I'm not sure if it's okay if I permalink my blog, but I should link the post that got me thinking.
Let me state, in advance, that I know I have a problem. I also know I'm about to get it wrong. Quite likely the whole time. For anything and anyone I offend by being the racist I know I am, I will apologize, because no one deserves to be written off for things that have nothing to do with them and are based on an attribute that is nothing they should have to compensate for, which is my understanding of racism; it's a bunch of stuff that the individual has nothing to do with which are tied to the color of their skin, something that they should not have to compensate for. If, in the process of reading this, you become troubled, feel free to let me have it. Maybe I'll learn something.
I am writing about this not to cause pain in anyone, but because if you do not examine your beliefs and background, if you ignore the things you have been taught, you are doomed, to a great degree, to relive them. And it's not like refusing to talk about racism makes it magically disappear. Silence does nothing to give us remission from our national cancers.
To talk about this, I feel like I must establish my credentials: I was born in Louisiana in the 70s, something that will set off a certain expectation for some of you and not others. My family is very Southern, from fairly exclusively Louisiana and Mississippi, and has been there a long time, to hear my mother tell it. I was shocked to discover that one of my mother's aunts, who we visited when I was a child, lived in a plantation house. I asked when I was 10 what the rundown shotgun house just to the left of the house was and was told in was 'domestic servants' quarters. I'm sure you know what I found out about it, later. My mother is proud of her Southern heritage, and taught me that the KKK were a land-owners and gentleman's club that was the equivalent of the neighborhood watch (which is only remotely correct, while missing the point, if you're a white, upper to middle class neighborhood member who complies in all ways to the neighborhood expectations.) My grandmother, who was one of the only relatives to ever want to see my brother and I, sat me down at 16 and told me that all black people were descended from monkeys (based on that whole skull argument), something she had learned in the highest level of education she had received, high school. Take for granted that I know most, if not all, of the Southern racial slurs from that period, 'genteel' or vulgar, that can be applied to black people. Also take for granted the dating talk that I wonder how many people also received about what I will and will not be breeding or associating with.
Even writing this, I feel both saddened and small, in the sense that I feel stupid, petty and unworthy. However, no matter how I do or do not feel, if I am anything moral, I am compelled to try and be less of an asshole. I hope that the buck, family wise, stops here.
Discrimination is an odd beast. It is my observation that people who do not suffer it frequently do not care because they do not see it. This means that the reason I care about this should be articulated. I expect that this post will be troublesome. If you are reading and you know what I'm doing wrong, please (if you want to), tell me. I will go out on a limb and say that the reason I care is that I see something similar between myself and the people who have been the target of the family ire. These are the ways: I have been snubbed and I can only imagine how much more that snubbing is for a person of color. My family rejects me and I them, so I have been motivated to examine the things they have taught me. I am, to some degree, queer, and having been exposed to things like a waitress refusing to serve me when I was cross dressed and out with a girl, men I've worked with telling me that good dick would convert me or being angry that I looked at the same girl they did/bugging me about watching, stares and name-calling based on my appearance or the 'unnaturally masculine' quality of my actions. I have been summarily shut out of churches and bible studies because women should be silent and meek and kicked out of my daughter's principle's office because I objected to her calling the police (my bumper stickers made the other parents uncomfortable. She told them the occupant of the car was a peeping perv. For some reason I objected to that, can't imagine why.) I have seen people lock their car doors and shying away/keeping the kids away from me as I passed in my punk days, also when I was homeless.
How much more, then, for people of color? I am white, female and relatively good looking. I do not carry my non-conformity in the very shade of my skin. In fact, my skin makes things a little easier for me. How much more of this behavior would I get were I black and female, Hispanic and female, Japanese and female, Chinese and female, Filipina, Latina, Chicana, anything else? How can I stop myself from letting something slip out of my lips that makes things that much worse? How can I stop the flow of assumptions, sometimes assumptions I do not even catch until later, from making someone else feel invisible? I think if I can be aware of myself, I will be that much more effective stopping it outside myself.
The quick answer is merciless self-examination. It's difficult at best to examine yourself in a merciless fashion. I know it's impossible to search yourself in an objective way, but my job, as I see it, is to get as close as I can and not slack. I must know myself, must get to the rotten root of every assumption I make in the hope that I will get better and be fair to the people around me.
I have to do something about it, as well. To some degree, because I am a writer, I must write about the process. I hope, if I have something productive to say about the process, that I will offer a way to see things to other white women. Who knows?
I began, as I think a lot of white girls do, by trying to date across race lines, which only turned out poorly, because it's equally as unfair to make someone 'the token date' as it is to refuse to talk to them or to call them names because of their race. Dating someone does not make you challenge your assumptions. Sometimes it makes you quite complacent in them. (As in, 'see, here's proof that I'm okay. I'm one of the good guys. Love me!' As in objectifying, yet again, another human being.)
I think I have to talk about it, to find a community willing to put up with my shit or to read things that challenge me. In other words, to be active about being less of a racist. It is very important, I think, to challenge myself or be challenged on the subject; it makes me think. I am deeply sorry to any community I have troubled in the process and any community I continue to trouble. I hope I earn (as in I hope that I keep trying in ways that are legitimately fruitful so that I'm not acting like I've already got there just because someone takes pity on me) some forbearance or are granted some out of the good of someone's heart. It's likely to be the good of someone's heart. Often. Not that it means I should stop trying.
I think I have to challenge people, as well. Not because I'm enlightened or some shit like that, but because the process requires someone to say 'none of that shit, here.' This is the single most problematic thing to do, for me. The humor I have been instructed to react in is deeply racist, sexist and otherwise problematic. Despite knowing this, my first reaction is still to laugh. Yes, I'm definitely not enlightened. The only thing I can think to do about that is to examine what I'm really laughing at and to tell people what the assumption the punch line is based on. I'm sure this is why I'm occasionally thought to be humorless, which is funny, because I laugh a lot, mostly laugh at myself. I'm sure this is self-absorbed navel-gazing (a theme, here; me, me, me) in nature, but I know laughing at myself is less likely to cause trouble.
Challenging people is also difficult for me because I fear being wrong. This will seem funny if you've read my other posts, but this is the single area I'm timid in, because I just know I'm getting it wrong but I'm not always sure how. I hate not knowing. This should not stop me, but it occasionally does. You'd think I'd be used to my foot in my mouth, and I can shrug it off on most things, but I am so very complicit here that I'm afraid to speak. I fucking well am going to talk anyway when something flies by that I recognize, because if I am wrong, at least the subject is not invisible around me and maybe someone will call my shit to the carpet. (To anyone who has ever called my shit to the carpet, thank you for bothering and I am striving to be more graceful about the process.)
Thank you for reading this far on what is quite likely a troublesome post. I think that's it for now, though I hold the hope that I will be that much less evil next week, next month, next year. I don't think I'll ever be 'perfect', because the insidious nature of racism is such that it must be combated every day of my life, or I will fall back into it, because the racism I recognize is designed to appeal to me. I benefit from it, after all.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Thursday, January 10, 2008
20 things I've done to make my life a little saner
1. given in to the siren call of used bookstores. 3 books for $10? *has warm glow*
2. refuse to step on scales. don't have any anymore, don't want any.
3. watch/do at least one thing a day that I think is funny.
4. remind myself how far I've come.
5. practice being honest about my feelings.
6. have a daily cup of coffee, too sweet and milky. coffee is comfort food.
7. treat myself to a good beer. A little good beer is comfort food, too.
8. read something I've written that I'm proud of and edit it.
9. sex or a good wank. Seriously.
10. dance around, singing loud, mood appropriate songs. There are times when only Ice Cube will do.
11. work out while watching a good movie. Nothing special, just a little sweat.
12. shop at thrift stores, not new stores. I fit better in older, broken-in clothes and I like them better. I actually found an old black happi coat a few months ago.
13. talk to someone who I think understands me.
14. when necessary, flame a sexist. It's oddly soothing to get to do something decisive that I feel is clearly motivated and necessary. Goal!
15. write about my feelings.
16. build my dream castles. I like to justify this by calling it planning, but sometimes it's good to just imagine decorating the castle I'll never own outside my imagination.
17. tell someone a story, sometimes a funny one. If I can make someone laugh, I usually feel better.
18. practice one random act of being kind (holding the door open for someone, buying someone lunch, etc.)
19. play games. Live games are fine, video games are fine, something that's distracting and competitive is very stress relieving.
20. read. Terry Pratchett is always good for a smile.
2. refuse to step on scales. don't have any anymore, don't want any.
3. watch/do at least one thing a day that I think is funny.
4. remind myself how far I've come.
5. practice being honest about my feelings.
6. have a daily cup of coffee, too sweet and milky. coffee is comfort food.
7. treat myself to a good beer. A little good beer is comfort food, too.
8. read something I've written that I'm proud of and edit it.
9. sex or a good wank. Seriously.
10. dance around, singing loud, mood appropriate songs. There are times when only Ice Cube will do.
11. work out while watching a good movie. Nothing special, just a little sweat.
12. shop at thrift stores, not new stores. I fit better in older, broken-in clothes and I like them better. I actually found an old black happi coat a few months ago.
13. talk to someone who I think understands me.
14. when necessary, flame a sexist. It's oddly soothing to get to do something decisive that I feel is clearly motivated and necessary. Goal!
15. write about my feelings.
16. build my dream castles. I like to justify this by calling it planning, but sometimes it's good to just imagine decorating the castle I'll never own outside my imagination.
17. tell someone a story, sometimes a funny one. If I can make someone laugh, I usually feel better.
18. practice one random act of being kind (holding the door open for someone, buying someone lunch, etc.)
19. play games. Live games are fine, video games are fine, something that's distracting and competitive is very stress relieving.
20. read. Terry Pratchett is always good for a smile.
I forgot to mention it
in the previous post, but the 'you need a man to do for ya' meme is the cleaner cut cousin of the 'if you were getting laid better, you would a nicer woman.' I'll resist the urge to discuss my sex life in detail here and say that I get out just fine on a regular basis and while it does relax me, it has never made me want to buy pearls and a frilly apron. I'm no good at nice, though I occasionally manage polite.
What I will say is that it is another example of the trapping women experience when they buck any system. If you make anyone uncomfortable, it's because there's something deficient about you.
Oddly enough, it quickly becomes a discussion, explicit or implicit, of whether or not you've had recent, quality penis.
When the meme is implicit and I recognize it, I try to defuse it with pointing out that competencies are not penis based, other than peeing standing up. I've had the practice, but I'm not quite as good at aiming as I'd like to think most guys are (although, having cleaned work restrooms, I'm not so sure.)
When the meme is explicit, I amuse myself by telling the speaker I do, indeed, have penis at home. Several, in fact, with a matching halter that I can remove when I don't want to deal with having something awkwardly hanging off me. I have no inherent problem with penii, they can be quite fun, I just think that if the penis is supposed to fix things, I should get to draw the speaker's attention to the drawbacks thereof.
Sometimes I twitch my foot when I'm talking about it.
What I will say is that it is another example of the trapping women experience when they buck any system. If you make anyone uncomfortable, it's because there's something deficient about you.
Oddly enough, it quickly becomes a discussion, explicit or implicit, of whether or not you've had recent, quality penis.
When the meme is implicit and I recognize it, I try to defuse it with pointing out that competencies are not penis based, other than peeing standing up. I've had the practice, but I'm not quite as good at aiming as I'd like to think most guys are (although, having cleaned work restrooms, I'm not so sure.)
When the meme is explicit, I amuse myself by telling the speaker I do, indeed, have penis at home. Several, in fact, with a matching halter that I can remove when I don't want to deal with having something awkwardly hanging off me. I have no inherent problem with penii, they can be quite fun, I just think that if the penis is supposed to fix things, I should get to draw the speaker's attention to the drawbacks thereof.
Sometimes I twitch my foot when I'm talking about it.
bitter women and academia
This last semester I took a class on 19th century women's lit. It was late in the evening, and I am fond of the professor for being an old roue and for sharing my aversion to daylight.
We were collectively talking about the Awakening, I believe, and the punishment that the novel's author extends to a female character for the desire she experiences but does not control. I forget how it came up, but one of the women in class made an off-hand remark about men, shrugged at the professor's discomfort, and attributed it to her divorce. The student in question is not my favorite person by any means, but I felt compelled to agree with the point, that Edna's character bears a disproportionate quantity of the responsibility for her sexuality in a highly negative way. And since I've been divorced, perhaps we could blame that, too.
I was not the only woman to chime in. I cracked a joke about interpretation.
The professor blinked, looked at me and said that there were an awful lot of bitter women in the room. I told him we should have a party.
We're such bitter bitches, you know?
The first student said she'd bring her papers. The woman in the back said she'd bring her hospital records. I decided not to say what popped into my head.
I'll bring my daughter's rape kit.
If there's anything I will never forgive, it'll be whomever the hell told everyone about it, just after I got into the department here. One of my professors, whom I had never met before at that point, gave her condolences to me in front of four people at the beginning of the semester party, who all (of course) wanted to discuss it and give their condolences, too. Because what I wanted after making it into college here was to discuss my ex-husband and that legal case. I tried to shrug it off because of the crowd involved, but I seriously thought about kicking her ass and working my way up the food chain.
In any case, back to the bitter bitches.
It was a little community building to hear that many women in the program with nasty divorces or experiences behind them. After all, academia is one of the places we're all supposed to default to being men who, you know, never bring their lives into the classroom with them and always have the impartial view. Emotions have no place in the playground of the mind, you know? Yes, well, I never came to class shell-shocked from being questioned by a detective or, in one case, after being there for my daughter's molestation exam, after trying for the umpteenth million time to figure out where I went wrong or endlessly prank-called all night by my ex's brothers and friends (yes, I turned the phone off after a few times.) Never.
And you know what? I chose to write about it, too. Might as well, since it was apparently already public knowledge. Moreover, there's bound to be some other woman out there with the same problems. That went over well. I'm soooo bitter, sooooo messed up for bringing something like that into the classroom space. I should be writing about something a little less problematic. Of course, I don't have anything else to write about right now, so I guess I should stop writing.
We're encouraged, as nasty, bitter women, to be solitary creatures, ruined for normal relationships and told we are the perpetual crows on the edges of the gender battlefields. There are certainly times when I feel as if that were true. I feel like some kind of carrion eating scavenger or someone carrying a battle axe. Of course, I get to forget it sometimes, too. I can only conclude from the sheer volume of women in the room who, just for a second, acknowledged nasty divorces, that we are well represented in academia. Possibly because, as the meme goes, if you don't have a man to do for ya....
Ha.
I know it's the you-aren't-complete-without-one bullshit. Unfortunately, it gets cited as if it is the only cause for going to college. When you don't have a partner but do have an obligation to provide, you have to do something with yourself that has a reasonable expectation of increasing that ability so that you can get by on your own, irrespective of men, women and wtf-ever. Or you could be going for yourself. Whichever.
That 'if there's no man to do for ya' meme has a very powerful effect on our culture, and I often find myself wondering how my fellow 'bitter bitches' approach the accrual of social and (hopefully) earning power that is getting a degree. In my impression of the academic experience, we have to face the meme. If we speak up, it's because we're bitter or we think we're macho. (I may never stop thinking about that incident. I kicked him out of bed after that statement and the talk that followed, but was polite enough to offer him coffee, since we had both just been stinking drunk/hungover. He declined and gtfo. I'm crazy, you know.) One of the guys I know told me that the MFA program I had just gotten into was one more step on the way to my becoming a (crazy) cat lady. I told him I thought my cat was better company than most of the men I've dated.
The funny thing there is that I know the relationships between men and women do not have to be antagonistic, not that I've ever seen it (I've got hopes for this one), but he didn't. We both laughed for different reasons.
Ha, ha, ha.
Part of the MFA comps here is the articulation of why you chose to go to college and what you think you'll be doing there in the first place/have done (both in the entrance letter and in the comps.) I get the impression, coming into the process, that I'm not supposed to say things like, 'because I have obligations to provide for my children, because I want to be economically independent, because this is a socially viable proof that my relatives were wrong about where women belong, because I have things I want to share and because this appeals to me.' It'd be okay if it was all about my brains, which is certainly a part of it, but there are other concerns. I think the assumption here goes that lucre is dirty and proof (I conjecture on the discussions I've been involved in or overheard in classes) that women just don't understand the (pure) purpose of academia.
Maybe I'm a silly, bitter bitch, but I think I can have both the brains and the money. And I am damn well going to write about what I have to write about without apologizing that I make reviewers nervous.
We were collectively talking about the Awakening, I believe, and the punishment that the novel's author extends to a female character for the desire she experiences but does not control. I forget how it came up, but one of the women in class made an off-hand remark about men, shrugged at the professor's discomfort, and attributed it to her divorce. The student in question is not my favorite person by any means, but I felt compelled to agree with the point, that Edna's character bears a disproportionate quantity of the responsibility for her sexuality in a highly negative way. And since I've been divorced, perhaps we could blame that, too.
I was not the only woman to chime in. I cracked a joke about interpretation.
The professor blinked, looked at me and said that there were an awful lot of bitter women in the room. I told him we should have a party.
We're such bitter bitches, you know?
The first student said she'd bring her papers. The woman in the back said she'd bring her hospital records. I decided not to say what popped into my head.
I'll bring my daughter's rape kit.
If there's anything I will never forgive, it'll be whomever the hell told everyone about it, just after I got into the department here. One of my professors, whom I had never met before at that point, gave her condolences to me in front of four people at the beginning of the semester party, who all (of course) wanted to discuss it and give their condolences, too. Because what I wanted after making it into college here was to discuss my ex-husband and that legal case. I tried to shrug it off because of the crowd involved, but I seriously thought about kicking her ass and working my way up the food chain.
In any case, back to the bitter bitches.
It was a little community building to hear that many women in the program with nasty divorces or experiences behind them. After all, academia is one of the places we're all supposed to default to being men who, you know, never bring their lives into the classroom with them and always have the impartial view. Emotions have no place in the playground of the mind, you know? Yes, well, I never came to class shell-shocked from being questioned by a detective or, in one case, after being there for my daughter's molestation exam, after trying for the umpteenth million time to figure out where I went wrong or endlessly prank-called all night by my ex's brothers and friends (yes, I turned the phone off after a few times.) Never.
And you know what? I chose to write about it, too. Might as well, since it was apparently already public knowledge. Moreover, there's bound to be some other woman out there with the same problems. That went over well. I'm soooo bitter, sooooo messed up for bringing something like that into the classroom space. I should be writing about something a little less problematic. Of course, I don't have anything else to write about right now, so I guess I should stop writing.
We're encouraged, as nasty, bitter women, to be solitary creatures, ruined for normal relationships and told we are the perpetual crows on the edges of the gender battlefields. There are certainly times when I feel as if that were true. I feel like some kind of carrion eating scavenger or someone carrying a battle axe. Of course, I get to forget it sometimes, too. I can only conclude from the sheer volume of women in the room who, just for a second, acknowledged nasty divorces, that we are well represented in academia. Possibly because, as the meme goes, if you don't have a man to do for ya....
Ha.
I know it's the you-aren't-complete-without-one bullshit. Unfortunately, it gets cited as if it is the only cause for going to college. When you don't have a partner but do have an obligation to provide, you have to do something with yourself that has a reasonable expectation of increasing that ability so that you can get by on your own, irrespective of men, women and wtf-ever. Or you could be going for yourself. Whichever.
That 'if there's no man to do for ya' meme has a very powerful effect on our culture, and I often find myself wondering how my fellow 'bitter bitches' approach the accrual of social and (hopefully) earning power that is getting a degree. In my impression of the academic experience, we have to face the meme. If we speak up, it's because we're bitter or we think we're macho. (I may never stop thinking about that incident. I kicked him out of bed after that statement and the talk that followed, but was polite enough to offer him coffee, since we had both just been stinking drunk/hungover. He declined and gtfo. I'm crazy, you know.) One of the guys I know told me that the MFA program I had just gotten into was one more step on the way to my becoming a (crazy) cat lady. I told him I thought my cat was better company than most of the men I've dated.
The funny thing there is that I know the relationships between men and women do not have to be antagonistic, not that I've ever seen it (I've got hopes for this one), but he didn't. We both laughed for different reasons.
Ha, ha, ha.
Part of the MFA comps here is the articulation of why you chose to go to college and what you think you'll be doing there in the first place/have done (both in the entrance letter and in the comps.) I get the impression, coming into the process, that I'm not supposed to say things like, 'because I have obligations to provide for my children, because I want to be economically independent, because this is a socially viable proof that my relatives were wrong about where women belong, because I have things I want to share and because this appeals to me.' It'd be okay if it was all about my brains, which is certainly a part of it, but there are other concerns. I think the assumption here goes that lucre is dirty and proof (I conjecture on the discussions I've been involved in or overheard in classes) that women just don't understand the (pure) purpose of academia.
Maybe I'm a silly, bitter bitch, but I think I can have both the brains and the money. And I am damn well going to write about what I have to write about without apologizing that I make reviewers nervous.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
give anyone enough slack and they'll probably
hang themselves, but you knew that.
The thing about being conditioned to think a certain way is that the earlier and more you were conditioned, the harder it is to uproot those roots (because they're fucking everywhere.)
Sexism is one of those things, for me. I have said in earlier posts that I was taught to be a good little girl. Let's be blunt. I was taught that I was destined to be property, and that the only way to be right and therefore enjoy the protection of my family and society was to shut my yap, pretend to be dumb, and find a good, godly man to manipulate (a message I always thought was oddly contradictory.) When I turned eighteen, my parents took me to church with them so that they could try to find someone to give me to and therefore negate any remaining responsibility to me by handing me off, not that they thought any man was dumb enough to have me. Yes, they told me so. I was a single mother by then.
Any other path and it was within my family's rights and privileges to abandon me and in the privileges of men to beat or rape me to make their point. Yes, this was explicit as well as implicit, though I doubt my mother remembers telling me it. She tends to forget all the relationship advice she gave me, growing up.
Only good little girls get the protection of society, and only pretty little girls who are also good get love. I had a fine, Southern education in that sense. It is my perception that there is great implied violence in the Southern and sexist way of life.
Smile and look pretty, or else.
It has been a long, hard road out of it, and I'm not done yet. By the time I hit puberty, I wanted to be a man so bad I could taste it. I figured that if I had a cock, at least I had a fighting chance. I wanted out of my targeted skin. It has taken me until only about five years ago and two female children to really begin to get comfortable in my shape, which I had spent my entire childhood learning was useless for anything but manipulation and being on the bottom, something that forced my personality against biology, as I understood it. My last girlfriend, for whom I cross-dressed, said I was the most neatly divided person she'd ever dated, nearly perfectly male and female but not androgynous. Put me in male clothes, give me a goatee and I swagger, she said. Put me in a skirt and I sway.
All this means is that I am uber-sensitive to sexism, though it has taken me forever to try and not win by being the biggest pig. Unfortunately for me, I get pigs.
Feminism has been a difficult discipline for me to accept. I am susceptible, for many of the reasons listed above and more, to a separatist doctrine, though I strive to be fair. I am equally susceptible to the more insidious brands of misogyny, which I will uproot in myself if it's the last fucking thing I do.
I tend to specifically buy the idea that you must viciously compete to get ahead, and that a macho type toughness is a necessary component of success. I honestly cannot picture a world without that competition, nor a language unsteeped in violence and power dynamics. I buy the competition because I have seen the competition, not because I like all of it, though I do love a good argument.
I know anecdotal evidence is not considered strong evidence, a claim I'm going to bypass by simply saying that stuff happens all the time without there being a consensus on why it happened and what happened, so all I can give anyone is my impression, as faithfully as I can manage.
The classes on feminism that I have attended have, thus far, upheld the idea that the reform necessary to give women equal rights is a reform that would refuse to treat power, meaning that the question of power would no longer be one that individual or language have to deal with, which I call bullshit on. Both men and women are interested (and should be) in power and authority. There's nothing inherently masculine about power, just as there's nothing inherently feminine about nuturing. When I have asked or talked about competition, with a view toward reform, I was told that it was 'masculine' and faulty (which I have no beef with; the system we love under is demonstrably designed to fuck women over and therefore faulty) and that I'm obviously no feminist, since I'm even questioning this precept, which enrages me.
Intellectually, I know that insisting that women out-man the men is both cruel to women (having been in several situations to compete with macho men, I know how horribly draining it is to have to try and be perfect while under fire, albeit perfectly whatever the competition is rooted in) and only perpetuates the system of sexism. When set up overwhelmingly to fail, women 'fail' (frequently in a fractional way or because the rules have been changed) and then confirm the stereotype the man who set up the competition was seeking to confirm. I also know that women cannot remain in that environment without taking severe personal damage, not because they're weak, but because there is nothing that unites a group of men better than having a clear enemy, which a woman who is willing to compete embodies.
Emotionally, I find the idea of 'you earn your way' attractive, even when I recognize the fallacy in it (the competition is rigged), because I have worked so damn hard getting anywhere, and to insist that the work I have done is suspect because it is not the right kind or because of the admittedly macho underpinning of it makes me feel kinda invalidated. I expect it from men. They don't have any reason to care and don't tend to have any understanding of the things they're engaged in. (Condescending, but I except more out of women because they are the target of so many messages about inferiority and are better positioned to intrinsically understand the vicious nature of it.) Yeah, the system is rigged. Yeah, I have some issues there. None of this has stopped me from stepping into domestic disputes because the cops didn't show/showed an hour later, from shielding women at work, from volunteering to watch people's kids and from jumping the fuck down some guy's throat for being a pig. I am a thorough jumper of throats, but not usually an unethical one. And let's not even talk here about working on the self or what I have gone through to openly write about sexism.
I am really, really uncomfortable with the idea that women don't have to compete, because I think they compete with one another even when there's no men present to 'arbitrate' the competition by being the standard to which we are societally encouraged to apply. As such, Hillary pushes my buttons. Not just because she is the target of the same kind of vicious smear campaigns I know by heart, but also because she seems to know that competition is shitty, but it is the nature of the beast and must be dealt with (sometimes by being a bigger bitch than the next guy; by being more decisive, faster on the draw, first to take advantage of a misstep and last to leave the field. All these qualities only leave you open to more cruelty, but then, women never get out of anything intact.) To some degree, I understand her change of mind on Iraq and the war, though I deplore it and on health care, though it makes me want to give her a good shake.
Come on, Hill, you know better.
I think that if she won, in general, we might see her doing things that we like, because sometimes women have to do an end-run to get there and change things from the top. Bush has gone about proving you can do so for nearly eight years now. I've done some managing of men, and they insist you be the biggest fucking dog in the room to get there. If you want to change anything, you have to outmaneuver everyone getting there and ram it down their throats, not because you're one of them, but because they won't take a carrot from you. That might mean they liked where they were, and the apparent man union rules prohibit such.
Who knows, I may have just hung myself. I think I gave myself enough rope.
The thing about being conditioned to think a certain way is that the earlier and more you were conditioned, the harder it is to uproot those roots (because they're fucking everywhere.)
Sexism is one of those things, for me. I have said in earlier posts that I was taught to be a good little girl. Let's be blunt. I was taught that I was destined to be property, and that the only way to be right and therefore enjoy the protection of my family and society was to shut my yap, pretend to be dumb, and find a good, godly man to manipulate (a message I always thought was oddly contradictory.) When I turned eighteen, my parents took me to church with them so that they could try to find someone to give me to and therefore negate any remaining responsibility to me by handing me off, not that they thought any man was dumb enough to have me. Yes, they told me so. I was a single mother by then.
Any other path and it was within my family's rights and privileges to abandon me and in the privileges of men to beat or rape me to make their point. Yes, this was explicit as well as implicit, though I doubt my mother remembers telling me it. She tends to forget all the relationship advice she gave me, growing up.
Only good little girls get the protection of society, and only pretty little girls who are also good get love. I had a fine, Southern education in that sense. It is my perception that there is great implied violence in the Southern and sexist way of life.
Smile and look pretty, or else.
It has been a long, hard road out of it, and I'm not done yet. By the time I hit puberty, I wanted to be a man so bad I could taste it. I figured that if I had a cock, at least I had a fighting chance. I wanted out of my targeted skin. It has taken me until only about five years ago and two female children to really begin to get comfortable in my shape, which I had spent my entire childhood learning was useless for anything but manipulation and being on the bottom, something that forced my personality against biology, as I understood it. My last girlfriend, for whom I cross-dressed, said I was the most neatly divided person she'd ever dated, nearly perfectly male and female but not androgynous. Put me in male clothes, give me a goatee and I swagger, she said. Put me in a skirt and I sway.
All this means is that I am uber-sensitive to sexism, though it has taken me forever to try and not win by being the biggest pig. Unfortunately for me, I get pigs.
Feminism has been a difficult discipline for me to accept. I am susceptible, for many of the reasons listed above and more, to a separatist doctrine, though I strive to be fair. I am equally susceptible to the more insidious brands of misogyny, which I will uproot in myself if it's the last fucking thing I do.
I tend to specifically buy the idea that you must viciously compete to get ahead, and that a macho type toughness is a necessary component of success. I honestly cannot picture a world without that competition, nor a language unsteeped in violence and power dynamics. I buy the competition because I have seen the competition, not because I like all of it, though I do love a good argument.
I know anecdotal evidence is not considered strong evidence, a claim I'm going to bypass by simply saying that stuff happens all the time without there being a consensus on why it happened and what happened, so all I can give anyone is my impression, as faithfully as I can manage.
The classes on feminism that I have attended have, thus far, upheld the idea that the reform necessary to give women equal rights is a reform that would refuse to treat power, meaning that the question of power would no longer be one that individual or language have to deal with, which I call bullshit on. Both men and women are interested (and should be) in power and authority. There's nothing inherently masculine about power, just as there's nothing inherently feminine about nuturing. When I have asked or talked about competition, with a view toward reform, I was told that it was 'masculine' and faulty (which I have no beef with; the system we love under is demonstrably designed to fuck women over and therefore faulty) and that I'm obviously no feminist, since I'm even questioning this precept, which enrages me.
Intellectually, I know that insisting that women out-man the men is both cruel to women (having been in several situations to compete with macho men, I know how horribly draining it is to have to try and be perfect while under fire, albeit perfectly whatever the competition is rooted in) and only perpetuates the system of sexism. When set up overwhelmingly to fail, women 'fail' (frequently in a fractional way or because the rules have been changed) and then confirm the stereotype the man who set up the competition was seeking to confirm. I also know that women cannot remain in that environment without taking severe personal damage, not because they're weak, but because there is nothing that unites a group of men better than having a clear enemy, which a woman who is willing to compete embodies.
Emotionally, I find the idea of 'you earn your way' attractive, even when I recognize the fallacy in it (the competition is rigged), because I have worked so damn hard getting anywhere, and to insist that the work I have done is suspect because it is not the right kind or because of the admittedly macho underpinning of it makes me feel kinda invalidated. I expect it from men. They don't have any reason to care and don't tend to have any understanding of the things they're engaged in. (Condescending, but I except more out of women because they are the target of so many messages about inferiority and are better positioned to intrinsically understand the vicious nature of it.) Yeah, the system is rigged. Yeah, I have some issues there. None of this has stopped me from stepping into domestic disputes because the cops didn't show/showed an hour later, from shielding women at work, from volunteering to watch people's kids and from jumping the fuck down some guy's throat for being a pig. I am a thorough jumper of throats, but not usually an unethical one. And let's not even talk here about working on the self or what I have gone through to openly write about sexism.
I am really, really uncomfortable with the idea that women don't have to compete, because I think they compete with one another even when there's no men present to 'arbitrate' the competition by being the standard to which we are societally encouraged to apply. As such, Hillary pushes my buttons. Not just because she is the target of the same kind of vicious smear campaigns I know by heart, but also because she seems to know that competition is shitty, but it is the nature of the beast and must be dealt with (sometimes by being a bigger bitch than the next guy; by being more decisive, faster on the draw, first to take advantage of a misstep and last to leave the field. All these qualities only leave you open to more cruelty, but then, women never get out of anything intact.) To some degree, I understand her change of mind on Iraq and the war, though I deplore it and on health care, though it makes me want to give her a good shake.
Come on, Hill, you know better.
I think that if she won, in general, we might see her doing things that we like, because sometimes women have to do an end-run to get there and change things from the top. Bush has gone about proving you can do so for nearly eight years now. I've done some managing of men, and they insist you be the biggest fucking dog in the room to get there. If you want to change anything, you have to outmaneuver everyone getting there and ram it down their throats, not because you're one of them, but because they won't take a carrot from you. That might mean they liked where they were, and the apparent man union rules prohibit such.
Who knows, I may have just hung myself. I think I gave myself enough rope.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
trying very hard not to sing in the rain
Immediately after the birth of my son, I had the surgeons perform a tubal, something I've been begging MDs to allow since I was 21. I asked repeatedly for a long time and was turned down because 'I'd have regretted it.' Looking at my son, I'm glad he's here, but being condescended to by ObGyns in terms of reproductive choices for years was not pleasant.
In any case, I went back in a few months later to get the final test results on the bits they pulled out. I am the only person I've ever met who had their tubes cut out and showed to them (see what happens when they dope you sideways? you ask to see strange things). The tests concluded that yes, I am sterilized.
It was all I could do not to go singing out of the hospital. I did, however, skip all the way to the parking garage grinning like a fool, bemused boyfriend in tow. The final I attended that evening was greatly ameliorated by the fact that I'd been to the vet to get tutored (sorry, old joke about the difference between dogs and cats.) Riding back in the car, I tried to explain my glee, which struck the boyfriend as a little ghoulish. I was rocking back and forward, punching the air and singing, 'I can't get pregnant any more, w00t!' I seriously contemplated sticking my head out the window to sing it at passing cars.
I suppose, if I had to break it down, it was the removal of the fear. Staring at a pregnancy test is a benchmark in every sexually active woman's life, along with the resulting panic and prayer (even if it's just a generalized 'please, no.') Even women who are married and not averse to being pregnant are not necessarily thrilled with the idea. Pacing the bathroom, crying, nausea, bargaining with god, the devil or whomever shows up; I'm free, goddamn it. I'll never have to see the lines again, never have to go through my body changing and the looks I get or the rearranging of my whole life because I cannot be sure that I'll get any help, should I chose to have the baby. I've been married, (ick) church-going and had a full time job and not received any support from my youngest daughter's father, to whom I was married, because babies weren't his problem.
Isn't the conservative, religious promise that if you're a very good girl, they'll stop punishing you by refusing to help? If you do everything you're supposed to, then you could earn the help of your partner, who doesn't have to help you unless you're behaving. I was taught that and a pretty face were insurance that you would be treated well.
My mother wonders why I ran screaming from the house as soon as I could and continue to be such a troublesome woman. Before anyone gets snarky, I'm told I've got a nice enough face and a relatively trim figure. Now if I would only get a girdle and a skirt, I could be putting ground glass into meatloaf and drinking daily in as little as a week.
In my experience, men are neither obliged nor likely to help with the children they father. Not having to worry again, to watch a child perform first steps, first words, alone because her father, in the other room, was too busy amusing himself to bother to care; all these things are off my future plate.
My oldest child's father actually brought a picture of his 'real family' to the hearing in which he surrendered all his parental rights and showed it to her. I don't give a shit whether or not he felt trapped by the pregnancy. Since he never spent any time with her, his feelings on the subject are moot.
The boy's father, whom I love hoping that he'll behave but am never sure of, thanks to experience, either will or will not comply. Either way, after my son grows up, never again. I'm not sure I could take the loneliness again. I've never had a more lonely moment than trying to beg my youngest daughter's father to care that she was taking her first steps. He told me not to bother him unless she said daddy and was very angry that her first word was mommy.
The burden just is not the same for men as women. Even after all the deadbeat dad legislation and commercial campaigns on responsibility, men still do not have to be there or give a shit. I think that we, as a nation, have come to expect men to do little.
Look at how hard we applaud men for doing a portion of what the child's mother does every fucking day (and works, too.)
Later that night, I lay awake for awhile thinking about my new sterility, still ecstatic from the knowledge that I'd never have to see a pregnancy test again. It's not just the ability to have sex anytime, anywhere (w00t), without the specter of pregnancy. It's not just being exempt from the long, lonely process of watching the child grow and watching society (which has changed considerably in the thirty years I've been around) still snub the children of single mothers and the single mothers for 'not being good enough to keep their man/relationship,' which I am still hearing about.
It's not being utterly beholden to that system of oppression. I'm out, goddamn it. No one can drag me back into that fear and grief, into the discomfort and risk of pregnancy. I'm done.
My body is mine and will stay mine until I fucking well die.
In any case, I went back in a few months later to get the final test results on the bits they pulled out. I am the only person I've ever met who had their tubes cut out and showed to them (see what happens when they dope you sideways? you ask to see strange things). The tests concluded that yes, I am sterilized.
It was all I could do not to go singing out of the hospital. I did, however, skip all the way to the parking garage grinning like a fool, bemused boyfriend in tow. The final I attended that evening was greatly ameliorated by the fact that I'd been to the vet to get tutored (sorry, old joke about the difference between dogs and cats.) Riding back in the car, I tried to explain my glee, which struck the boyfriend as a little ghoulish. I was rocking back and forward, punching the air and singing, 'I can't get pregnant any more, w00t!' I seriously contemplated sticking my head out the window to sing it at passing cars.
I suppose, if I had to break it down, it was the removal of the fear. Staring at a pregnancy test is a benchmark in every sexually active woman's life, along with the resulting panic and prayer (even if it's just a generalized 'please, no.') Even women who are married and not averse to being pregnant are not necessarily thrilled with the idea. Pacing the bathroom, crying, nausea, bargaining with god, the devil or whomever shows up; I'm free, goddamn it. I'll never have to see the lines again, never have to go through my body changing and the looks I get or the rearranging of my whole life because I cannot be sure that I'll get any help, should I chose to have the baby. I've been married, (ick) church-going and had a full time job and not received any support from my youngest daughter's father, to whom I was married, because babies weren't his problem.
Isn't the conservative, religious promise that if you're a very good girl, they'll stop punishing you by refusing to help? If you do everything you're supposed to, then you could earn the help of your partner, who doesn't have to help you unless you're behaving. I was taught that and a pretty face were insurance that you would be treated well.
My mother wonders why I ran screaming from the house as soon as I could and continue to be such a troublesome woman. Before anyone gets snarky, I'm told I've got a nice enough face and a relatively trim figure. Now if I would only get a girdle and a skirt, I could be putting ground glass into meatloaf and drinking daily in as little as a week.
In my experience, men are neither obliged nor likely to help with the children they father. Not having to worry again, to watch a child perform first steps, first words, alone because her father, in the other room, was too busy amusing himself to bother to care; all these things are off my future plate.
My oldest child's father actually brought a picture of his 'real family' to the hearing in which he surrendered all his parental rights and showed it to her. I don't give a shit whether or not he felt trapped by the pregnancy. Since he never spent any time with her, his feelings on the subject are moot.
The boy's father, whom I love hoping that he'll behave but am never sure of, thanks to experience, either will or will not comply. Either way, after my son grows up, never again. I'm not sure I could take the loneliness again. I've never had a more lonely moment than trying to beg my youngest daughter's father to care that she was taking her first steps. He told me not to bother him unless she said daddy and was very angry that her first word was mommy.
The burden just is not the same for men as women. Even after all the deadbeat dad legislation and commercial campaigns on responsibility, men still do not have to be there or give a shit. I think that we, as a nation, have come to expect men to do little.
Look at how hard we applaud men for doing a portion of what the child's mother does every fucking day (and works, too.)
Later that night, I lay awake for awhile thinking about my new sterility, still ecstatic from the knowledge that I'd never have to see a pregnancy test again. It's not just the ability to have sex anytime, anywhere (w00t), without the specter of pregnancy. It's not just being exempt from the long, lonely process of watching the child grow and watching society (which has changed considerably in the thirty years I've been around) still snub the children of single mothers and the single mothers for 'not being good enough to keep their man/relationship,' which I am still hearing about.
It's not being utterly beholden to that system of oppression. I'm out, goddamn it. No one can drag me back into that fear and grief, into the discomfort and risk of pregnancy. I'm done.
My body is mine and will stay mine until I fucking well die.
Monday, January 7, 2008
sHuckabee's gob factor
sHuckabee (aw, shucks, guys) has a certain kind of appeal. Sort of. Because of his gob, both the gob he can't seem to shut (it's like watching a wreck; you know you shouldn't look for parts on the road, but you do anyway) and his 'good old boy' factor. I am not terribly surprised by his appeal, not necessarily because of his theology degree (which has the appeal, to me, of roadkill sushi), but because of his use of the common folks approach.
I have *pokes index finger into air* a theory: the influx of technology is creating a divided population, polarized at a basic level by the desire to retain a certain kind of privacy and simplicity and the ability to commit certain kinds of abstractions. The conversion of things like record keeping, literacy and communication to primarily digital forms changes the parameters for privacy and literacy such that acts of communication are increasingly nuanced and multipartite. Communication comes, of necessity, across different cultures (and therefore styles of interpretation) and multiple channels in terms of method (auditory, word and image), requiring digital communicators to be technological generalists to be effective. Digital communication requires communicators who are a little graphic designer, a little artist, a little writer, fairly well-read and at least marginally witty. Formal styles of discourse, legacy of paper literacy, were originally intended to bridge the gap between cultures (and attempt to compensate for unintended gaffs) are neither efficient in terms of net communication (though appreciated, if anyone feels like commenting) nor adapted to net and digital culture. For starters, formal styles are a bit... wordy.
And it uses language, now that we can rub cultures across the planet, that is associated with enforcing status quo, which is why it tends to make certain groups of people more comfortable than others.
Privacy is utterly changed in a digital environment. Since computers are being used to store personal information, they are basically collections of everything from thoughts to social security numbers and bank passwords. This condensation of information only makes people nervous (no one likes to be reminded they can be broken down into a pile of data), and since very few people can afford to either have a separate computer for storage, not be online or do all their personal business in person, a problem in a period where the local customer service is being outsourced overseas, this creates a situation in which anonymity is difficult at best and reserved for specialists or people who can afford their services. I know enough to run several anonymizers, when I like, but I am not convinced that my knowledge is complete or common.
These kinds of factors create the generalized anxiety that gob appeal is so attractive to, in a population that feels outstripped, generally manipulated and longs for a feeling of competency. Of course, the rosy past they're pining for doesn't really exist (life has never been a terribly simple place), and staking your desire to be competent on an imaginary time that you need to get back to has the rosy effect of making you feel more competent by proxy (you'd have really fit in, back then; any inability to cope with now is not your fault, you were born in the wrong time) and creating tremendous apathy and easily diverted motivation; what can you do to change your anxiety can very quickly become a sort of generalized fondness for 'stand-up' guys who promise to simplify things.
*cough* Bush *cough*
I find myself not so much surprised as much as a little annoyed and somewhat resigned by the fact that sHuckabee got the Iowa primary and the amount of momentum he seems to be currently enjoying. After Bush's manipulation of the gob (and god) factor, with resulting fall out, you'd think some of these voters would think back on that campaign and be wary of the gob approach, but the pervasive intrusion of technology creates a constant, low level buzz of anxiety to be taken advantage of by those kinds of appeals. (As well as the 9/11, terrorist-- pronounced tourist-- appeals, which are beginning, thank god, to wear thin.)
I suppose that the history of politics is as much the history of fear as it is of the decisions groups of people make (a few at a time or many.) And the gob factor here is completely a fear based argument. Because of that, when I go to analyze politics, even the politics of (I lurve you!) Kucinich, which are remarkably free, rhetoric wise, of the kinds of fear I see in some of the other campaigns, I still look first for the fear. I think this is sadly becoming a very valid way to examine the political system here in the US; sad because it is not a productive kind of fear. Gob factor appeal is not based on long term planning, it's based on reductive and dangerously exclusive thinking. Productive appeals to fear have a much stronger emphasis on the future.
To make all this a little funnier, my ultra-conservative mother just dropped by. Unable to resist the siren call of someone else's writing, she read the first few paragraphs, then stopped to remind me that the thyroid problems running in my father's side of the family cause disordered thoughts and the prescription for it was really cheap, ahem. I mean, criticizing sHuckabee means my thoughts are obviously disordered.
I have *pokes index finger into air* a theory: the influx of technology is creating a divided population, polarized at a basic level by the desire to retain a certain kind of privacy and simplicity and the ability to commit certain kinds of abstractions. The conversion of things like record keeping, literacy and communication to primarily digital forms changes the parameters for privacy and literacy such that acts of communication are increasingly nuanced and multipartite. Communication comes, of necessity, across different cultures (and therefore styles of interpretation) and multiple channels in terms of method (auditory, word and image), requiring digital communicators to be technological generalists to be effective. Digital communication requires communicators who are a little graphic designer, a little artist, a little writer, fairly well-read and at least marginally witty. Formal styles of discourse, legacy of paper literacy, were originally intended to bridge the gap between cultures (and attempt to compensate for unintended gaffs) are neither efficient in terms of net communication (though appreciated, if anyone feels like commenting) nor adapted to net and digital culture. For starters, formal styles are a bit... wordy.
And it uses language, now that we can rub cultures across the planet, that is associated with enforcing status quo, which is why it tends to make certain groups of people more comfortable than others.
Privacy is utterly changed in a digital environment. Since computers are being used to store personal information, they are basically collections of everything from thoughts to social security numbers and bank passwords. This condensation of information only makes people nervous (no one likes to be reminded they can be broken down into a pile of data), and since very few people can afford to either have a separate computer for storage, not be online or do all their personal business in person, a problem in a period where the local customer service is being outsourced overseas, this creates a situation in which anonymity is difficult at best and reserved for specialists or people who can afford their services. I know enough to run several anonymizers, when I like, but I am not convinced that my knowledge is complete or common.
These kinds of factors create the generalized anxiety that gob appeal is so attractive to, in a population that feels outstripped, generally manipulated and longs for a feeling of competency. Of course, the rosy past they're pining for doesn't really exist (life has never been a terribly simple place), and staking your desire to be competent on an imaginary time that you need to get back to has the rosy effect of making you feel more competent by proxy (you'd have really fit in, back then; any inability to cope with now is not your fault, you were born in the wrong time) and creating tremendous apathy and easily diverted motivation; what can you do to change your anxiety can very quickly become a sort of generalized fondness for 'stand-up' guys who promise to simplify things.
*cough* Bush *cough*
I find myself not so much surprised as much as a little annoyed and somewhat resigned by the fact that sHuckabee got the Iowa primary and the amount of momentum he seems to be currently enjoying. After Bush's manipulation of the gob (and god) factor, with resulting fall out, you'd think some of these voters would think back on that campaign and be wary of the gob approach, but the pervasive intrusion of technology creates a constant, low level buzz of anxiety to be taken advantage of by those kinds of appeals. (As well as the 9/11, terrorist-- pronounced tourist-- appeals, which are beginning, thank god, to wear thin.)
I suppose that the history of politics is as much the history of fear as it is of the decisions groups of people make (a few at a time or many.) And the gob factor here is completely a fear based argument. Because of that, when I go to analyze politics, even the politics of (I lurve you!) Kucinich, which are remarkably free, rhetoric wise, of the kinds of fear I see in some of the other campaigns, I still look first for the fear. I think this is sadly becoming a very valid way to examine the political system here in the US; sad because it is not a productive kind of fear. Gob factor appeal is not based on long term planning, it's based on reductive and dangerously exclusive thinking. Productive appeals to fear have a much stronger emphasis on the future.
To make all this a little funnier, my ultra-conservative mother just dropped by. Unable to resist the siren call of someone else's writing, she read the first few paragraphs, then stopped to remind me that the thyroid problems running in my father's side of the family cause disordered thoughts and the prescription for it was really cheap, ahem. I mean, criticizing sHuckabee means my thoughts are obviously disordered.
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