The Feminist Agenda

Video of the day

2012-01-18T13:33:00.001-07:00

Feminist parenting: arguing with your kids

2012-01-11T11:01:00.007-07:00

Happy New Year, y'all.

As you may remember, I have a thing against making New Year's Resolutions, but I was sorta thinking that I should try to crank out one real post a week in 2012. We'll see how that goes.

So here's something I've been thinking about:

Over at the NPR blogs there's a piece about how kids who are in the habit of arguing in a productive way with their parents are better at resisting peer pressure. It's definitely worth a read.

Of course this isn't surprising to me. I think having good arguing skills (of the non-flaming, non-drama-queen type) is a basic life skill that will benefit you in many areas of your life. On the other hand, I can definitely see that raising kids who think they have a voice and who will argue (respectfully) with you is more work than just reverting to the classic because-I-said-so style of parenting. But I think it's integral to their developing sense of autonomy, and their critical thinking skills in general, so it seems worth it.

I've also been thinking about the value of being good at arguing with the people in your life in a productive way in another context. I have this friend who is incredible in many ways. He's smart and funny and artistically talented and witty and thoughtful and super fun to be around. But... from time to time he does this thing where he allows some small conflict with someone in his life to build up to the point where he just suddenly goes off on them (usually in email form) and says terribly hurtful things, completely ending his friendship with them, leaving no room for backtracking or starting over or mending fences. There's no room for dialogue, and the hurtful things that have been said can't be taken back. It's a complete burning bridges approach that's puzzling to me given this guy's social skills in general. To say the least, this has cost him pretty big over the course of his adult life, and caused a great deal of turmoil and hurt feelings among our friends.

When my great-grandma (the one with 13 kids) was in her 90s, someone asked her what the secret to a good marriage was. She said "knowing when to shut up." There is a lot of truth to this, I think, but in some cases, knowing when to address conflict before it becomes a blowing-up-and-burning-bridges scenario is more important. My dad has said a few times before: the most important relationship skill is knowing how to argue without saying things you can't take back, and without tearing down the person with whom you disagree. I would add that not discussing things when you're too worked up emotionally is probably a good skill to develop too.

So how do you teach your kids how to do this? I suppose by modeling the skills on a daily basis. By engaging in productive arguments that focus on the activities or events in question rather than making personal attacks or engaging in emotional blackmail. By not rewarding drama queen behavior, but being willing to compromise when kids stake out a reasonable position in a calm and persuasive way.

As far as I can tell, this is a crucial part of feminist parenting.

Anyone wanna argue with me about that?

Comic of the Day

2011-12-16T13:28:00.001-07:00

Video of the Day

2011-11-25T14:29:00.004-07:00

In honor of the most wonderful time of the year.

As a service to the corporatocracy, I would like to remind you that your family won't know you love them unless you embark on a crazed, irrational buying frenzy this weekend which will cause your stress level to spike through the roof, drive your family deeper into debt, and cause serious longterm environmental degradation. Hopefully your crazed consumer frenzy started today. It really should have started yesterday, it turns out. And if you don't get on it this weekend, you're doomed. Cheers!

The lyrics:
All the garbage that you have thrown away
Is waiting somewhere a million miles away
Your condoms and your VCR
Your ziploc bags and father's car
Dark and silent it waits for you ahead

So much garbage will never ever decay
And all your garbage will outlive you one day
You should sign a fancy signature to your messy messy portraiture
Because dark and silent it waits for you ahead
Making so much garbage each and every day
We make this shit for you to throw away
In plastic rooms in factories for you to dispose of as you please
Because dark and silent it waits for you ahead

With stomachs full of oil and vinegar
Stomachs full of oil and vinegar
With stomachs full of oil and vinegar hey hey
With stomachs full of oil and vinegar
Stomachs full of oil and vinegar
With stomachs full of oil and vinegar hey hey

La la la la
La la la la la la la la
La la la la
La la la la la la la la
La la la la
La la la la la la la la

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T14:42:00.002-07:00

Happy Friday

2011-11-11T16:27:00.004-07:00

In honor of the weekend, a drink recipe.

Dump a bunch of ice in a glass. Squeeze a whole lemon and dump it in.

Add 2 shots of whiskey. Not Jack Daniels. Some other decent whiskey.

Add a squirt of agave nectar and top it off with a splash of cold filtered water. Stir it all up.

Best whiskey sour ever.

Happy Friday

Video of the Day

2011-11-11T09:00:00.002-07:00

The sponsors of American Idol are trying to forcibly remove this video from Youtube, so you should probably watch it and see what has them so freaked out:

via My Plastic-Free Life

College football, the Catholic church, same difference

2011-11-10T10:25:00.004-07:00

So, it's not really a secret that I like college football. I mean, I really like college football. And I feel conflicted about that.

On the one hand, there's my childhood experience of college football. When I was a kid, college football was a central part of the transition from summer to fall each year. Most Saturdays would find me in Husky Stadium with my dad and uncle and siblings and cousins (or getting up insanely early and driving to Eugene or Corvallis or Pullman for away games). We'd meet up late morning at my cousins' house, stuff our pockets with snacks, and head toward the stadium with the crowd of other fans heading down the Burke-Gilman trail. We would walk through the fall leaves or gray drizzle, carrying piles of umbrellas, ponchos, hats, mittens, and my dad's famous solution to the rain getting your jeans and shoes wet - a long roll of clear plastic to unroll over the whole row of laps, resulting in many admonitions from the adults to sit still already, you're knocking the plastic on the ground. Needless to say this made The Wave a little problematic. During away games that were too far to drive to, we collected at whichever house had the best football-watching tv at the time and watched the game there. Most Christmas vacations there was a bowl game to go to. We all knew the vocabulary, strategy, roster, conference politics, etc and could discuss them fluently. So yeah, a central part of my childhood that involved a lot of bonding and fond memories.

On the other hand, there's the culture of college football. And football in general. And club sports in general. Case in point: Penn State. First, you have a hierarchical structure where careers ride on wins and losses and revenue brought in. For a graduate assistant coach, being a whistle blower is a career-ending move. The very machinery that you are hitching your career wagon to will grind you up in a heartbeat if you buck the system and step outside the clear but implicit code of (mis)conduct. Then there's the reluctance of the administration to do a goddamn thing to prevent serious ethical breaches and abuses as long as the program is doing what the program is supposed to do - win games and make money. After all, involving the police and bringing charges against people is really bad PR. Better to sweep it all under the rug. What's the rape of a few 10 year-olds when $68 million a year is at stake? Collateral damage.

And so I distrust college football, because it's a patriarchal institution driven by a warped set of values, which isolates itself in order to maintain the fucked up culture that results from these values, and somehow manages to maintain its privileged status in spite of repeated instances of misconduct and abuse. And what does this all remind us of? The Catholic church, perhaps?

Right. You could take that sentence and replace "college football" with "the church" and it would perfectly capture the issue. Like this:

I distrust the church,* because it's a patriarchal institution driven by a warped set of values, which isolates itself in order to maintain the fucked up culture that results from these values, and somehow manages to maintain its privileged status in spite of repeated instances of misconduct and abuse.

Note that I say "the church" here instead of "the Catholic church" because I think the abuses rampant in the Catholic church are just the most widespread and visible abuses of their kind. You might remember that the church I grew up in, which was decidedly not Catholic, was a great environment for abuse as well. Obviously the values that drive the institution and allow for the abuses are different, but the same dynamic is at play.

So I think that isolating a couple of scapegoats at Penn State and publicly excoriating them is kind of a joke. Way too little; way too late. Until we take a step back and really examine the culture and practices of the institution, we can expect to see one instance of misconduct after another. Nothing will change. Patriarchal, hierarchical institutions will always choose to sacrifice individuals and engage in self-protective behavior to preserve their own culture and practices, and maintain their privileged status. That's the way it works. That’s what it means to be a patriarchal institution. What did we expect already?

*Of course it's true that not all churches fit this description, and in fact there are some churches that make an effort to prioritize the needs of individuals over that of the institution. But I still think this is the exception rather than the rule. Generally speaking, the institutional nature of a church results in a tendency to pursue practices that are protective of the institution first, even if this comes at a cost to individual members.

Three quickies and a Monday song

2011-11-07T08:16:00.005-07:00

One
I've always thought it's unfortunate that the culture in which abstinence and purity rhetoric dominates is also one in which sexual dysfunction is covered up or accepted as a fact of life. Of course, this is the culture I grew up in, and I can tell you that talking honestly and openly about sex is strongly discouraged. Any indication of a lack of fulfillment from sex within marriage is viewed as a sign of selfishness, or an "impure heart." I've always thought this was a recipe for disaster. First you make sex taboo, and teach young people to avoid all sexual contact, sexual behavior, and even sexual thoughts (good luck with that) until marriage. Then miraculously these two people who are completely sexually inexperienced, and most likely have some huge psychological walls built up around the very concept of sex, are supposed to magically have awesome, mutually-fulfilling sex on their wedding night, and for the next 50 years. Right. I mean, not only is there the inexperience factor, but there's also all the rhetoric about impurity, where a woman (especially) who has had premarital sex is dirty and less valuable in some way. So if sex makes you dirty before you're married, and you spend 18 years associating sexual contact with pollution and degradation, how do you magically "flip the switch" overnight and go to thinking of it as a positive, fulfilling thing?

The prohibition on discussing sexual dissatisfaction within marriage is a such a central mechanism in the purity and abstinence machinery that it's encouraging to see advice columns like this: The Monotony of Monogamy: I married my first sexual partner, and now I’m itching to cheat, where the more likely trajectory is openly discussed. Not that it will change much, but there it is.

Two

When my daughter got out of the bath the other night, she left these two sitting on the side of the tub. I've been wondering what they were talking about ever since.

Three
In a recent Science article, The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling, much of the data that has been used to support single-sex schooling is debunked, and some of the truly significant problems surrounding segregated schooling are discussed. It's totally worth a read.

And finally, a Monday song.

Friday Quick Hit

2011-09-30T16:48:00.002-06:00

First....I am still alive, just very busy, as well as being emotionally and intellectually engaged elsewhere right now. As my 3 year-old would say "I can't tell you about that right now." Which really just means "I don't want to tell you about that right now."

Second, This is definitely worth checking out: Knocked Up and Knocked Down. If there's any doubt what impact the war on reproductive choice has, this oughtta lay it to rest. As predicted, the whittling away of affordable access to reproductive health services is resulting in a higher birth rate among poorer women, which feeds into a cycle where they become poorer, and thus less likely to have access to birth control or abortion services, and therefore at higher risk of unplanned pregnancies and birth, which makes them even poorer, etc.

On the other end of the spectrum, wealthier women are having fewer kids. Perhaps because our system makes it so very very difficult for women to parent and enjoy professional success at the same time. So it turns out a larger number of them are foregoing the whole mommy-track thing altogether. Which is a totally rational ( read here as "unfeminine") thing to do. Let the conservative handwringing commence.

And I have an adorable 3 year-old, a good movie, and a margarita waiting for me. Gotta go. See ya around.

Friday Miscellanea

2011-09-02T16:40:00.004-06:00

In a breathtaking display of the power of industry lobbying, Obama Administration Abandons Stricter Air-Quality Rules. Because what's a little (or a lot of) asthma in the general population compared to the money you can make when you're free to do...whatever?

In a downright shocking turn of events, the vast majority of welfare recipients who were forced to undergo mandatory drug testing in Florida (thanks Tea Party!) tested clean. Now the tax payers get to pay for a whole lotta drug tests. Now there's small government for ya: Not Druggies After All: 96 Percent of Florida Welfare Applicants Pass Tea Party Governor's Drug Test. The thing is, this wasn't about small government or anything like that. It was about sending a message to those on public assistance that we think they're inferior, lazy schmucks that need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps already. Or something. And from that perspective, this testing program was a marvelous success. Well done, Tea Party.

Slate has an interesting piece about a woman who's following all the Biblical commands concerning women to the letter: A Year of Biblical Womanhood. It turns out that Rachel Held Evans' project demonstrates some facts that your more conventional (by which we mean male, of course) evangelicals don't want you to know. The scriptures that churches choose to enforce (like all that stuff about women being submissive and remaining silent in church) are carefully selected by those who will benefit from maintaining the subordinate servant class. However, all the other stuff it says that doesn't exactly benefit the dominant group just kind of falls by the wayside and gets forgotten. If the scriptures were really being adhered to in a complete and unselective way, men wouldn't get to have sex with their wives during her period or for 9 days afterward. That's like half the month, every month. Who the heck wants to enforce that kind of scriptural command?

Mother Jones ran a piece about The Teen Suicide Epidemic in Michele Bachmann's District, which has pretty much been ignored in mainstream media outlets. I would be interested in hearing what Ms. Bachmann has to say on the topic, but I doubt I'll be hearing that anytime soon.

In the New York Times Amy Schalet has an interesting piece about The Sleepover Question in which she discusses parental attitudes toward their teenaged children's sexuality.

According to the Institute for Policy Studies, CEO salaries have increased dramatically, while the taxes their corporations pay have shrunk continuously. Executive Excess 2011: The Massive CEO Rewards for Tax Dodging lays out the trend, in which the pay gap between what CEOs and average U.S. workers bring home rose from a ratio of 263-to-1 in 2009 to 325-to-1 in 2010. At the same time, CEOs don't appear to be doing anything that actually benefits shareholders (and their employees are certainly not benefiting either). In fact, the only thing they actually do seem to be accomplishing is driving down corporate taxes. Ya know, so they can get a bigger piece of the pie while everyone else's piece either stays the same or decreases. Gotta love 'em.

In a totally not surprising turn of events, Scientists Discover That Antimicrobial Wipes and Soaps May Be Making You (and Society) Sick. Yep. I think we already knew that. At least us health-nut conspiracy theorist freaks. What took y'all so long to figure that one out?

And finally, I cannot tell you how much I love this post: The Busy Bee Garden Project. It just makes me happy. What can I say?

Have a great weekend!

Update

2011-08-31T16:55:00.004-06:00

I reallyreallyreally am going to write something here soon. Really.

In the meantime there's this:

Happy Wednesday!

Video of the Day

2011-07-27T12:23:00.004-06:00

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Vaginal Puppeteering vs. D**k Scrub

www.colbertnation.com

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Video Archive

Coincidence?

2011-07-26T10:24:00.006-06:00

Over the weekend I stopped into a local convenience store to purchase some obscenely expensive propane for the grill (long story) and had the pleasure of standing in line for several minutes studying a t-shirt with this charming graphic on it:

Needless to say it was a delightful experience, all the way around.

Later in the day, in an unrelated conversation with babydaddy, the topic of suicide rates came up. We were talking about how, in Wyoming, the wind whistles through the house in a spooky, haunting way sometimes no matter how tight your house is. And some people sort of half-jokingly attribute the very high suicide rate in Wyoming to the incessant wind.

But that got me thinking. The suicide rate in Wyoming is very high among white middle-aged males. Extremely high. And for most white middle-aged men in this state, gun ownership is extremely important. Central-to-their-identity important. And, as this t-shirt demonstrates, gun culture tends to coexist with some pretty sexist attitudes and behaviors.* Those sexist attitudes and behaviors are probably really not all that conducive to establishing and maintaining meaningful, fulfilling long-term relationships with women.** And being single is a risk factor for suicide. In fact, having a string of failed romantic relationships in your past is even more of a risk factor. So it seems like maybe having this worldview in which women are just a giant pain in the ass, and an object to be used and disposed of, and inherently flawed, unpredictable creatures, etc might just lead you to be a total failure with women, which might result in a depressing and lonely life. And since your gun is your best friend, why not let it help you out with this little problem you have?

Or maybe it's just a coincidence that gun culture tends to track with both sexism and high male suicide rates.

And maybe there are other causal factors involved here. For instance, it is generally true that middle-aged white and Native American males are the two demographics that are most likely to commit suicide, and we just have a lot of those here in Wyoming, so that's going to naturally push the suicide rate up a bit. Then there's the relatively high male-to-female ratio. That probably contributes to cultural attitudes about gender and relationships, and decreases the chances that a middle-aged man will be in a relationship, or that a woman will stay in a relationship that isn't fulfilling to her. Then there's the prevalence of oil and gas jobs, and ranch work, which tend to isolate married men from their families and keep single men away from places where women tend to be. Fewer interactions with women allow these overgeneralized, stereotypical, demeaning views of women to flourish, and make it less likely that a man will be able to successfully interact with women when he does come in contact with them. So I'd venture to say that there is a bit of a feedback loop going on here, complete with self-fulfilling prophecies and preexisting attitudes that doom relationships from the start and history repeating itself and a howling wind that makes you feel more isolated and lonely than you felt to begin with.

At any rate, it seems like it's probably a little more complicated than:
gun culture + sexist attitudes and behaviors = bitter and lonely single men = high suicide rate.

But it is an interesting correlation, isn't it?

*Isn't this why images of women like Palin hunting and posing with guns is such a spectacle in our culture? Like the image of a woman driving her own Harley, rather than being the bitch on the back. In subcultures that tend to be fairly sexist, or at least dismissive of women, those women who do integrate into the culture seem to be incongruous, and images of them are kind of jarring and fascinating to us.
**Leaving the plight of the "gay cowboy" out of the conversation completely for the time being. Obviously there's a whole range of other issues that come along with being gay in a heavily hetero-centric, male-centric culture, and no doubt those issues correlate with suicide rates as well.

Video of the Week

2011-07-25T09:19:00.001-06:00

Friday Miscellanea

2011-07-15T16:15:00.003-06:00

Y'all know I tend to be a bit (by which I mean totally and completely) anti-plastics. And this week more reasons have emerged to avoid the stuff:
Large Human Study Links Phthalates, BPA and Thyroid Hormone Levels

A link between chemicals called phthalates and thyroid hormone levels was confirmed by the University of Michigan in the first large-scale and nationally representative study of phthalates and BPA in relation to thyroid function in humans.

The gist is that, in urine analysis of adult subjects, there's an inverse relationship between the levels of certain chemicals associated with plastics and thyroid levels. And since we already know that these chemicals mess with your endocrine system in other ways, this is hardly surprising, but worth paying attention to.

And speaking of hormones, a new ad campaign for milk claims to help men deal with PMS. Their wives' or girlfriends' PMS, apparently. Because all men are in heterosexual relationships with women, all of whom are fucking crazy because of all their scary lady hormones which (everyone knows) renders them entirely irrational, bitchy, and impossible to live with.

In spite of the super scary PMS thingy that hetero men have to constantly deal with, it's still far better to be straight. At least it is in the eyes of God and Michelle Bachmann's husband. To that end,his clinic will use federal funding to help you pray the gay away. At least, that's what this article in The Nation claims. Of course, Doctor Mister Bachmann denies this, and says they only use federal funding to help pray the gay away if the client specifically asks for that kind of "therapy." Which is way better. Or something.

Over here, Mica Zenko crunches the numbers and concludes that there is a striking gender imbalance in the land of think tanks and foreign policy and national security. What explains this imbalance and what can change it? Click over there and read it.

A new study investigates the Google effect - the way that we seem to remember differently than we did before the Google machines were so plentiful and easily accessible. It seems that we strategically remember - and forget - things based on how easily we can access them online. If some piece of info is easily accessible online, then we're less likely to remember it than if it's not.

Another study reveals that the chances that a person will cheat on their partner is not actually tied to gender, as conventional wisdom would have it. Instead of adhering to the gender divide, it follows the power divide. In other words, in a truly egalitarian society, women would cheat just as often as men. Just don't tell the evo psych community this.

And finally, we're reminded yet again that our justice system tends to incentivize overzealous and dishonest prosecution practices, at a huge human cost. And if recent rulings from the supreme court are any indication, that ain't about to change anytime soon.

Happy Friday everyone!

Video of the Week

2011-07-13T08:32:00.002-06:00

Video of the Day

2011-07-01T15:24:00.001-06:00

Brilliant

2011-07-01T10:11:00.001-06:00

So, there's this: Ohio governor signs law allowing guns in bars

Cuz really, what could go wrong?

I'm sure a pink ribbon will help

2011-06-28T10:35:00.006-06:00

So, the Race for the Cure is coming up. No fewer than three people have already asked me if I've signed up. Um, no. I haven't. Why not? Well, it's a long story. You can read all about it here.

And now, in related news, it turns out that federal research and regulation of chemicals that impact breast health is ... basically nonexistent:

...it may come as a surprise that the federal agencies responsible for public health don't routinely take childhood exposures into account when testing whether commercial chemicals cause mammary tumors. In fact, in many lab-animal tests, they don't bother to look at the mammary gland at all. Breast cancer may be the No. 1 killer of middle-aged women in the United States, but as a new set of reports makes clear, the breast is a major blind spot in federal chemical-safety policy.

But it's not really that surprising, right? We allot billions and billions to research for pharmacological solutions to problems we ourselves are causing. In our model, we allow industry to fill our water and air with endocrine-disruptors and free radicals, and we relentlessly pursue agricultural policies that result in more toxic runoff and more hormones in our food, and then we invest big bucks in "curing" the resulting illnesses. Except that sometimes the cure doesn't work. Or the cure itself ends up killing you off. Or it "cures" you for awhile, and then you get some other heinous disease a few years down the road, that turns out to have been caused by the cocktail of drugs (and radiation) we pumped into you to "cure" you the first time. And this is somehow better than changing our practices to reduce the toxins in our environment to begin with? Really?

Support the Sylvia Rivera Law Project

2011-06-23T09:56:00.002-06:00

Read about SRLP here.

Cartoon of the Day

2011-06-21T16:27:00.002-06:00

Once more, with feeling: real foods are always better. Always.

2011-06-21T14:40:00.005-06:00

This just in: Fat Substitutes Linked to Weight Gain

Are we surprised to learn that real, unaltered, actually-occurring-in-nature foods are better for you than frankenfoods? Of course not.

Will this change Big Food or the diet-industrial complex or the gov't regulatory agencies that produce our guidelines and recommendations even the teensiest lil bit? Hell no. Because switching to an evidence-based approach would be too ... anti-capitalist? Or reasonable. Or something.

See also:
Eat More
The "Obesity Epidemic"
We Need Policy Not Plates

Fun with Charts

2011-06-15T08:27:00.007-06:00

Conservative blogger David Frum posted this graphic illustrating the rate at which workers' share of national income has steadily dropped:

Meanwhile, Felix Salmon posted this chart demonstrating the gains experienced by both finance institutions and domestic industries:

You might notice a huge asymmetry here. You might also notice that nobody seems to be willing or able to do anything about it. I can pretty much guarantee you that none of the candidates- from either end of the political spectrum - will address this issue in the upcoming election season. They'll talk about economic growth and job creation and housing, but they won't ask why it is that corporate earnings are up, yet American workers make less and less. Why is that?

Click here for more fun with charts.

Video of the Day

2011-06-13T10:37:00.003-06:00

I love this song and wanted to post this video back in May, but decided that might be a bit insensitive. So now, just for fun, here it is:

The lyrics:
What if I'm wrong
And what if you're right?
And what if there is an intelligent design?
When the day comes and judgment begins
Will I be left behind?

But what if I'm right
And you're not correct
And there's no hellfire when we're dead?
Regretting all the boys you coulda kissed
All for nothing; it wasn't a sin

You were busy gettin' ready for the rapture
For the rapture
For the rapture
You were busy gettin' ready for the rapture, warning us all

What if I've been
A really nice gal
Followed the Golden Rule, but now
Because I don't believe in your best pal
You say I'll burn forever?

But let's say he's real
But not like you sell
He's more like the nice hippie in Godspell
Well, I'd think that he was swell
Would that bum you out?

You were busy gettin' ready for the rapture
For the rapture
For the rapture
You were busy gettin' ready for the rapture, warning us all

I'll give to you
There is a God
All-powerful, he sees it all
But do you think
That he's that small
To care about your candidate
Your football team or who you mate?
No, God is great

What if you're wrong
But then so am I?
And what really happens when we die?
And what if L. Ron Hubbard, he was right?
Well, that would bum me out

As you were busy gettin' ready for the rapture
For the rapture
For the rapture
You were busy gettin' ready for the rapture, warning us all

You were busy gettin' ready for the rapture
For the rapture
For the rapture
You were busy gettin' ready for the rapture, warning us all

You were busy gettin' ready for the rapture
For the rapture
For the rapture
You were busy gettin' ready for the rapture, warning us all

God is great

Gender Theory - it's not just theory

2011-06-09T13:14:00.006-06:00

It seems to me that the debates between essentialist and constructionist theories of gender that so often play out in feminist spaces like this feel to most people like they're largely theoretical. Those of us who fall on the constructionist side argue that gender is largely a learned performance - there's a script and a system of positive and negative reinforcements, and clear penalties in place for those who fall outside the "norm." Meanwhile, gender essentialists claim that gender is innate, and any variation from the strict binary only occurs where there's some perversion or some negative force that's diverting the "normal" development of the individual away from his/her "natural" inclinations. But since there's no control group available - no child who grows up free of gendered socialization, and who isn't immersed in a gendered world from birth - all the debates and discussions feel pretty theoretical. It's simply impossible to test the theories in this case.

However, the recent news story about a man who underwent extensive "sissy-boy" "therapy" (more like a failed, abusive attempt at brainwashing) and went on to become a lonely, unfulfilled adult who committed suicide at the age of 38 serves as prime evidence that this shit is not just theoretical. "Therapy" programs and "retraining" camps and religious programs that try to pray the gay away often inflict real trauma on the individuals who suffer through them. Profound, lasting trauma that damages them for life.

Every time I'm confronted with this version of extremely conservative, no-holds-barred gender essentialism and sexuality policing I have the same questions, and there never seems to be a consistent way to answer them:

If gender identity and gender roles are innate, then why is there any need for the extensive socialization, and the corrective measures that are so often taken when an individual's development doesn't appear to be following an acceptable script? Why is there even a need for "therapy" programs like this if biology is destiny? Why the plethora of books telling you how to reprogram your child's gender expression and sexuality?
How can anyone believe that living a non-conforming life when it comes to gender performance could be worse than the trauma that's inflicted on children through these kinds of corrective programs? Would you honestly prefer to beat your child to the point of leaving welts on his body every day rather than watch him grow up to be gay or trans or genderqueer or whatever? Seriously?
Whose definition of "normal" is driving "therapy" programs like this? In the case of programs that are connected to churches and religious institutions it's clear, and at least there's no pretense that it's grounded in some kind of objective scientific framework. But in this particular case, you have an extremely socially conservative, religious individual who was using taxpayer dollars to run a "therapy" program designed to force children to conform to gender roles that came from his personal religious beliefs. Very, very problematic.
How is it that parents in these kinds of cases have such blind faith in the religious or therapeutic system involved that they willingly partake in the abuse of their children even when the signs of trauma are unavoidably clear right in front of their faces? And how do they overcome their protective instincts to the point where they can participate in the abuse of their child, regardless of what longterm results the program promises?
How many other people are there who went through this kind of coercive reprogramming and don't kill themselves, but live a life of quiet desperation and never manage to establish fulfilling relationships, or to really flourish in life? How many of them end up with serious addictions or troubling mental illnesses as a result of the abuse? For sure, we see the most extreme cases, but think of all the cases where the "therapy" is ostensibly successful but the individual is permanently traumatized.

I'm sure there are people who think there are reasonable answers to these questions, but to me the experiences of so many individuals like Kirk Murphy are irreconcilable with this conceptual framework. And even if there was a way to make the view coherent, when so much trauma results from a set of beliefs and practices, it seems like the only humane thing you can do is abandon the position and try to find new ground that allows people to thrive and find fulfillment. Even if the life they end up living doesn't look like the ideal you imagine. Because maybe the failure doesn't lie with them. Maybe you've experienced a failure of imagination. There should be some kind of therapy for that, shouldn't there?

Right choice, wrong reason

2011-06-03T09:33:00.003-06:00

So there's this: Retailers move to greener, easier-to-open packaging:

[T]he maddening — and nearly impenetrable — plastic packaging known as clamshells could become a welcome casualty of the difficult economy. High oil prices have manufacturers and big retailers reconsidering the use of so much plastic, and some are aggressively looking for cheaper substitutes.

Which is good. What's depressing is their reason for it. It's not because plastic is unhealthy in multiple ways, and reallyreallyreally bad for the environment. It's not because that packaging was shitty and irritating to begin with. No, it's because of the cost.

Seems to me like this is reason enough:

More Awesomeness

2011-06-02T14:09:00.001-06:00

From Slow Food USA:

Click on it to see a larger image.

Full of the awesome

2011-06-01T14:21:00.008-06:00

So, it's finally gardening time again. Which makes me pretty damn happy. Until the first epic hail storm comes through and pounds my carefully nurtured seedlings to pulp. Then I'll be cursing the weather gods and guzzling tequila. But for now, YAY!

Y'all might remember Gunther, one of our garden gnomes. He's come out of ~~storage~~ hibernation for the season, and this has motivated me to get to work on these felted wool gnome hats I'm making for the girls.

And that made me realize that they need gnome beards to go with the hats, if they're going to be hangin' with Gunther and Linus (Gunther's stoic but loyal friend). So that prompted a search for beard templates, which led to this awesome set of images on flickr. It really doesn't get any better than this, does it?

For more gnome-related awesomeness, check it:

Just Say It

2011-05-31T10:54:00.007-06:00

And while we're talking about religious narratives and female sexuality and virginity and the value of a female person, there's this:

A senior Egyptian general admits that "virginity checks" were performed on women arrested at a demonstration this spring, the first such admission after previous denials by military authorities.

The general said the virginity checks were done so that the women wouldn't later claim they had been raped by Egyptian authorities.

"We didn't want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren't virgins in the first place," the general said. "None of them were (virgins)."

Did you get that last bit? Mind-blowing isn't it?

Or maybe not.

Cuz really, how is this different from our cultural beliefs about rape, and who can be raped, and under what conditions? Why else do we spend so much time investigating the sexual habits of women who claim they were raped? I mean, if she would voluntarily sleep with Joe on Tuesday, then can we believe her claim that she didn't consent to sex with Bob on Wednesday? If she was seen dancing with or leaving the bar with a man on one occasion, then doesn't that mean she gave blanket consent to all men in all bars on all occasions for any sexual activity they might wish to engage in with her?

Of course, if asked these questions point-blank we'll claim that we don't believe that. But look around at the reporting on - and discussions that follow - rape cases, and you'll see that we pretty much do believe these things. So maybe our attitudes are a little less extreme than the ones being voiced by this Egyptian general, and for sure most people would never actually say out loud the things they think about women who "get themselves raped." But the attitudes are still there, and a person can't live within a culture without being aware of these unspoken beliefs.

Which is another factor in our fascination with/horror about the Elizabeth Smart story. I mean, there she was, modestly dressed, not drinking alcohol, not walking down a dark alley, being a virgin, in her parents' home. And she got raped. How could that happen? Don't you have to do something to entice men to rape you? It contradicts everything we "know" about rape.

In other, sort of related news...

If you read the rest of the article at CNN, you'll also find that the prison sentences most of these protesters had received have now been revoked, because some of the detainees had university degrees. Not because they had good reason to protest or they were just being used as an example or because maybe they really were guilty of some crime but now there's a lot of international pressure on Egypt to mind its human rights bidness. No. It's because they had university degrees so they should be given an extra chance.

In America we're not classist, so we would never admit that the justice system went easy on a defendant because s/he was educated or wealthy or had good connections. We'd never say it. Right out loud like that. That would be embarrassing. But again, what's the difference, really?

It's almost refreshing that this guy will say this stuff right out loud. It's honest in a way that we're not. And when you're willing or able to articulate your cultural beliefs and attitudes like that - you make this stuff explicit - then the mind has a chance to critically engage with it.

For instance, if I said to you "if you drink x brand of beer, then hot chicks will love you. They'll come out of fucking nowhere and rub their bodies all over you as soon as you crack that can/bottle open," you would find that laughable. Or if I said to you "women are the only ones who are competent enough to do housework, and anyway, cleaning the house makes them deliriously happy," no doubt you would argue with me.* And yet, you've had these messages communicated to you over and over and over again, and you've probably never really thought about it. But no doubt you've internalized it.

If you took an implicit association test, you'd be much faster at connecting female names (or pictures of women) with cleaning products than male names or pictures of men. You'd be much faster at connecting certain beer brands with adjectives that suggest sexual appeal than those brands that don't use the hot-girls-will-love-you advertising formula. No matter what you would explicitly say you believed about these things, somewhere in your head, these implicit beliefs have been safely planted and reinforced over and over and over again. The implicit association test tells us that, at some level, you got the message. You learned what the advertiser wanted you to learn. You absorbed the implicit belief without ever actually engaging intellectually with it.

So in a way, although the things this Egyptian dude will say right out loud are sort of shocking to me, I appreciate the fact that he'll say them. We can engage with a belief that's explicitly stated, and discuss what's right or wrong about it. But beliefs and attitudes that are implicitly held and communicated are much more insidious and hard to address. And that's why articulating the implicit beliefs behind media reporting and advertising and the discussions we have around issues like this is so damn important. Even if it makes you the stick in the mud or the oh-rape-jokes-are-funny-to-you? buzzkill or the uptight fat lesbian feminist in the room.

*In the latest estimates I've seen, the average American child will see over 600 images of women vacuuming before the age of 4, while they will see few or no images of men vacuuming. And although this wasn't included in the research, I'd bet a lot of those women were smiling, or at least acting content and happy.

Update

2011-05-26T09:43:00.003-06:00

Remember how there was pending legislation in 3 states that would make it illegal to take picture or videos of farms, or to post said pics and videos? Well, a bunch of people got upset about that, and some of them signed a petition and some of them spread the word on Facebook and other places, and at this point the bill has failed in Florida and looks to have a similar fate in Minnesota and Iowa. To celebrate, Slow Food USA put together a little slideshow of farm images sent in to them. You can watch it here. I highly recommend it.

Virginity and Religious Narratives and Elizabeth Smart

2011-05-25T16:13:00.012-06:00

Trigger warning for sexual abuse.

Earlier this week I heard on NPR that the sentencing hearing for Brian David Mitchell, who abducted and sexually abused Elizabeth Smart, is happening this week. From what I've heard, Mitchell needs some serious mental health care, which he won't get. Instead he'll probably spend the rest of his life drifting through the prison system, with many other mentally ill folks who are dysfunctional - and therefore imprisoned - because of their illness and the lack of available care. And of course, because of this dynamic, prison is an even more dangerous and counterproductive place to be for most inmates. So this story disturbs me on that level, and in general I've avoided media coverage of it.

But a quote from this article pulled me up short, and I've been thinking about it pretty much non-stop since I read it. When recounting her experience with Mitchell, Smart says this

I felt that because of what he had done to me, I was marked, I wasn't the same. My personal value had dropped. I was nothing. Another person could never love me. I felt like I had a burden the size of a mountain to carry around with me the rest of my life.

To me, these words are so striking and so tragic because of the cultural and religious narrative they tap into. I don't doubt that part of what's going on here is based on the way Mitchell and his followers treated Smart. She described it as being treated "like an animal." Abusive personalities often use this kind of tactic to erode the self-esteem of their victim to ensure compliance. Clearly that has a profound impact, and probably factored into her feelings about her personal value.

At the same time, I think her response to the abuse is deeply connected to her worldview, and the role that virginity and sexual "purity" play in her religious context. When you grow up in a very conservative religious environment in which your parents try to prevent you from coming into contact with "secular" values, and when sexual purity is emphasized almost above all other values in that context (at least for girls), your sexual status cannot help but hold a central position in your self-conception. Your assessment of your self-worth will unavoidably be tightly connected to it.

This might be all sunshine and rainbows, if we lived in a world where you always have control over your own sexuality. But this view of female worth and sexual purity goes terribly wrong when you find yourself in a situation where somehow your sexual "purity" is forcibly "taken" from you (as if it's a thing you can possess). It doesn't matter that you had nothing to do with it. Even though you never made any choices that led to this ostensibly huge change in your sexual status - you never voluntarily took any action that led to this change - it is still a profound measure of your personal worth. Because the fact remains that the most valuable asset a woman in this context can have is her virginity. Losing it, regardless of how it happens, is an event that takes a woman or girl out of the realm of cleanliness and innocence and intactness, and transitions her into a state of being polluted and damaged. Less valuable. Less desirable. Blameworthy somehow, even though she was unable to control the events that took place.

This is significant for all of us, because conservative religious attitudes toward female sexuality have a considerable impact on our broader cultural views. Read through the abstinence-only sex ed curriculums that are federally funded and utilized in public schools to see how pervasive this is. Female sexual purity is highly valued, and the onus for abstinence falls largely on the girls. Girls who don't abstain until marriage are often portrayed as being dirty or damaged in some way - offering less to their future spouse than if they had abstained. So even if we're not functioning in the very narrow, conservative world that Elizabeth Smart lives in, we've all been exposed to (and to some extent internalized) these same attitudes.

I remember feeling both skeptical and resentful as a kid when discussions of "sexual purity" came up. Because of my abuse, I didn't feel like I fit into the category of "virgin" even at a really young age (9? 10?). Yet I also felt like that had nothing to do with me as a person. I was pretty contrary and constantly questioned what I heard at church, but I was still a very young person immersed in a world where apparently everyone else believed this stuff and didn't question it. This can leave you in a strange position where you have these conflicting thoughts and feelings that you're trying to sort out, but the fact that everyone around you seems to accept these sometimes harmful and frequently contradictory things as truth can make you feel like you're either defective or crazy. So, accepting that sexual purity was the most central element of female virtue (and what made a woman valuable) while also thinking of myself as a person who could be a good person, and who was valuable, presented a bit of a conflict for me.

On the one hand I didn't believe that I was responsible for my abuse in any way, but it was still this shameful thing that I had to hide (for the sake of others) and that fundamentally changed me as a person. Ironically, it also made me feel like I was immune to all the talk about sexual purity. If I wanted to sleep with my high school boyfriend, why shouldn't I? That ship had already sailed, so to speak.

In fact, I think I actually became sexually active at a younger age than I probably would have because it was almost a way of reclaiming my sexual identity. All my life my sexuality had been defined by the abuse, and my abusers. Embarking on my own sexual relationship was a way to stake out my autonomy and take control of my own life. So this compromise slowly emerged between this worldview that I had been so surrounded by and my own view that struggled to integrate it all and make sense of my own experiences.

In my early teens I concluded that being sexually active had nothing to do with personal virtue or worth. For one thing, I didn't believe I was personally worth less because of my "lack" of sexual "purity." Then there was the fact that the adult males in my world (two of them) who behaved in a sexually inappropriate way were still highly valued and held up as role models. So my initial response was to separate the two and dismiss all the hype about sexual purity, or at least conclude that it didn't apply to me.

Over the next few years, of course, I had to continue to refine that view to include the fact that you can inflict great harm on others sexually. First there was the obvious fact that one ought not to fuck around with one's defenseless 6 year-old niece or granddaughter that had to be accounted for. But this also included the degree of vulnerability and emotional connection that generally accompanies sexual intimacy in a reciprocal, consenting relationship, and the harm you can do to others because of it. Unfortunately, my earlier splintering of sexuality from morality allowed me to be less than careful with the feelings of my first few sexual partners, but these early experiences are part of what shaped my understanding of the moral responsibility that comes with sexual activity.

So...what if I had grown up in a world where, rather than placing this huge value on virginity and "purity," and tying these especially to female morality, there had been open and honest conversations about sexual intimacy and why it can be so dangerous and so rewarding, and how that gives it special moral weight that other social interactions don't share? Not because it has something to do with your personal worth or cleanliness or lovability. Not because your partner's body is your possession and any sexual contact they might have had with others is some kind of violation of your property rights. Simply because sexuality is often a locus of intense emotion and vulnerability (and sometimes very clouded judgment) that can result in a special kind of pain inflicted on others if one is not careful. For that matter, what if my abusers had grown up in a world like this? And what if Elizabeth Smart had grown up in a world like this?

I don't know much about her recovery process, but I would bet that it's involved a lot of unlearning things she had internalized about female sexuality and personal worth. Unless she has somehow been convinced that her case involves a special exemption from the rule, a part of her recovery will require an uncoupling of the ideal of the "sexually pure" female body from her conception of female virtue, or her sense of what a morally worthy person looks like. And I would bet that this is a pretty hard transition to make for somebody from her background.

So this is one reason I don't want my girls going to my parents' church or involved in any sex-ed program that emphasizes abstinence. Not because abstinence is bad, or because waiting until you've grown up a bit to engage in sexual relationships isn't a wise thing to do. Rather, it's because the ends don't justify the means. Planting irrational fears in young people's heads, and trying to manipulate them, and teaching them to value themselves in counterproductive ways cannot end well. It just can't. And beyond that, it's simply not true that a woman's value is connected to her sexual history. And the quicker we get rid of our religious and cultural obsession with virginity, the better.

Wednesday Miscellanea

2011-05-25T09:27:00.005-06:00

The Supreme Court has ruled that California has to significantly reduce its prison population in order to prevent the routine violation of inmate rights due to the overcrowded conditions. Among other things, the prison system can't provide (and, let's be honest, doesn't give a flying fuck about providing) adequate medical care and secure living conditions while functioning with such high numbers of inmates in limited space. The ruling has led to much hand-wringing from social conservatives over the thought of all these violent thugs running the streets.

In reality, of course, mostly non-violent drug offenders will be released. Admittedly, these types are generally maladjusted and frequently lack a viable social network on the outside and the basic life skills needed to become a functioning and fulfilled member of society. In fact, they may have even picked up some violent and anti-social behaviors during their incarceration. But rather than addressing the issue of the personal and social impact of incarceration in our prison system, or the issues in these peoples lives that led to their incarceration to begin with, folks like Justice Scalia prefer to wallow in their fearful fantasies of all the "fine physical specimens who have developed intimidating muscles pumping iron in the prison gym" (the gym which ironically no longer contains any iron to be pumped, seeing as how it's packed to the gills with bunks). In Scalia's view, we as a society are better off disposing of this segment of the population by funneling them at an early age into a system that more or less guarantees their lifelong dysfunction and need for institutionalization. Cuz that's just worked so damn well, why would we change a system ~~that's profoundly broken, classist, racist, etc~~ that functions so well and meets all of our needs with such breathtaking efficiency? Why indeed?

------------------------------

In other news, the Environmental Working Group has released their 2011 guide to choosing a sunscreen that's both highly effective and nontoxic. If this year's guide is anything like last year's, I highly recommend it. It can be confusing and intimidating to sort through all the info available (and the corporate propaganda from cosmetic companies) about ingredients in skin care products and make a well-informed choice, and tools like this greatly simplify things. I also highly recommend the EWGs shopping guide for produce, which you can find here: The Dirty Dozen. Or if that's too analog for you, get the app. Whatevs.

------------------------------

Over at CNN, Dr Drew takes on the story of a family raising a gender-free child, pretends to explore the story in a neutral manner, and then goes on to defend our system of enforcing the sex and gender binary, and to freak out about the terrible social cost that this child will inevitably end up paying. His child psychologist guest concurs that the social cost to the child will most likely be unacceptable. Of course, neither Dr Drew nor his guest consider the social cost of the current system by which we socialize kids into gender roles, police their performance of gender, and box them into a neat binary system which turns out to be uncomfortable and restrictive for most, and downright catastrophic for some. No social cost there, of course. No, the real social cost is the bullying that this child will inevitably (rightfully?) receive from hir peers. Which is a serious issue, of course, but maybe the problem is not with this child or this family, but with a system that enables/encourages such bullying in the first place?

This story also left me wondering - why the child psychologist? From my understanding, psychologists do one thing - they focus on how well an individual functions in hir social context. By definition this precludes a questioning of that social context. Asking the bigger questions like "should we embrace/enforce our current gender system?" and "would we all benefit from a paradigm shift in this area?" don't really seem like the job of psychologists, so it seems like an odd choice to have a psychologist speak as the expert in a case like this. But more often than not, we do assume that psychologists are the experts and should have the final word in these situations. It reminds me of this one quote I've heard a few times: "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." Seems to me that a psychologist can tell you how to get along well in the society that you're born into, and that can be pretty damn helpful. But on a deeper level, what does that tell you about the society and it's practices? Nothing.

------------------------------

And finally, this week the New York Times has this interactive feature going that focuses on the experiences of young LGBT individuals. Seems pretty cool so far.

By Request: Porn Fairies and Pinups

2011-05-18T11:24:00.007-06:00

In response to a request in the comment section of this post:

And just for fun:

What women love

2011-05-11T11:59:00.008-06:00

This morning the Yahoo news feed told me that women love make-up. Even worse, apparently there are lots of beauty trends that women love and men hate. So the idea is that women are running around spending thousands of dollars and wasting countless hours and damaging their skin and hair and exposing themselves to toxins in various beauty products in order to appeal to men, but most of what they're doing is actually aimed at appeasing or showing up other women, and the end result is actually less appealing from the standpoint of the all-important male gaze.

And none of this really adds up, which generally means that you need to back it up and take a look around for some other dynamic that is probably the real controlling mechanism.

But first, I'm kind of curious about this. Is it true that (some) women love make-up, or any of the other beauty regimes that are thought to be so central to the performance of femininity? If you're a woman reading this post, and you wear make-up, do you love it, or even like it? Do you identify with wearing make-up, or any of the other beauty rituals in a significant way? I guess I always thought that for women who wear make-up, it's just another one of those slightly unpleasant, time consuming things that you nevertheless feel obligated to do. Or that you've internalized the idea that you can't look good without.

At my stepdaughter's afterschool program a few months ago they had a spa day for the girls which involved styling their hair and applying some awfully adult looking make-up. She came home and showed me and said "don't I look beautiful?" It was like a trick question. I didn't want to say "yes," and reaffirm the idea she's already picked up on that what makes a woman's face beautiful is the stuff she puts on it. But I also didn't want to tell her she didn't look beautiful. Needless to say, a long conversation ensued.

So, if men aren't particularly turned on by a lot of our beauty conventions, and women don't love them for reasons that are entirely independent from the social dictate that women must cater to the male gaze, then what's driving these beauty trends? What's motivating them?

You can probably guess that my theory will have to do with the beauty-industrial-complex, and the need for constant market growth, which requires ever-evolving and increasing demands, which in turn requires a set of constantly-changing perceived needs on the part of the consumer. I have a vague sense of how this might work. It seems to me that the make-up ads out there are always telling you about how some cosmetic product solves some problem you have with your existing one, or does something your old brand doesn't do. Some lipsticks last longer, or make your lips shinier (if that's the current trend). Some mascaras don't clump as easily, or they make your lashes longer (seriously, now) or plumper or something. Foundations have a (get this) more "natural" look. Like they make you look like you're not wearing any make-up.* And then there's eye color, which is one of the things the panel of male experts consulted by Yahoo for this article complained about. It seems to me that the trendy eye colors have to change from year to year, or you'll be able to buy one color or set of colors and it will last you a really long time, so you won't be spending money on it. But if no make-up trend lasts for more than a few months, or maybe a year, and if your beauty "needs" are constantly evolving, then you'll constantly be buying new products.

And that's how an industrial-complex works, right? You have to constantly be manufacturing both the demand for your product and the product itself. It's a self-sustaining system. What gets left out of the system is 1) what women actually ~~love~~ like, or would like if they hadn't been taught to think of themselves as unattractive unless they participate in the various beauty rituals; and 2) what men actually find attractive. It's even more complicated than that, of course. What we find attractive is largely conditioned by our culture. Add to this the fact that neither group is monolithic, so talking about what all women like or what all men dislike is just kind of silly. I'm sure there are some men out there who think that dramatic eye makeup and two-tone lips are the hottest things around.** I suspect there are even some women who really do love makeup and those hairstyles that make the little bump on top of your head.

...anyway, the beauty-industrial-complex theory seems like a compelling explanation for this dynamic to me, but I'm sure it will have it's critics. So, what other competing explanations are there? How do we make sense of all the collective silliness?

*Incidentally, I have an idea about how you can make your face look like you're not wearing any make-up, and it even has the added benefit of allowing you to sleep in an extra half hour every morning, or however long it takes to apply make-up. Send me $50 and a self-addressed stamped envelope, and I'll share my idea with you. Your life will never be the same.

**Of course, none of this conversation will have anything to do with what lesbian and bi women find attractive in women, because hetero relationships are always centered in these kinds of discussions, so it's just plain silly that you would even notice the fact that in articles like this we always talk as if the whole world is heterosexual.

Disney porn-fairy

2011-05-06T16:34:00.007-06:00

At the grocery store. Work that ass, Tinkerbell's little ethnic friend.

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The story we need to hear

2011-05-04T14:18:00.007-06:00

A few years ago I was at the bar with a group of friends, and another of the regulars at this particular bar came over to our table and told us a far-fetched, self-aggrandizing story. As he walked away afterward, there was much eye-rolling and irritated head-shaking, but I just shrugged and said "we all tell the stories we need to hear." And that stuck and became a much-quoted line we'd use after listening to the stories people tell at the bar.

I think this little statement has application beyond the self-aggrandizing anecdotes so common in situations like that one. I think in a broader sense, we all really do tell the story we need to hear, all the time. The problem is, we don't realize that we're not telling it with words. Sure, what we say is a part of it, but it's a very small part. What we do, how we respond to the actions of others, which events we take to be significant... all of these do much more to weave together the narrative of who we are than anything we might say. And when that broader narrative is in conflict with the story we're verbally telling about ourselves, there's a problem.

I mentioned in my last post that the fact that Americans are celebrating Osama bin Laden's death (and calling for the release of photos of his corpse) is problematic. It's problematic because of the story it tells about us - to ourselves and to the world. Since I posted that yesterday afternoon I've received a bunch of angry emails. In addition, the administration has announced that the photos will not be released, and I've gotten some preemptive (I assume) emails about that too. Instead of replying to the individual emails, which would be exhausting and time-consuming and probably unproductive, or just ignoring them, I've decided to reply to them here. So here we go:

aBob (and 2 others) says that "wussy liberal types" (like me, apparently) lack a basic understanding of what we're dealing with in al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. His claim is that "these types" don't understand anything except violence, and they would be the first to release gruesome photos of dead US soldiers or citizens given the chance.

I say that it's not about being wussy or liberal. Arguments that center around what kind of person bin Laden was are not going to get anywhere with me, because they miss the point. This is not about bin Laden; it's about us.

I think the story of Achilles and Hector illustrates this better than anything I can say. When I read through the Illiad in Greek a few years ago, it struck me how English translations just don't do justice to Hector. When you read the Illiad in Greek, you realize that Hector is the most compelling character in the book, while Achilles is basically a boorish, whiny, self-centered brat. And the scene where Achilles defeats Hector (only with a ton of help from the gods, not through his own personal prowess), and then drags his body around behind his chariot, is a perfect example of this. What does this scene tell us about Hector? Nothing. Hector was on the losing side by birth, and he paid for it with his life. Being physically mutilated after his death simply doesn't reflect on Hector at all. But it tells us a whole heck of a lot about Achilles.

In our case, celebrating bin Laden's death, and releasing photos of his body, are the equivalent of Achilles dragging Hector's body around. This is not about bin Laden or terrorism or 9/11. It's about who we are.

In another email, PJ says that I ought to apply my own argument about transparency and having nothing to hide to this situation. In a recent post I argued that laws prohibiting taking and distributing photos and video of farming practices are problematic in that it simply reveals that there is a heckuva lot wrong with the way we do agriculture in our country. So, rather than seeking to stop the flow of information, we should alter our practices so that we have nothing to hide. PJs claim is that not releasing the photos suggests either that we have something to hide and are in some way ashamed of our actions, or that it didn't really happen, and this is just a fictional event that the Obama administration is making up to boost it's numbers.

The thing is, there's a difference in what these photos say about us. Photos of abusive farming practices are an important tool in educating the public about the realities behind our agricultural system so that we can bring about real change. They're an example of a portion of our story that we need to be informed about, so that we can change it. Publishing photos of our enemies after we've killed them does nothing to bring about change, and only serves to demonstrate that we're barbarous and bloodthirsty people.

Incidentally, this response also applies to the claim that "wussy liberal types" didn't object to the Abu Ghraib photos but have a different standard regarding the bin Laden photos. Yes, there is a different standard - for good reason.

As to the conspiracy theory problem... posting an official legal copy of Obama's birth certificate has done nothing to curb the birther conspiracy theory. Among these types, photos of bin Laden would be dismissed as photoshop fakes before they even hit the press.

Finally, Mr. M claims that this is a great example of "feminine thinking." My objection to our celebrating bin Laden's death and publishing the photos is based in a "feminine" shrinking from violence and a wish to be in denial about the hard realities of "what the world is really like." He adds that I'm probably worried that my kids would see the photos, and I just want to shield them from this kind of thing. By doing so, I'm doing them a disservice, and producing another generation of people who can't face reality.

I most certainly agree with Mr. M that I don't want my kids to see these photos, or any others like them. In fact, I'll take it a step further and say that I don't want my kids to live in a world where these kinds of photos are publicized and gawked at and celebrated. But it's not because my lady-parts render me incapable of facing the hard realities of this violent world we live in. In fact, if "feminine" here means passive and dainty and weak, then I think Mr. M's line of reasoning is "feminine." You just resign yourself to living in a world where tragedies unfold and nobody tries to stop it, and instead escalates the violence through short-sighted, irrational knee-jerk reactions? And this is somehow bold and admirable and "masculine?" It seems brutish and unintelligent to me. But maybe that's just because my feeble lady-brain can't wrap itself around your mysterious logic.

There are good reasons why we no longer hold public executions or display the severed heads of executed criminals on spikes in the town square. It's all tied up with civilization and who we are and who we take ourselves to be and who we aspire to be. We're weaving a narrative here, and there's a particular version of that story we really need to hear. As they say, the whole world is watching.

Celebrating bin Laden's death

2011-05-03T16:13:00.005-06:00

A flashy animated banner just asked me how I'm celebrating Osama bin Laden's death. Not if. Not whether I think it's something that ought to be celebrated. Just how.

Because somehow the things we view as worthy of celebrating have no reflection on who we are and what our values are, I guess. I know I've discussed this here before, but all this gets me thinking again about the complicated relationship between justice and civilization and how, when it comes right down to it, our actions tell the whole story about what kind of people we are. And you can argue until you're blue in the face about how we're a civilized nation, deeply invested in freedom and human rights and democracy, but this champagne-fueled dance on the grave of anyone - even a murderous, brutal man - tells me all I need to know about who we are. And it ain't pretty. A barbarous response to a tragic series of events, topped off with a heaping portion of bad faith. Somehow it's not quite the America of my dreams...

And this is relevant because...?

2011-04-27T11:07:00.007-06:00

So, there's this:

The sponsors of California's same-sex marriage ban insist they are not trying to disqualify the federal judge who struck down Proposition 8 because he is gay.

Instead, they argue the judge's decade-long relationship with another man poses a potential conflict because they might want to get hitched themselves.

Interesting right? I mean, one of the reasons why we need to prevent same-sex marriage is that it's disruptive - gay people don't want the same things that normal people want, so letting them get married will totally destroy the institution of marriage. Ya know, cuz they don't do relationships the way we do. Oh, wait, except here's one of those gay people who seems to have a stable relationship with his partner. But somehow this doesn't serve as a counterexample that reveals a flaw in the argument. It just makes him unqualified to rule on the subject of marriage. Because maybe he wants to get married. And if he was a single gay man then he wouldn't be qualified either, because then we could infer that he doesn't want to get married, and therefore has no respect for the institution of marriage. And now that we think about it, no gay judge would be qualified to rule on this. But not because we're biased against them, of course.

I wonder, if he was a single hetero male, then would he be qualified to rule on this? Because then we could infer that maybe he was anti-marriage, right? Since we're just straight-up speculating about people personal lives and motives and desires and the impact of that on their legal competence, this seems like a valid line of reasoning. Or if he was happily married, that might disqualify him, because he might think that marriage is so awesome that everyone ought to be able to share in the bliss. And by this reasoning shouldn't a judge who's been married for years be barred from ruling on cases involving divorce law, since he might be unhappily married and pining for a divorce, or happily married and unable to imagine why anyone would ever even want a divorce? And then shouldn't single hetero judges be barred from ruling on cases involving divorce law too, since maybe the reason they're single is that they experienced an unhappy marriage and are now divorced, or that their divorce was the best/worst thing that ever happened to them? I mean, really, is anyone ever qualified to rule on something like this? If you follow this line of reasoning, it doesn't seem like it.

Except that if you're the socially conservative opponents of same-sex marriage, you really do think that there is one group of people who are qualified to rule in cases like this. Straight white males. Because they have the default, "objective" perspective. In contrast, anyone who isn't the straight white male norm is obviously ruled only by their personal experiences and countercultural agendas and could never simply look at the law and the relevant precedent and apply it to the current case. Because straight white males don't have situated identities, but Others do. Because straight white males operate on reason alone and aren't influenced by their life experiences, but Others lack the mental discipline and depth of character to keep these things separated.

Of course, if you're the socially conservative type, you think this way, but you know better than to say it out loud. You might not even be aware of the fact that you believe this. But you've learned to try to put a nicer face on it, and make it about his marital aspirations rather than about his flawed identity. You probably also think that nobody sees through it, to the insecurities and pettiness behind it. Good luck with that.

Video of the Day

2011-04-18T10:35:00.006-06:00

The Colbert Report
Tags: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor &
Satire Blog,Video Archive

On being "found in a compromising position"

2011-04-18T09:40:00.007-06:00

My daughter is 3, and she's in that funny developmental stage where kids begin to appreciate the value of diversionary tactics when engaging in some forbidden activity, but they're not very sophisticated about it yet. Say she has a piece of candy that she's been told she can eat, but not until after lunch. She wants to eat it now. The solution is to take it in the bathroom with her and say she needs privacy to go potty. You know what's gonna happen as soon as that bathroom door closes. Or say she has a library book that she reallyreallyreally wants to color in with her markers, but she's already been prevented from doing so. Her solution at this point is to say "Don't look at me Mom! Go over there." And this tactic is so transparent that it's kind of cute and funny. Because she's 3.

On the other hand, when full-grown adults engage in these kinds of tactics, it's not really that cute or funny, although it's still pretty transparent. For instance, agricultural associations in several states (Iowa, Florida, Minnesota) are pushing through legislation to prevent images and video of abusive agricultural practices and conditions from reaching the public. The proposed legislation would make it illegal to "produce, distribute or possess photos and video taken without permission at an agricultural facility" and, in some cases, make it illegal to lie on an employment application for an agricultural job if the employee's intention was to gather information on abusive farming practices. Because producers don't want to be "found in a compromising position."

In other words, the full-grown adult representatives of numerous grower's associations are straight up saying to the public "Don't look at us! Go over there." Instead of changing your practices so that you don't have anything to hide, just become better at hiding it, or use the politicians you've already bought and paid for to do it for you. No need to be sophisticated about it. No need to behave like mature or, for that matter ethical, adults. No, the diversionary tactics typical of 3 year-old children are perfectly appropriate here.

If you don't want to be found in a compromising position, then don't do things that have to be carefully hidden from public view. It's as easy as that.

Those gender rebels at J.Crew

2011-04-14T09:01:00.008-06:00

You might have seen this:

The stir it's causing with the socially conservative parenting police is both predictable and amusing. And even though I'm perennially amused by the fears of this crowd, I'm never really sure that I completely understand them. What exactly is going to result from boys wearing toenail polish and girls playing with trucks?

According to Dr. Keith Ablow, it appears that the following things will result from any variation from the conventional parenting script that requires strict enforcement of properly gendered behavior:

Years down the road, you'll have to spend a lot of money on "psychotherapy for the kid—and maybe a little for others who’ll be affected by your “innocent” pleasure."
The result of this kind of play is "psychological sterilization."
An assault on "genuine emotion and genuine relationships"
"encouraging the choosing of gender identity, rather than suggesting our children become comfortable with the ones that they got at birth, can throw our species into real psychological turmoil"
Behaving in any way outside the sex/gender binary system to which you have been assigned amounts to "masquerading through life" which we have to avoid or else "life will exact a psychological penalty"
A further problem is that "girls show none of the reticence they once did to engage in early sexual relationships with boys"

"it will be a very big deal if it turns out that neither gender is very comfortable anymore nurturing children above all else
and neither gender is motivated to rank creating a family above having great sex forever
and neither gender is motivated to protect the nation by marching into combat against other men and risking their lives."

But I wonder about these things, and I think that Dr Keith's claims and the assumptions that they ride on tell us a lot more about his own fears and limitations and insecurities than about the world we actually live in.

How do we know we'll have to spend a bunch of money on therapy for the girls who play with trucks and the boys who paint their toenails? Even if there was evidence that this was true, why is it true? If the real fear here is that the kids will turn out to be transgendered, then let's talk about that.
First, it is true that trans people often have to engage in therapy - they need a diagnosis to get the meds they need. But why is that? Because of other social constructions such the DSM and western medical conventions. We have chosen as a culture to categorize gender dysphoria as a mental health issue. We have chosen to say that when a person's gender identity doesn't fix the box we put them in, the problem is with the individual, not the box itself.
Second, if something as simple as wearing fingernail polish can derail your gender identity, why are there any trans people in the world at all? They all went through years and years of gendered socialization, and somehow it didn't work. And now they probably do need therapy, because they're traumatized by it all. There are countless incentives in our world to suck it up and perform the gender you were assigned to rather than transitioning. If, in the face of all that socializing and policing and bullying and belittling and incentivizing acceptable behavior, there are so many people still making the choice to transition, then the claim that wearing some nail polish or playing with the wrong toys is going to derail your gender identity just seems kind of weak.
I'm struggling to figure out what "sterilization" even means here. Is this sterilization in the sense of reproductively incapacitated? That seems unlikely. I was a terrible tomboy, and caused no end of worry and stress to my mom with my unacceptably boyish ways, but I don't seem to have any problem reproducing, physically or psychologically. Ironically, all the really tomboyish girls I grew up with have kids now and seem to be well-adjusted parents. Then is this intended to be "sterile" in the "bacteria-free" or super-duper clean sense of the word? I'm not even sure what that means when the modifier "psychologically" is added in.
So, those who don't strictly conform to the narrow gender boxes supplied by their culture are incapable of genuine emotions and relationships? By whose definition of "genuine?" It seems to me like there are a lot of non-gender-conforming folks out there who manage to forge and maintain lasting, fulfilling relationships. So I suspect that "genuine" here just means "looks like the kind of relationship that doesn't make me feel uncomfortable or insecure."
Again, where's the proof for the predicted "psychological turmoil"? And I'm pretty sure most trans people will tell you that they didn't just blithely go out and "choose" a gender. And if they could, they most likely would have chosen one that was easier to live with. It doesn't appear to work like that, Dr. Keith.
Why isn't behaving according to the gender scripts we've been taught a form of masquerading as well. A performance is a performance, right? So some people perform a different script than the one they were assigned to. This makes it a "masquerade?" Hm.
This is one of my all-time favorites in the list of "fears and insecurities of the socially conservative." We all know that women are the gatekeepers to fun sexy times, right? Because really, we can't expect men and boys to take responsibility for their own sexuality, the poor dears. No, the only way they can possibly behave in a sexually responsible manner is to be surrounded by demure women who will exert a gentle but firm civilizing influence and "tame the beast" by constantly withholding sexual pleasure from them. Of course, this assumes both that these women have no sexual desires of their own, and that men are so weak as to be incapable of controlling their sexual appetites. And this seems like a rather unflattering view of men, don't you think Dr. Keith?
And here we get to the real underlying fear. If men and women are no longer constrained to such narrow and constrictive roles, then OMG who will raise the babeez?!?! Who can be expected to put their projects and dreams and career on hold to selflessly care for the children and perform all the other unpaid domestic labor? In a less-gendered society, could some of this self-sacrifice possibly *gasp* fall to the men? Could they really be expected to give of themselves and risk the possible damage to their careers and nurture their own offspring? Why, it's unthinkable, I tell you!
Wait, you can't have great sex and also create a family? What? I didn't realize you had to choose...
I suppose it's true that you can't march off to war with neon pink nail polish on your toes. Except, maybe you can. And maybe we could try talking things out before going to war. And maybe if we didn't have to construct masculinity as a zero-sum competition, there would be less of a need for war. And maybe since there are in fact already women and gay men and trans folk of both genders fighting wars, this one doesn't really make much sense.

But putting all of these basic disagreements aside, Dr. Keith and I do agree on something. I don't really care for this ad either. In fact, I don't care for this type of advertising in general. This ad suggests that buying the right things will bring you closer to your kids. If you just have the right shit in your life, you'll bond with your kids and have fun times with them. And that's what I object to.

Aspirational marketing like this always carries the implicit message that if you want to be x kind of person, all you need to do is buy product y. Choosy moms choose Jif (because what could be better for you than peanut-flavored hydrogenated oil sweetened with high fructose corn syrup?). Trendy hip mothers buy stripy shirts and neon nail polish to paint on their boys' toes. I'd like to think that my relationship with my child is not dependent on material things. There's nothing I could buy that would make me be the kind of parent I want to be. And whenever I encounter marketing (every every every day) that suggests that I need to buy a product to be the kind of person I'm supposed to aspire to being, I feel insulted and manipulated. So Dr. Keith got it right. There is a problem here. It's just not the problems he identified.

One more time: "Healthy" vs "Low Calorie"

2011-04-13T15:37:00.004-06:00

I know I've mentioned this in passing before, but for some reason lately I've been exposed to a slightly higher level of weight loss-related bullshit. So I'd like to invite you to ponder a few things with me real quick, and then we can all get back to work:

When we discuss food in our culture, "healthy" is thought to be a synonym for "low calorie" or "low fat."
If "healthy" and "low calorie" or "low fat" were really synonyms, then famine and drought would be awesome. People would fucking thrive under famine conditions.
When we discuss weight, we tend to equate being thin with being healthy, even though there isn't a scrap of scientific evidence supporting this link.
If being thin, in and of itself, was healthy, then all this talk about diet and exercise doesn't make much sense. Why would you mess around with such a slow method of weight loss if being thin = being healthy? Wouldn't you want to "get there" as fast as possible?
If you want to get thin fast - really fast - I can tell you what to do. Get your hands on some crack. Or if meth is the drug of choice in your neighborhood, go with it. Whatever. The object is to smoke it consistently, several times a day. You'll lose the weight, and fast. Faster than you've ever lost weight before. Will you be healthy? Fuck no, but you'll be thin.

So maybe it seems like I'm the one engaging in crazy talk, recommending that people go out and turn themselves into addicts. But a cultural framework which equates astonishingly unhealthy practices with health is just about as irrational as it gets. Somehow starving yourself or severely limiting your diet or obsessively engaging in repetitive exercises that strain joints and ligaments or eating nothing but grapefruit or eating bars made of what appears to be pressed sawdust three times a day ..... has become "healthy" now. Our bodies didn't evolve under these conditions, yet we expect them to function well under conditions they're not adapted to. In fact we practically have a moral obligation to starve and discipline our bodies in this totally counterproductive way (that just happens to be super profitable for the diet-fitness industrial complex) or we're not being responsible citizens.

...

So, what physical conditions did we evolve under?

Constant, moderate, varied physical activity
No processed foods, chemically altered oils, or chemical food preservatives
No refined sugars or artificial colors
No synthetic hormones in food sources
No petroleum-based pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers in food sources
A wide range of seeds and nuts and seasonal fruits and veggies with occasional lean meat

Now that's healthy.

Train wreck

2011-04-08T14:55:00.002-06:00

Do it

2011-04-08T14:27:00.002-06:00

Click here to sign an open letter to Boehner and his pals concerning the funding of Planned Parenthood.

Incorporate Your Uterus

2011-04-05T10:36:00.004-06:00

It's the only way to protect it from your friendly neighborhood "small government" conservative, who reallyreally needs intimate access to your bedroom, your doctor's office, your romantic relationships, your relationships with your kids, etc. etc.

Incorporate My Uterus

Also, can someone who knows how to knit please make me one of these? I feel like I really need one, but I ain't learning how to knit anytime soon.

Facts - so inconvenient

2011-04-04T20:11:00.008-06:00

So, there's this: Indiana House Backs Greater Abortion Restrictions

INDIANAPOLIS – Both houses of the Indiana Legislature have now approved bills that would restrict access to abortions.

The Indiana House voted 72-23 on Wednesday to require that women seeking an abortion be told that human life begins at conception and ban the procedure after 20 weeks unless the woman's life is in danger.

The bill also requires those seeking abortions to be told in writing that they faced a greater risk of infertility and breast cancer.

Republican Rep. Eric Turner of Cicero says it's the responsibility of lawmakers to protect the unborn and that he hoped the additional requirements would lead to fewer abortions.

The bill now goes to the Senate, which last month approved a bill with many of the same provisions.

Note first that this is the same Eric Turner who opined that women would simply lie and claim they were raped or the victims of incest if there was an exception to the ban on state-funded insurance coverage of abortion for victims of rape and incest. Yeah, he has a super high opinion of women.

Second, this claim that abortion is correlated with a higher risk of breast cancer is interesting. It seems like the kinda thing I would have heard about before, being a health geek and all. So I did a little research, and look what I found.

From the National Cancer Institute:

The relationship between induced and spontaneous abortion and breast cancer risk has been the subject of extensive research beginning in the late 1950s. Until the mid-1990s, the evidence was inconsistent. Findings from some studies suggested there was no increase in risk of breast cancer among women who had had an abortion, while findings from other studies suggested there was an increased risk. Most of these studies, however, were flawed in a number of ways that can lead to unreliable results. Only a small number of women were included in many of these studies, and for most, the data were collected only after breast cancer had been diagnosed, and women’s histories of miscarriage and abortion were based on their “self-report” rather than on their medical records. Since then, better-designed studies have been conducted. These newer studies examined large numbers of women, collected data before breast cancer was found, and gathered medical history information from medical records rather than simply from self-reports, thereby generating more reliable findings. The newer studies consistently showed no association between induced and spontaneous abortions and breast cancer risk.

From ACOG:

There is no evidence supporting a causal link between induced abortion and subsequent development of breast cancer, according to a committee opinion issued today by The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). ACOG's opinion is in agreement with the conclusion reached at the National Cancer Institute's Early Reproductive Events and Breast Cancer Workshop, which met in March 2003.

ACOG's review of the research on a link between abortion and later development of breast cancer concluded that studies on the issue were inconsistent and difficult to interpret, mainly due to study design flaws. Some studies showed either a significant decrease in breast cancer risk after abortion or found no effect. The most recent studies from China, the United Kingdom, and the US found no effect of induced abortion on breast cancer risk.

More detail from the American Cancer Society:

The largest, and probably the most reliable study on this topic was done during the 1990s in Denmark, a country with very detailed medical records on all its citizens. In that study, all Danish women born between 1935 and 1978 (a total of 1.5 million women) were linked with the National Registry of Induced Abortions and with the Danish Cancer Registry. All of the information about their abortions and their breast cancer came from registries – it was very complete and was not influenced by recall bias.

After adjusting for known breast cancer risk factors, the researchers found that induced abortion(s) had no overall effect on the risk of breast cancer. The size of this study and the manner in which it was done provides good evidence that induced abortion does not affect a woman's risk of developing breast cancer.

Another large, prospective study was reported on by Harvard researchers in 2007. This study included more than 100,000 women who were between the ages of 29 and 46 at the start of the study in 1993. These women were followed until 2003. Again, because they were asked about childbirths and abortions at the start of the study, recall bias was unlikely to be a problem. After adjusting for known breast cancer risk factors, the researchers found no link between either spontaneous or induced abortions and breast cancer.

The California Teachers Study also reported on more than 100,000 women in 2008. Researchers asked the women in 1995 about past induced and spontaneous abortions. While the women were being followed in the study, more than 3,300 developed invasive breast cancer. There was no difference in breast cancer risk between the group who had either spontaneous or induced abortions and those who had not had an abortion.

I could continue, but it seems like overkill. Will this have any impact on the vote? Of course not. These are just silly little facts.

Manizer

2011-03-31T09:08:00.002-06:00

The term "womanizer" has been used in two different conversations I've been involved in this past week, which made me start wondering, what's the female equivalent to a womanizer? I feel like I should know this...

Sixteen

2011-03-30T16:15:00.001-06:00

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signs death penalty repeal

Cultural Beauty Standards and Childhood

2011-03-30T11:27:00.005-06:00

First of all, does every little girl want to be "like mommy" (defined here as wearing makeup and clothes), or do we just really want little girls to want to be "like mommy?" Sorta like we want them to spend their childhoods daydreaming about their wedding day and "being a mommy"... Second, note that being "baby-faced" enhances your shot at being a "superstar," and that being a superstar is something to aspire to. Third, what's the "magical age" for botox for children? How about never? Fourth, a quote from someone who's too young to have either wrinkles or boobs:

I check every night for wrinkles, when I see some I want more injections. They used to hurt, but now I don't cry that much. I also want a boob and nose job soon, so that I can be a star.

Finally, as the commenters in the video note, it's ridiculous that this girl (and her mother) think that boob jobs and botox will make you a star. But why wouldn't they think that?

Obviously the mom in this situation has some serious issues and she's placing a lot of crap on her daughter's very young shoulders. But just pointing at this mother with horror and disgust is a bit misleading and ultimately unhelpful. She's a product of our culture*, and if you've looked at celebrity culture lately, this is what makes a superstar, and it's never too early to start. It's reasonable for anyone who's uncritical and enamored of the celebrity dynamic and totally inundated by the messages that stream from popular media 24 hours a day to reach this conclusion. The more interesting questions are:

how do you help people become more critical in their consumption of popular media?
how do you go about making real changes in the steady stream of implicit messages about beauty and personal worth that are embedded in almost all of the media that we consume?

*A non-reflective, irresponsible product of our culture, of course, but still...

ETA: And I should say it's not just media and products that are aimed at adults either. This article highlights some really good examples of problematic marketing to ~~children~~ girls.

Help Ann Coulter Raise Money for Gay Rights

2011-03-28T09:11:00.004-06:00

Sounds too good to be true, right? But in fact it isn't! Click here and get your pledge on to help Ann raise money. She'll probably be too overwhelmed to thank you for your support, but you'll know in your heart that your donation is much appreciated.

Webcomic of the Day

2011-03-24T11:52:00.003-06:00

click to embiggen

Abortion and Childbirth and Coercion

2011-03-23T08:53:00.007-06:00

I'm sure by now you've heard about this:
SD governor signs bill requiring women to wait 72 hours for abortion, longest wait in nation
And while I've honestly been too tired/distracted/depressed by the predictability of the whole thing to blog about it, it did get me thinking about the common thread that runs through our cultural approach to childbirth and abortion and female decision-making altogether.

Proponents of legislation like this always yammer on about how they're trying to help women make better decisions. They're trying to prevent coercion. Get that? On the one hand if you were contemplating an abortion but decide not to do it after spending three days being shamed and harangued by the anti-choice folks who run crisis pregnancy centers, then that wasn't a coerced decision in this view. On the other hand, if you go ahead with the abortion after the three day wait and the forced visit to ~~your mom's church~~ a crisis pregnancy center, you won't have made a good decision. It was coerced. Of course, I'm not saying that women are never coerced into having an abortion, or that it's not a serious problem if they are. But claiming that you're trying to prevent coercion when what you're advocating for is forced exposure to a whole gamut of coercive rhetoric preceding a major life decision is so disingenuous that it would be laughable if the consequences weren't so sad.

So what does it really mean to make a "better" decision, and why do women need so much more help than men to make good decisions?

First we should note here that this legislation assumes that women who come in to get an abortion haven't already thought about this decision for three days, or possibly even longer. In the imaginations of the men who write legislation like this, what actual women in this situation do is

take a pregnancy test
grab their jacket and car keys
head straight to the abortion clinic.

No time to even grab a snack or apply lipstick. There are no long serious talks with the boyfriend/husband/father of the baby or with close friends preceding the decision. There are no thoughtful pauses in the middle of the work day or school day or while driving the other kid(s) to daycare or doing homework or folding laundry or sitting in a meeting at work or making dinner or ... in which the possibility of raising a child, or the emotional/social cost of carrying a child and giving it up for adoption, is carefully weighed against the other projects/obligations/goals/dreams/hopes/burdens the woman might have in her life. No. Because in this imaginary world women aren't actual 3-dimensional characters living actual lives, and anyway lady brains don't work like that. Therefore women don't show up at abortion clinics having already gone through a decision-making process.

So ... obviously there's just going to be this fundamental disagreement on what counts as women making good decisions concerning their reproductive life. But I still think it's an important question. Maybe this is the better question: what are the cultural conditions that would allow for truly uncoerced reproductive choices? For instance, what if women were neither economically penalized for becoming mothers nor shamed for choosing abortion or a child-free life? What if teens had access to both reliable birth control and open and honest conversations about sex and sexual relationships and pregnancy with adults who were neither squicked out by nor turned on by the reality of their developing sexuality, instead of the pathetic mess of mixed and contradictory messages they currently receive from abstinence-only sex ed and the media? What if we moved away from our cultural commitment to the socially and economically isolated nuclear family and instead encouraged networks of friends and extended family members who shared in both the work and the rewards of raising children?

And thinking about the cultural conditions of mothering makes me realize the parallels between the rhetoric surrounding abortion and the rhetoric surrounding childbirth. Your OB tells you "you think you can just read up on the current research on birthing practices and then be prepared to make informed choices about how your birth will go, but you can't. Because I am the doctor and you are the patient and therefore I will tell you what's right for your body, and you will shut up and be a good (by which I mean passive and docile) patient." Legislators tell you "you think you understand pregnancy and conception, but really you don't, so you will shut up while I tell you what's happening inside your body and make you have unnecessary ultrasounds and listen to anti-choice rhetoric and withstand three days of shaming to make the choice you've already made, because you're not smart/mature/responsible enough to handle a choice like this on your own."

And beyond that, there's another deeply troubling feature of this latest legislation that few are talking about. And that has to do with the time and energy and economic resources it takes to access an abortion in most parts of a state like SD to begin with. If SD is like Wyoming in this regard, I'd bet that abortion clinics are already few and far between. Which means that if you don't live in the biggest city in SD (or possibly one of the cities), accessing abortion services involves traveling some distance. That means taking time off school or work, paying for gas, or finding someone to pay for gas, or finding someone who has a car who can help you out ... and driving to the clinic, however far away that may be. Then once you get there you have to undergo hours of counseling and have your ultrasound and make your trip to the crisis pregnancy center, etc. etc. etc., and then drive back home, however many hours that might take, and then three days later turn around and do it all again to get the actual abortion. And as you can see, this all works to place a clever series of obstacles in the paths of the women and girls who probably need an abortion the most. I mean, if you can't afford the gas money and lack supportive friends or family members and don't have sick leave to travel back and forth repeatedly and waste hours and hours of your time getting "counseling" how can you afford to have a baby? But as more and more obstacles are erected in the abortion path, these are the women and girls who will be having more unwanted babies.

You want to talk about choices and coercion? Let's do it. But let's drop the Orwellian doublespeak. War is not peace. Coercion is not free choice. If you want to claim that you stand for free choice and personal autonomy, then drop the condescending manipulative paternalistic bullshit, and let's start talking about the conditions of autonomy and good decision-making and supported choices. The catch is, before you can make that move, you have to alter your worldview to one in which women are capable of making informed decisions. And that's something I suspect you are incapable of. Prove me wrong.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-15T09:31:00.002-06:00

"Every society has the criminals it deserves."
---------------------Emma Goldman

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Unbelievable

2011-03-09T19:32:00.005-07:00

Unfortunately you may have seen this story today: Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town, in which an 11 year-old girl wears makeup and grown-up clothes, practically forces as many as 18 boys and men to sexually assault her in an abandoned trailer, and then inflicts this terrible tragedy on the entire town by somehow causing video and images of these events to be circulated throughout her nice, innocent Texas town, ruining the lives of said boys and men, the poor dears.

At this point you'll probably need a margarita or two, and you'll probably want to sign this:
Tell the New York Times to Apologize for Blaming a Child for Her Gang Rape

Heaven help us.

ETA - read the NYT's response to widespread complaints about this article here: Gang Rape Story Lacked Balance

Quote of the Day

2011-03-09T10:24:00.003-07:00

"...disease isn’t just biology. It’s a personal culture, shaped by stories, by people, by sexuality, by cities, by coincidences."
--------------------------Kayla Rachlin Small

Scylla and Charybdis - or - Female Sexuality American-style

2011-03-04T11:55:00.006-07:00

My favorite Philosophy professor ever of all times would often start class with this phrase: let me tell you a story.

So...let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful sea nymph named Scylla. Everything was all sunshine and rainbows for Scylla until one day Poseidon, the god of the sea fell in love with her. This angered his wife, Amphitrite, who poured a poison into the pool that Scylla bathed in. The poison turned her into a monstrous multi-headed (yet perky-breasted) creature who lurked forever after under the rocks in the Strait of Messina (between Sicily and Italy), nomming on sailors who steered too close to the rocks.

Meanwhile...

Once upon a time there was a beautiful sea nymph named Charybdis. She was the daughter of Poseidon and Gaia. Everything was all sunshine and rainbows for Charybdis until one day Zeus became angry with her. It seems that she habitually helped her father reclaim land from Zeus by riding the high waves Poseidon would stir up in his storms, consuming land and houses. For this Zeus turned her into a monstrous creature in the form of a whirlpool that lived in a cave across the Strait of Messina from Scylla. Three times a day the gaping hole (get it?) of Charybdis' whirlpool would open up and consume any sailors who steered too close to her cave.

Together Scylla and Charybdis created a terrible hazard for sailors passing through the Strait. If they steered too close to either monstrous female, they would be devoured.

There's a lot to be said about female sexuality and Scylla and Charybdis. In the ancient Greek worldview, women could endanger (in the male view) men in oh-so-many ways. They could endanger them by being beautiful and seductive, or by remaining loyal to another man. The simple act of being (or appearing to be) available to a man could bring down destruction on a woman. The simple act of being (or appearing to be) unavailable to a man could bring down destruction on a woman. And the hazard of both scenarios lent itself to this myth in which somehow the men had to find a way to navigate a careful path between the two dangers.

So here we are in America in 2011, and what could this have to do with us? Well....

When you have young daughters you suddenly become an especially keen observer of the forms female sexuality takes in our culture. No matter what message you try to convey to them, your voice is practically drowned out by the multitude of messages (both explicit and implicit) they're constantly exposed to. And as others have pointed out, there are basically two different ways to be a female sexual being in our culture. You can be the pornified sexual object who exists solely for the male gaze and to fulfill male desires but has no independent sexual desires of your own. The other option, of course, is to be the prudish gatekeeper required by the abstinence-only, purity types. This kind of sexual being also has no desires of her own, but only engages in sexual acts to please her man. Since she doesn't have the uncontrollable sexual desires that her male counterpart does, it's her job to "just say no." Of course these are extreme versions of the options available, but a survey of the images of female sexuality that are ubiquitous in our culture reveals that these are by far the most prevalent and powerful.

So these are the Scylla and Charybdis of contemporary modern female sexuality*. And somehow our daughters have to navigate a course through these hazards as they grow and explore their developing sexuality. They must not be too available to men. They must not be unavailable either. They must be pleasing and accomodating. They must not give in to male desire, thus defiling their pure bodies, but must charm and cajole men into being a "better" versions of themselves. On the other hand, they must not be too charming and accommodating or they might get themselves raped. And so it goes.

I wish I could believe it was possible for my girls to avoid this particular Strait of Messina altogether. I wish there was a way for them to navigate through calmer, less hazardous waters, as they grow and develop and learn about themselves and the world. I wish there was a place that was open yet safe, where female sexuality wasn't rigidly scripted, and girls could approach their sexuality free of guilt or shame or coercive cultural narratives, but with caution and respect for the power of sexual experiences. I wish, I wish, I wish....

*And even when female sexuality is portrayed as anything other than hetero, these paradigms still dominate. In the pornified version of female sexuality, lesbian desire is merely a performance for the male gaze, and in the purity version it's an unnatural perversion which one can learn to overcome.

Moral Bankruptcy

2011-03-02T13:21:00.005-07:00

So, I recently had this conversation with a friend in which he kept using the term "morally bankrupt." He said (among other things) that his upbringing and immersion in the consumer, throw-away culture had left him morally bankrupt. And his implication was that this is the result for all of us, more or less.

Whether you agree with that point or not (after all, consumerism is just one aspect of our culture), the term "morally bankrupt" jumped out at me. Of course I've heard it many times before, but what exactly do we mean by it? Can a person be morally bankrupt? Is morality the kind of thing you can stock up on or save up, like in a bank account? Is it an asset that must be carefully balanced against liabilities to avoid bankruptcy? Obviously it's just a metaphor, but I think the metaphors we choose are really revealing. When we talk about greedy executives or corrupt politicians we almost always use the phrase "morally bankrupt," as if morality is quantitative like that. Maybe the problem is that we think of morality that way to begin with.

Nah

2011-02-27T15:28:00.006-07:00

On PostSecret this week:

They don't need public funding, do they?

Isn't it ~~funny~~ ironic to think about the way Planned Parenthood basically makes it possible for the socially conservative to not talk to their kids about safe sex, birth control, and "down there" in general?

Hey there privileged smug conservative paternalistic shitheads: Taxpayer dollars have basically been subsidizing your families' sexual dysfunction in this area for years now. So if you ever do succeed in cutting PPs funding, in addition to screwing over a lot of marginalized and disadvantaged folk, you'll be shooting yourselves in your own damn foot.

Video of the Day

2011-02-25T13:42:00.000-07:00

Things that don't suck

2011-02-23T21:25:00.005-07:00

So, we've been checking out Sesame Street Old School dvd's from the library lately, because it turns out that it's not Sesame Street I ~~dislike~~ despise, it's Elmo. I know it's cliched and snotty, and I always thought I would never be the kind of parent who develops a violent and irrational aversion to a character from toddler tv, but that grammatically-challenged little fucker (and his friend Baby Bear) can work your last nerve. On the other hand, old school Sesame Street still kinda kicks ass. As it turns out, so does The Electric Company:

And, just in case you're not convinced, a bonus scene. The 3 y/o dissolves into a helpless giggling fit at this one. Every time. She's had to rewind and rewatch it at least 50 times.

I know, right? Indisputably awesome.

Depressing Links and Video of the Day

2011-02-18T15:54:00.011-07:00

Want to know the end result of bullshit conservative policies? Check out Texas:
Mrs. Bush, Abstinence and Texas

The true cost of plastic:

Can you tell what that is? Look closely.

OK, this one might not be as depressing to you as it is to me, but if you teach at the college level it's both unsurprising and profoundly depressing. Meanwhile, people increasingly complain that a college degree is worth less and less on the job market. Gee, I wonder why?
What happened to studying?

I'm not a huge advocate of co-sleeping. I think every family should figure out what works for them, and being tuned in to your kids personalities and your needs as a parent is far more important that anything you can learn in a parenting book. Still, it was always puzzling/amusing/irritating to me when people reacted with horror and/or deep concern if I mentioned that I let my daughter sleep in our bed so she could nurse whenever she wanted to at night. It worked for us, and all the evidence suggests that co-sleeping is safe and good for tiny babies, especially those who are nursing. It's great for the mom - you get to sleep all night. But of course, as a culture our approach to things like this is anything but evidence-based. That makes this headline a bit ironic: Study: Average of 26 children hurt by cribs every day. I believe that means it's more dangerous to sleep in a crib than with your parent(s). Is that going to change the horrified reactions? Yeahno.

And then there's this:
Single motherhood still rejected by most Americans, poll finds
Which prompts me to ask "what about teh menz?!?"

On the other hand, there's this!

Have a good weekend y'all.

What Not To Say

2011-02-17T16:45:00.003-07:00

A message from Tom Scocca to men who may be inclined to pontificate on the assault of Lara Logan:

So there is this horrible news about CBS correspondent Lara Logan. People are reacting strongly to it. You may feel an urge to say something or write something about it. But many of the things you are producing are stupendously inappropriate and wrong and offensive.

Here are some things that are OK to say about the news of the attack on Lara Logan:

1. "What a horrible, horrible thing to have happened."

2. " . . . "

No. 2, there, is the sound of you refraining from saying the other things it might occur to you to say. It might even be the sound of you being quiet and listening! Sometimes that's worth doing.

In conclusion:

Before you say anything, strongly consider the merits of saying nothing!

That about sums it up, don't you think?

Guess

2011-02-14T11:31:00.005-07:00

State legislatures that think it's an awesome idea to allow guns on college campuses (even in classrooms and dorms) and in bars.
State legislatures that can. not. let. the whole birther thing die.
State legislatures that continue to obsess over defending ourselves from the OMG real!! and present!!! danger!!!! of gay marriage!!!!!

It's a good thing politicians heard the loud and clear message sent by voters in the last election - ya know the whole "we want you to focus on jobs and the economy" message. Yep, that one.

Video of the Day

2011-02-11T15:41:00.001-07:00

Dear Valentine,

2011-02-09T13:49:00.008-07:00

Please accept this gift as a token of my affection and a sign of our collective comfort with our role as colonialist oppressors, colluders, mindless consumers of a disproportionate amount of the world's resources, and polluters of the environment.

Hugs and kisses,

Millions of American Consumers

Fair trade sources:
Make a Difference With Fair Trade Flowers
Organic and Fair Trade Flowers

Aid

2011-02-09T09:52:00.000-07:00

U.S. aid to the Mubarak regime 2009-2010: $4 billion
U.S. aid to home-owners facing eviction 2009-2010: $0

Video of the Day

2011-02-04T16:41:00.002-07:00

Eat More

2011-02-04T13:52:00.010-07:00

Just so you know, as I write this post I'm unashamedly drinking a cup of coffee with (gasp!) real half-n-half in it, along with a totally not low-fat or low-calorie homemade almond biscotti. It's not a guilty pleasure. I'm not ashamed of it, or promising myself I'll do 10 extra minutes on the treadmill to atone for this "sin." I'm not trying to hide this from my co-workers. I know this seems like some kind of proud villainy, given our cultural approach to food. But really, this is just me, eating the food I like. The food that makes me feel good.

But ... as I was meandering through the New York Times this morning, I stumbled upon this: Government’s Dietary Advice: Eat Less.

Now, you may not have the same reaction to it as I do, but when I hear someone exhorting us/you/them/anyone to eat less, an image of my sweet, frail, tiny little great aunt comes to mind. And I'll explain why in a second. But first I want to say this about the actual article.

It is indeed an eency weency baby step of progress when government regulatory agents of any type make even the most toothless statement in opposition to the agendas of the powerful lobby groups that control them. So, ya know, yay for that.

I even agree that the recommendation to fill at least half of your plate with fruits and veggies can be a good one. Even a great one. Avoid the dirty dozen if you can help it, but do what you can. Score 1 for whole foods, -1 for processed foods. So far so good.

But, this "eat less" thing....

Let me tell you about my Auntie E. Auntie E is my grandma's younger sister. My grandma, the one who flew her father's plane between Iowa farm fields and had gorgeous skin and hair and ankles (apparently that was a big deal once upon a time), and sang beautifully and danced gracefully and argued forcefully, and baked and sewed relentlessly, and knocked all the men dead. That one. She has a younger sister, E. And E was petite while her sister was tall; she had thin straight dark hair while her sister had thick wavy blond hair, etc. etc. It's not that E wasn't pretty and talented and intelligent enough. Taken by herself, she was all these things. But her older sister was the stuff of legends, especially in a small Iowa town. So E grew up with a major inferiority complex that even escaping that small town and that big shadow couldn't reverse. She went off to college and made her own friends and got her own boyfriend and was respected and valued for her own accomplishments, but it was never enough.

Somewhere along the way E decided that the one thing that made her special was her knack for self-denial. Her own grandmother, who was also thought to be a great beauty, once remarked that the secret to maintaining your youthful beauty was to push back from the table while you were still a little bit hungry. And E could do that. Oh boy could she do that.

I remember visiting E's family as a child, and E would cook a big fancy dinner for her family and guests, and then sit down with just an apple while everyone else ate the dinner she had prepared. I remember family reunions where good food was everywhere, and E didn't take one bite all afternoon. People often complimented E on how thin she was, and she would wave it off with some self-deprecating comment. In recent years E has had terrible health problems because her bones are razor-thin and break with alarming ease. As she ages she seems even tinier, with rounded shoulders and apologetic eyes. And looking at E makes me feel indescribably sad, because I suspect she has spent her entire adult life hungry. It just seem like an incredible tragedy, to spend your whole life hungry in the middle of such abundance.

So here's what I say. Eat more. Eat more whole foods. Eat more local foods. Eat more homemade meals with real ingredients. Eat until you're satisfied. Eat healthy whole-fat dairy products that actually give a feeling of satiety. Snack on nuts and homemade cookies. Eat eggs from happy cage-free chickens. Eat avocados and olives and other "high-fat" foods that are nevertheless really good for you. As much as you can, avoid foods that are packaged in plastic (plastic is a terrible environmental scourge, and it transfers some of its toxins to the food packaged in it, y'all!). Bake, if you enjoy baking. Surround yourself with good healthy foods that make you feel nourished and satisfied. But don't deprive yourself. Don't go hungry. It is neither healthy nor virtuous to deprive yourself of the nourishment you need. And good food provides both physical and psychological nourishment. So eat up. Eat until you're satisfied. Ignore the government "experts" who always and everywhere turn out to be the pawns of some industry, whether it's the diet industry or the food lobby. Learn how to listen to your body, and give it what it needs. Eat until you're satisfied.

Cheers!

The Count 2010

2011-02-04T09:19:00.004-07:00

This will only take a minute. I promise.

VIDA has published a comparison by gender of both bylines published and books reviewed by a wide range of magazines and journals. In a super accessible format, no less. Of course, the men are disproportionately represented in almost every area:

Depressing, no? Cue the rash of quasi-misogynist explanations and rationalizations for this phenomenon. Women just aren't assertive enough when pursuing publishing opportunities. Women just tend to write chick-lit, and not the real serious important stuff the public is really interested in. Etc, etc, blah, blah, blah.

I'm sure that will make it all better, Roger

2011-02-03T08:39:00.004-07:00

This week NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has this to say about Ben Roethlisberger: "I think Ben's committed to making the right decisions. He's doing a tremendous job of focusing on football and trying to win the Super Bowl, and I think the fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers appreciate that."

Here's the thing, Roger. Your boy has repeatedly proven himself to be a sexist bully and predator. Focusing on his game and winning the super bowl ain't gonna change that. I feel sorry for Steeler fans, but I hope the Packers win.

Either way, this is the first Super Bowl I ain't watching. Because fuck Ben Roethlisberger. And fuck the culture of professional athletics that allows this behavior to continue, in spite of the token sanctions the league may impose. Fuck the moving-in-packs-and-protecting-your-boy m.o. that allowed Roethlisberger to commit repeated sexual assaults. Fuck the system that allows wealthy white men like Roethlisberger to avoid criminal charges or repercussions. And fuck the example athletes and celebrities like Roethlisberger set for young men.

My daughters are watching me, and sadly, I don't want them to see me watching football right now. Maybe some day. Maybe even next season, accompanied by some serious discussions about the flawed culture of male professional athletics and our social construction of masculinity and the sad reality of rape culture. But not right now. This year on Super Bowl Sunday I'm hosting an anti-superbowl, Chinese New Year party. Good food will be eaten, crafts will be crafted, and chocolate will be consumed. But no football will be watched.

Wednesday Miscellanea

2011-02-02T12:18:00.003-07:00

At Kern Valley State Prison, inmates have no choice but to drink water containing toxic levels of arsenic:
Drink up -- assuming you like arsenic, that is
You may notice that this story is kind of old. Why is it included in this week's Miscellanea post? Because, even though the court ordered the prison to fix this problem years ago, no progress has been made and the inmates continue to drink toxic water. After all they are just inmates. It's not like they're human or something.

In my neckathewoods, everyone's all fired up about loosening gun laws and basically allowing anyone without a felony conviction to carry a gun just about anywhere. Cuz of the safety and all. Because we all know that having a gun on your belt prevents you from getting shot, right? I mean, it totally worked in Tuscon:
Myth of the Hero Gunslinger

On the cognitive benefits of nature:
Thoreau Was Right: Nature Hones the Mind

A Food Manifesto for the Future
A summary:

End government subsidies to processed food.
Begin subsidies to those who produce and sell actual food for direct consumption.
Break up the U.S. Department of Agriculture and empower the Food and Drug Administration.
Outlaw concentrated animal feeding operations and encourage the development of sustainable animal husbandry.
Encourage and subsidize home cooking.
Tax the marketing and sale of unhealthful foods.
Reduce waste and encourage recycling.
Mandate truth in labeling.
Reinvest in research geared toward leading a global movement in sustainable agriculture, combining technology and tradition to create a new and meaningful Green Revolution.

The result of constantly cutting taxes and spending?
A generation of malnourished, undereducated kids. Which is fine if you're a wealthy conservative politician who knows that your children will never have to "tighten their belts" or forgo medical care when they're sick or receive substandard education...

OK, so they hate health care for poor people and deficit spending (except when it's spending that benefits one of their causes) and gun control and the Gays. So what does the GOP love? Greenhouse Gasses, baby:
Upton Looks to Block Greenhouse Gas Rules

Another reason not to give birth in a hospital?
Rules on Cameras in Delivery Rooms Stir Passions

Monsanto wins again. Small farmers, organic farmers, local co-ops? Screwed.
Genetifically Modified Alfalfa Officially On The Way

Photo of the Day

2011-02-01T08:22:00.004-07:00

And a quote to go with it:
"If there is democracy in my country, then I can ask for democracy in my own home."
-Sahar Ahmad, a 41-year-old school teacher and mother

Random

2011-01-31T12:16:00.004-07:00

I'm super busy today but promise a Miscellanea post tomorrow. In the meantime, sit back and enjoy the most random keyword hit my blog has ever gotten: "are there hotdogs not made with icky stuff." To which the answer is yes. Actually there are. I don't have time to discuss them right now, but take heart and continue your search. Good luck!

Sign it

2011-01-27T10:00:00.002-07:00

I know you probably get a lot of requests to sign various petitions on a regular basis, but this is definitely one you should sign:

Gov. Kasich: Pardon Ms. Kelley Williams-Bolar's Unfair Sentencing For Fraud and Theft

Video of the Day

2011-01-24T09:46:00.000-07:00

Thursday Miscellanea

2011-01-20T08:50:00.005-07:00

In the news:
I know it's a revolutionary idea, but patients in most hospitals will now get to designate who their visitors should be. Ya know, instead of having some hospital personnel who know nothing about them decide who can and cannot see them. What's amazing is that this is 2011, and we're just now finally implementing such a basic no-brainer policy. And who the hell would oppose a policy like this, anyway? Saints preserve us!, as my great-aunt would say.

It hasn't been in the news much, but Illinois is on the brink of abolishing the death penalty. Assuming the pro-death penalty governor signs the bill that has already been passed by the General Assembly. Either way, the fact that the bill was passed by the state legislature, any state legislature, feels like progress.

The supreme court dealt a blow to employee privacy rights this week, and grappled with the fallout of granting corporations personal privacy rights. At this rate corporations may soon have more of a right to personal privacy than, um persons. Which could prove a bit awkward. Or maybe not, as long as people dutifully remain cocooned in their haze of perpetual commercialized entertainment, consumer rat-race running, and second-shift working. That should prevent them from noticing or objecting to the relentless erosion of their rights.

And finally, a recipe for catnip crackers for your cat:

* 1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
* 2 tablespoons dried catnip
* 1/2 cup plain yogurt
* 1 egg
* 1 tablespoon honey
* 3 tablespoons vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a bowl, mix together the flour and catnip, then stir in the yogurt, egg, honey, and vegetable oil. Roll out the dough on a floured surface and cut into small bite-sized pieces with a pizza cutter or small cookie cutters. We have a small dogbone-shaped cutter and a tiny duck-shaped cookie cutter we like to use. Place them on a greased cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes or until they start to brown.

If you have small kids in your house like I do, store the cat crackers in a container on a high shelf to prevent the kids from feeding the cats too many. Believe me, most cats will eat as many of these as they're given, but should only be given a few at a time to avoid manic climbing-the-drapes-and-swinging-from-the-light-fixtures episodes followed by a sleeping-off-the-catnip-hangover-with-a-bit-of-a-tummyache episode.

Falling pregnant

2011-01-19T16:01:00.002-07:00

Apparently, in Memphis, high school girls are falling like birds from the Arkansas sky. Falling pregnant, that is. Which is something I was not previously aware you could do. But apparently you can and they are. All by themselves, from the look of it. You can google this news story all day and not find a single one that mentions the boys (men?) who are participating in the impregnation of the teenage uteri.

However, you can find plenty of speculation about why these (mostly disadvantaged) youngsters are turning up pregnant at such a high rate. It seems that they can't say no. Because everyone knows that that is the sole responsibility of girls/women. Boys, with all that testosterone and peer pressure, cannot possibly be expected to abstain, the poor dears. And we all know that the only way to prevent pregnancy is to abstain entirely from sexual activity. Having comprehensive sex ed that teaches about contraception wouldn't help. Talking honestly with girls about relationships and sex and how to set boundaries and require condom usage and withstand pressure/walk away from a boy who's acting coercive wouldn't help. Talking with girls about life choices and reproductive choices and educational opportunities wouldn't help. No. The only thing to do is tsk tsk about the high teen pregnancy rate and yammer on about how to get those slutty girls to just say no. Cuz that's been working so damn well...

Video of the Day

2011-01-14T14:27:00.005-07:00

My kids are totally in love with capybara's right now...

Happy Friday!

Boob Wars, part MCCXXXIV

2011-01-14T11:21:00.004-07:00

So.... it seems that the WHO's recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months is now in question. A few thoughts:

Perhaps we could use this opportunity to reflect on how health recommendations are sometimes (often) context-dependent. While it may be true that in countries without access to clean food and water, breastfeeding exclusively for a longer period is in order, applying the rule everywhere may not be the best solution. However, before we commence WHO-bashing (sounds like a Seuss story, no?) it's helpful to remember that a major driving force behind the recommendation was the marketing of formula to mothers in geographical areas lacking access to clean water. We can go into the reasons why there's no clean water and why using formula would seem preferable to these parents, but for now, let's just remember the chain of events leading up to the recommendation to begin with.
One reason why solid food is recommended at 4 months (I started introducing select solid foods to my daughter at 4 months, but just kept my mouth shut about it at the pediatrician's office) is that babies who are exclusively breastfed may become anemic. *Ahem* What they don't tell you is that this only tends to occur in babies who were born with the conventional hospital practice of clamping and cutting the cord immediately, rather than waiting for all the iron-rich cord blood to flow into the baby's body. This is why midwives in most cultures waited to cut the cord. But why would we pay any attention to the quaint practices of uneducated indigenous women? What the fuck could they know?
The foods that we tend to introduce to babies as first foods (grains with all of the most nutritious portions stripped from them, processed into powder and then mixed with formula and/or tap water containing chlorine, fluoride...) don't generally contain any of the nutrients that babies actually do need at this stage in development. Oh, except for how we fortify them with ingredients like iron, which often makes their little tummies hurt. And then we give them some kind of medicine for their tummies and call them colicky. Yeah. Of course, we could learn a lot about the foods that are easily digested by babies and contain the nutrients they really need by looking at what various "primitive" cultures actually fed babies. Things like egg yolk and yogurt. But rejecting the highly processed, attractively packaged baby foods on the market would be so... uncapitalistic.

So here we have another example of the ongoing process of fixing the problems we ourselves have created, by turning to a solution that is itself the cause of another problem which then must be fixed, and on and on. It would be truly amusing, if there wasn't so much at stake.

Word of the Day: Neuroplasticity

2011-01-13T13:29:00.007-07:00

The Truth about Boys and Girls by Lise Eliot

In Brief:

Boys and girls are different, but most psychological sex differences are not especially large. For example, gaps in intellectual performance, empathy and even most types of aggression are generally much narrower than the disparity in adult height, in which the average man is taller than 99 percent of women.

Researchers have found very few large-scale differences between boys and girls in brain structure or function. Boys have larger brains, and girls’ brains finish growing earlier than boys’ do. But neither of these findings explains why boys are more active and girls more verbal or reveals a plausible basis for any of the other emotional and cognitive differences between the sexes.

Experience itself changes brain structure and function. Most sex differences start out small—as mere biases in temperament and play style—but are amplified as children’s pink- or blue-tinted brains meet our gender-infused culture.

The whole article is available online if you have institutional access.

Also, watch a video of Eliot talking about her brain research here. The video is interesting, but it's profoundly ironic that it's sponsored by the very Dove chocolates that feature the intensely stereotypical and somewhat misogynist quotations geared toward women. That's what I call delicious irony.

I would expound more on this, but now that chocolate has been mentioned I've gotta go eat some and then go shoe shoppin' with my 9% smaller lady-brain. Ta-ta for now!

Scripture of the Day

2011-01-12T16:21:00.004-07:00

...for our Bible-thumping* friends:

Ephesians 4:29
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.

And a few bonus scriptures:

Colossians 3:8
But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.

Romans 14:19
Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.

1 Peter 2:1
Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.

Matthew 12:34
How can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.

*Which is not to say that I have anything against reading the Bible or being a Christian. I just think that if you're going to claim the label and (especially) try to force your beliefs and values on others, the least you can do is live up to it. All of it. No cherry-picking, please.

New Year's Reading

2011-01-06T10:30:00.011-07:00

What're y'all readin' these days?

I have a fairly bizarre mix of books sitting on my night stand, reflecting my current obsession with crafts and indoor gardening and short stories as a basic form of escapism:

What can I say? We're into gnomes right now. Ever since the 3 year-old announced her intention to be a garden gnome for Halloween...

Lacto-fermentation FTW!

Delusions of Gender is turning out to be really good, although it's taking me forever to read it.

Best kids' book ever of all times. We've read this book at least 1500 times and plan to read it 1500 more time. It's indescribably awesome.

Icky bits: 0 Vagina: 1

2011-01-05T16:29:00.005-07:00

You may remember this post, in which I had a little run-in with Bossy Daycare Lady about what words we use to refer to our genitalia. On a side note, thank god we got out of that institutional daycare and into the hippie-green-organic-local foods-yoga lady daycare. Until you have kids, it's hard to appreciate how stressful it can be to feel like you're stuck with a daycare that's out of line with your values. And once you have a chance to switch to one that is in line with your values, you realize how much the old one was really bothering you.

Anyways... Back to the icky bits.

So my stepdaughter is in first grade. They're beginning a unit on anatomy (like the skeleton, muscular structure, etc), so yesterday her teacher introduced the unit by asking them to name some things that are in their bodies. Of course, it was my kid who raised her hand and listed "a skeleton and a vagina." According to her teacher, none of the other kids reacted to it, and her teacher just calmly added it to the list and moved on. No snickering or blushing or shaming. And to me that's a score. The fact that 6-year-olds can name their body parts for what they are without feeling guilty or weird or thinking it's profanity or comedy or the-one-thing-that-makes-me-super-special is kinda awesome. Maybe the other kids don't know the word. Or maybe the ones who do have also only ever heard it in the same non-sensational matter-of-fact manner as my stepdaughter has all her life. All I know is that this feels like the first step in her developing a healthy relationship with her body and her sexuality. And that's something.

Heaven help us through all the cultural obstacles that await us.

Happy New Year + The Myth of the Lazy Fatties

2011-01-01T17:27:00.006-07:00

First: Happy New Year, y'all. I would resolve to be less neglectful of my blog this year, except I can't since my resolution last year was to boycott New Year's resolutions. So, ya know...

Second, there's this: One-third of 9-month-olds already obese or overweight:

The path toward obesity starts at a young age - even before babies transition to a solid diet, according to a new study.

Almost one-third of 9-month-olds are obese or overweight, as are 34 percent of 2-year-olds, according to the research, which looked at a nationally representative sample of children born in 2001. The study is one of the first to measure weight in the same group of very young children over time, said lead researcher Brian Moss, a sociologist at Wayne State University in Detroit. The results showed that starting out heavy puts kids on a trajectory to stay that way.

"If you were overweight at nine months old, it really kind of sets the stage for you to remain overweight at two years," Moss told LiveScience.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), childhood obesity has tripled over the last three decades. In 2008, 19.6 percent of kids between the ages of 6 and 11 were obese.

But less is known about obesity rates in very young children. In fact, researchers hesitate to label children that young as "obese." Recent studies have raised the alarm about particularly large babies, however. One 2009 paper published in the journal Pediatrics found that babies who gain weight rapidly in the first six months of life are at increased risk of being obese by age 3. Another study, published in April 2010 in the Journal of Pediatrics, found that heavy 6-month-olds are more likely to be obese as 2-year-olds.

This kinda calls into question the whole people-are-so-fat-because-they're-sitting-around-watching-tv-and-playing-video-games-instead-of-exercising bit that so many have been yammering on and on about. What are 6 month-olds doing differently than their great-grandparents did at that age? Probably not spending less time on the treadmill. *

However, they are drinking lots of formula that has some form of corn syrup as it's main ingredient, along with other forms of highly processed corn as fillers. And that's different from what their great-grandparents were doing at the wise old age of 6 months. They're also probably going to be exposed to far higher levels of environmental obesogens than their forebears, both prenatally and in the environment throughout their childhood. Then there's the fact that genetics plays a role in weight, so it seems likely that a person with a higher target weight as an adult will also have a higher target weight as an infant. Then there's the fact that what counts as overweight and obese has changed dramatically since their great-grandparents were infants. Add to that the fact that almost every food that's marketed to young children, and even infants, is loaded with highly processed (probably corn) sugars, artificial colors and flavors, partially hydrogenated oils, and corn-based fillers, and you have the perfect storm.

Case in point: most fast-food restaurants, and even school lunch programs, have now replaced whole milk or 2% milk with skim milk that has processed corn starches and sugars added to it to try to simulate the flavor and texture of whole milk. This is widely cited as a way the restaurants and lunch prgrams have improved the health of the meal. It's so incredibly ironic. Let's remove the (basically) healthy natural fats in the milk, which young kids who are undergoing rapid growth and brain development really, really need, and instead add in cheap highly processed ingredients which have been linked to obesity and diabetes. Brilliant! Add to that the fact that studies show that people who eat full-fat yogurt for breakfast or snack on full-fat cheese actually consume fewer calories over the course of the day because they feel satisfied after eating it, and you have a widely believed, totally counterproductive myth concerning low-fat dairy product being healthier. What should we be worried about keeping out of our dairy products? Hormones, antibiotics, and pesticides. Carcinogens and obesogens. Now that is something to be afraid of.

*Add to that the fact that obesity and diabetes have dramatically increased in our pet population. Are the dogs and cats doing less reps? Seems unlikely.
________________________________________

Soooo...next time you hear someone mindlessly repeating the old Fatties-Are-Lazy line, ask them about the babies. Ask them about the cats and dogs.

And have a happy (healthy) new year.

Things to do instead of blogging, part 2

2010-12-16T16:20:00.004-07:00

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

The content of your character

2010-12-16T09:44:00.007-07:00

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

2010-12-16T08:55:00.007-07:00

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

2010-12-10T13:55:00.001-07:00

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

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Human Rights Day

2010-12-10T11:08:00.002-07:00

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Rally the Team

2010-12-08T19:56:00.003-07:00

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

2010-12-07T15:28:00.003-07:00

from Slate

Food for Thought

2010-12-01T16:05:00.005-07:00

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

2010-12-01T13:44:00.003-07:00

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

2010-11-24T13:10:00.004-07:00

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:

Bake something yummy
Play in the snow
Read some awesome blog posts
Serve lunch at the soup kitchen
Make a sock monkey
Read a book
Play a game with your kids/friends/neighbor/partner/whomever
Sort through your closets and bookshelves and toyboxes, and send unused items to the thrift store
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
Make homemade holiday decorations.

What did I miss?

Transgender Day of Remembrance

2010-11-21T09:05:00.002-07:00

Drown the Dolls

2010-11-17T14:34:00.004-07:00

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

2010-11-04T09:10:00.004-06:00

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:

uses the correct pronouns consistently, all the way through
never refers to the individual's "real" or "actual" sex or gender
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
positively notes the respectful way that the individual's school has responded to him
never suggests that the individual has some sort of political or sexual agenda motivating his gender transition
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

2010-11-03T08:32:00.002-06:00

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

2010-11-02T12:55:00.002-06:00