My Amusement Park

Cabin Fever

2006-10-23T20:41:00.000-04:00

Leave it to Henry Louis Gates to resurrect Uncle Tom's Cabin, one of my favorite all-time novels, from the swamp of denigration.

His essay and Edward Rothstein's on the new Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin for which I've been waiting and over which I'm now salivating.

The blurb:

Declared worthless and dehumanizing by James Baldwin in 1949, Uncle Tom's Cabin has lacked literary credibility for fifty years. Now, in a ringing refutation of Baldwin, Henry Louis Gates Jr. demonstrates the literary transcendence of Harriet Beecher Stowe's masterpiece. Uncle Tom's Cabin, first published in 1852, galvanized the American public as no other work of fiction has ever done. The editors animate pre-Civil War life with rich insights into the lives of slaves, abolitionists, and the American reading public. Examining the lingering effects of the novel, they provide new insights into emerging race-relation, women's, gay, and gender issues. With reproductions of rare prints, posters, and photographs, this book is also one of the most thorough anthologies of Uncle Tom images up to the present day. 2-color throughout; 32 pages of color illustrations, 150 black-and-white illustrations.

[Gates works with Hollis Robbins on the project (they also worked together on a great book of essays on Hannah Crafts's The Bondswoman's Narrative.]

Oh, and he's giving a lecture on his work with the text at the NYPL on Wed, Nov 26!

It's Official: I'm Not A Feminist

2006-10-14T17:45:00.000-04:00

For a long time, I really thought I should keep identifying as a "feminist", even when I hated everything I saw of feminism, as a sort of rehabilitation of the term, or a claiming of it, or something.

But now I wonder: when I say I'm a feminist, am I actually just dredging up a bunch of crap I don't want spread around. So, for the moment, I'm avoiding it.

I don't want to link to the blogs that are making me furious right now, so I won't. Suffice it to say, I'm sick of the thoughtlessness, the pettiness, the racism, and classism that go unacknowledged and/or willfully misunderstood. I'm sick of the hypocrisy and the bizarre sense of ownership. I'm exhausted by the mind-numbing sameness and, frankly, intellectual emptiness, of most "feminist" discussion.

I could discuss the burqa thing or the disturbing consideration of the "choice to wax" or the stupid Playboy-Pandagon thing, but all of those have been tackled with aplomb by bloggers I respect. I want to talk, briefly, about the whole "Amp's a sell-out!" controversy.

I have a few things to say about that.

1. Unless it is actually your blog, not just a place you enjoy commenting, then it's not your blog. All these ideas around the blogosphere about how it's a blog propreitor's duty to protect people from stuff they don't like - grow the fuck up, people. I've seen it in the past when someone didn't immediately ban someone who was an anti-feminist. And now this. Amp doesn't owe you anything. You should feel lucky that he entertains your complaints at the frequency he does.
2. Maia was awesome in admitting how she'd done something for money that she didn't support politically. If you have not, you must be pretty wealthy or ascetic. It's a basic precept of capitalism that we all become complicit in our own oppression. It reminds me of a "real life" feminist group I was involved in (back in my youth) wherein one member wanted another member out because that member worked at Loreal cosmetics. Again: grow the fuck up, people.
3. If you can't handle running in into porn, you may want to get off the internet. Because I don't think you'll like it much. The other option is to set your homepage to The Margins and never, NEVER click a link or check your email again. (I'm not saying you can't critique what you see.)

(Right about now, Amp is going, "Why did EL jump to my defense!? Shut up, EL!" :) )

Recently, a certain someone called the burqa issue a "flame war". Why? Because the uproar over something like Amp's selling his domain name, sadly, matches the intensity of people's critique of the appropriation of a burqa. Whether your waxing appointment is grounds for revocation of your feminist card warrants as much fevered commenting as the class considerations of a $40 wax. Seriously fucked-up priorities. So nothing looks bigger or more important than a petty "flame war".

Okay, so am I really "not a feminist"? I don't know if I'm quite ready to say that because I don't want feminism, a movement to which I've devoted quite a lot of time and energy, to be totally stupid. But ... let's just say that, for the first time, I'm beginning to think that shedding the label wouldn't be much of a loss to me.

On the new Walter Benn Michaels book

2006-10-12T19:28:00.000-04:00

I'll admit freely that I dearly love his Our America and have been known to use it to my own scholarly ends more than a little, but I have not yet read The Trouble with Diversity though everyone is talking about it.

If you're curious, as I am, there's discussion everywhere. First, you may want to check out his essay in The Prospect, starting as it does with that famous literary exchange:

“The rich are different from you and me” is a famous remark supposedly made by F. Scott Fitzgerald to Ernest Hemingway, although what made it famous -- or at least made Hemingway famously repeat it -- was not the remark itself but Hemingway’s reply: “Yes, they have more money.” In other words, to Hemingway, the rich really aren’t very different from you and me. Fitzgerald’s mistake, he thought, was that he mythologized or sentimentalized the rich, treating them as if they were a different kind of person instead of the same kind of person with more money. It was as if, according to Fitzgerald, what made rich people different was not what they had -- their money -- but what they were, “a special glamorous race.”

Then, go enjoy the tangled morass of debate:

Alan Wolfe reviews it and so does Scott McLemee, Jen Chau of Racialicious and her commenters put the jacket thesis through the paces, Prometheus 6 reads more WBM, Kevin Drum is sympathetic to WBM's argument, as is 11D, while University Diaries tallies style points (not without depth), and Discriminations's John Rosenberg talks multiculturalism.

But best of all is The Valve's book event on it, with luminaries galore, including Walter Benn Michaels himself. And Russell Arben Fox of In Medias Res responds to The Valve's series.

Questioning Feminism/Feminist Blogging/Feminist Activism?

2006-10-12T15:50:00.000-04:00

This whole burqa controversy: I've refrained from commenting ONLY because I didn't think I had anything new to say, beyond what bfp and Blackamazon and Bitch and AlBustaania and belledame have said, rather brilliantly,
but I find it's eating me up.

zp commented on my Five for Feminism post:

This list makes me hate feminism. Or makes feminism look a lot like personal privileges accrued to white women. Maybe it's the question - what feminism did for ME that structures it this way, but still. What else is new?

I am wondering more and more whether identifying with and even associating with (particular, not general) other feminists is really kosher anymore. I think my way of being "feminist" is actually, in many ways, counter to what the word even means anymore.

What I've been noticing is how few feminist bloggers of color seem to be reaping the blog rewards. Like, for example, being invited to dine with former presidents or current candidates. Like, for example, getting book deals. Like, for example, getting on the *HOT* conference calls. Like, for example, getting invited to do articles for the MSM. Some of the white feminist bloggers who do get these invitations try to speak to issues for women of color (which is, 9 times out of 10 a total disaster, but not always) but women of color never seem to get the invites. (For that matter, white women who focus on issues of race rather than going over and over whether the Mommy Wars was a myth or the inconceivably distinct-but-usable oppression of women of color abroad, don't seem to get much play either.)

A bunch of white folks were furious awhile back because Blackademic's Nubian/Kortney was getting "too much attention". I think that a lot of white bloggers linked to her as a sort of shorthand - here's the "black opinion" on that so I don't have to dig deeper, I'll just keep her on the blogroll - but it's not like you see her in the mainstream media. She hasn't been recruited outside the blogosphere. Nor have very many other women of color.

I think there are a lot of white feminists out there who see the inclusion of women of color in "their" movement as a way of backing up their own ideas and projects. I think it's easy to think that way because tokenism is alive and well and, I think, trained. That's why the big feminist organizations hire overqualified woman of color after overqualified woman of color to fill entry-level admin positions. Somehow their work is legitimized by the presence of women of color, but too many might tip the balance, and no one, NO ONE, is willing to sacrifice a shred of their own career for what they claim are their politics. (This happens in academia too.)

A lot of these white feminist bloggers who parlay their blogging into mainstream (read: paying!) careers aren't saying anything you haven't heard a million damned times in Women's Studies classes or, hell, in the rest of the world. If they were, if I felt that some of these women were saying something that only they could say, that was a new idea, I don't think it would bug me as much. But it seems like the ones who get "picked up" and "invited" are not saying anything nearly as interesting as, say, bfp. This isn't sucking up or pulling for my blog-clique: Bfp should be the one getting famous. Instead, it's a lot of the usual suspects shoring up their own importance with arguments originated by women of color or bastardized versions of those arguments.

I think you have to put your money, quite literally, where your mouth is. If you're on and on about feminists of color getting their say, then maybe you should suggest their invitation instead of your own.

And, you know, we've had Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem before. I don't understand why we would want to find young versions of them, who just happened to have been exposed to riot grrl and Chandra Mohanty.

Writing that Five for Feminism thing made me really think about how much feminism has done for me, me, ME and whether I think that really made the world a particularly better place. Certainly, specific things that are associated with feminism might have helped, but what if a single issue group had done that work with an eye toward inclusivity? What if feminist "coalitions" are, in fact, a way of silencing certain ideas in favor of tired old ones?

Seeing people defend themselves on this burqa thing doesn't seem different even though it's gross; it seems like the usual. And it makes me wonder. I mean, I understand that white folks are never going to be perfect, but how many times must we be told not to appropriate images like the burqa for our own agendas? It reminds me of last year when I read about white women protesting a women-of-color-only production of The Vagina Monologues- WTF? Why? What the hell kind of ethical platform do you think you're standing on? Who is helped by that protest? Come on!

It's sad how white feminists are always, always, always gesturing toward women of color, religious women, queer women, poor women, women of the global south, etc, and this has been true for seriously 30 years, and STILL this crap is going on. Obviously, some people don't want to learn anything. I think we all know why.

For New Yorkers' Eyes Only

2006-10-12T15:19:00.000-04:00

Not really, but the rest of you might not care much.

1. Yesterday, this plane crash thing seemed like a big deal. I was very freaked out for a couple of hours. But now I feel like kind of a doofus for being that vulnerable to it. I mean, accidents happen! They happen everywhere. They're tragic of course, but they're not 9/11 all over again. But I was a basketcase. I wonder if I'll ever stop losing it when these things pop up.

2. Have you seen Time Out NY's list of the 50 best blocks in NYC? It's weird because, even though I don't think my block is remotely worthy of inclusion, I now feel insulted because it didn't rank. Also, I think they were trying really hard not to overrepresent Park Slope and the West Village and Harlem, which is fine, but a little ... well, I'm skeptical.

3. Finally, I know it could be better, but is there anything bad about this proposal? Because I feel like I may be missing something.

Blogging Battlestar

2006-10-12T14:55:00.000-04:00

If you're obsessed as I am, here's a bit of a link farm on the topic.

archive: s0metim3s has it's own link farm so check that first.

Next, check out Dustdaughter's post (with a long comment by yours truly).

Now, this excites me:

Yes, on the season opener of Veronica Mars, she is introduced to the "swearing of the future" and, frakkin' hell, she uses it! But wait, there's more! In the second episode, she uses it again. Could "frak" be a permanent addition to Ms. Mars' vocabulary?

Courtesy of Vader's Girl.

(Oh, and on the V.Mars tip, apparently Samm Levine from Freaks and Geeks is a character this season.)

And I love this blog, Galactica Station which transcribes articles from everywhere on the show.

Film Frontier Reviews the first episode, if you want a "real" sci-fi fan's take.

And, finally, a 76 comment BSG thread on Feministe.

Ann Hulbert on The Illustrated Jane Eyre

2006-10-12T13:35:00.000-04:00

My partner, A, just read Jane Eyre for the first time this week. One of the great things about relationships is their potential for vicarious pleasure: I haven't read Jane Eyre for the first time in so many years, but I long for the satisfaction.

So, in the heat of relived first reading, I found Ann Hulbert's delicious discussion of the new Illustrated Jane Eyre.

Now, I must first say that I'm generally against "illustrated" anything. Even Blake. Give me some semi-unadorned typescript on an otherwise blank page, please. Though I like Dame Darcy's take on Jane Eyre, I'd prefer that to bubble up from the language (and I think it does). Also, though Dame Darcy's illustrations are gorgeous, they are gorgeous in a way that, I think, detracts from the incredibly cabin fevered feeling of that novel (and, indeed, of just about every novel of it's kind).

I was telling A about this film version of Jane Eyre, which I can't seem to find online right now, but remember viewing as a child, in which the filmmaker chose to completely forego "the mad woman in the attic". I think s/he was trying to make it more of a children's tale, but, I mean, how is that the same book?!

So, Ann Hulbert reminds me of something I'd forgotten:

Brontë's guiding insight into life and literature, to simplify only somewhat, is that surfaces are suspect: Beware of assuming they are a reliable sign of the real passions within. Her own title page in 1847 (a facsimile of which appears in the Viking edition) was purposely misleading: Brontë adopted the male-sounding pseudonym of an editor named "Currer Bell" and presented the novel as an "autobiography." This immediately sparked debate about the real identity of the author. Subsequent biographical treatments of Brontë only added to the gallery of mythic personas.

There's very little more interesting than these editorial forewords of the era. I'm mostly familiar with them as they appear before slave narratives, but this reminded me that they accompanied a great many works of literature whose claim was "a true story". And this case is particularly interesting because the conceit was used to "deceive".

Brontë's most famous character, the "Quakerish governess" Jane, is a prime case of deceptive packaging herself. Out of a "poor, obscure, plain, and little" victim emerges a commanding—and demanding—narrative voice, proclaiming a right to bold self-creation almost as jarring today as it was a century and a half ago. A mistreated orphan at the start, Jane goes on to script her own dramatic fate—and to alter the destiny of her "master," Mr. Rochester, who falls under her spell. In a story tricked out as a melodramatic romance, Jane embodies a force that still deeply discomfits us: a female refusal to be valued as less than an equal, which blossoms into a fierce ambition to make her mark on the world.

No doubt this is true, but not strictly. One of the things that makes the novel so enthralling is Jane's conflicted relationship to her own status as a servant. Simultaneously, Rochester's conflicted relationship to her status. She even (as A reminded me the other day) notes that, were she not his servant, the attraction between them would be less certain. The moment at which she ceases to be a technical "underling" is the moment that her spiritedness and command become mixed blessings, sometimes liabilities, to their relationship. It's only, as many feminist scholars point out, when Rochester is completely physically disabled, that she's able to marry him. But this is complicated by the fact that it, in some way, forces her into eternal servitude. Jane both fights and embodies what philosophers have called "slave mentality". And the erotics of slave-master take place in all their multifaceted and contradictory patterns in the text.

In an era when everybody—from the Girl Scouts to guidance counselors to the Gossip Girl series—peddles the "you-go-girl" message, Jane Eyre is a book that evokes the struggle for self-definition as a truly harrowing one. This isn't a coming-of-age story about absorbing the counsel of wise mentors, overcoming temptation, and thus learning to "be yourself." As Edward Mendelson astutely observes of the novel in The Things That Matter, Jane sets about doing something much lonelier and harder. She insists on finding "her beliefs by herself," in her own way, as she weathers exile after exile, first from her past (a hellish home and school) and then from a future that seems, fleetingly, to await her with Rochester. She doesn't come to accept others' values as her own, as the protagonist of the traditional novel of education does. Instead, "[w]hat Jane learns," Mendelson writes, "is not how to act, but how to believe."

While reflecting on the vicarious first reading, it made me realize part of why I love reading and writing literary criticism. It's corny, but I love great literature being made new to me again and again.

Weekend Homework

2006-10-07T16:59:00.000-04:00

1. The Welfare Nanny Diaries by Rinku Sen and Gabriel Thompson.

2. Everyone's all excited about "neuroeconomics" these days. I am always skeptical about such things, but can't help but find it interesting, so Why say no to free money? caught my eye.

3. I haven't seen the first episode of this season of Battlestar Gallactica yet, but am viewing it (Tivoed) at a friend's this evening. It's hard not to think about it and, therefore, want to read about it, but I'm trying to be a better spoiler-avoider. I was happy to see this spoiler-free Geeking out to Gallactica to quench my thirst for the moment.

Five Things Feminism Did For Me

2006-10-07T15:59:00.000-04:00

I've been tagged with the feminism meme.

1. I've been able to have meaningful intellectual, emotional, professional, and nonsexual relationships with men.

2. It may seem small, but I am very grateful that I can choose to wear pants.

3. Education. By that I don't simply mean being let in the door, nor do I only mean being taken somewhat seriously once in, I also mean that my perspectives and feelings about being a woman were (once I hit college) often validated.

4. It wasn't until I was an adult and thought more about how fucking hard it is that I wondered whether it was truly possible for a woman to have a career and kids.

5. There was never a time in my life when I felt that "getting a man" was reaching my potential.

And bonus: 6. Feminism made it possible to see women in my life as fully human.

I tag anyone who feels moved.

What is Lost, Where I'm From, I Don't Know What to Call This Post

2006-10-05T13:33:00.000-04:00

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a sophisticated urbanite. Now, it would seem that is what I've become, at least on paper. I am advanced-degreed, NYC-dwelling, coffee-addicted, with Flaubert, Fitzgerald and Shakespeare shelved near Benjamin, Fanon, and Foucault in my tiny, but unmistakably arty, shared-with-my-partner, apartment. My friends are mostly hip; some make films, some are dancers or actors but of the intellectual sort, others are literary or music critics, a few work in (liberal, naturally)politics, several write, many teach, one works at the UN, and the ones in law school are there for the "right reasons". I steer clear of chain restaurants. I avoid network television, reserving particular contempt for sitcoms. I am disappointed when great novels are made into mediocre films or musicals. I am self-importantly mystified by the popularity of most popular things. My appreciation for "pulp", my idiosyncratically eclectic music collection,
my adoration of television drama, the time I spend reading conservative essays: these are all part of it.

My uncle lives in a small town in Kansas and works, quite miserably, at a steel mill. Last year, he almost lost his job of 25 years because he smoked a cigarette furtively on the job behind some huge equipment, endangering his coworkers. Around the same time, my aunt almost lost her job as a meter reader because she was drunk on the job, driving the company truck through rural and small-town Kansas. She was barred from driving for six months. Both kept their jobs, for good or ill, through union intervention. Due to mutual alcohol-driven animosity and the marital problems caused by serious gambling debts, they divorced later in the year. My aunt got a night and weekend job as a supermarket cashier to pay off her share of the debts. My uncle remarried, to a waitress from his after-work bar, within months.

When I heard about my aunt's and uncle's separation, I was shocked. But something else came up immediately: how could they ever find someone else to love them romantically? Both are seriously obese, both have chronic health problems, both are beneath broke. And, as is obvious, they are alcoholics. But also: their musical tastes are shared; Seger is a favorite. They don't read books and haven't since high school. They don't even read their 2-page local newspaper. I don't remember them having ever watched a film that wasn't a Hollywood comedy. What, I asked myself, would anyone see in them?

I asked myself, "What if they weren't alcoholics?" And even if they got clean, I still couldn't get how someone who want to partner with either of them.

I just saw my parents. I've been in grad school for 2 years now to get my Ph.D in English. I realized, in the middle of a conversation with my father, that he thought an English Ph.D was for creative writers. All of a sudden, it came to me that, not only do my parents not know what I personally do, they probably have never read a piece of literary criticism in their lives. And it was hard, in that moment, not to think less of them for it.

When I say all this, I say so with a sick feeling in my stomach. I'm coming clean. I'm not saying that what I think is cool. It's ugly. I'm objectifying and condescending and judgmental of people I actually love deeply.

I would not be the urban sophisticate I am today if it weren't for my parents. I was raised with an eye toward upward mobility, toward "getting out". Well, to be clear, that was mostly my father's influence. My mother was and is content with red-state life. My dad always told me, with no moral caveats, that I was "better" than everyone else around me. Of course, instilling in me this notion of superiority could only lead to one thing: at some point, I'd think I was "better" than him.

I know my dad is extremely proud of me. He is neverendingly impressed with the fact that I am teaching at a college. When we come home, he can't contain his excitement over how "cool and bohemian" we are.

I'm proud of my parents, too, but in a different way. I respect and admire what they accomplished, especially the hard work and sacrifice that it took them to make my upward mobility possible. But I also respect their unyielding commitment to ethics, even when this commitment interfered with their livelihood. I respect the importance they place on family. I respect their humility, yet I cringe and rage when I think back to some of what I watched them put up with.

When I started college, I would bring them books that had broken me out and open, changed my life, and then I'd become frustrated and angry when they'd stop after the first couple of pages. I stopped doing this so indiscriminately. I love my parents and, in some ways, am probably closer to them than I've ever been, but our frames of reference are so different now. There is so much about me they don't know because so much of what goes on inside me is influenced by a learned cynicism and constantly critical perspective, not to mention books, books, and more books. And some of this I never want to show them, not (just) because they wouldn't understand it, but because it would actually hurt them. For example, my agnosticism would not just seem an insult after my carefully religious upbringing, but would actually worry them greatly for my future here on earth and beyond.

The other day my mother was talking about her favorite writer, Janet Fitch. She was explaining how much she loves the way she writes, her insights, and then she said, "You'd probably think it was a bunch of cliches, but I like it." I wanted to die. I imagine, if she says so, she's probably right. I haven't read Fitch's work, but the last time I read something my mother and sister loved, I couldn't finish it fast enough. But I was enjoying the discussion, as my mother very rarely talks about these things and also because I love that my parents love to read. When she said that, I was stalled; I didn't want her to see me as a literary snob, but I am a literary snob. I didn't want that distance between us, but it's there and it will never go away. And, worse yet, she feels it too.

I am a very envious person, as anyone who reads this blog at all regularly already knows. I envy the many (majority) of my friends whose families live only hours away in Jersey or Connecticut or Massachusetts. I am sad on long weekends when they go "home" because I can't. I also can't think of where I'm from, where my parents live, as "home" the way they can. It's a culture shock every single time I go back there, even though I grew up there. I decided a long time ago, before I left really, that that place was not "home".

I envy that these friends did not have to move away from their families, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually, to reach what they felt was their "potential" and find a community that accepted them. I envy that they can say "red state" without that complex relationship: it's where I'm from, it shaped me, I love people there, it's more complex than coastal liberals give the area credit for, but I left there for a reason. I left there because I found it offensive, stifling, and miserable; I found the people bigoted and, frankly, stupid. I didn't fit in there, I never belonged, I always wanted to get away from what I called "this hick town," a phrase that I relied on to distinguish myself growing up but cringe at now.

Growing up out there, I never anticipated this conflict. I just longed for the day (for me, I split exactly one week after turning 18) when I could get out and be someone else, not realizing then that I couldn't ever completely be Woody Allen because part of what made those types those types was the first 18 years, not just the here-and-now. I'd be Annie Hall, always with Granny May back there somewhere.

What I've lost in both upward and outward (to the coasts!) mobility is a certain cohesivity that, though probably mostly fictional, seems to anchor the two worlds I can't fully inhabit. People and place, people and people.

My sister, after following me to NYC, moved back to Colorado in a very short time. She realized that, at heart, that was "who she was" and that she "fit in" better there than here. I feel I "fit in" better here. But, in feeling that way, having grown up in a culture that glorifies the urban and the coastal, part of me still feels superior.

I have read about similar feelings from immigrants, memorably in Anzia Yezierska. But Bitch posted this quote by Maria Lugones the other day and it really hit me:

To love my mother was not possible for me while I retained a sense that it was fine for me and others to see her arrogantly. Loving my mother also required that I see with her eyes, that I go into my mother’s world, that I see both of us as we are constructed in her world, that I witness her own sense of herself from within her world. Only through this traveling to her ‘world’ could I identify with her because only then could I cease to ignore her and to be excluded and separate from her. Only then could I see her as a subject even if one subjected and only then could I see at all how meaning could arise fully between us. We are fully dependent on each other for the possibility of being understood and without this understanding we are not intelligible, we do not make sense, we are not solid, visible, integrated; we are lacking. So traveling to each other’s ‘worlds’ would enable us to be through loving each other.

It made me cry and I had to post all this.

The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

2006-10-04T14:42:00.000-04:00

From David Orr's review in the Times:

The difficulty of teaching poetry to a lay audience can be summarized by a single, diabolical name: Robin Williams. Williams, as you may recall, played the free-thinking English teacher John Keating in the 1989 movie “Dead Poets Society,” a film that established once and for all the connection between learning about poems and killing yourself while wearing a silly hat. In the movie’s first depiction of poetical pedagogy, Williams as Keating instructs his students to open their textbook — a dry, dully diagrammatic primer by “Dr. J. Evans-Pritchard” — and then, with the insouciant panache of Lord Byron (or possibly Patch Adams) tells them to rip out the introduction! Yes! Riiiip! “Armies of academics going forward, measuring poetry,” cries the righteous Keating, “No, we will not have that here!” Instead, the class is told to embrace a philosophy of carpe diem, and sic transit J. Evans-Pritchard. Significantly, however, while Keating subsequently teaches his students how to stand on their desks, how to kick a soccer ball with gusto and how to free-associate lamely about Walt Whitman, he’s never shown actually teaching them anything about the basics of form — basics they’d need in order to appreciate half the writers he’s recommending.

That and the fact that 95% of people went through a phase where they "wrote poetry" (this includes songs and raps), so everyone thinks poetry is just a glorified journal with extra cliches and loads of stilted metaphors.

Anyway, I just gave my students an assignment which required them to select and view a film on education. And, frankly, I ended up feeling strange about it because many of them were about the Inspiring Teacher, a category I am far, far from inhabiting. I'm not going to ask my students to rip out pages from their books; I'd be happy if they just fucking read them. I'd imagine coming into my class after watching an Inspiring Teacher for two hours was a real letdown. Sorry students.

Good News for Hacker Chicks!

2006-10-03T08:10:00.000-04:00

It seems you may be able to infiltrate the techie-boys-club even if you don't want to pose for a calendar. Check these gals out.

And note that Diana Eng, of Project Runway fame, is among the crew. Talk about ambition and perserverance.

Help! It Just Keeps Coming!

2006-10-03T07:51:00.000-04:00

Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 12:59:35 -0400
From: Katha Pollitt
Subject: Re: invisibility

I'm interested that you see 'regionalism" as comparable to racism.
Do
Dakotans have trouble getting served in restaurants? Do cabs not stop
for them? Do they get longer sentences than other Americans for the
same crimes? As a New Yorker, and thus hopelessly prejudiced, I really
have trouble seeing the upper Middle West as invisible -- I feel I am
constantly getting the message that that's the heartland, where the
real Americans live, and that my NYCculture and values are alien and
immoral. What strikes me as especially unfair is that because of
the electoral college and the fact that every state has two
senators,regardless of size, citizens of small rural states like ND
have fantastically greater political clout than big states like NY. A
voter in Wyoming has 71 times the weight of one in California. Who's
invisible there?
Taken together, small rural states control 44 senate seats, while
having 11 percent of the population. Black people have about the same
percentage of the population -- there is currently one black senator.
Women, of course, are more than half the population, and are grossly
underrepresented too.
If we're going to talk about regionalism and invisibility these are
facts that belong in the mix.

Katha Pollitt

I don't have the will, friends.

More Critique of Katha Pollitt From the WMST-list

2006-09-30T23:13:00.000-04:00

If biological sexual dimorphism
was just a social construction, we wouldn't be here. Reproduction
counts for something. If some tiny percent of people are born
biologically sexually anomalous, like the intersexed , why does that
call biological sexual dimorphism into question? There are many
genetic anomalies, like extra fingers and conjoined twins. But
basically, people are born with ten fingers, and live in individual
bodies. We don't go around saying, well, actually it's just the
hegemonic discourse of digits that makes us think of people as having
ten fingers. In fact, some have nine, some have eleven, some are born
with no hands at all! Nor do we say, actually, physical individuality
is another social construct-- look at siamese twins!
What one does about genetic anomalies like intersex is a social
decision, of course. But it's a different question than that of
whether sexual dimorphism is a social construct in the first place.

Katha Pollitt

Yes, sperm+egg=baby, at least for the moment, though things just keep getting better. However, the fact that we are SO DEFINED by whether or not we most resemble those who carry eggs or those who carry sperm means that, socially, sex differences are constructed. What if we defined people into two groups based on another functional difference, say, ability to haul 150 lbs for a city block? We'd think that was bizarre. Well, why do we define people based on their assumed ability to play one particular procreative role? I mean, we carry groceries more often in our lives than we conceive children. [Well, there are probably some extremely rich ladies who lay around getting fertility treatments while their personal chefs buy groceries (or send their own assistants to buy groceries).]

Also, those in disability studies might say that, in fact, the discourse about bodies is that everyone has ten fingers and toes and walks upright and has an individual, autonomous body. And that this is hegemonic.

Get it?!!!

On Fashion and Censorship

2006-09-30T20:21:00.000-04:00

Feminist bloggers seem pretty excited about Madrid's fashion week decision to "turn away underweight models after protests that girls and young women were trying to copy their rail-thin looks and developing eating disorders."

"I think its outrageous, I understand they want to set this tone of healthy beautiful women, but what about discrimination against the model and what about the freedom of the designer," said Gould, Elite's North America director ...

Until I started watching Project Runway, I'll admit that I didn't really see fashion designers as artists. They were kind of borderline to me. But now the idea of infringing upon their creative expression is anathema to me. Even if they wants walking clothes hangers. I know that it's only we Americans who seem to hold this as some ideal, but, well, I guess I'm holding onto our last shreds of goodness.

Are You A Nerd, Geek, or Dork?

2006-09-30T20:04:00.000-04:00

Pure Nerd
91 % Nerd, 34% Geek, 17% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd.
The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful. Congratulations! Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99% on nerdiness

You scored higher than 99% on geekosity

You scored higher than 99% on dork points

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Saw it on What the hell is wrong with you?

Weekend Homework

2006-09-30T18:45:00.000-04:00

Basically a nice sampling of what I've been reading:

1. Superhero Worship in the Atlantic:

Once the province of Garbo and Astaire, movie glamour now comes from Superman, Spider-Man, and Storm.

2. Writers from the Telegraph UK debate, Can men write romantic novels?
Should we even be having such a moronic conversation? Of course not. But, since we are, I must read it.

3. CS Monitor's Stacy A. Teicher reports on the Higher Ed panel and their proposals.

4. Stephen Metcalf's review of the new Greil Marcus sure makes me want to see for myself.

5. Razib on Gene Expressions explains that story about the black and white twins and more. I'm a science-dummy, but I tried to hang, and ended up enjoying.

6. And on torture and The Military Commissions Act of 2006:

This is What Waterboarding Looks Like, Sayonara, Checks and Balances, and Why the Torture Bill Matters.

I'll admit it: I'm an unpatriotic liberal right now.

What I'm Thinking Today

2006-09-30T17:17:00.000-04:00

Awhile ago, and I wish I could remember where, people were batting around some statistics about how many Americans thought it was possible to come from poverty and become a multimillionaire in this country. These stats were meant to show how ignorant Americans are about class operations in their own country. But, if you answered that it wasn't possible, you were even stupider. Is it possible to come from poverty and become a millionaire? Well, duh, yes. I could give you a bunch of examples. It's just extremely unlikely and will take a fine combination of luck, ambition, and VERY hard work.

There's something on the left that's blasphemous about saying that hard work can take people from poverty to millionaire because it smacks of the whole "up-by-your-bootstraps" thing we despise. But sometimes it's true.

Some of us don't want to, or can't, work as hard as others. I might be able to compete with the bred-for-success-rich-kids I envy if I were willing to work night and day, but I'm not. So, middling success with middling income will have to do. And it will do.

If I'd gone to Harvard and prep school before it, if my parents were so-and-so and so-and-so of the Easthampton So-and-Sos, blah, blah, blah, I could probably work a little less hard and be a little more successful. And that's what I'm whining about today.

I worked hard for awhile to get where I am and I'm over it. I can't sustain a lifetime of striving for upward mobility. I think I only have the energy for middle-class-ness.

At the very bottom, we talk about the people who have to work two jobs and are still on welfare, but we don't talk enough about how, for many folks, hard work pays off, (though it doesn't often make multimillionaires). And the next step: maybe not everyone wants to work hard and one should be allowed to expect a family, lovers, friends, must-see-TV.

Rob Harvilla reviews American Hardcore

2006-09-28T20:19:00.000-04:00

There's something really satisfying about the fact that, after replacing Chuck Eddy, Rob Harvilla shows up at the Voice and writes stuff like this:

... In the end American Hardcore canonizes everyone you expect it to canonize (Bad Brains, of course, emerges as a mystical, overpowering, unstoppable force) and takes a few last-minute swipes at the Hot Topic–shopping chumps still flogging those dead horses at a Warped Tour near you. Even Harley, for all his optimism and boosterism—"If it wasn't for hardcore, heavy metal would have killed itself with hairspray and killing imaginary inflatable dragons and shit," he informs me—indulges in a bit of It Ain't the Same grousing . . . about New York City itself. For him the flick is a last glimpse at his old, dangerous, beloved Lower East Side. "I could give two shits about Manhattan at this point in my life," he says. "It isn't what it used to be, it doesn't have that same beauty, that same charm. It doesn't have that danger." ...

It's really quite "meta". A real "fuck you" to all those nostalgia junkies who want their Village Voice the way they want their hardcore -- never-changing.

Even if you kinda miss Chuck, you've got to admit Harvilla got your attention. I don't love everything he writes, but this one sold me on his necessity at the Voice.

Criticisms of Garden State

2006-09-28T15:10:00.000-04:00

From Pandagon the other day:

This article by Josh Levin has in it what could be, word for word, one of my better rants over an alcoholic beverage or two.

Braff also uses pop songs as a cheat, an easy way to heighten the emotional impact of otherwise unremarkable moments. The music in Garden State is so load-bearing that the movie becomes ridiculous if you swap in different tunes—if you don’t believe me, check this out.

I don’t have anything against using pop music in movies, but seriously, one of my pet peeves is a mediocre movie or TV show leaning on great music to salvage crappy scenes. The entire 60s oeuvre of Motown and Phil Spector have been particularly ravaged by this practice. The worst perpetrator was David E. Kelley on “Ally McBeal”—he took this practice to a whole new level of suck by using a relentless onslaught of 60s R&B and pop in an attempt to make the audience mistake their enthusiasm for the music for their enthusiasm for Ally’s miserable existence.

One thing I absolutely cannot stand is the disrespect that, well, almost everyone shows to the notion of "form" or "medium". For example, my latest cross to bear is
this phenomenon where, because of the popularity of documentaries, everyone who should really just be writing a magazine feature has decided to make a movie, but they don't make a movie, they make a 35mm (or, more likely, DV) version of a magazine feature that I would have enjoyed in Harpers, but can't stand when it pretends to be a documentary film.

Ahem.

I used to be in the dance world. It was common to discuss a choreographer's "reliance on score". The choreographers who were hot shots choreographed something and then found music for it. In fact, many were known to change the music from time to time for the same piece. Even in fucking ballet. I can't help but think the quote above is akin to that sort of bizarre snobbery.

If you are a filmmaker (or editor or music supervisor) and you have a weaker scene, or even just a scene that could be vastly improved by a masterful choice of music, your job is to put kickass music behind that scene. Duh. Music is one of a filmmaker's tools.

"Gee, that scene wouldn't have been that great if the writing hadn't been good. The filmmaker is really 'leaning on' the writing there."

Maybe you, as a viewer, prefer a film that's well-written to a film that's well-shot. That doesn't mean that a film with better cinematography than writing is using that cinematography as a crutch.

As for Garden State, which I think gets altogether too much criticism because hipsters can't handle that they themselves didn't make it, it seems that people are mad at the movie because it used music too well. It can't be that good because it did one thing too well.

And let's think back to THE FILM ITSELF. (As my high school English teacher used to say, "Read the goddamned text!") Garden State is a VERY interior film. While Braff could have gone the "Interiors" route of Woody Allen, using no music, and making an unwatchable film, he didn't. He chose to use music to turn the film inward, to show an exterior landscape, but to allow the viewer to hear the interior landscape.

My adored Ampersand comments on the Pandagon post and notes:

In the comments of Pandagon, “The J Train” calls Natalie Portman’s character in Garden State a “vagina ex machina” character, which she defines as “the beautiful, together, inexplicably single woman who just seems to fall out of the sky in front of the protagonist.

This reminds me of my student the other day who pretended to have viewed the film for class, but referred to the main character as a "he" though the protagonist was, in fact, unmistakably a woman, and a movie star to boot. I don't know if "The J Train" saw or remembers Garden State. One thing Natalie Portman's character is NOT is "together". She's a total mess. It completely understandable that she's single. She's a total mess. She doesn't fall from the sky. She's a total mess, he's a total mess, they meet at the doctor's office to take care of that.

(Also, shouldn't feminists be a bit alarmed by a phrase like "inexplicably single"? Doesn't it kind of indicate that the only reason a woman would be single is because she's damaged goods?)

I don't like Natalie Portman, as a person. Her interviews never cease to offend me. But she rocked that part. And it wasn't an easy part. She wasn't ever playing some random-sexy-girl. True: her character wasn't particularly brilliant or successful. I don't really think she needs to be. She's sad. And she had plenty of pathos to play. She wasn't just cute.

I'm pretty critical. I'm especially critical of the sort of early-twenties-bilgundsroman, common in indie film. And I liked Garden State. That doesn't mean you have to. But please come up with a critique more film-sensitive than, "there was too much good music in it". If what you don't like about it is the writing, criticize the writing. Not how they got away with it by doing other things right.

Why "Put the Excitement Back in Your Marriage" Advice Doesn't Often Work

2006-09-28T13:25:00.000-04:00

You could also call this entry "EL Auditions for Redbook".

Helaine Olen interviews Esther Perel, a New York couples and family therapist who has a new book out.

I like her thoughts on monogamy, especially this:

Our model is that marriage is for everything. So, we think if it didn't work out with you, I'm not going to think that maybe there is something to question about my model, I'm just going to say I chose the wrong person and I'll go somewhere else to get everything. And there is something about not wanting to give up on that ideal that makes people more willing to go for divorce, and the dissolution of the entire family system and all the bonds, than the willingness to renegotiate boundaries.

Pathological monogamy anyone?

I also agree with her on fantasy and on the expense of erotic energy, though I personally would use another adjective. Perel is, perhaps, brainier, more New York and less heartland, in comparison to her colleagues in the field, but she still lapses into certain of their irritating habits.

There is a notion people have that in the beginning of relationships passion is spontaneous. They actually forget that the beginning was one big story line. There were hours spent anticipating, planning, plotting, developing the script, imagining what you're going to wear, what you're going to eat, where you're going to go, the whole thing. But people remember things as explosive and in the moment and unplanned. And that's not true. But passion can die because we forgo the willfulness, the intentionality and the imagination that fuel the erotic.

I agree that sex is not necessarily spontaneous at the beginning of a relationship, but passion is, I believe, spontaneous. You're sitting there and suddenly you're overcome with wanting the person you're sitting with. Not that you take them at that moment. But that feeling -- let's get real -- cannot happen as often when you're sitting with that person too often. Your body/mind/whatever-it-is has to turn down the frequency just for your health. You can force something else happen, but I don't think you can make that happen. And a lot of people just aren't satisfied without that.

Perel says: The whole point of fantasy is that it's not meant to be reality.
The early part of a relationship is the time at which fantasy and reality are not wholly separate processes. Where what you fantasize, down to the tiniest thing, may or may not manifest. And you feel alternately in control and out of control over whether that happens. Once you're in a relationship, the mechanisms by which you gets what you want are set: generally, you ask for it or you don't get it. Not knowing whether (not to mention how or why) you'll get what you want is part of what makes getting it exciting. You just can't do that later on, unless you want to be deeply unsatisfied.

Some problems can't be solved. I don't mean that relationships end up sexless after awhile and this can't be solved, but I do mean that you can't put something you've lost "back in" like that when it comes to desire. The thing that makes sexual desire fascinating is that you can't help it.

I Hate Arianna Huffington

2006-09-26T18:58:00.000-04:00

And it has nothing to do with her blog. It has nothing to do with her cameo on "The L Word". It doesn't even have to do with her political conversion.

Arianna Huffington and Maureen Dowd are basically interchangeable to me. They're both superficial, but well-educated and connected enough to swipe a "token" slot away from a hard-hitting intellectual woman. Both are as Meghan O'Rourke smartly notes re: the former almost unimaginably unaware of their incredible privilege. Both seem to feel that cutesy nicknames and clothing analysis are brilliant and incisive treatments of politics, making themselves priceless assets to the community of, as they say, "talking heads".

And don't even get me started on how they gesture to "feminism" when their everyday lives are testaments to how little they value what I consider feminist principles.

Smart Readers, A Question

2006-09-26T18:40:00.000-04:00

I was reading this:

The city's board of health is considering allowing transgendered New Yorkers to get new birth certificates.

Under the proposal, the new certificate would only indicate a person's current sexual identity.

And my question is:

Is there a good reason for having one's sex on a birth certificate? I'm not saying there's not, but I just don't know.

What I'm Reading Today

2006-09-21T14:51:00.000-04:00

I'm far from a Shakespearean, but I'm loving this conversation about Lear on Slate.

A student of mine told me that she didn't have to know how to read and write. Why? Because she's going to be a lawyer. And lawyers TALK, you see. This incident made me particularly interested in Jean's run-down of lawyerly TV. A much-needed reference guide. Hopefully, some doctors and cops will make/have made some of their own.

After the beginning of "boob-gate", I decided to avoid all discussion of this Bill-Clinton-blogger-party. Sometimes it's nice not to be in the popular clique. But I happened to see this brilliant commentary on a "conversation" (I use the term loosely) about the lack of POC bloggers at the luncheon. (That's what I first noticed about the pic, even before Jessica's chest.) Anyway, it's rather appalling (though predictable) the direction the "conversation" takes.

Transracial adoption: we talked about it here awhile back, but it seems to have receded a bit from the blogosphere. Of course, gives us plenty to think about. (I'd love to see what it's like in her classroom!)

More to come!

The Funniness Epidemic

2006-09-21T14:18:00.000-04:00

I was -- I don't know if this predictable or surprising -- a very serious child. It caused me a great deal of misery, more often from my family than from my peers. My uncles would lovingly torment me; I would be utterly crushed or riled. Perhaps this is the literal-mindedness that characterizes children's approach to external influences. Regardless of the source, my seriousness (distinguished from other children in that it tended to lack playfulness, not just an inability to grasp humor) isolated me. Even as I became less serious, or at least less exclusively serious, "seriousness" remained a crucial criteria in evaluating other people's worth. Someone who "couldn't be serious" didn't belong in my social milieu. Similarly, I can't stand blogs that never get meaty or serious and comedy that doesn't have a bit of an underbite leaves me cold. It's not that one cannot be funny and earn my respect. It's that one must be able to carry on a conversation without it. And I find, more and more, there are a great many people that are simply incapable of it.

So, I read Peter Hyman's The funniness epidemic with interest:

Must everybody try to be funny these days? Are we now compelled, as a culture, to be comical, no matter the setting or the endeavor? And if so, what on earth gave rise to this troubling idea? ...

The end result? The guy standing next to you in line at Starbucks sounds like a nondescript sitcom actor that even your TiVo can't stand. ...

A related cause could be the contemporary avoidance of sincerity. Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter's post-9/11 declaration pronouncing the death of irony is, five years later, the misstatement of the millennium. From sneakers to cell-phone ring-tones to rain on your wedding day, everything is ironic. Or, more accurately, everything is sarcastic, the less-literary stepcousin of irony. Unlike irony, sarcasm can be printed on a T-shirt or written into every tenth line of an ESPN newscast with the generic (and easily aped) voice of mocking detachment that is so prevalent today. ...

What is the upside of being funny? Well, apart from getting noticed, it's safer to hide behind the mask of humor, especially in a culture skeptical of intellectualism. Andrew Stott, an English professor whose academic treatise Comedy explored the philosophy of humor, sees it like this: "Being funny is a means of avoiding scrutiny. It's a deeply concealing activity that invites attention while simultaneously failing to offer any detailed account of oneself. The reason humor is so popular today is that it provides the comfort of intimacy without the horror of actually being intimate." ...

And, for all of the democracy the Internet engenders, it is possible to have too much vox populi, especially when the populi seem intent on using such tired punch lines and hacky premises.

I think something that Hyman glides over is that there has been a democratizing cultural shift which specifically takes the shame away from failing at humor. When I was younger, a flopped joke was the height of embarassment. Now, people will at least smile at the dumbest thing. In fact, people seem to prefer bad humor (especially sarcasm of any kind) to regular conversation. One is no longer expected to try at humor, but just to sprinkle half-assed bits of it into all conversation.

I think it's this lowering of humor standards that has led to the proliferation of "funny people" because there are no longer any consequences.

(Let me be clear: I do this all the time. In many ways, I would not live up to my own standards of company. I would wish I would shut up. I already do wish I'd shut up.)

Back By Popular Demand: Email Access to EL

2006-09-17T18:55:00.000-04:00

I've gotten requests from people I'd actually like to correspond with via email, so I'm getting back in the game.

Send correspondence of the non-obnoxious variety to:

elatmap@hotmail.com

as in EL at M(y) A(musement) P(ark)

Crisis of Conscience: Teaching Pop Culture

2006-09-14T13:13:00.000-04:00

It probably comes as little surprise to you that my pedagogical approach so far has been to mix "high" and "low" culture on a syllabus. There are several reasons for this:

1. I love certain bits of a both, passionately. My life would be woefully incomplete without either one.

2. I am one of those wackademics who thinks you can't tell the value of a work of art or culture based on how many times it ends up on college syllabi. The high/low split seems pretty stupid. I prefer it-rocks/it's-crap or it's-useful/it's-not-useful.

3. I want my students (in their very first college course - "developmental" (remedial) at that) to be engaged, and including pop culture seems to be one way of capturing their attention. My students practically skipped out of the classroom yesterday singing that they got to watch a film instead of read for an assigment. Maybe that's sad, but it is what it is. I truly believe it comes from the fact that, for most people, school is a site of serious trauma and certain "types" of classwork bring up that trauma. My students can barely read standard English and certainly can't write it. They're far less likely to have been traumatized by watching the Wayans brothers than reading out of some literary anthology.

I remember how I was with math and science. I felt so helpless in those subjects that just encountering a textbook or an equation or, most especially a lab, would panic me. I was looking into the abyss and it was glaring back at me.

I now regret not having much math or, especially, science under my belt because of this fear and shame. I didn't take a lick of either as an undergraduate. I haven't seen math or science in a classroom setting since May of my junior year. All because it tore me up inside with frustration. I wish someone had tried to reach out to me, to find a way for me to interact with the trappings of science, but no one did. It was one pointless lab I didn't understand after another.

It's entirely possible that there's nothing anyone could have done to make me understand or feel less afraid. It is entirely possible that, in that area, I am dumb. I believe in dumbness; we all can't do everything. But I don't know for sure that I couldn't do it. After all, in chemistry when we didn't do labs all the time (my great hate), I ended up getting an A. It's just as possible that I slipped through the cracks, despite the resources of a suburban high school and the support that comes with being identified as "gifted".

I always wish that we'd done a really thorough nutrition unit. Having gotten into it as an adult in all its nitty-gritty, equations and memorization and all, I feel like that might have been a way to steer me gently into science.

My undergraduate institution had very few traditionally-aged students, though I was one myself. Most of the people in attendance were older and were going back to school. In the courses I teach, some students are still in the high school mode of trying to seem cool. It's much cooler to get into a pop culture assignment than to get into a "high literary" assignment.*

4. At the same time, one of the wonderful things about college for me, perhaps the most wonderful, was being exposed to so many incredible things I would never otherwise have encountered. I am thoroughly appalled by the attitudes many other professors show toward the students at our institution. I remember the other day this guy saying he felt guilty about being "a pusher of standard English". The department chair replied simply, "that's what your students will love you for." I am privileged to have a good education and lots of it. There's something sick about hoarding the tools I gained from that privilege in the spirit of preserving some invented "authenticity" that supposedly belongs to my students. There's something sick about teaching my students as though they could only deal with texts that are like those they encounter at home. My students deserve a good education, just as I did. (Not to mention that seeming "cool" and "down" with the students is not our job and I can't even begin to tell you how sick I think it is to go into a classroom with that attitude - it's my current cross to bear that a sizable chunk of the adjuncts at my institution seem to see this as their primary goal.)

So ... there ya go.

But now I'm doing some second-guessing. One reason is, and this will sound crazy, my students seemed to like this recent assignment a bit too much. Their enthusiasm made me feel like maybe I'm not challenging them enough.

And then I read this discussion on the WMST-L list-serv:

Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 10:21:26 -0400
From: Katha Pollitt
Subject: Re: Shift of tone on WMST-L

yes, the race division on survivor is racist and idiotic, as is much
pop culture. But you haven't persuaded me that studying Survivor is a
particularly valuable way to approach race/ethnicity in a college
classroom. I would say everything that needs to be said about
survivor's tribes can be said in about two minutes. i would have
trouble stretching it out to a whole column (1000 words). It's all
pretty obvious, isn't it?. And I'll bet that outside the academy
people in the racial-ethnic groups included would not see the way
they are portrayed on Survivor as one of their major problems in life.
The daughter of a friend of mine took a whole course on Buffy the
Vampire Slayer at NYU. I would be amazed if this young woman has
studied the middle east or Africa, can speak a foreign language
fluently, has read five books written before 1500 (or the Koran!),
or could discuss intelligently the differences between the american
and French revolutions, or .... Sure pop culture is part of our
world, and shapes attitudes at conscious and unconscious levels. But
it's not why we're in iraq, or why people are poor or why they risk
their lives to write or read novels and poetry. Think of all the
courses in the catalog at NYU, and tell me why Buffy the Vampire
slayer was an excellent choice-- better than Modern Poetry, 18th
Century Women Novelists, or for that matter Economics of Women's
Labor or 20th Century russian history or Beginning Spanish (or any
other language) or ...
A number of people have said that college gives you a skill set, a
set of analytical tools you can use to read anything, and that
teaching pop culture is a good way to teach the skill set. i have
three problems with that artgulment. One, I don't think a course on
chick lit really does teach you how to read , say, George Eliot, let
alone TS Eliot. Two, I doubt such courses give students the idea that
serious literature holds something valuable that is missing from pop
culture--the point of studying Survivor isn't to get kids to read
James Joyce, it's to get them to be more critical watchers of reality
TV. Three, for most people college is the last opportunity they are
ever going to have to meet difficult, classic, or out of the way
texts, and learn how to enjoy and understand them and relate to
them. Having spent their undergraduate years on pop culture, how
likely is it that once out of college,in the work world, starting a
family etc, that graduate is going to say, you know, I've never read
Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky or Emily Dickinson. I barely know who Balzac
is! I think I'll turn off the set for a bit and spend my evenings
with the penguin classics!

Katha Pollitt
katha.pollitt@gmail.com

Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 10:29:50 -0700
From: "Dustin M. Wax"
Subject: Re: Shift of tone on WMST-L

In a sense, I think it's
*easier* to get students to read something like _Pride and Prejudice_
for it's "deeper meaning" -- after all, it's a "classic")
than to get
them to "read" something like _The Sopranos_ or _Scary Movie 8_ as
anything other than trivial. Yet as Katha and others have pointed out,
our students will be exposed to pop culture that they're intended to
swallow uncritically far, far more often than to the "demanding" works
that they avoid precisely because they already know they are expected to
find some deeper meaning in them, that is, that they're "work".

students will admit to me freely that they do not read/do not like to read. If,
under those circumstances, I *do* assign a difficult read such as Faulkner or Woolf,
I can be assured that they will not read it, they'll go to sparknotes.com or
some other such website and read the summary. If I want students to *actually*
read something (or fail the class for not doing so), I know I'll do best to
keep away from "the classics."

Michele Ren
English/Women's Studies
Radford University
mren2@radford.edu

Joan Korenman says:

I'd like to say a bit more about the pop culture discussion. Some
people seem to regard that discussion as putting Women's Studies on
the defensive. I don't agree. The debate over "high culture" vs.
"pop culture" has been raging for many years in most Humanities
fields. As an English professor, I've been wrestling with these
issues throughout my entire career, and not just in Women's Studies
classes. And in earlier centuries, disputes over whether
literature written in modern languages (as opposed to Latin and
Greek) should be taught, and whether American literature was worth
teaching at all, are earlier versions of the debate.

When you're talking about teaching Women's Studies (which I don't at the moment), Katha Pollitt's argument is ridiculous, in my opinion. You need some pop culture in WMST because a significant element of the discipline is the analysis of how cultural perceptions of gender manifest themselves everywhere: policy, family, pop culture.

What about English, though? My students may never see a piece of "literature" again in their lives. 50% of them will drop about before the end of the semester, according to institutional data, and, of those who stay until the end, 30% of them will not pass the course and/or the exam which will allow them to move past the "developmental" coursework. (If they do not pass both, they cannot continue their college education.) For many of these students, I'm their only chance to read and experience non-pop culture. At the same time, there's no way in the world I'm foisting Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons on these students because 50% would quickly become 95%, even though I think the experience of Tender Buttons is something that everyone should have the opportunity to have. I can guarantee, however, that my students will watch more mainstream film and television. They won't watch them in the same way, or discuss them or write about them the same way, but they will encounter those forms. I don't know if my students will ever really read again. Because, as Michele Ren says, my students hate reading.

I'm so confused. I'm starting to feel I need to dig through the canon. And I have never, ever had that feeling before. My conscience is screaming that my use of pop culture is in some way condescending to profoundly underserved students. It's also screaming at me that to excise pop culture from my syllabi would be a transgression of some of my most closely held intellectual beliefs. Thoughts? (Not just other teachers, but from students current and former, and, well, everyone else.)

* This reminds of a big moment of embarassment in junior high. After we finished reading it, the teacher asked who liked Whitman's "Beat! Beat! Drums!". My hand shot up in the air with enthusiasm. Laughter began and I turned from my front-row seat to see that I was the only person in the classroom with my hand up.

Notes on the State of Feminism

2006-09-12T15:08:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure if I need to say anything about this. I think I may just put it up as a piece of found art:

GM: Is the blogosphere the location for a new feminism?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: If you are an activist and not reading blogs, you're not doing your job. [The blogosphere] is a listening audience and an active audience. It could be anyone out there; an anti-feminist from Ohio, a housewife in Illinois.

GM: Are most of your readers from the Midwest?

SM: We get a lot of response from the Midwest and Austin, Texas, but the Bay Area and New York City are our two mainstays. We hear from a lot of college students. ...

GM: Is it possible to have a united feminist movement?

SM: Those chicks who flashed their tits in the 60s largely cater to the white middle class. They often don't do enough to include women of color. I think what you see now is little clusters [of feminists] getting together on issues, like the Duke rape case. It's fragmented, but once something happens, people rally.

From an interview with Samhita Mukhopadhyay by Gary Moskowitz here.

2006-09-12T14:52:00.000-04:00

Q. My boyfriend refuses to give up coke for reasons I can't explain. I don't make a stink if he smokes a reefer. I don't make a stink about the tranny sex he's had in the past or the his-and-her butt plugs he bought us in month two. He's well-read, witty, and sweet—but I'm seriously anti-drug for my own reasons, and he knows my stand. We're reaching month six, and in spite of all his skeletons, I love him. But this coke-hating sister can't get serious about a man that can't commit to not doing coke. I need a man's swift and brutal opinion: What the fuck? Is this butt-plugging asshole trying to sabotage our relationship by holding on to some libertarian conviction that was started in ancient Rome? —Coke-Hating Sister

A. I'm not sure how the Romans factor into this, CHS, but here's the swift and brutal opinion: If a coke-hating sister can't get serious about a man who uses coke, then why is this coke-hating sister wasting her time on this trifling, tranny-banging, coke-snorting brother? Either coke is a deal breaker for you, CHS, or it isn't. If it is, then don't date him. But if this butt-plugging asshole merits an exception—if the lift tickets are balanced out by well-read, witty, and sweet—then date him, girl, and stop bitching about it.

Relationships are not your amusement park. Just because you find someone you like and they like you doesn't mean you can them remodel them to your further liking. If this guy got coked up and then started treating her badly, I might have some sympathy for Coke-Hating Sister, but the fact is that I hate people with random fucking standards like this. If you don't like coke, don't do it. If someone is mean to you or doesn't listen to you or treats you badly, in other words does something to you, then ultimatums are in order. If not, SHUT UP. The relationship is your to leave.

You know people like this write to advice columns so that someone will tell them, "People who use coke don't deserve to be in relationships! You lay down the law! If he doesn't completely change into the person you want him to be, he doesn't really love you anyway!" Luckily, she didn't write to Dear Prudence or she probably would have gotten that response.

She didn't write to Dear Prudence, however, because she obviously likes to think of herself as way crescent-fresh and GGG and liberated and not bourgeois-uptight. She tries to prove this by mentioning that, gasp, her boyfriend's sex life apparently included trans partners! But she was so fucking cool that she let that go, it's just the coke. Well, Coke-Hating-Sister, you are so bourgeois-uptight that I think you ought to have written Dear Prudence and gotten the response you wanted. Next time, try her first. Hell, check out an old bound collection of Dear Abbys from the 1960s.

Did you vote, New Yorkers?

2006-09-12T14:47:00.000-04:00

If you didn't and don't plan to, I'm not about to chastise you. This is a dud of a primary (unless you live in Major Owens's district).

Cuomo, ew, here we come.

Why Protest Politics Will Stay Dead

2006-09-09T20:03:00.000-04:00

It's old hat these days to joke about the freak shows that constitute left-leaning political marches or rallies. Whether you're on the right or left, the chaotic morass of unleashed pet causes is a sad sight to behold. It's rarely been, to me, as frustrating as now, with the rise of the immigration rights movement, through which protest politics is experiencing its only chance of rebirth. I could go on and on and I have at other times, but tonight I must give Shawn Macomber props for getting specific and dirty on this topic in the American Spectator.

Some favorite moments:

Like a movie star whose Hollywood cachet you can track by the ebb and flow of his entourage, the number of political hangers-on at the San Francisco march clearly demonstrated the ascendancy of the immigration rights movement. As with any other hangers-on, the people trying to cop a ride on the immigrant rights movement's coattails have their own agendas -- agendas that are not necessarily a boon to the cause.

literature castigating the Zionist Entity outnumbered amnesty/immigration rights pamphlets by at least ten to one. A man peddling Mexican flags had few takers. There was one booth dedicated to registering recent immigrants. The first question on the lips of nearly every other booth table jockey was some variation of, "So do you have any interest in the wider movement?"

The starkest example I saw of how disconnected the activists attempting to co-opt immigration for their own ends were from those they were ostensibly there to help was a middle-aged white woman standing in the midst of arriving Hispanic marchers waving mostly American flags -- although some Mexican and El Salvadoran flags fluttered in the breeze as well -- with a sign hoisted above her head reading, "Sensenbrenner, You Are an Extremist Jew!"

Gerald Lenoir from the Black Alliance for Just Immigration followed this up, exclaiming, "We are fighting against the same racist system. We are fighting against the same corporate power. We are fighting the same right-wing conspiracy in the United States." And still more muddle from yet another speaker: "We are all members of families of the world against globalization fighting for a better life for grassroots communities."

Globalization? Corporate power? The IMF? When did a freshman sociology class take over the march?

Allowing a march to devolve into a circus where immigrant rights become inextricably entangled with pet issues of the far left, however, only serves to further convince those with conflicted feelings about immigration that this categorically is not their struggle.

As it stands now it has more to fear from those desperate to associate attach themselves as "friends" of the movement than it does from Pat Buchanan.

Having been involved in "on-the-ground" political activism in my more naive days, I can actually recall discussions:

"There's going to be an anti-death penalty march. We should bring our feminist group flyers to hand out!"

"Yeah, that's a great idea!"

I look back and shake my head.

I'm It, You're It

2006-09-09T19:39:00.000-04:00

The lovely antiprincess tagged me. ::blushes::

Why do you blog?

I started blogging because I had a job wherein I spent lots of hours with little to do but surf the internet. As such, I began to have a lot of opinions about everything that was going on. So, I started My Amusement Park. I keep doing it basically because it is a thing I do. I don't do it to change the world, which I know some folks would think is sad. It really is just sort of a hobby.

How long have you been blogging?

A year.

Self-Portrait:

Um, no, thank you.

Why do readers read your blog?

I think mainly people read my blog because they stumbled on some contrarian post at some point or because we're sort of friendly in the blog universe. I also seem to attract a lot of people who want advice on coming out, which is kind of sad because I don't really offer that.

What was the last search phrase someone used to get to your site?

"is kate moennig straight"

Which of your entries unjustly gets too little attention?

I did a pretty kickass series on the local NYC races last year, but to little acclaim. I know I'm supposed to be modest here, but ...

Your current favorite blog?

An impossible question.

What blog did you read most recently?

Is There No Sin In It?

Which feeds do you subscribe to?

I really dislike feeds for some reason.

What blogs are you tagging with this meme and why?

Omnipotent Poobah, Brownfemipower, Corrine, Luke, and Dustdaughter because I love them all dearly and they don't seem to be tagged yet.

Weekend Homework

2006-09-09T17:37:00.000-04:00

1. Fredric Jameson reviews Slavoj Zizek's new book. Come and get your geek treat!

2. Cheryl Miller discusses class, race, and fertility treatments in
Babies for Sale.

3. Are you concerned about the state of American higher education? So are Donald Kagan, Peter Schmidt, and Diane Schemo (and her readers), but not Robert Samuelson. Blogland responds: History and Education, The Quick and the Ed, Vox Baby, My Secret Public Blog, Web Diary of a Boston Grad Student, and Not in Kansas Anymore have lots of interesting stuff to say.

(Also interesting is Alvin Sanoff's piece from March which incorporates the Chronicle's survey of high school teachers vs. college faculty.)

4. Stanley Crouch reviews "Will You Die With Me?": My Life and the Black Panther Party, Flores Alexander Forbes's new memoir.

Enjoy your weekend!

What Do Y'all Think About This?

2006-09-07T16:40:00.000-04:00

Kim Ficera's new column:

If you were a tomboy in the '70s or early '80s, trying to make sense of life's challenges that were offered in prime time on your TV, you knew that something was amiss. You weren't satisfied. You might not have been able to articulate it well, but you knew on an emotional level that the “strong woman by day; weak woman by night” plots were insulting, and that the “girl meets boy, falls in love with boy” story lines were for someone else. Perhaps you thought, as I did, Jan Brady doesn't need a boyfriend, because I don't need a boyfriend! ...

Today, queer and questioning kids aren't frustrated by an absence of gay characters or sexuality on TV. If young viewers want to see lesbians and gay men having same-sex sex, all they have to do is find a cable box that isn't locked or steal their parents' Blockbuster cards. And it's been that way for quite a few years. Hell, if they want to see kids of their own age declare, “I'm gay!” on a major network, they can tune into ABC's Desperate Housewives.

What young media consumers are exposed to in the 2000s make their parents and grandparents long for the days when Lucy and Ricky Ricardo weren't allowed to sleep in the same bed. And to be completely honest, although I'm a parent to no one, current programming sometimes makes me question the means to the end.

While I believe we have to be honest with kids and show them that sex is natural, healthy and fun, not dirty or sick, I wonder if in our efforts to provide them with accurate information about sex and sexuality we're inadvertently depriving them of something even more valuable: wonder.

Read the whole thing and let me know.

Old New Yorkers, Newer New Yorkers, Emotion, Territory, and Distance

2006-09-07T14:01:00.000-04:00

There's an incredible snobbiness about New Yorkers that often manifests in a who-was-here-first, the-best-hole-in-the-wall-to-get-gelato-is-..., you-know-you're-a-real-New-Yorker-when-..., if-you-can-make-it-here-..., attitude. (Just to be on the up-and-up, I'll admit having indulged in such snobbery from time to time.) The longer I live here, the more I realize that I'm not a "real New Yorker" and probably never will be because I'm not a real, authentic, unadulterated anything or anyone, though, postmodernist critique aside for the moment, I sort of think there may be some real, authentic, unadulterated _______s out there. But it's hard not to identify pretty strongly with being a New Yorker when I think back to 9/11.

But let me be clear: I did not know anyone killed. I was not in Lower Manhattan. I did not see it happen. I am not, in any real way, an "owner" of the experience. However, one thing I will never forget as long as I live was watching the city I love fall limp around me with grief and shock. The liveliest, most energetic thing I'd ever met dulled like a light flipped off. That to me, far more than any particular image of the towers, is Sept 11. And the fact is that, though one could see the Trade Centers topple from any television in the world, one could not feel the whole of New York City waste away in the blink of an eye. Only someone who had lived there and loved it, who felt it was her home, could feel that particular loss. There are losses I didn't feel and couldn't begin to understand. But what I felt was something particularly New Yorker and I think my love for this city, that began long before that day, has since developed out of it.

In today's New York Times, there's an article on the divide between New Yorkers who lived here on Sept. 11, 2001 and those who didn't.

It reminded me of a day last year in a grad school class where the professor asked if anyone in the classroom had been here for Sept 11 besides himself. I was the only one. And I suddenly felt afraid. And I have no idea, no idea, no idea why that would be the emotion that came to me in that moment.

I am always surprised to meet people who moved to NYC after 9/11. It seems strange to me that they would have done so, but, of course, why not? Living elsewhere in the country and the world, one is often told how very very dangerous it is here, so one who chooses to move here has obviously come to terms with that before making the decision. Somehow though, I am still taken aback.

It's hard to know what effect it had on my fears about terrorism. I don't know if I'm more afraid than other New Yorkers who moved here after 9/11. I doubt it. I think it might actually just be being in the City itself, rather than the firsthand memory. But there's no doubt that I am far more afraid of another terrorist attack than people I know who live in other places. When I'm not in NYC (or DC) and I get my usual heart-clench at the sound of a low-flying plane, I always breathe a sigh of relief when I remember I'm not in NY, so it's unlikely that it's a terrorist attack.

One quote in the second article caught my attention:

Nearly a third of New Yorkers said they thought about Sept. 11 every day.

I can't imagine that being accurate. I can't believe that there's any New Yorker who doesn't think about every day. Not that it crosses their mind, but that they think about it. I don't think I'm oversensitive here.

I'd like to know how many times, in an average week, other New Yorkers fear a terrorist attack. Despite my survey research background, I have no clue how to formulate that question: "When you see someone put down their briefcase on the train, what percentage of the time do you feel a panic?" or "When you feel your building moving and settling, what percentage of the time is your first thought that there's been another terrorist attack?" or "When you see someone open their compact and powder their nose vigorously on the train, do you wonder if she's got anthrax ... all of the time, most of the time, some of the time, a little of the time, or none of the time?"

I am a big Gothamist fan these days, so here's what they say. In the comments section, people start to discuss the smell. Which actually made me feel sick with memory. And, like I said, I wasn't even in Lower Manhattan.

I am also fascinated by the experiences others shared in comments: the particular feeling of having been born and raised in NYC, but not being there on 9/11, the particular feeling of being in the suburbs of NYC and having so many of your loved ones there and not knowing where they were, the particular bold, fearless solidarity shared by those who moved here afterward.

I think what Dave H. says makes most sense:

I'd like to say this is a stupid debate, but it reminds me of the episode of "Rescue Me" in which a NYFD firefighter in a grief counseling group berated its other members when he found out that they were nowhere near the WTC on 9/11. He had a legit point. There are differing levels of trauma associated with horrific events.

This is true even for the person who was with me the entire day, my partner, A, upon whom the event made far less of an impact at the time, though we both have come to realize how it affected us in different ways over time.

This is strange, but I think there's a defensiveness and territorialism over any pain. As someone who was not born and raised here, I became a sort of 9/11 ambassador to the states of Colorado and Kansas, where all my family live. And my defensiveness came, I think, from having had the memory evoked against my will by sometimes innocent and truly caring questions from innocent and truly caring people that weren't there and wanted to know how it felt. I didn't want to be caught off guard with, "What was it like? How did it feel?" and be taken back to that time. I was also offended by people who didn't seem to care enough. My sister never once, never one time, asked me what it was like around 9/11. She didn't call me or speak with me at that time because she was mad that she thought I'd stolen a bra of hers on my last visit. (Seriously.) And she never apologized for that, she never said, "I wish I'd been there for you. What was it like?" and that's something I don't know if I'll ever get over, though she's one of the closest people in the world to me.

There's a way in which I don't want to ever have to tell anyone how anything feels. I am always annoyed and offended when someone says, "Wow, what was it like to move from little ole Colorado to New York City?" Instead of saying, "It was a profoundly beautiful experience of liberation I can't describe, at the same time as it was fraught with difficulties I didn't even realize until it was over and blah, blah, blah," I want to say, "Ummm. Hmmm. Fuck you." Or, as a gentleman asked me the other day, "What's it like to be a beautiful woman and get shouted at on the street?" Well, sir, none of your beeswax. All because words cannot express something that's mine and I am, in some sense, comforted by that distance.

But I have no idea how to handle it when I'm the one on the other side of that distance. For example, the other day I met a woman who just moved here from Louisiana and, before I knew it, I was talking about Katrina. Because, though the pain I feel is drastically different from the pain she feels about Katrina, I feel pain about Katrina. Just like my unassuming aunts and uncles and cousins and grandmothers and family friends felt pain about 9/11 from hundreds of miles away. And, though it is perhaps a strange comparison, the born-and-bred-on-the-coasts people who ask me about what it's like to come from Colorado are asking because they are part of the rift, they are on one side of a national tear and they feel it, though ever-so-differently; and men who see women harassed on the street probably feel their own frustration, though frustration of another kind.

I wish our language allowed a certain space around these emotions, a way to express that the pain we feel about things and the pain we feel from things is different, and even that one specific experience collides with so many other factors, often unknown, to compound or diminish or simply reconfigure our reactions and our relationships to one event or structure or another. It's why identity politics, without anything other analytical mechanism, never works to explain how things feel, whether identity is gender or identity is pre-9/11 New Yorker. Emotion is intersectional, personal, and relies on being internalized, in pieces, and shared, in other pieces.

NY Election Stuff

2006-09-06T16:53:00.000-04:00

I'm rolling my eyes that Charlie King endorsed Cuomo. I'm rolling my eyes that the New York Post endorsed Cuomo. And I'm rolling my eyes at the debate, though it sounds like Green brought it.

This election wears me out.

Overcooked

2006-09-06T16:36:00.000-04:00

One of the painful things that comes with living a totally different life from everyone else in one's family is that, inevitably, one mostly disagrees with them when it comes to matters of taste. Rarely is this more clear than in the comparison between me and my sister. My sister's favorite movie in high school was Charlie's Angels, and not in some sort of riot grrl way. She has been known to listen to Andrew Lloyd Weber musicals by choice.

So, it should come as no surprise that, despite some funny moments, I've always been rubbed the wrong way by Dane Cook. I find that, even when he is funny, he's funny in a way that is thoroughly unmemorable and, well, disappointing. Mostly, I just know he's the kind of person I most definitely would not want to know, and not in that genius-asshole sort of way that makes me still sorta want to meet, say, Ernest Hemingway or John Lennon.

Dane Cook is the "funny guy" and always has been. There's something about the really funny people like, say, Chris Rock or Stephen Colbert - you know they weren't the "funny guy", even if they were really funny, when they were, like, 15.

The other thing is that I'm really sick of hearing how "hot" he is. Frankly, I can't tell.

All that is a preamble to say that, yea, I really liked what my Heather Havrikesky (also known as Bitch With My Job) wrote.

Weekend Homework: Late for the Holiday Edition

2006-09-02T20:35:00.000-04:00

Some lucky few of us will enjoy Monday off. I am amongst those who will be basking in the brand new autumn. That's my excuse (the extra day) for lateness on Weekend Homework.

1. Evelyn Nieves writes about the rise in hate crimes against Navajos.

2. Ethan Miller says that Other Economies Are Possible!

3. John Cloud tells us What's Good About the New SAT?

4. Belledame says This is what intellectual honesty looks like responding to, inspired by antiprincess's "I shame the matriarchy". Both are must-reads, whether you agree a lot, some, a little, or not at all. I want to give mad props to both for their level of psychic engagement, emotional investment, and personal commitment to struggling, analyzing, critiquing, and soul-searching through the serious issues of feminism, solidarity, relationship, femininity, sexuality, vulnerability, and the connections and disconnections between the personal and the political.

Then, when you're done with those, check out Bitch's fresh poststructuralist response.

The "Epidemic" of Oral Sex

2006-09-02T19:32:00.000-04:00

Usually, we reserve use of the word "epidemic" to refer to something both horrible and widespread. Like, you know, a disease. But the other way we use "epidemic", it seems, is to make something sound horrible and widespread. To arouse hysteria. To make people feel that it could be in the food they drink, the air they breathe, the water they drink. Beneath the beds of their children. Lurking in their own closets. Everywhere and anywhere. Watch out!

For example, the "obesity epidemic". Or, the example at hand: "the oral sex epidemic".

Tim Harford tells us about it in his recent piece, "A Cock and Bull Story":

"Parents, brace yourselves." With those words, Oprah Winfrey introduced news of a teenage oral-sex craze in the United States. In the Atlantic Monthly, Caitlin Flanagan wrote, "The moms in my set are convinced—they're certain; they know for a fact—that all over the city, in the very best schools, in the nicest families, in the leafiest neighborhoods, 12- and 13-year-old girls are performing oral sex on as many boys as they can."

Are they right? National statistics on teen fellatio have only recently been collected, but the trend seems to be real. Johns Hopkins University Professor Jonathan Zenilman, an expert in sexually transmitted infections (and father of former Slate intern Avi Zenilman), reports that both the adults and the teenagers who come to his clinic are engaging in much more oral sex than in 1990. For men and boys as recipients it's up from about half to 75 to 80 percent; for women and girls, it's risen from about 25 percent to 75 to 80 percent. ...

... even as the oral-sex epidemic rages, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the percentage of teenage virgins has risen by more than 15 percent since the beginning of the 1990s.

To my eye, there are a few things to be happy about:

1. Female equality. Girls are 3 times as likely to be recipients of oral sex as they were in 1990. Boys' chances have gone up too, but only to the point where both genders are getting head at a similar rate.

2. If Caitlin Flanagan is right (which would be a rarity, but let's give the benefit of the doubt), "putting out" is no longer the province of the poor, but a cross-class phenomenon.

3. Teens, because of their changing sexual behaviors, are less at risk for disease!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

4. Teens, because of their changing sexual behaviors, are less at risk for unwanted pregnancy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

5. Repeat 3 and 4 without end.

It seems to me that there's some serious prudery underlying the use of the word "epidemic". What else could explain the objection to increasing oral sex? I personally don't understand why a parent would be particularly disturbed by their children's being engaged in oral sex, unless it's a general concern with sex or a more specific concern about their child being engaged in a sex act that's still seen, especially by older folks, as "dirty". Yes, they could get emotionally involved and then hurt. They could be used. But, frankly, no one gets out of adolescence unscathed by either of the above. Maybe not sexually, but maybe socially, maybe academically.

Here are the circumstances wherein I object to oral sex:

1. Obviously any time it is not consensual.

2. Any time where one partner isn't getting it and wants it, but the other is.

3. If it hurts and those involve don't want it to hurt.

If your kid is smart enough to be avoiding unsafe sex in favor of oral sex, applaud her/him. Feel proud of your parenting skills. Pat yourself, and your kid, on the back. Thank his/her sex ed teacher. Thank MTV.

I mean, WHAT'S THE PROBLEM? Oprah, why is this so scary?

One more thing: our culture supports parental fear of sex for their children. It is considered normal and even positive to be a father who does his best to terrify anyone his daughter dates, to be a mother who cautions her daughter about the danger of expressing desire, the damage they could do to their reputation. It goes for boys too: boys who want to have sex with girls are told that they are not "respecting" them. Parents are expected to shame their children into avoiding sex. These actions are considered good parenting. Damn near everyone thinks that telling kids to WAIT WAIT WAIT is the best thing to do; some might say to mention condoms too, but very few will say, "Hey, if there's little to no risk, tell them to do what they want!" That won't be having sex for everyone because some will still want to wait and that's cool.

Kids: if you're out there and want sex, do it, just do it safely. Oral sex is definitely safer for everyone, regardless of gender and sexual orientation. If oral and manual aren't for you, try a condom for vaginal or anal sex. And advocate for your school to offer comprehensive sex ed, starting young.

Parents: kill the shame. Your kids will only try harder to hide it from you; they won't stay celibate forever just to get your pat on the back. Be honest about the dangers of oral sex versus vaginal or anal sex. Be honest about the options for protection from STDs and unwanted pregnancy. And advocate for your children's schools to offer comprehensive sex ed, starting young.

Media: start covering this rise in oral sex as a success story. STOP CALLING IT AN EPIDEMIC!

Fertility Treatments

2006-08-31T14:50:00.000-04:00

Did y'all read about this?

Smokers, lesbians, and single women, but not fat women or women over 40, would be allowed to get fertility treatment through the National Health Service under recommendations from the British Fertility Society. The cutoff is a body mass index of 36. Rationales: 1) "Obese women are less likely to get pregnant and more likely to encounter health problems." 2) "The NHS is already stopping women who are obese from having fertility treatment," so let's make it official. Fertility Society's view: "Continued inequality of access to treatment is unacceptable in a state-funded health service." Cynic's view: Evidently, some inequalities are more unequal than others.

I don't tend to spend a lot of blog time complaining about the policies of governments that are not my own, but this is, no doubt, on its way to the US.

And one more thing: what about the severely underweight women (often celebrities and trophy wife types) who are VERY likely to get fertility treatments and also very likely to encounter health problems?

There is Silence in the Streets; Where Have All the Protesters Gone?

2006-08-31T14:30:00.000-04:00

There is very little in this world I hate more than editorials like this.

There's very little need for me to comment, though, because lots of good folks have done it for me.

Blue Crab Boulevard says it:

Andrew Rosenthal, in the New York Times, makes a plaintive lament about the lack of protesters in the streets today. Ah, the good old days of marching in the streets, revolution in the air, teach-ins, sit-ins and all the est of the fun and games of that era. ...

Laments like this reveal more about the person making the comments than about the world as it is. Rosenthal mourns that there is no draft to motivate the young to rise up. What Rosenthal doesn't admit, or remember is that it wasn't all heady idealism. There were also riots and bombings in some places. Many of the protests had much more than just an anti-war agenda, many were openly pro-communist. Many more protesters wanted not just the end to the Vietnam war, they had other political irons in the fire. A good portion of the protesters were swept along by the enthusiasm - they were not really true believers.

In the rose-tinged hindsight of people like Rosenthal, it was all good and driven by people with high ideals. It was not quite as he would paint the picture.

Matthew Iglesias knocks it out of the park, as they say:

Have I ever mentioned that I hate baby boomers? Sometimes I think this is irrational on my part. Then along comes Andrew Rosenthal's infuriating contribution to today's New York Times editorial page. In essence, he went to hear Crosby, Stills, and Nash play, started thinking about the old Crosby, Stills, and Nash shows he's seen, waxes nostalgic about the sixties, and demands to know why the kids these days aren't as awesome in terms of mounting an anti-war movement as the kids were back in his day.

Well, what's happened is that a broad coalition of boomers who've managed to grow up, along with the vast swathes of the American public either too old or too young to have been at Woodstock, are trying to avoid the catastrophic mistakes made by the anti-war movement in the late 1960s. Specifically, we're trying to not link the war question up with a broad countercultural movement that managed to become less popular than the war itself. Specifically, rather than engaging in a lot of self-indulgent political theater, contemporary anti-war people have managed to get the vast majority of the Democratic Party -- along with a few Republicans, like the desperate Chris Shays -- to shift toward a position favoring an end to the war in Iraq, and we're now hoping the 2006 midterm elections will put such politicians in a position where they have the power to do something about it.

There's just very little reason to think that organizing mass demonstrations or getting more people to listen to "New Kicks" or "Celebration Guns" would advance any important political goals in a useful way.

Metadish:

I actually had a similar conversation with my parents a few weeks ago, despite the fact that, being not yet 50, they are both too young to have seriously engaged in the anti-Vietnam movement in the first place. My mother's specific complaint involved the lack of modern protest music. I responded by playing the beginning of "Hail to the Thief" and declaring it to be a more intelligent critique of our current situation than almost anything produced by the hippies. ...

The hippies lost their war because they fought it poorly. To win our war, we need to do a much better job of making our views mainstream. So far, we're succeeding, albeit at a much slower pace than would be ideal.
Aging Boomers can complain all they want about the lack of excitement accompanying the current anti-war movement, but they failed where we still have the chance to succeed, and that's how history will judge us.

I couldn't agree more with all of the above. One more thing: the economic climate was very different at that time. Just saying.

Katrina Anniversary Round-up

2006-08-31T14:16:00.000-04:00

1. The Washington Post tells us about the Katrina-inspired works of art coming on the one year anniversary.

2. NYT's coverage includes a lot about the children of Katrina, including an interactive feature. Also, considers Bush as president in the aftermath and anniversary.

3. The Progress Report: An Unhappy Anniversary

4. Adolph Reed: When the Government Shrugs

5. Mia White: New Orleans: Repeating Its Mistakes?

Prepping for the Primaries

2006-08-31T13:20:00.000-04:00

Now, I didn't go crazy blogging on the primaries this year because, well, eh.

1. The Spitzer-Suozzi race is, well, not exactly a race. I guess it's always possible that a tortoise-hare situation could happen, but, by possible, I mean there may be a .000000000000000000000000000001% chance.

2. As far as the Attorney General's race, I CAN'T STAND CUOMO. I'm also not a big Mark Green fan. So, I'll vote for Maloney, who I think would be fantastic, but I know won't win. Or, I'll give in and vote for Mark Green just so as not to throw away the chance to basically vote against Cuomo. The fact that Maloney doesn't have a chance just shows how utterly insulting NYC politics are.

3. The Assembly race kind of sucks on my district, the 74th. I basically don't like any of the three Democrats: Brian Kavanagh, Esther Yang, or incumbent Sylvia Friedman. I think, maybe just to be contrarian, I'm going to vote for Yang. They all have some things going for them, don't get me wrong, but on a lot of the major issues (housing, bars and clubs, redistricting, term limits except for Yang), they're so off. And I don't even want to get into Friedman's health care bill. All of these people mean well and their proposals are meant to help people, but their ideas are just not sustainable. It's like with Social Security: we don't want to get everyone further entrenched in the current system because that system's going to break. The other thing is that I think candidates in my district are only looking out for one, fairly small, community, not for the district as a whole.

One of the only things I dislike about living in my neighborhood, a neighborhood I am actually passionate about, is that it's impossible to get someone decent elected, because most of the time they won't even run. I've actually thought about running for City Council (you won't get me to Albany, sorry).

In the general election, I'll vote for the Republican, Frank Scala, even though he already lost once and hasn't the slightest chance.

If you want more info on the race though, this is the best you can get.

4. I don't get to vote in Brooklyn's 11th congressional district, but I'm pretty charged that the New York Times endorsed Yassky.

So, in conclusion, I don't know how much I'll be blogging about these elections because there are so many shoo-ins or it-doesn't-matters. But thanks for asking!

On the Emmys

2006-08-31T12:59:00.000-04:00

I guess I'm late on this post. Well, I'm late on all the posts coming up because I did another disappearing act. (Let me just say that working 2 jobs and going to school full-time is a killer, but the other problem is that Veronica Mars Season 2 is now on DVD.) Anyway ...

One of the problems for me with the big awards shows is that I assume that whatever it is I am watching and loving is most definitely better than whatever I'm not watching. So, I am outraged at the defeat of Project Runway, my new flame, by The Amazing Race, which I have never seen but assume is awful. Also, anything that beat Arrested Development or Weeds makes me mad. Then, I find out that the last season of Six Feet Under was eligible but wasn't nominated!!!???? I truly believe that's as good as television (art?) gets!

Anyway, this is why, as the Omnipotent Poobah advised me 'round Oscar time, I should simply get over it.

Triumph of Television

2006-08-21T20:29:00.000-04:00

It seems fitting that my 1000th post should extol the virtues of extolling the virtues of that most virtuous of art forms: television. Despite the fact that the bitch has my job (seriously, someone offer me living writing about television and I'll forego the Dr. I'm working to put in front of my name), I love, love, love Heather Havrilesky and it's fantastic to see her spread her wings a bit with a larger word count and a grander scheme in piece.

She makes all the points I so love to make about television's perpetual improvement: Television has become a more reliably fulfilling and commercially uncompromised medium than film. This is largely due to the rise, in the last decade, of the serial drama, with its season-long arcs, slow-simmering character development, and diverse permutations, all of which have allowed TV writers more creative range than ever before. Instead of concise, often formulaic, self-contained episodes, we're treated to rich, complexly plotted stories about tortured Mafia families, soulful Muslim CIA agents and intergalactic spirituality crises that we end up caring deeply about.

And situating TV's artistic leap as fundamentally an effect of serializing does my heart good. There's something fascinating in the way that serial art forms have been for so long maligned (soap opera, comic book, "series" novels), but that element, precisely that element, is the element recuperated and now lauded for its artistic (rather than sentimental) merits.

I also burst with pride for "my shows" mentioned in the article, especially Six Feet Under and Battlestar Gallactica.

I was also tremendously gratified by Havrilesky's note that Tivo and DVD as viewing methods have distanced the art of television from its formative profit motive. Exactly.

If I know my readers, and I think I do, you'll get a kick out of the letters written to Salon in response to the piece - as always, the freaks come out of the woodwork. Blaming television-lovers for everything from poverty to the election (or whatever it was) of President Bush. Also, everyone has to come out for "their shows" that didn't get play in the article and, as usual, the Wheedon posse know how to stand by their man better than anyone else's. And, naturally, some fogies (no disrespect to older people, just to these older people) show up saying that the original Star Trek and The Avengers are really good TV. Mmmmm-hmmm. Finally, a few people who apparently didn't read the article have to weigh in on how only the rich can afford to watch good television because it's all on premium cable, whereas film is affordable. Please. I don't own a television and I'm a television FANATIC. One reason why: it's more cost effective to rent one disc of 6 hours of television vs. one disc of the same price with a 90 minute movie on it. Obviously, some people can't afford to go around renting movies, but, if you can rent DVDs or video, you can watch good television.

But wait. I want to go back to something I said earlier. I'll just quote myself: There's something fascinating in the way that serial art forms have been for so long maligned (soap opera, comic book, "series" novels), but that element, precisely that element, is the element recuperated and now lauded for its artistic (rather than sentimental) merits.

I need to clarify. Because part of what's cool is that, when we laud serial television, we are, to some extent, praising sentimentality. Or, if not praising it, acknowledging that it is fundamental to (or can be fundamental to) great art.

But one itsy bitsy quibble: why is it that the only way we can save television from the cultural cemetery of the middle-brow is by putting it above film? There are things television does better than film, but not everything. Honestly though, after the beating TV has taken for the past 5 decades, film can take a punch or two, I guess.

The Trouble When Jane Becomes Jack

2006-08-20T17:18:00.000-04:00

God help us. The New York Times tries to deal with the topic of transitioning in lesbian relationships. In the Sunday Styles section, no less.

Why?????????????

The Odd Couple: Andre and Big Boi

2006-08-20T17:03:00.000-04:00

Whether you're an Outkast fan or not, Jonathan Dee's 6-page profile is an incredibly sensitive, insightful, stomach-deep piece of pitch-perfect music journalism. It's a beautiful short story about a fascinating relationship, told with driven subtlety. It brought tears to my eyes, actually. You must check it out.

Gather the Women at the Crossings

2006-08-18T16:10:00.000-04:00

Some of my beloved blogfriends have recently been questioned, or are questioning, whether or not they get to be/should be called "feminist" because of what the word connotes. I'm pretty comfortable with the label myself.

Until I see something like this and think I'd rather eat glass than join the festivities.

I Guess Grand Theft Auto and Trans Fats Haven't Spoiled All of Them

2006-08-18T16:03:00.000-04:00

Check out this awesome letter to Ask Amy.

Dear Amy: A letter from "Mr. Old Fashioned" shocked me. He doesn't believe that mothers should serve in the military.

As a 14-year-old girl hoping to one day become a Navy pilot, his letter made me sick.

So it is OK for a father to serve his country but for a mother, that's not acceptable?

Mothers in the military are women who are bravely serving our country. All parents over there, not just the women, are probably homesick and want to see their kids more than anything in the world. Singling out women in this situation is not OK, and questioning a mother's love for her daughter is cruel.

-- Future Pilot

Dear Pilot: "Mr. Old Fashioned" seemed to be trying to make a point about women leaving their children while they serve in the military. Many readers were riled by his highly insensitive comments, especially at a time when fathers and mothers are facing unexpected and dangerous deployments.

As a girl and future Navy pilot, you are in an excellent position to react to Mr. Old Fashioned, and your remarks are on the mark.

Weekend Homework

2006-08-18T13:07:00.000-04:00

Everybody:

1. KC Sheehan's "Doing Justice: Bad Writing which considers Martha Nussbaum's famous takedown of Judith Butler in the New Republic and then reaches into questions of language and feminism more grandly, is a fascinating read.

2. In The Chronicle Leonard Cassuto goes "Beyond Peyton Place" on its 50th anniversary.

3. The indomitable Rachel discusses Oliver Stone's new film in Erasing Black Heros By Making Them White.

4. Friends don't let friends see Snakes on a Plane. Yes, it will be very, very, very kitschy. I still won't let you go. Instead I offer you The Illusionist for your perfectly summery movie, with no snakes, no plane, so Samuel L. Jackson.

San Francisco:

5. Celebrate the 10th birthday of Bitch Magazine! At The Women's Building, 3543 18th St (between Guerrero and Valencia), 6pm-8pm. $15 advance tickets, $25 at the door. Keep Bitch alive!

New York:

6. Check out this article in NYT on blacks and Hispanics (lack thereof) in specialized New York schools.

And, finally, just stay the hell away from Jones Beach on Saturday, folks. 311 is playing.

Bitch-Time: Feminist Definitions of Desire

2006-08-17T16:12:00.000-04:00

I love Shake's Sis, but I hate threads like this where everyone has to prove their desires are politically correct. Excuse me if I don't believe all of you that say you're only attracted to women who are in the bloom of 2200+-calories-per-day health, never (NEVER) wear makeup, and never even began shaving their legs. It's also good if she has some kind of quirk that would make her unattractive to everyone other than you. And, of course, if these women put on heels, the desire goes right out the window. Even though, naturally, it's really just about her personality anyway.

I believe that some people are attracted to those women in exclusivity, but I highly doubt it's as common as people (mostly men, because its their desire being policed) on feminist blogs would indicate.

While I'm leaving myself wide open to hate today, let me just say that I've been known to think conventionally attractive people were attractive. I know, I know: I'm a sinner. I love the guy on the thread that's like, "My girlfriend is naturally thin. She's Japanese. She's hot."

I've said it before and I'll say it again, sexual desire is interesting in that it can't be magically made to conform to your politics. Some people's desires and politics probably align, but, amongst us way lefties, I'll bet it's few and far between.

Transracial Adoption

2006-08-17T13:33:00.000-04:00

I was excited to see this article in NYT about "transracial adoptions," specifically, white couples adopting black children.

Prometheus 6 responds here:

You have to wonder what made them say they specifically want a Black child. 'What do these people think they are doing?' is exactly the question that occurs to me, but it's an honest inquiry...not a challenge. (There's more, by the way, and it goes in different directions, so ...)

Now, this probably won't make me popular, but, if I were going to adopt a child, I would specifically look for a black or Latino child to adopt. Not because I think I am particularly equipped to negotiate the incredible challenges of raising a black child as a white person, but because I know how, in this racist culture, many of these children will never be adopted and will spend their lives in foster care, whereas white children are snapped up as embryos. So, yeah, I'd walk in the door and say, "I want to adopt a child, preferably black or Latino."

What I would not say is, "love makes a family, so I won't notice the color of my child's skin." That's stupid. I would not say, "This child will never feel alienated or isolated because I'll love them so much that race won't matter." That's stupid too. Nor would I say, "Gee, maybe I'll take the child out so that they can experience playing the dozens like 'real black people' do."* That's just so stupid.

(Robert O’Connor, 39, who was raised by a white family in Rush City, Minn., recalled his struggles growing up in a small town with few other blacks. Throughout his youth, he said, he felt awkward around other blacks. He did not understand black trends in fashion or music or little things like playing the dozens, the oral tradition of dueling insults.)

My fear would not be that the child would not be exposed to enough 'black culture'. I'd say at least half the music I listen to and books I read are by black artists. And, as the saying goes, some of my best friends are black. ;) My workplace is far more black than white. My neighborhood is racially diverse, plus I live in NYC, so it's not like you have to search around to see a black face in really just about any neighborhood (Staten Island notwithstanding). The films I like are often fairly (though probably not enough) racially diverse and blah, blah, blah. And, let's get real: people growing up now can't not be exposed to 'black culture', even if some of it is the worst mainstreamed crap (just like all the white worst mainstream crap) in the world.

My concern would not be exposure to black culture, but that I wouldn't really feel like I could prepare someone for being the object of racial prejudice, having never experienced it myself. But I hardly think that changing foster homes every six months is any better.

Also, it seems like more and more programs are sprouting up for adopted children of races other than their parents wherein they can build relationships with people of their own race. Obviously, this can't replace parents, but ... we're not dealing with ideal scenarios here.

Families never work. Even the ones that do don't. I think accepting that racial difference will be an issue is fundamental to the process. If I were selecting white families or individuals to adopt black children, I would definitely be freaked by people who said, "It will be no different from raising a white child," and other such things.

I would be very wary of trying to force some kind of 'authenticity' on my child, as I would be wary of trying to force 'assimilation'. If my kid didn't like Spike Lee films, I'd be really disappointed, but I'd be disappointed because I love Spike Lee and am always disappointed when others don't share that preference. But I wouldn't be forcing it down her/his throat like, "But you're black, honey! You have to like this or I'm failing as a parent to a black child!" I think it's important that white adoptive parents not bring stereotypes to bear on their child of what it will mean for that individual child to be black.

I think that, at the same time, I'd become more conscious of what the mix was of influences to which they were exposed via my own tastes and what that communicated to him/her.

Anyway, I think it's frankly tragic that so many black children go without permanent families because white people either prefer white children or are afraid to participate in some kind of "genocide".** If, and this is a big if, I were to overcome my immaturity and selfishness enough to have a child (I mean this only in my own case, not that everyone who chooses not to have kids is immature or selfish), this is how I would like to do it.

* Robert O’Connor, 39, who was raised by a white family in Rush City, Minn., recalled his struggles growing up in a small town with few other blacks. Throughout his youth, he said, he felt awkward around other blacks. He did not understand black trends in fashion or music or little things like playing the dozens, the oral tradition of dueling insults.

** Rhetoric around the issue has softened considerably since the National Association of Black Social Workers, in 1972, likened whites adopting black children to “cultural genocide.”

Something Fishy

2006-08-16T14:21:00.000-04:00

(And I don't mean that in the whole sex-gender way.)

Everyone's talking about the Census. It's very cool. I love a good census. But it's the way they're talking, people. For example, the title of an article in the NY Post, WHITES DECLINE IN CITY might make you think that it was whites and only whites, as a racial group, whose numbers in NYC declined. But guess what? The percentage of blacks in NYC declined too!

???????

Into Africa

2006-08-16T13:41:00.000-04:00

Your favorite paper, and mine, The Paper of Record that is, published a piece a few days ago called Into Africa which was interesting. Or it's concept was.

And much as it may strain the limits of good taste to say it, Africa — rife with disease, famine, poverty and civil war — is suddenly “hot.”

Beginning early in the decade with a trickle of celebrity fact-finding missions to strife-torn sub-Saharan nations (Bono in Ghana, Bono everywhere) that became a torrent within the last couple of years (Clay Aiken in Uganda, Jessica Simpson in Kenya), Africa has now been embraced by the masses.

Those who work with or study Africa-related causes report that tourism in many African countries is way up, that students are increasingly choosing to study and volunteer there, and that money is pouring into Africa-centric charities — from grassroots efforts organized at churches and suburban dinner parties across the country, to larger aid organizations. Even among hipsters, clothing decorated with the image of Africa is beginning to replace last season’s Che Guevara T-shirts.

I can hang. It sounds, even, like my kind of thing to read. But Alex Williams feels the need to blast us with this as his last paragraph:

The larger question is whether soccer moms and flyover people will continue to care about Africa once the celebrities move on. As Mr. Musto said, “Just like a trendy restaurant lasts 18 month, so will interest in Africa.”

Hmmmm. "Flyover people" has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? A slur is born. But anyway, that's not what this article is even about. The article seems to take stock of a national trend. Let's take a look:

Celebrities, celebrities, celebrities ... Genevieve Parker, a 17-year-old student at the Potomac School in McLean, Va ... Daniel Millenson, a Brandeis University sophomore ... dollar-wielding Bills — Clinton and Gates ... A recent celebrity-dotted fund-raiser at the Puck Building in Manhattan featuring Kevin Bacon as the master of ceremonies — Donna Karan and Iman attended ... 125 people banded together at a Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., restaurant ... parishioners at Christ Presbyterian Church in Madison, Wis. ... Jay-Z on clean water, Gwyneth Paltrow on aid to children, and Lucy Liu on AIDS ... Lindsey Lohan, Alyssa Milano, Don Cheadle.

A whole lot of soccer moms in that bunch! What that whole last paragraph implies is very much the opposite of the way the rest of article reads: celebs have gotten a bunch of people, mostly other celebs and A-list types, to give a whole lot of money to different causes on the continent of Africa. Whether soccer moms and flyover people are involved is really only one teeny tiny piece of the puzzle.

Plus, the construction of that last paragraph makes no sense. We're given to assume that soccer moms and flyover people are not cool, not trendy, don't know what the hell is going on until it's over. Then Michael Musto, of all people, shows up discussing trendy restaurants as an apt comparison, when not one of those "soccer moms and flyover people" would ever visit such a restaurant and, if they did, they'd be led out of the "soccer mom and flyover people" category, because, "soccer moms and flyover people" is shorthand for another shorthand, let's say "people who go to the [get ready to cringe with all your might] Olive Garden instead of a trendy restaurant in MePa".

As for the article itself, I admit I am susceptible to the trendiness of certain social issues. You'll note how quickly I became all about local and organic when Michael Pollan's book came out. For me, I don't think I'm into this stuff because celebs are. I'd much rather read about their clothes, workout regime, ridiculous purchases, and sex lives. I think it's because the media actually starts covering this stuff and then I get into it from reading about it more often.

Also, while that Paltrow ad APPALLS me (I can't believe she did that - I'm sure that Natalie Portman's next) and I'm not a big fan of the opening to Madonna's new concert, I think it's good for celebs to try to use their money and influence for causes they believe in. I sure as hell would. So it's Africa right now - alright. It's their money and influence. Just try not to be so disgusting about it.

"God" is Dead or What Happens When Religion is "Cool"

2006-08-08T20:46:00.000-04:00

No one needs to be told that the thing about trends is their imminent demise. Or that nothing is more uncool than the thing that was cool two weeks ago. Or that whatever fad you personally threw yourself into most deeply in your teenage years (whether it's evangelical Christianity, alcoholic clubbing, or death metal ear-to-ear and head-to-toe) is likely to be the site and subject of your most cringe-worthy memories.

It is, therefore, no surprise that 88% of Southern Baptist teens are leaving the church upon, or not longer after, graduation:

Dr. Frank Page, the denomination's new president, says SBC churches need to counter that statistic by finding ways to make themselves more relatable, more pertinent and significant to students before they graduate.

"We're seeing a societal trend where a large number of young people are opting out of the church," Page notes. "Estimates of 15 to 20 million people now in America have said they are Christians but they simply don't want to be a part of the church," he says.

Some blame the church "drop-out rate" among young people after they graduate on the secularist influence of America's public schools. However, the SBC's president observes, "The sad thing is that we're seeing that number of dropouts from church [among] those who went to public school and private school, and that's an unfortunate trend."

A trend for a trend, I'd say. For a decade and a half, youth groups have been crescent-fresh party-time, complete with their own bands, their own witty sloganed t-shirts, their own slang, their own Christians-Gone-Wild spring breaks ("mission trips"), their own pretty boy "trend-setter" leadership. And what did they get: the same thing every other trend got: relegated to humorous anecdotes of shame, dragged out on parties or fourth dates, after a couple drinks, complete with photos (see above).

Of course, the SBC has a plan:

The Southern Baptist leader says churches must find ways to connect with this young adult demographic -- Generation X, the bridger generation, or "whatever you want to call it" -- and must do a better job of discipling members of this group. A big part of the problem, he contends, "is that our churches simply are not relating to or seeming relevant to these students."

Being "relevant" and "find[ing] ways to connect with this young adult demographic" is what killed them to begin with because their notion was that youth wanted a lifelong Sprite campaign. Hip faith is not lasting faith. Ask the followers of the Maharishi, circa 1968.

American Blackout and the Power of Documentary Film

2006-08-08T17:09:00.000-04:00

Brenda Goodman writes about Ian Inaba's film, American Blackout and its possible impact on the Georgia District 4 congressional race, where Representative Cynthia A. McKinney fights to keep her seat.

Whether political documentaries affect the outcome of elections is an open question. Michael Moore released his anti-George W. Bush film “Fahrenheit 9/11” in the heat of the 2004 presidential campaign, but Mr. Bush was re-elected. Earlier this year Robert Greenwald announced distribution plans for the movie “The Big Buy: Tom DeLay’s Stolen Congress,” which he produced, during a primary. Mr. DeLay, a longtime Republican representative from Texas, eventually resigned his seat and left Congress, but the documentary was only a tiny factor in the media storm following his indictment on money laundering charges last year.

“I think they do reinforce and intensify people’s feelings,” Michael Cornfield, who teaches political strategy and message at George Washington University, said of political documentaries. Do movies influence how or if people vote? “That’s more aspirational than empirical,” he said.

Still, they try. In late July the producers of “American Blackout,” which was made by the Guerilla News Network, a nonprofit group with operations in New York and California, announced plans to release the film on DVD, including as a special feature interviews with four men, their faces and voices disguised, identified only as black officers with the Capitol Police. The officers, who call the Capitol Hill “the last plantation,” say their white colleagues often made a sport of stopping black members of Congress at security checkpoints, thus bolstering contentions that Ms. McKinney’s troubles with the police were the result of provocation.

“I’m so happy that filmmakers are taking on the role of investigative journalists,” Ms. McKinney said. “And I’m so happy that we have an alternative media that has arisen as a result of the public’s craving for fact rather than faction.”

Now, I'm confused on the Rep. McKinney issue - I tend to think she overreacted and took out a lifetime of racism on someone of lower status, which is a forgivable, but certainly unbecoming, response. I imagine it would be beyond infuriating to go unrecognized day after day after day after day. I mean, I've been angry about it at my job, and I'm white and the security guards are black, but, if a racial narrative was being more explicitly played out, I'd probably be far moreso. That said, I'd like to think I'd stop short of assaulting anyone (after all, I'm medicated). But again, this has been blown WAY out of proportion in keeping with a racial mythology: black women are angry and crazy. As a representative she seems to me lackluster, but no more lacking than the great majority of people on the floor of the House of Representatives. Would I vote for her, if I were her constituent? I don't, frankly, know enough about the race.

So, the particularities of the case aside, I am interested in the deeper question with which this piece is flirting: does/can film influence political outcomes?

I think that the focus of this piece on specific electoral races, rather than on larger, more expansive goals, does justice to the potential of film, specifically documentary. In other words, I don't think that film can stop the war or fight poverty or, sadly, end global warming, per se. Yes, it can influence how people generally think about things, but I am skeptical that any kind of critical mass can be generated by films, especially since documentaries tend to be limited in their release and

But, to take the specificity further, I think that, the more local an election, the more likely it is that a documentary could influence the outcome, particularly in terms of voter turnout. The fact of a film even being about something taking place in some of these districts will get people involved. After all, many American districts get very little attention from The Media, and some out-of-towner documenting their political process is exciting and controversial. Also, there is simply much less information out there about congressional races (to say nothing of, say, the local Public Advocate race) so a film's voice is heard more loudly. The filmmaker who puts together a film, critical or laudatory or somewhere in between, on President Bush, is one small voice in a sea of other voices, and, unless the filmmaker is her/himself something of a media star, the film won't make a dent. But even a first-time filmmaker can exert some pressure on a local race.

But why would anyone do that? Most people don't believe local politics matter. I just heard someone criticizing Ned Lamont for having deigned to serve his local community, as opposed to zooming straight to a senatorial campaign. As my sister-out-law would say, "gag me with a spoon." I'm so sick of the idea that local politics consists entirely of potholes.

As for whether documentary films are "investigative journalism," they may be "journalistic" but they are not "journalism" and I certainly wouldn't want people to go around thinking they are. The importance of The Truth and Objectivity are fundamental to the enterprise of journalism, right or wrong, real or imaginary; filmmakers' relationships to these concepts vary. Regular readers may know that my partner, A, is in filmland, and I hear stories all the time about documentary filmmakers whose philosophy is basically, "this is not journalism, so make it as interesting and dramatic as possible!" I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. But people should be wary of being manipulated when it comes to politics.

I am pretty aware that documentaries are often structured around careful manipulation of carefully selected footage yielding a carefully-plotted dramatic arc. And yet, I find myself easily snowed by them: they're just so ... convincing. It is hard not to believe something that you are hearing with your own ears and seeing with your own eyes. Of course, you're never seeing or hearing on your own, you bring 75%, the film's director, cameraperson, editor, and others bring 25%. I remember watching this incredible documentary called The Staircase, which I posted about. I finished the film convinced, convinced that Michael Peterson was not guilty. A quick Google left me thinking I'd been wrong and the man was a murderer. I don't know which is right, but the power of the film on my psyche was more than any article could have. Film has serious advantages as a medium to affect political change, but the advantages are, in many ways, predicated on misunderstanding, by viewers, of how the medium is used by its practitioners to optimum effect.

Welcome Endangered Cutie!!!

2006-08-04T14:47:00.000-04:00

Give us your tired, your poor, your endangered cuties ...

Manatee seen in the Hudson River!

Most manatees live in Florida and sightings even in Virginia are considered rare.

Watchers tracked this one last month as it swam north — first near Delaware, then Maryland, then New Jersey. Saturday, it was seen at 23rd Street in Manhattan, then later at 125th Street in Harlem.

"On both occasions it was observed logging at the surface adjacent to the bulkhead and appeared to be heading farther north up the river," said Kim Durham, rescue program director for the Riverhead Foundation, a nonprofit group devoted to marine mammals.

Manatees are an endangered marine mammal. Florida wildlife experts counted 3,116 individuals in their annual survey in February.

Gray, pudgy and whiskered, the 60 million-year-old species is a cousin of the elephant. A herbivore, it probably evolved from an animal that waded in water to eat plants.

A manatee was seen near Montauk, on the eastern tip of Long Island, in 1998, but this may be a first for the Hudson.

Rey Tagged Me

2006-08-04T14:22:00.000-04:00

And I can't let him down, so ...

1. One book that changed your life? Kathy Acker's Blood and Guts in High School

2. One book you have read more than once? Octavia Butler's Kindred

3. One book you would want on a desert island? Rey said this one, and it's too smart not to copy - The U.S. Army Survival Handbook.

4. One book that made you laugh? Tolstoy's Anna Karenina killed me.

5. One book that made you cry? Most recently, Amy Bloom's Love Invents Us.

6. One book you wish had been written? I wish Bill Clinton had written a memoir that really got to it and didn't spend so much time praising and thanking people who helped him.

7. One book you wish had never had been written? Oh so many. The one that comes to mind is Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place, but there are so so so many.

8. One book you are currently reading? Saul Bellow's Herzog. Snore.

9. One book you have been meaning to read? Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth

10. Now tag five people: Birthday girl Amy King, Amber Rhea, Cracker Lilo, The Poobah, and Mamita Mala - YOU'RE IT!!!!!

Weekend Homework

2006-08-04T01:41:00.000-04:00

Richies (if you've got disposable income you'd care to spend; this includes the middle-class, really):

1. Tanglewood is on. I was once among the spoiled and enjoyed an afternoon of incredible chamber music. Everyone who can possibly do so should attend at least once. I plan to have a second go at it when I am elderly and have presumably paid off my loans.

2. Happen to have 100 fucking dollars just lying around? Then, you are enabled to do a good deed, while enjoying yourself.

Richard Giles and Holley White, owners and farmers of Lucky Dog Organic Farm, lost their entire crop due to the recent flooding the Upper Delaware River Valley. Lucky Dog is one of the few local farms that is family-owned and operated and 100% organic. Applewood restaurant will be hosting a cocktail party benefit for Lucky Dog Farm. They will be featuring as much product from the farm as possible, but will be getting help from other local farms to help make the event a success. ... 7:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m., $100 per person (cash or check only, please) includes: beer, wine and passed hors d’oeuvres and a silent auction, featuring donations by local artists, authors and businesses (All beverages and food items are being donated by local farms and purveyors). Call 718.768.2044 for reservations. 501 11th Street, Brooklyn. If you cannot attend, please send donations to: Lucky Dog Farm, c/o applewood, 501 11th Street, Brooklyn NY 11215. From Gothamist of course.

Middle-Incomers:

1. Half Nelson comes out this weekend and it seems to me a must-see.

2. As the New Yorker describes it:

WE B*GIRLZ
Twenty-five years ago, a break-dancing battle staged at Lincoln Center Out of Doors was a landmark event in the mainstream recognition of hip-hop culture. Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper, the organizers of that legendary contest, have put together an anniversary re-creation spotlighting a signal development in the past quarter century: the rise of women. The 2006 competition is for ladies only, gathering together an international roster of contending m.c.s, d.j.s, graffiti artists, and B-girl crews. (Josie Robertson Plaza, Lincoln Center. 212-546-2656. Aug. 10 at 5:30.)

Broke-ass:

1. Pier 46 is showing a kids movie for free, Nanny Mcfee. You can diss it if you want to, but it stars Emma Thompson so ...

2. Read Alternet's There's No Such Thing As An Old Girls Network.

Stay cool, darlings!

New Yorkers and Cheap Eats

2006-08-04T01:29:00.000-04:00

I come from a lazy household, so we eat takeout or go to a restaurant at least once per week. I've noticed how the norm it is in NYC, maybe because of the kitchen situation (we have a refrigerator, stove, and sink in our living room and no counter space really) or maybe because New Yorkers tend to be babies, to eat out for many or most of your meals, if from deli, street cart, fast food, etc. So, the whole Cheap Eats thing (it appears both in New York and the Village Voice each year) gets a lot of attention. And every year, I go: Seriously?

It's that time where New York publishes its list and I have found one, exactly one, thing I'd agree with out of all 101. It's not that I haven't tried a bunch of these places, but, please!!!! It almost seems like they try to find places that, while semi-cheap, have no atmosphere, tiny portions, and bad service. It exhausts me, really. I've lived here for a long time now and every year I get excited and every year I find myself rolling my eyes. A good many of these places I would never, I repeat NEVER, return to. I don't spend my hard-earned (or hard-borrowed, in many cases) money on a half-empty stomach I got abused in the making of. Give me a break.

There's this sort of particularly New York, particularly middle-class on up, pretension that says the more wack a place is, the better you can feel about dropping cash there.

I think I might make my own Cheap Eats list. God knows I haven't eaten anything that wouldn't fit the cheapness parameters in a longass time.

On That Weird Moment On The View The Other Day And The Limits of Younger Women's Solidarity

2006-08-03T21:36:00.000-04:00

Click here to see the video of The View wherein Barbara Walters, Joy Behar, Lisa Loeb (apparently now on the show- who knew?), and Elizabeth Hasslebeck. The Big Feminist Blogs gave it their treatment, as did Gawker, saying:

[Discussion of Plan B] sent young Hasselbeck into a tizzy of earnest "life begins at penetration" arguments, getting herself so worked up that her voice slipped into the trying-not-to-cry quiver. Den mother Barbara Walters eventually had to step in and calm the girl down; after the segment, we're certain that Hasselbeck stomped off to her room and slammed the door. "You'll never understand me, Barbara! I hate this family! I can't wait till I go to college and get away from you people!"

You know what? As much as I disagree with her opinion, I was fucking infuriated by the way Barbara Walters talked to her like she was a naughty child, when she got a bit heated. People keep saying she "wigged out," "flipped out," or "lost her shit": have these people ever seen CNN? She spoke louder. She's allowed.

To make matters worse, after she was condescended to after expressing herself pretty articulately on the show, the "feminist blogosphere" jumped right in with the ageism. She's not a baby. She doesn't appear, from that clip, stupid or childish. I disagree 150% with her point of view, but this proliferation of the youtube clip on every blog disgusts me. Barbara Walters looked like a patronizing older woman who couldn't deal with the passion of a young woman taking over HER show.

The response of feminist bloggers to this, not their disagreement with Hasslebeck which is legitimate, but their characterization of her as a little girl or a dumb blonde, reminded me of a few weeks back when young feminist bloggers couldn't wait to get behind Katha Pollitt against Ana Maria Cox. It was bizarre because Cox's arguments seemed far more aligned to what they express on their blogs everyday. Many of these bloggers laughing at Hasslebeck are the same ones and many of them don't hesitate to make their names specifically as young women whose voices need to be heard/read at least in part because they're young women.

Which also reminds me of a discussion on Bitch|Lab about how someone like Camille Paglia might be using the "feminist" label in some way to get ahead. And I can't help but wonder if that doesn't actually pertain to some feminist bloggers' playing the "youth card". Young women should be listened to, respected, and treated as equals when young women = those particular feminist bloggers.

I think it's entirely possible both to critique what Hasslebeck was saying, while simultaneously critiquing the way Barbara Walters handled the situation. She had no qualms about blatantly humiliating this young woman, just as in Katha Pollitt didn't seem to see anything wrong with tarring a whole generation of young women "featherheads".

iPods Are a Girl's Best Friend

2006-08-02T19:28:00.000-04:00

Apparently, American women are not the tech-dunces we're told we are. Despite all the biological hard-wiring that makes us crave Manolos and our heads spin when faced with a gadget, An Oxygen Network survey released Tuesday found that more than three out of four women said they'd choose the TV over a diamond solitaire necklace. Women preferred a top-of-the-line cellphone to designer shoes by a similar margin. And a little white iPod narrowly trumped a little black dress.

And this study was conducted before the tech babes made a calendar!

The findings suggest advertisers need to address a broad audience and not talk down to women. Advertisers are best served communicating lifestyle benefits of tech products by showing what's useful about them, rather than focusing on specifications, Oxygen says.

"There have been some missed opportunities to market consumer electronics to women," says Steve Koenig, senior manager of industry analysis for the Consumer Electronics Association, whose research reveals only subtle differences between the sexes in their attitudes toward technology.

In the Oxygen survey, 59% of women agreed with the statement "Women are much more tech savvy than they give themselves credit for." Among the men, just 38% agreed.

"Men and women are equally competent in the technology arena," says Oxygen CEO Geraldine Laybourne.

It was only a matter of time before we ruined gadgetry for men, just like we did college, work, sex, and everything else. Now, men will be running like mad back to typewriters and rotary phones because it's just no damned fun anymore.

She, The Petitioner

2006-08-02T19:10:00.000-04:00

This is awesome!

The New York state Senate and Assembly have approved bills that would require all petitions for public office to include feminine pronouns, its sponsors in the two houses said.

Currently the language in all petitions is masculine and only provides options such as "he" and "himself." The new legislation will allow for the variations "she" and "herself" and will be applicable to all petitions, including those submitted when running for village and town boards, state Senate and Assembly, and for the office of governor.

"This legislation, in a small but symbolic way, reflects the decades-long effort by society to promote equality. If signed by the governor, the legislation would amend the text of the election law by adding the feminine pronoun wherever the masculine pronoun appears," said state Sen. Thomas P. Morahan, R-New City, who introduced the bill.

In addition to Morahan, we can thank Assemblywoman Sandra Galef, D-Ossining, for introducing the bill to the NYS Assembly.

Every once in awhile, I'm still proud to be a New Yorker.

Carnival of Feminists #20

2006-08-02T13:49:00.000-04:00

Right here and hosted by Kactus, of Super Babymama fame.

She and her brilliant contributers tackle the topics of :

Poverty, Class, & Bureaucratic Idiocy
Women in the War Zone
The Sex Wars
and more.

Go check it out!

5 Things To Read Today

2006-08-02T12:34:00.000-04:00

1. Tracie McMillan brings us Jicama in the Hood, about the fight to bring decent food to the urban poor, an issue I've blogged about with gusto in the past, but managed to miss recent developments thanks to Congresswoman Velasquez.

2 and 3.Point and Counterpoint on the whole "Roe v. Wade for Men" thing.

4. Kay Hymowitz on the phenomenon she calls Desperate Grandmas:

It’s not just that older women continue to enjoy sex; it’s that it has to be—in defiance of all common sense—Better Than Ever. It’s not that they like working to rescue animals; they’re Pursuing Their Passions. “They are the most amazing women our country has ever seen!” Levine quotes a gerontologist as gushing in Inventing the Rest of Our Lives.

5. The first chapter of economist Deirdre McCloskey's The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce. You'll want to read it: she's a bizarrely engaging writer.

Another Free Outdoor Film Opportunity!!!!

2006-07-27T13:04:00.000-04:00

Except this one is starting January. Huh? MOMA's showing Doug Aitken because, as Bloomberg said, “Great art brings people out of hibernation ..."

There are good reasons people hibernate in NYC in January. Bitter cold and snow top the list.

Oh, and did I mention it goes from dusk to 10pm? After the heat dies down, I guess.

Lance Bass Is Coming Out

2006-07-26T19:51:00.000-04:00

There's something kinda sad about this. Like, um, we know, honey. We're proud of you for saying it, but ...

"I want people to take from this that being gay is a norm.

Hmmmmm.

Edited to add: Okay, upon reflection, I realize that this is actually really cool. One major reason being that he's an outspoken Christian and remains so after coming out. Besides the fact that it's (almost) always cool when a mainstream celeb comes out. So I apologize for last night's bitchiness.

Linda Valdez on the IT Goddesses

2006-07-26T13:21:00.000-04:00

I am confused by this article.

I have read it three times now and still. Not sure.

The successful young women of today who've made "I'm no feminist" a mantra ought to get a little humility. They wouldn't have the vote, let alone a seat at any decision-making table, if it hadn't been for some mouthy women who were brave enough to be shrill and wise enough to be feminists.

But these days, feminism has a decidedly unsexy image. So does Barres' call for women and men to unmask discrimination and fight for more family-friendly workplaces. Both feminism and frank discussions of discrimination are necessary.

But they may not have the punch I need right now.

At my house, the 15-year-old girl who used to say math and science were her two favorite subjects now says she wants to be a film actress. OK, I say. But how about a backup plan? Something like a medical degree, maybe? She chuckles.

That serious image just can't measure up to the reality of Keira Knightley getting to give on-screen kisses to both Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom, the two hottest men on the planet, according to my daughter.

So maybe the Australians have the right idea.

As a mother, I've always been a devotee of the School of What Works. Luring girls into a male-dominated occupation by showing the women who are in that field as sexy film stars might not be entirely honest. Or feministically correct.

Thoughts?

Also, does it strike anyone else as strange that the IT Goddesses used The Princess Diaries as one of their samples? No one's going to argue with Charlie's Angels or 10 but ...

The Other Woman as Rogue Animal Trainer

2006-07-21T18:42:00.000-04:00

Granny Gets A Vibrator's post on Cultural Appropriation in the zydeco scene got me thinking about something that is really not what Liz is talking about, but nevertheless interested me. The excerpt that started my train of thought:

I began to notice that there was one segment of the Creole population that was far less friendly: the younger black women. Many of them totally ignored white people at dances, like we weren't even present; others were more openly hostile. I asked a black male friend of mine what this was about. He told me it was because these women were angry and fed up at the way white women were "stealing their men,"--dancing with them, using them, flirting with them, playing seduction games, and having sex with them.

"But why me?" I asked him. Hell, I'm an old lady, 52! Why should these beautiful young women in their 20s feel threatened by an old middle-aged shlub like me? And my friend said, Because that's exactly who is fucking with their men: older women, women over 40, over 50, sometimes over 60. When the zydeco bands travel up north, all the musicians, mostly men in their 20s and 30s, sleep with older white women while they're on tour. When the older white women come down here as tourists, they have sex with the Creole men in droves. These white women don't care if the men are married or have girlfriends, they don't care what effect their little affairs have on families, friendships, children, the community. They just want to have their fun, collect their Creole "trophies," dance and fuck with the natives like they're some exotic ride at Disneyland.

And no, the black Creole women are not just angry at the white women, they're also angry at the Creole men who participate. In fact black women boycott some of the zydeco bands because of the musicians' attitudes and treatment of black women. So this rift has been created within the community.

Race aside, I never understand how a person who has been cheated on can place *any* blame on the third party. How are these white women discussed above, who are either tourists or residents of towns wherein these men are visiting and are therefore not rooted in the same community, supposed to know who's married and who's in a relationship and what arrangement people have whose relationship is worth preserving? If he doesn't care, why should she? Sex is about the consent of the people having it, not the consent of everyone that loves them. I wouldn't doubt that a lot of these white women are married or coupled with (probably) white men, who themselves wouldn't want their wives and girlfriends sleeping with other men. But that's why relationships are about trusting your partner. If you've agreed to monogamy, then you have to trust your partner to be monogamous. Because it's just plain dumb to expect the rest of the world to honor you and your wishes for your relationship, when they don't even know you, or sometimes know you exist. It's just plain dumb to act as though one's partner cheated because someone else was "playing seduction games" and one's partner was rendered helpless.

I think the way we handle The Other Woman as this powerful, almost supernaturally so, dominating presence that compells the man to cheat is just an extension of our infantalizing of men in general. Women, whatever our sexual orientation, aren't expected to crumple into a wet pink throb just because someone swings a penis or a set of breasts in our direction. Much less, gives us some sexy glance from beneath the bandstand. Men, as always, are treated as children or animals, with no control over their own actions (except their unyielding ability to hold back tears). And so, they get compared to Fido or Shamu.

I don't think that what the Creole women above are doing (and it's certainly not limited to them - it's by far the norm) is particularly different from what some idiot might write in the Modern Love section of The New York Times about training her husband like a performing dolphin. If you think your partner is an adult human, you see their choices as their choices and their weaknesses as their weaknesses. This blaming of The Other Woman makes it seem like infidelity is actually a property crime (hence the use of the word "stealing") perpetrated by The Other Woman against the cheated-upon-partner. You can't "steal" that which goes with you willingly. And given that the objectification of these Creole men is pointed out as one of the sins of the white women here, I'd say the Creole wives and girlfriends are just as guilty, though it manifests differently.

And that brings me to another question: if you are having sex with someone on vacation and you don't know much about them, are you automatically treating them like a "ride at Disneyland"? I'm not saying some people aren't, but when Liz makes the comparison with Heading South, I'm a little puzzled because that's about sex tourism. The men in Heading South are prostitutes. (I don't automatically think they're being "objectified" either, but there's still a world of difference.) Is it possible for us to conceive of a casual sexual relationship as not exploitative? If so, is it possible for us to conceive of a casual interracial sexual relationship as not exploitative? Or is the old "jungle fever" explanation our culture's only way of comprehending this?

Oh and what does the age issue signify here? The fact that these women are in their 40s and 50s (even 60s!) is made a point of - why? (I'm not saying it's not significant, I just need someone to tell me how.)

Finally, what really are the ethics of casual sex outside one's race? Do these ethics change with age differentials, the gender of the participants, the races involved, income disparities, where people live?

Congrats to Unmarried Hetero Couples in N.C.

2006-07-21T16:22:00.000-04:00

N.C. Law Banning Cohabitation Struck Down!

A state judge has ruled that North Carolina's 201-year-old law barring unmarried couples from living together is unconstitutional.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued last year to overturn the rarely enforced law on behalf of a former sheriff's dispatcher who says she had to quit her job because she wouldn't marry her live-in boyfriend.

Deborah Hobbs, 41, says her boss, Sheriff Carson Smith of Pender County, near Wilmington, told her to get married, move out or find another job after he found out she and her boyfriend had been living together for three years. The couple did not want to get married, so Hobbs quit in 2004.

State Superior Court Judge Benjamin Alford issued the ruling late Wednesday, saying the law violated Hobbs' constitutional right to liberty. He cited a 2003 Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Texas sodomy law.

That ruling showed that "the government has no business regulating relationships between two consenting adults in the privacy of their own home," Jennifer Rudinger, executive director of the ACLU of North Carolina, said in a statement.

She added that "the idea that the government would criminalize people's choice to live together out of wedlock in this day and age defies logic and common sense."

Rudinger said that since 1997, the law has spawned about 36 criminal cases in North Carolina. State officials have said the number of people actually convicted under the law - formally known as the fornication and adultery statute - is not clear.

The law also has been used to deny compensation to crime victims, child custody, health benefits, probation and parole, Rudinger said.

The law states, in part: "If any man and woman, not being married to each other, shall lewdly and lasciviously associate, bed and cohabit together, they shall be guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor."

About 144,000 unmarried couples live together in North Carolina, according to the 2000 census. The ACLU says along with North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Florida, Michigan, Mississippi and North Dakota have laws that prohibit cohabitation.

Only six states to go! Hooray for "activist judges"!

What this means for queers, I don't know.

Weekend Homework

2006-07-21T16:13:00.000-04:00

I seriously can't belief it's Friday already. Not working outside the house much (I'm still part-time, but it hardly registers) makes time seem strange.

1. Having never had this issue come up for me or my friends or family, I'll admit I spend little time thinking about it, but organ donation numbers are very low and the system by which dead donations are distributed is woefully inadequate. Sally Satel's article comes out of her own struggles in getting a kidney replaced.

2. If you're mad at Bush for the Stem Cell Bill, which you should be, here's yet another reason, beyond all the many people who will live and die with potentially curable illnesses. Starita Smith reminds us that Bush doesn't care about black people:

The plight of black children in foster homes doesn't seem to be a priority for the Bush administration.

On May 24, 2005, in his continuing courtship of the Christian conservative constituency, President Bush lauded families who have used a frozen embryo to bring a child into the world.

The event, which took place at the White House East Room, showed that the administration and many of its supporters are more concerned with the potential life of embryos than they are with the children already living. Thousands of black, older and disabled children need homes. We have never as a nation put their lives at the top of our agenda.

For many years, white couples who wanted to adopt healthy white American infants had difficultly doing so because of the short supply. Some of these would-be parents instead sought Asian, European and Latino infants. Others have forgone adoption altogether.

Those white couples who would have considered adopting a black child faced a virtual ban against it, endorsed by the National Association of Black Social Workers in 1972.

But any such restriction was nullified when the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 was signed by President Clinton, and today, no adoption crisis exists among people who adopt black children. These children, as well as older children and those who have disabilities, are in tragically large supply.

3. Christopher Dickey in Newsweek paints a scary, scary picture of both Israel and Hezbollah as marching ever-forward with failing strategies as more people die, are injured, and are forced from their homes.

4. I know you need some fun, so how about watching Work Out on Bravo (which Alessandra Stanley has decided is the premier gay network). If, like me, you don't own a TV, but do own a computer, you can watch it for free on iTunes! The protagonist is a hot ambitious lesbian personal trainer who owns her own elite gym in LA. What more can you want? (Well, if you do want more, there's the hilarious way her straight male trainer tries to "bond" with her by inviting her to a strip club, and there's also the fact that her girlfriend is addicted to biting, and, finally, Kristof St. John - "Neil" from The Young and the Restless - is an affable client.)

5. Now, that you're inspired to get in shape, check out one of my favorite workout sites, run by a former feminist academic, now known as Mistress Krista.

Thursday Links

2006-07-20T11:49:00.000-04:00

1. Figleaf's Training, conditioning, and control: animal-management techniques reacts to that most appalling of NYT Modern Love pieces, "What Shamu Taught Me About A Happy Marriage".

2. From The Wo! Front, Abortion: Another Hurdle in US with establishment of fetal rights looks at cases in the US and Australia.

3. NYT on the "ghetto tax".

4. From Michael Young at Slate on Lebanon: Why the current attacks are worse than the siege of 1982.

5. SMRT-TV on Freaks and Geeks episode "The Little Things".

Greenmarket Turns 30!

2006-07-19T14:04:00.000-04:00

I know you're distracted by "The Mommy Diaries", but, if you're over onNew York's website anyway, you should check out The Greenmarket Effect which profiles 4 family farms on this 30th anniversary of the NY Greenmarket. It might inspire you, if you're able to afford it, to buy as much as possible from the Greenmarket farmers (or it might make you jealous of how much $ they actually make).

2nd Feminist Sci-Fi Carnival

2006-07-19T12:37:00.000-04:00

Find it here.

P.S. At a party last night, discussing Battlestar Gallactica, someone said re: myself, "Does she look like the kind of person who'd like sci-fi?" I asked what that meant and he said something about how you don't expect women to like sci-fi. My partner A didn't think it was a big deal - something to do with the fact that I wasn't wearing glasses - but I just wanted to pass it onto my readers.

Take the "Ask a Working Woman Survey"

2006-07-19T12:15:00.000-04:00

The AFL-CIO wants to hear from working women. Click here to participate. I must warn you, it might make you even more aware of how bad things are (at least it did me) for some of us. But it will be sent to every member of Congress on Labor Day.

"The System Worked"

2006-07-18T17:12:00.001-04:00

Salon's big story today is Jody Jenkins' story of being wrongly suspected of child molestation and pornography. You should read the whole thing: the innocent pictures, the investigation ... it'll turn your stomach what these people went through and will never forget.

Searching for other bloggers' responses to the article, I came upon a blog called Unwilted and a post called "Salon goes Right Wing":

Essentially, the author and another father took the kids camping. They took pictures of the kids skinny dipping, then got them developed. The store clerk reported the pictures. Instead of reacting with sincerity and cooperation, the author was defensive and uncooperative. His friend demanded to see the officer in charge of the investigation. He hired a lawyer. By his reaction, he made the process last longer than it normally does.

The author also obstructed justice. On the drive to the forensic interview with the authorities, he told the kids that the state wants to take them away from home. He admits this in the article.

All that said, the process worked. It worked more slowly than normal -- thanks to the author. But it still worked. There were no charges filed, and the state never even attempted to take the kids (when the children could be in danger, they take the kids right away -- so the state used appropriate restraint here). And now, the poor author (who has moved to France) complains about depression and tears. This guy has problems.

This guy does have problems, problems caused by the trauma (it is trauma) of being investigated for something of which you are innocent. Here's how Jenkins describes the emotional aftermath of the investigation:

Shortly after our case ended, we moved to France and I slipped into a depression. Perhaps it was something akin to the helplessness that victims feel. Or perhaps it resulted from suddenly being released from the constant and intense pressures of moving, combined with the fear and anger we had been feeling for so long. But I felt violated and exposed and vulnerable. In the mornings, we would awake and prepare our children and then hurry them to school. And on many days when I returned home, instead of getting to work writing I would go into the bathroom, sit on the toilet and cry uncontrollably.

For months, I felt as though I was moving almost unconsciously through daily life, numb to the world and yet overly sensitive to everything. Finally one day, six months later, unable to bear the sense of helplessness and unjustified shame about what happened to us, I sat down at the computer and began to write about it. And I began to feel something shift inside me, a subtle but distinct change from a sense of powerlessness to taking back some sort of control of our lives. I wrote in a fury, and when I sent the story to my wife, she sat in her office and cried. I sent it to our friends who had gone through this with us. Although seven months had passed, they still had not come to terms with what had happened. Rusty's boss had been understanding, but they said their children still talked about it in the most unexpected moments. "My youngest daughter will say, 'Why did they think that, Mommy?'" Janet said. "'Why did they think we were drinking beer and doing things wrong?'"

I truly think that, unless you've been there, maybe you can't understand. I didn't go through exactly what Jenkins and his friends and family went through: I was not accused of a sex crime, much less a sex crime against children, and nothing, nothing has a stigma like that. I didn't have to tell everyone in my life that I was being investigated, as these folks did. But I do believe I experienced at least a year of PTSD as a result of being wrongly accused and investigated. The invasion of privacy alone (they read emails between my partner and myself, found out details of my mental illness, sex life, family issues, etc) scarred me, the good cop-bad cop manipulations scarred me, the feeling of being so out-of-control, the abusive manner by which they used personal details about me in interrogations ... I seized up with rage around cops for years afterward. I was angrier than I've ever been and it destroyed my life in many ways. I was more criminally-inclined after that experience than at any other point.

And this is me: a young (18 and 19 years old during the process) white woman in college at the time. Other than my mental illness and political beliefs (and possibly sex life - don't know because they didn't address that directly), I had all the advantages. And again, I wasn't accused of a sex crime against a child, which, in our culture, means you are guilty until proven innocent.

I am really enraged when people can say that that experience means "the system worked". If that's what it feels like for the system to work, the system needs to be drastically reconsidered. If you've never been through it, it's not for you to say whether the system works. I'll bet you'd be hard-pressed to find a hand's fingers' worth of young urban black men who think "the system works". There's a reason why.

When so-called liberals or progressives defend the faults of the criminal justice system and underplay the real emotional destruction it causes to both the guilty and the innocent, I feel the deepest futility. (And that includes some of the wack commenters on Pandagon.)

Austen's Power

2006-07-17T15:49:00.000-04:00

Jane Austen's Power by Laura Thompson tells us that any woman who likes Jane Austen these days is probably misreading her. When she sits on the train across from a woman paging through Pride and Prejudice, a voice inside Thompson says, "Poser!"

The idea that Austen is just some sweetheart romance novelist to these women seems to have been fabricated by Thompson herself. Where's her evidence that these women "don't get it"? That they aren't as finely-tuned to the harshness of the reality Austen conjures as Thompson is. As soon as women make something popular we must immediately point out how they're wrong and stupid and cloying and too desperately middlebrow to ever understand. The assumption is that women only like mushy schmaltzy romance; they couldn't possibly be loving Austen for everything that makes Austen Austen, including her humor and wealth obsession and harshness.

We also think that the "harsh reality" in a piece of art is always more interesting or important than any sort of romance. But the center of P&P, though it's brimming with fascinating bits, is most definitely the Elizabeth Bennett-Mr. Darcy relationship. That doesn't make it a bad novel, nor are those who fixate on that element of the text misreading. When you read a book once or twice, you are unlikely to remember everything about it. It doesn't mean you missed the things that don't spring to mind. Thompson, if memory serves, wrote her dissertation on Austen so she probably can afford to be a bit more aware of a character like Charlotte.

Also, I haven't read any other novels classified as "chick lit" except the two Bridget Jones novels, the first of which I quite liked. (That's right, haters.) That said, from reading about them, I think that some of these writers are acutely aware of some of the "harsh reality" that Thompson believes they'd rather not contend with: class and beauty as two examples, and I would add generational conflict to that list myself. I haven't read it, but The Devil Wears Prada seems very much about those things.

This just seemed like the kids who say, "You shouldn't even be allowed to wear a Ramones t-shirt if you can't name every track on It's Alive and recite the stage banter." Grow up.

Old Navy Mascot Contest FRAUD

2006-07-17T14:11:00.000-04:00

Catherine at Poverty Barn reports on the scandal of the Old Navy Mascot Contest:

Ok, so Old Navy had this bogus mascot contest where you can enter your dog. Right, so I entered Liam with this picture. He is a neighborhood favorite, after all!

They held four fake casting calls where one of the judges even had the nerve to ask several questions about him, take his picture with her handheld and say that she wanted him. WHATEVER!

So, he is not selected -- I can live with that part, but then I get this email to vote for one of the six semifinalists. Ok, again not so bad. But, then I click over and the dogs that they "claim to have selected" are the same ones that ran in the ads for the contest!

The contest is/was BOGUS! Boycott Old Navy and their crappy clothes.

I wish I could boycott wearing Old Navy in protest of this fraud perpetrated on the American public, but I'd say a good 90% of my clothes are from there. But Liam is so much cuter than the other dogs - sickening injustice. You can mess with people, but you ought not mess with their adorable innocent pets. That's when things get dangerous.

Here's the real question though: Does German shepherd-collie, Sandi, from Bartlett, IL know the contest was rigged? How about you, border collie Josie of Mesa, AZ?

APN: Send Former Presidents

2006-07-17T13:31:00.000-04:00

This is a really good idea:

Americans for Peace Now called on President Bush to send his father and President Clinton to the Middle East on a peace-seeking mission.

“President George W. Bush should immediately dispatch a senior presidential envoy or envoys to the Middle East, vested with the authority of the president and empowered to work with parties in the region, the U.N. and relevant world leaders to restore order and renew a political process capable of ending terrorism and violence,” Debra DeLee, the group’s president, said in a statement.

Having recently read his memoir, I know that President Clinton is deeply invested in making peace in the Middle East and is highly aware of the issues involved. It seemed to me that this was perhaps the most important thing to him. And he and Bush I seem to make a good team these days.

While they're out there, vested with the authority of the president, they could take a few side trips.

Hat tip to That Black Lesbian Jew.

When Prudie Attacks

2006-07-17T10:04:00.000-04:00

Has there ever been a less intuitive advice columnist?

Dear Prudie,
I am a 16-year-old girl in love with a 26-year-old man. This isn't the problem; I love him and he loves me, and he's never abused or coerced me into anything. We haven't had sex, even though I wanted to; he wants to make sure that I'm not doing anything I don't really want to. What is the legal status of my relationship? I'm in New Jersey, so what is the age of consent? I am tired of keeping our relationship a secret, but I will if revealing it would get him in trouble. That leads to the other part of my question—if I have to keep it hidden, how do I respond when people ask if I'm involved? I don't want people to think he's a predator, because he isn't.
—Not a Victim

Dear Victim,
If you're not able to find out on your own if the love of your life will be committing statutory rape by having sex with you, then you're not old enough to consummate this relationship. (OK, I'll look it up for you. In New Jersey, the age of consent is 16—if the male partner is not a relative or does not have a supervisory position over you.) If Hamlet is still taught in high school, you've probably heard the phrase, "The lady doth protest too much." When you write about how great your boyfriend is, it's hardly reassuring to hear your protestations that whatever it looks like, he's not a sexual predator. Yes, if you agree to have sex with him, he won't get arrested. But I wish the fact that you are worried he could be makes you realize you should run from this relationship. While this guy sounds like he only has half a brain, at least he's using it because it's kept him from taking advantage of you so far. Do your parents know about him? If not, please tell them. That they will want to throttle him will be evidence that they are the ones who really love you.
—Prudie

Prudie is a fucking nutjob. She is so distracted by the fact that the letter writer is 16 that she can't even think through a response. She just knows she doesn't want these two together, whether because Not a Victim was "not able to find out on your own if the love of your life will be committing statutory rape by having sex with you" or because this guy, about whom she knows nothing except his age and his lack of sexual coercion, "only has half a brain" or because being "worried he could be [breaking the law] makes you realize you should run" or, finally, and this is classic, because Not a Victim "doth protest too much". In this day in this country of unyielding terror of teen-adult sexual relations, a 16-year-old girl must shout her sexual agency from the rooftops to be heard and then told she's too loud, she must not mean it. She has to tell us her boyfriend is not a predator again and again because idiots like Prudie won't hear anything else.

Edited to add: Read Jennifer from Ravings of a Feral Genius on the topic.

GO: 100 Women We Love

2006-07-14T16:07:00.000-04:00

It's not just the usual Ellen and Rosie, though they're in there. This year's list is AWESOME: not just NYers and Hollywood-types, not just white gals, not just cisgendered folks, not just young 'uns. If you're a queer woman, or a lover of queer women, you'll appreciate The Class of 2006.

My Reaction to the WOC "Safe-Space" Thing

2006-07-14T15:47:00.000-04:00

Apparently, some white bloggers are objecting to being left out of WOC "safe-space". Their argument seems to be (and this is a patchy aggregate) that this inhibits coalitions. It doesn't. They remind me of the kid who thinks she has to be with her best friend every single day afterschool and at every lunch and recess and they have to sit next to each other on the bus both ways too, or else they're not really "best friends". Maybe that's a bad analogy, but I'm leaving it. Anyway, good people: stay out of safe spaces you're not supposed to be in. It's divisive (much more so than those spaces existing), disrespectful, pompous, and, frankly, fucking embarassing. Yes, it makes you feel left out, of course it does, if you are close with these folks. But it's not about you, it's not meant to hurt you, it's about what other people need.

Weekend Homework: Depressing News + Sci-Fi Fun Edition

2006-07-14T15:16:00.000-04:00

Depressing News

1.Ampersand has the best possible round-up of articles and posts on the "American Soldiers Arrested For Rape/Execution Of 14-Year Old Girl And Her Family".

2. "Two Men Arrested, Eight Others Sought in Rape of 11-Year-Old Fresno Girl" article and commentary thanks to With My Nappy Headed Ass.

3. From NYT, the latest as of 14 minutes ago: Israel Targets Hezbollah; Its Leader Calls for ‘Open War'.

Sci-Fi Fun

1. After reading my post about Lee and Kara, you probably want to run right out and rent Battlestar Gallactica, if you haven't yet. Go. It's the best sci-fi show I've ever seen.

2. Recommend in the comments to this thread some more good sci-fi novels for my partner and I to read as bedtime stories. By good, I mean well-written, primarily, and not offensive. We're trying to read Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, which was suggested by a friend, but it's bad.

3. And, finally, beat this!!!!!

Which Star Trek: TNG character are you?

You are Captain Jean-Luc Picard. You are rather stern and bookish. However, you can win a moral argument with almost anyone and have held out against Klingon assassins.
Take this quiz!

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My Love Affair with the Almost Love Affair Between Starbuck and Apollo

2006-07-14T13:45:00.000-04:00

The most liberating TV moment for me in recent memory was in Season One of Battlestar Gallactica when Lee/Apollo punches Kara/Starbuck right in the jaw. She punched him, it hurt, he punched her back. There was no grabbing her wrists or holding her back, he decked her. And, for just a moment, gender equality rang through the flight deck and through my living room.

Battlestar Gallactica doesn't condescend to its women fighters. Even the sickeningly sex kittenish blonde Cylon kicks ass, boney limbs no object. Her clash with Starbuck was no hair-pulling, shrieking, slapping catfight, but a full-on, fisted, grunting, groaning, gorey deathmatch. There was no playful eroticism, red-laquered nails razing moist pink skin, just unmitigated survival instinct and brute strength. And it was not over a man, it was war. I was in awe.

But what grabbed me about the scene between Apollo and Starbuck was that it trounced taboo, by never noting the taboo ("Never hit a woman") at all. The audience may be shocked - He HIT her! - but Apollo and Starbuck are not. He doesn't run to her in apology, or flee only to return with ice and gauze and tears and shock at his own monstrous capacities - "My mama taught me never to hit a woman and I swore to myself I never would ..." - nor does she shame him - "Pick on someone your own size!" He's mad, she's mad, they're in love, and they're totally (despite the small matter of rank) peers and equals. Equals enough that his punching her is equivalent to her punching him. It's not "violence against women" which indicates that violence against any woman, in particular, is worse, because she, in particular, is naturally unable to fight back. Instead, it was portrayed as the violence that happens between two people (who happen to be military-trained) who are negotiating a complicated relationship. He was not expected to grip his jaw, wince a bit, and take it, out of some pedestalizing "respect for women". He respected her enough to dish out what he took, in unbracing justice.

Commenter galveston says, on Television Without Pity's Satellite of Love: Relationships on BSG:

I heard [show's creator Ron D.] Moore say on a podcast that the sexual tension with Lee was a big reason he made Starbuck a woman. If that's the reason why, it's the wrong reason IMO. Why couldn't RDM make the character a woman solely for the purpose of having a strong female character who's a good friend in the tradition of the old Starbuck and who's a kick ass pilot? What's wrong with that? What's wrong with her and Apollo being the dearest of friends, friends who would die for each other, without the contrived "sexual tension"? Why must there be sexual tension between the male and female lead?

I would usually side with galveston. I'm sick of knee-jerk heteronormativity that results in the two attractive young people hooking up simply because one's male and the other's female. For years, I watched all-men and all-women movies almost in exclusivity in order to avoid another chemistry-less, clumsy, banter-filled, cutesy hook-up between two people who'd never have been attracted to each other offscreen. (Caveat: they do it in queer stuff too, it's just less grating most of the time.) But that scene between Apollo and Starbuck paid off their relationship in full, with no lingering sense that I was being toyed with.

That scene didn't happen in a vacuum though. The show is intent on making Kara macho, while also not feeling forced (unlike, say, Rescue Me) to make her a lesbian. While BSG is in dire need of queer content, Starbuck's sexual appetite toward men (not just Apollo), paired with her toughness and competence, makes her a particularly unusual character. She doesn't need monogamy, though she clearly has strong feelings for Lee. And she doesn't take shaming around it; that's why she punched him.

Lee, however, is no shrinking violet himself. The old-school mythical-feminist ideal of the quiet, sensitive, ever-yielding man bears little resemblance to the fighter pilot who put a gun to the head of his own commanding officer, embedded with terrorists, and, need I say it, socked the object of his affection in the face.

Both Lee and Kara are tough and sensitive, smart but emotional, with strong beliefs, and strong defenses. In other words, they're a good match.

There's all that and as CaptTightPants says on Satellite of Love:

Personally, every time I see Lee and Kara onscreen, I am afraid my TV set might explode from the pure scorchy hotness of it.

Feminists Love Sci-Fi

2006-07-14T13:25:00.001-04:00

After getting all excited about it, I managed to miss the First Feminist Sci-Fi Carnival at Written World.

Pretty, Fizzy Paradise, host of the next carnival, Where No Woman Has Gone Before discusses the women of Star Trek: The Next Generation and manages to defend the dreaded Pulaski. I'm not convinced, but I am intrigued. :)

I liked Crusher and Troi. Especially Crusher. There's no doubt that Data and Worf got the big story play, but I didn't find them mindless. The "girl talk" scenes of them doing stretches were dumb, but ... I guess that, as things go, I was pretty relieved by the relatively low level of sexism. Pathetic really to be defending TNG because it was less sexist, but I tend to do that.

He Just Wanted Some Attention!!!!

2006-07-13T15:28:00.000-04:00

What the hell is with this title?

Man Tries To Get Attention From Women, Arrested

(AP) CRAIG, Colo. A Steamboat Springs man got a little more than he bargained for after allegedly trying to get attention from some women in a hot tub in Craig.

Police said Arturo Martinez, 20, faced a charge of indecent exposure following his arrest late Tuesday.

The women claim Martinez was whistling and "engaging in lewd acts" while trying to hide naked in the bushes outside a condominium complex.

Authorities later tracked him down at another complex.

Police said he put up a brief struggle as officers were trying to get him into custody.

Another case of harassment read as men's desperation for women's love and kindness.

Transsexual Neuroscientist on the Gender Gap

2006-07-13T15:17:00.000-04:00

I really, really love this guy. You will too.

"Like many women and minorities ... I am suspicious when those who are at an advantage proclaim that a disadvantaged group of people is innately less able," Barres wrote in his four-page essay for Nature.

He said he's haunted by memories of sexist bigotry during his female youth: "As an undergrad at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology," Barres wrote, "I was the only person in a large class of people of nearly all men to solve a hard math problem, only to be told by the professor that my boyfriend must have solved it for me. I was not given any credit."

In his essay, Barres calls for specific efforts to improve science opportunities for female students and academics, including running fair job searches, improving women's chances of winning research grants, and making it easier for women to cover day care costs for their children.

It's also helpful to cultivate male supporters, he said. "It has been 30 years since I was a medical student," Barres recalled, "but I still recall with gratitude the young male student who immediately complained to a professor who had shown a slide of a nude pinup in his anatomy lecture."

Barres also treasures memories of his Harvard doctoral supervisor, David Corey, who encouraged the shy Barres to imitate aggressive male students by approaching distinguished scientific lecturers and asking them questions. Barres said such forthrightness pays off in any career, including science.

"Life, even in science, is a popularity contest," Barres observed.

Simone de Beauvoir Bridge

2006-07-13T15:13:00.000-04:00

Wow, weirdly cool. From the BBC:

A footbridge in honour of the French writer and leading feminist Simone de Beauvoir has been opened in Paris.
Designed in the form of two steel intersecting curves, it is part of a regeneration effort in south-eastern parts of the French capital.

This is the city's 37th bridge and the first to be named after a woman.

Good News: Sexism Is Not Bigotry

2006-07-13T15:01:00.000-04:00

Richard Thompson Ford tells us so:

But what if these gay-marriage bans were not animated by anti-gay bigotry? What if they represent a deeper-seated anxiety about gender and gender roles? What if popular aversion to gay marriage has less to do with hating same-sex couples than with a deep psychological attachment to a powerful symbol of sex difference: the tulle-covered bride and the top-hat-and-tails groom?

No one clearly admits this, perhaps because most people aren't sufficiently self-aware to name their deep anxieties—if they were, psychotherapists would be out of work. But you can hear the longing for secure gender identity in some of the comments of same-sex-marriage opponents. After San Francisco's same-sex marriage experiment, one observer in a red county nearby complained: "God made marriage for Adam and Eve; not Adam and Steve." It's telling that this objection to same-sex marriage doesn't rely on moral condemnation of same-sex couples but instead on the most primordial account of natural sex difference. ...

How to reconcile the growing support for equal rights for gay Americans with the seemingly hardening opposition to gay marriage? It certainly suggests that homophobia is only part of the explanation for the widespread resistance to same-sex marriage. A lot of the resistance is less about sexual orientation than about sex difference. In other words, it's not about the difference between gay and straight; it's about the difference between male and female. By this logic, conventional marriage doesn't exclude gay couples from a special status reserved for straights; it excludes women from a special status reserved for men—that of husband—and excludes men from a status reserved for women—that of wife.

It would seem that this guy's proposing that homosexuality and gender roles somehow interact in this wacky equation!

Rescue Me: Sexist?

2006-07-11T20:07:00.000-04:00

I don't watch the show, but did stumble on the fact that a rape occurred on Rescue Me. Then, I read an article about in NJ Star Ledger. Here's a bit of it:

The writers had an opportunity to incorporate a more well-rounded woman into the guys' world with Laura, the female firefighter played by Diane Farr for parts of the first two seasons. Initially, Farr seemed there to fill the same role she played on Leary and Tolan's short-lived ABC cop comedy "The Job," as the tough woman who calls the guys on all their macho idiocy. Instead, Laura was thrown into an affair with Franco (a decision Tolan later regretted) and was proven to be incompetent at the work.

That was the whole point of that character, according to Leary, who railed at length against the real FDNY's relaxed physical standards for female and minority applicants -- "She shouldn't have been there," he said of Laura. "She wasn't capable of doing it." -- before acknowledging that "I've met female firefighters from other parts of the country who are supremely physically able to do the job."

In fact, Leary and Tolan are considering adding a new female firefighter next season, who Tolan said might be "a lesbian or somebody who's extremely capable in the job and the guys have to deal with that. They'll do the same thing, they'll say she shouldn't be there, but she'll prove herself and they'll have to accept her. And then you'll be getting that woman's viewpoint from a woman they are forced to respect for her abilities."

But right now, these are the female characters we have, and this is the scene we got, including Tommy's "I came, I saw, I conquered" expression as he walked out of the apartment -- which, to those who viewed the incident as rape, played as the show's endorsement of it.

My favorite part is the suggestion that only lesbians, among women, would be capable of being firefighters. Yeah, why don't they get Jenny from The L Word? I was thinking of Starbuck from Battlestar Gallactica, but she's into guys, so I doubt she could do it.

Now, I can't say for sure that the show is sexist having never seen it, but I don't doubt the makers are.

Tuesday Links

2006-07-11T18:26:00.000-04:00

1. My partner A came home aghast after seeing the new fucked up SONY Playstation ads: "White is coming". I hadn't seen them, but was shocked and appalled, and was going to look them up and link them for your co-shock (that's what readers are for), but nubian beat me to it and even has the address and phone number for complaints.

2. That Black Lesbian Jew publishes Diane Finnerty's "An Open Letter to My White Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Sisters and Brothers".

3. Carnival of Bent Attractions! Happening at Aman Yala.

4. Carnival of Feminists! Happening at Clare's place.

5. Having just been told, upon sharing the challenges of teaching, that I should see it again, I was interested to read White Bear's "Why I Dissed Dead Poets Society".

6. Noah Cicero writes two knockout posts, Last Night My Brother Called and More Television-Humans.

Queer TV News: A Mixed Bag

2006-07-11T18:05:00.000-04:00

Planetout's "Inside the TV Gay Guide" thrills me with the introduction of Mario Lopez (A.C. Slater) into the cast of Nip/Tuck, then chills me with the news that he'll be a homoerotic fling for our beloved bad-good-guy Christian, but I got that icky sicky clammy feeling reading that Karina Lombard will be back as "sultry Marina" on The L Word. You'd think that'd be the last straw and I'd quit it with that show, but ... I know I'll tune in for another miserable, agonizing year.

Pathetic Good News

2006-07-11T12:23:00.000-04:00

Let's give it up for Neil A. Lewis and John O'Neill for this headline:

In Big Shift, U.S. to Follow Geneva Treaty for Detainees

(I know, I know, they probably didn't write the headline. So let's give it up for whoever.)

We can all thank the Supreme Court for this news, which shouldn't be news, but is. Vindication too for the military experts, yet again. Why do they have these guys if they just ignore them, I wonder.

Are We Not Liberal?

2006-07-10T09:18:00.000-04:00

Gay Ruling Shows New York Is Less Liberal Than It (and the U.S.) Thinks from NYT takes on New Yorkers' political self-perception. Apparently, we're not that liberal.

I just got back from Colorado though, and, um, New York feels pretty liberal to me. Just saying.

"The key will be how many people start arriving at Lincoln Center in pickups with gun racks," he said. Thanks, Christopher Buckley. That is the key, isn't it? You're still liberal until you've got the pickups. It's not really about voting.

Which is kind of the point here. It's not people's voting patterns that make folks think NY is liberal. As Sam Roberts points out, NYC has elected several Republican mayors. The difference is cultural, and that is no small thing. Americans are not going to start envisioning NY as a bastion of social conservatism because of this appalling same-sex marriage thing. Why? Because same-sex couples walk down the street hand-in-hand. Because getting married at 18 here is uncommon. Blah, blah, blah.

The other thing is that, in NYC, the people who are super-religious tend not to be "prominent figures" (read class into that as thou wilt), unlike in, say, Colorado. Everyone can vote in NY, but you won't see the "culture" of most of those voters represented because they don't have the money/power.

I Took a Few Extra Days

2006-07-10T08:54:00.000-04:00

because, though I returned Thursday night from a truly lovely time with family, I found out Friday that I lost my job. I needed some time, friends, to process. By the way, thanks for all the sweet comments while I was away.

Anyway, let me ask you this: is this about gender? I have to hand it to Randy Cohen - he tried pretty hard to keep that out of his answer. But I would have taken it head-on: if the girlfriend had escaped, wouldn't we cheer?

She's Leaving Home, Bye Bye

2006-06-23T15:18:00.000-04:00

Dear blog friends, blog lovers, blog family,

Posting will be light and easy until July 7, when I return from a much-deserved, (if I do say so myself,) trip to visit family. Nothing but regular old, plug-it-into-the-phone-line dial-up out there, and I am just too spoiled by DSL at work and school and cable at home to have enough patience to crank out my average 20 posts per week.

I expect to be thinking substantially less about blowjobs, making fun of monogamous heterosexuals, and maybe even Michael Pollan for awhile; more time for the consideration of life's meaning and the existence of a higher power, or for watching DVDs of Arrested Development and playing cards.

I'll be here from time to time and checking your blogs from time to time, but lower your standards for me for two weeks. I will be dredging up some old posts from the archives from before anyone read this blog, out of equal senses of duty and vanity.

In the meantime, I hope all of you get a chance to look out at the sky away from your monitor (assuming you want that chance). If you don't know what to do without me, a quick search for "Weekend Homework" in the My Amusement Park archives may help.

Love, EL

Never Liked Her Music Anyway

2006-06-22T11:59:00.000-04:00

But this bit about Nelly Furtado is just weird:

Singer NELLY FURTADO decided to dump her feminist, hippy image and transform herself into a sex bomb for the release of her new album LOOSE. The PROMISCUOUS singer wanted to create a sexier image and started wearing midriff-baring clothes and showing off sultry new dance moves.She explains, "I went through a feminist phase and read a lot of philosophical stuff. "Some of the male bashing brainwashed me for a bit so I stopped. I love men! "I'm just now catching up. My video choreographer taught me how to move in all these different ways. "I'm more at ease with my body than I've ever been."

Huh?

Carnival Heaven

2006-06-22T11:34:00.000-04:00

Two of my daily-visits are hosting Carnivals right now, so I am, as Hubert Humphrey would say, pleased as punch.

1. Bitch|Lab is hosting The 17th Carnival of Feminists and it's a doozy. Featuring several of my most beloved bloggers (not to mention yours truly) and also some new and amazing voices, while also beautifully organized by the Bitch herself, this cannot be missed.

2. Jay Sennett is hosting The 2nd Erase Racism Carnival and, while small, the posts are great and Jay makes a very thorough and lovely space for each post; it must also visited.

Senate on Minimum Wage: Roll Call

2006-06-22T11:19:00.000-04:00

You want to see if your Senator is amongst the asshats who shut down the amendment to increase the minimum wage yesterday? (As per my usual, those who crossed party lines are italicized.)

YEAs ---52
Akaka (D-HI)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Biden (D-DE)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Carper (D-DE)
Chafee (R-RI)
Clinton (D-NY)
Coleman (R-MN)
Collins (R-ME)
Conrad (D-ND)
Dayton (D-MN)
DeWine (R-OH)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Lugar (R-IN)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Obama (D-IL)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Schumer (D-NY)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Warner (R-VA)
Wyden (D-OR)

NAYs ---46
Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Allen (R-VA)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burns (R-MT)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Frist (R-TN)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lott (R-MS)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Roberts (R-KS)
Santorum (R-PA)
Sessions (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Stevens (R-AK)
Sununu (R-NH)
Talent (R-MO)
Thomas (R-WY)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)

Not Voting - 2
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Shelby (R-AL)

I have a question, not that it would have made the difference, but where is Sen. Rockefeller? It seems like every time I do a roll call, he's out of the picture.

Anyway, I want to give props to the Dems for seeming to, for once, have their act together on this one - no Dems voted against the Amendment.

Big Love by Josh Max in Salon

2006-06-22T11:08:00.000-04:00

I've been searching searching searching the blogosphere with a fine-toothed comb, trying to find some response to this article. I need someone to tell me what to think. Preferably a fat woman.

Honestly though, I'm almost 100% in favor of people discussing their against-the-norm attractions, but there were bits of prose (I began to happily, gently lose myself in her spheres, her bountiful soft flesh, her tiny lips and enormous hips) that make me wonder what this is really doing. For example: why does the article begin and end with some guy making anti-fat comments? I think I mostly liked the piece, but feel this sense of self-doubt about my reaction. Anyone care to weigh in?

Edited to add: I just so happened to use "weigh in". Accidentally. I am really sorry. Ugh.

Edited again to add: zuzu took care of it.