Professor Mama

So people are talking about children in academic and private life--lots of people. Let me start by admitting that I do find some of what's being said upsetting, especially in the comments to some of the older posts. Which is part of why I'm weighing in now rather than earlier. Here, having had time to get past my initial anger, I'll try to minimize the polemic.

The first thing to start with, as I've said before, having children is not a "choice." It is a biological fact. We are living animals: we reproduce. That's how it works. It is a wonderful, wonderful thing--and I took advantage of it for more than 30 years--that we can choose not to reproduce; but unless you wanna outlaw sex, reproduction will happen. I know a woman, for instance, who got knocked up with TWINS while she was on bcp. Pseudonymous kid was a condom baby. Though really, the question of birth control error is a red herring, because I really want to stress the fundamental point that any system that is predicated on the idea that living things will not reproduce is deeply, fundamentally stupid. You might as well resent the fact that people have to eat. (And by the way, how often do you eat a power bar for lunch? Doesn't the inability to acccomodate eating suggest that there's something wrong?)

The second fundamental thing is this "children are okay, as long as I never have to deal with them" thing--including the resentment of people who get "more" resources because their health insurance covers their family, or because their kids get tuition breaks at the colleges where they teach, or who breastfeed in public, or whatever. Children are part of society. They are human beings. They are not exotic pets. They get to go into restaurants; they get to eat in places other than public bathrooms; they get to have bad days; they get to have their needs met, too.

Yes. Kids have certain needs that are specific to being kids. They are more dependent, they have shorter attention spans and less impulse control, they are sometimes clumsy or incompletely socialized. (Then again, so are a lot of adults.) Good parents will take this into account: if the kid starts crying, they will immediately pick it up and leave (or nurse it, which is what I always did). If the kid is being a brat, they will either put a stop to the behavior or leave until it's under control; if they want to go to a social event, they will either inquire about bringing the kid or they will figure out a solution, whether that means not going, or leaving their partner at home, or paying a sitter. This will inevitably cause some inconvenience to those around us: you will inadvertently see the tit while the baby is being pacified (though really, if you don't like to see breastfeeding in public, look elsewhere), or you will hear the yelling as the kid is hustled to the door, or you will not see your coupled friends as often as you'd like, if you aren't willing to have social events that include their kids (which is fine, but then don't get bent if the friendship inevitably cools a bit). And sometimes people are bad parents, and sometimes even good parents have bad days. Admittedly, other people are inconvenient sometimes.

Kids, perhaps, are more often inconvenient--especially in societies where their presence is not accomodated. Know, however, that I am raising my kids to have good manners--so when you get old and dribble your food down your chest in a restaurant, or speak loudly because you are hard of hearing, or even tomorrow, if you are having a shitty day and you are broadcasting your resentment to everyone in line at the shop, they will not demand that you remove yourself immediately but will, instead, understand that "everyone feels bad sometimes, honey; let's let that lady go ahead of us in line" or "she can't help being a messy eater, and it's impolite to stare."

Ok, so that out of the way, the specifics of academic life: what I think is that those of us with kids who are insisting on (and starting to get) "accomodation" for our family lives are the damn canaries in the coal mine. Or, if you want to be more optimistic and you don't mind mixing your metaphors, we're the vanguard. Rather than resenting us for getting "special" treatment, why not back us up? The fundamental problem isn't the kids: the fundamental problem is that the 40-hour work week died a long time ago, and we're all supposed to have these stupid monkish existences where we don't have frivolous hobbies. Like kids. Those of us who are pushing to do things like leave the office at a reasonable hour, or have some flexibility in scheduling, or recognize that teaching at unconventional hours isn't something you can just assume people will do, are the ones who--if you'll just back us up--will start forcing reexamination of the myth of 24/7 availability.

Let's talk about some situations: night classes? I taught a night class when pseudonymous kid was a toddler. Working class families have done that kind of thing for ever: one parent works the day shift, one swing shift, so as to cover child care. I would imagine that a lot of academic parents might actually prefer night classes for that reason, at least until the kids go to school. Meetings missed for soccer games? Everyone misses meetings once in a while--is this really that big a deal? Having to schedule things around when kids get picked up from school? Admittedly, this is a pain in the ass; if it helps at all, it's a fucking pain in the ass for us, too, the running back and fucking forth all the time: it isn't easy to try to maintain a train of thought when you're constantly dashing around, and it means we're always late, yes, and we know you resent it, and that just adds to the stress. So it's annoying all 'round.

Now it is true that academic life (and certainly other jobs too) demands a sort of presence beyond 9-5. The very existence of the "campus" creates a sort of community to which we all belong. Students schedule plays or rallies or campus barbeques during non-working hours, and in most places faculty are expected to take part, at least sometimes. I have this utopian idea that we ought to just bring our goddamn kids into the office when there are after-hours meetings, and let them play in a separate room, or quietly in the corner, or in the hall, or in our offices--it would help keep meetings short. When pseudonymous kid was a babe in arms, I damn well took him to meetings and nursed him to keep him quiet. And by the way, has anyone ever noticed that there are never baby changing tables in campus bathrooms??? Things like on-campus child care would sure help, especially if they were fully staffed (always, there is a waiting list) and let you drop kids in and out as needed (which often they don't).

I had a professor in graduate school who would bring her cat to the office on weekends. I had a couple of friends who brought their dogs to campus sometimes. I think this is all good: sure, there are people with allergies, and yes it is hard to work if the kids or pets are noisy, so obviously you need to be considerate--if the department's admin. assistant is deathly allergic to (or phobic of) dogs, leave the dog home, and if your kid isn't the quiet type, don't bring him in for the entire afternoon. Ideally, we really should be able to integrate our lives with our jobs, especially in jobs that demand we identify ourselves by our titles. Ideally, campus life should either be just a job--in which case, I'm leaving at 5 so I can have dinner with my kid--or it should accept that it's a vocation and professing is an identity, in which case I'll stay late, but my kid will come into the office and play in the hall.

I also want to point out that most of the discussion, especially by academics, is presuming that people with kids are married. This isn't always the case. Even if you wanted to be a hard-line asshole and say that anyone with children who divorces deserves to be punished by not being able to hold a job (because, you know, why should the workplace accomodate people's choices?), do you really want to say that if someone's partner drops dead? Not to mention that it is totally fuzzy thinking to conflate the issue of children with the issue of relationships--though obviously they often overlap, for lots of reasons. Being part of a couple does make it easier to parent, assuming your partner isn't a complete asshole; even in couples, women with demanding jobs often end up pulling more than their fair share of parenting hours, because it's a lot harder for men to ask for time "off"; because we've all--including the kids, which is important to note--internalized the "mama first" bullshit; because a commuter marriage is a lot harder to have when there are kids involved; and of course because "relationships" includes relationships with one's kids.

People are not brains on sticks. People have lives. Whether it's partners, parents, kids, pets, buddies, whatever, we all need time to get the hell out of the office. Yes, culturally, we say "kids come first" (though "family" parking spots notwithstanding, that is largely lip service--it's nice to lessen the chance that my kid's going to get hit by a car in a lot if he tears himself out of my hand while I'm carrying shopping bags, but it doesn't really make up for the fact that the big-ass grocery store is a shopping environment designed to try kids' patience so that inevitably they're going to tantrum or run off before you get all the way through the store, and then everyone will glare at you for being such a "bad parent").

Sometimes we are even starting to put kids first, like by not penalizing people for leaving the office to pick up their kids at school. It doesn't therefore follow that everyone else comes in last, however. It means that you ought to be able to say, "So-and-so needs to leave because her kid gets off school, and I need to leave because my dog has been locked in the house all day and will pee on the floor if I don't go now." So, say it. Don't expect us to fight your battles for you: speak up about your needs. If you can do so in a way that doesn't set up some false zero-sum game, you might get us as allies: keep in mind that saying, "I need to go because of my kids" is a fucking terrifying thing to say, a lot of the time. Ten years ago (and still, often), women who said that sort of thing were cutting their own throats. We had to fight damn hard to get the right to have kids and jobs (a right we still can't take for granted, obviously). In some sense, the pressure that we're all feeling about work can be read as a kind of backlash: you want a kid and a job? Ok, that's your "choice." Now, suffer--including suffering the resentment of your fellow workers. Fellow workers, look at how these women and men with kids are making your lives more difficult! Don't you think that they shouldn't be getting these "special" rights? Shouldn't they be forced to "choose" between their kids and their jobs? They're taking away "your" jobs, and they're not even doing them properly! They're imposing on your rights because they are demanding special treatment!

We all, every last one of us, with and without kids, need to resist the idea that the other person's "choice" is somehow unfair to us. Don't blame your sister because life isn't fair.

Continuing to become a link blog

Actually, this is serious. Check this out: Republican Provision to Outsource Torture of Suspects. Which, in fact, is against international law, not to mention unconstitutional. I got the link from Unfogged.

Which brings me to something else I've been meaning to blog. Cleis and I have this plan where, before the election, we want to gather a ton of links--hard evidence stuff, not just lefty opinionating--on what, exactly, the Bush administration has been doing. My own hangup is shit like the Global Gag Rule and women's reproductive stuff; the torture crap is obviously bad (can we just link Seymour Hersh's entire damn book? Probably not, but the New Yorker articles are available online), Scott Ritter and Hans Blix damn well did say that there weren't WMD's before the war, which makes all the mealymouthed apologizing by leftist commentators and the NYT and WP just so much self-serving bullshit, and etc.

I'm sick of the press coverage of the fucking Swift boat bullshit, and I know that there are blogs out there, real political blogs, that have all the evidence people need, but it can't hurt, damnit, if we entertainment & fun blogs also collect and present stuff. And, frankly, I would just find it helpful to have a big ass collection of very specific hard evidence to point to when I try to convince people at the 11th hour to vote for Kerry, damnit. I'm as guilty as anyone (more guilty, probably) of resorting to fairly content-free polemic on the subject of the current administration and/or saying, "they're doing x, y, and z" (to which the response is always, "where's your evidence?"), but as a matter of fact I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who are too smart to be swayed by rhetoric, but who are still dithering over whether they're going to vote for Bush, and I want to hand them a sheaf of articles and say, "here's evidence, read this."

We had this idea that we could actually gather stuff and then anyone who wants to could post it, sort of a last-ditch, "my god, please don't let's ruin this country" meme.

And yes, I know this is anti-Bush and not pro-Kerry. At this point I really would vote for the proverbial yellow dog. But if people want to take the pro-Kerry angle, feel free to send things along on that too. Either comment, or post it in your own blog and then link back to me and/or Cleis.

Anyone? Bueller?

Now I'm a link blog

I can't believe I broke 30 comments with the Trevor thing. Especially since only one of those comments was actually mine.

So, since linking is obviously the key to true popularity, let me point out that there's a new page up over at Get Your War On. That strip is getting bitterer every time.

I've discovered the secret to a productive research strategy

First, get a blog, write almost every day in it, exorcise your anxieties and neuroses. Next, start getting laid and admired on a regular basis. Begin feeling less anxious. This will get you working on the essay you've been dithering about all summer, even though classes have started and theoretically you have less time.

Get a boyfriend in a big city with a real research university. Go visit him on a night when you don't have to teach the next day, let him cook you an excellent dinner, have good sex, and a solid night's sleep in his arms. Wake up at a reasonable hour the next morning because he has an actual job, rather than sleeping in as you would at home b/c you're not teaching, and get your ass to the actual real research library that you intend to go to all the time, but then you end up sleeping in and/or deciding that you don't want to deal with rush-hour traffic.

Spend a few hours feeling your synapses fire as you look over your manuscript, taking notes on exactly how to frame your argument for the journal that's solicited it. Read books your own library doesn't have, furiously jot down brilliant ideas. Realize how you have to frame the monograph proposal you intend to write this fall.

In other words, OGeorge: I was too busy having sex yesterday, and working today, to write about the sex-having. Sorry ;)

But I'm glad Trevor kept everyone so amused in my absence... For the record, my argument was Amardeep's; Mr. B. went with "hidden."

Oh dear

I fear that Mr. B. and I are on the verge of a divorce, because we simply can't agree whether the lyric to this little ditty runs, "Where is the cow / Headed right now?" or "Where is the cow / Hidden right now?"

I know I'm right, of course. But if most of you agree with him, I'll at least be convinced that he's not such a freak that I can't possibly live with him a moment longer. Because, after all, what other people think is the only thing that counts.

No, really. Which is it? Listen, leave a comment, and don't blame me if you spend the rest of the day humming it under you breath.

Mother/fucker

So, having complained that mithras gets more interesting google searches than I do, apparently someone found my blog today by googling "children fucking," which is just so disturbing I don't want to think about it, and I hope they went away immediately. Be careful what you wish for, obviously. All the people who want to find out about "open marriage husband fucking others" or "fucking hot phd women" or whatever are fine, but "children fucking" crosses my personal line, thanks.

Not that kids aren't erotic creatures, because they are. In the comments to this thread (go read it immediately, it's great), I asked flea to talk about the whole problem of kids and sex toys. What do you say when your kid gets into your toybox? Because the nosy little monsters will, you know. You could, of course, just not have sex toys, but you have to give up so many sexy things when you have kids--spontaneity, leisure, dates--that it would just be too much of a sacrifice.

Anyway, I decided that rather than making flea blog this topic, I'd do it myself. Plus I've been feeling bad that all the Guardian readers who came here looking for Washingtonienne-style sex have found only undigested political snark and really boring pleas for technical assistance. Wrong version of Washington: dull and politically banal.

So, since it's the weekend, here is the idosyncratic Dr. Bitch advice on "how to deal with sex toys around kids."

First, stay away from too-realistic dildoes. Now, personally, realistic dildoes kind of squee me out anyway: wow, I think, that looks like an amputated body part! Not sexy. So maybe this advice stems more from my own personal wiggishness on those particular devices. But still, I just am not sure I want to try explaining why we have pretend penises lying around in a box, and you just know that the kid would try to play dress up with them, like putting a rubber hand inside your sleeve and offering to shake someone's hand and then having it fall off, and you'd end up laughing and also feeling like a really sick fuck. Not going there.

Non-realistic dildoes are fine. I, personally, am not into the cutesy dolphin kind of thing, which is probably good, as obviously this could turn into a favored toy, which would be annoying, as it would go missing and become a kids' toy. But the vaguely representational ones that come in bright swirly colors are interesting to a kid for a few minutes, and then they move on, which is about right. Just make sure you rinse the damn things off before you put them away.

Third, vibrators are officially "tickle toys" chez nous. This means that you will have to tickle the kid with them, under the arms of course, and you will, of course know that this, like having your kid slap your ass when you step out of the shower, is merely an acceptable expression of childhood sexuality and all you can do is exchange knowing looks with your partner and laugh, like when you catch your pre-verbal toddler masturbating or something. Oh well, just shrug your shoulders and admit Freud was right about some things. Pseudonymous kid especially likes Hello Kitty, and who can blame him? It's a very popular vibrator, obviously b/c of the kitschy cute factor, appealling to the little kid in all of us. Have extra batteries, b/c kids are really bad about turning things on and then just leaving them running when their attention wanes and they wander off to do something else.

Restraints, cockrings, and such: no big deal. You can always just say it's for playing pirate, although again you'll have to deal with the fact that they'll go missing and end up in the wrong toybox, and again they'll commandeer the cockrings as bracelets or something. I cannot emphasize too much the importance of keeping your sex toys clean when you've got kids around. It's good for you, you should be keeping them clean anyway. Smacking type toys, you can either just admit that they're smacking toys--if your kid, like mine, thinks smacking people is fun anyway--or, you can affect your scary story voice and say, "those are for smacking naughty little children who play with their parent's toys! Be careful!" And then, if you like, you can tell the story of Hansel and Gretel, or the one about the woodcutter whose second wife killed her stepdaughter and made soup out of her. Might scar 'em for life, but then you're going to do that anyway, sooner or later, especially since if you own sex toys you're obviously a perv and an unfit parent to begin with.

Videos, magazines, etc. Ok, these you pretty much do have to hide, I think. Mild eroticism is okay--I mean, kids see their parents naked from time to time, and you know, the tasteful softcore stuff is really just tits--but the hardcore sucking & fucking stuff I, for one, do not want to try to explain. Top shelf of the closet is okay, b/c by the time they're old enough to get up there, they'll have seen porn anyway on the internet, and the ensuing perversions will already be something you can't stop.

Oddly, I find the most annoying sex toy to have to explain is birth control pills. (Condoms are fairly innocuous, in their little wrappers, as long as the kid doesn't think they're candy or something. Say it's medicine, if you like, and emphasize the bit about not messing with other people's medicine.) Pseudonymous kid, who wants a sibling, has developed this shtick where he catches me taking a pill in the morning and says, "mama, don't take the pills that keep my brothers and sisters away."

I worry that he's practicing to become the Pope, or something.

Mas with the endless tech crap

Updated to blogrolling. Coolness! Though I fear my "recently updated" indicators will never change since I'm definitely copying links into new tabs (thanks Safari) rather than clicking over from here on out. Then again, with wanting multiple blogrolls (b/c my academic blogroll is disgustingly long), and wanting ppl to be able to post long comments in Haloscan, my "free" blogging is now up to $30/year. Not a ton. But let's try to cap the out-of-pocket hobby expense a bit, shall we?

Does anyone wanna tell tech-idjit me how to define the margins of the primary blog space a bit narrower, such that the blogroll on the right doesn't do that annoying thing of splitting halfway down and continuing only at the bottom of the page? Obviously it's just a problem of how wide one keeps one's browser window, but it annoys me. And presumably some of you, as well.

Anyway, yeah. Some new links over there. And a few I'll probably continue to add, silently, over time, but now I'm tired from fiddling with this darn thing all night and I'm going to bed.

Try reading this out loud

Random, but damning, list of who did and did not serve in the US armed forces. I don't know 100% if it's true, but obviously it's easily verifiable (not by me).

For the record: I do not think that failing to serve is in and of itself dishonorable. But I do think that those who disdain others' service, or who advocate war and militarism without being willing to do the grunt work, ought to be held to account, ya dig?

What the Kerry campaign needs is an ad of someone reading this list out loud. I volunteer.

This, on the other hand, is just pure mean-spirited snark, the more so as it invites us to feel political schadenfreude over geniune tragedy. But I can't help posting it anyway, because it made me laugh.

In other news, tonight I'm gonna see if I can install blogrolling without screwing everything up. So if the site is all wonky or not loading for a while, bear with me.

Educate me?

From Echidne: Nation: 'Policing the academies': Funding bill ignites fears.

Essentially, we have HR 3077, the "International Studies in Education Act," which "passed by a wide majority in the House" last year and is coming up before the Senate Committee on Health etc. (?) this month. The bill calls for "balance" in the teaching of international studies: balance, apparently, is to be ensured by assigning political nominees to oversee programs that use government funds.

So, the increasingly common conceit that if anyone (the government) pays for something, they have the right to shape it to their agenda. Government as private consumer. I realize, of course, that the idea of the government as a governing body that pursues the antiquated notion of "the public good" is completely outdated and not worth really even trying to drag back into the picture any more, but occasionally I find myself still upset by this fact. Juan Cole is cited as pointing out that government funding under Title VI (which funds int'l studies) is pretty fucking paltry anyway--better, of course, to clamp down on research than to fund it, she says, polemically. I actually wonder what Cole has had to say about this bill--sure he's covered it, but I've missed it, so if anyone has been paying closer attention than I, please link. Also, does anyone know what the odds of this thing passing are?

Finally, this: "Kramer, a professor of contemporary Islam and Arab politics at Tel Aviv University, argues that the biases and prejudices of American Middle East scholars have tainted their scholarship and prevented them from understanding the region’s more dangerous developments. He recommended Congressional hearings on Title VI and reform of the program.", which chaps my hide. The argument seems to be that American scholarship on the Middle East is faulty. If so, is not the scholarly method of proceeding then to publish better scholarship, pointing out the flaws in others' logic or research, rather than yelping for the government to set up an oversight committee? Is such evidence of bias or distortion not available? Because if it is, please publish it; if it isn't, then don't pretend that advocating your opponents' views be repressed is anything other than blunt political maneuvering.

File under "no shit, sherlock."

Poll: having money helps with satisfaction: "People who make more than $75,000 a year are far more likely than those who make $25,000 or less to say [they] are "very satisfied" with their lives."

$25,000? That's a realistic adult salary? Are they nuts? Yeah, I find that being able to pay rent helps one feel satisfied with one's life. Don't you?

Hit me baby...

Damn. I got a writeup in the motherfucking Guardian.

"Bitch PhD, meanwhile, is the diary of one American professor's existence - spiced up by a Washingtonienne-style sex life and occasional interludes on motherhood. With frank admissions about her professionalism, or lack of it, it's full of the candour that typifies the best confessional blogs."

I've been waiting for someone to compare me to Washingtonienne. Sadly, the distinction is she got some goddamn money out of both fucking around and blogging. Given my description of my crappy work habits, I fear a book deal is not forthcoming, but hey, if anyone wants me to write "The Naughty Professor," drop me a line.

Who says the public intellectual is dead?

Shallow! And vain!

So people are talking about makeup and clothes. Despite my handicapped laptop, I have to blog this one (especially since I actually woke up before 8 on a non-teaching day--will miracles never cease?).

Can I just say this? Yes, I can, b/c it's my bitchy blog. When boys start nattering on about how women who wear makeup are shallow or high-maintenance or whorish (fast becoming one of my favorite words, anyway), this woman-who-almost-never-wears-makeup-and-keeps-her-nails-short gets really really annoyed. It's sort of like the "you aren't like other girls" thing that we all (should) know is just sexism disguised as a compliment. Now, I admit: makeup probably tastes gross, if you are making out with someone who has it on. If it's badly applied, it doesn't look good. And if one is all made up for a party, especially if one isn't used to wearing the stuff, one can take kind of a hands-off approach, like Madeline Khan--may she rest in peace--in Young Frankenstein. ("Don't touch the hair!" "No kiss!"). But boys: makeup is fun. Sometimes fun to play with--pseudonymous kid, who loves having his nails painted, knows this (yay me for raising a boy who gets to enjoy some small vanities)--and fun, also, to sometimes feel vain about and pretty oneself up. Vanity can be awfully fun, you know. God knows the boys have the right to decide that makeup-wearing women are not their type; women, in turn, have the right to roll our eyes and decide that such boys are insufficiently playful and ironically shallow, what with that whole don't-wear-makeup-or-i'll-make-snap-judgments-based-on-superficial-things thing going on.

On the question of clothes, here's the simple answer: academics dress badly because academics, for the important youthful years when one is likeliest to be vain, are paid crap. I used to dress well, because my husband had one of those real-world jobs that more and more seem to privately subsidize graduate education. And then I got a job, and he quit his, and now the lot of us are living on a junior professor's salary, and we all know what that means: my former wardrobe is starting to look perhaps just a tiny bit shabby, and in order to delay the aging process, I wear cruddy clothes when I'm not teaching. Cuts down on the dry-cleaning bill, don'tcha know, and preserves the silk blouses. Doesn't help that pseudonymous kid's birth permanently changed the size of my feet, so that there were $300 shoes that I had to give away, heart breaking, because they no longer fit. (Newsflash: no one tells you this, but pregnancy relaxes your joints, which makes your feet bigger, and they often don't return to their former size. Sucks.)

Now, all that said? I still dress well, mostly. I buy myself new or stylish used clothes periodicially. I learned a long time ago that if you like something and it's a good price, buy the damn thing; saves you spending more than you have to later when you need X outfit for Y occasion. But it ain't easy like it used to be. I am in bad shape now, lingerie-wise (so painful, what with the fucking around, to have to pick through one's lingerie drawer trying to find something that doesn't look too dingy), because lingerie doesn't get seen, so I haven't bought any in a long time (it is on the "to do" list, now, though, because I am really reaching the outside limit on possible date undies.) I had a meltdown last December when I realized I was too poor to buy moisturizer, for god's sake: then I decided, fuck it, and whipped out the goddamn credit card. These are the compromises we make when we are broke. And it fucking sucks, because I'm old enough now that I remember deciding "I'm an adult. It isn't too much to spend over $100 on a pair of shoes. $70ish for a nice skirt or blouse is a good price. $200 for a good suit is a bargain. $30/ month on facial care stuff isn't outrageous, and I hate shaving, so I am going to fucking spend the money on waxing, thank you very much. And a woman needs decent bras, which cost about $60, and that's just the way it is." Because you know, my body isn't growing, I'm not changing sizes, I have a well-defined sense of personal style and an eye for fashion, and so most of what I buy isn't disposable. So, spend a little more to buy stuff that's nice and that you won't get sick of in three months. Have it altered so that it fits well. Keep it dry cleaned. That's how it's done.

But now, though I'm in my mid-30s, when by the standards of the North American middle class it's not unreasonable to spend that kind of money occasionally on one's appearance--and not doing so, frankly, makes it hard not to be shabby--dude, I do not have that kind of dough. Maintaining my sense of style is important to me. No fucking kitten sweatshirts or baggy-ass jeans. So keeping my sense of being pulled together takes work, now, goddamnit, and it ticks me off. It's shallow, but I'm not kidding when I say that my inability to afford to clothe myself sometimes feels like a symbol of why this job annoys me. I've been teaching for years, what's with this "starting salary" crap at 35? I'm a college professor, why can't I afford to dress like a grownup? And why, for god's sake, am I paid so badly that I can't afford to buy books for my kid? Why did my husband, with a B.A., earn about three times what I earn within four years of starting his second career, just before I finished my diss? (He hated the work, and we both think parenting is important, so yeah, we're taking a big financial hit which will doubtless bite us both in the ass come retirement time. Rant on the economics of family life forthcoming, perhaps.) Yes, I can afford to keep us on this salary--just barely, in small town midwest low-standard-of-living ville. But when we were living in big expensive city, he was keeping us on *his* salary, in much, much better style.

So yes, professors (I think this is even more true of K-12 teachers, by the way). How we dress is really an outward expression of the professoriate: a lot of hard work and personal sacrifice, if we try to keep up "professional" apperances. A lot easier if we just accept the reality that, in a lot of ways, we aren't treated as "professionals."

In my own case, I'm still hanging on to the image--but the undies are getting a bit shabby.

Or, as pseudonymous kid said this morning (summarizing the entire metablogging series):

"Naughty is a kind of being bad, for fun."

Metablogging, part 3

Ah, work and sex. Superego and id. I have, for whatever reason, an absolutely crippling sense of anxiety about my goddamn job. Here's some reassuring info for those of you who are graduate students: I got this job without a single publication. Not one. Nope. I've got a good essay coming out soon, and I've had another solicited by a good journal, and I've got conference papers coming out of my ass, but when it comes to turning conference presentations into publications, I just freak the fuck out.

I got this job--much to my surprise--after having spent a few years in therapy and way too long writing my dissertation (which was very good, actually) and having decided, in part through therapy, that actually I was really perfectly okay with the possibility of not getting a t-t job in my field. I decided I would give the job market maybe two chances, I would not apply for anything adjuncty that would require me to move, I would only apply for jobs that were places I was willing to live, and that if I got nothing, it was NOT ME it was THE MARKET and I would happily accept Plan B, which involved staying in a city I loved, near friends I'd grown close to, getting a job that paid actual money maybe, and having enjoyed my years teaching and doing research and thinking of the shift not as failure but as career change due to an imploding profession.

I really managed to be okay with this. Even, I think, to be looking forward to being able to retire gracefully from the field, having given it a good shot while refusing to compromise my fundamental values (which include not moving halfway across the country to work for pennies on a short-term contract). I was, in fact, sort of looking forward to being one of those people who draws their line in the sand and refuses to step across it and stands up and says, "this academic bullshit is bullshit, and I am not going to let it dictate my life. See ya."

But then the market came along. And I applied for every t-t job in my field, even ones that were places I didn't want to be, on the grounds that "well, it was worth a look and I have the material ready anyway." And maybe I got sucked a little bit back into the way one is "supposed" to think about this stuff rather than the way I wanted to think about it. Or maybe not. Maybe I was just giving it the ol' college try. Anyway, I got interviews. And I got campus visits. And I got an offer, to a place that was, on the one hand, undesireable (midwesty) but on the other hand the town seemed nice on my visit, it's near a big city, the job conditions seemed very good indeed. And it was the only offer I got. So I took it. And moved.

And found out that I don't want to live here.

I struggle with this fact almost every day. I feel extraordinarily guilty about caring about location when, really, pretty much everything about this job is either what I wanted or something I can live with. After all, I'm "lucky" to have a job. I'm extraordinarily "lucky" to have a good job, and superlatively "lucky" to have landed a good job in my first year out. I'm "lucky" that my husband was willing to relocate and that my kid was young enough to make relocation easy. Lucky, lucky, lucky. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Dr. B.

But I hate it here. And if it comes down to it, I would rather jettison my career than stay.

Of course, it may not come down to that. It probably won't. I'm in the system now, I've got the support I need to publish and get out, my diss was good and should definitely provide me with at least three good journal articles and the foundations for a solid monograph, I'm getting modest grant money from my university that will help me write, I have research assistants and clever graduate students to push me. On the surface, it all looks really, really good. I know what I need to do to get a different job (I don't actually want a "better" one; basically I want this job, someplace else). I have a plan in place, supportive friends and family, I'm starting to know people in my field (am thinking of starting a nymous blog to further this), there's been quite a bit of interest in what I do.

But I'm not producing very much. And I can't tell how much of that is me being unhappy, and therefore avoiding my job by fucking around; how much of it is me being, if I were honest with myself, totally uninterested in my job and having gotten so far only by virtue of being a "good girl" (this is my motherfucking superego talking); and how much of it is just flat-out anxiety. My rational brain tells me probably 80% anxiety, 15% mild depression, and at most 5% grass-is-greener syndrome. Because the truth is, I like my job. I'm a really good teacher. My research is interesting to me, and apparently to other people. I have several book-length ideas in mind that I would love to pursue. When I talk to people who are not academics (and who therefore don't terrify me) about my work, they are fascinated, and I really enjoy it.

So what is fucking around doing for me? It started off as a way of managing my anxiety. Anyone who has a problem with this can go fuck themselves: when I'm stressed out, getting laid a lot makes me feel better. Having other people find me attractive and desireable makes me feel better, goddamnit. Mr. B. tells me all sorts of flattering shit, but he's my husband: he has to say those things. (In fact, he keeps saying that one of the best things about me fucking around is that he can now compliment me and I don't immediately deflect it.) It's also, since two of my chatfuckbuddies are in fact now 3D fuckbuddies, giving me friends in the area, friends who are totally unconnected with my job, friends who I can be totally honest with. If nothing else, fucking creates quick intimacy; so does chat, where you tell complete strangers all sorts of things because really, it's just you and your computer screen and your imagination. I fell in love with Mr. B. through letters, long-distance. Writing is the path to my heart.

In fact, it's becoming clearer and clearer to me that it's no coincidence that I decided to out myself on my blog. I started the thing in order to talk about my work anxiety, and the question of trying to find a new job, and whether I am undermining my job search by not being little Ms. Publishing Machine, and whether I really want to even be a professor or whether, really, the whole anxiety thing is just more fucking trouble than it's worth and instead of working hard to "grow" past it, I should just fucking allow myself to avoid it and run the fuck away. Dude. I got my Ph.D. What more do I have to prove? (That's why the degree is so ostentatiously presented in my blog title, even though I also think it's fucking obnoxious to brag one one's degree-having. It's more a memo to myself than to anyone else.) But I started talking about my sex life because what is causing me problems in my work life is feeling dishonest, feeling inauthentic, and feeling insecure.

I have a Ph.D. And in real life, I am not a neurotic, anxious, insecure freak. I'm a fucking bitch in the best sense of the word (can I get a witness?). A major part of my real-world academic identity is that I am the "no bullshit" woman (this, according to my department chair) who is not afraid to say what I think. (Obviously, this also pertains in my blog.) One of my best skills as a teacher and colleague is that when students or friends are standing around worrying I will freely say shit like, "oh, I didn't read that either. No one does," or "yeah, the stuff we talked about in class last week was boring, but it needed to be covered to introduce this far more interesting subject; don't worry that you don't have a lot to say about it, because neither do I," or, "yes, that person is an ass, everyone knows it, don't let them make you feel stupid." I don't believe in unwritten rules, or at least I don't believe in not telling people what they are; I don't believe in meritocratic bullshit; I don't believe that making people paranoid is the way to get them to do good work; I don't believe that competition need be cruel. I'm an extrovert, I'm honest, and I don't like to lie. (Plus, I'm really bad at it. I live in fear of someone approaching me and asking, "are you Dr. Bitch?" and having my face totally give me away.)

So back to the fucking around. Part of it is pure old-fashioned ego-boosting. Like I said, those who begrudge me (or anyone) the need for that kind of thing can kiss my bitchy ass: we are all only human, and it feels good to be petted. Mr. B. gets this. Bonobo monkeys are his favorite animals. But a big, big part of my screwing around right now, I am starting to realize, is that in my personal life? In my marriage? Sexually? With my friends? I have no problem at all feeling entitled. None. And I have no problem with other people's entitlement, either. I don't know where or how I got that way, but I am not afraid to ask for what I want--not really, even if I sometimes hesitate a bit, figuring out how to do it nicely. I am thrilled half to death when other people lay their cards on the table and tell me what they want. (Which is part of what I hate about this place: passive-aggressive midwestern bullshit is going to make a real bitch of me yet.) I know that this open marriage shit works for me; I know that Mr. B. "gets" it; I know that my marriage is as solid as granite (how I know that, another time, I'm on a roll here). I have a hell of a lot of faith in my bullshit meter, and in my ability to assess other people, and in my ability to get what I want without fucking other people over. I know that, when it comes to marraige--and other personal relationships, too, including parenting--I am pretty good at discerning what's worthwhile, for me, from what's not worth fretting over. I think about it; I talk about it; I write about it. But when the chips are down, I trust myself.

But work-wise? I don't. At least, I think that I'm doing the right shit, that I'm making the right decisions for me. If I were a friend, I would tell me that, as someone who knows me well. But it doesn't feel certain. I question myself constantly. I second-guess my own motives. Am I self-sabotaging? Do I want to self-sabotage? I know I'm smart enough to do this job. God knows I see people in academe all the time who are way less smart than I am. I know that my work is good; people who I respect think so, I think so, I'm proud of it. I know that I'm capable of doing what it takes, that I'm not lazy: no one who finishes her Ph.D. with a baby can be accused of sloth or poor work habits. But I feel driven by this horrible sense, not that I am inadequate, but that I don't really know what I want. If I really did like this job the way I "should," I wouldn't fuck around online instead of preparing for my lectures. I wouldn't blog instead of writing my articles. I wouldn't read blogs instead of reading books in my field. I wouldn't run off for a gorgeous fall weekend in Big City instead of sitting at home working. I wouldn't spend money on clothes instead of books.

In short, I would have no leisure at all, I would never enjoy the flexibility and pleasure that are the best parts of this job. Because it sure as hell isn't the money. I know this is ridiculous. But it bugs the hell out of me anyway.

So I think that, in fucking, I am exercising those entitlement muscles. This is in fact Mr. B.'s idea: he pointed it out to me. I think I am reminding myself of what it feels like to feel attractive, confident, sure of myself. Yes, part of that means being sure of myself "as a woman," cornball, objectionable phrase, because a woman is what I am, damnit. My academic identity isn't separate from my body. Not brain-on-stick. I refuse to be asexual just because I'm a woman academic, even though I know that's expected of me. I'm a professor, I'm a mom, I'm a wife, I'm a woman, I'm a real person. AND I like sex. A lot. And I know, and the people who matter to me know, that there's not a goddamn thing wrong with that.

And I'm finding that my extracurricular activity is, in fact, working. I'm getting more interested in my research. I'm feeling more confident. A significant part of that is simply the having-of-friends, especially the having-of-so-very-NOT-work-friends. The meeting of people, of men, who get, as Mr. B. "gets," that being a mom, a wife, a professor, and a freak are not incompatible. It gives me hope. And I'm having an excuse to go into Big City on the weekend and hang out. An excuse to feel like a grownup smart person, who knows other grownup smart people in the real world, the world that isn't nearly as hostile to bitchy Ph.D.s as I fear it is.

And this is why my screwing around, in the end, has absolutely nothing to do with Mr. B., why I am solving problems that he cannot help me with. Because he is here, too, in midwestern tinytown. He is supporting me being Professor Bitch, god bless him, and I love him for that, and he knows this. But what I need is to teach myself that I am not "just" Professor Bitch. That my dissatisfaction with the status quo is something I can act on, not just rail about. That I can exercise my entitlement. That it's not merely theoretical.

And finally, possibly the most important part of the whole thing. The fucking is confirming my sense of entitlement in terms of place. My sense that physical pleasure--not just fucking, but also living someplace I love, that I find beautiful, that I feel comfortable in--is important. Is worthwhile. Is something I am, yes, entitled to do. So yes, the understanding, the knowing, the confirming of the body: location, location, location. That is my bete noire. That is the one problem. That is the thing I can't get past.

And it's entirely, totally, throughly, unavoidably physical.

A quickie

Laptop backed up; currently working. Going into shop tomorrow (sigh, I can't afford more debt). Luckily, Mr. B. has a laptop too (mine is also my work machine), so I will borrow his for work this week and maybe do a little blogging too. Though I really will have to let him have when I am at home, since I'll be taking it away from him all day. He might otherwise go into withdrawal.

I had a kind of revelation today, from this blog. A lot of my readers say, "I get the idea of open marriage intellectually, but I could never do it myself." And a lot of other readers say, "but shouldn't you try to work out your problems with Mr. B., not with other people?" And I suddenly realized, these are the same question. Yes, I (anyone) should try to work out my problems with my husband. And, in fact, I do. But getting what my (our) problems are intellectually doesn't mean that we can, actually, stop having them. Just like intellectually being "ok" with open marriage doesn't mean that you could actually do it yourself.

For some reason, I find that I can, sometimes, not have those same problems with other people. This is, I assume, because other people have slightly different personality configurations; they don't, maybe, push my buttons in quite the same way, or because they are new I am more polite, or because they aren't my life partner of 15 years (20, if you count the time we dated before marrying), I'm just less in a rut with them. So, say Dateboy does something that Mr. B. does, and it drives me crazy when Mr. B. does it, and I almost always yell at him. And I've tried, really hard, not to yell at him about it but it really just drives me so fucking crazy and I know he's doing it on purpose and why do you always do that? Really? Those of you who have been in relationships (i.e., everyone) knows what I mean.

But Dateboy does it. And because he's not my partner, I find that I don't particularly care, so I don't say anything. Or I do mind, but because he's just my fuckbuddy, I don't think I have the right to yell at him, so I don't. Maybe I sort of mildly object, or maybe I just let it go. And then I realize--I feel, as distinct from intellectually knowing--that actually, this really wasn't that big a fucking deal. It didn't ruin the evening or anything. And I sort of have this little epiphany and I realize that even when Mr. B. does it, it's not that big a deal. And now I know how it feels to let it go, and move on. So next time he does it, I recall the feeling I had with Dateboy, the not-caring-so-much, and I don't yell. And Mr. B. notices (or maybe he doesn't, but let's say he does), and he sort of stops what he's doing. He has time enough, you see, to realize what he's doing because I haven't immediately yelled at him and put him on the defensive. So he realizes, and he goes, "oh, I'm doing that thing you hate. I'll stop now," and I go "omg! That's all it took? Me not yelling?" and we both feel much better. Or maybe he doesn't notice, and he does it, and I sort of roll my eyes and that's it. And then I feel, afterwards, like "wow, that was kind of irksome, but you know, not yelling actually makes me feel less stressed over it than yelling and starting a fight."

I don't know if that makes sense. I'm just saying, knowing something with your brain and knowing it in your gut are not the same. Sometimes it's hard to learn things with your gut with some people, for some reason that one usually can't figure out. So sometimes you can learn them with your gut with someone else. And once learned, they're yours to keep.

I promise to try to blog about the work/cheating connection some more--hopefully soon, on Mr. B.'s laptop. It'll all be anecdotal and personal, so very fun in a voyueristic, "omg this person is so fucked up, I can't believe she has a job" kind of way. I'm sure you'll all enjoy it. And, in fact, it is also true that my job hangups are something I am very definitely learning about from some of my boyfrirends, who have job hangups very like mine (which Mr. B. doesn't), or from other boyfriends, who are totally free from those kind of hangups. So there again, in figuring out this shit with them, I'm hopefully, in the end, going to make Mr. B.'s life easier in the long run.

Stay tuned.

Uh oh

Laptop appears to be dying. Blogging postponed until further notice.

Latest sitemeter find

Sorry, no blogging today--busy and out of it--but I found a new and beautiful blog via my sitemeter stats: Jan's Nobel Project.

A lot of Milosz--a favorite of mine--in the recent entries. And some very pretty pictures.

For Profgrrrl and Dr. Crazy

Look! We're a triumvirate.

Like Macbeth's witches, maybe.

Metablogging, part 2

(This is the stuff about sex, and how being a freak and talking about being a freak (I remember in college someone asked me if a girlfriend of mine was a freak and I had no idea what he meant)--how talking about my sex life on my blog is, I hope, not merely titillating (not that there's anything wrong with that), but also has a point to it. How it is that I see my sex life and my intellectual life as being, actually, two manifestations of the same impulse: to think, and to pursue a line of thought. Enjoy. Part 3 tomorrow.)

By way of explanation about what I know is a major topic of interest to a lot of my readers: my open marriage, when you boil it down, is based on my examining one simple question. Does commitment to a partnership mean commitment to sexual fidelty? And the converse: does commitment to sexual fidelity mean commitment to a partnership? The answer to the second, obviously, is no. One can remain faithful, sexually speaking, and still treat one's partner like shit. The answer to the first, for me, is also no. But don't assume that because I screw around, or that because I tolerate--and am willing to think carefully about--the meanings and significances of screwing around and lying, that that means I don't take commitment seriously. I think that people can fuck around, and lie, and still be very committed to their partners, still be "honorable." Because I have seen it happen.

Here is what I think. I think sex is, among other things, a form of communication. I presume that anyone who has ever had good, loving sex, knows this. I think that we learn things not only in the generally accepted brain-on-a-stick way, but also through our bodies and our emotions. I know I do. The problem I have with the presumption--as distinct from the conscious, informed choice--of sexual fidelity is that I think it closes off one way of learning. Now, this may be fine. It may be a valid trade off. No one can read every book, no one can study every subject, and no one can learn everything. But I think it is very important, absolutely vital, not to assume on someone else's behalf that they should forego reading books. I'm not talking here about people who want to scold me for my sex life. What I am saying--and it is polemical--is that I think that assuming that your partner must remain sexually monogamous to you, assuming that without talking about it, is not a loving thing to do. It is selfish. I reject it. Because, not in defiance of, the idea that partnership and marriage are meaningful acts. This does not mean that I look at people who are monogamous and think they are wrong, or that I am not (do not try to be) understanding of those who find examining these things threatening. It does mean that I think that what we should strive for when we love is acceptance, openness, trust, and understanding. This is why my partner and I agreed, when we married, that infidelity is not grounds for divorce.

Now, why do I talk both about open marriages, which are consensual, and cheating, which is not (at least, not on the part of the cheated-on partner)? For a few reasons.

1. First, even open marriages are a form of cheating (channelling Laura Kipnis here): they challenge, "cheat" on, the standard assumptions about what marriage means.

2. Second, because I don't accept it as a given that the cheated-on partner always fails to consent, even if that consent is not verbal. This gets into dodgy territory: a lot of feminists want to insist that "no" always means no, and only "yes" means yes. But in our own lives, we know this is not true--which is not to say that "no" never means no, or that it isn't, generally speaking, a good idea to act as if it is. Still, we all know that sometimes we agree to things that we really don't want to agree to, and that sometimes we object to things that we really don't care about. That sometimes in relationships people are passive-aggressive, or that they withhold intimacy (sexual or otherwise) while insisting that they love their partners. People attempt to manipulate, because sometimes saying what we really think is terrifying. One advantage, I think, to examining received truths--by talking about open marriage, among other things--is to hopefully start to make it a little more okay for people to think about this stuff, to say "no" when they mean it, and "yes" when they mean it, without saying (or not saying) things just because they think those things can't be said.

3. Presumably people cheat for a reason. Certainly, I think, people who cheat openly (open marriage types), do so for a reason. As I said once before, a friend asked me: "what do you get from partner X that you don't get from Mr. B.?" This is a good question. What, then, are the reasons people cheat? Selfishness? Sure, sometimes. Everyone is selfish. Misogyny? Sure, sometimes. And this, I reject. Loneliness? Yes, sometimes. This is human, this is important, this it would be cruel to dismiss out of hand. A longing to learn something from someone new? I think, often. Sometimes, I think it is something that one could, theoretically, learn from one's partner--but the nature of long-term partnerships, I think, is that often one settles into assuming a lot, and if one is committed, it is risky to break the pattern. So, for example, Homeboy is very emotional, very comfortable with his feelings, even (his word) a bit melodramatic at times. I am not. Emotional outpourings scare me. Mr. B., too, is often very emotional, and over the years he has learned to hold it in, so as not to scare me; and while I am learning to be more accepting of it, I still fall into the trap of being very snappish or cold when it comes up unexpectedly. Since Homeboy is new, he and I haven't yet developed a pattern for how we act around this issue, which means that once or twice he's had an emotional outpouring, and I have gotten scared, but I have found it easier to hang in with it than I do when it is Mr. B., where I have a lot more to lose (and, admittedly, some bad habits). And lo and behold. Homeboy had his outburst, and came through it, and there I was on the other side, and it was still okay. (And, on the flip side, Homeboy is terrified of driving people away with this thing, and the fact that despite getting nervous, I didn't run off, was reassuring to him too.) The experience is, I think, allowing me to learn a little bit, to grow a little bit. I suspect that it will help me be less panicked with Mr. B.'s emotions, and I suspect that it will help Homeboy to be less terrified when other people get uncomfortable around him. Hence, we are both learning something.

Now, what if Homeboy were married? (He isn't, but for the sake of argument.) What if his emotional outpourings were a problem in his marriage? Would it be "bad" for him to learn to deal with them by having an "affair" with me, or someone like me? What if the issue of his emotional outpourings had gotten so touchy in his marriage that he and his wife were frozen, were not intimate (whether or not they were still having sex), could not learn how to break out of this on their own? Maybe therapy would be a better route--less risky, certainly--than cheating; but that doesn't mean that cheating isn't, in a way, a valid way of learning stuff if he does it "honorably." If, that is, he enters into it thoughtfully, with due consideration for the person he is cheating with and for the person he is cheating on, and for himself. Yes, he might risk hurting his wife; he might risk losing her. Then again, he might risk hurting her or losing her simply by trying to change the pattern in their marriage. Is it therefore a given that, in order to save this theoretical marriage, he should not try to grow as a person? Maybe your answer is yes. My answer is no. Homeboy would, of course, have to come up with his own answer: he has that right, the right to think for himself. Thinking through it is, one hopes, part of what one does when one decides to cheat.

4. On the other hand, I think that straight-up dishonest lying unthoughtful cheating can be honorable too. Let's say your marriage is unhappy. Let's say that, for whatever reason, you're not willing to divorce. Going out and finding someone who meets some of your emotional and physical needs can act as a pressure valve, I think, so that--again, if you are honorable, by which I mean you are reasonably careful--the marriage can sort of stumble on forward in its unsatisfying way without you getting so unhappy that you feel like the only options are change, or divorce. Sure, this isn't ideal. So few things are ideal. Let us say that the cheating person, in this hypothetical scenario, is a woman, and that her husband is kind of an unthoughtful jerk. But he is faithful. Doesn't she "owe" it to him to stay faithful? Maybe. But doesn't he "owe" it to her not to be an unthoughtful jerk? If he breaks his obligation, why should she honor hers? I'm not advocating tit for tat, or cheating out of spite. I'm just saying, sometimes marriages reach dead ends. People might then divorce. Or, you know, they might not, for a number of reasons. If the latter, then I for one think it's really a bit cruel to expect that someone, anyone, should give up sex and/or affection for the rest of their life.

Fucking, I think, is the body's way of figuring shit out. Like having the time to read and write, it's a form of leisure, of pleasure (and, sometimes, of obligation and avoidance). I think that asserting people's rights to the autonomy of their own bodies--whether or not they're married--is like aserting their rights to the autonomy of their own minds. You can choose not to screw around, just like you can choose not to become, say, a biologist--though you find biology interesting--because you want to dedicate your mind (your body) to your chosen line of work. Cool. But if I choose to read an occasional book on evolution on the side, it doesn't really make me a bad whatever-I-am. It might even help me come up with new ideas in my own field. Or, you know, it might just be a way of procrastinating. Or it might show that I secretly (or not so secretly) find my field boring.

But as one of my sex-chat friends (the Connoisseur, actually) said to me: "It's your intellect. You can do what you like with it."

Metablogging, part 1

In wandering around my sitemeter stats, I keep finding interesting things. Mostly, of course, responses to my sex life. I shan't link here because I want to just talk, without the interruption of tracking down sources.

I have been thinking, for myself, about what is the connection between the academic posts, the mom posts, and the sex posts. And about why blog, anyway? Here is my attempt to think it through, informed by links and comments I've seen lying around, though mostly, in the end, the product of my own brain.

As an academic, as a feminist, as a smart woman, as a mother, as a teacher: I think one of my most fundamental responsibilities--it is also a joy, and a habit, and a way of being--is to be wary of received truths simply because they are received truths. This is the connection between my sex life and my academic life. (More on this subject in a follow-up post.)

As a woman, as a writer, as an academic, as a feminist, as a mother, and as a teacher: I grow tired of the way that women, when they write--especially, perhaps, but not exclusively, on politics--are constantly interrogated about fundamental premises; are constantly held up from following a line of thought by silly, disruptive questions about basic starting points, questions that turn into arguments. Sometimes, perhaps often, these questions are sincerely meant, similar to the way that questions from college freshmen often slow things up terribly but are, after all things they need answered. When one teaches, one has to consider this, and one has to spell out the premises again, and again, and again, and be willing to clarify and explain. At the same time, though, one has to reach a point where one says, "it is time, now, to move on. If you still need help with this, do some more reading on your own." When one is not teaching entry-level courses, when one is trying to think something through at a fairly high level of analysis, having to reiterate basic premises is not only irritating (which is why women so often get "shrill" or "angry" when they're interrupted YET AGAIN, and why it is so fucking wrong for men to say patronizing things like, "don't be insulting, or you'll never get anyone over to your side"). One presumes--one should presume, one is entitled to presume--that one's auditors are willing to meet one halfway. That they, say, have a basic understanding of feminism, or if not, that they not automatically dismiss it out of hand; that they accord one the respect one is entitled to as a thinker. And indeed, all human beings are thinkers, so I am not saying that only those with Ph.D.s are entitled to this kind of willing, open-minded ear. On the other hand, I do think that those with Ph.D.s (and all smart people) have, by virtue of their degrees/jobs/brains, a special responsibility to be open-minded listeners. To not accept received truths for no good reason.

These are two separate things, the question of whether one always has to articulate one's premises (no), and the question of whether or not one accepts received truths (no). People often confuse them, in good faith or bad, and accuse people of accepting received truths ("obviously she has been brainwashed by feminism") when, in fact, what is happening is that the speaker is simply not bothering to spell out really basic shit because she assumes that most intelligent and thoughtful readers either already know it, or are willing, for the sake of following a line of thought, to accept it conditionally and see where it leads.

Hence, polemic (and, occasionally, humor). I think a lot of the women writers who I enjoy are very "glib," to use a word that's been tossed at me more than a few times. Yes, we are glib. But glibness doesn't automatically mean that we are not thinking, or thoughtful, or that our arguments are without merit. Instead, glibness often represents a challenge, informed by feminism, to the reader: damnit, I am not going to be your mommy here. I am not going to hold your hand. I am going to say what I think and you better scramble to keep up and do your fucking homework, and if you don't then don't come whining to me. Because if I take the time not to be glib, if I take the time to spell things out patiently, and slowly, as I do for pseudonymous kid (most of the time), or as I do for my students (most of the time), then I will never get on to what I am really trying to say. And also because I am entitled to have a sense of humor. I am entitled to speak to an audience who I know accepts my fundamental premises. The rest of you are very, very welcome here: I am, after all, a teacher, and this is, after all, a form of publication, and I know and welcome the results of that. But here I am constructing in my own mind an audience that is, more or less, on the same page I am. I'm willing--as are we all--to occasionally pause and reexamine the opening chapters, to go back over beginning stuff; this is how we learn, after all, and our understanding of things changes over time (which is another element of blogging, by the way). But when I am in the middle of thinking stuff out, it is really frustrating, and disruptive (and, one suspects, sometimes deliberately so), to be interrupted all the time and asked, "sorry, I came late to class. Did I miss anything important?" And it seems to me that this kind of thing happens a lot more to women bloggers than it does to men. And I think that people should think about this.

On blogging as form: it is, obviously, a temporal and informal medium. I take these things as fundamental premises. Therefore, my writing here is often informal (and almost never spell-checked or proofread), and I assume that if I say something silly or stupid or simply not well-thought-out, that I can return to it at a later date, and/or that those who, like me, recognize that this is a periodical and drafty form of writing, might ask questions about it, or think to themselves, "well, that's not one of the better entries," but that over time, a line of reasoning, a sense of thoughtful purpose, comes out. Now, this is also a bit of a problem, formally speaking, because one of the other aspects of web writing is that people dip in and out; they follow links, never to return, they bookmark things but read them irregularly, or skim. I do it. Still, as a writer, at this point, I don't feel I can do a whole lot about that. Hopefully even intermittent reading reveals some things; I don't really expect anyone (except me) to parse my words as if they were holy writ. But I do hope and expect that readers come with an open (enough) mind: not only to what I write, but to all writing, all human attempts to communicate.

And that, I think, is what I am doing here. Saying that.

Movie recommendations?

So I got an email today asking me to recommend movies about mmf situations. Obviously this is the kind of email one gets when one becomes the postergirl for heterosexual open marriage, especially when one has been getting hits like crazy off of better, more popular blogs. So, welcome all of Flea's readers! For the sake of a larger audience, I'm quite willing to entertain questions of this nature, at least until I get bored with being the slutty postergirl and move on to something different, like whinging about my crappy work habits and how I'll never manage to stay ahead of my classes.

Anyway, on to my email inbox. I don't know if the author wants porn, or just movies where that's part of the subject matter. Presumably porn is pretty easy to find, so I assume the latter. Anyway, I drew a blank. (I know I've seen movies like this--but the only thing that leaps to mind is Max, Mon Amour, which is not only about cheating rather than open relationships, but also involves a monkey. It's a really weird movie.) Were there mmf 3somes in Sammy & Rosie Get Laid? I don't remember, though I remember that Roland Gift was, as always, a real hottie in that movie.

So, if any of you have better memories than I do, please leave comments. Might as well turn my 15 minutes of fame into something useful for someone, somewhere.

Brilliant

God, I wish I could make snark ring with truth like this:

"It is only there, on the Iconic Plane, that the War on Terror can be won - it is, after all, a war of civilizations and ideologies, not a war of terrorist cells and counter-terrorist intelligence apparatus - and thus it is symbolic actions which matter, not petty, real-world results."

Yes! I am the biggest (straight) slut in the upper midwest!

It's official. I would like to thank Flea over at One Good Thing, who is not only a blogging goddess but also owns a sex shop, so she knows what she's talking about, for publicly declaring me "a Libertarian's worst nightmare." I couldn't be any prouder.

(Standing, in my award ceremony attire of trashy lingerie, clutching my TongueJoy Vibrator to my scantily clad, heaving bosom): "Gosh, I never expected to win. Thank you so much for everyone who believed in me, all of you who thought that I was, indeed, the biggest social problem since the welfare queens of the 1980s. Wow, what an honor. I'm sorry I was a bit late to the ceremony, but as it happens I was off in big city yet again this weekend, fucking yet another person I met online, and having a really grand old time. When I heard I'd won, I went running downstairs yelling "YES!! GUESS WHAT!! I WON A PRIZE FOR BEING SUCH A SLUT!!" so now all the neighbors know as well, probably. I can hardly wait for my career to take off, now that I've finally been recognized by the academy, and I promise never to wear a latex catsuit like Halle Berry, or at least I won't wear one of those weird cat masks, anyway. Cross my heart and hope to die."

I would also like to thank, in writing, the gentlemen whose roles helped highlight my performance. There are a few supporting actors, as well, but these are the main leading men:

1. Dateboy. You've all met him before. He's an up-and coming arty type who's going to take obscene pictures of me in a couple of weeks, but I shan't be posting them here. However, when he undoubtedly becomes famous (actually, I'm not totally joking--he really does do something arty, and from what I can tell, he actually is doing it successfully), doubtless you will see them in a gallery near you, funded by the NEA, and being picketed by humorless wingnuts. Hopefully, however, I'll have tenure by then.

2. Oscar. Who I was with last night. A nice guy who finds me witty and laughs at my bitter mockery of his home state--and who can argue with that? He, too, has an interesting job, one that requires travel, so that in fact he just arrived this week from Hong Kong, making him the man who has probably travelled furthest just for the pleasure of sleeping with me.

3. The Connoisseur. Who is smart and witty and an autodidact (which impresses the crap outta me), who seduced me online by talking to me about the latest David Foster Wallace short story collection--in a goddamn sex chat room, ignoring the overhead of "hey baby, suck my big fat cock"; how classy is that?--and who is flying into Big City next month specifically in order to shack up with me in a nice hotel, wine me and dine me, and cart me around town buying expensive lingerie. Seriously.

4. The French law student. The suave guy whose admittedly bullshit flattery (he has no idea whether I'm beautiful or not) I posted here a few days ago, and who is charmingly willing to tutor me in French as long as I correct his very rare mistakes in written English.

5. Homeboy. Not only is homeboy my first online fuckbuddy, he is also from the city I would desperately love to move back to. I've never met him, but we have totally become bestest online friends. (He is such a darling that he put together my reserve list the other day while I was busy freaking out about something else.) Like every other one of these guys (except the Connoisseur) Homeboy has a job that requires him to write for a living--hence my earlier theory about how sex-chat is an absolute boon for smart people. He writes fantastic porn, though this isn't, in fact, his day job; and he also writes one hell of a love letter.

6. Mr. B., of course, always charming in the role of uxorious cuckold. He has helped Homeboy with his computer, cleaned the car before my first date with Dateboy, and taken my calls from Oscar's hotel room at midnight asking if it was okay if I spent the night because, really, I would rather not drive all the way home. When I asked him what he thought of me spending a long weekend with the Connoisseur, he declared that it all sounded way too much like a Cary Grant movie for any sensible woman to pass up, and then said, "so will you mind if pseudonymous kid and I take off for NYC while you're out?" Always with the brilliant comic timing, the Nick to my Nora.

More on open marriage

Well, even I think my last post crossed the line from rant-with-a-point to rant-with-spittle-dribbling-down-chin. Oh well. There's a point buried in there sometime, maybe I'll drag it out when I feel less rushed. Classes start next week, my syllabi aren't done, I have a huge grant proposal that I have to finish by Thursday, I still haven't tackled that stupid article that's 90% written already (just print it out and put it in a damn envelope, gah!) and I feel like puking. Oh, and I'm having the same semi-depressed feeling that maybe I just am not cut out for this job--otherwise shouldn't I be at least sort of looking forward to classes? In the past I've liked teaching and I'm good at it. And shouldn't I be writing the stuff I want to write? I really am interested in it. And yet I put it all off and off and off, and I don't even have anxiety as an excuse this time, just a sense of ennui. Maybe it's place. Maybe not. Dither, dither, dither--that I had most of last year, then lost over the summer (when, in fact, I did get some work and research stuff done). And now it's back again. I suspect it's because the new semester signals yet another year here, where I don't want to be.

Anyway, blah. I don't want to talk about or even think about that stuff. But I did want to link to a really good Salon essay on cheating, one that I think says a couple of things that I have found to be true, and that violate the conventional wisdom about extracurricular sex.

First, this phrase: "in anchoring him to its comforts and constraints, his domestic life gave him the very energy he needed to defy it." In other words, being married gives one a lot of confidence and a lot of sexual experience; it also makes the non-married sex a lot more meaningful (and fun). Probably this is just as simple as the lure of the forbidden, and/or the stuff I talked about earlier--the sense that one has nothing to lose with the "extra" partner, b/c one has the married partner waiting, as it were, in the wings, so go ahead and take some crazy risks. But I think there's also something more there, about the additional layers of meaning brought to a relationship when the context of the relationship is more complicated. It forces one to think about sex and relationships and affection in new ways, and it makes one aware of the really pretty vast landscape of possible variations on the theme.

The essay also concludes with what I think probably happens a fair bit, if the people involved are honorable types: the unmarried partner (in this case, a woman, much younger than her married lover) isn't damaged or heartbroken over the affair. Her lover doesn't use her and throw her away. Instead, he provides an opportunity for her to learn some new things, and then when she's learned them, she moves on. And he gets a little hurt, but that's the way it is because he's the one with the marriage and the kids. I think that's really true: the person with the constraints is the one who (should) end up, well, running into those constraints, while the person without them gets to the edge, realizes that the constraints aren't their problem, and moves the hell on.

Of course, it doesn't always end this way. But I think that more often than is often acknowledged, in affairs where one is sleeping with a married person, the unmarried person has a lot more power. And I also, as the married person in that kind of situation, think that's exactly as it should be.

Bringing it all together: sex, feminism, academic identity, politics. Or, I feel a rant coming on

(This is the post I promised about politics and feminism--it's a bit rantier than I wanted it to end up being, but it's late on the Monday of a 3-day weekend and I don't have time to pretty it all up, so it retains a lot of the original growling it had when I drafted it. I'm sure you all can deal, since after all "bitching" is what this blog promises to provide.)

So we have the question of women bloggers and not being political again. Lots has been said, and I'm not going to even attempt to offer a comprehensive answer: I shall let the form of my response mold itself to the content.

Let me take the opportunity to explain something about my blogroll.

The blogs I link to under "liberal bias" are all, I think, by women; a lot of the "procrastination tools" and "professoriate" blogs are by women too. (BTW: I'm working on getting started w/ blogrolling: is it really true that I can only have one list unless I pay them money? Can anyone suggest a better blog management tool that'll save me the hassle of pasting in new links by hand? The list of "add to blogroll" links is getting looong...)

Where was I? Oh yes. My blog roll isn't some affirmative action program on my part; it's about who I like to read, and why. I read Alas, A Blog once in a while--but I haven't blogrolled it (I probably will) because I find there are often small missteps (which sadly I can't recall any specific examples of) that annoy me. It is a great source for feminist news, and I do still check it occasionally, but I often find the discussion and analysis slightly tone deaf.

On the other hand, my favorite blogs--Echidne, One Good Thing, Body & Soul, Respectful of Otters, World O' Crap--are, in fact, by women. And also, they are political. Totally political, even though I myself half half of them listed under "procrastination"--which reflects more the pure pleasure they give me than any implication that they aren't, also, reflective of my political opinions. These are, imho, among the best blogs going. Why? Well, for one thing they never misstep, they are utterly reliable on feminist subjects. I occasionally view things slightly differently than these bloggers do, but I never have the desire to smack my forehead and yell "duh" at their political tin ears, the way I do, often, at the more "famous" political (or academic blogs). Like for instance the whole question of "why are most political blogs by men, oh, we, the male political bloggers feel So Guilty about this, gosh, we wish more women were here, but really, what are we to do?" This drives me crazy and makes me want to swear. One Good Thing, just to take an example, is a political blog. Feminism, boys, is a political subject. Sex and families are political topics. (See the go-round about my open marriage, a few links down, if you have any doubts on that one. Or just go read a book or something.)

The corrolary to this is that I notice that in the self-identified "political blogs," feminism is, at best, an occasional afterthought. I'll say it again, as will every other woman on the planet, until we all lose our voices and you no longer have to hear our shrill nagging: women are (slightly more than) half the fucking population. So, you know, women's subjects are not, like, marginal to political action or political thought. [Warning: rest of paragraph is a rant.] Y'all political boys think you're political, but often what gets defined as "political" is boring, one-note, and tone-deaf. Politics is not just about party negotiations and strategic foreign policy planning, and, see, the girls get that. Though if you're reading, you'll see that women bloggers do talk about those things, just like men do talk about their cats and their kids from time to time. Because politics is, in the end, about people. [Now I get sarcastic.] This is why so many of us are over here talking about apolitical subjects like families and kids and work and sex and stuff. It really is Feminism 101.

I'll offer myself as an example, though I don't think I'm anywhere near on a par with the blogs I cited above. Why does my own political blogging not have a bunch of links and a bunch of "this is political for x,y, and z reasons" exposition in it? Well, for one because I have a job and a damn family. And even though I am technically the person who works for money and Mr. B. is the person who keeps home and hearth together, I do most of the mental work involved in making sure priorities get set and carried out--which is a very old political subject, as everyone (should) know. Even more to the point, however, I expect my readers not to be stupid: to "get" the political angle, as well as the fun entertaining one. Hell, I get the political angle in the stuff I read by Echidne, et al; why can't other people put their brains in gear and get it, too?

Like I said once: subtext, people. It exists. Look it the fuck up. E. M. Forster was right: "only connect." Metaphors are a way of thinking. Similies are a form of syllogism. When I talk about pseudonymous kid, I am being professional *and* political *and* personal; when I talk about sex, the same; when I talk about politics, the same. When flea at OGT talks about her life, she is enacting and embodying a lot of political philosophy--and doing it in an incredibly entertaining, moving, intelligent, and thoughtful way that adds a lot to the political discourse, above and beyond the usual dry abstractions. If you think about these things at all, you really should be able to see it. It's as plain as the nose on your face.

And because I teach, I know it is important, often, usually, to spell these things out. On the other hand, I teach *well,* which means, I don't let students (or readers) get away with sitting on their thumbs watching the show. You have to think for yourselves. People who like thinking ought not to find this a problem, ought not to be stumped by it or fooled into thinking "oh jeez, this has nothing to do with politics or research, it's 'just' diary-keeping (or entertainment, or whatever)." And for most of us, I think, blogging isn't an intro-level course, so we don't have a responsibility here to begin by defining the subject. I expect people who blog on, oh, say, politics or feminism to have some working definitions of their own, and I certainly expect them to understand that politics and feminism are not two separate categories. I expect the blogosphere to run like an advanced-level seminar or even a roundtable. Don't be passive, people. Think about what you read, and read widely.

And if you think feminism is important, listen to the girls. Duh.

Edited to add a very good example of what I'm saying.

Still more on motherhood, children, and war

Really interesting posts over at The Young Hegelian: Matt at Pas Au-Dela left a link in the comments, but I'm bringing it up to the main page because I really like the thinking going on over there.

You know it's the first day of classes when....

You're eating a really crappy pre-made refrigerated sandwich from the snack bar while quickly going over the lecture notes you wrote back in June, trying to remind yourself what you wanted to say.

So, yeah. I started today (way behind everyone else; man, we start late here). Of course, while my syllabi were ready (I finished the grad syllabus last night), I hadn't done the reading I told the grad students to do. And I needed to look up a couple things for my undergrad lecture. But first . . .

I had to take pseudonymous kid to his first day of school!!! Bless him, he was all nervous about it, all week, and had a couple of bedtime-I'm-getting-tired crying jags where he was begging, "don't make me go to school!. But we showed up, bright and early, lunch box and backpack and spare set of clothes and shoes in hand. By the time he'd hung up his jacket and backpack and pinned the construction paper fish with his name on it to the bulletin board, he was totally ready to go. "Mama, papa, I don't need you any more," he said. Rock on! My job is done, now I can relax, man. So we kissed him goodbye, took off, and Mr. B. dropped me off at school . . .

where I quickly re-read the essay I'd assigned the grad students, xeroxed their syllabi, and taught my first ever grad course! Man, they're smart and ambitious. They want to do a field trip to nearby Big City University, which has Real Archives, so I said, sure, if we can figure out how to all get there, let's do that. And the undergrad class, in the afternoon, was nice too. As always, I tried to cover too much (but it's good, it creates the sense that I have Big Expectations). Walking in, I had a little fan club of former students in the first and second rows, which is always a pleasant surprise, since I never check the class list ahead of time. And I tried something new: instead of going over the syllabus first, I had them write on a seemingly innocuous get-to-know-you question (why are you taking this class?) while I took roll, and then I collected answers and streamlined them into the larger rationale for the course, before turning to the syllabus and explaining what and why they're expected to do the things they're expected to do. It seemed to work pretty well, actually; there was a bit of laughter at my fake distress over their honest answers ("I'm taking it because it fit into my schedule and I really don't care about this subject, so what I hope to get out of it is that I hope it'll be interesting after all") and I, for my part, was pleased with my always clever ability to make comments like that seem meaningful ("You know, that's a very practical attitude! Let's talk about the practical advantages of higher education. . .")

So, like pseudonymous kid, all my anxiety sort of dissipated when faced with the reality that school is fun! There are other kids there! And you get to play with them! It's like a big social event, really.

Plus, I'm kind of pleased at the way my MWF teaching schedule does an awesome job of defining T/Th as the days for non-teaching related writing. And I have a big fat break between my morning and afternoon classes that I'm going to dedicate to grading and prep stuff. And office hours in the afternoons to do the bureaucratic bullshit... like today I have to put together a panel for upcoming Big Conference in my field, and also write one of my patented Dr. Bitch last-minute abstracts to see if I can get on someone else's panel while I'm at it.

So yeah. I'm feeling like I've got my shit together. And I'm sure as shit not feeling guilty or undeserving about it, either, unlike some people. Because I haven't been down so long that competent professionalism looks like up to me. Nah. It just feels familiar, and damnit, I'm entitled to enjoy it.

Empathy and abstraction: Russia, part 3

Jeanne over at Body and Soul talks a bit about the woman--her name is Zalina Dzandarova--in the Sophie's Choice situation. Apparently her daughter Alana lived, saved by a 15-year old boy. One detail in the story, though, I think, undermines the "happy ending" it promises: ""when the explosions sounded, she just hurled her arms around him and begged, 'Please don't leave me behind' "— the same words she had uttered to her mother 24 hours earlier." The news story implies that it is the mother providing this quotation.

Ugh. Jeanne goes on to say that focusing on individual stories like Dzandarova's "immunize us" and allow us to "turn away from tragedy"--which I think, is often true. At the same time, though, I can't agree with Jeanne that it's "awful [to be] thankful that Alana made it home." This is another one of those things that I feel I realized after becoming a mother (though Jeanne is a mother too, so obviously this is just my own understanding of my maternity): I think it is the only way to understand tragedies of this sort, on any real level. To realize that the numbers (last I heard, "more than 300") represent 300 individuals, rather than a broad abstraction. In theory, my child is no more valuable than any other woman's. In practice, he absolutely is to me (and, of course, should be)--and I realize that every other mother feels the same way. I think that in a way it is our ability to abstract these 300+ individual horror stories that allows us to turn away from tragedy, because otherwise we wouldn't be able to think. Of course, "human interest stories" in the news often pander to this human desire for empathy, combining it with a desire to feel good and offering cute kittens or happy endings devoid of analysis or context. So this impulse, like any other, can be misused. But I really don't think it's awful that, emotionally, we tend to connect with other people as individuals. (One of the commenters on Jeanne's thread points out that this is basically Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments).

And I'm really glad that 15-year old boy didn't leave Alana behind, even as I know that that phrase will echo in her mother's head for the rest of her life.

Jesus fucking christ

More on the Chechen terrorists in Beslan: Killers Set Terms, a Mother Chooses.

You know, I read Sophie's Choice long before I became a mother. And I used to be very unsentimental about children: even when I was a child myself, I used to growl at claptrap about "innocent children," arguing that childhood innocence is a ludicrous myth (so very Catholic and Augustinian of me) and that it is equally as horrible when an adult dies as when a child does. That's sort of true, in a ruthlessly rationalist kind of way. But as I've grown up a bit, I've come to terms with the fact that emotions are, in fact, real, and I have come to understand that emotion (like metaphor, which I think is the essence of religion) is also a way of understanding the world. If people matter, then how they feel matters.

My point is that I read Sophie's Choice long ago and, like everyone else I know who's ever read that novel, found it powerfully affecting. Profound, even, in representing the violence that's done by "choosing" between reason and emotion, of denying the truth and reality of human feeling, of deliberately rejecting that essential part of humanness. Sophie survives; but really, she is murdered--and damned--in the moment she has to make the impossible "choice" that she cannot not make, but cannot make. It is a horrible novel, and a splendid one, I think. It is at once breathtakingly secular and deeply representative, I think, of what we mean when we talk about good and evil.

I cannot imagine making a "choice" like that. I cannot imagine forcing someone else to do that. It is essentialist of me, but I can only say that unless one has children, one cannot imagine how utterly devastating, impossibly cruel, how evil (words fail me) such a "choice" would be. I feel certain that, as I only have one child, I don't understand it myself. That as I have never had to make such a "choice," and god forbid I ever do, I cannot understand what it must do to someone to have to. And what it must do to the child to see their mother walk away, at gunpoint, leaving them to die alone. What it does to the surviving child, knowing that that choice was made, and having to grow up with a mother who has had to make that choice. There can be nothing worse. If there is, I don't want to imagine it.

It makes one understand why Marianism has had such a hold over women throughout the history of Catholicism. It makes this bad, irreligious, religion-is-metaphor-not-literal Catholic want to go to church, light a candle, and say a Hail Mary for the metaphorical soul of humanity.

On the school in Russia, I have nothing to say

Over at Crooked Timber, there's a really heartbreaking comment thread about the horrible terrorist incident in Beslan yesterday. You know, the school where so many children were killed.

I was thinking about it all day yesterday, and like a few of the commenters at CT, I was amazed that I saw nothing in any of the blogs I read about it. I think the commenter who said that no one is talking about it because everyone is struck dumb with horror is, of course, right. At the same time, it seems horrible, too, to say nothing about something that everyone is thinking about, which I think is why people are upset at the silence, and why people are fighting in the comments over there. One wants an explanation, one wants something to be said. At the same time, clearly, no one knows what to say.

I never watch television news, because we do not have cable. And I don't get a newspaper, because I can't get anything but the local paper here, and it's pretty useless. I get my news from the web. So, while I knew what was going on in Russia, about the seizure of the school by Chechen terrorists, I didn't know that it had turned into a fucking blood bath when I posted yesterday. Now I'm feeling very strange about having posted a cute kid story, and yet, somehow it also (subtext) ties into my own, very personal, response to the thing.

In my home town, there was a crazy person (an adult) who shot up a schoolyard of kids. Yes, horrible, but I can imagine how one would do that. Columbine, horrible, but imaginable. Even 9/11 or bombing a bus in Israel or an abortion clinic, I can understand the logic, though my abhorrence of it should go without saying (and, of course, it should not go without saying. One should always say that one abhors such acts.) I firmly believe that "nothing human is alien to me," and one of my triggers in any political argument is when someone says that someone else is monstrous, inhuman, that we should make no attempt to explain or understand them. Nothing can come of that.

But I admit. Seizing a school full of children as a political act makes no sense to me. I don't mean this in the larger sense, where of course it is a senseless, cruel, disgusting thing to do. I mean it in the sense that I really can't even begin to imagine how someone could think that way. In this sense, I think it is worse than children dying of starvation or war or disease all over the world: we ought not to ignore these things, but I understand why we do: the problem seems too large, each death an individual one, overwhelming in totality. Similarly, genocide: while it turns my stomach to say it, the fact is I can understand the logic of it, though I push it away from my brain even as I am forced to admit that.

But this thing in Beslan, I can't get my mind around it, even if I try to divorce my emotional response, because I can't divorce my emotional response. I cannot be a brain-on-a-stick about it. Partly this is because it is new, temporally speaking; partly it is because it is, I think, new in the annals of political acts. Partly it is, no doubt, because I am a mother and my brain crashes, overwhelmed by the initial thought: my god, what if that were my child? Those parents. My god. I can't understand how the brains of the people who planned this act didn't shut down at the same thought. I, frankly, cannot understand how the brain of any human being, any social animal, wouldn't shut down at this. Children have always been targets in war, even deliberately so, but not like this.

I think that tapping into that reaction, allowing oneself to be silenced, is precisely the reaction we ought to have. It is the reaction that says, "this is unthinkable." We ought to find more things unthinkable, probably. But the unthinkable things thrust us back into the argument that this is "monstrous" (which it is), and part of why it is monstrous is because it violates our sense of common humanity. But then declaring the people who did it monsters also violates our common humanity, disgusting as it is to say that.

So that is why I, for one, do not know what to say.

Epater la bourgeoise

Our good friends over at Gene Expression are continuing to try to impugn my character. Apparently I am also a Bad Mother and my children will grow up to hate me. Plus ca change.

I started to post a longish comment over there, but then realized I am just being baited, and that the pile of false logic and poor reasoning is too high for me to spend hours picking it apart. Plus others, who are not being personally indicted and are therefore keeping cooler heads, are doing it for me, and I really hate flamewars.

I think, instead, I will let the gentleman I was sex-chatting with last night have the final word:

Me: I actually like my bourgeois life. Especially because I get to epater la bourgeoise, thereby having my cake and eating it too.
Him: :)
Me: I am honor bound to admit that in fact I have an open marriage.
Him: So you are enjoying the fact of being married, having a beautiful kid, and being a beautiful woman who can do what she wants?
Me: Exactly :)
Him: Should I envy your husband now? I guess I should.
Me: LOL. Only if you are so open-minded as to envy a man whose wife is not "faithful." Which a lot of men are not.
Him: I envy a man who is married to a woman who has not forgotten she is attractive to other men.

Make. It. Up.

That's what pseudonymous kid just said to me, demanding a THIRD "naughty kitten" story over our (late) breakfast, in response to my trying to plead that I couldn't think of another story to tell him.

See, pseudonymous kid absolutely adores didactic narrative. I don't get it, b/c I hated that as a kid, but there it is. He loves stories where children (or "naughty kittens") misbehave and horrible things happen to them. Though actually, in the naughty kitten series, what usually happens is the naughty kittens get scolded soundly, and then the mama cat tells them she loves them anyway. They do things like throw the phone in the toilet ("and then the mama cat explained that that is a Very Bad Idea, because if the phone doesn't work and there is a fire, then you can't call the fire department!"), paint not only the walls of the bedroom but go on to paint the furniture and even the sheets ("and the mama said AHHHHH!!!!" which gets gales of giggles), hide so that the mama cat thinks they are missing and calls the police and gets the whole town in an uproar, and so forth. I think my masterpiece was the time they wandered off into the desert on vacation and got lost, but wound up being So Naughty that the desert animals, even the rattlesnakes, were scared of them and sent them back home where they were, of course, soundly scolded for wandering off and told to Never Do It Again Because They Could Have Died.

I know, I know. It sounds absolutely sadistic of me. (And in fact, the naughty kittens got invented on a long road trip where I was just so sick of entertaining him that I channelled my aggression into a story about terribly misbehaving kittens and How Angry They Made Their Mama!) But the more catastropic the consequences, the better he likes the story. Obviously this is a kid who thinks narratively (maybe all kids do it, but I only have the one so far). It's interesting, because it's sort of like blogging, for me (this will be developed further, in the promised post on women bloggers): subtext, narrative, temporal development of ideas, dialogue, etc: all really great ways of meandering around ideas.

The thing is, it's making me rethink research, and how it works, and the whole publish/perish thing (I have a lot of publishing anxiety, which is one reason I haven't published much). Start thinking of it more as process and less as Final Product and Last Say Forever and Ever, Amen. Of course, part of the problem with books and articles is the polishing them up: you research stuff, and you want to write about it (and I do, like here, about sex and stuff), and then to write it "for publication" you have to have sort of learned it pretty well, but by the time you've done that, you've sort of digested it and are ready to move on, yk? So I want to start writing my "real" stuff more like the blog, just kind of churning out things as I think of them and then popping them off to journals.

In other words, making it up as I go along.

Sitemeter; or, whoring on the web

Well, I've installed it too, and it really is pretty interesting. Luckily, no one at work seems to read my blog, so it has done its job. The unexpected side effect of sitemeter, though, is that I now see how many of you check this thing on a pretty regular basis (tsk! tsk! don't you have work you should be doing?) and now I feel guilty that this is not a good posting week for me: am trying to get my syllabi done (with incredible amounts of procrastination along the way, believe you me). I'm not even going to talk about the other work I should be doing, except to say that my book proposal got turned down so now I need to either see if it's negotiable (I wanted to do a complete edition of a very long out-of-print thing, sort of to support the monograph I'm working on, and now I wonder if the press might be willing to do a shorter edition, with maybe some supplementary web stuff--they've done that sort of thing before, I believe) or whether I should just see if someone else might want it. Advice?

Anyway, I am working on a couple of exciting posts, no really!! One about the "gosh, why don't the ladies write about politics" question addressed over on Trish Wilson's blog, and another on something else I found, some sexist b.s. linked to my blog (ah, sitemeter), where some libertarian sociobiology freak is concerned for my marriage, no really he is, and I really oughta be ashamed of myself b/c even if my own extremely well-educated Murphy Brown self might be able to handle it when my husband wises up and divorces my whorish ass--i.e., keep myself and my undeserving sprog off of welfare, thereby not stealing other people's hard-earned pennies--I'm setting a bad example for the plebes who will undoubtedly read my blog and begin producing bastards all over the place and then drain the national coffers and undermine the very foundations of liberty. Liberty, you know, being defined as the right of men (and a few women) to keep all "their" money--you know, which they earn in the free market where everyone's work is compensated precisely according to their merit--rather than the right of women to do what the hell we want with our cunts. Oh, and I'm also doubtlessly indoctrinating my students with my radical feminist agenda. Picture me rolling my eyeballs back in my head so far I pass out at the astonishing cluelessness of this idiocy. And just wait 'til you read the racist crap in the comments. I shan't link to it yet, because I prefer to wait until I can more properly articulate my utter disdain.

Well, actually, never mind. I think that I've kind of summed up my response, and you can also see that I am stupid enough to leave comments when I find things like that, as well as seeing that, yes, Mr. B. knows about my blog identity: here. Don't bother to troll, please; I probably shouldn't have commented myself, and I don't want to be sending trolls all 'round the internet; I post the link only for context b/c I'll be referring back to this in the other entry when I get around to it. Do note, however, that our dear blogger considers himself sexually liberal because he believes that "many women are too intelligent to be satisfied with *only* a housewife's life" (his emphasis), which I think may be my favorite line in the whole thing.

Actually both of those posts (the planned one and the one that, inadvertently, I've just written) are really on the same subject: people who totally fail to get it and should really be ignored, except that I get annoyed and start ranting. It's this chain attached to my Achilles' heel, you see: yank on it and watch me run. My friends use it to great comedic effect, the bastards, and it is yet another self-improvement project I owe to the internet, the realization that the world is full of idiots, really, and you can't let them all wind you up so you must learn to meditate or be all zen or something. But I'm not quite there yet, so expect a(nother) rant soon. Maybe over the weekend.

In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves. And/or check out the stuff in the sidebar, especially Fafblog!'s fucking hilarious coverage of the RNC. I've also created a blogrolling account, so many exciting updates should be added soon (yes, I see all of you who are linking to me, and I love you! Really! Because I am a big fat whore and I'll fuck anyone for the price of a link!), as soon as I figure out how *that* works.

But first of all I have to figure out what the hell I'm going to teach my graduate students this semester, and really more to the point, what I am not going to bother to try to cram into this class just because it's my first graduate class and I'm feeling like teaching everything I know in one semester is a realistic and desireable possibility. Yes! Here it all is! Everything I have ever learned! Thank you, and goodnight!

Ah, the perpetual motion machine of last-minute course planning, driven by ambition and sloth....

'Twould make a nice engraving, that, wouldn't it? Framed, on one's office wall? The whore, driven by ambition and sloth, planning to indoctrinate young impressionable minds and lead them down the path to hell? Where is Hogarth when you need him?