Things to do instead of blogging, part 2

...make a bunch of ugly dolls (and a mad dog) for nieces and nephews.

The content of your character

I've been thinking about how totally misapplied and co-opted the "all that matters is the content of your character" theme is. I was recently in a conversation where an acquaintance mansplained this idea and then concluded "if you're an asshole you're an asshole, whether you're male or female, gay or straight, white or black, trans or cis." To which I say "yes and no."

On a personal level, assholish behavior ain't pleasant, no matter who it's coming from. I don't deny that. But that doesn't even come close to making these other political aspects of identity irrelevant the way my obnoxious acquaintance thinks it does. Because being an asshole as a person with social power is a heckuva lot worse than being an asshole when you're at the bottom of the heap. And a person who's been at the bottom of the heap all hir life may have some damn good reasons for being an asshole, or for coming off as one. Having to defend yourself every day in countless ways can do that to a person.

And anyway, this is all beside the point. Every time that phrase is used this way, which it frequently is, it's taken out of context. You might remember that this was part of the dream speech. This was a vision for a future in which people aren't on the bottom or top of the heap because of who they are. So I'll agree. It's true that if we lived in a perfectly egalitarian culture all that would matter would be the content of your character. But look around. An asshole is not an asshole, regardless of their identity. A powerful asshole is a dangerous asshole. A powerless asshole is just an unpleasant person, who probably has good reasons for being unpleasant. Big difference.

pound cake

An excerpt from This Life, by Rita Dove

My grandmother told me there'd be good days
to counter the dark ones, with blue skies in the heart
as far as the soul could see. She said
you could measure a life in as many ways
as there were to bake a pound cake,
but you still need real butter and eggs
for a good one — pound cake, that is,
but I knew what she meant. She was always
talking around corners like that;
she knew words carried their treasures
like a grape clusters around its own juice.


Read the whole thing here.

Things to do instead of blogging

...make a bunch of pocket gnomes...

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Human Rights Day

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Rally the Team

So, today is Blog for Girls' Sports day. I don't have much time to write a post, but needless to say there's a lot that could be said about the impact of athletic involvement in girls' lives. I was involved in organized sports (basketball, volleyball, track, crew rowing) from middle school through college, and the benefits are hard to count. I think the most important thing I got out of sports was physical confidence that spread to other areas of my life and caused me to see my body as functional and capable, rather than merely ornamental. When I compare my self-confidence and body image to that of my friends who weren't athletic, being active in sports was a clear advantage in these ways. So here's one more reason we should be vocal in our support of team sports for girls. In a world full of negative messages about women's bodies, an experience in team sports can provide a powerful positive message to a developing girl.

Cartoon of the Day

from Slate

Food for Thought

From the excellent book:



An excerpt:

In all kinds of societies-foraging bands, horticultural tribes, peasant villages, and industrial cities-women have always had primary responsibility for preparing food and giving it to others (D' Andrade 1974, 18). Particularly in preindustrial societies, women contribute heavily to producing, processing, and distributing food as well. The predominant role of women in feeding is a cultural universal, a major component of female identity, and an important source of female connections to and influence over others. Hence, although there are other components of female identity and other sources of their authority, the power of women has often derived from the power of food.

I am concerned here with two kinds of power. The first, coercion, is attained through control of might and essential resources that can be denied to others. This is the power of provincial Italian prefects who can raise the price of bread and of the U.S. government that sent food to the Nicaraguan Contras but denied it to Chileans after Allende's election (Burbach and Flynn 1980, 70). The second form of power is influence. It accrues not through force and the ability to deny but through giving, through the obligations created by giving, and through the influence wielded in the act of giving. This is the power Mauss described in his masterpiece The Gift (1967). It is the power of the tribal big man who distributes enormous piles of yams at feasts and "leads because the people wish to be led;" it is also the power of women who feed, who satisfy hunger, who are viscerally needed, and who influence others through manipulation of the symbolic language of food.

True coercion is typical of class societies where resources are concentrated in the hands of the few, who are usually male. The power of the gift, on the other hand, predominates in egalitarian societies where women's relatively high status comes from their full participation in the giving that creates obligations and from their control of a particularly powerful channel, food (see Brown 1975). Interestingly, although control of food can be the strongest weapon of coercion, for women it is not. In no culture is it acceptable for women to deny food to their families, whereas it is acceptable for politicians - mostly male - to deny food to entire populations for political ends (Lappe and Collins 1978). Like women in stratified societies, individuals and groups in tribal societies do not permit groups to starve others as a path to power; rather they achieve power by shaming other groups with their magnanimity (Young 1971). Food is a special substance that follows exceptionally strong rules of sharing and generosity (Sahlins 1972,215-19). It would be unthinkable for Italian women to starve husbands and children to force them to do certain things. Rather, individuals in tribal societies and women in stratified societies have the culturally sanctioned ability to manipulate the giving of food and thus to attain influence through means other than coercion. Women in stratified, market-oriented, agro-industrial societies like Italy and the United States are often defined as subordinate to men because, although they control feeding, as a group they lack the coercive ability to withhold grain shipments or control corn futures. Gender equality involves, then, an effort by women to gain public political and economic power, and with it the ability not just to influence, but to coerce as well.

Carole M. Counihan, Routledge, 1999.

Video of the Day

Here we have a classic example of an excellent question (asked by Colbert at about 2:57), along with a complete and total non-answer (at about 3:27). Apparently the Dept of Ag still views the issue of food subsidies as an all-or-nothing proposition. Either we continue subsidizing the unhealthy foods while haranguing people about the bad choices they make, or we end food subsidies altogether. How about a little more nuanced thinking on a topic that's so, so important? How about a little standing up to the industry goons and changing things on behalf of the people for whom you work instead of making non-arguments in favor of the status quo?

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Tom Vilsack
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election March to Keep Fear Alive

Ten Things To Do Instead of Shopping

Friday is Buy Nothing Day, y'all.

In honor of consuming less, living more, preserving natural resources, reducing waste, and modeling responsible behavior for my kids, I'm avoiding the mall on Friday. Of course, this is easy for me since I don't live near a mall, I don't generally enjoy shopping, and I absolutely cannot stand the "holiday bustle" of retail environments during the holidays. Really, it's just an excuse for people to be irritable and entitled and shitty to the person making their latte. You work in a coffee shop in a mall for three Christmas seasons, and you'll despise it for the rest of your life too. But I digress.

In honor of Buy Nothing Day, I've decided to compile my own list of Ten Things To Do Instead of Shopping. Here we go:

1. Bake something yummy
2. Play in the snow
3. Read some awesome blog posts
4. Serve lunch at the soup kitchen
5. Make a sock monkey
6. Read a book
7. Play a game with your kids/friends/neighbor/partner/whomever
8. Sort through your closets and bookshelves and toyboxes, and send unused items to the thrift store
9. Read the newspaper all the way through while petting the cat who insists on sitting on your lap while you read the paper, and drink your coffee at a leisurely pace because goddammit you don't have to work today
   
10. Make homemade holiday decorations.

What did I miss?

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Drown the Dolls

In order to prove that I am in fact still alive and able to blog (albeit from under a mountain of work and miscellaneous life stuff I need to deal with), I'm writing a post that basically just asks a question.

I've gotten a couple of emails about this art project: Drown the Dolls. It purports to be a feminist response to our oppressive beauty standard as embodied by Barbie. The artist has created a series of photographs and paintings of Barbies drowning. When I look at the images, though, I don't so much get the message that the beauty standard is being drowned as that images of violence against women - especially attractive women - are both acceptable and visually appealing in our culture. In fact, in most of the images only portions of the doll's body is shown, which is another disturbing feature of our visual culture.

Am I being too sensitive? What's your take on this? Is this a constructive feminist statement or a continuation of a disturbing trend in how we portray the female body?

How it's done

Dear Mainstream News Media,

In light of your repeated failures when reporting on news stories involving transgender individuals, I would like to bring to your attention a recent story found on a college basketball blog, of all places. The post can be found here. As you read through the story you will notice some things that the author does rather effortlessly:

1. uses the correct pronouns consistently, all the way through
2. never refers to the individual's "real" or "actual" sex or gender
   
3. recounts the individual's history in a respectful way that situates the person in his relationship with gender without making it salacious or sensationalizing his story
4. positively notes the respectful way that the individual's school has responded to him
5. never suggests that the individual has some sort of political or sexual agenda motivating his gender transition
   
6. talks about the individual's feelings about his original gender assignment in a straight-forward way that encourages compassion and preserves his dignity.

None of these things appear to have required a superhuman effort on the author's part. None of this required arduous editing and rewriting. Perhaps this is because the author appears to have simply approached the story as if it were about a real human being, deserving of just treatment and human compassion.

I propose that this approach could serve as a model to guide you in your coverage of news stories involving transgender people. Just think of them as humans, and treat them with the kind of respect that you want to be treated with. I promise you, it's not that hard.


Thank you for your time,

Rachel

That about sums it up

My Favorite Election Night Moment: Christine O'Donnell's Concession Speech

Democrat Chris Coons defeated Republican Christine O'Donnell by 18% in the Delaware Senate race, but in her concession speech, she announced "we have won." And you know what? She's right. Well, "we" didn't win anything, but she sure did, which is why even compared to some of the night's victory speech's, O'Donnell's was among the most enthusiastic.

So, what was she so damn happy about? She was happy about winning what matters, duh. O'Donnell received the most news coverage of any candidate in the midterms, quite a feat considering few had heard of her before the primaries and she never posed any kind of serious general election threat. That she received the bulk of that coverage for being a clown doesn't matter either. What matters is, she's a star now.

Book deals, speaking engagements, maybe even a reality show if we all pray loud enough. Those are the rewards that await Christine O'Donnell, and with just a moment of listening to her speech, you know she knows it. Chris Coons might have gotten the most votes, but all he got out of the election is one of the shittiest jobs in the country.

So, congratulations to Christine O'Donnell, the biggest winner of the night.

November 3 at 10:00AM by Matt Tobey over here.

You know what to do

A question on natural childbirth

Last week I got a question in my inbox prompted by That Post on Natural Childbirth that I haven't had time to answer yet. Around the same time this awesome post: Baggage Check appeared on The Unnecesarean, and it made me think about the same question again. So here's the question:

Given your experience with NCB, and given your wish to avoid both the extreme natural birth advocacy and the dogmatic medical model of birth that's so dominant, what will you tell your girls when they're old enough to be having their own babies (if they choose to have babies)?

I have to admit that I'm not sure what I'll be thinking or feeling about it that many years down the road. But I would say something like this now. "Natural childbirth is not perfect and it's not easy, but it's doable, and it's worthwhile." I didn't have a traumatic birth experience, but I didn't have a conflict-free one either. I didn't glide through it with no effort or emotional distress, but it wasn't anywhere near impossible or as dangerous as we've been taught to believe. And if I hadn't had to consistently resist the medical staff involved, it would have been a lot less stressful. But in the end you can't know how things will go, and you should be prepared to utilize whatever resources you honestly need. The hope is that you can use the technological resources to your benefit rather than being coerced into following a script that requires you to submit to them whether they're necessary and/or helpful or not. And the hope is that you'll come out of the childbirth experience feeling stronger and more confident/supported/heard than you did before. That would be a perfect childbirth experience.

The Fallout

Trigger warning: sexual abuse.

So, remember how my uncle the molester went to prison and my grandpa the molester died and I promised some posts about that shit and then I never posted anything? Yeah...

I just spent a few days with my bestest BFF helping with her wedding, and when we get together we talk a lot, and about everything, even in the midst of frantic last minute wedding preparations. So the topic came up, and it occurred to me that one of the most pervasive experiences you have growing up as a kid who was sexually abused is that you always wonder what each experience is like for "normal" kids.

Of course, I've thought about this before. When my grandpa died I felt really sad - more than I had expected since I basically have no relationship with him, and haven't for years. But that's what I felt sad about. Not sad that he had died so much as sad that he had made it so that I didn't want a relationship with him. Sad that I lost out on that experience. And this was exacerbated by the fact that my grandpa was actually a pretty good grandpa to the kids he didn't molest. He was funny and quirky and playful and helpful and attentive and just so deeply flawed and terribly damaged in this one way that made all the rest of it useless and out of reach for me. For most of my cousins, he was a great grandpa, and they had a really good relationship with him. It would be easy to dismiss the lost relationship if he had just been an all-around asshole, but of course, that's rarely the case. So it's much more complicated than we tend to think, and how we tend to portray abusive relationships in pop culture.

I didn't always just feel sad about it. Through the years I've felt kind of guilty at times when I would go home to visit and would have no interest in interacting with him. And then that guilt would trigger anger that he made it that way and that my family wasn't better at giving me an escape route from having to see him all the time. And this stuff is so complex and subtle that it takes years to sort out. I think over time I got really good at recognizing the emotions and thinking my way through them and finding my own escape routes, or being evasive and emotionally distant when there was no other escape route. And I got over the whole guilt and resulting anger thing. So now what's left is the sadness that the experience of having a healthy relationship with a grandpa through your teen years and young adulthood (my other grandpa was pretty awesome all the way around, but died when I was 12) just wasn't an experience that was available to me.

Thinking about my reaction to my grandpa's death got me thinking about this dynamic where the abused child is always aware of the difference between hir experience and the imaginary "normal" experience. I think this is especially acute during those years when you're exploring your sexuality and navigating intimate relationships with peers. These can be uncertain times in themselves, but it seems like the experience of abuse heightens the uncertainty and undermines the confidence you may have otherwise had. Of course, it's impossible to know, since you've never experienced this developmental phase any other way, and kids tend to have an exaggerated sense of this fictional "normal" person. So this is something I need to give a little more thought to, but I'd be interested in hearing if other people had this same experience. I think it's important to talk about this stuff because there's such a tendency to either act like abuse victims are thoroughly damaged, completely powerless creatures, or like everything is in the past and thank god we can move on now that you've worked through this thing and it doesn't effect you anymore.

More later...

Picture of the day

From growingupheroes.com.

The Art of Womanliness, Redux

A comment from the previous post:

Jack Danger Canty said...
This blog post and discussion fascinates me. So much so that I wanted to find out what, exactly, a site would look like if these same principles of honor, kindness, integrity, etc. were written for an all female audience.

So I built one: artofwomanliness.heroku.com

It takes the live site at artofmanliness.com and translates it so that the gender of every piece of text is swapped. We now have, for example, a complete article on "Archetypes of American Womanliness"

As I read it I think "most of this makes sense, though these archetypal ladies seem to have poor relationships."

Funny!

Happy Coming Out Day

Monday Miscellanea

A former Guantanamo prisoner describes the experience as "Kafkaesque" and sues the U.S. government.



Senator Jim DeMint thinks that sexually active unmarried women and openly gay individuals should not be allowed to be teachers. Apparently single, sexually active, straight men can totally pull it off, though.



A shift to HTML 5 will give marketers unprecedented access to the info on your computer. Sing it with me

marketing makes the world go 'round
it makes the world go 'round
some marketing firm soon will target you
if no one's targeting you now ...

In North Carolina a court ruling curbs zero-tolerance school policies, which are all too often extreme and over-reaching, and serve to further marginalize the very students who most need help and support from their schools and communities.



And in other news mainstream American obstetrics confirms that research has little or no impact on how they practice medicine. In spite of a new study (which confirms a number of previous studies, incidentally) showing that light consumption of alcohol during pregnancy is not only not harmful to the child but may in fact involve some benefits, American obstetricians remain committed to their anti-alcohol dogma. Among other things, the study found

Boys whose mothers were light drinkers during pregnancy were 33% less likely and girls 31% less likely to have behavioral, emotional or intellectual problems than nondrinking mothers.

Both boys and girls in this category were also less likely to have hyperactivity: 27% and 29%, respectively, and scored higher on measures of cognitive functioning.

The opposite was true of children born to mothers who were heavy drinkers. These children were more likely to have problems across the board.

Of course, European doctors and moms have known this for years decades centuries. But why would we let the facts intrude upon our practices? Everyone knows that pregnant women are not to be trusted. If alcohol in excess is harmful to a developing fetus, then we must forbid pregnant women from alcohol consumption altogether. The poor dears won't be able to grasp the concept of "light drinking." And even if they could process such a subtle concept with their delicate lady brains, they probably wouldn't be able to limit their consumption of alcohol once they started drinking anyway. Everyone knows that self-control is not a female characteristic.

Video of the Day

A Conversation about Birth Rape

About a month ago now, a flurry of intense conversations on the term "birth rape" circulated through the feminist blogosphere. Although birth rape has been the subject of conversation before, there were several posts written within a few days of each other that are particularly relevant here:

What is "Birth Rape"? by Irin Carmen at Jezebel
Bad Birth Experiences Aren't Rape by Amanda Marcotte at Slate
The push to recognize "birth rape" by Tracy Clark-Flory at Salon
"Birth Rape" Rhetoric is Ugly, Misleading by Lindsay Beyerstein at BigThink

These posts produced outrage (on both sides of the issue) and a great deal of intense commenting and some name-calling and a lot of hurt feelings. It also prompted a number of thoughtful responses that were posted in the days and weeks following, and I'll link some of them below.

Although I read much of the commentary, I didn't post on it here or comment in many of the ongoing comment threads because there are times when this whole conversation makes me feel tired and depressed, and it's hard to say much of anything. It's also difficult sometimes in the context of a blog to address such a sensitive, complex issue with the degree of thoughtfulness and inclusiveness it deserves. But the flurry of birth rape posts did prompt a private email exchange between six feminist bloggers/ birth advocates that seemed really productive to me. Too productive to remain private. So I'm posting it here for your reading pleasure.

Note: this kinda starts in the middle of an ongoing conversation, so it might take a second to get your bearings - keep reading.
___________________________________________

B wrote:

Okay, Clark-Flory just pissed me off even more. Is she ever going to let this drop? She has now called the use of the term birth rape "casual" and compared it to people who say things like "Man, that aerobics class totally raped me." http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/2010/09/14/rape_hearing/index.html

For fuck's sake. Growling and grrring all over the place here. How insulting can she be?


F wrote:

Yeah, if it weren't for the word "casually", I wouldn't be upset as much, because she'd just be talking about debates on how to define rape.

About 80% of the time, I'm ok with her, but the other 20% she tends to say clueless stuff.

Of course, since Salon commenters are only a little above YouTube commenters, she usually comes off looking ok in comparison. Which is why I never read the comments.


U wrote:

That's absolutely disgusting, and I had to leave a comment to that effect. If she doesn't think "rape" is the right term, that's all well and good, but my goodness you'd think she'd have more sense than that. :/


K replied to F:

Salon comments are like YouTube Light. That's a great comparison.

I think what we saw last week was another example of how women who "allow" themselves to be vulnerable (and giving birth is a great biological example of that) just don't fit that second wave narrative. I don't have high expectations in the first place when it comes to folks who seem to feel like motherhood is when women sell out (read: those women who let us down deserve what they get), so this whole manufactured brouhaha was pretty predictable. Cognitive dissonance is itchy and stingy, no?

I've seen the same type thing coming from biological essentialists (the "all women should birth vaginally, breastfeed, stay home" set) when a woman decides to get an epidural and ends up with a c/s. They want everyone to do things one way--their way-- so they resent and find indirect ways to tell women they got what they deserved for not _____.


D replied to all:

So I've been mulling over this for a little while because I want to respond in a thoughtful manner. It's worth saying up front that I:

1. identify as feminist
2. have kids, one delivered by truly awful, likely totally unnecessary cesarean
3. am uncomfortable with the terminology "birth rape."

I probably don't need to show my cred, but my cesarean was worse than awful, I hated my body, I couldn't bear to even think about sex for a very long time and would cry and panic if my husband came near me. I still shake when I get into stirrups. I didn't think I was going to die, but I hoped I would. I really, really get the feeling of loss of agency and basic humanity.

I am in a constant process of working through what exactly it is that makes me uncomfortable. I think part of it is that I am very concerned with the meaning of words (no surprise I ended up in law school), and think of rape primarily as a term with legal significance. This really pisses some people off, and I've been accused of boo-hooing on behalf of women who have experienced rape (I have not, and don't pretend to know what anyone else feels or speak for them) and denying the existence of date rape (wtf). I have seen some people make some pretty sweeping claims about whether or not a battery in an obstetrical setting constitutes rape, and I'm left a little confused I guess. So I'll work through it and you can read or not. Maybe grab a cup of tea...

At common law, rape was sex without the victim's consent by force. As time has progressed, we have expanded the meanings of some of the words, specifically "sex" (as including penetration of orifices other than the vagina with things other than a penis, not requiring ejaculation), "consent" (no longer implied in an intimate partner or potential intimate partner), and "force" (to include even the most minimal force required to complete the act and threat of force). Basically, the trend has been expansive and inclusive.

The Model Penal Code, which was supposed to be this sort of utopian criminal code, but is actually still sort of retrograde (um, spousal exception? deviate sexual intercourse? what century is this?) defines rape exclusively as including sexual intercourse, but creates a separate category of "sexual assault." Essentially, this crime is when a person has or causes another person to have sexual contact with them knowing that the victim finds it offensive (and a smattering of other permutations not relevant here). The Code further states: "Sexual contact is any touching of the sexual or other intimate parts of the person for the purpose of arousing or gratifying sexual desire."

I think that the magic, from a legal perspective, is in finding a definition of rape that is neither too narrow nor too broad. As others have pointed out, feminist theory tells us that rape is not about sex, but is about power and control. From a legal perspective, though, it's necessarily about asserting power and control in a sexual manner. This doesn't necessarily have to lie in the gratification of the rapist, as the Model Penal Code suggests, but I think there has to be a sexualized element (such as inducing sexual humiliation). People assert power in a lot of ways, and obviously not all of them are rape. Not just because the laws are retrograde, but because the word has to have some sort of parameters to have legal meaning.

This raises a number of questions for me. Does the fact that obstetrical touching involves genitals necessarily make it sexual? Body as sexual vs. nonsexual is a distinction that we're comfortable making in the context of breastfeeding. In fact, a big part of my complaint as a birth activist is that medical personnel objectify women's bodies, divorcing them from humanity/sexuality. When a vagina is a hole a baby comes out of, you can stick your hand in it, cut it, sew it, whatever. It involves a sexual organ but is not sexualized if that makes sense. If someone fondles my breast on the bus, that is (in most jurisdictions) a sexual assault of some sort. If someone does a breast exam, against my will but in good faith looking for cancerous lumps, is that a sexual assault? I'm not so sure. To add another dimension, is the act judged by the intent, or by the fallout? Generally speaking, the law says by intent; I think other disciplines would look at result to the victim. If the feeling caused by rape is similar to that caused by an obstetrical battery, are they the same? Then again, what if I had say a colposcopy that, while technically consented to (or maybe I was silent, or maybe I revoked consent), was painful, terrifying, and left me with symptoms of post traumatic stress? Is that a rape too? Without being flippant at all, what would we call it, gyno-rape? What about a tooth extraction? CPS taking my child away? All of these things might leave me feeling powerless.

When it comes to people talking about what happened to them and how it made them feel, I have no place telling them that they can't call it rape, or liken it to rape, or torture, or whatever else. In any event, the words that women choose illuminate how they feel about what happened, and that has independent value. I understand that the usage is not casual. But I also think that it is important that we have a name for what is happening. Like from a legal perspective. The importance of this is that it would give us a mechanism by which we can hold providers accountable. Great strides were made when we came up with the concepts of "child abuse," "domestic violence," etc. To the extent that it matters what anyone outside the choir thinks, "birth rape" doesn't really resonate. At all. Then again, neither did "partial-birth abortion" or "African-American" and nobody has let that get in the way.

But it also involves telling doctors that they are rapists. This is much more than telling some frat boy that having sex with an unconscious woman is rape. It's telling someone who in all likelihood thought they were saving a life that they are a rapist. This is where it breaks down for me a little. I've heard people say "look, I had to do the' run down the hall with full hand in the vag' because of suspected prolapse and crashing heart rate." Does this excuse them from a violation of informed consent or make them not an asshole? Not in the slightest. But (at least in my definition) a rapist has some sort of malicious or sexual intent - no confusion here as to what they were trying to do. It's either get off or humiliate. Barring some of the more egregious cases, I don't think this is what is going on in a lot of the cases women are calling birth rape. Maybe, for the purposes of institutional change, there's a less destructive way to have this conversation. (For the purposes of personal restitution though, by all means, call them a rapist and key their car!)

Anyway, I think that there is a gap between the metaphorical definition of rape and the legal definition, and that causes me trouble. My inner conflict might make sense if you think about someone who, say, is given a vaginal exam without a word and someone who is digitally penetrated by a perv claiming to perform an ultrasound (an actual case from my torts book). I feel like there is a difference there, and the "birth rape" terminology erases that difference.

So I guess I'm not any closer to an answer, but at least I've thought a little. I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts.


B replied to D:

I think you make some valid, reasonable points, D. I sometimes hear women call, say, unnecessary c-sections 'rape' and it does make me cringe a little because it didn't involve any non-consensual VEs. In that sense, I can see why some would see that as a 'casual' link. On the other hand, when it comes to instances of actual forced VEs, I think there is something very...paternalistic about telling women what they can and can't call the violation against them. Even if in a legal sense 'rape' doesn't hold up, the pain, shame, anger and degradation are often just as powerful, with similar effects on the psyche. It's the dismissal of that pain and the allegation that birth rape/assault somehow diminish 'real' rape that really gets to me.


S replied to D:

FWIW, I'm totally on board with you about most of this. I feel pretty cautious about the use of the term, and it took me a long time to form an opinion on it when the terminology first came into broader usage.

On the one hand I really am sympathetic to those who worry about diluting the meaning and power of the word "rape." This is something to be taken very seriously. On the other hand, I think that birth and reproductive autonomy are areas where women are especially vulnerable due to the cultural context, and it's so easy for individuals who work within patriarchal systems like the medical industry to violate them in egregious ways. And this is one criterion from a legal standpoint, right? The comparative vulnerability and powerlessness of the victim in relation to the perpetrator is commonly factored into legislation as is clearly seen when dealing with laws that protect children and disabled individuals, for example. The problem is that we as a society don't recognize this huge power imbalance between birthing mother and medical care provider, so the potential for coercion and violation that comes with it is largely invisible.

But obviously this vulnerability alone is not enough to get you to something as serious as rape. I do think the intent vs. consequences issue is central. Obviously most medical professionals are not going to derive sexual pleasure from mistreating birthing women. But I do believe some of them derive pleasure from dominating and/or humiliating them. And generally speaking this combo of sexual violation + pleasure is enough to get you a conviction of rape-rape (hence the jettisoning of the ejaculation requirement...). And of course the damage done to the victim is often intensely sexual. So I think I fall somewhere in the middle where I think there is a select group of cases where "birth rape" is applicable. Reproduction and birth are inherently a part of a woman's sexual life, even if the medical professionals involved don't perceive it that way. Hence the damage that can be done to a woman during birth is, or can be, sexual in nature. I suspect that the vast majority of cases would be better categorized as birth assault, but I still want to reserve the term "birth rape" for those especially outrageous cases where there was either a clear intent to dominate and humiliate the mother or a flat-out criminal disregard for the mother's well-being.

And at the very least, in cases where you can't establish intent or personal gratification at the pain and humiliation inflicted, there should be some sort of criminal negligence standard so that doctors who claim to have had the best of intentions of saving the baby can still be held to a kind of reasonable person standard in which anyone should have known that treating a birthing woman this way was going to inflict terrible damage and psychological trauma. But as far as I know doctors are generally allowed to hide behind the "I was trying to save the baby" defense. And I think this is what motivates the push for recognizing birth rape and trying to force people to take it more seriously. In the absence of any culpability, and in the face of the cultural apathy regarding this issue, I think the tendency is to go to the furthest extreme in order to capture attention and shock people into taking it seriously and making changes. Does that make sense?


F replied to S:

S, that is it exactly--"rape" captures attention, and also underlines the severity of the woman's experience, in a way that "assault" doesn't--it's too vague.

"Medical assault" gets a little closer and is probably as precise as you can get, legally. But it doesn't have the visceral tug, and it doesn't really get at the wrongness of twisting the experience of birth, which is so particular to women, into an occasion for medical battery.

"Rape" didn't even mean what it means now at one time (it was closer to "unauthorized use of woman's vagina/uterus by a man who is not her owner", yes?).

So I guess I don't worry about the appropriation as much; I think that a woman assaulted during birth has enough in common with a traditional rape victim that outside of a courtroom, "rape" does not really get diluted, in the way that "that spinning class really raped me!" does.


B replied:

I agree wholeheartedly, F.


U replied:

Sorry for the later reply.

I totally get D's reply, and agree with it. I think it's hard when discussing it because, for me, it all bends on how "rape" is defined in a certain area. However, I also agree with F in that I'm not really worried about dilution. I think part of the issue in the back of my head is what used to NOT be considered rape (date rape, marital rape, etc.), and how taking the power away from the victim to name their pain is somehow...abhorrent to me. I think "assault" is convenient only in that it gives an actual criminal place to attach the events but doesn't really describe it to me.

It's tough, because we don't want to encourage the idea that women are lovely little fragile creatures who require special delicate touches (by saying that women are especially vulnerable - I've had several professors describe birth as making women "incompetent") but the situation is a bit tough.


S replied:

Yes - I agree on the point about not making women into fragile little creatures. But I also think that being vulnerable (especially during a specific event in your life) and being incompetent are two totally different things. I think the dominant and convenient myth is that women are incompetent during labor and delivery, but you can work to eliminate that while still acknowledging the huge power imbalance between birthing women and medical care givers, and the resulting vulnerability and potential for abuse.
_____________________________________

Your thoughts?




Additional posts on birth rape:
On Birth Rape, Definitions, and Language Policing by Cara at The Curvature
So, About this Birth Rape Thing by Emjaybee at The Unnecesarean
SEXIST BEATDOWN: Nation of Whoopi Goldbergs Edition by Sady and Amanda at Tiger Beatdown
It's not RAPE rape by Amity Reed at The F-word
Are there other posts that should be included here? Send 'em my way!

The Art of Womanliness

Today at work I met this woman, and we started talking about our respective areas of expertise /interest /research /teaching /etc. I explained to her my whole postmodern-feminism-environmental-ethics thang, and she was like "oh, I'm really interested in gender too. You should check out this website." And she typed in http://artofmanliness.com/. And at first this site looks like it might be kinda tongue-in-cheek, but it's not. And at first I thought maybe she was being kind of ironical, but she wasn't. So first, this makes me realize that sometimes you think you're communicating with a person but you really aren't connecting at all. And second this website raises a lot of questions for me. Questions like

1. What do we mean by "manliness"? How is it defined and what makes it so valuable?
2. Is "manliness" really an art?
3. If so, is "womanliness" also an art?
4. What would a website called "the Art of Womanliness" look like?

I think sometimes as feminists who've been feminists for a long time, we're so used to rolling our eyes at this kind of cultural artifact that we no longer take these questions seriously. I mean, obviously "manliness" is a social construct that is practiced and defined differently in different socio-historical contexts, etc. etc. But I think from time to time it's worthwhile to revisit the questions of how manliness (womanliness, masculinity, femininity, etc) is defined in our culture here and now, what significance this has, how it's influenced by the events of our time, how it fits in with other dominant cultural narratives, etc.

A quick poll of your peers will generally reveal that the connotations for words like manliness are still predominantly positive, while there's a bit of confusion surrounding the term womanliness. It is clear that womanliness has a strong tendency to be one of two things: an old-fashioned word that has homemaking and nurturing connotations, or an insult used primarily against men. Womanish is especially prone to this kind of negative usage. But beyond this asymmetry, what are the real differences between manliness and womanliness?

The founder of The Art of Manliness tells this story about the birth of the website

My idea for the Art of Manliness came about as I was standing in Borders bookstore looking at the men’s magazines. It seemed to me that the content in these magazines were continually going downhill, with more and more articles about sex and how to get six pack abs. Was this all there was to being a man?

And as I looked around at the men my age, it seemed to me that many were shirking responsibility and refusing to grow up. They had lost the confidence, focus, skills, and virtues that men of the past had embodied and were a little lost. The feminism movement did some great things, but it also made men confused about their role and no longer proud of the virtues of manliness. This, coupled with the fact that many men were raised without the influence of a good father, has left a generation adrift as to what it means to be an honorable, well-rounded man.

Talking about honorable manliness was to me a niche seemingly not covered on the web or elsewhere, and I decided to start The Art of Manliness to talk about all things manly- both the serious and the fun, but with the ultimate eye toward encouraging readers to be better husbands, fathers, brothers, men.

So he looked around at the version of masculinity that the manmags were selling, and he found it lacking. So far so good. I can sympathize with that. I look around at the version of femininity that the the girlmags are selling and I find it lacking too. But there are two important caveats here. For one thing, magazines, and media in general, exist primarily to sell products in our culture. It's capitalism, baby. Marketing drives media. Period. And nobody behind this marketing is sitting back asking "what should women/men really be like?" or "what's the best way to live?" Cuz that would be silly, right? You don't sell shit by asking ethical and/or philosophical questions. The only answer to a question like "what kind of men/women should we be" a marketer is going to come up with is "men/women who buy a lot of shit." So I would naturally expect the version of masculinity/femininity exhibited in any media outlet to be marketing-driven and totally irrelevant to the real underlying questions.

Secondly, I wonder why this discontent he experienced applied only to the version of masculinity he saw, and not to the version of humanity as a whole we're presented with. Because mostly what you see reflected in magazines is shallow, narcissistic, self-involved, entitled, petty people, right? And this ain't by accident, y'all. It turns out that one thing that shallow, narcissistic, self-involved, entitled, petty people are really good at is buying shit. But this isn't a gendered thing. Women and men are presented with different avenues to gain their material fulfillment in the vast marketing machine, but it's all the same thing in the end. It's just that by differentiating the marketing you sell twice as many products - one for the women and one for the men.

So what are the manly virtues according to a website like AOM, and what does this say about womanliness? A quick perusal of The Different Types of Manliness over at AOM yields the following list of manly virtues:

• Toughness, leadership, courage, sacrifice (the Warrior)
• Self-sufficient, free-thinking, independent, able to be his own man (the Lone Wolf)
• Free spirit, courage, vitality, risk-taking (the Adventurer)
• Well-dressed, well-mannered (the Gentleman)
• Idealistic, driven, civic-minded, principled (the Statesman)
• Hard working, loyal, good husband and father (the Family Man)

So these virtues all seem to be pretty nice, right? I mean, I like well-mannered, loyal, hard-working, self-sufficient, idealistic men. But that's probably because I like well-mannered, loyal, hard-working, self-sufficient, idealistic people. What makes these characteristics male, or especially desirable in men more than women? And if these wide-ranging and sometimes contradictory characteristics are exclusively masculine, what virtues are left for the ladies?

When you teach a class on gender, if you ask a group of college-aged kids to define feminine virtue they unhesitatingly list sexual purity and modesty as the only two synonyms they know for the term, and act as if it's a quaint, outdated phrase. The thing is, I get the sense from sites like AOM that this isn't far from their sense of what womanliness amounts to. But I'm not sure why. You can infer from the About page that the founder of AOM and his wife are Mormon, although they go out of their way to avoid saying so. So I kind of expect their gender politics to be extremely conservative and somewhat, um, quaint. But doesn't a religious framework like theirs have any positive characteristics associated with womanliness?

And this brings me back to the question "what would a website on the Art of Womanliness look like?" So I did a google search just to make sure there wasn't one of those out there. And what did I find? A discussion thread at AOM. As you read through the discussion thread on the Art of Womanliness, here are some thoughts on what a site like this should do:

• "cover the virtues and values of being a woman, etiquette, classic fashion, and womanly skills. I like to see stuff on dating, gardening, cooking, friendship, and how to negotiate feeling like an independent woman, while also feeling like, well, a woman" (yes, but what does it mean to "feel like a woman"?? And what are the womanly skills?)
• "It shouldn't say working or being a breadwinner is wrong but it should have an area in the Family and Relationships section that does celebrate the stay at home mother as well. Chivalry should also be celebrated, and women should be noble in those ways too"
• "They should emphasize the differences between men and women so they can enjoy being women as much as we enjoy being men"
• "I think some of the ideas mentioned here like fashion, dating, family and relationships...to be honest, a lot of the things on this site I do apply to my own life as a woman. The general basic rules of respect, courtesy, manners, and the like are helpful to anyone."

And so on. But we're still left to ask "how are the male virtues different from the female virtues? This is never really specified. It seems like being respectful, courteous, responsible, etc are listed at the top of the list for both men and women. Of course, there are many veiled (and not so veiled) references to things like housekeeping and child-rearing and gardening and cooking and being a friend. Which brings us back to the same old "men should be adventurous and bold and idealistic and courageous and women should keep a clean house" dichotomy of a century ago which sites like AOM claim to eschew. But really, what else is underpinning this? What are the female virtues in this view, and how do they differ from male virtues?

And since we're so insisitent that there are in fact two distinct sets of virtues, why is this true? One commenter from the discussion mentioned above was so explicit as to claim that

It's hard for men to talk about this for fear of being chauvinist. Some food for thought. Men and women had certain roles that we both fell into out of natures guidance. We had those roles for centuries. Then all of a sudden the rules changed. While. I agree that most of this is for the better, it has to be confusing for women. What compounds it is that women feel like they can't be women and can't talk about it with other women.

So there it is - the ol' essentialist narrative (along with the ever-infuriating phrase "be women" with no accompanying explanation of what that means). But here we hit the performative contradiction, right? Art and artifice and artificial are antonyms for nature and natural. If manliness (and womanliness) is an art, can it be natural? If it's embedded in our very biology and issues forth from us in spite of ourselves can it be something that is lost and must be relearned? Could it be something we have to form discussion forums on and write articles about and establish support groups to regain? I mean, you're born with it, right? So what's with all the learning and policing?

In a way I really sympathize with the intent and the feeling behind sites like AOM. We do live in a world that tends to encourage shallow, petty, immature behavior. It truly is depressing to watch the juvenile dramas played out in celebrity culture and emulated by the masses. But why is this a gender issue? Good character - people who run deep, who do what they say they're going to do and finish what they start and stand by their friends and loved ones - is a thing of beauty and something to cherish. I agree wholeheartedly. But the issue isn't gendered and the enemy is neither feminism nor changing social roles. No, the enemy is much more ubiquitous and powerful than that. Look to the consumer economy that requires relentless market growth and perpetual buying, buying, buying, and then to the marketing machinery that feeds it, my friend. Thoughtful people who value something other than their image and their belongings don't feed the consumer economy in the right sort of way, and thus you will never see these characteristics truly valued and nurtured in our culture until we shift away from our economic practices.

So there's your target. The massive Capitalist-Marketing-Consuming Juggernaut. Good luck with that.

Webcomic of the Week

a softer world

Sadly, yes

So....I've been posting really sporadically lately. You may have noticed. But it means I've been missing some of the things I usually post on with some degree of regularity. And violence against trans people is one of them. In a comment exchange on an earlier post someone asked if it seemed like lately there's been an unusually high number of cases where a trans person is assaulted and/or murdered, and to add insult to injury the police/media handle it horribly. And as distracted as I've been, it does seem that way. I don't have any statistics to share, but do a quick survey of recent posts on individual instances of trans violence on all the usual blogs and you'll see what I mean. Here's the most recent example. I don't really know what to say about this, but I feel like something needs to be said. Is it that awareness of this problem has increased so it's getting more coverage? Is there some social shift going on that's causing an increase in the violence? I have no answers.

Video of the Day

My kids' favorite song right now...

Monday Miscellanea

Ya know who kicks ass? Elizabeth Warren.
Consumer advocate to set up watchdog agency
Warren has been known to say such kick-ass things as this:

Motherhood is now the single-best indicator that an unmarried middle-class woman will end up bankrupt. In the world of financial devastation, there are two groups of people: single mothers and others.

Check out 5 reasons to love Elizabeth Warren here.



And while we're talking about ass-kicking women...check 'em:

Just sayin'...


During a recession, the effects of ageism are more clearly visible:
For the Unemployed Over 50, Fears of Never Working Again



And according to this review, the presence of shows like Huge and Mike and Molly reflect the positive influence of the Fat Acceptance movement in mainstream culture:

And yet despite its disappointments, “Mike & Molly” is significant as the second fictional series in recent months to take weight not as a sideshow but rather as a central, animating subject, surpassing even the efforts made by “Roseanne” in the 1980s and ’90s. “Huge,” a drama about teenagers at a fat camp, which appeared this summer on ABC Family, displayed a similar sensitivity, a tone aimed at correcting for the reflexive cultural judgments levied against the overweight at a time when obesity has been cast as one of the greatest blights of our age.

Both series indicate the extent to which the countervailing sentiment, the fat-acceptance movement, begun in the 1960s, has gained traction in the mainstream as a rebuttal to political and social forces seeking to tax Mountain Dew and convince you that every time you have a second slice of pizza the devil grows an extra pair of horns. “Mike & Molly” is a mushy and human exploration of the struggle to find pleasure away from the bakery aisle, and the fight fat people wage against objectification.

I wouldn't bet the show will be unproblematic, but it seems like a step in the right direction.

What did I miss?

Tea-Partiers @ the courthouse

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Video of the Day

Seems like alls I got to post lately is videos... enjoy!

Video of the Day

Christine O'Donnell, now the official Republican candidate in the Delaware race. It's delicious, y'all.

An unhealthy, overly-processed food additive by any other name

...is still an unhealthy, overly-processed food additive. Good try, though.

Corn syrup producers want sweeter name: corn sugar

Before the "Ground Zero Victory Mosque"

One thing I know is

... that I am going to read the heck outta this book.

Stuck

So...as I mentioned in an earlier post, my grandpa the molester died a few weeks ago. And this has dredged up all kinds of conflicting emotions and thoughts. It's kind of therapeutic for me to write about this stuff, and in my experience it's therapeutic to read other people's thoughts about their similar experiences, so I'm working on a post about it. But I've started it three or four times and keep getting stuck. Usually I bang these things out and post them without much delay, but this time is different.

I think part of the problem is the strange response these kinds of posts get. When I post on something like this (or an intensely personal post on my childbirth or breastfeeding experience) the hits that post gets jumps from the usual hundreds to thousands very quickly. But the comments don't always reflects that. If a post like this gets 80 comments it's often getting read about 8,000 times. One such post got over 23,000 hits and only 17 comments. So first of all it's weird that I'm talking about this really private intense stuff and there are all these people out there reading it silently. Some of them are linking it or posting it on Facebook, according to my stat counter. But I don't know who they are or what they're thinking about. What made them read it in the first place, and what response did they have? Why does such a small percentage of the readers for these posts comment compared to other posts? Does it feel more dangerous to comment, or do they not know what to say? When I read a really personal post I feel more inclined to comment, but maybe that's just me.

So anyway, I'm curious about this dynamic and what it means. Your thoughts?

Video of the Day

I know,my musical taste is all over the map, right? Have a good weekend, y'all.

OMG WTF is UP with Feminism, y'all?!?

So...feminism. Doesn't it just totally suck ass? What with all the calling out and flaming and triggering and swarming and OMG what the fuck is wrong with feminism?!?

I've been on a bit of an internet hiatus lately, what with my busy life and all the thoughts cookin' in my head and a vacation to the land of thick rainforests and come-and-go internet signals. But, of course, you can't step away from the feminist blogosphere for long without missing some kind of kerfuffle or other involving calling out and/or flaming and/or angry discussions about triggering behavior, which is always followed up by a widespread and generalized panic about OMG The State of Feminism. Maybe I'm just cynical and world-weary, but here's how I tend to feel everytime this dog and pony show commences:

1. It would probably behoove us all to remember that Feminism≠Internet Feminism.
2. It would probably behoove us all to remember that Internet Feminists are not a monolithic group. There's a huge range of perspectives and writing styles and personalities and outlooks among feminist blogs, y'all. Feeling disillusioned by the actions of some? Seek out new voices. They're there.
3. Criticizing someone's fucked up words or actions is totally different and generally more effective than attacking their character. Maybe their words or actions truly are a reflection of a deeply flawed character. Or maybe they're a generally sincere and good person who has this one flaw or a total lack of experience in this area or whatever. Attacking their character probably isn't going to result in a learning experience for them or a furthering of the dialogue.
4. If you're getting a giant ego boost off of calling someone out and escalating the situation into a flame-war, then you probly need to engage in a little soul-searching. Gettin' your metaphorical rocks off in a flame war? It's quite likely that you're oblivious to the beam in your own eye even while you're attacking someone else for the speck in theirs. Step away frm the computer and take a look in the mirror, my friend.
5. And finally, feminism is a human activity. It's a social movement engaged in by humans. And humans ain't perfect. We've all got our shortcomings and blindspots and bad days and impulsive moments. So quarrels will arise and insensitive things will be said and tempers will flare. It doesn't mean Feminism is busted. It means feminism is a human activity with it's ups and downs and flaws and moments of beauty and warmth and banality and pettiness. And that's OK.

And anyway...the fighting and hating and swarming...it takes a lot of energy. I need all my energy for the good stuff and the meaningful stuff and the tough stuff in my life. And the ego boost you get from that kinda stuff? It lasts, and it doesn't have a bitter aftertaste.

I'm back

...and scrambling to get caught up. So no Monday Miscellanea this week. However, there is this to chew on:
New Study Estimates Neonatal Circumcision Death Rate Higher Than Suffocation and Auto Accidents

Interesting, no? For more info on circumcision and a good resource for research realities vs cultural misconceptions and medical dogma, check out Intact America.

More later, y'all. Happy Wednesday!

My grandmother, with her plane and her firstborn.

Happy Labor Day weekend, from Seattle.

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Someecards does it again

Just so...exactly. In fact, I admit to not even knowing Dr Laura was still on the air, and thus being both surprised by that fact and by the fact that someone would call her with a problem involving race or gender. Wow. I need to start paying attention.

Forthcoming

I have a lot of stuff to post about. But right now I'm really busy and emotionally absorbed elsewhere and not in the mood to post. But just to keep you from giving up on me altogether, here are some of the things cookin' in my head:

1. My grandpa (the molester) just died (not unexpectedly) and I've been quietly exploring the complex range of emotions that go along with that. It's something we rarely talk about or acknowledge, but when your abuser is a member of your family, there are all these implications stretched over the course of years. I've got something to say about that. Soon.
2. I'm thinking about the cultural mythology surrounding obesity in our medical/health related pop culture. This seems to me like an instance of misinformation become unquestionable dogma, and that dynamic is always interesting.
3. I'm thinking about food production and gender norms and how these are shaped by economic systems and what the implications are on family/community cohesion and personal freedom. This one might take awhile.

In the meantime, ponder the Halloween baby/toddler t-shirts offered by a certain large retailer this year. Note how the female-gendered ones involve manipulative social relations ("Mommy's wrapped around my finger" and "Daddy's under my spell") while the male-gendered ones feature space explorers and monsters and demands for candy. Business as usual...

Mormons: we're just like you (except for how we hate The Gay)

So, I've been hearing about these new ads the Mormon church is running. The idea is to profile "normal" looking people and then right at the end say "oh, and I'm Mormon." Apparently the church thought this was necessary because many Americans have a low opinion of the church. Mormon leadership chalks this up to the prevalence of TV programming and news coverage that focuses on polygamist sects.



The thing is, I think most Americans get that the polygamist groups are now officially not recognized by the church. But that's totally beside the point. First, the modern-day polygamist sects are a reminder that back in the day when they could get away with it, they were all polygamists. Women were taught to put up with it and shut the fuck up if they wished to enjoy eternal bliss in the afterlife. It was only when pressure from the larger culture and the government became too strong that the church received a new "inspiration from God" saying that polygamy wasn't cool anymore. And the same is true with the role of Blacks in the church.

In fact, the Mormon church provides a great object lesson in privilege. It was all white males who founded and led the church, so of course all their teachings and practices benefited white males. Over the years they've been forced to make concessions to various non-male non-white groups, but you don't get a cookie for doing the right thing only after you've been forced to do it. So no matter how hard the church tries to distance themselves from these groups, the polygamist sects serve as a living reminder of church history.

And of course, the other thing that leaves so many Americans with a low opinion of the Mormon church is their role in buying ultra-conservative and anti-gay election results. Hatefulness backed by the economic resources to enable you to force your beliefs on everyone else is a lethal combination. And it tends to make people despise you, not respect you. So all of this makes me laugh a cynical, bitter laugh when I see these ads. If they really wanted to be honest they should say "My name is _________ and I'm a normal person just like you, only I'm Mormon so I hate The Gay and want to force everyone to live my lifestyle." At least it would be honest.

Arrrrrrrr!

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World Breastfeeding Week

It's World Breastfeeding Week, y'all. While I suspect you already know what I have to say about breastfeeding and I'm busy and not really in the mood to write another post about it, I think it's such a huge feminist issue in our culture that I can't let it pass unremarked. So here you will find a list of previous posts I've written on the topics of breastfeeding and birth and informed choices. These are complicated topics, and much lip-service is given to "choice." But I think we have to move past the lip-service and oversimplification. So here we go:

Rachel goes on about mothering and childbirth and breastfeeding and supported choices again

That Post on Natural Childbirth

The Mirror Test

Have you stumbled across a great post on World Breastfeeding Week? Post it in the comments!

Monday Miscellanea, on Tuesday

Apparently many mortgage companies are turning pregnant women down for mortgages because they equate maternity leave with unemployment. Even if their maternity leave is really short. I wonder if they're doing the same with men who take a couple weeks of sick leave? For some reason I doubt it.



It has now become clear that massive amounts of chemical dispersants were used on the oil spill (out of sight, out of mind, y'all) in spite of the EPA's request to limit the use of them. In order to pretend to take the EPA's concerns into account, there was a paperwork system in place by which BP would have to request permission to use the dispersants from the Coast Guard. The thing is, no matter how much they were proposing to spray, the Coast Guard never denied the requests, so the paperwork was just a deceptive formality. And gallons and gallons of chemical dispersants are in the water as we speak, doing damage that we won't be able to fully understand for years to come. It's a science experiment, y'all. Because we don't do R&D on this kind of stuff in between disasters, reserving the R&D funds instead for improving our drilling and extraction techniques.

Oh yeah, and concerning the claim that the dispersants (Corexit and its siblings) are as mild as dish soap... would you squirt large quantities of Dawn into the aquarium containing your expensive and beloved pet fish? I didn't think so.



And finally, the ACLU is rightfully protesting the fact that Boy Scout troops often use school facilities at a discounted rate given the fact that their discriminatory policies conflict with public policy. A recent court ruling involving a christian student group that had been denied official recognition by the law school it was affiliated with because of its discriminatory policies seems to have implications concerning the relationship between public schools and groups like the Boy Scouts. The court ruled that "it's within the legal parameters of the school to deny official recognition to organizations that don't follow school policies." If discounted access to school facilities counts as official recognition, then this seems pretty clear cut.


What have I missed?

Video of the Day

Happy weekend, y'all.

Yeah, but...no.

I know this guy (we'll call him M) who's always seemed like a fairly OK guy. He's easy to talk to and has a habit of reading books that are interesting to me, and vice versa. I see him around town or campus occasionally, and we always stop and chat. So the other day I ran into him with a couple other mutual acquaintances, and we had this little conversation that eventually somehow turned to the whole Male Studies debacle. The other two just sort of rolled their eyes at the arguments made by Male Studies advocates but then had little else to say. But M wouldn't let the topic drop, and proceeded to mansplain to us how the current "climate" in academia serves to "disenfranchise" men. For real, you guys. He even referenced Christina Hoff Sommers, repeat winner of the Little Miss Colluder award. (OK, there is technically no such award, but there should be.)

So, anyway... My first reaction was "Disenfranchised? Are you kidding? Look who's disproportionately getting tenure. Look who occupies all the top administrative positions on most campuses. Disenfranchised? Seriously?" This response was met with some decisive but uncomfortable agreement from the other two participants in the discussion, but seemed unpersuasive to M. But since none of us seemed to be in a mood to argue, we wrapped up the conversation and headed our own separate ways. It was kind of depressing to walk away realizing that my seemingly well-informed and progressive friend was actually a bit of a douche.


But it also got me thinking about this alleged dynamic in education that favors girls and women. And I thought perhaps my initial response, although totally accurate and germane, didn't quite address the whole story. I mean, it's undoubtedly true that people who are already in academia experience this gender divide that clearly privileges men. And it's also true that male graduates are somewhat privileged when they first enter the job market; experiencing a certain amount of (probably unconscious) preferential treatment in the interviewing/hiring process and often starting out with higher entry-level salaries. But it's also true that this measuring of economic outcomes is not the only measure of whether or not academia serves men and women equally.

You've probably heard men's rights activists yammer on about how primary school is tailored for girls, who naturally sit quietly and passively all day long, are inherently cooperative and good listeners and not at all boisterous or curious or creative, like all boys inherently are. And since institutional schooling rewards passive learning and good rule-following, girls will automatically do better, right? Except, of course, that these tendencies have more to do with gendered socialization than with biological tendencies. And there's often a rather large disconnect between how well a student does in school and how well they do in the job market.

But more importantly, this just speaks to a problem with school in general. For children of all genders. We say we want our educational system to foster creativity and innovation and intellectual vigor and independence and curiosity in the adults these kids will become. And then we do everything we can to make them into "good listeners," which is code for passive rule-following sheep. And that's pretty much the opposite of the curious, creative, intellectually adventurous ideal that gets so much lip-service.

Don't get me wrong - I think good listening skills are essential in numerous ways. Constructive dialogue cannot occur without good listening. But when educators and parents talk about good listening, they almost always mean "you, the child, should shut up and listen to me, and then should unquestioningly do whatever it is I told you to do." And this is pretty much the opposite of the kind of listening skills involved in the open, respectful, reciprocal communication that we hope our kids will be capable of as adults. In other words, if teachers and parents don't listen to kids, then why the fuck would we expect kids to listen to us? And the sad reality is, adults often don't listen to kids, because we're so often preoccupied with the plethora of tasks (educational, social, household, etc) that need to be accomplished on a daily basis, or because we don't see them as humans that merit the respect involved in looking someone in the eye and listening to what they're saying.

But what does this have to do with gender? Obviously allowing for curiosity and creativity and physical interactivity and critical thinking in schools benefits both boys and girls. And to the extent that we forbid these things, academia disenfranchises students. But not just the boys. So maybe it's this problem with our school system that M and the rest of the school-is-bad-for-boys party are trying to articulate, but somehow it's going wrong and becoming a gender thing. If schools are set up to cater to the characteristics that girls are socialized to have, then that's a problem with both the gendered socialization and the educational model. But the results are still the same. Whether or not the boys struggle more than the girls at any educational level, men still come out ahead of women economically and politically. So saying that academia disenfranchises men not only seems willfully ignorant of the economic and political realities; it's also an incredibly douchey attempt to defend one's own privilege.