were flaky about writing back. I used to go days and days and even weeks at a time with no new email. Of course, because I was stupid, I checked my email obsessively and complained about the lack of it.

"No one loves me! No one wrote me back!"

When I first met my boyfriend in 1999, I remember him voicing another complaint I had back then: Some people just aren't letter-writers, so they aren't good email correspondents, either. He told me he'd lost touch with all his friends from high school and college because they'd send him this type of email. Hands up who remembers receiving this type of email:

Hey bro, what's up? got a job interview next Mon., pretty psyched! well not much else is new. write me back!!!

That's not an email, that's . . . okay, I don't know what that is. My attitude towards those kinds of emails was always, "write you back? You didn't give me much to write you back ABOUT."

I had no idea what was coming. NO idea.

In fact, from about 2000-2005 I begged my recalcitrant parents to just send me emails. Please! SEND EMAILS. No more phone calls. Oh, I hated the phone. I always felt trapped on it. Didn't I say as much once upon a time? Yes! Yes, I did:

49.···I can't stress this enough: I hate the telephone. The way you can be my best friend is never to call me on the telephone. I lost a programming job because they wanted me to code up a "soft phone," and I just hated it too much to want to work on it, so I didn't. The ringer on my phone was once turned off for a week because one Saturday, while trying to take a nap, people kept calling me and waking me up, and even though I knew eventually I would have to turn it back on before someone got hostile about not being able to reach me, every time I reached for the ringer switch I thought, "Nah, let 'em wait awhile yet." I tell people that if I had invented the phone, it would only dial out, and it would only dial one number: 911. They think I'm kidding, but I'm not.

(Rereading that now, it occurs to me that I left out 95% of the story on that programming job, like the part where my boss got me drunk in an attempt to convince me to stay with the company instead of accepting a better-compensated position elsewhere [it came with such perks, too], or the part where in my subsequent state of drunkenness I explained TO MY BOSS that I had to leave the company because my wanting to sleep with him was fucking up my ability to do good work there, or the part where he said he wanted to sleep with me, too, or the part where within two months of my stupidly turning down the offer from the other company BUT ALSO refusing to deliver on the whole sleeping-with-the-boss thing, I was let go.

BUT, ANYWAY, it is also true that I did not enjoy working on the softphone. Remember, kids: If you find yourself wanting to sleep with your boss, change jobs immediately, and keep your fucking mouth shut until you're safely out the door. Accept no alcohol from the object of your affections in the meantime. Also, if he's married, just don't do it. That toad is on his third wife now, with hefty alimony and child support payments, which of course he bitches about constantly, going out to wives 1 and 2. I'm GLAD I didn't sleep with him. I'm only sorry I ever thought I wanted to.)

Oh, but we were talking about the phone versus email. Pardon me! I am not bitter. Back to Nezua:

i used to hate the fone. but i’m different now. now that i have a headset. ever since i got a headset in 2001, i dont mind the fone at all. i can walk around and do all kinds of junk and still be on the fone. fone is one of those things, like going to the bathroom that bores the living hell out of me. things that need to be combined with other actions because they just require too little brainpower and you dont feel like zombieing out that many times in a week.

My situation is obviously different from Nezua's. I'm NOT hugely popular. My situation is different from Brownfemipower's, too: I'm not signed up on hundreds of activist lists.

It isn't really that I get so very many emails; it's that I type for a living. Forty hours a week. Okay, 37.5. This week only thirty, because doctors are bailing for their Caribbean holidays and work is slow. But I don't just type, I transcribe. I turn the spoken into the written. And here's the first thing you learn doing that: No one can type as fast as humans can speak. On a good day I can knock out a 5-minute dictation in 8 minutes, but there are a lot of health care providers who dictate rapidly enough, or badly enough, that it can take 10 or 12. It's inefficient, and I'm not growing in patience as I get older--quite the opposite, really.

Guess whether I want to sit down and type more once I've finished a shift of that?

Nez, how much for a headset these days? I might have to look into that, even if I would feel like a huge dork wearing one (and I would). But it is time for me to renew my relationship with the telephone. I'm going to buy it flowers and send it a nice note:

Dear telephone,

Baby, I'm sorry. I treated you bad and you went away and that fling I had with the email, it didn't work out. I'm not asking you to feel sorry for me. I know I don't deserve your pity. I just want to know whether you could find it in your heart to give me a second chance.

I miss you,

xoxoxo
Ilyka

Housing on my Mind

2007-12-13T17:24:00.000-07:00

Several years ago--"sometime in the late 90s" is about as specific as I can get--my aunt and I were sitting in my grandmother's kitchen somewhere in Orange County having an argument about Guiliani. My grandmother and aunt are both lifelong Democrats, for the record, but that didn't stop my aunt from taking the he's-been-good-for-crime-control position in this debate.

"You have to admit though, Ma, he's cleaned up the city."

"Oh, would you give me a break?" No one can put quite as much into an expression from the "oh, please," family as my grandmother can. "Gimme a break, _____."

"He HAS, Ma," my aunt insisted. "I don't like him either, but he HAS."

"Yeah, Grandma," I jumped in, "it says right here in the paper [I'm pretty sure I was reading my more-conservative grandfather's New York Post at the time] that in [some neighborhood] alone, crime's gone down 57% since he's been in."

My grandmother had been having this conversation with her back to my aunt and me. She'd been futzing around at the kitchen counter, but she whipped around to face me at that. She got right to work:

"Yeah, _____, that's what it says in the Post, right? That crime is down 57%."

"That's what--"

"Do they say why crime is down 57%?"

I knew I was about to lose this argument. I could tell by the tone of voice, I could tell because she was still making her "oh, please," face, all comically raised eyebrows with the mouth in a grimace. But what could I do?

"No," I admitted. "They just say it's been since Guil--"

"Well, I watch the news, darling. I watch it every night. I can tell you why crime is down so much. You wanna know why crime is down in that neighborhood?"

"Uh--"

"Crime is down because," my grandmother sensibly interrupted, drawing out each syllable for emphasis, "they demolished all the old buildings in that neightborhood. Whole blocks, kaboom! That's why crime is down. But leave it to the Post not to tell you that."

She turned back to the counter.

"Of course crime went down! How can you have any crime in a place nobody lives anymore?" she asked of no one in particular. I think it was what you call a rhetorical question.

And I think what that question really was asking was, "How is that my own flesh and blood doesn't know you can't believe everything you read?"

My aunt tactfully changed the subject.

*

I have to quit watching "My House Is Worth What?" on HGTV when I work out. If you're looking for the most obnoxious people on all of planet Earth, that is the show where you can see 'em all. They're all there fretting over whether the $10, $15, $20 thousand dollars they sunk into the kitchen remodel is going to translate into $$$MEGABUCKS$$$ of profit when they sell.

Every show is the same: Some yuppie couple with 0-1 kids decides it's time to head for the suburbs but first, but first, could a real estate expert (they are NEVER just realtors on this show, never EVER) please tell them what their hipster haven in the city is worth, so they can figure out whether to buy the 4-bedroom ranch or the 5-bedroom?

I don't know why I watch it, I really don't, except that there's not a lot else on.

Today's couple was obnoxious enough to stand out, which is saying something. "We won this place in a lottery," beamed the blonde woman.

"A lottery for first-time home buyers just starting out. There were income restrictions, you know, you couldn't make too much, but you had to make at least this--"

"We really needed the help because we're stand-up comics," interjected the even-blonder man.

"We're not wealthy," agreed the woman. "Four years ago, when we bought this place, this neighborhood wasn't as nice as it is now. I really feel like we're pioneers in a sense, because--"

You know why, "because?"

Because they'd paid $182,000 for an apartment in Harlem. That's what this little shit wanted her Pioneer Award for. For bravery in the face of all that--and you bet this phrase was said during the show, oh, many times--"ethnic diversity."

By the time the real estate expert had finished giving the couple the sad news that although Harlem had "come a long way" in those four years, it "still isn't quite where it needs to be," I'd pretty much made up my mind never to watch this show again. But I guess she wasn't all wrong, that lottery-winning lady: Pioneers also displaced people to follow their dreams. Sure, pioneer dreams were more like "practice polygamy" than "fart around pretending to be stand-up comics so we don't have to get regular jobs," but close enough, right?

The show's narrator kept reminding viewers what was really important: If the country's least-funny stand-up comics couldn't sell the apartment at a profit, their twin boys wouldn't get to have a backyard.

I know!!!

*

I think it was only a couple years ago that libertarians and conservatives went frothy over Kelo v. City of New London. But that was different. Decisions like Kelo could really fuck up a dude's real estate investment strategies:

Some of the luster attached to dirt has been severely diminished for the small investor class. I've made a few dollars in real estate and now I'm gong to have to look elsewhere. Having the capriciousness of government looming over my property takes all the safety out of the equation. On an even more serious note, the three pillars of prosperity for emerging nations are free markets, rule of law, and private property rights. We just got busted down to third world status.

You know what's "third world?" This is "third world:"

Last week, the city housing authority approved the demolition of 4,000 public housing units at five projects damaged by the storm. In their place, the authority plans to build mixed-income projects, large parts of which will not be affordable to previous residents.

This is "third world:"

One of the more striking changes to appear lately in New Orleans is the highly visible number of homeless men and women living under bridges and in parks. Social service groups say about 12,000 homeless people are living in the city, about double the number before the storm.

This is "third world:"

Time has already run out for some. Ms. Bernard, 40, and her two daughters got the final word on Friday that they were evicted, cast out of the only home they have had since the storm to whereabouts unknown. And they were not alone.

“I don’t know what’s going to become of us,” said Tiffany Farbe, who lives in a trailer park near the Mississippi River in the Uptown part of New Orleans with her son and mother. “They said get out. I’ve explained to them over and over again our situation. FEMA just makes you feel like dirt.”

But a conservative says what again?--I don't know. Searches aren't turning up much. I guess nobody's sweet blond boys need a backyard to play in. Likely no one's real estate investments are at risk. Maybe they're afraid their "authority" will be called into question the way this guy's was.

All I know is that I'm running out of cute ways to direct people to Brownfemipower.

No-Win Situations

2007-12-10T15:33:00.000-07:00

Damn, am I ever glad piny's back. Piny's nearly unsurpassed for seeing and exposing the no-win:

The problem isn’t so much–or isn’t only–that some women are taught to hate their bodies and fixate on official bodily imperfection. That situation can’t exist until all women are taught to think of their bodies as the most important thing about them. That’s why it isn’t exactly a privilege to have big tits or to get fake tits. A buxom girl isn’t only subjected to all sorts of virgin/whore conflicts because of her chest size. She’s also receiving the message that she is her big breasts, that her y’know actual personality is negligible, that she can’t escape those judgments because they aren’t only pervasive but paramount. Any reaction, adoration or disgust, will be toxic so long as that belief underlies it.

Bingo! This isn't about whether it's better to conform or not conform to patriarchal standards. This is about there being such a reductionist standard in the first place--one that says, "You are your body."

Think of grading (I'll use the U.S. system here because it's what I'm most familiar with): Anything above and including a C is passing, and anything below that is failing. Whether I pass or fail matters if I'm trying to take calculus. But if the teacher grades solely on the attractiveness of the students, is the problem that some students are passing while others are failing, or is the problem that the grading system is for shit?

I'll just add that from what I've seen of the comments, I may need to finally get around to a post on the dreadful circular firing squads that are out to Ruin Feminism, Like, Totally. Another day! Remind me.

SU-DY! SU-DY! SU-DY!

2007-12-10T04:55:00.000-07:00

Anyone who sparkles this much on the YouTube ought really to be lighting up a Broadway stage. It's ALL gorgeous, but Sudy's reading of the infamously ignorant "hee hee, Tabasco!" comment damn near killed me.

(Hey, guess which Mexican state my part of the world borders? OMG they named it after teh Taco Bell dog! LOLNACHOS!!!)

I'll have more to say about this later--lots more. For now, I'm just content to be in awe.

(Thank you, Problem Chylde and Egotistical Whining.)

Subvert the Dominant [headdesk][headdesk][headdesk]

2007-12-08T21:32:00.000-07:00

Important feminist news briefs!!!

Item! Claire Danes is under attack, y'all! Here's what you can do about it.

(Oh, wait: That link doesn't go to anything about Claire Danes. I think it's because I don't give a fuck about celebrities!)

Item! Feminist author needs money to build community! Here's where you can donate.

(Oh, wait: That donations page probably isn't for the author you were expecting it to be for, is it? I think it's because I like the author I linked so much better!)

Item! Magazines perpetuate a lot of sexist stereotypes! Here's where you can write the publishers.

(Oh, wait: That link doesn't go to anything about magazines. I think it's because it's so hugely fucking wrong to incarcerate children! Link via Brownfemipower!)

Item! I miss the Christmas specials of my childhood. I am immature and being silly now. I think it's because I've been banging my head against the desk a lot!

(Stupid desk!)

We'll Never Get That Elephant out of the Room Until We Admit There's an Elephant in the Room

2007-12-06T16:06:00.001-07:00

I have this branch of my family that's about filled with masters of crawling under, edging by, and catapulting over elephants in the room. Whether we're avoiding talking about that one time my aunt ran away from my uncle, or that other time we lost that one cousin to heroin addiction, or--look, you get the idea. We're always avoiding, never dealing. It is crowded and smelly in those elephant-filled rooms and I always feel as if I'm about to pass out in them. I can't deal with this branch of my family at all.

I feel a little guilty about this, because they aren't bad people. They just have one rule I cannot for the life of me keep:

NO UNPLEASANTNESS EVER.

Which would be fine and a noble ideal and all that, except that life is so often unpleasant, and then only when it isn't outright horrible. I'm not trying to be cynical; that's just facts. I have a relatively pleasant life, you bet, but my life isn't typical of the lives in this world and (this is important to get) if you have a secure roof over your head, nourishing food on your table, and relative health in your body, your life isn't typical either. I can't possibly proceed with this unless we're agreed on that much first of all.

There, that's one elephant of unpleasantness down: The unpleasant fact is that avoiding unpleasantness is a luxury most people don't have and as such, the desire to avoid unpleasantness is fairly reliable indicator of relative privilege. See, most people can't avoid unpleasantness because unpleasantness is SITTING ON THEM.

*

It's amazing how much damage you can do in the course of avoiding unpleasantness; the classic example is the parent who says "this hurts me more than it hurts you" while spanking a child. Spanking is unpleasant and the parent feels guilty for doing it, but hurts MORE? Could we put that to a vote, actually? We'll just get a dozen people together jury fashion and hit 'em with this survey:

Given the choice, I would rather:
1. Hit someone.
2. Be hit by someone.

I believe this option would cause me the LEAST pain:
1. Hitting someone.
2. Being hit by someone.

It hurts when you hit me.
1. I'll bet it does, but you deserve it.
2. Actually, it hurts me more than it hurts you.

I don't want to hear it from parents who spank, because you know something? If it really hurt you more than it hurt the kid, you wouldn't do it. Period. End of discussion.

*

There's this guy out there who likes to crab that I mention my boyfriend too much on this blog. Of course if I didn't have a boyfriend, or if I were lesbian, or if I had a boyfriend but never mentioned him, he'd be crabbing that I'm underappreciative of teh menz. You gotta know when you're in a no-win, is what I figure there.

Anyway, that fellow should look away now, because I'm about to credit my boyfriend with the astute observation that this whole "Elephant? What elephant?" business is usually called concern trolling when it appears on the internet.

Oh, duh!

Rather than talk about the unpleasantness honestly, a concern troll shifts the conversation to how concerned s/he is about the unpleasantness. Given even a smidge of an opening, a concern troll will then usually continue with a lot of nonsense about how concerned s/he is that all this unpleasantness could be avoided, or maybe even eliminated entirely, with more and better effort by all those other people, over there, who just won't stop being so unpleasant, for some reason?!?

I could do a whole flow chart up of this process, and with access to some flow-charting software I would do up a whole flow chart, because I'm obsessive and I really like flow charts. Luckily for all of us, though, an actual chart isn't necessary here. The concern troll flow chart can be effectively condensed to one main loop:

1. I am concern-trolling:
YES: Shut the fuck up.
NO: GOTO 2

2. I'm NOT concern-trolling. I'm just very concerned, as a member of Group M, that certain members of Group K are acting in a way that will ultimately prove detrimental to their interests. I am concerned about this, and I am going to keep sharing my concerns about this until you acknowledge the vast depth of my concern and pat me on the head for having it:
YES: GOTO 1
NO: GOTO 1 anyway, because I'm pretty sure you're really saying #2, even if you can't bring yourself to acknowledge it yet. I'm pretty sure of this because I have never even once seen a concern troll admit to concern trolling on the internet.

*

Sometimes if I'm partially awakened from sleep I curse at people, and never remember it the next day. "I was asleep," I say when it's brought up in the morning. "I didn't mean it."

"You told me to go fuck myself with a chainsaw!"

"I was SLEEPING!"

Then I get hurt feelings because I can't get the curse-ee to quit hassling me. Doesn't that person understand that I was unconscious? I can't be held responsible for what I do when I'm asleep! If this person could just understand that, then maybe we could proceed to a reconciliation of sorts--but how can I ever make amends if the curse-ee won't try to understand where I'm coming from here? Hint: I am coming from a state of previously BLISSFUL UNCONSCIOUSNESS. I literally did not know what I was doing.

You know what?--It's hopeless! You can't accept that I didn't mean any harm? You want to hold me responsible for causing you harm unintentionally? You think this is fair? Well, I think it's a no-win situation for me, that's what I think, so go fuck yourself with a chainsaw! And quit hassling me!

What do you mean, "blackmail?" Now you aren't even making any sense. I can't deal with you if you insist on being so irrational.

I was well into my 30s before I figured out that the only thing the person I cussed out wanted to hear was an abject apology.

"Really? I said that? That's horrible! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean it, not even subconsciously. I guess I'm just way overprotective of my sleep. But still--oh, I am so sorry! What an asshole thing to have said."

Funny thing: When I do that? When I take responsibility for the hurt I caused even though I never meant to cause it, was never even conscious that I was causing it?

BOOM! Suddenly, there's a huge drop in unpleasantness.

*

Here's the unpleasantness I'm avoiding right now: I am avoiding saying that I think someone is being either dishonest or dumb. I wish I could find a pleasant third way out of that dichotomy, so people would think I was a benevolent and compassionate person full of courage, someone with an ardent commitment to celebrating life, one who enriched all humanity with tender love and sweet knowledge. That would be much more pleasant than being a bitch.

Maybe if I said something vague, like, "Oh, well, so-and-so is just rationalizing unpleasant behavior, it's a natural human tendency, we all rationalize our actions to ourselves, it's how we make sense of the insensible--but mercy, that doesn't mean we're stupid and don't know better, and it doesn't necessarily make us dishonest. We're all just human! We're all learning and growing like weeds in the night, only smarter. Ah, that's all that's going on here: Just a few growing pains, just a few bends in the learning curve. Yes. So, so, tragically, beautifully human!"

But you know something?

If you post the same tired old crap I've been reading for at least a year now, it doesn't matter how you dress it up. It doesn't matter how many remarks along the lines of "I'm a little confused" or "I'm just thinking out loud" or "Perhaps I'm missing something (but here's four more paragraphs explaining why I'm not missing anything, really)"--it does not matter how many Uriah Heep "pay no mind to humble ol' me"-type concern troll disclaimers and disarmers and gee-golly-whiz obfuscations you shove into the same tired old crap. It does not matter; it's still the same tired old crap, and I can't be pleasant about it. I just can't--not when that same tired old crap hurts people I love.

This is crap. It's crap, and it stinks, and furthermore, the precise nature of the crap, as well as how to stop leaving it everywhere, and how to clean it up when you do leave it everywhere--everything there is that can possibly be said about this crap has been said and is normally ONE GOOGLE SEARCH or ONE BLOGROLL CLICK or ONE TRIP TO THE LIBRARY away from you.

So that's enough justifying the endless reposting of crap! Enough! I find it unpleasant that you are standing there wringing your hands over all this crap while protesting that you never meant to crap on anyone, honest; but oh, p.s., could the people you crapped on please try asking you to clean up your crap a little more nicely?

Okay. Here is the nice version:

It's like, fuck, just listen. Don't fill the air with your assumptions, just listen. Look for the answers, don't dominate discourse with your questions, and listen.

"But I think by talking!" Yeah, I've used that defense myself, often. But you can't listen as well when you're talking, and it's the listening that needs to be done now, desperately.

Not the thinking.

Not the wondering aloud.

Definitely not the crapping.

LISTENING.

*

I seem to have gone from an elephant motif to a sewage one. Well, elephants poop mass quantities. That's how I'm rationalizing THAT.

*

The elephant I want to shoot next is the big one:

We, white feminists, do NOT treat women of color the same way we treat other white feminists. We treat them demonstrably, provably worse--and don't make me fill this post with links to prove it, because I can do that, but it's going to look simply awful all collected in one spot like that. Talk about unpleasantness! But I can if I have to. I am obsessive enough and angry enough to dredge up 90% of the ugliness that's gone down online between white feminists and women of color (and nearly all of that unidirectional; guess which direction?) THIS YEAR ALONE.

In fact, a project of roughly that sort is already in the works. Tell me: Is that project happening because white feminists treat women of color the same way we treat other white feminists? I don't think so.

We do NOT treat women of color the way we treat other white feminists, and no WOC blogger I've read has ever "made the mistake" of failing to understand that we do, because we don't.

We recenter every issue women of color raise onto ourselves. We talk about how important it is to interact with women of color--not for their benefit, but for our personal growth. Hell, I do that one too much, which is probably why this makes me wince right down to my toes.

We play the Nice White Lady who can Do Anything, including finding novel ways to "stop hurting each other"--as though the hurts experienced on both sides of the white-feminist/women-of-color divide were in any way near to equivalent, or as though we as white feminists were in any way capable of being neutral, objective, fair or balanced in that pursuit. But we have to try! We have to fix what women of color keep breaking! We have to have this dialogue. If you deny us this dialogue, that's silencing.

We say we're all in this together, and then we gripe that it seems SOME of us are more "in this together" than others. Coincidentally, I mean totally coincidentally, the some of us who are more "in this together" tend to share a common skin color, while the some of us who are less inclined to be "in this together"--well, like I said, it's just a coincidence. I mean, gosh, we'd love to all be in this together, but for some reason, Those Other People just won't join up.

And then we ask (and we're just thinking out loud here; please ~~pay no mind to~~ grant us complete absolution for ~~our innocent befuddlement~~ our stinking disingenuousness): What's up with Those People? Except we don't actually ask Those People, we ask each other--as if we had any fucking clue at all (from what I've seen, we don't) and could possibly come within a continent of the answers (doubtful).

And I do mean answerS, because the other thing we do is say "women of color" while appearing to address one undifferentiated great brown bloc. If we could just penetrate the mystery of that great brown bloc, we'd have The Answer to The Race Problem. But how can we penetrate the mystery when the bloc won't stop hollering at us? Never mind that we're the ones actually doing the hollering:

"Teach us, O Great Brown Bloc!"

"Excuse me? Were you talking to me? To whom was that addressed?"

"It was addressed to WOMEN OF COLOR! WOC for short!"

"Uh, which woman of color? Did you mean me, or were you talking to--"

"Why do you refuse us knowledge, Great Brown Bloc? We seek enlightenment! We come in peace!"

We talk about rather than to. We plead ignorance where ignorance is (again, demonstrably and provably) no excuse. We strive to include--but in our club, and we still chair the board, oh, you bet.

Listen, it's quite an honor that we even invited you at all, okay? We can't have you just storming in here and taking over. That would be too chaotic.

Hey, but my friends and I were just admiring your pet issues, how cute they are? No, really, they are so cool. So REAL, you know? Like in the 70s, when everyone was wearing ponchos and Afros? That was in the era BI, Before Irony. Ha! I LOVE the 70s. Everyone was so earnest back then. Earnestness is going to be the next big thing, seriously. It's like my friends and I are always saying: We have irony burnout.

Listen, though, we would be so stoked for you to teach us about your issues. We are so supportive of your--huh? 'Sat now?

Books? Oh honey, books are so whatevs. I mean, by the time you're done with grad school you're just over the book thing, am I right?

--Oh, I'm sorry! I always forget that your people were educated on the mean streets. You're probably super annoyed with all my fancy academic rhetoric, huh? God, I wish I could get my education on the streets. Or in the fields. I just think it would be so much more REAL to learn that way. I had no choice, though. In my family, in my culture, it was kind of expected that I would put myself $75,000 in debt to fight patriarchy? God, I know! The things we do for this movement, huh?

What was I saying before? Oh, yah, books: Books are finito, hermana. It's ALL digital media now, except when it isn't. Like, if we wrote books, that would not be whatevs; that would be MAJOR. You would support that, right? It's so important to support feminist authors! We have to make feminism accessible again, like it was in the 70s, but minus the ponchos this time.

So we can count on you? I hope so. We need to present a united front. A diverse united front, though--not like the Christian Coalition or anything fascist like that. See, I don't know if you can understand this, but it's like, right now, there are a LOT of young women out there who think feminism is so whatevs, and it totally isn't. That's just books. Oh, and herpes.

--All right, now I'm just ripping off that dude at Gawker who does the Underminer posts. But listen, when are we going to stop undermining women in this so-called women's movement? Can it be soon, please?

*

Things I find undermining in this post:

1. It begins by classifying its remarks as "meta-feminist." Puzzlingly, then,

2. It frames the debate around a point that has never, to my knowledge, been seriously contested on any feminist or womanist blog: Shouldn't feminists retain their humanity (and thus the respect we owe fellow human beings) as they become better known and more successful? (Yes, they should, and nice strawman.)

3. It references "for some background" a thread largely dominated by white women arguing about breast implants (not that that thread wasn't as entertaining as a hammer to the skull), all in order to

4. Express ostensible confusion about "what some WOC and their allies are upset about."

You have got to be fucking kidding me. But it doesn't stop there. Does it ever?

5. The post then proceeds to explain that mistakes were made--

6. By "those WOC bloggers and their allies."

7. These "mistakes," by those WOC bloggers and their allies, included
a. Assuming, or OVER-estimating, the ability of white women to "get something deep about what it means to be a WOC in our society."
b. "The second crucial mistake they made was to not recognize how female white blogging rhetoric works."

Get. The fuck. OUT.

This is how white feminists treat other white feminists in general, which IS not very nicely, I'll agree, but still jarringly different from how we treat women of color:

* We assume good faith initially. We assume that in time any trolls, like murder, will out; until then, we generally begin by treating each other as reasonable, good-faith opponents. We assume women of color who disagree with us are just jealous, just expect too much of us, or just have trouble comprehending our grossly overeducated rhetoric.

* We acknowledge, name, and link to specific posts by specific people with whom we disagree. We excerpt specific parts of those posts. Our opponents have names. We don't say "some white feminists;" we say "Molly" or "The Happy Feminist" or "Natalia." We LINK. We QUOTE. We NAME. We substitute links to white women, or just the shorthand "WOC," or maybe if we're really being careful the shorthand "some WOC and their allies," where links and quotes and names of women of color should go.

* When one white feminist makes a particularly good point, other white feminists don't go run it by a man to get his stamp of approval on it. When a woman of color makes a particularly good point, we run it by other white feminists or, worse, our sympathetic friends of color, to get a stamp of approval on it.

* When one white feminist makes a particularly stupid point, other white feminists don't go run it by a man to check whether he'll agree that this makes us stupid as a group. When a woman of color makes a particularly stupid point, she turns out to be a white woman we've assumed was a woman of color, and then we blame all women of color for her stupidity anyhow, because close enough..

* When a men's rights activist, an antifeminist, a misogynist, or Ann Althouse says something (or several things) silly, we do not use their remarks as a launching pad to critique other white feminists. We do not, in general, blame each other for the words of those known to be hostile to feminism, nor do we stress to each other the importance of stifling intrafeminist debate because The Man is watching. But we tell women of color to shut up and be team players so reflexively, we might as well make a macro for it.

Aunt B., you can't tell me you treated women of color "the way we treat other white people" in those two posts. You just can't. This has got fuck-all to do with academic rhetoric, or class loyalties, or any of that other elephant shit you're flinging around like a meth-loaded circus roadie, albeit an awfully pleasant one. I can't believe you're this dense and I won't believe you're this inured to the stink. Kai is right about what this has to do with.

I may not be treating you very nicely--I definitely am not--but I'm linking you, I'm quoting you, I'm NAMING you. I'm addressing YOU, Aunt B. the human being with whom I'm personally a lot disgusted right now, but thanks to whom there are perhaps larger points to make, so maybe I should try making them. I am addressing Aunt B. who blogs at Tiny Cat Pants, which I earlier tonight referred to as "Tiny Cat Piss" because you know what, I may have cried over the way you disappeared me here (that thread was so mean to whom now? I'll ask it again: That thread was so mean to whom? Can you read?), but that hurt I could mostly keep private.

That Blackamazon is shit-talked at least every month and sometimes every week by one white feminist or another, and that she's mainly known among white feminists for her responses to those outrages, instead of for the sparks that fly out of her head and thankfully onto the internet, as would be right and just--that all this goes on and yet she is never named or linked or quoted, NEVER has her humanity acknowledged, even as you fret over the supposedly, in-what-universe-is-this-happening, threatened humanity of two white women--THAT I can't suck up. THAT I can't bitch about privately in email and resolve to "move on" from. That injury, heaped upon hundreds of other similar injuries, is not mine to forgive.

I wasn't sure whether I was going to post this. I'm not convinced you're worth the bother, and I know you aren't worth the shit I'll get. But then I read this:

I am angry because no matter what I write now, it has to be written in a defense. I’m sick of defending who I am. I’m sick of defending why I write, I’m sick of rehashing what I write because people can’t be bothered to try to see what I’ve done (and I understand blowing up my last blog kind of negates this point for me, but I’ve seen it with other bloggers too and they probably feel the same way), and I’m sick of being angry and sick from doing something I enjoy.

--and that's heartbreaking enough all on its own, but she also wrote that she isn't angry at you. Maybe your thoughtlessness has already begun to blur into the other 8900 times she's been smacked in the face with the brutal truth about how she's seen through the white lens (that would include: indistinctly, peripherally, and reductively, to name just a few). Probably she is better than I am at recognizing the "systemic" in "systemic racism:" Why single out any one mole in a game of Whac-a-Mole? They all need a good whacking. So many moles, so little time. So many dumb white folks, so few mallets. I don't know.

But I'M angry at you, because your precious need to think out loud was so much more important to you than maybe taking a few minutes to click around and CHECK whether your out-loud thinking was really as necessary to get out there as you thought it might be, or whether it was simply the same tired old crap that's been hurting people all year long plus infinity. Sure, you keep going on and on about how important it is that we all stop hurting each other. You keep going on about that, and while you do, I'll be over here making that smarmy little jack-off gesture while muttering "[cough]bullshit![cough]" under my breath.

I am distinctly unpleasant that way, in part because I learned this summer that you really DON'T fuck with the pink mafia, they really WILL fucking cut you, they really DO consider that horrible pack mentality a selling point (!) of whatever-wave-this-is feminism--and frankly, it's nitwits like you who enable them to keep on cutting without the least pang of conscience. It's nitwits like you always looking for some shiny new speck of intellectual whimsy that will finally, finally make it clear to everyone that our whitefeminist It Girls are actually right even when it looks as though they could just possibly be wrong.

You're always looking for a fresh way to "humanize" them, but you idiot, they HAVE their humanity. They are linked, they are quoted, they are named, they are engaged, they are respected, they are published and they are read. Meanwhile all you have to offer "WOC and their allies" (no names! No names, please!) is worthless advice about how to get into a worthless whitefeminists club, and they never asked for that, PLUS they've seen it already and know that it sucks. But Sylvia never asked for that. Blackamazon never asked for that. They're not even interested in that! They do other things. They have other projects. They write other posts. They have interests beyond white people, can you believe???

No, they never asked you or your precious darlings for a fucking thing except their due, and that they didn't ask for so much as insist upon--but you, you'd rather humanize those who refuse it to them. Oh, good JOB. Oh me, oh my, if only there were some New and Exciting way we could all learn to stop hurting each other! Well, I'm sorry, Great Healer, but there are only Old and Boring ways we could all stop hurting each other, such as (1) not hurting each other, (2) apologizing when we hurt each other, (3) apologizing even and especially when we never meant to hurt someone. Really, it's basic. Not much call for thinking outside the box with this one.

No. No, no, no. No more erasing my friends. No more bedazzled baffling bullshit. You cram that right back where it came from. Then maybe we can talk about stopping the hurt, but it won't be pleasant. It will be worth it a thousand times over, yes, yes, yes, but it will not be pleasant.

It is worth it to me to be unpleasant if even one white feminist who was thinking of posting, "What is the damn deal with women of color? What are they so upset about? You know, this is where I think they screwed up," stops for a second, just long enough to take this advice to heart:

Shut the fuck up and listen. Shut the fuck up and read. Shut the fuck up and think--quietly, to yourself.

That is as pleasant as I can possibly be about this under the circumstances.

Letter to a Puppet

2007-11-27T21:57:00.000-07:00

(NOTE: Seconded.

I am reluctant to delete posts once they've been linked to by others--it's always frustrating to hit a dead link in your surfing--and as a general rule I'm reluctant to delete things, period, which is why so many of my idiotic opinions from days gone by are still out there, even though they're often mortifying to me. I figure (1) blogging's no fun if you formalize it too much and get so rigid, so obsessed with appearing "professional" that everything you write, you write in terror of fucking up, and (2) sometimes people learn more from the fuck-ups, or at least I do.

So what'd I learn? I learned that it is sometimes good to stifle yourself until you are 100% sure of your facts. Certain cases demand that, if you are to sleep well at night.

Finally, a note about comments on this post: I had to reject one tonight that I thought would be better addressed to, well, the person it was addressing. Let me put it plainly: If you want to snipe at Hugo, you know where his blog is, and I'll bet he's got an email address published, too. But if you must bring it here, keep it short and sweet and definitely limit the nastiness, because honestly, I probably don't want to read it. [Duh? I want to read about how great I am, and how you love me even when I make mistakes.] Honest anger in a comment is one thing--and right on with that; anger and I have always been BFF--but if I read it more as unconstructive pettiness, it ain't gonna make it through.

Besides: I don't like it when people talk ABOUT Blackamazon rather than TO her, so why would I want to help perpetuate that phenomenon against anyone else? I was in fact perpetuating that phenomenon with this very post, and look what that got me: Making corrections in the middle of the night and feeling, somewhat deservedly, like a shit. So you see, it doesn't pay.)

Oh, honey.
Has it really come to this?
No, no, don't answer; it doesn't matter.
And come to think of it,
I wouldn't have signed my name to that shit either.

But then, I wouldn't have written it in the first place,
because I read what you don't.
Now, to read you tell it--
to read you tell it is to read about a world I don't recognize,
one I've never been to. I don't get it.
You say "it's like this," and then you describe what you have not seen;
children do this.

There's one down the way in fact;
his name is Tyler.
Tyler's always telling me the craziest shit, I love that kid.
"Guess what!" he shouts, and I play along, I say, "What?"
And then he just makes shit up
about dogs who are like Transformers but also like dogs, except they can talk,
and about the planets he has visited
(pretend planets, mostly, but also Jupiter),
and the cat he is going to get
which he will take for walks EVERY DAY, because everyone knows
you need to take cats for walks regularly
(this is accompanied by a stern look, and then I have to apologize
for not taking Shane for walks).

It's great,
I love it,
but Tyler is four.

I have to tell you, the stuff you make up,
It could use some work, some finesse.
It's a lot less interesting
than Tyler's interplanetary travels.
"Hateblogging," for example: Why couldn't you have at least
made it a hateblogging dog who is like a Transformer?--I don't understand.
It would have added so much, yet taken so little.

But let's back up because
I don't even understand
the first thing you wrote. You said:

"Hugo,

The main objective to keep in mind in all of this
is to bear in mind
[hee hee, redundancy
everyone writes lousy
when she's angry--
we have that much in common]
that, whether the criticisms of you are valid or not,
you will never please
the three
self-proclaimed spokespersons for the WOC community
because they need targets."

I don't understand. Three like three witches? Or like three strikes you're out?
Or like bad things come in threes?
Or like all of the above?
Yes, I think for you it is all of the above.

Anyway,

it's a privilege to wonder, "It's a Privilege to Be Here,"
what in hell you are talking about,
when one of your labeled "spokespersons" (self-proclaimed!)
just self-proclaimed that she is emphatically
DEFINITELY
not a spokesperson
for anyone but her own sweet self
Wait! I know what it could be:
Did you learn otherwise on a pretend planet?
Did you see Tyler there?
Come to think of it, I haven't seen Shane in hours.

That's it, isn't it?
You're all floating around Pretend Space,
And Tyler is walking Shane,
And the Transformer dogs are transforming,
talking and playing frisbee.
Yes, I'll bet it IS neat, but all the same,
I would like my cat back.

I would also like you to stop making me ashamed of being a white feminist, but you know what they say:
The perfect is the enemy of the good.

And that, I know, is your real point:
That these spokesperson-denialist spokespersons
are being unfair. No book is perfect.
Then why
Are you
So
Invested
(Some might say overly invested)
In showing them repeatedly
How much you hate them? How much you wish they would
just
shut
up?
Drop dead?
Go away?
Stop being here?
Why are you so invested in keeping them silent?
"No book is perfect" means criticism happens;
grownups know this.

The hateblogging, now:
That really pissed me off.
I felt a bit hateful on reading it, in fact,
but then I remembered that you were in space with Tyler, likely suffering hypoxia, and that seemed to explain things.
I don't know what else could,
when hate is hard to find where you are looking for it.
Not that I didn't try.
I did try; I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt.

So I went looking and I have to say, initially, I was concerned;
for here is Sylvia, and she says,
"You know what? You're right.
Consider this post evidence of me being a hater."
Ooh, I thought, I may have made a mistake.
Ooh and ooh again, I thought, I may have to admit I was wrong.

Then I read it. You should try that sometime; I can't stress enough
how much it helps.
And in fact there was hate in that post
but it was not from Sylvia, it was to her.
A white woman said to her,
told her right to her face,
that her dreams would have to be deferred.
It was just necessary in order to get things done. The important things,
which Sylvia's dreams were not among, must come first.
Moral triage was performed,
and some people
were just going to have to sit in the waiting room
a little fucking longer than they had been,
and they'd been there for hundreds of years already, that's the really shitty part.

I thought that was sad,
and hateful,
and patronizing. That it was said in an earnest,
well-meaning,
conciliatory,
and no doubt civil tone--
well. It didn't make ME any less angry,
let's put it that way.

I don't know how someone
hears that,
reads that,
absorbs that into her bones
allthetime everyday onandonandon unceasing
and keeps getting up in the morning,
let alone writes and writes well, more music in one of her phrases
than in all your sentences put together.
I don't know how that happens.
I don't know how this DOESN'T happen.
(Did you think that post was hateful, when you read it?
Hateful to men?
--No, me neither. Personally, I loved it. But that,
as we know,
was different.)

I did not find hate at Sylvia's,
although I think she's a little teed off at Hugo. Well, it's funny
how someone asking for more of your less
(and best of all,
they're not the first-hundredth person to do that to you,
or even the fifth-hundredth), well--
it's just funny how repeated offenses can be so irritating,
and how states of prolonged irritation
can lead to anger.

But it's a privilege to be here, indeed it is. It's a privilege to be
out and about, looking for hate on such a lovely day.
Who's got it? Someone has it. Someone must be hating;
a white person said so.
Blackamazon, was it you?

I don't mean to accuse
but I was told you were a self-proclaimed spokesperson;
a white person said so. So you can say you are not a spokesperson, you can say

"Now why wouldn't i be happy at being elected a voice of WOC ?

doesn't everyone want that power.

NO

If a group of YWOC want to say what i speak resonates with them fine , but I will not accept someone else trying to put me there."

--you can say that, but it's just no use: Targets are needed,
and targets are not deferable. We need them urgently, so a target and a spokesperson you'll be.
(They're the same thing; we can call it "targetperson" if you prefer.)
Look! It's out of my hands. I have no say.
I lack the authority to perform moral triage here. I'm sorry;
I got overinvested. It happens. I thought you were
a person
with ideas and feelings and voice and heart
(you may keep the voice
in your new role as spokesperson)
but now I am told otherwise. What? Oh. Well.
Yes, it was a transmission
from Pretend Space. Well, no, actually, it wasn't too clear,
coming from all that way. A bit crackly, a bit muffled in parts, but don't worry:
I got the message.
I actually got the message
loud and clear,
even through all the static.

It's a privilege to receive messages from Pretend Space.
It is. It's a real privilege. Oh, stop protesting already!
Of course you'll do fine. You'll be an excellent spokesperson.
You can be too old for Target A and too young for Target B
(though never just right for either--
that would take all the fun out of your spokespersonning,
and how will our aim improve if you're too easy to shoot at?
See, I'm always thinking).
Besides, be reasonable:
Who wouldn't want extra helpings of the extra special shit like this?
It's delicious!

(which is why I could not go near it for six months:
the deliciousness was overwhelming)

If I may, a suggestion:
I think in your role as spokesperson,
you ought to step up the hate.
It should be the first order of business, in fact, because again,
I couldn't find any.
This, for example:

"Notice the passage he chose in his gathering in May WAS A DEFINITION OF MYSELF. YES YOU READ THAT RIGHT. A WHITE MALE said that my self definition was UNWARRANTED CRITICISM."

--seems a bit tepid under the circumstances. I mean, that's it?
You're just going to defend your right
to define yourself
however you want?
Is that all? It seems a little, I don't know, hate-deprived to me.
As if it could use more hate, you know?
Yes, I think that's what's missing:
The hate. Furthermore (and I am upset about this),

it made me cry.
Now, I went to your blog on purpose to be hated,
so I could whine about that to my white friends.
I wanted to be a Pretend Target in Pretend Space, where the dogs are transforming like crazy. Well!
Imagine my disappointment when I found no hate:
A whole day shot to hell.
Now,
now I guess I'll have to talk about the equitable sharing of housework in the feminist home or some shit. How cliché.
(Or maybe we'll have the porn argument again. I don't think
we've had that one recently. It's probably time.)

Anyway, Blackamazon, perhaps you shouldn't be spokesperson after all
if it's only going to disappoint people.
Huh?--No, I was talking about real people. White people.
People whose needs are never deferred,
people who must never suffer a moment's disappointment
even if their needs come
at the cost
of your being.

Well, you shouldn't have been in the way to begin with, is what I'm told,
with your life and your feelings and your thoughts and your words all taking up space just the way we feminists fight
to let white women do.
"Don't be afraid to take up space in the world!" we exhort each other, but, yikes--
I thought you knew.
I thought you knew that wasn't FOR you.

That phrase reminds me of Magniloquence. Perhaps she's hating!
Magniloquence, are you hating?
Tell the truth, now--"It's a Privilege to Be Here" certainly is.
She's just doing it under a different name. Well, can you blame her?
There's so much hate out there!
A woman must protect herself, and sockpuppets are cute besides.
I'm going to get myself one off of Etsy, I think.

Hmm.
Hmmm.
Hmmmm.

Magniloquence, this stuff is awfully abstract.
It makes my head hurt in places,
and it's definitely hate-deprived.
I guess we can't have you for spokesperson either.
I don't know who we'll get on such short notice.
Maybe someone will volunteer?--Brownfemipower, are you busy?
Oh. Oh, you are. And your work is not centered on white women?
We don't star in it? But we were promised!

Where will we turn now for hate? It can't be bought
for love or money. This hate shortage
will be the death of us!
To leave us with only the government the media the corporations, etc.,
to help us feel hated. What's a white feminist to do?
I'm telling you, it's unfair.
It's a pity. It would be such a shame
to let all the extra-special shit go to waste,
especially after "It's a Privilege to Be Here" did all that stirring.
Stirring is quite hard work.

Kudos for that, "It's a Privilege to Be Here;" hooray for the stirring.
That said,
this has been an altogether disappointing
and shockingly hate-free experience. I will be frank:
I don't think you are good at this.
I would advise strongly
against quitting your day job. I can't take you seriously,
and your imagination isn't what it was at four
(what I hope it was,
because it would be horrible if the four-year-old you
were imagining
seething befanged women of color,
self-proclaimed spokespersons all,
chasing you, mauling you, burying you
in hate.)
So much imagined hatred! Where did it all come from?
We have more of it than we do the real thing; imagine that.
It's pretty like a holograph, pretty like a projection, pretty like a reflection in the mirror. Pretty from a distance, pretty over oceans, pretty if you squint.
Close up, however, it's sickening.

Oh, honey. No.
Four-year-olds should have bright dreams of whirling planets.
They shouldn't fear bogeymen under their beds (at least, not often).
Neither
(especially)
should grownups.

Virtual March for the Jena Six

2007-09-20T05:33:00.000-06:00

Today's the day. And what have I got?--No money for plane tickets to attend the real march, and a busted damned digital camera so I can't even show up for the virtual march. Good God, I fail even at internet marching. By next week I'll be expecting a gold star just for sitting upright of my own volition.

This business of writing stuff on the internet being what it is--rushed, spontaneous, unedited--shorthands become customary. Thus we write "the Jena Six," when we mean six specific young men. These are the six students facing criminal charges--originally, conspiracy to commit second-degree murder and aggravated battery; later, conspiracy and battery--for giving another student a black eye:

Robert Bailey
Jesse Beard
Mychal Bell
Carwin Jones
Bryant Purvis
Theodore Shaw

It's funny about that black eye business, which of course was just a mite provoked: I got a black eye once, but then, I'm white and so was my attacker. The helpful police recommended I bail my attacker out. Oh, yes. A little (or more accurately a lot of) bruising around one of my eyes wasn't worth ruining someone's life over, was it? And goodness, everyone knows a little time in jail will plumb RUIN one's LIFE. Swelling reduces and bruises fade, but good heavens, jail!

I guess our outrage over the inevitable life-ruination that jail guarantees--guarantees!--is directly proportional to how much we think the lives in question are worth in the first place. If, on the other hand, a life is already deemed ruined from the moment of its conception, well: What's a little jail to that?

And speaking of worth--

--if you took time out of your busy day anytime this year to rail against criticism of a fucking book cover, you have time to post about this.

--if you took time out of your busy day anytime this year to screech about nerds on the internet DOSing and dDosing your feminist website, you have time to post about this.

--if you took time out of your busy day anytime this year to explain why you wear lipstick or suck dick or wax your cooter, you have time to post about this.

So don't cry that you didn't have time today 'cause you're so busy. Just spare everyone the overwhelming stench of horseshit and tell the truth: You don't give a fuck.

Further, it's at least partly due to apathetic non-giving-a-fuck brats like yourself that people who do give a fuck have left Internet Town. If you were aware of this case months ago and you get a good chunk of your news via weblogs, odds are real, real good that you have Sylvia to thank for your awareness of the matter. And for her hard work she got, what? The satisfaction of a job well done, I guess.

What are the young men facing jail time over a black eye going to get? Well, supposedly this is a democracy, so technically that decision is up to us.

Small, big, long, short, simple, elaborate, prosaic or poetic--you can do something. There are petitions. There is contact information. Get as fired up as you do when someone says "I just don't know about this image of a sexified headless torso," or "It ain't real ethical to buy pets from breeders," and figure out something you can do. This is not neurosurgery.

UPDATES

Making Ian Fleming's "M" look like weak tea. Kai, I volunteer to clean your house for the rest of your life for bringing her back.

Brownfemipower and Color of Change for what you can do. (Much love and thanks for the link, BFP.)

More Kai, because you can never have too much. Words that ring and sing in your ears even though you're just sitting there silently reading. I don't know how he accomplishes that, but I imagine it involves more knowledge of physics than I possess.

The Update to Say There Will Be No Updates

2007-06-16T12:45:00.000-06:00

. . . at least, not from me.

It finally occurred to me that so many people were requesting invites NOT because I am a marvelous writer whose archives are full of delight and wonder, but because they thought I'd keep updating, only, privately. Exclusively. A VIP lounge blog! That is incorrect, however, and it's my fault for not making that more clear. I'm sorry.

Speaking of incorrect, a lot's been said about me and the positions I hold lately for which "incorrect" can only be a whopping understatement. I thought of addressing some of that, but my immediate reaction upon contemplating that activity was to feel exhausted. Remember: Your opponents online will win most of their victories not because you're wrong and they're right, but because you let them just plain wear you out. I see much better now what bloggers mean when they talk about being careful to whom they give their energy. And from the other side of it, consider that when someone doesn't seem eager to engage you, it might just be because you're trying to engage them on a topic they've already hashed out with forty other people recently.

And that brings me to the one thing I can't leave alone, because even my friends have suggested it--kindly, but nonetheless erroneously: With regards to so-called "identity politics," the fervor with which I make certain arguments has nothing to do with "convert's zeal."

I love you, lefty friends, but you seem to have forgotten that just a few short years ago I was having these arguments as a Republican with other Republicans, because if you happened to have been one of those sucker Republicans who supported same-sex marriage and was pro-choice, as I had been, such arguments are inevitable. Maybe it is possible to argue in favor of same-sex marriage or reproductive rights without relying on at least some notion of group identity for your support, but if there is, I never found it.

In other words, I may have come late to the term "identity politics," but not to the concept. It ain't a matter of having the zeal of the converted; it's a matter of feeling enormously frustrated to find myself having the exact same arguments on the left as I did on the right.

And mark my words, they are exactly the same. Lefty guys hate to hear this, and they love to self-righteously proclaim that it's different because they do not condone TORTURE. Do they get a cookie for that? Sure! Is it a very big or particularly delicious cookie? Not really, because how do you think Republicans got around to condoning torture? Do you think it might have begun when they defined "human experience" as "white heterosexual Christian able-bodied middle-class experience," promptly vowed never to acknowledge their own group identity but simply to term it "human experience," and started assigning gradations of humanity to everyone else? The history of the United States doesn't follow without that starting point, never even mind what's going on in Iraq.

To oppress others you must begin from the notion that they are not as human as you are, so it's okay. To keep track of humanity, humanity, who's got the humanity, it is helpful to sort humanity into groups.

But wait! If you sort them into groups, and vary your methods of oppression slightly by group, you run the risk that members of a group might begin using their shared experiences as organizing and unifying principles. Then they might organize and unify against you! And then they might fight back.

To prevent this disaster, you must do all you can to undermine the validity of group identities, even as those very identities (that, remember, your work created in the first place) are helping you keep track of which group(s) is/are the most threatening to established, "real" human beings like yourself.

These are not such loony or radical concepts, for one. For two, get over the fucking sandwich business already. Get therapy if you have to, but seriously: It's time to let that one go. This is just like that time Je55 G01dst31n kept referencing me at least once a month as a perfect example of Why Identity Politics Are Going to Get Us All Blown up by Muslims (and Interfere with the Ability of My Wife to Fix Me a Nice Frittata Besides).

Anyway, there's my convert's zeal for you: I am sick and tired of having this argument. And I'm sick and tired of blogging, too. The problem is, when I think of all the things I could be doing in a day, "blogging" simply doesn't rate. LAUNDRY is more fun than blogging to me right now. Until or unless that changes, then, this is it.

Thanks, everybody. It honestly has been fun; it's just not anymore.

Notice

2007-06-12T17:34:00.000-06:00

Despite my (I believe excellent) advice to TAKE STUPID PETTY INFIGHTING TO EMAIL, some people with Jell-O for brains are just determined to keep raging. As long as this blog exists, that's going to be the case, at least until some new feud develops.

Further, every time I post in my own defense, I'M going to be the one accused of "keeping it going."

Neat trick, that.

So here's the deal: Grab whatever you want from here, and you've got roughly 36 hours in which to do it. After that time, I'll either lock this blog down to be private, restricting access to authors only, or pull it completely. But this blog's status as a certified shit magnet cannot continue.

I'm sorry, folks. Thanks for all your kind words and understanding.

UPDATE: Okay. Enough people have complained at me (in the best possible way, I mean; I could use more complaining of this sort) that I think what I'll do is just restrict access to invite-only. Email me if you'd like that, and I can set you up. Yeah, you'll have a stupid login page to go through first, but I can't help that. And of course, keep in mind that I don't plan to update. At least this way, though, if you need something out of the archives it's available to you and you don't have to waste your hard drive space storing it.

My rule on reposting anything from the archives is that there are no rules. Hell, say you wrote it if you want, although with things as they are at the moment, I can't in good conscience recommend that particular course of action, unless you enjoy being characterized as a wingnut cum dumpster. In that case, I note only that it takes all kinds to make a world, so knock yourself out.

My contact information is available on my Blogspot profile page, which you can access through the link at the left there, in the sidebar under "Contributors."

Thanks again to those of you who win at life forever.

I Started To Draft a Response, but You Know?

2007-06-10T03:57:00.000-06:00

We all have our limits. I've reached mine:

I don't know whether you're actually a conservative and a provocateur, but if you were, I'd expect you to be doing exactly as you have been doing.

You know, I've kind of been waiting for someone to just come out and say it, so I could say this:

Fuck you.

And tell me: Where in your playbook does the provocateur who runs no BlogAds; owns no CafePress store; posts no Wishlist; has never made one thin dime from blogging; is not a graduate student living off some combination of loans, grants, and dear old Mom and Dad; earned a paltry $19,000 before taxes last year; wastes way too much of her fucking time on this worthless gig that doesn't pay; is NEVER getting a book deal or a spot on CNN or any little piece of the so-called blogging dream--in what part of your playbook does that so-handsomely compensated double agent for the Republican party just up and fucking quit?

This part. That's what part.

Ah! But of course . . . if I were being compensated by the government . . . I wouldn't need any outside sources of income! Well, you're too clever for me, Rich Puchalsky. If I weren't so fond of it myself, I'd send you a paperback copy of The 70 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time. No, no--you've earned it.

UPDATE: I want to be done with this.

But now that you're being a shit to my friends, Mr. Puchalsky, I think it's time I reminded you of a key point you've conveniently forgotten:

Scott Eric Kaufman wasn't dragged into this. He leapt into it, head first.

No one asked him for backup. No one invited his input. He wasn't dragged. Not by me, not by anyone else. Are we clear on that, poochie?

To continue: When Scott got a ration of undeserved shit on his head from a stellar member of the General's army, I thought, "This is not right."

Because it isn't. What Scott's going through right now isn't right. He didn't deserve it, and it's a just plain ugly thing for his harasser to do, and it's ugly of patriotboy to enable it.

So I tried to cheer Scott up with a bitter joke.

You misinterpreted it, perhaps because you're a humorless asshole. I'm not sure. I don't know you from a hole in the ground, which is why I hesitate to make assumptions about you. Would that you were similarly courteous in your treatment of me.

But you weren't, and you aren't.

And now you're extending your smug know-nothing shittiness to people who called you out for what you said of me. People I consider friends.

And you keep linking to this blog, this blog which I would very much like to go dead. I didn't delete it only because I don't want to inconvenience the people who still have links in to it. One person has a link to one of my posts in her site's FAQ; I don't think she should be put out because you won't quit behaving like a child.

So I'm asking you to quit behaving like a child. Put a sock in it, fuckface.

Now as for some of the rest of you:

You who really loved it when I'd jump into some comment or blog war to take up for you, to get your back, but who are now suddenly fatigued with "all this fighting?" There's an easy way to prevent most of it, and it's not even "just admit that I'm right," although let's be honest, I wouldn't be against you doing that, either.

No, it's even simpler than that. Let me give you a tip from The Provocateur's Handbook. I've got it right here, and it contains this handy bit of advice that I remember well from my days as a so-called warblogger:

THE NEXT TIME YOU SPASTIC, BELLIGERENT IDIOTS HAVE A PROBLEM WITH EACH OTHER--THAT IS, FOUR MINUTES FROM NOW*--TAKE IT TO FUCKING EMAIL, SO YOUR ENEMIES ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE AISLE DON'T SEE IT.

Do you notice that you don't see as many internecine disputes over on the right side of blogosphere?

"Oh, yes!" says some pompous prick. "That's because fascism doesn't allow for the intricate complexities and nuances of--"

Excuse me, I have to be fascist myself for a minute: WRONG. Or rather, you're only half-right, no pun intended.

But you weren't over there and I was, so let me tell you something: If you think there's no internecine warfare on the right, you're dumb as toast. Disputes happen. Nasty disputes happen. Nasty, horrible, savagely bloody disputes happen. But privately.

I have to be honest, I don't blame the right-wing bloggers for laughing their asses off at you right now. Fragging your own is stupid. A lot of you seem determined to get your doctoral degrees in exactly this kind of stupid.

And I could deal with this, except for the part where you then turn around and blame your supporters and (especially) your detractors for "prolonging" or "spreading" or "intensifying" it.

What the hell did you expect, genius? You made it public in the first place. Did you do that so that none would read or remark upon it? Do you even know how the internet works?

To hell with you.

*i.e., when someone posts about how ableist it was of me to use the word "spastic." EMAIL, STUPID. Take it to email, so I can mark it as spam.

Right Then

2007-06-10T00:20:00.000-06:00

I just blew up at somebody over at Feministe. Well, it was a partial blow-up, actually, because I deleted the first version, the nuclear one. But it was still too much.

So this is all I am going to say about recent events:

I am not happy Steve Gilliard is dead. His death was shattering to many people I respect and admire; I can only imagine how it must be for his family and for those who were really close to him.

I am not happy that people I respect and admire are feeling torn up.

I am REALLY not happy that I contributed to amplifying some of those feelings. That, I am extremely sorry about. That was never my intent, but as I think we all know, intent only gets you so far in this life. The fact is, some things I have said have people who were already feeling bad feeling worse. My intentions don't alter that fact.

Unlike Aunt B., I am not going to apologize for calling sexism where I continue to see sexism. Don't look for Jesus' General to appear on the blogroll any time soon, or in fact ever. Far as I'm concerned, that guy's still a douchebag, and a douchebag with too much power and too little maturity to boot. That's a bad combination right there.

But I am going to apologize for not having backed off sooner from recent discussions. There comes a point in these conversations when the discussion isn't going anywhere productive, when I know in fact it is no longer capable of going anywhere productive, when I say to myself, "There's really no point anymore"--and it's when I pass that mark, when I have that awareness of how it's going and yet, I keep going anyway, that I say things I regret.

I still think the person to whom I responded was running her mouth in a way she shouldn't have been. I definitely think--no, I know--that she made false assumptions about how I'm feeling about all this. I continue to find that insulting.

But I'm fucking merciless when I'm angry, and I don't like that. For every time my ability to cut people off at the knees verbally comes in handy, there are nine other times it just makes things worse. This was probably one of those times.

For that, I am sorry.

This Post Is Not for Vegetarians*

2007-06-09T17:40:00.000-06:00

Meat eaters, gourmands, foodies, etc.: Please tell me what the hell to do with this 2.36-lb eye of round roast that the boyfriend brought home ~~to annoy me with~~ because apparently when I said "and a London broil would be nice if it's cheap, or see if they have another one of those bargain tri-tips," he heard "buy an expensive, USDA-choice eye of round roast."

It's 90-something degrees here, I have to work tonight, and everything I've been able to Google on this roast so far indicates that long oven-cooking is involved in its preparation. I did not want to have to turn on the oven today, which is why I specified cuts of meat that can be grilled, but since when does what I want matter?

HELP.

*I'm not kidding. Comments lecturing me on the evils of meat will be deleted. I've had my fill of the blogosphere playing judge, jury, and executioner lately, thanks.

I Especially Despised 'Meathead'

2007-06-09T01:32:00.000-06:00

I don't get it. Do we have to put some revamped version of All in the Family back on the air? Will that do the trick?

Because I was never that fond of the show; even as a little kid, I found it preachy and hamfisted. But apparently, if you don't remind white people at least once a week not to be Archie Bunker, this is what they get up to:

Caption reads: "Bringing home the runaway slave in the Senior skit"

From CBS47 TV:

Leaders at Riverdale Christian Academy are accused of racism after a themed graduation party on Friday, June 1st.

The theme was southern plantations during the Civil War. Students and staff dressed up in period costumes for the event.

Controversy arose when some school employees dressed up as slaves and wore black make-up on their faces, arms and legs.

. . .

Douglas Spencer, Principal, Riverdale Christian Academy said "The point of the skit it to roast the graduates and poke a little fun at their mannerism and different things like that."

Oh, okay--things like THAT. I thought he meant things like this.

Via Blackamazon, who has actually written about much more than just the above, and who has a good question: "is it a stretch for me to notice that unless it can be used against her a WOC physicality or sexuality never comes up?"

Contextualizing My New Number-One Fan

2007-06-08T17:31:00.000-06:00

In several active threads at the blogs I read, commenter "anon" has made it his mission to inform the feminist blogging community that I used to be a supporter of George W. Bush and the global war on terror. Shocking, I realize, and certainly something I take great pains to keep under wraps, but I suppose the truth will out.

I'm fine with that, but I think it's worth examining anon's own liberal/feminist credibility before determining that he's just a proud supporter of Jesus' General with a hard-on for Truth. What's good for the geese, etc.

Roll tape.

Anon, posting as "J. Pierpont Flathead," has a very empowering message for naughty little girls who love them some cute handbags:

BTW, little girls, my (ex)wife and I chose a new last name for the both of us. Though divorced (though she has remarried), we have both still kept that new last name.

Grow up.

He thinks feminism has lost its focus at Pandagon; he remembers when it used to be about equality and justice, but now it's only about hating men. Curse you, Amanda!

Once upon a time, women’s liberation was about liberating women AND men. Now at Amanda’s site, women’s liberation is about gaining and keeping and leveraging power that women have gained over men, even when that leads to demonstrable injustices.

A common cry there is that it is ridiculous for any man to claim that they are discriminated against in any fashion, BECAUSE of course, they are men and members of the patriarchy.

Amanda’s new and improved Pandagon — basically a hate site towards men not much better than how LGF and Freepers discuss “islamofacism”.

Like any good feminist, he's passionate about abortion rights. To his credit, however, he refuses to let that passion burst into zealotry:

It’s simple. Abortion is a surgery terminating a medically dangerous condition that a woman doesn’t want to have. She has a right to decide whether or not she’s pregnant or not, period.

Nothing is this simple. No rights are as absolute as this. By insisting on absolute rights in a world where nothing is absolute, by insisting you are right and it is simple, and by casting those that disagree with you out, and calling them names, you alienate people who would agree with you on many issues.

By insisting that it is this simple and that there aren’t other deep issues involved you turn off everyone but your fellow zealots.

His remarkable restraint becomes even more impressive once he lets it be known that a woman (!) caused all his misery:

I lost my sense of humor and proportion and irony when my ex asked the court to move away. Under the Marriage of Burgess (since overturned) she was allowed to. When that happened my 49/51 coparenting turned into 25/75 and until I found a job in the new location I drove 1600 miles every two weeks to be with my children. Now moved into the new location, I have had to pay tens of thousands of dollars to turn that 25/75 back into 49/51.

Along the way I have won just about every battle in court, including the false allegations of sexual conduct, and I have had 3 court appointed psycholigists agree with me and 1 disagree but I watched my kids grow from 2 and 4 to 6 and 8, and I have had to pay 50% of my wages in support. I live in a 2 BR/apt and barely have enough money for clothes for the kids (and none for myself) or presents for birthdays. The $2500 I pay each month (finally reduced to the GUIDELINE payment of $1059 each month) has gone to house downpayments, house painting, and house renovation.

But he's not an MRA:

And though I am not a member of an MRA, this is what MRAs are fighting for. No fault divorce should come with a presumption of joint custody of the children.

So yeah, I lost my sense of humor and proportion, and would love to find it again.

Where to find that sense of perspective? Maybe the Nice Guy forums can help!

I have never said anything racist on Pandagon.

Nope, that’s something you and your buds reserve for the “private” forums, twerp. And you seem to forget your defense of racist cartoons, earlier. But no matter–we’d all love to expose your Little Boy’s Club rantings to the public eye, if you guys, knowing what vile sexist and racist pigs you are, didn’t keep your forum private so you can speak your hate without getting called out for it.

Dear, dear J. Pierpoint, who I have to address that way because that’s how I address all my moral and intellectual inferiors.

Or victim-blaming and slut-shaming--I hear those are terrific hobbies for restoring mental and spiritual balance:

She went to bed with someone that is stronger than she was and was too drunk to reason. She admits the guy was too drunk to reason. Her words “drunk enough to be deaf to reason”.

That’s fucking stupid, pun intended, and you’re damn right she should bear responsibity for that act.

Then she expects Mr. Too Drunk to Reason to be able to reason. What is that called? That is called fucking insane. Pun intended.

And she worries about what Mr. Too Drunk to Reason may do to her. But guess what, he peacefully and passionately negotiates with her (pun intended), and does nothing to her because he respects her rights.

In the meantime she writes all this down to a near rape experience. And she claims that anyone that disagrees with her is just being disapproviing of her partners. What is this called? Fucking dangerous. Fucking dangerous to men. What a fucking misandrist cunt.

The really sweet thing about anon/Flathead/Benson is the way he's so eager to be part of the solution instead of being part of the problem. So what's to be done about rape, Mr. Flathead?

Change the attitudes at this site. Change the attitudes that condone Nick Kiddie’s behavior with a person that was too drunk to reason.

Change the attitudes that refuse to address that false accusations of misbehavior by men are in fact a serious human rights problem, a problem of gender equity, a problem that creates bias throughout our court system whether it is in regards to rape or in regards to child custody.

Gender inequality was a problem that feminism used to want to address. This site just advocates a power struggle.

Pitiful sad site….

What, you were expecting something about stopping rapists? Clearly you're too simple to deal with the complexities of justice. Let an expert show you the way:

You are disgusting. You are straight out of Les Miserable. Straight out of Devil’s Island. End justifies the means. You are an enabler of torture. You are a free republican. An LGFer.

Do not confuse yourself with anyone associated with liberty.

Hey! Where are you going? I SAID, let him show you! Don't you care about justice?

You care not a whit for the innocent husbands, fathers, and brothers that are rotting jail or their wives, daughters, and sons whose lives you advocate ruining.

Amanda, the ends do not justify the means.

Well? What's wrong with you fuckheads? Don't you care about freedom? Or pleasure?

Sex should be about intimacy and giving and receiving pleasure.

I thought you fuckheads claimed to be sex positive?

What the fuck are you doing letting culture get between you and intimacy? I thought you had more guts and brains than that.

Speaking of guts and brains, my new fan really admires Amanda's:

I’ve listened to Johnny Cash Lady, and you ain’t no Johnny Cash. Hell, you ain’t even CarrotTop.

Sides which Cash has said he wore black to differentiate himself at the Opry. In other words, all these purty words aside, he did it for money.

Is that what you’re saying? You wear anger as a bullshit facade to differentiate yourself?

Amanda, you come off as very shallow, insecure, and ignorant, and bullying your way through life.

But for real guts and brains, you just can't beat Glenn Sacks:

I actually believe that if people at this site were to read Glenn Sacks’ readings (or his postings at his blog) you would honestly find Glenn Sacks to be a progressive liberal and in many ways a feminist.

You would certainly find him an intellectually honest “opponent” that you could work with.

Good to know! Any closing thoughts, anon?

. . . when good, honest, progressive, open liberals say that Amanda Marcotte and Pandagon have more in common with the Free Republic, and Little Green Footballs, and Red State, and Patterico, and Protein Wisdom, and the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler than they do with good honest progressive open liberals it means that we prefer dialogue, and conversation, and an exchange of ideas, and we dislike echo chambers and circle jerks.

[applause]

So there you go. It being a crime not to provide proper context nowadays, I hope I've fulfilled my obligations in that regard.

Hee!

2007-06-07T18:30:00.000-06:00

Major nostalgia.

(Via email from Chris Clarke, once again doing his part to misrepresent music in Spanish.)

Themes Repeat

2007-06-07T07:02:00.000-06:00

Donna is smart. Sometimes I get lucky and Donna visits me and says smart things here too, like for instance:

But you notice something else, almost all these blogwars aren't really about the initial complaint, and neither is this one. The TN bloggers and Brittany herself came in and explained who she is and how she does things. That's when JG started digging.

. . .

This is just like Kos with the pie fight, the ad was just a tiny blip on people's radar, it was attacking and demeaning progressive women that blew up all over the place. That was some nasty crap written by a conservative asswipe for sure, and that writer should have been condemned by all for it, but it is easier to attack and demean progressive women.

Bingo. It's the attitude. The elitist, know-it-all, everything-adjusted-to-my-comfort-zone attitude.

I get accused of having that attitude myself. Like, if I participate in a thread on a feminist blog criticizing a particular thing--oh no, that must mean I'm expecting the world to be tailored to me-me-me all the time.

'Scuse me, pardon me, but NO. That is incorrect.

See, if I thought everything should be tailored to me, I'd be over at the blog that didn't accommodate me, demanding it start accommodating me this instant, I mean right now!

And I didn't go over to Sadly, No! during the fat wars and do that. Sadly, No! is what it is. I didn't expect it to change much.

But I sure as hell expected that feminists could have a body image discussion on a feminist blog, even if it was about content posted elsewhere, without being told to shut the fuck up and quit boring the big liberal boys with our trivial fucking problems.

So some of us said that: "Hey, you don't have to be here getting bored with our trivial fucking problems, you know. You can leave and stuff."

And when that was said, the response was, "But this post is titled 'Go Fuck Yourself'." And then the feminists said, "But that's a reference to something Dick Cheney said, don't you get it?" And then the response to that was, "But this post is titled 'Go Fuck Yourself', that's what I saw in my referrers, 'go fuck yourself', and that's so wrong." And then we said, "Okaaay, I think maybe you don't understand the culture here," and they said "I find it really offensive that you think we need to learn about your stupid culture in the first damn place." And then I threw up.

Is any of this looking at all familiar?

Because the funny thing is, for people who supposedly wanted to dictate what could and could not be said, what jokes could and could not be made--for people who wanted to stamp out free speech!!!--well, I don't mean to insult us, but doesn't it seem as though maybe we were being pretty lazy in the way we set about doing that? Because we were not over there, crashing the gates and demanding the immediate application and enforcement of Our Rules. We were kind of sitting around our own space yakking, you know, how the fat people love to do.

Oh, what else does this remind me of. What else, what else, what else.

This is it, really. Here it is, the secret formula for the prevention of further trivial and boring and stupid blogfeuds that you, as a very important blogger, cannot possibly spend a moment's time weighing the various arguments of, though you can certainly spend days dismissing the idea that there should be any arguments made in the first place: Find out how much a loaf of bread costs. Because that is who you sound like, when you step gingerly out of your big liberal blog environment to see what the niche blogs--the feminist blogs, the Tennessee blogs, the race blogs, the queer blogs--you sound about this dumb. It's not because you are that dumb, or at least that isn't necessarily the reason; it's more because you can't accept that (1) there's stuff out there you don't understand and (2) some of that stuff is important to people, and especially (3) I don't care if you're the fucking Elvis of blogging, you don't have the right to decide what's important, or even how shit works, outside your own virtual Graceland.

So I don't want to hear that Brittney should have done this or should have done that because that's how blogging is done. No, that's how you do blogging, Elvis. And incidentally, "In The Ghetto" really made me almost hate you.

If you don't know how things work outside your own world, then for the love of sweet reason, put a sock in it until you figure it out. And if you cannot do this then will you at LEAST back the fuck off when someone who does know tells you, "Hey, things don't work like that here?" Instead of insisting, insisting, insisting that things work JUST the way you're used to and comfortable with?

When you travel to Europe, do the electrical outlets confound you? Ever tried to force one? I must know.

Well Then

2007-06-07T04:06:00.000-06:00

Is there even any point anymore?

The federal government disclosed details yesterday of a border-security program to screen all people who enter and leave the United States, create a terrorism risk profile of each individual and retain that information for up to 40 years.

I, for one, will not panic. Everyone knows mistakes are never made in bureaucracies, so obviously, obviously, if you were to wind up locked in or out of the United States, it would be because you did something bad and you deserved it.

And even if mistakes were to be made it would be no problem, because then you would just--

According to yesterday's notice, the program is exempt from certain requirements of the Privacy Act of 1974 that allow, for instance, people to access records to determine "if the system contains a record pertaining to a particular individual" and "for the purpose of contesting the content of the record."

--be up shit creek without a paddle. Okay! Sounds good!

Man, I sure wish the terrorists would quit hating our bitchin' freedom so we could have some of it back.

Hurl

2007-06-06T15:22:00.000-06:00

A test. I call it "Are You a White Male Progressive?"

In the wake of a prominent liberal blogger's death, a liberal media personality reposts an excerpt from a particularly loathesome "obituary" authored by a wingnut shitstain, without commentary save for a caustic title implying distaste for said excerpt, and by extension, said wingnut shitstain. In response, you, as an esteemed progressive blogger:

(a) Join the ensuing thread to agree that said wingnut shitstain behaved in a subhuman manner.

(b) Join the ensuing thread to argue against giving this shitstain a moment's more attention, which would of course be more attention than he deserves.

(c) Ignore wingnut shitstain. Instead, post on your blog a call to have this media personality held accountable for reposting the words of this wingnut shitstain. Encourage your readers to notify her employer and her local representatives of her reprehensible behavior.

Read, read, read, throw up.

Back on hiatus for me. I hate whitemaleprogressives so much right now, you don't even know. Can you fuckers do ANYTHING right? Fight the real enemy, my sweet fat ass.

Well, no loss. I always did prefer reading Nez at his own joint.

UPDATE: "Brittany screwed up posting that vile crap without comment, but apparently, she did so for it’s ironic value. I, of all people, understand how hard it is to pull that off successfully. She blew it. She should acknowledge that and apologize to everyone who cared about Steve."

Okay, I get it: You wanted things pureed, contextualized, and spoon-fed to you. Under no circumstances were you willing to accept the words of others who kindly stepped in to do this for you (breaking! Smantix is an asshole!); no, only Brittney's special touch would do.

That's nice. Hey, is this you maybe?

It reminds me of sitting in a movie theater in Berkeley with Becky and Ron and Joe watching O Brother Where Art Thou, and having a handful of the audience members applaud when the Cyclops Klan character played by John Goodman got spanked by the burning cross. Because, you know, it’s possible that the rest of the audience in Berkeley might actually have felt support for the Klansmen in the movie, and only by the brave action of booing Klansmen in a dark movie house in Berkeley, California could those folks make sure that their stalwart opposition to cartoon evil was made known in every possible venue. One wonders if those folks hiss “sexist!” at Snidely Whiplash when watching the Cartoon Network.

Some of us took the time to figure out what the fuck was going on. Some of us contextualized the situation our very own grownup selves (but then, some of us grew up in the days before 24-hour news channels and the internet, so perhaps some of us shouldn't take any credit for this ability, seeing as how it developed from necessity rather than choice.).

But you couldn't, or wouldn't, do this. And now you think--still!--that you're the one owed the apology? For what? For your dogged insistence on continuing to behave like a whiny-ass titty baby? For your stubborn refusal to just stop digging?

Tell me something: If you have a job, then as of today . . . do you still have a job? Because Brittney Gilbert doesn't.

So take your desperate, aching need for pre-provided context and fucking cram it. And please, quit being so thin-skinned. There's no need for all this drama.

Asshole.

DO NOT WANT

2007-06-06T02:47:00.001-06:00

Could someone who knows art please tell me whether the below image is a famous painting or something? Be kind, please, and recall that I am an idiot, and not just artistically.

So Brownfemipower was asking about books on adult attention deficit disorder the other day, and that reminded me that I have, figuratively speaking, many rivers to cross if I'm ever going to finish Women with Attention Deficit Disorder, because I've only just started it and it's a long one.

I picked the book up again tonight, but then I did not really feel like soldiering on, so I just started flipping pages, eventually landing on the beginning of the section of the book titled, "Emergence." The above serves as the accompanying illustration for "Emergence."

And, well--this just wasn't the sort of emergence I was looking for, you know? I like dicks and all, but that doesn't mean I want one emerging from my chin, growing up towards my hairline and threatening to fwap me on the bridge of the nose every time I lean my pretty head back. And I have enough trouble keeping my boobs aligned as it is; I don't need to encourage the emergence of the left one every time I have a seat, either.

I don't know about me and this book, y'all. I just don't know.

But it did get my attention, I'll give it that.

Blood, Boiling

2007-06-04T16:38:00.000-06:00

Main Entry: ²ex·ploit
Pronunciation: ik-'sploit, 'ek-"
Function: transitive verb
1 : to make productive use of : UTILIZE <exploiting your talents> <exploit your opponent's weakness>
2 : to make use of meanly or unfairly for one's own advantage <exploiting migrant farm workers>
- ex·ploit·abil·i·ty /ik-"sploi-t&-'bi-l&-tE/ noun
- ex·ploit·able /-'sploi-t&-b&l/ adjective
- ex·ploit·er noun

It's the second definition that applies here:

But back in Afghanistan, the subjects of her book say Rodriguez and her newfound fame have put their lives in danger. They say they've seen none of the money or help to get them out of Afghanistan that Rodriguez promised them in exchange for having their stories appear in the book.

Tuesday, two Afghan women with a copy of the book arrived in an unmarked car with armed guards and burst into the beauty school. There, they threatened the girls, saying they would pay for defaming Afghanistan.

And the landlord is threatening to seize the school's building for non-payment of thousands of dollars in rent.

As for Rodriguez, she left Afghanistan in mid-May, after selling her share of a coffee house that she bought with proceeds from the book.

You ever have one of those times when you're so appalled you simply don't know what to say? I am having one of those times right now.

Rodriguez says that she knows the women are angry and terrified — but that they should realize that things take time. She also claims the girls misunderstood what she promised them.

She says she plans to give the girls a small part of the royalties from the book, along with 5 percent of her earnings from the movie Sony Pictures is planning.

"I never, never in a million years would abandon them," Rodriguez said. "I had to leave, but I can do more good for them here." She says she has no plans to return to Afghanistan.

When I am dictator of the world, women like Rodriguez will not be allowed anywhere near Afghanistan in the first damn place. But if heaven forbid such women should thwart my decree and go on to pull such exploitative, unconscionable, greed-motivated shenanigans, rest assured that they will, upon being caught, BEG me to be allowed to return to Afghanistan as slaves of the women they did this to, rather than suffer the far less merciful fates I've decreed for them.

Vile. This is just so vile I can't stand it.

UPDATE: I couldn't remember how I'd found this (I am scatterbrained) and was assuming I'd got it from Google News. WRONG! This vileosity brought to you courtesy of Shannon.

UPDATE II: I see I was so pissed off when I posted this that I used "decree" twice in the second-to-last paragraph. I'll leave it, but know that I am ashamed. Ashamed, I tell you.

Theriomorph Wastes All my Damn Time

2007-06-03T23:57:00.000-06:00

First it was the Jackie Chan video, which only led me to more Jackie Chan videos. Why didn't I think to look for these goodies on YouTube before? Oh, right!--Because I wanted to GET THINGS DONE in life.

And then it turns out Theriomorph and I have similar tastes in music.

Anyone who attempts to deny that this is the greatest video in the history of the world will be shot.

This Doesn't Count As Blogging, You Know

2007-06-02T18:12:00.000-06:00

It's just linking, and cheering, and being awestruck. Ballastexistenz on community:

Good allies don’t threaten to cut off their support every time they hear something that makes them uncomfortable.

Critiquing the priorities and power of a group that someone belongs to might just be a sign they care about that group, not a sign that they are evil incarnate or “infighting” or all that crap.

Critiquing power structures that benefit certain people above others is not the same thing as saying these are bad people who must go away and leave us alone and that we don’t appreciate them.

At the same time, it’s not always our job to reassure you that you’re not evil and awful and stuff. At some point just decide that as axiomatic and move on to something constructive like figuring out what’s right and wrong and trying to do what’s right.

Yeah, that's all you get. For the rest--GO.

Blogger's Done a Bad, Bad Thing

2007-06-02T01:54:00.001-06:00

I don't know why I thought this was a good idea. I really, really don't.

Wait! Don't click that up there without something to fortify you first. The video below is neither a cover nor a bad song. It is not a real video and the imagery is boring, but be grateful for that, for many images are interesting in only the most horrifying ways. Drink and be quenched, drink and be sustained for the long road ahead.

Which road is very, very bad and wicked. Again: I am so sorry.

Also a helpful prophylactic: Every codependent's theme song!

Which Is Not to Say I Won't Post Once in a Blue Moon

2007-06-01T02:56:00.001-06:00

Blue_Moon_2007_2JPG, originally uploaded by ilyka_damen.

And--why, look! Here's one right now.

Okay, first, the boring clarification: I am fine, all is well, but again I find I need money, and again I recall that I never put up AdSense or anything like that, so again I kick myself and again I commit to typing more doctors.

Second, in order but not importance: Holy crumb, is there some good discussion here or what? And yes: Like all good discussions, it is lengthy. If you absolutely must have a short version, Blackamazon follows up and highlights some favorite points here.

I stay out, I mean far, far out, of the sex-pos/radfem debates. And stop your typing fingers right there, missy, because I know the very terms themselves are a problem, not so much radfem as "sex-pos," and I know in real life feminists don't always line up neatly into one category or the other, and in fact, that is my point: Neither do I. I like both. I reserve the right to agree with anyone at any time for any reason, whether it makes sense to anyone else or not. And you can substitute "disagree" for "agree" in the preceding sentence and have it be equally true, as some disappointed team players learned last week.

That said, you can probably tell from what I write and who I link to that I lean slightly towards the radical feminist side. I attribute this to my being a little old and a lot prudey, and I don't care. I will turn 38 in a week, and that's old enough to have reached a comfort zone with my own desire level, and--this is the best part--to understand and accept that my comfort zone and your comfort zone may not intersect at all, AND THAT IS OKAY. Get your freak on! I'll be over here with a book. Or I may be getting my own freak on, but you are not going to read about that here because my policy is, no posting about my girl parts unless I do something spectacularly stupid with them, at which point they become a comedy prop, and, why, just call me Gallagher. But be honest: You're grateful I'm not pitching this particular prop at the audience, now, aren't you? See, so am I.

And that is my position in general on the sex wars: I refuse to assume any position, ho, ho.

But I am more definite about cultural appropriation. My position on that is that white people (1) do too much of it; (2) are seldom honest about what they're doing upon being caught doing it; and (3) when they do admit to appropriating, too often follow it up by telling you their very good, unimpeachable by reasonable persons, reasons for doing it.

Case in point, this fella.

I found that by reading this interview with Chris Crocker in The Stranger, via Chaos Theory (Lauren, Lauren, what have you done?). And reading the interview, my heart did bleed:

. . . Chris took me to the nearby mall, a small cavern of beige floor tiles and pasty patrons, and gave me a tour that offered a new way of looking at this video, a way that made it much less funny. As we walked around, past the Sunglass Hut, past the pushy smells of scented candles and baking cookies, people stared hatefully at us, and mostly at him. They stared hard, with the kind of presumed right to glare that people in more sophisticated places wouldn't dare show.

. . .

Most young men like Chris, at loggerheads with their families and unwelcome in their communities, quickly give up. They either adapt to a closeted lifestyle or they run off to a big city, locate that city's gay neighborhood, take a job in a coffeeshop or bar or theater, and start anew. Chris may still do that. He's given himself until mid-June, the anniversary of his first internet video, to leverage enough money and opportunity out of his internet fame to escape his small town. If that doesn't work, he says, he'll consider doing something more old-fashioned, like buying a bus ticket.

Okay: I can't say "I get it" as in, "I've been in this situation," because plainly I haven't. But so far as I'm able to get it, I get it. I get that Chris is a young gay man stuck in what the interviewer describes as a town that "seems to hate him." I get that he has black friends online and I get that not all black people find videos like the one above offensive.

And I get also that when white people are being stomped on by other white people, for whatever reason, the seemingly logical thing for them to do is to draw support from people with even more experience in being oppressed by white people, and those sadly experienced people do tend to be nonwhites.

Finally, I get that some cultural mixing goes on anyhow, and probably always will, and if I really thought it were such a terrible thing, I'd have to give up eating tamales just to be able to sleep at night, and me giving up tamales, that is not going to happen.

The problem is that it's almost always one way. I've been trying off and on all night to come up with an example of resistance initiated by whites against other whites that wasn't originally borrowed from people of color, and I can't think of too many. Why, white people, when we rebel, do we always have to jump someone else's oppression train? And how many of us, once we're feeling a little better, once we've escaped our repressive Bible Belt towns for Hollywood or New York or Paris, jump right back off that train and wave bye-bye to the people still riding it, shouting after them some nicey-nice version of "So long, suckers"?

Thanks for letting me borrow your Compton slang. It really helped me tell my youth minister to fuck off in a creative way.

Thanks for telling me about Cesar Chavez. I may have to quote that guy the next time Harvey complains about doing his share of the housework.

Thanks for the book on Tantric tradition! So like is it true you can have sex for eight hours with this stuff? My lover is so busy these days, I'm lucky to get eight minutes.

I know there are whole schools of theory on this stuff about which I know nothing, nothing, but how hard is it not to ABS: Always Be Stealing? Or is the above video not stealing at all? Am I wrong to view it as stealing? I don't know, honestly, but something doesn't feel right to me. It feels to me as though once again, someone out there is confusing entitlement with empowerment.

Hiatus

2007-05-31T17:24:00.000-06:00

Back in September. Nothing's wrong; it's just time for me to step back and figure out how much of my time I really want to spend arguing with various people on the internet. Right now, that quantity of time is zero. Too much else I want, and need, to work on.

Doesn't mean there won't perhaps be new posts here. You never know when Genni or Daddyslittlegirl are going to show up and amaze.

Have a great summer!

Clarifications

2007-05-24T13:34:00.000-06:00

Just clearing up a few things here and there, some totally unrelated to each other, but all stuff I missed during all The Excitement:

The Girl From Marz was awfully kind to me here. Thank you, Girl From Marz! And thank you for reminding me of this conversation at Fetch Me My Axe. In it, Sara from F-Words astutely observes:

I don't think the "don't identify with the assholes" model really is very helpful, since we're talking about a lot of unconscious and inadvertent behavior here. I could just start to ignore anything that makes me uncomfortable, because I get to think, "Well, it's not me that's doing racist thing x, phew."

This is true, but I must say it was very mean of Sara to tap into the heart of my angst about that post having so many links into it like this. Meaning: Its chief feature, which I think is that it's conversational in tone and structure, and therefore easy to read, is also its chief flaw. My boyfriend and I have known each other going on eight years now, and like all longtime couples do, I suppose, we talk to each other in a sort of shorthand you wouldn't observe between people who had only recently met, or even people who had known each other six months, a year, etc.

So in the discussion, when we get to this bit:

"A lot of the guys written about on feminist blogs do things I would never do."

"Then don't identify with them. It's not about you! You stand to pee, they stand to pee, beyond that, what's the commonality?"

--what he realizes, which Sara reminds me the reader may not realize, is that I am absolutely not giving him a free pass to stuff his hands in his pockets and walk away whistling that, yay, he's not the problem at all, ever! As Sara says, a lot of this stuff is unconscious, so to overcome it, first you have to recognize it: "Oops. I'm doing that thing, that asshole thing, again." And if your sole response to reading about racist or misogynist acts is, "Great Scott, what is wrong with these inhuman monsters? I would never," etc., you risk exempting yourself from self-examination where it might be desperately needed.

I could go off on a long tangent here about how there are still-to-this-day left-leaning political blogs that I won't read, because the focus is too much on Those Inhuman Monsters with Whom We Have Nothing, NOTHING in Common: Republican Voters. Instead, I will go off on only a short tangent:

Notice I didn't say "Dick Cheney" or "David Horowitz"--I'm fine with demonizing public figures nine times out of ten--but when it bleeds over into these asinine How Evil is Half the Country Anyway, Huh? discussions, I'm out. Because--and this was equally true for me when I was coming at this from the opposite direction, as a Republican--I'm still related to Republicans, just as back then I despised "Libruls R Traitors"-style blogs because I was still related to Democrats.

If you think Americans who vote Democrat are wicked traitorous monsters at heart, fuck you: That's my aunt we're talking about. And if you think Americans who vote Republican are vile capitalist pigs at heart, fuck you again: That's my mother we're talking about. Either way, I'm not down, and I sometimes think that the shorthand definition of feminism, that it's the radical notion that women are human beings, needs expansion, because I'm not sure we've even grasped yet that human beings are human beings.

End tangent. For more in that vein--not that specific vein, you understand, but on the general notion that humans is human (crazy talk!)--I'm going to direct you back to Belledame's for this. That woman's been on a roll lately. Much respect, Belledame.

To bring it back around to race for a minute, though, one more thing I appreciate about Sara's remarks is that, well, she's right: Too often the horrified gasps of How Could They? are not followed up with any introspection at all, i.e. "Wait, wait: While maybe I personally would not ever do such a thing, can I at least see (1) how someone else could and (2) what societal forces might influence them to do so and (3) what part, if any, I play in shoring up those forces?"

And here I just deleted a recent example of this dynamic at work because I'm in enough trouble for now, but read this post of Sylvia's about recent events in Jena, Louisiana, and, damnit, pay attention here:

I also encourage you to stop yourself before distancing away from Jena and painting it as a special place with special problems. Our actions affect others’ realities. It is highly likely that if the school officials took decisive action after the nooses were placed on the tree, the resulting incidences would not have occurred. Perhaps I should say: we need to pay attention to those small matters and discuss them seriously before they escalate.

Because that's it, exactly. That's what I'd like to see more emphasis on in coverage of racial hatred: How are we as a society contributing to it, and how do we stop? Throwing up our hands and saying "Oh, well, what will you? It's The South," is inadequate.

When I started this post I was certain I had somewhere to put this post at Tiny Cat Pants, also via Belledame. Now, of course, I can't remember for the life of me how I was planning to tie it in. Read it anyway, though. Especially:

Look, I wrote a nice post on the spiritual implications of mythological and fairy-talish women who come in sets of three. I even used the term "we" without bothering to say, "We folks of European descent from a Christian/European pagan background." Three's an important number for us. It doesn't have the same importance to other cultures or, if it is important, not in the same ways. But I threw "we" out there like my audience all shares my same traditions, even if they don't practice them in the same way.

Is that racist? Yes. Is it the end of the world? No. Am I wrecked with guilt, as so many assume all good liberals are? No. But it is what it is, me forgetting that my experiences aren't standard.

It might not seem like the most insidious form of racism, but it is--because it's so easy to slip into, it's such a difficult habit to break, and it's hard to fight against.

And that brings me to my next clarification, which I'll save for its own post because I'm still working out the kinks: I owe Rachel of Rachel's Tavern a response to some questions she had for me at Feministe, questions prompted by my inept babbling upthread (and no, I don't know who the hell I think I am either). Apologies, Rachel! Threads the last few days have gotten away from me faster than my youngest cat trying to make an escape. Since the thread's gone stale I've been trying to sort out what I want to say and to an even greater extent, what I'm even thinking to begin with. I'll try to sort that all out and have something up here in the next day or two.

Finally (did I say "finally" already? Well, this is the REAL "finally," then), and this is not so much a clarification as a gush of admiration, Magniloquence of Feline Formal Shorts puts Chris Clarke through the mixer. Results are vastly more fabulous than frozen margaritas. Check it out!

A Preview of Coming Attractions

2007-05-23T01:19:00.000-06:00

So listen up, Ms. Jared, and anyone else walking in Ms. Jared's shoes right now. This is a rough template of how it's going to be:

You're going to read people saying, "I must diversify my blog-reading habits." Maybe, like Ms. Jared is right now, you'll even be saying it yourself.

Whether you branch out yourself or you don't, you're going to learn something: A lot of people make this promise the same way they'd say, "This year I'm going to exercise more." Or like I do: "This year I'm going to get those thank-you notes written on time."

Still you will believe them. It isn't nice to do otherwise.

And if you're branching out yourself, you'll be much too busy to care what anyone else is doing. So much good reading! So many ideas you hadn't considered before! So many new voices! It's going to be a lot of fun. No lie.

Of course, it's going to sting a little at times, too. You'll read, maybe, that "middle-class white Americans are untrustworthy and unreliable," and you'll squeak inside, "Not me! Not me!"

Or you might read a post like "An Open Letter to Feminists of the Paler Persuasion" and spot where something you just wrote about is cited as an example of the stupid, airy-fairy bullshit on which white middle-class feminists tend to fixate. And you might think, "Damn, was that necessary?"

You'll probably remind yourself then to focus on the damn point of what she's saying (because it's not about you, not centrally), and with a sinking feeling you'll realize, she's right: The white feminist blogosphere didn't have a lot to say about that. And you, you didn't have anything to say about that, because you didn't even know about it. You hadn't been reading.

You will check out some of the linked source material and realize, this nightmare is over a week old already. In that time you have heard nothing, read nothing.

Then you see that another white blogger you know is already on it. She's way ahead of you. She's been reading while you've been screwing around playing computer games. Does this excuse you from saying anything yourself? Do you have a free pass to skip this one?

No, you don't. So you leave off tending your wounded ego, and you get in there.

After awhile, you'll start to notice you're seeing things you never saw before, perhaps couldn't see before. Things that made no sense to you even just a few months back, suddenly make too much sense. Where before you saw legitimate complaints against OVERSENSITIVITY and PARANOIA and JEALOUSY and PETTY DIVISIVENESS, you now see an order and a method. But the order is all out of whack and the method is brutal and graceless. The order constrains what you would see free, and the method is only used to punish whatever, or whoever, threatens the order.

Things look different, and things don't always look so good. Your White Lens is shrinking. It isn't filtering your vision as well as it used to. Instead of seeing everything bathed in a pale rosy glow, you see more individual colors. You see more light, too, but the light reveals much that disturbs you.

Some days you about claw your own eyes out trying to put that lens back on. Like a relationship you know is no good for you that you nonetheless return to occasionally for familiarity, for comfort, or for sex, so is that lens. But you can't revive that dead relationship and you can't seem to make that lens grow back to its original size, either.

Spoiled now is the way you used to see things. A lot of pleasant reading has turned coarse and awkward. Where before you would read:

I think what is most amazing to me is that this doesn't take place in some tent in the middle of the desert or a stone hut. These people are not dressed in tribal garb --- they are wearing jeans and t-shirts and the whole thing takes place in a street in what appears to be a modern town.

--and say, "Yes, how odd that is!", now you're aghast. You wish you could find another interpretation for this besides, "I wouldn't be shocked by such brutal behavior from primitive savages. But from modern, Westernized people? Bizarre!"

And you know that it is anything but bizarre, and you know the author knows it too, and you know that is not what she meant, so now you worry. You worry that maybe you, too, are becoming oversensitive. And is it really important? People are dying. You should fight the real enemy. Don't be petty. Don't get so hung up over mere language. They're just words! Don't be divisive. George W. Bush is still President. Focus! Fight the real enemy.

Plenty of real oppression to tackle without you imagining more from people who mean well. Let it go.

But you will remain uneasy. You will have been reading different points of view than you once did, and you will notice something ugly the purveyors of these viewpoints have in common: They will all, at some point, or maybe often, maybe even daily, have been told to shut up and fight the real enemy. They will have been told this by people who have hurt them, even as those same people swear they mean well.

Because of this, the people you are newly reading will sometimes make the same decision you just did, the decision to let it go; but they will not always make it for the same reasons you did. Sometimes that decision will be made to stave off an inner exhaustion you don't have. Other times it will be made in a heartache you don't know, and still other times in a rage you can't imagine.

No, you will not know what any of this could possibly be like. You will only know that you hate to see it.

Focus!

It will cross your mind once or twice or twenty-seven times or more that we could all focus more easily and fight the real enemy better if we were all more respectful of each other.

"That's what I'm trying to tell you!" the well-meaning people will say. "When these people say, 'Get off our backs,' they need to say it respectfully!"

You will see the futility in explaining the problem. You've seen it explained. You've seen it explained over, and over, and over.

You'll stew over what to do sometimes. You may think on occasion that you could speak up, perhaps should speak up, but what's the point? And what will it cost you? Who will it cost you? Who will still be there when you quit speaking? Who will have stormed out before you could finish? In whose address books will you still exist?

Certain phrases will haunt you right up until the moment of decision, when a well-meaning person wounds someone just a little too nearby. You've been able to ignore it while it happened over there, in that neighborhood, or over there, in that other one. If only it had stayed far away, if only you had your lens back.

You will charge ahead and say something. It won't come out quite how you wanted it to, but nevertheless, instantly a weight will lift. You will have your voice back, for awhile. You will be so relieved to find it still works.

It is not long after this that you will lose, at conservative estimate, about 70% of your friends. It's a lot to process at once, but you won't worry long, for you will soon make more. In fact, as much as you detest hierarchies, you still will have to concede to yourself that it feels like an upgrade process at times, this dropping off of old friends and getting to know new ones.

It is true that when you have time to think about the loss, you will grieve it a little. But in fact you won't have much time for this, because there will be no shortage of new grief. You'll quickly become angry at yourself as you realize how much of this grief was being shared around you before, all this time, that you're only yourself just noticing.

"Is this usual?" you will ask one of your new friends, even though you know it's a fucking insensitive, dumbass question--and besides, you already know the answer to it.

Her answer will be what you knew it was.

You will realize you have another question, one you can't ask anyone, one you have to figure out the answer to yourself:

Now what?

Almost Like . . . Human Beings

2007-05-22T00:21:00.001-06:00

Loveless Cynic calls for a boycott.

What Silencing Is, and What it Isn't

2007-05-21T18:10:00.000-06:00

Lots to be heartsick about today.

I bleed for Samhita, for knowing she's in a lot of pain right now. Samhita writes:

. . . I am not a token. I am not here to talk about all WOC voices. My being here doesn't inherently fix or solve the white-centered nature of the political blogosphere (please believe). And my brown-ness doesn't make me the spokesperson for all things brown, and similarly Jessica or the other white ladies, spokespeople for whites only. To discount the contributions of all the women that write for Feministing, while upholding Jessica as the embodiment of all that is wrong with Feministing and feminism, erases our contributions and ignores the fact that we are all working TOGETHER. What does it mean when Jessica is singled out for blame for posts or threads that we ALL take responsibility for?

All of the women that write for Feministing, from DAY ONE, have incorporated an intersectional analysis (please go back to archives and read). All of the writers at Feministing believe that a race, class and sexuality lens is necessary to inform our feminist action and writing. It's an integral part of our work, evidenced not only by what we write and how we write it, but also by who we bring in to work with us and the connections and collaborations we seek on the ground. To argue otherwise not only feels dismissive to us, it feels intensely hurtful and wrong.

I can't imagine anyone is really unclear on this point, but I want to emphasize it anyway just in case: I would never label any woman of color sharing blog-space with white women a token, not least because it simply isn't my place to. As a white woman I don't have the right to apply that label, or even to hint that it might be applicable to someone.

Further, I'm generally uncomfortable with labeling of that sort in ANY instance. It would require me to assume too much about motives and means. I simply don't know enough about why someone's in this space and not that one, doing this but not that.

And finally, I just don't think it's helpful. When Samhita says it feels dismissive, I can't argue with her. That is exactly what the word "token" is designed to do. It's designed to dismiss. It's designed to silence.

Now if only anyone had actually called Samhita a token, we'd be in business.

I know it sometimes comes off as patronizing when a blogger resorts to riffing off a dictionary definition to explain herself. In this case I'm going to risk being patronizing, however, because I think it's important to define terms. So, from Merriam-Webster online:

Main Entry: ²silence
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): si·lenced; si·lenc·ing
1 : to compel or reduce to silence : STILL <silenced the crowd>
2 : to restrain from expression : SUPPRESS
3 : to cause to cease hostile firing or criticism <silence the opposition>

We can dispense with the first definition, as there's really no way for any blogger or group of bloggers "to compel or reduce to silence," though if my inbox is anything to go by lately, that doesn't always stop people from making the attempt. I hope we can agree up front, however, that short of hacking someone else's blog to take it offline or deface it, none of us really has the power "to compel or reduce to silence." This is not to say we can't try so hard that our target eventually concludes the struggle is not worth it. We can do this, and too often, we do. And then we say, "But gosh, no one made her quit." In the sense that no one put a gun to the ex-blogger's head, that's true, but it doesn't excuse us from examining our roles, if any, in her decision.

And although the third definition may also apply in a few specific instances, it's the second definition I want to focus on: "To restrain from expression: SUPPRESS." It is here that my sympathy for Samhita bleeds into exasperation, because I will not be argued out of the following:

When you respond to your critics without linking to their words, you are withholding information from your audience, information necessary for your audience to generate informed opinions on the matter. That is suppression. That is silencing.

And I'm seeing way too much of it lately. It angers me. It pisses me off something fierce. And my saying "I don't like this; it makes me angry," is not silencing. It's me expressing an opinion, an opinion you are wholly free to disregard.

And just to stop the noise before it starts, my saying "This pisses me off" isn't a personal attack, either. One thing I'm surer than ever of after the last few days is that we have all got to do a better job of distinguishing between "I don't like your actions" and "I don't like you." These two sentiments are not the same. I didn't like Jill's first post on Full Frontal Feminism, but I did like her second one. Now: What changed between those two reactions of mine as regards how I feel about Jill as a person? NOTHING. I respected and admired her before, during, and after. Doesn't mean I'm going to boogie down with everything she writes, and the beautiful thing is, she isn't going to do that for me either. Disagreements happen. This is the internet. We are all grown-ups, we know this, but in the heat of disagreement it's often easy to forget.

I have often forgotten it myself. The next time I forget, I'd be grateful if one of you would kick me in the pants and remind me to re-read this excellent post by Brownfemipower at The Silence of Our Friends*:

I also want to address the idea put forth by Samhita (and many many maaaany of Jessica’s supporters) that women of color bloggers are “hating” on Jessica.

I met Jessica from feministing and Amanda from pandagon at the NAPW conference earlier this year. I liked both of them a lot. Especially Amanda—who, for the first time, made me see why people think southern accents are sexy.

At the conference, I joked with Jessica about the size of her boobs, talked at length with Amanda about Texas/Mexican border issues and living on farmland—I liked them both a lot, and was really happy to that I met up with them.

And then I got back home, and continued blogging and continued to be pissed off by Amanda’s analysis of X and Jessica’s understanding of Y.

Disagreement happens. Disagreement happens even when we really, really like each other. The problem isn't the disagreement, which is inevitable, and the disagreement isn't silencing! As a link piny included in one of her recent posts states:

15. If we attend to your work closely enough to engage in angry, detailed criticism, don't take this as a rejection, crankiness, disordered ranting and raving, or the effects of testosterone poisoning. It's a *gift*. (And it's praise: there must be something we value about you to bother to engage you, especially since such engagement is often painful, as well as time-consuming, for us.)

(Emphasis mine.) And I wasn't the only one who recognized its applicability to recent discussions; in the comments to piny's post, Nanette says:

I was thinking of writing almost this very thing earlier, just for people to keep in mind, but I came across someone who put it better, in piny’s link to the trans how-to piece[.]

Lest anyone remain unclear: "Angry, detailed criticism" is not silencing. PERIOD. I swear, if I see "criticism" equated with "the suppression of criticism" one more time, I'm going to flip the fuck out and quit myself, because I have reached my saturation point with this stupidity, so much so that I wonder whether terming it "stupidity" isn't actually being too kind; stupidity arises from ignorance, and I'm no longer confident that ignorance is the real problem here. "Deliberate obfuscation of the issue so as to promote one framing over another," which I hope I don't have to remind you is another suppressive and silencing method, might be the more accurate description of this bizarre phenomenon of equating "criticism" with "silencing."

When I see people I respect reacting to only one side of the story, as Scott Lemieux does here:

Fundamentally, there's no line of argument stupider than alleging that women of color are not "real" women of color, and that goes triple when people make this offensive argument in order to support a fact-free a priori narrative about a site's content.

--my first reaction is to get angry at Scott. But then I realize, I don't actually disagree with anything Scott said! And then after that, I groan at "fact-free a priori narrative about a site's content," because what Scott's responding to is at best a fact-deprived a priori narrative about what Samhita's critics have actually said. And the blame for that, I'm afraid, lies squarely with Samhita:

In light of the conversations surrounding Jessica's book, I just wanted to touch on some of the issues that have come up. I am going to admit first and foremost, I haven't read all of them and I am not going to cite any people, just some themes that are coming up and the feelings they are bringing up for me.

The problem with this approach is it allows the author free rein to interpret those themes for her audience in any way she sees fit, and someone as hurt and upset as Samhita is currently may naturally be expected to interpret them to paint herself in the best light possible and her critics in the worst. "They said this"--and how is anyone reading supposed to know who "they" is, or whether "they" really said "this?" One must either take Samhita's word for it or make fumbling search attempts using Google.

Or you can be an unfeeling bitch like me and go to the source. Despite Samhita's claim in the comments that she was wounded by "conversation all over the interwebz about Jessica's book, our comments policies and how we lack intersectional analysis at Feministing," found in "some of the threads at Feministe," I'm dubious that Feministe is the real culprit here, not least because I find, at last check at least, no mention of "how we lack intersectional analysis at Feministing" in any of the Feministe threads on Full Frontal Feminism.

So regarding intersectionality, at least, I suspect this thread is more likely the source of Samhita's pain. Some excerpts:

Samhita! Don’t go away! Talk. I love your contributions but other people seem to have a problem with it. They made me think deeply about it and they we feel you can be more hardcore about it. You don’t stand alone. Im kind of hardcore about it but I’m just a commenter.

It meaning intersectionality. And Feministing has been talking about intersectionality since the first page in 2004. You always talk about it but talk about it more as in don’t back down from being hardcore.

Samhita, TONS OF PEOPLE and WOC read you. It’s shocking to hear you feel alone. Just don’t back down.

Very hurtful. Very silencing! But that isn't to say there wasn't some anger expressed to Samhita:

I want to tahnk you for finally showing up to Sylvias place to throw yourself a YOUVE WOUNDED MY FEELINGS PARTY. while sitting pretty motherfucking silent while it happened to us.

BUt shit your voice erasure is more important than ours, your inability to read the fucking posts is less important than how wounded you fucking are cause we really are doing this while we cry and comisserate and weep and desperately try to get some attention to our life and death situations .

We’re doing it to piss you off.

THATS THE ENTIRE FUCKING REASON

(Blackamazon's last two sentences are meant sarcastically, just in case that isn't readily apparent.)

Radical? You? Where were you when that bullshit was pulled on Nubian? You and the other “WOC” there let it ride too. The least you could have done is smacked down the racist and white privilege comments there, if you even recognize them, and I seriously doubt that.

It's Samhita who interprets the above as an accusation of not being a "real" woman of color:

Donna, you are trippin. Am I not women of color enough for you?

And this is met with several responses, among them, Brownfemipower's:

samhita, if you recall I DID come to your defense, do you recall that?

or am I not women of color enough for *you*?

how many times have you come to *my* damn defense? how many times have you commented on *any* of our blogs?

And also, Blackamazon:

And somehow your writing about it si teh same fucking thing as actually engaging about wit which never seems to happen until you want to come up into OUR spaces to tell us how wrong we done ya.

YOU must be out your mind.

You can’t even bring u p any damn facts or specifci posts jsut your hurt feelings like me Sylvia PP DOnna BFP etc etc haven’t been basically jumped for teh past four fucking days lumped in with everyfucking body and called covertly or overtly fucking stupid.

I tried real hard to be polite but I’m fucking done with this shit.

But while there's a lot of (to me, perfectly understandable) anger expressed in that thread, there's also a lot of reaching out to Samhita:

Samhita, don’t get defensive, just let the sense of the comments penetrate.

The reason for the anger is patiently explained:

samhita, I have never and will never comment on your site because of all the reasons that have been laid out endlessly. it is a site that is patently unsafe for any type of thought that does not fall right into line with what all the rest of the mainstream feminists are saying. bint, amazon, nubian–they all represent a perspective that I am in tune with an identify with and they have all been attacked mercilessly on your site.

Again, and again:

christ, samhita, YOU have been attacked on your site, and where the hell are your own co-bloggers????

if you can’t feel safe on your own blog why in the holy hell do you think any of the rest of us are going to go over there?

You’re awfully slow if you don’t already know that you tell the white women what they want to hear there or get trashed. How very supportive of Jessica! We figured it out long ago and that’s why we aren’t there. If they treated us like we have a brain in our heads we would be there, we would see these threads you are talking about and defending you along with the rest of the readers, even the white ones, because that is the kind of atmosphere they would have cultivated. Instead they cultivate one where WOC are hung out to dry if they get uppity.

Reassurances are given that this isn't personal:

Even though we don’t like your shenanigans, we can still like you as a person and stuff.

samhita gets severely trashed on her every other post by racists because she is a woc.

samhita, remember it’s structural, not individual. take these criticisms constructively. and remember, nubian stopped blogging.

And this just plain makes no sense coming from a would-be silencer of Samhita:

samhita, i’m so glad you’re here and read this blog regularly.

I had an email request today for a show of solidarity for Samhita. I regret only a little that I cannot grant that. I don't stand with dishonesty. I don't stand with "shenanigans" of this sort. I don't stand with suppression of dissent. I don't stand with silencing.

To the extent I am permitted to, I stand with her. And her. And her. And her. And her.

That's who has my solidarity. That's who has my respect. That's who has my support.

For what it's worth.

UPDATE: And, especially, her.

I don't know how you do it. I hate that you have to do it. I hate that your allies have let you down. I hate that the people who keep this going do so by covering up what's really going on in favor of an increasingly ludicrous persecution narrative that simply doesn't hold up once you have all the facts.

I hate that posts are linked to which endeavor to be fair to both sides, but go unread. I don't have time to respond to everyone.

I hate that arguments are made and promptly turned to straw. But of course no book could be everything to everyone.

I hate that feelings are being hurt right and left, but only some feelings matter. These attacks on Feministing are unfair.

Most of all, I hate that the so-called attackers are seldom named, never linked, never responded to directly. They're just jealous. They're not worth responding to.

Here's an idea: If they're not worth responding to, then shut the fuck up. This "I'm not going to link to it, but SOME PEOPLE have said--" gambit is foul. It's dishonest. And if that doesn't get through to you, let me remind you that it's also a favorite conservative tactic.

Some feminists--

When I wrote this, I worried afterwards that the comparison I made was unfair. Now I'm convinced that it is unfair--to antifeminists.

This has to stop.

*Another good reason to bookmark this one: If, like me, you aren't always sure what people are talking about when they reference "intersectionality," I think you will find Brownfemipower's explanation, especially as it relates to the concept of inclusion, very helpful.

Everybody Say Awwwwww

2007-05-20T17:20:00.000-06:00

The groom looks shy. The bride is a knockout.

But you can't beat that ringbearer for cute.

I'm Sick of Working Weekends

2007-05-19T16:13:00.000-06:00

I want my damn time back.

For those of you who do have the time to be reading and discussing, you will not do better today than:

Blackamazon

Piny. Also, piny.

Belledame

Nezua (Note to people weary of The Book Thing: NOT ABOUT THE BOOK THING! Don't say I never break up the monotony.)

And if you have a minute go congratulate Sylvia on having completed her first year of law school. Lawyers, look out!

UPDATE: And my other favorite law student, who I missed before because I tend to spaz when I realize piny's posting again.

I can't tell anyone what to do, and I'm often guilty of being a Pollyanna about the world, but my feeling is that Jill deserves fair hearing. Her ability to write honestly has always been something I've admired and envied.

A Thank-You, an Apology, and a Rant

2007-05-18T13:47:00.000-06:00

First, the thanks:

Everyone who stopped by and dropped me a comment yesterday pretty much knocked me out. Even the comments I was arguing against were instructive--I got something out of everything contributed, even when I wasn't always keen on what I was getting.

I know it's not all about me and my personal growth or whatever, but at the same time I think it would be a bit selfish of me not to acknowledge what I got out of the dialogue; not to acknowledge that I benefited. When Blackamazon, Little Light, Donna, Sylvia, and other writers I admire stop by to say what they think, and they're willing to take the time, use up some of their energy stores, make the investment--I know they are not doing it for me. And yet I benefit. To pretend otherwise would be horribly rude.

It goes to the heart of my anger yesterday, really, that such powerful voices are not always getting heard. That is a whole other post, or series of posts, but that brings me to the apology: I have a lot of work-work, you know, the boring kind that pays the bills, ahead of me the next two days, and it's gonna be a little bit before I can get back to the blog.

But this I can say right now:

This is one of my most popular posts, even still. I still see posts by others linking it with--and I'm not trying to be all bigheaded here--huge cheers and enthusiasm, like, "Yay, someone gets it!"

And not to spit on praise, which heaven knows I LOVE, because I am a fatheaded slave to vanity, but, all due respect, I think there was a portion too many fans of it overlooked.

[Oh no help me I'm about to quote myself.]

That portion is:

"I mean, if someone who'd never really read Feministe just went over and all they read was that post of piny's--well, no, not so much that post, or even Feministe necessarily, but like, I can see how some of these guys get the idea that you all hate men. Because you're talking to the regulars, and the regulars know you don't hate men, but some new guy reading some of this stuff, he's going to be all, wait, what did I do? I didn't rape anybody, I never beat up a transsexual--"

"No, I get that," I interrupted him. "That's a lot like--like, I used to have the same reaction reading blogs by people of color. I'd see something like 'white people sure suck sometimes,' and I'd be all, 'Hey! Wait! Not all of us! Not me!' Even though I probably do suck as a white person sometimes--but I mean, I'd take it too personally."

"It's hard not to take it personally."

"It's not as hard if you move yourself out of the center of everything, though. That's what I finally got through my thick skull. It's not ABOUT me, always. And even if it is about me, so what? I'm not perfect. Why shouldn't I have to take some shit once in awhile? Heaven knows I dish enough out in a day. Would it kill me to get an attitude adjustment? Would it kill me to listen to someone unlike me for five minutes?"

Now the fans of this post love that I halfway got a het guy to understand that in feminist spaces, he needs to stifle himself; he needs to respect space designated for other people not like him; other people who, even if they are not oppressed by him personally, remain nonetheless oppressed by those who ARE like him.

But I don't know how many fans keep in mind that this goes double for women of color spaces, that I was only able to explain this to my boyfriend BECAUSE women of color had explained it to me first--not by telling me, but by showing me. By just doing what they do.

But to just take this concept of safe space, and the reasons that space is necessary, and to use these ideas to explain my super-special white girl problems to the guy who has his foot on my neck (even though he doesn't mean to!)--to do that, and to then fail to give it back by pointing out those lousy times when the newbie intruders are not white men, not even just white women, but white feminists--that would be thievery.

I aspire to be a lot of things. A thief isn't one of them.

I am angry about this post because what I see is a lot of good criticism mixed in with even more two-bit cheap-shot criticism--Google search results from WAY down the list--all thrown into one bag labeled, "TO BE THROWN AWAY."

And I think, to ignore the parallel between that act, and acts like--

* equating "Deb Frisch" with "the left"

* equating "Buffalo Bill" with "all transpeople"

* equating "some loon who sent me a death threat" with "the entire anti-war movement"

--is to be willfully blind.

I understand the impulse to defend a friend. We all do it.

But I've also had to tell friends to grow up. That once you put it out there, it's up for grabs. That if you are unwilling or unable to defend yourself, you're not ready to put it out there.

And if one of your friends has to shit on smart young women from whom, take it from me, she could really benefit, well beyond what she could ever repay, in order to defend you, then you know what?

Your friend just became that What-About-the-Menz guy.

She's THAT GUY. Her concerns about "being silenced" sound exactly like concerns about what the firing of Don Imus does to free speech, or concerns about what the Duke lacrosse case does to the rights of innocent young wealthy white men, or concerns about what all that mean man-hatin' shrillness is going to do to harm the "effectiveness" (read: palatability to heterosexual men) of the women's movement.

For crying out loud! You live in one of the wealthiest cities in the world, you have your own book deal, you attend one of the best law schools out there, and you run a hugely popular blog, and nearly all of that also applies to your friend. YOUR FRIEND IS NOT BEING SILENCED, and neither are you. You're just being that guy.

And I really wish you would stop, because if you can't tell the difference between Petitpoussin and Alon Levy, then something is very, very wrong.

For Those Who Prefer Words to Code

2007-05-17T21:07:00.000-06:00

Magniloquence.

I have nothing to add. Every once in awhile you find a post that's just perfect start to finish. This is one of those posts.

And no comments here; you run along and talk to her if you have somethng to say. I made the mistake today of playing interpreter for someone whose words need no interpretation, and I'm not doing that again. It insults her, it insults me, and it insults the person I'm talking to. Bad all around. No more.

Pseudocode

2007-05-17T06:19:00.000-06:00

if (young_women_reached_by_book - young_women_repelled_by_book > 0)
{
result = net_gain_4_feminism;
hit_points_of_patriarchy = hit_points_of_patriarchy - net_gain_4_feminism;
}
else
{
quit_being_so_mean();
}

if (people_clicking_pie_ad - people_hating_pie_ad > 0)
{
result = net_gain_4_markos;
hit_points_of_Republicans = hit_points_of_Republicans - net_gain_4_markos;
}
else
{
sanctimonious_womens_studies_set_boo();
}

It's not the book. It's not what's in the book. It's not even entirely the cover of the book. And for the last time, it's not personal animosity, it's not cattiness, it's not a circular firing squad. It's the way discussion of the book is playing out--or, often, not playing out, because one side is playing deaf.

You Can't Hit What You Can't See

2007-05-17T04:06:00.000-06:00

I'm not certain how to approach this. This post may disappear, I guess I should warn you up front, because if asked to remove it I won't hesitate to do so. And someone might well ask me to remove it, because I'm going to talk about another post that disappeared, but which I can't get out of my mind all the same.

And I guess I should throw up one other caveat: This post might be guilty of the white feminist habit of taking an issue important to women of color and making it all about What the White Feminist Thinks About That. Because that's very important stuff to know, and there's a real dearth of white feminist opinion out there!

No, it's like this, though: I can't write with any competence about anything except what all goes on in my head. And it's a white feminist head, so there you go. What I don't want it to be is an overbearing, oppressive white feminist head that tells the brown or the black or the any-other-tinted heads to shut up. That's what I'm trying to avoid here.

Here goes:

Brownfemipower is on vacation. One of the items she posted about before taking a break was the Cinco de Mayo party hosted by some students at the University of Delaware. You can read about that in more detail here, but for right now I think this is one of those times when a picture is worth a thousand words--though not the words on the backs of these shirts:

Delightful.

Here I have to paraphrase from what I recall of this missing post I wanted to yak about: Brownfemipower pointed out that the women at that party doing their best "spicy Latina" impressions weren't "the patriarchy." And this was said in a larger context of, white feminists tend to blame everything on the patriarchy, when meanwhile women of color are just as likely to have the feet of other women, white women, stomping all over them as they are to have any man's.

Brownfemipower was a little fed up with this, with the whole blame-patriarchy-not-me business, and speaking of blame, I sure as hell don't blame her for being angry about that, because who could? She's right.

Yet my defensiveness kicked in, because it always does, so that on first read of this, I thought, "No, no, that is CLASSIC patriarchy--the internalized version." And it is, you know, because patriarchy's whole gig is pitting women, all women, against each other. So one of the socially-encoded numbers you get whipped on you all the time if you're a white woman is the paradox that (1) it's not okay to be sexually provocative, because that makes you a filthy whore, but (2) it's not okay to be sexually demure either, because if you get too content in that role, your man might leave you for someone more enticing. Someone more naturally sensual. Someone with a more voracious sexual appetite. Someone more . . . exotic.

And this is a swell one-two punch, really, because it reinforces racist stereotypes and sexist ones, intertwining both, and it can be flipped right back around for men to wield against women of color: Don't flaunt yourself, don't act so ethnic, why can't you know your place/be gentler/button up more like a white woman, blah blah.

Given all that, it doesn't completely surprise me that some particularly stupid white women would welcome the chance to revel in racist stereotypes like this, because they're getting a stale, crusty, but nonetheless real benefit out of it: They're getting to try on a sexual persona that they believe permits them to act like a whore without actually being labeled a whore. That is precisely why they can't be reminded often enough that they're only escaping the "whore" label by earning the "racist" label instead. They are earning a few hours' sexual liberty on the backs of women of color.

So, deservedly--racists. I'd like to know: Is it worth it now, white female students, to feel so sex-ee, so spicy, so exotic? You know, you're in college; you're supposed to be learning things--including how to recognize and fight against the bullshit standard that says white-heterosexual-female-desire dances like this, but Latina-heterosexual-female-desire dances like this. And that bullshit standard is the stock in trade of Ye Olde Patriarchy, which loves having so many flavors of sexy to choose from.

But here is the thing:

Alcoholism is a disease, or like enough to one to be thought of that way.

If you have dealt with alcoholics at all, you know that sometimes they're total fucking assholes. They're total fucking assholes because they're drunk, and they're drunk because they have this disease, and having that disease isn't their fault, so maybe nonalcoholics shouldn't blame them for being total fucking assholes, but--

--but, when someone is in your face being a total fucking asshole, yelling at you, insulting you, maybe even attempting to get physical with you, you do not see an amorphous blob labeled "ALCOHOLISM." You do not see a cartoon bottle of Jack Daniels before you. You do not see The Big Book. You do not see "a disease." You see a total fucking asshole, in your face and no more than five seconds away from gettin' clocked--by you, because you hate that person just then.

The rage you feel is so deep your bones threaten to snap from it. A disease called "alcoholism" doesn't get drunk and get abusive; a human being does that. Yeah, it's a human being in the throes of a disease that will destroy her eventually, but you don't see that! You see the human being, the person who at the moment you'd almost prefer to see dead.

One thing I will not ever, ever accept is that anyone has a right to shut down the nonalcoholic partner in a relationship with an alcoholic by telling him or her, "Oh, don't get so mad at him/her. She/he has a disease." Listen, the nonalcoholic knows that, and probably a ton better than you do. You don't need to remind them, and you aren't entitled to tell them not to get pissed off, because it's a very pissing-off kind of disease.

And that, I realize, is more or less how I've been feeling about the color divide within feminism lately--like a lot of us need to quit telling women of color to don't get so mad at us, we have a patriarchy. The analogy is flawed in many respects--racism doesn't suddenly sober up and come home with a gift for you, ready to kiss and make up and swear off the hate forever--but it works to illustrate the title. You can't hit what you can't see. I can't hit "alcoholism," not literally, but I can sure as hell hit the jerk trying to drag me down with him, and I have done so, and I'm not sorry, because the jerk hit me first, and hitting him back was unbelievably satisfying.

This is why I say that when Brownfemipower says, "That wasn't the patriarchy," she's right: Some amorphous blob labeled "PATRIARCHY" didn't dress up stupid for a Cinco de Mayo party and have big laughs over racist stereotypes; white women did that. Asking women of color to ignore or excuse that is asking them to ignore whose heels are on their necks. White women, and white feminists especially, we who are supposed to be a little more sensitive to this oppression business, are not entitled to tell women of color to quit being pissed off about their realities, nor are we entitled to "helpfully" correct women of color about what they should really be pissed off about, namely, the patriarchy. You know--"We'll get to your pet issues later! But first--patriarchy."

Look, I don't know Brownfemipower personally, but I know her writing is sharp and I figure from that that she's sharp and so guess what?--I'm pretty sure she knows about patriarchy. I don't think she needs any well-intentioned reminders.

And white feminists know about patriarchy, and we say so all the time, but we don't always acknowledge our own participation in it. Sometimes, I am realizing, I am the drunk fucking asshole. And a breezy "I blame the patriarchy!" isn't going to heal the damage I do when this is so.

By Me Is So Big the Mouth, So My Foot Always Goes In

2007-05-17T01:15:00.000-06:00

Sometimes you gotta get burned to learn.

I made the mistake of offering condolences to Hugo Schwyzer upon learning that someone had called him a simpering, sanctimonious little prick, or somesuch similar. The following then transpired:

* I learned who had said it, and in response to what.

* Hugo's thread was promptly enlivened by a throng of MRA trolls back-patting him, defending Falwell, and insulting everyone else, including me, the moron who'd sort of agreed with Hugo in the first place.

* Deservedly, I felt like an asshole.

And now, a little story:

About ten years ago, my mom was working on a talk for her church, and for whatever reason she solicited my advice on the thing, specifically asking for honest criticism. (The cool thing about my mom is that if she does that, she's game to hear what you have to say. She's not kidding around. You can tell her, I like this, not so hot on that.)

Even so, I hesitated after she'd finished reading it to me, because I had good news and bad news. The good news was, as Mormon talks go, hers was a good one. The bad news was, she'd wound it up with a sentence beginning, "I challenge you, my brothers and sisters . . . ."

Maybe Ms. Jared can back me up on this: "I challenge you" is common parlance in the Mormon church. I don't remember what the challenge in my mother's talk was--it could have been to read the Book of Mormon in its entirety (admittedly a real challenge because, damn, is that book boring; I never finished it, myself), or to do your geneology work (it's important to know who your dead relatives are, so you can baptize them by proxy in case they were heathens), or one of any number of things Mormons are "challenged" to do by their peers every single day of their busy lives until they are finally relieved from duty by sweet, merciful death.

It's exhausting being a Mormon.

Anyway, "I challenge you, my brothers and sisters," is very common Mormon-speak, and I had always, always hated it. I really started hating it when some substitute Sunday school teacher used it long ago in my Sunday school class, a class of seven year old children. He had challenged us to bear our testimonies in Sacrament meeting that Sunday. This is where you get up and thank God for everything and then tell everyone that you know that the Mormon church is True, just like the Spandau Ballet song.

People, I write, but I don't talk. Didn't then, don't much now. And I sure as hell was not equipped at the tender age of seven to get up in front of the entire church and tell everybody how fervently I believed the church was true. The prospect was terrifying.

As it happened, my family ditched out on Sacrament meeting that Sunday, so I was off the hook, theoretically. Practically, however, I could not relax. I got more and more upset, thinking how Brother WhoeverTheHell had challenged me to do something I could no more do than I could fly, and how I'd told him I would do it, and now I wasn't even in Sacrament meeting, which meant I had broken a promise and lied to my Sunday school teacher, and while Mormons aren't the sort to threaten eternal damnation with any real frequency, surely lying to a Sunday school teacher was a wicked, awful thing to do.

When I eventually confessed in tears to my mother that I had promised my Sunday school teacher I'd bear my testimony "as challenged," she snorted and told me he had some nerve scaring little kids like that; now come set the table. Where is your father? He knows we're going to eat in five minutes.

And that was the end of it. But I never forgot it, and I never stopped grinding my teeth whenever I heard some fellow Mormon challenging people.

Because, as I explained to my mom when she asked me what I thought of her talk ("Very good! Love almost all of it! Hate the challenging!"), the problem with "I challenge you" is that it presumes the speaker is in any such position to be challenging people (or as I think of it, tasking them with silly self-improvement assignments so they can never know peace or serenity) to begin with. You see what I mean? Who's Sister SoAndSo to be challenging me? Sister SoAndSo beats her kids with a ruler! Who's Brother SomeGuy to be challenging Brother JelloSalad? Brother SomeGuy keeps a liquor cabinet down the basement. And it's not empty!

My mom saw what I was saying, and she revised the concluding sentence to ix-nay the allenging-chay. But she also said it was interesting to her that I felt that way about it, because she had never even imagined that interpretation of the phrase before.

This makes sense, because my mom LOVES challenges. She'd tell you she doesn't, but she does. I know it sounds all hokey-cliche to say she sees problems as opportunities, and I'm not saying she feels that way about all problems always and ever, but in general, my mom likes challenges. So she had never considered that there might be anything offensive about "I challenge you."

To me, though, there definitely is something deeply offensive about that, and ditto its stronger, more bullying cousin, "Shame on you." Who's anybody to be running around putting shame on people? Especially to be putting it specifically on friends? I can object to that even before we ever get around to the power dynamics, to noting that it's a white Christian male trying to shame all Falwell's favorite targets on a feminist blog.

It was a bad, bad move, one destined to end in being called a sanctimonious prick. And I made a bad, bad move by reacting to only one side of the story.

All comment buttons should read "Think before you post." I have to do better about remembering that.

My Mother

2007-05-13T03:45:00.000-06:00

My mother is a complex person and my relationship with her is not simple. She is not an easy person to write about, and she would not want to be written about in any depth without her consent anyhow.

I can write about my father; indeed I have done. My father and I are simpatico. He is muy amable, un bueno amigo; no solo mi padre, pero un compañero. It is easy to write about my father.

It is not easy to write about my mother, even though I owe her so much.

For example, the privacy thing: That is feminist in its essence: My life is mine. My experience is mine. My body is mine. I own me. Trespassers will be shot on sight.

I remember reading this as a young girl:

"I never thought of that," Tucker said, "but it's true. In my own case, I didn't even have any idea my mother had any ambition to be anything but my mother. She took this temporary job when my father was fired and I thought she couldn't wait to get back to just being my mother again. What she really couldn't wait to do was stop being just a mother. She wants to be something more important."

"I know," Natalia said. "That's neat."

"It is neat," Tucker said, "because she's been stuck being just my mother for fifteen years. I suppose that was important when I was little, but what good would it do her in three more years when I go to college?"

"'Dear Tucker,'" Natalia said, "'This is just your mother writing you again for the third time this week to ask how is my son.'"

"Exactly," Tucker said. "I don't know why I didn't see it before."

"That's why I never want to get married and have children until I'm very old," Natalia said. "The minute you get married and become a parent, you're nobody. You're just somebody's mother."

--and I thought, "Yes, my mother." But my mother couldn't say that. My mother couldn't hint at it. My mother was born in the wrong time. She was able to see that "you're nobody. You're just somebody's mother," was wrong. But she wasn't able to do anything about it.

So the story my mother tells is that she had to go to work when I was still a child, she just had to, because my father didn't earn enough and they would never have been able to buy a house otherwise. She did it for us, she did it for the children.

But my father tells a different story, one of a woman coming to him saying, I can't take this. I can't be shut in with children all day. I am losing my mind. They are driving me crazy. I need more.

There should have been room in the world for my mother to feel whole as a mother and whole as a woman and whole as a human being. There wasn't. There still isn't. Always with the women it's a trade-off. You do this at the cost of your wholeness in that identity, you do that at the cost of your wholeness in this identity.

Whereas a man is a man, always and forever.

I read sometimes the complaints by the younger feminists about the older ones, the dialogue between the third-wavers and the second-wavers. I don't participate in it; I think to myself, it will work itself out. One of the ways I think it will work itself out is, I think the third-wavers will grow into the understanding of why their elders fought what they fought and did what they did.

I say that because when I was young I did not understand why my mother did what she did, said what she said, hid what she hid. Now I know: She was doing the best she could, and when I look at the circumstances in which she grew up, in which she became an adult, and then a mother and then an elder, I cannot fault her anything; in fact, I find a lot to admire. Here are a couple of those things:

* My father, my mother, and I were sitting around watching TV sometime in the mid-90s. Some infotainment channel (by which I mean CNN) was running some piece on Tracey Chapman. My father said something like, why doesn't she do something with herself. She looks so unattractive.

My mother said, calmly, "She looks like a young African-American woman. She looks happy. Who are you to say she looks bad or unattractive? Not everything you find appealing is universal to all people. Not everyone wants what you want."

My father argued with her, but I don't remember the details. I was too busy thinking, "My mother gets it. My small-town-born-and-raised, stereotyped-as-provincial, lifelong-Republican mother gets it. My mother understands that the white beauty standard is bullshit."

* My parents are Mormons. My father is a convert; my mother was born into it. Unsurprisingly, if you pay attention to the religious and don't just write them off as superstitious folk who require a crutch to get through life, my mother who was born into it is more cynical about it. And perhaps cynical is not what I mean, because she still loves it and I do not. More pragmatic, maybe. Less inclined to see it with blinders on.

And when I was living with them in the mid-90s, my mother started signing us up to feed the missionaries once a week on a Sunday. If you are not Mormon then let me explain, briefly, that Mormon missionaries eat on the charity of other Mormons. To have enough to feed extra and not to offer it is a terrible thing. My mother had enough to feed extra and extra on the extra; she signed us up.

Only after many of these meals did she say to me, "I hate when they ask your father about his job."

"Oh?"

"They ask him about his job--they never say, 'And Sister _____, what do you do?' And it's my money, my cooking--it's my work. But they just see the man of the house and they ask, 'Brother _____, what do you do?' Even though they know I work."

"They weren't brought up with women who worked, and they're ignorant."

"I know, I know . . . ."

"But I'm not saying that so you'll feel guilty. You shouldn't feel guilty. You're right. They're wrong."

"Well, no . . . no, if I'd married a hardworking man, if I hadn't married your father, I wouldn't have to work . . . ."

I talked to my mother recently and she was depressed. She was tired, she said, of going to work. I tried to draw her out: Was it the actual work, the actual tasks she was sick of? "No, I'm just tired of getting up and going to work." Okay; was it the people? Was someone being mean to her? "No, I'm just tired of getting up and going to work." I tried my best to offer a point of comparison, to identify using examples from my own life, but this only frustrated her more, and she became more direct: "I just don't want to do it anymore." She sounded just like Peter in Office Space. No, not just like--she sounded like a woman raised with the idea that real women don't work, who nonetheless felt that "women don't work" shortchanged her. She sounded like a woman caught between what she should do (which she didn't like) and what she had once dreamed of doing (which she was now thoroughly sick of).

She sounded, in other words, like a woman feminism failed. And this is the thing: Feminism does fail those women who expect they are going to see results in this lifetime. Feminism doesn't always offer results in this lifetime. And in that sense, and that sense only, it is a little like religion: You don't get the results in this life. You get them in your daughter's life (if you are lucky) or in your granddaughter's life, or, for those of us who are either childless or child-free, you and yours don't get them at all--you have only the vague hope of "future generations."

"Future generations" will benefit because you stood up when you should have sat down. "Future generations" will consider it normal for an analytical, no-nonsense woman like my mother to be CEO of Merrill Lynch; "future generations" will not say, stupidly, "If that's what she wanted, and she had the ability to achieve it, why didn't she?"

Me, I hope "future generations" will understand that the chains you are taught from an early age to wear are the hardest to shake off. Because what my mother wanted and what she chose (you young ones, always with the choice! You have no idea) to do were what the chains of her age permitted her to do--no more, no less. She WANTED, I think, to write, to think, to float ideas, to spend loving hours wandering abstractions--but of none of this did she dare dream. A good Mormon woman puts her family first. And of course she has a family, of course she buries her needs and her wants in a perfect graveyard of service to them, to others, to anyone at all but herself.

She works, she works, she works, and she has nothing to comfort her. Her own daughter is a disappointment to her. Her own daughter lacks her work ethic, lacks her discipline, lacks her swift and clear thinking, lacks her potential, lacks her competence. Her own daughter forgets to write thank-you notes, dodges emails, lets phone calls go to voicemail. Her own daughter has not been able to make things better, and that would be tolerable, maybe, except that all she has done has not made things better either. All the carrots my mother peeled after a long day of work because my brother and I would not eat canned vegetables--for nothing. All the potatoes she mashed because her children complained loudly about being served instant--for nothing. All the Hostess snacks she packed in our lunches, all the treats she made sure we had for the asking--for nothing.

Children she thought would go to Ivy League schools barely graduated their high schools--didn't graduate high school, in one case. Neither of them have college degrees, but she does. She went back to school when she couldn't take being a legal secretary anymore. It was not easy, to say the least, but she did it. She graduated with a 3.9, and she still feels bad it was not a 4.0.

My mother is an amazing woman.

And I live still in a world in which my own mother was never allowed to be a fully-fledged human being. It had nothing to do with reproductive rights, it had nothing to do with abortion, but it had everything to do with the thinking that supports restrictions on either. It had everything to do with my mother being a woman rather than a person.

I can't go back in time and fix this. I can't go back in time and whisper in my mother's ear, "Get out of here. Leave this town and this state and this country. Do not go to college locally; find the most affordable ticket to Europe you can buy and get out of here. Do not have children, do not have a husband, do not tie yourself down until you are 60 or more. LIVE. Live your life, your way. Do not follow the formula you have been given, for it is a death formula; not for every woman, no, but for you, certainly. You were meant for something else."

I can only do what I can to prevent this curse falling upon any other woman. And thanks to all the failures listed above, what I can do is not much.

YouTube Cheers Me Up

2007-05-12T23:18:00.000-06:00

I don't want to hear any complaining, and I for damn sure do not want to hear any "calling out" regarding the "problematic nature" of some of Rock's "questionable statements." Dear I'm-Calling-You-Out Enthusiasts Everywhere: Here is fifty cents; go call yourself out. Real entertaining, listening to your busybody knowitall shit come burbling down the line, isn't it? So, you see.

Readers with further questions on the matter are hereby directed O'Malley-ward. And also from Sheila, because I love it so:

And now - a small tangent about my blog: One of the issues I have with the way some people comment on blogs - not all - SOME (especially those who spend most of their time reading political blogs, and then come to visit me ... they bring that judgey rigid tone HERE - it's like that's the only way they know how to speak, even though I'm posting about Mae West and not the Republican fucking debates - but still, it doesn't matter: they are in the habit of being positional, judgmental, and rigid - where I am so not interested in having that type of black and white conversation - even if I DID post about politics - that tone ruins everything. I don't read blogs who have that tone, and I don't want that spill-over here)

To be fair, people who are consistently judgey and rigid don't last long here. I don't tolerate it, because it ruins my fun. But still: it happens on occasion. Anyway - one of the issues I have with that kind of commenter is that it makes for a boring conversation. It's too positional. As in: Richard Bach = BAD. And people who love Richard Bach = STUPID.

And that misses my point. I'm not interested in having a political-type audience, who can only take positions on things, who are only in opposition, etc. Whose main attitude appears to be: "What in the hell is wrong with everybody else except me?? Why can't everybody be as smart as I am??" You know the type. Yawn. Also: it seems to be that that type of attitude is geared towards ENDING conversation, rather than continuing it. I'm all about the talk, and the conversation. Even with strong opinions - it is a hope of mine that we can still continue to TALK about things. But "what is wrong with everyone? Such and such is BAD and that's final" is not intelligent, and not a continuation of anything. No place for that here.

No place for that here. Especially--oh, ESPECIALLY--if anyone wants to tell me that what I post about is not "compatible with Pandagon." Hello, illiterate motherfucker! This ain't Pandagon.

That means sometimes you are going to get a post that does not call Ayn Rand the worst writer EVAR!!1! I am a mix of a whole lot of things I have read or heard or seen that don't necessarily go, that are not necessarily compatible, with a whole lot of other things I have read or heard or seen, etc. I like this about myself. I like being a tangled-up mess. It is not my job to tidy up this virtual space for you. Accept the messy or fuck off.

Keep it up, and I'm going to start posting about my conversion to Catholicism. We'd all love that, wouldn't we? See, that's what I thought.

I'm Not a Film Critic, I'm Just Crabby

2007-05-08T14:14:00.000-06:00

Spiderman 3: Oh, how I wish I could unsee this movie.

Possible spoilers follow.

Kirsten Dunst was merely so-so in the first movie, a vague background annoyance in the second movie, and the worst thing ever in this movie except for Tobey Maguire and his extra chin. That chin should have received second billing. But Kirsten Dunst has two expressions in this movie: "Silly schoolgirl" and "stricken." THAT'S IT. I can't act for beans, but even I could manage to portray two entire moods for 2-1/2 hours. I might even be able to do it for an entire day. Now I'm tempted to try! People will ask, "What is wrong with you?" and, stricken, I will tell them, "I've got a bad case of the Dunst." Or perhaps I'll give them silly schoolgirl and giggle, "Dunst! I've come down with the Dunst, can you believe it?"

There is singing and dancing in this movie. I like singing and dancing. I like Spiderman. I like garlic. I like peanut butter. BUT NOT TOGETHER.

There is Topher Grace in this movie. Would someone who has some authority on the subject please sit me down and tell me whether Topher Grace can act or not? Because I have no idea. I think he makes a good bad guy, but I'm worried that I only think that because every time I see his face on screen I yearn to kick it. Does it count as being a good movie villain if the sole reason everyone hates you is your highly kickable face? "Starring Topher Grace's face"--that would tell me all I'd need to know.

The most human character in the movie is made of magic sand. I love Thomas Haden Church. I have loved him since he was Lowell on Wings, also known as "the only reason I watched Wings, so shut up." I also love comic book physics.

In the first two movies I thought, "James Franco is playing this for camp, like he's on a soap opera. Knock it off, Franco." Now, I just think he was ahead of the curve. He knew where this was going to end up and he made sure to get there first.

Everyone in this movie acts like they're auditioning for the original version of Melrose Place--the one before Heather Locklear, back when the producers still thought everyone would tune in weekly to see Andrew Shue and Courtney Thorne-Smith deliberate endlessly over whether fucking each other would ruin their friendship. I remember thinking, "You have the most boring friendship ever! Just fuck already!"

Everyone has an opinion about Peter Parker becoming a dick in this movie except me. I don't have an opinion because this is all that went through my brain during those scenes: "Wash that hair. Lose that chin. Wash that hair! THAT CHIN. Hair is beyond washing. Shave it. The chin is showing signs of independent behavior. HAIR! CHIN! Hair exacerbates chin! Rock smashes scissors! Eyes hurt! Brain hurts!--Ugh, I hate when movies show men hitting women. Then again, it's Kirsten Dunst. HIT HER AGAIN, CHIN!"

By the time Venom had Spiderman tied down and Sandman was whaling on him, I was rooting for Sandman. How many direct whole-body blows do you think you could take from a gigantic sandbag? Even if you were blessed with superhuman spider strength, two should be the limit.

Everyone in the audience laughed at inappropriate moments during this movie except me. I was too busy cursing everyone on screen for making me hate their characters and becoming accessories to the murder of my childhood.

I would like to see a cheesy-death-scene-off between William Shatner and James Franco. I'll bet ol' Bill's still got it, but Franco is definitely a contender.

No one in the audience laughed during the Saturday Night Fever-style strut scene. I didn't exactly look around to check but I suspect it's because they were all doing what I was: Wincing so hard my bones ached. I'm still sore today.

I wouldn't piss on Sam Raimi if he were on fire.

The Problem with Condescending to Young Women Is That They Might Figure out You're Condescending to Young Women

2007-05-04T20:33:00.000-06:00

I have really, really tried to hold my virtual tongue about this, but I can't take it anymore:

What’s with the cover, the title printed across a woman’s bare torso?

I’ve taken a lot of shit about the cover—somebody called me a patriarchal whore. But let’s face it, no young woman is going to pick up a book with the woman’s symbol with a fist on it.

O RLY?

I bought this book at the relatively tender age of 22. And while I've written tangentially about that purchasing decision here, I think I should fill you in on some details I left out.

As many of you know, I was brought up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, better known as the Mormon church. For instilling patriarchy in young women, it's a tough church to beat, though certainly there are plenty of contenders. A conversation I had with my Seminary instructor at the age of 16 will suffice to illustrate my point, however:

Me: Brother Searle, can I ask you a question?

That smug asshole, Brother Searle: Shoot!

Me: You said that in the Celestial Kingdom men will have multiple wives.

TSABS: Now, hold on--that's not official Church doctrine. It's just what many elders of the church think likely.

Me: Do you?

TSABS: It seems like this is bothering you, Ilyka. Does it seem unfair to you, perhaps?

Me: Heck yes it does.

TSABS: Well, let me ask you a question: If you're trying to raise chickens, how many roosters do you need?

Me: One.

Me: [stunned horror at realization that Seminary teacher is comparing people to fucking chickens]

TSABS: [smirk to end all smirks]

TSABS: So, you see.

But the thing was, I didn't see. I didn't immediately walk out of the Seminary building vowing never to set foot in it again. I didn't tell That Smug Asshole, Brother Searle, that his analogy was perfect only in the sense that indeed, he WAS a worthless cock.

Even though I left the church not too long after that conversation, a lot of Bad Ideas about how women are, how men are, and how women should be (but never how men should be) stayed in my system for YEARS afterwards as a result of my religious upbringing. You don't shed that skin all at once or overnight. It all bleeds out slowly. Especially if you're me and you're a little dumb-n-naive to begin with.

By 22, I hadn't been a Mormon for years. But I still felt that women should be gentle, kind, nurturing, and all that happy horseshit. I still felt that my relationship problems, which included a fractured nose and a black eye or two for lucky winner me, were 90% my fault.

I still endeavored to be: Pretty, gay (in the lighthearted and jovial sense), accommodating, gracious, generous, empathetic, cheerful, sparkly, fun, and, yes, sexy. I was as in the game as a young woman could be.

And I remember the first time I saw this cover in the bookstore.

--except it didn't say "Search Inside!" on top of it, BUT ANYWAY, MY POINT.

Yes. I saw that cover and I thought something like, "Holy shit, that's harsh. War? There's a war on us? It seems so extreme."

So naturally I had to pick it up to see what this crazy shit was about an undeclared war against American women. I mean, A WAR! Fantastic! Unbelievable! Preposterous!

And I read:

To be a woman in America at the close of the 20th century--what good fortune. That's what we keep hearing, anyway. The barricades have fallen, politicians assure us. Women have "made it," Madison Avenue cheers. Women's fight for equality has "largely been won," Time magazine announces. Enroll at any university, join any law firm, apply for credit at any bank. Women have so many opportunities now, corporate leaders say, that we don't really need equal opportunity policies. Women are so equal now, lawmakers say, that we no longer need an Equal Rights Amendment. Women have "so much," former President Ronald Reagan says, that the White House no longer needs to appoint them to higher office. Even American Express ads are saluting a woman's freedom to charge it. At last, women have received their full citizenship papers.

And yet . . .

Behind this celebration of the American Woman's victory, behind the news, cheerfully and endlessly repeated, that the struggle for women's rights is won, another message flashes. You may be free and equal now, it says to women, but you have never been more miserable.

Holy shit, I thought, that's true. That's what they say, in the women's magazines, on the news, in the movies--

And I kept reading for a couple more pages and then I motherfucking bought that book, me the beat-up ex-Mormon girl, me the mousy little codependent.

And I can tell you that I have changed a great deal since I was 22, and I can cheerfully admit that society also has changed a great deal since I was 22, and I can freely confess as well that I don't hang out with young people, that I'm 37 going on 38 and I spend more time kvetching that I don't get the kids these days than I do asking them what they think, what matters to them, what do they love, what do they hate. I am a grumpy old lady, that's certain. I am out of touch.

But I'm also dead certain that I would have recoiled from the cover of Full Frontal Feminism with a sneer of disgust and a pang of anxiety (my body doesn't look like that!) at 22. Unconsciously, I was searching for something that would help me make sense of my sex, and the last, I mean THE last thing I needed, was the cover of Cosmopolitan and the implied sexual availability in the title. I was already trying to look good for The Man, I was already making myself sexually available to The Man, I was trying so hard, and I was failing, and I was miserable, and I blamed myself, and I didn't know why, if women were so free, life seemed so fucking hard.

I respect Jessica Valenti--no, I admire her. Hugely. And I've got a link on the front page of Feministing, and I couldn't be more humbled-but-proud to have it. She's tons sharper at 28 than I was. Feministing is an invaluable feminist resource, and Jessica doubtless knows her audience better than I do.

But I hate, hate, hate that cover. And I find that defense of it--that young women need to be marketed to in the very same way women's magazines do it--offensive.

By the way, here's the last feminist book I bought, even though it clearly wasn't intended for my generation either. Gosh, I sure hope that defiant-looking young woman on the cover didn't scare off any of her peers.

Grumpy old lady OUT.

UPDATE: Recuerda, las mujeres jóvenes no les gusta el símbolo femenino con un puño:

First off this is my tattoo (Click here) I’m assuming all of you shall know what it is but for those few who read this and don’t It is the symbol for being a feminist.

I knew I wanted a tattoo, I’ve wanted one since I was a child even before I really knew what a tattoo was, I knew that having stuff drawn on my skin intrigued me and I always saw it as having a work of art on you forever. So I basically started counting down the days tell I would turn 18 and finally the day came.

I turned 18 on April 9th [this year--ed.]. Getting my tattoo was one of the bonuses of finally being legal besides being able to vote. (which had me completely giddy with joy and I sent out for my voters registration card a week before my birthday so I would have it as soon as possible) But anyway the tattoo was what I was looking forward to on my birthday.

I won't hotlink the photo of Elizabeth's tattoo--how rude would that be?--but I hope she doesn't mind if I reproduce it here:

Anyway the kids don't like it, that symbol, because it is so old-fashioned and ugly. They would never buy it.

WHAT'S THIS? ANOTHER UPDATE?: Yeah. So, it's like this: What I'd like to tell you, I can't really tell you, because it'd be betraying a confidence and I'm kind of big on my policy of not doing that.

But it's like this: You know how sometimes something will get buzz and media play, and then the person it was about, they are like, "Hey, I was quoted out of context?" And then, if you hold that person in low esteem, you sneer and go, "Sure you were, buddy--sure you were." But if you hold that person in high esteem--well, nowadays, you go search up the complete transcript on the internet and see for yourself. But if you can't do that, you probably think, "Yeah, that does happen," and you believe that person.

Have I mentioned that I hold Jessica Valenti in high esteem?

And there's another factor in this purely hypothetical situation, which is that feminists get this treatment from the media all the time. "Andrea Dworkin (or Catharine Mackinnon) said all sex is rape." "Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood to promote eugenics." You know the drill.

But I have to say, I'm pretty overall pleased with the comments, because the people who come here and drop me a line, they get it. This hasn't turned into a down-with-Jessica referendum. It's turned instead to what I think is the big question: How do we turn this around? How do we fix it so the next blogging feminist to publish a book doesn't get shoved between a rock and a hard place?

That's a discussion worth having.

Quote of the Day

2007-05-04T17:48:00.000-06:00

"Live by the sword, die by the sword, motherfucker."

Yes, I have a childish attachment to the word "motherfucker." And a huge blog-crush on Bitch, Ph.D., the woman who saved my boobs.

Doing Nothing

2007-05-04T03:48:00.000-06:00

I cannot call myself an activist. I never get off my ass if I can possibly help it. I never lift a delicate lady-like finger unless it's absolutely necessary, that is, unless I am out of cigarettes. Or coffee. Which reminds me, we only have one more pot's worth of coffee in the house!

Oh, damn. See? Tomorrow I am going to have to lift a finger. Already I am depressed just thinking about it.

So I suck at doing things (blogging doesn't count). But I was thinking about what motivates people to do or not do things and I was thinking, particularly, about how you get people to do things when the problem seems--no, is--really, really bad.

This weird thing happens sometimes at Pandagon: Someone will write a post about a problem and some commenter, sooner or later, will basically show up and say, "Quit telling me about this problem." Lest anyone think I am bashing a gig I love here, let me add that this isn't most commenters or even a good handful of 'em. But there are always one or two. Sometimes they say it nicely. Other times it's just "Chris Clark suxx." I had one commenter complain that I had merely lectured him about a problem (that he already knew all about, thank you!) without providing any ideas for solutions, and he did it in a post where I'd linked MULTIPLE (I hate this phrase) "action items" for solution-oriented hipsters like, you know, himself, to pursue if he desired. This proves that some people still (1) don't read and (2) love shooting the messenger.

What else is new.

But the anger surprises me. And I want to add that I think the other side to that coin, that "Quit Bumming Me Out with This Depressing Shit" coin, is, "Why Do You Post About Such Superficial/Trivial Stuff When Serious Problem No. 11,287 Is So Much More Important?" Let's clear that up right now: Because no one is ON all the time. No one. I don't care if you're scheduled for 37 super-important activist events in your 24-hour day--you're not on all the time. Sometimes, but especially if you're me, you are thinking about whether anything can be done to save Lindsay Lohan from herself, and does it seem sometimes like she doesn't really appreciate being a natural redhead? Because it seems like that sometimes to me. And then sometimes you're thinking about a loved one or a pet. Sometimes you're thinking about nothing in particular and sometimes you're thinking about nothing at all.

And sometimes you want people to think about a specific thing and you want to do your little bit to get them there, maybe even get them from thinking about it to doing something about it. Luckily, I can tell you all about how to do this, because I am a highly regarded and influential person.

No, I have no idea. But I think from reading some of these angry comments--you know, it's true: You learn as much from your critics as your fans. Doesn't mean I don't want to kick the critics in the pants on a daily basis, but I have to grudgingly acknowledge that they serve a good purpose sometimes.

(Please skip the rest of this post because it is all things everyone else already knows but I am just figuring out now. So it's interesting to me, but probably not to you.)

The critics seem to go gunning for the messenger when:

People feel they cannot contribute effectively to solving the problem.

There's a mentality I run across that's more common to left-leaning blogs than right-leaning ones, and it's this weird sort of Jesus mentality that says, people shouldn't do things because they enjoy them, they should do things because they're the right things to do.

(Remind me to write that post about how I still like Ayn Rand and I am probably never going to stop, and then remind me that I should write that post because I don't have enough people quarreling with me in my life; I need more.)

Anyway, that's a bullshit mentality and Rand did a good job of explaining why, but I don't even need Rand for this. You just have to look at the Great Blogroll Purge of 2007 to see it. And what you see is that an awful lot of people with impeccable leftist credentials went waaaaayyy Howard Roark when it was suggested to them that they owed anyone a blogroll link--that they should link smaller blogs because it was The Right Thing To Do.

"You mean I blog for some reason besides my own pleasure? I blog to help other bloggers? I have to put aside my own preferences for the greater good of the lefty blogging community? Well! That does it. I'm dynamiting this blog."

Sure, I'm exaggerating, but not by that much.

People aren't altruists by nature and, bad news here, they're never going to be. You can guilt 'em temporarily; you can nag one or two suckers into linking your small-but-deserving blog on their blogrolls. But most people want to own their efforts and they want to be rewarded for those efforts because they earned them, not because someone inspired them with the importance of blah-blah-community.

That's why the whole blogging-as-meritocracy thing won't die, even though there are times and situations in which it should, even though blogging clearly ISN'T a pure meritocracy: Because telling people "you didn't get here through merit; you got here through the grace of the almighty power law" devalues their work. So when you point out that blogging isn't a meritocracy, some douchebag like Kos gets all offended because he thinks you're telling him his work isn't all that--which it isn't, if you ask me, but let's not derail.

The point is, people want some fucking appreciation, they want to feel they've earned it justly, and where I agree with Rand still is that this is not a bad thing, and certainly nothing to run around trying to shame people out of. If you're gonna do that, just put your fundie clothes on and go whole hog and renounce all sin (except the sin you commit, because of course that is different). Don't go screaming at people that they should care about truth and justice. People already know this, that they should care about truth and justice! Now what they would very, very much like is to believe that their caring about truth and justice (1) will make one fuck of a difference and, yes, (2) will make them feel good.

People like to feel good and hate to feel bad. This is not difficult.

People are intimidated by the enormity or pervasiveness of the problem

Goes hand in hand with the one above, but--well, this is a perfect example:

"Oh, dear," you say, "That's ten minutes long." Let's see: Shall I lecture you that you should care and watch it anyway because it's the right thing to do? No, I think I won't do that. I think I'll say: Skip the first 3 minutes, or just slide the little scroller until a helicopter appears. If you skip to 5 minutes in I won't tell anybody, but definitely watch what happens when the people do as they're told by the riot police, and begin leaving MacArthur Park.

The police, you may note, keep advancing, and firing. That black line just keeps going, and going, and going, well out of the park, several blocks away from the park, meeting no real resistance, but firing at people all the same. In the Soviet Union? No. Here.

This is a despair-inducing, overwhelming problem, and I don't know about you, but I'll tell you what I'd much rather do with my time than contemplate this problem: I'd rather read TBogg's account of Ann Althouse's account of the Republican debates. That's some funny fucking shit! I love how she can scarcely be assed to name any of the participants.

What would I do without Ann Althouse? What would any of us do? If she didn't exist, someone would have to invent her.

So a problem being too big becomes a problem in itself: What the fuck do you do against riot police? Especially riot police going after people who weren't rioting in the first place? I mean, you can hardly decide to start rioting then:

"We were just hanging out, peaceful-like, but then you pigs had to show up in your riot gear with the tear gas--I think NOW we're gonna riot."

It sounds real noble, but you're not running towards a rubber bullet any more than I am. A handful of people might, but that handful of people, you know what's going to become of them. They're going to jail, the all-star package with special super-fun bonus FREE injuries besides.

Although, I have it on perfectly good, secondhand authority from some clown calling himself Jack Dunphy that--

. . . there are no broken bones or bleeding head gashes among the injuries, suggesting that the police might have been more retrained in their tactics than their critics are alleging

--so it's okay, and we should thank God that those brave, under-appreciated officers showed the restraint that they did (however did they manage it in the face of such horrific peaceful assembly? Truly Our Lord was with them that day), and graciously refrained from breaking bones or splitting any skulls open with an axe.

You see what I mean? It's overwhelming. But if I say it's overwhelmingly horrible, I'm the bad American, I'm the anti-authoritarian unpatriotic lefty loon; whereas if Dunphy writes that the press owes the LAPD hugs and kisses for not actually bashing any heads in, he gets whatever they're paying not-very-good freelancers at the National Review these days. Best of all, hardly anyone with any influence will stand up and say, "Great hairy goat balls, this Dunphy's a psychopath." Which you'd have to be, to suggest this nakedly that if people don't shut their complaining pieholes, next time they're gonna get worse. And, you're welcome, Angelenos!

A sternly-worded (but eminently civil) letter to William Bratton, or the LA Times, or your Congressional representatives, seems an anemic response, but what the hell else can you do? Call a general strike? Look: I'm not losing my job for truth and justice. I like eating and sleeping with a roof over my head and things of that nature. I can hold a red bell pepper in my hand; I can feel that I'm not sleeping in my car. Truth-n-justice, well, it does give me warm fuzzies and all, but if I want warm fuzzies I should probably mention that I'm also a huge fan of electricity, which powers this, which delivers way warmer fuzzies, if you know what I'm saying. Anyway electricity costs money, and for that I need a job, so I'll be clocking in as usual on August 1. Sorry.

I am sort of putting on a selfish-asshole persona here; I hope that's apparent but, you know, in case it isn't, there's your disclaimer. My points are (1) that persona is not entirely fabricated and (2) we're all both good people and selfish assholes, sometimes even at the same time. What I am trying to figure out is how to fix it so the good people win and the assholes lose, and that is not easy when the assholes are in riot gear, and the good people are in the park with their kids, and some piece of scratch paper we used to call "The Constitution" is apparently being used to make spitballs or something.

But I think the trick is to try to break the big problem down into several small ones because otherwise . . . otherwise, the good people feel helpless, and then they do nothing, because what's the point. And then, well. Like a broken bone with that tear gas? We're offering a discount, 2 for 1, on special ~~this week only~~ forever.

People think the proposed solution is imperfect.

Taken to extremes, all proposed solutions are imperfect; any solution less than "all creatures on earth have enough to eat, enjoy perfect health, live exactly as long as they want to (including forever) and die exactly when and how they'd like to (including never), and get along splendidly with each other, and spend every waking moment blissfully happy," is imperfect.

Who gives a fuck? If you don't like solution A, by all means, say so, but then one hopes you have somewhere in your back pocket a solution B or C or X or Q or whatever that is not completely at cross-purposes to A. Unless A sucks, of course; but I still think it's important to say something besides, "A sucks." It's fun to sit around bitching about A, and how it sucks, and how much it sucks, and what's wrong with the people who proposed it in the first place anyhow, do they suck too? But it doesn't get anything happening.

Naturally, I say all this as someone who loves to sit around complaining about how much things suck. What else can I say? It beats lifting a delicate, lady-like finger.

Yes!

2007-04-27T16:28:00.000-06:00

Someone just got here via a search for "Michael Chiarello asshole."

I knew it wasn't just me. I KNEW it.

Perdone, por favor, mi español pobre

2007-04-27T14:35:00.000-06:00

--but even I can make out the title, and so far as I can understand the rest of the piece, I'd say CalheR gets it. Contrasting coverage of the Austin clinic bomb attempt by American feminist bloggers with the Houston Chronicle's report, s/he notes:

La noticia completa tiene solo dos párrafos más, que he preferido no traducir porque tampoco dicen nada nuevo. Id allí y buscad la palabra terrorista, veréis como no aparece. Ni atentado. Ni siquiera la bomba era tal cosa: era un dispositivo capaz de causar lesiones o la muerte. ¡Qué cosa tan inofensiva! ¡Seguro que lo han hecho sin querer!

En fin. Imaginaros que, en lugar de ser ese mismo dispositivo puesto por un grupo pro-vida en una clínica abortiva, lo hubiera sido por un grupo pro-Alá en un colegio o en un hospital.

Very, very, VERY roughly en inglés:

The complete [Houston Chronicle] article has only 2 more paragraphs, which I have declined to reproduce as they don't add anything new either. If you go and you look for the word "terrorist," you will see it doesn't appear. Nor "attack." Not even the bomb is such a thing; it is "a device capable of causing injury or death." What an inoffensive thing! Surely it was made without that intent!

In conclusion: Imagine that, instead of the same device being put by a pro-life group in an abortion clinic, it had been put by a fundamentalist Muslim group in a school or a hospital. Yes, surely the narration of the event would have been very different.

What's the Spanish for "heh indeed?"

Into the Bloglines you go, Mentiras Piadosas, y gracias.

In Which I Confess My Heretofore Secret Adoration

2007-04-27T00:53:00.000-06:00

Dearest Hilzoy,

I love you. I love you passionately enough to bear your United States citizens with full legal rights.

Love (and a nice rasher of crispy bacon),

Ilyka

This is What Erasure Looks Like, Or: That's One Way to Title This Photo, I Suppose

2007-04-26T03:34:00.000-06:00

Perhaps it's just an artifact or a trick of the light, but I'm seeing ~~someone~~ something else in this photo besides wood floors.

It's just me, right? I need glasses, I bet.

She Did This Just to Show Me Up

2007-04-26T02:47:00.000-06:00

Lauren triumphs over ADD; alas, I cannot say the same.

The box in the background of the photo above is, of course, filled with Christmas cards I never sent last year. But you see, I've got them right there, where I can see them, so this year, this is going to be my year. Things are going to change, I can feel it.

What?

Lie to Me, Internet Quiz

2007-04-25T20:28:00.000-06:00

Lie shamelessly, lie often!

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

It's all so flattering, almost as if they'd designed it that way!

Some of this stuff is true. I do like to be alone and I do like to have my way, making me a barrel of JOY JOY JOY to live with, let me tell you. Or let the boyfriend tell you. In fact I will let him tell you, just as soon as I unchain him from the bedpost and permit him to speak again.

But I do NOT have an eye for fine detail, which is how I wound up with a duvet cover that doesn't match the bedskirt, and did I tell you about the bathroom towels? The bathroom towels that don't match either because I could not tell the difference, in the bright lights of the store, between "terracotta" and "deep terracotta?" I am blind to detail. An imbecile. A walking fashion-don't.

Hey, listen: No one tell Chris Clarke about this quiz, okay? Because one of the choices for "That's Gross" is [whispering] a photo of a dude's hairy back and, well, you know how he gets about that. It is currently the most popular choice in the category of grossness, beating even the cigarette photo. But come on, Steroid Steve up there is much more disgusting than either of those choices. Everyone knows this; I don't know why they're all pretending they don't.

(Via beansbeans.)

Negative for Posting, Commenting, or Answering Email. Positive for Working a Whole Bunch.

2007-04-25T16:25:00.000-06:00

I have been working a lot. Consequently I have developed a long shit list. Members of this list include:

All physical therapists: Rival only surgeons for mumbling and dictating reports with mouths full of food. Appear to increase, rather than relieve, pain in at least half their patients. Bore me senseless. Shut up, physical therapists.

All rheumatologists: I get that rheumatology is unbelievably complicated, but MUST every chart note exceed 15 minutes in yakety-yak time? Oh, must it really? You called in a medication refill, Dr. Rheumy. That should be one minute--two minutes, tops, if you also want to note a few lab results while you've got me on the line. Shut up, rheumatologists.

All podiatrists without exception everywhere and always amen, amen: Oh my stars and garters, will you all just shut up about the marvels of custom orthotics already. Custom orthotics bore me. Feet bore me. YOU bore me. Shut up, podiatrists.

Specialties so far remaining in my good graces: Neurology, Oncology, and a handful of internists but by no means most of them, or even half of them. This is just my personal experience, but it seems to me* as though neurology and oncology attract some brusque, no-nonsense personalities and damnit, as a transcriptionist, that is what I want. In fact it is what I generally want as a patient, too, but I don't think I'm the rule there and I imagine most people are all complaining that their neurologists and oncologists are so cold and clinical, no bedside manner at all. GOOD, I say. If I suddenly develop multiple sclerosis I don't want bedside manner. I want a cold clinical fish who won't mistakenly diagnose me with Parkinson's or epilepsy or Lou Gehrig's or what have you.

Do not even start me on the OB/GYNs, whose bedside manners stink more than not anyhow, but especially when they're done up Hollywood-fashion.

*Translation: "Don't show up here with a link to an August 2005 survey you searched up to demonstrate that, actually, most neurologists and oncologists are the swellest, swingingest, heppest, most personable people around, because I don't give a fuck and I don't want to hear it and if I could be bothered to check in with this blog more regularly, I would even delete that comment on the grounds that this blog is not the Monty Python Argument Clinc** and I find the tendency of people on the internet to nitpick every declarative statement, however qualified, tempered, and disclaimer-laden it may be, unbearably tedious."

**Why, yes, of course I will delete you for quoting from the Argument Clinic sketch. Depend upon it.

Incommunicado

2007-04-16T00:20:00.000-06:00

Hey, what's this? Oh, yeah: I have a blog! I should post in it or something, huh?

I had a really good conversation with my mother this evening. One of the reasons you couldn't pay me to go back to being a teenager (along with the acne, the hormones, the unrequited love, the ridiculous curfew, and the backstabbing faux friends) is that when I was younger I could not relate to my mother at all. As far as I was concerned, my mother was just one big walking list of What Not To Do When You Grow Up. And my job was to point out every single one of those items on that list to her every second of every day. Item One: Jiminy Christmas, the house is clean enough. Put the vacuum away.

Of course, now that I'm older and posting pictures of my yellowed bathroom grout on the internet it occurs to me that, hey! If you clean halfway decently once a week, you never get to yellowed grout in the first place. Maybe mom had a point all those years.

We were not talking about housecleaning tonight, though. We were talking about people who don't communicate. That is, we were talking about my boyfriend's family and my mother's family.

"Every time I think the (mother's maiden name)'s are bad about not communicating," I told her, "I just take a look at the boyfriend's family. They're worse."

"Oh, I know," my mother said. "I don't know how I dealt with it all those years. I don't want to think what I might have been like if I'd stayed there. You can't say anything! No one ever expresses any emotion--"

"Emotion, hell," I said, "The boyfriend's family won't even deal in facts if the facts are in any way unpleasant."

"Yes! What causes that?" my mother asked. I think she was mostly asking herself, but I'm a bigmouth, so I jumped right in with my pet theory.

"I honestly think it's some Midwestern farming family thing handed down through generations of Scandinavians and Germans," I replied, because I love blaming everything on ethnicity, provided it's some ethnicity I share in myself. It's so convenient, and at least half the time you're right. My mother's family is Scandinavian (and English, another ethnic group famous for forthrightness and high comfort levels with messy emotional matters). My boyfriend's family is German and Irish, but it's the German that predominates. I know this because I have never succeeding in enjoying a drink with any of them, save of course my boyfriend, who seems to have got all the Irish and nearly none of the German.

"But I mean, you can't even say stuff that's harmless, or I mean harmless to normal people, for fear it might hurt cousin so-and-so's feelings," I continued.

"Every time I go back there I get in trouble," my mother said, referring to her mother's house. "I mean every time, because of course your father, you know he just says whatever's on his mind, and then since I've been living with him, I've adapted to his ways, and so I'm--I'm not used to covering up anymore, either, and I forget myself and say what I think, and then everyone else is horrified."

"And it's always over something trivial. At least, with Mark's family. Stuff that wouldn't bother anyone else, but if you say it, it's 'Oh dear oh dear I just don't know--'"

"Just saying what you'd like to eat is a crime," my mother agreed.

We agreed that my father's family does communication better. The funny thing is I think this is one of the few times I have heard my mother come right out and say, "Your father's family has it right." My father's family is working-class Irish and Spanish. Between my grandfather the Spic and my grandmother the Mick, who had time to fuss over niceties? Who had time to obsess over what is and is not "nice to say?" They both worked like dogs. My father has no conception of "stay-at-home mom." He didn't grow up with one.

But because of this cut-to-the-chase communication style, when my grandmother says, "Can I fix you something? How 'bout an English (muffin)? It'd take me just a minute to fix you a nice English," you know she means it. She isn't going to fix you an English muffin and then sneak off to the deck to carp to your aunt that you're so tiring, the way you keep her running in the kitchen all the time, and why couldn't you have just been polite and declined the English muffin, the way the Nice People are brought up to do?

My dad's mom isn't going to do that to you. She's going to fix you a nice English muffin, and beam when you tell her it's good. Which you will do, because it will be awesome.

But that is exactly what my mother's mother would do--plus, bonus, the English muffin would be horrible, all not toasted enough and scarcely dabbled with ye-gods-margarine--and that is why every question my maternal grandmother asks catches you off-guard, turns you to jelly while you ponder every potential (negative) ramification of your answer.

Too many people I tell this to say "Oh not me, not me. I'd show her." Yeah? Bet me, motherfucker. I've seen strong people reduced to infants around my grandmother, even now, even these days, when she's on so many prescription narcotics it's a wonder she wakes up most mornings. Me? I "uh" and "um" around my mother's family a lot, stalling for time, trying to choose the least offensive answer--the nicest answer. They probably think I can't speak so good English.

"Well, of course, it's very sad, but I suppose it isn't Ilyka's fault, bless her poor heart. Her mother did marry a Spanish man."

Enough of them; it's your turn. What's your comfort zone of honesty in communication? Did you grow up with my mother's family, or my father's, or something in-between? I know my background and my preference; what's yours?

Instances in Which I Am Just Barely Able to Overlook Sexism

2007-04-02T04:33:00.000-06:00

Okay: In my perfect world, Snoop would not describe his female lawyer as "riding for her pimp." She went to law school and passed the bar, Snoop; furthermore, she fought your battle on Bill O'Reilly's show while you did whatever it is you do on your off hours. Show some respect.

We do not live in my perfect world, however, so I'll take what I can get.

And rock on, Lauren Lake.

(Via.)

A Note About Scheduling

2007-03-30T16:56:00.000-06:00

As most of my long-time readers know, I work nights--Tuesday through Saturday, 6 p.m. Eastern to 2:00 a.m. the following morning. This is Thing One to recall when you're wondering why I didn't participate in Blog Against This, That, or the Other Day, or why I didn't cover a topic close to your heart, even though just last week I wrote like all this stuff about a topic that interested me.

Thing Two to recall, which many of you may not know, is that I'm on a schedule at Pandagon. My posting slot is 2:00 p.m. Eastern. If you want me to link to something or write about something there, I need, I regret to say, at least 24 hours' notice.

I used to write just after waking up, before logging in for work (again: 6:00 p.m. Eastern, 4:00 p.m. my time), but that doesn't work with a noon-my-time "deadline." I just don't get up that early, and you wouldn't either if you hadn't even clocked out until midnight, on the nights you weren't working overtime.

So the only way I've found to make my posting slot is to write after I finish work, in the middle of the damn night. This works out to be kind of cool because then, by the time I get up the next day, it's all posted and usually already getting good comments. It's a fun way to start the day.

But it does mean I need to know about Your Very Special and Super-Important Blogger Action Alert the night before if you want to see it from me at Pandagon (of course, you can always try some of the other bloggers there, who have different time slots). And I don't mean to sound bitchy, but I really, really need people to grow up and deal with the fact that I'm doing this for free and for fun, and to quit trying to run the guilt trip on me because they've got some fucked-up idea in their heads that I'm just lazing around all day, stuffing bon-bons into my perfectly made-up face with my immaculately manicured fingers, moaning about how oppressive my White Feminist Lifestyle(TM) is.

In other words: I am going to be taking my own advice more often. Get ready to hear a lot more "no's" from me if you can't even acknowledge the constraints I'm under, as outlined above.

Treat me with a little respect and understanding and I'll happily return the favor. It's that simple.

I Am Tired of my Youth Coming Back to Haunt Me

2007-03-28T04:13:00.000-06:00

In the course of researching an entirely different post, a post in which I lead off with an almost irrelevant tangent (so I should say, in the course of researching my irrelevant tangent) I ran across Google images of an old classmate of mine from Joaquin Miller Junior High School, Cupertino School District, 1980-1981.

He is an actor now, fairly famous, and I used to sit catty-corner from him in seventh grade graphic arts, and I hated him, skin to bone and back on up again. No role I have seen him in since, no interview I have read of his, has done a whole lot to change my mind about my initial preteen character assessment of him.

Fuck you, Sharon Beckhart. You were cute, but there were cuter in your peer group who were neither assholes nor rank anti-Semites.

Not like you.

UPDATE: This is what I was working on. It's garnering fairly good discussion, although of course there's a troll. There's always a troll, isn't there?

Spoiler Alert

2007-03-24T21:48:00.000-06:00

The Titanic? It sinks.

UPDATE: We just watched The Departed a couple days ago. Had I but known this existed, I could have watched it instead, and I'd have those hours of my life back.

Guaranteed argument-starter: King Missile to the contrary, Martin Scorsese does NOT make the best fucking films. Discuss.