Matters academic

A dear friend of mine once pulled me aside after a particularly trying Ph.D. class to say, "Oh my God, you have to stop making those faces. You are making me laugh just to get me in trouble, aren't you?"

"What faces?" I asked.

"You know." She scrunched up her brow and pulled a comically pained frown. Then she laughed mightily. "You're making it really hard to keep a straight face whenever that boring guy talks."

The boring guy, as I recall, was a fellow student who talked a lot and never made any sense. I had thought I was the very image of self-control, since I never, ever, not even once, said anything withering or mean in response to his comments. In fact, I shut myself up tight for at least ten minutes after each time he spoke just so I wouldn't accidentally say, "What the fuck, man?" As it turns out, I seem to have zero control over my facial expressions.

In my M.A. program, I had a perceptive professor who would watch me beadily as he lectured, only to interrupt himself with, "A White Bear, your eyebrow seriously twitched when I said that. Why?" Usually, my eyebrow had twitched because I wanted to respond, but at other times my eyebrow twitched because I had been enjoying a particularly ripe daydream of some sort at that moment. Asking me what I was thinking about based on my face was a gamble he was apparently willing to take.

At academic lectures, I'm sure I'm a mess. At bad ones, I've been observed with my mouth agape, subtly shaking my head no, no, no, no, against my own will. At good ones, I'm smiling and nodding (subtly, thank God). Once, while moderating a conference panel of mixed quality early in the morning, I was seen listening to an entire talk with my head straight on, my mouth lightly pursed in the attitude of courageous endurance.

I am pleased to say that over the past few weeks I have been treated to several wonderful talks that have not at all required me to sit somewhere out of the speakers' sightlines. It really makes my week to be able to understand (and later repeat) a speaker's thesis, be made to care about the subject matter (extra points for novelty to me), feel inspired to ask (or at least hear) earnest and challenging questions, and learn some nuance of presentation or organization that I might incorporate into my future work. I love feeling like I've been taught something not only about the subject, but also about how to do this work we do and why we do it.

I've been to maybe five truly great academic lectures in as many years. Of those lectures, I can still repeat memorable phrases, name all the major texts cited, and recall the entire organizational arc as if I heard them yesterday. Two of these five lectures happen to be by the same professor. None of these five lectures were made by people whom I would primarily describe as charismatic or silver-tongued, and none of them spoke on subject matter that was inherently attractive to me or my research. They really just had amazing things to say and they said them in an amazing way.

Since I can't in this venue single out the speakers themselves, I should instead single out the qualities that made these lectures remarkable.

1. The speakers demonstrated reading that is both broad (ranging a wide variety of eras, authors, subjects, and genres) and deep (demonstrating a mastery of the literature and criticism surrounding the particular topic).
   
2. They either provided or implied a warrant for their study that exceeds the context of scholarship. That is, they made me not only want to tell academic friends what I heard, but also non-academics.
   
3. They either provided or implied a challenging pedagogical method related to their study.
4. The talks each formed a sort of scholarly narrative, not merely serially listing ideas, but linking them in a causal chain that yields conclusions that are more than a sum of the talk's parts.
5. None of these speakers spoke strictly from a script. Strictly scripted talks without asides can seem too much like high-wire acts, and rarely follow the listenable cadences of human speech. I like feeling that if the script spontaneously combusted, the speaker could wave away the smoke and plunge on with reasonable success.

This one's for the academics out there: What are the attributes that make a good presentation in your field? How do you make distinctions between a merely "good" talk and a fantastic one? How often do you hear a talk worth repeating in some form to your colleagues? What about a talk worth repeating to your non-academic family and friends?

N.B.: When I speak of the value of a talk for non-academic audiences, of course I don't mean "stupid audiences." What I mean is, does this talk have conceptual, social, or even entertainment value for people who do not automatically assume the importance of academic study?

Why I write not of men

Anytime any women get together to have a conversation about women's problems, there's always a man there to say, "That happens to men, too!" or "You just want to take away what we have!" or "You have no idea how your feminism makes me feel!" Men who say these things are not feminists. Why do we still listen to them? Why do we bother letting them catch us up in stupid arguments about whether it's worse to be forced to have babies or to be forced to go to war? No one's drawing any comparisons, sweetheart. We're just dealing with these women's issues right now, you see, and if you'd like to help us solve these problems, please do. If you want to go solve the problems of the dominant culture, you're welcome to do so any time of any day. Most men have had the luxury of dealing with their own goddamned problems for, oh, at least 5,000 years.

When feminists get together online or in person to talk about our problems, the focus is on us. If we decide to deal with a different or more specific group's problems, you can bet straight white men's problems are not on the emergency to-do list. We might talk about men of color or gay men or impoverished men, but for some reason, straight white bourgeois men rarely take up a lot of our activist time. Some of us feminists happen to be straight white women who are involved sexually with straight white men. In my love life, I do care for a straight white man and we treat each other with complete respect. In my work, I deal all the time with straight white men, and I treat them all with exactly the respect with which I treat everyone else. But in my activist life, when dealing in abstracts, I don't think, "You know who desperately needs my help today? Straight white dudes."

When men derail a conversation about feminism, they are not interrupting a conversation in which privileged little girls are sitting around bitching to hear our own voices or even to solve our own problems, necessarily. They are often interrupting a conversation in which we are concerned with the least fortunate among us, the ones who have to struggle to get through a day because of who they are. When we talk about abortion rights, it's not because each of us desperately wants to have an abortion. It's because we know that the people who suffer most from abortion bans are almost always poor women of color who don't have anything like reasonable representation in government.

Anyone who has really suffered learns to comfort themselves by thinking, "And yet others have it worse." It is the ugliest of bourgeois privileges to burst into a conversation about discrimination to talk of your own dilemmas, because, somehow, the most privileged person in the room always gets the floor while the others are expected to stand back and say, "Perhaps I've been selfish." It's what they have been told their whole lives, so why should they expect better, even in a "feminist" environment?

Here's a story. When I was in college, I spent over a year in a relationship with someone who tried to kill me, over and over and over. It broke my spirit. I stayed with him because he was mentally ill and I thought that the murderous him wasn't the "real" him. We fought and fought and I wore lots of long sleeves to cover up places where I'd been cut. For two years after I finally got out of this relationship, all I thought was not "poor me" but "poor him." "Is he alive? Has he gotten help? Did I do everything I could?" Of course he's fine. He's a charming young bourgeois white man with a mental disorder and a large family who loves him, so plenty of people want to help him.

Eventually I got to the point where I could think "poor me." I did for a little while, but it wasn't long before I realized that just about every woman I knew had been in some similar situation. It soon became "poor us." But among us, I realized that those women who were not white and/or straight and/or financially self-sufficient had it worse just about all the way down the line. "Poor us" became "I don't even know the half of what it means to hurt for being a woman."

Just a week ago, I was on the phone with a student of mine from a year ago. She's a brilliant young lesbian who will go far in her activist career. She grew up in New York City, and before I knew better, I used to think, "Wow, what a privilege she has to be a lesbian in the most open queer environment in the world! These kids today are great." That was before we started hanging out. From talking to her, I learned that not only has she suffered constant alienation from her family and practically ritualized abuse at the hands of men, but she also gets the shit kicked out of her in public pretty regularly. "Oh, I got jumped last week," she said over the phone. I was frantic. Did she go to the police? Were there passersby to rescue her? "Naw, it happens kinda a lot." What provocative lesbian thing was she doing, you ask? Walking down the street with short hair. A bunch of drunk white guys yelled at her from a block away, "Are you a boy or a girl?" When she didn't answer, they chased her for two blocks, threatening her sexually, and then held her from behind while they punched and kicked her.

The thing that I always must keep in mind is that no matter what happens to me, no matter how many abusive men I know or sexist guys I have to face in my career, I don't have to worry about walking down the street. The most upsetting thing I've ever "come out" about to my conservative parents is that I've chosen not to marry or have my own children. I may not be able to afford fancy rich women's clothes or tanning vacations, but I can make my rent.

There is a reason for the poem "Those Tears." To interrupt a conversation about the struggles faced by an oppressed group is to become the oppressor. As someone who has never had to walk down the street afraid that my haircut will get my ass kicked, as someone who's never been refused a job for not being the right color, as someone who's never faced losing the love of everyone I know just for being who I am, I do not have the right to derail others from talking about these issues, no matter what my own problems are. In fact, it's my job as a feminist to help ensure that a safe space for those conversations exists. It is not my fucking job to ensure at all costs a space for a more dominant culture to discuss their struggles. There is a reason that Blac(k)ademic and Angry Black Bitch and brownfemipower don't sit around talking about how awful straight white men and straight white women have it. We already have representation in newspapers, the magazines, most of the internet, the government, and every public space in America. Do we really need our problems represented in every venue on the planet?

Is it that hard for men who don't care about women's problems to just let us talk? I am delighted to see that so many of the men who read this blog do seem genuinely to care about women's lives. They listen, they ask, and they have in the past listened and asked and read and thought. Thank you for recognizing that women do need to hold conversations about women's issues. I know you already know why I don't post about men.

Who's your favorite feminist?

The Bitch used to have a little feature, I recall, that displayed a different historical feminist each day or week. I don't know if she ever showed my favorite or not, so forgive me if this is a repeat for you.

Whether you grew up an oppressed female or a free-range type like myself, you probably weren't actively a feminist in any real sense for most of your young adulthood. You heard about feminists and their arguments, and maybe they sounded "shrill" or "churlish" or "bitchy" to your patriarchally-attuned ears. You either didn't care about the issues they raised or didn't experience them as problems in your own life, so you had a hard time thinking of feminism as either valid or necessary. Then you read something or heard about someone, a feminist, and you thought about her experience and her struggle, you compared her to yourself, and suddenly it all fell into place. That's what the patriarchy is, you thought. The bastards!

I was terribly in need of enlightenment. If ever a young woman grew up to be a misogynistic young man, it was me. I could play ball with the boys, but couldn't stand to talk to girls. I loved "masculine" literature about survival and seduction and scorned "girl books" like Little Women. In college, I tossed back martinis with the guys and ripped on the ladies of my dorm -- how petty, how whiny, how self-absorbed and catty! Fucking bitches, I'd say. Yes, I even used my loathing of chicks to get laid. I was halfway through a very manly M.A. thesis on the manly topic of classical rhetoric in Tom Jones when I was struck from my ass into the dirt upon reading sweet little old Frances Willard.


Willard's a hard sell, nowadays, on account of her not being sexy. She was, after all, the founder of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the name of which should be enough to strike fear into the heart of any quasi-alcoholic agnostic graduate student. She didn't fight for the right to bigger and better orgasms. She didn't wave a gun around while stalking bourgeois artist circles. She didn't stage dramatic protests. She merely calmly explained, in language not foreign to any literate person, what the world has to gain from the full professional, political, and spiritual participation of its women. Nowadays I'm far more attuned to the voice of Willard's more radical sisters and granddaughters. I see now why acts of rage and disruption are necessary. At that moment in my life, though, I needed Willard to help me confront my own hatred of women.

I started by reading her brilliant little book, Woman in the Pulpit. Her Biblical exegesis in this book is some of the sharpest I've ever read. Taking the dialogue between Satan and Jesus in the wilderness as a pattern for how one must compare scripture with scripture, Willard easily dismantles any possible justification for sexism in the Christian church. For every verse that claims a woman should be silent, she finds three praising the wisdom, prophecy, and active ministry of women. In this book, she explains that the exclusive male right to exegesis has perverted the religion, not only because of statistics (at the time, women comprised two-thirds of church attendance in America), but also because, she claims, men only know how to read with their own best interests at heart. A woman is raised to think of everyone's needs at once -- her parents', her partner's, her children's, and her own -- so women read more generously, with everyone's best interests at heart. Until men learn to think of others' lives with the same immediacy with which they think of their own, they must relinquish exegesis to the female sex.

This strikes us, of course, as sexist in its own way. Who is Willard to say what a "woman" is or is not? I think what she is arguing is that only those who have been oppressed can see the system for what it truly is. Willard surrounded herself with women all her life because she couldn't relate to the blindness and entitlement of men. As a teen, she entered into a courtship with a young man of great promise. In her correspondence from that time, she tells a girlfriend that she has tried desperately hard to love him, but cannot love him like she loves her friend, with the passion of knowing a like mind. She eventually broke off the engagement and never married. It has been suggested that Willard had many lesbian relationships with the women close to her, but she always retained the awareness that she could have gone down the other path and married. Her compassion for the struggles of married mothers (especially in an era ravaged by alcholism) is enormous.

I went on to read everything Willard ever wrote, some of which only exist in first editions. How to Win: A Book for Girls is a handbook for young women on how to develop professional skills in case that plan to marry a handsome prince goes awry or the prince turns out to be an abusive alcoholic. Wheels within Wheels tells the story of Willard learning to ride a bicycle at 50, urging women of all ages to avail themselves of every opportunity for education and mobility. Even the guidebooks for starting Women's Christian Temperance Union chapters are really little rhetoric-books, teaching women how to organize and run meetings, recruit members, and mobilize groups for action through speech. They tell readers what to do if they get nervous or if their husband disapproves. They teach women how to be leaders and politicians. They fight for racial equality and more lenient treatment of prostitutes. In the end, she argues, women who learn how to get into positions of power will remake the world not just for one gender or the other, not just for one race or another, but for everyone.

These days, I prefer redder feminist meat to feed on. I am not afraid now of being called "shrill" or "churlish" or, God forbid, "radical," and the feminists I read are similarly shameless. Willard provided me with the baby steps I needed to free my mind from misogyny, and no matter how far I go beyond her, I'll never forget that I once needed her.

So, feminist readers, who was the first person to uncover your eyes?

Short-answer essay exam

So Nancy Goldstein of the Raw Story asked Bill Napoli of the "sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it" about what he thinks the results of South Dakota's abortion ban will be. She asked him about the high infant mortality rates in the state, only to be told that's what you get with a bunch of impoverished Sioux stinking up your statistics. Goldstein wondered why helping Sioux families get insurance isn't a priority, and he washed his hands of them. They're, like, Sioux, you know?

Question #1: Why don't anti-abortion activists care about live children?

Later, Napoli claims he has never heard that contraception can fail, and has always assumed that abortions are just, like, birth control for procrastinators. This places Napoli outside of the traditional pro-abstinence movement that says "birth control almost never works." He may be a splinter group, in which case his splinter group should be offering universal state-funded contraception. This is not happening either.

Question #2: Why is birth control this thing you can lie about one way when you're convincing Jane to pledge allegiance to the V, and you can lie about it another way when you're legislating that Jane can't have an abortion?

Apparently we are still fighting about whether fetuses feel pain. The South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion has asked 30 witnesses to present testimony on both sides of the abortion ban to provide evidence. The committee chose to ignore the statement of Dr. Mark Rosen, a fetal anaesthesiologist, that a fetus cannot feel pain until at least the 23rd week, among several other experts who presented their research.

Question #3: Why do these fuckers even bother asking doctors and scientists what they think when they're going to do what they want anyway?

For help on this exam, please read this rebuttal of the SDTFSA's decision by Karen Miller and Barbara Chapman.

Why I Love Empiricism

Those of you who have clicked over to my blog have probably already noticed that most of it, like this morning's post here, consists of personal anecdotes. I have been delighted to see that so many of you are eager to share your experiences in comments. Why am I so in love with anecdotes? Because all we really have are our experiences.

One of the things that drives me absolutely batty about the notion of a "public sphere" is that we seem to take for granted that what journalists tell us is true, even when it conflicts with our own experience of the world. I'm not saying that journalists are bad people or anything, just that we assume that they go out and experience the world, see things, talk to people, experience life fully and thoroughly, and then give some kind of accurate account of it to us. What many journalists do instead is make patterns, connections, and assumptions out of the empirical experience of others.

A scientist may work closely on a problem and convey the results, and then the science journalist makes predictions about how it will change our lives or who will be angry about the results. (A wonderful case study of this problem in journalism is recorded here at Language Log, which often covers the problem of poor science journalism.) An article about "religion" or "the Midwest" in the NYT Magazine is rarely written by someone who's lived for a while as a Baptist in Missouri. It's written by someone who has talked to Baptists in Missouri and has opinions about how what that person says might be interesting to, say, agnostics in Westchester.

There's a tricky relationship between journalism that describes and journalism that theorizes. One of the things I love about the New Yorker is that it's always clear from the outset of an article which it is. Malcolm Gladwell doesn't go around reporting minute details of homelessness or dog attacks. He presents some statistics and mentions an instance or two, then creates theories to explain them. It's a gift, but it's not reportage. Other NYer writers have the gift of trying to step back and say what happened without much external hoopla. (Oddly enough, the review section is probably the best this way, describing books, performances, and music without hypereditorializing. Denby and Lane's movie reviews, of course, are usually so editorial that you can't even guess what the movie was about.) In the New York Times, it's almost impossible to tell reportage from editorial.

During the 2004 election, I read every word of their coverage until it drove me insane. They told me how the two or three people they interviewed in a bar "felt" about the candidates. They told me about the candidates' image campaigns. They spilled gallons of ink on the campaign logos and tie colors and height and speech-pauses. They told me that Christians liked Bush and less religious people liked Kerry. They worried about Kerry's embarrassing attempts to "win over" the Heartland, like, emotionally. They wondered if single women would "warm" to the candidates, like, romantically. (What is this, 1960? Because we don't have enough feminist issues to vote about, we're concerned about a strong jaw, deep voice, and full hair?) There may have also been a few articles on policies, party platforms, speeches, and so forth, but it was drowned in a cacophony of analysis.

What pissed me off was to hear people echoing the sentiments of these NYT writers as if they were things we obviously all felt. My parents started saying, "Well, as Christians, we really can't support Kerry, you know," and I heard people on the subway saying, "Clearly, Kerry's campaign is doomed, with that 'weak' logo and his desperate attempts to 'win over' the Heartland." To what extent does the NYT report on true things, compared to the things they make true by "reporting" them?

There is no end to newspaper editorialization, of course. I just wish that people trusted their own eyes and ears more. Why let trends and generalizations tell you what people of your age, race, gender, social class, cultural identity, or sexual orientation think or experience? Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wrote in "Integrating the American Mind" that "Maybe the truest thing that can be said about racism is that it represents a profound failure of imagination." Stereotypes invalidate what we know about ourselves and those around us. Stereotypes make communication with others easy because they give us a recognizable shorthand, but is ease worth the loss of our detail and perspective?

A sure sign that journalistic discourse is taking over our lives is Slate's new feature, "Weekend Cocktail Chatter." Presumably, you have nothing to say, since your life has nothing interesting in it. You can't possibly create conversation with strangers, as you can't have any real opinions or experiences to discuss. You need someone to tell you what to talk about, how you might feel about it, and even how to say it. Slate is there for you to tell you what "everyone" will be talking about this weekend. Of course, "everyone" can only talk about what's being discussed in the news. Of course, "everyone" spends all weekend at bourgeois urban cocktail parties with educated people who are all too stupid to invent their own conversation topics.

Unfortunately, I find myself in this position rather often, and, recognizing the absurd banality of cocktail chatter, I usually find some quiet moment in which to bring up Secret Mark, the gnostic gospel passage in which Jesus is revealed to have a sexual thing for zombie dudes. Put that in your weekend cocktail chatter and smoke it.

When that I was and a little tiny girl

(with a hey, ho, the wind and the rain)

I don't remember my parents imposing any patriarchal mandates on me until I was at least 13. Sure, my mother would have preferred if I'd stop slouching and smile pretty, but from age eight or so until then, I was awfully depressed and getting me to smile at all was a chore. Before then, I remember running wild. We lived for a time in a half-empty cul-de-sac on the plains and my friends and I, boys and girls, spent afternoons hiding in the abandoned houses and putting on lip-synch shows to favorite Harry Nilsson and Donovan songs. We all played ball together, like in Peanuts, and we stole our parents' clothes to dress up in. Before I got depressed, I don't remember feeling like I was a girl and had to do girl things, or that there were boy things from which I was forbidden. An itchy lace collar on Olan Mills day was the worst of it.

In cities, from what I gather, kids aren't so lucky. They're forced to deal with gender difference in one way or another since they're always on display. Children, their clothes, and their friends become a statement of what their parents "believe" about gender. Unfortunately, parents who don't think they believe anything about gender end up reinforcing patriarchal crap.

In my Brooklyn neighborhood a few weeks ago, I heard a mommy cooing to her two-year-old blue-clad stroller-hostage while pointing at a $600 necklace in a shop window, "Doesn't baby want to buy that for mommy? Wouldn't he just love to give that to mommy? Someday, he will." Meanwhile, a block away, a long-haired boy with pink boots on saved a stranded worm from certain pavement death while Daddy said, "It's good to be kind to little things."

The New York City college kids I've taught whose parents helped them hate the patriarchy are some of the most gender-enlightened people I've ever met. They understand sexualities, transsexualities and nonsexualities better than most of my fully-adult acquaintances. They're practically magical. But the city kids I've taught whose parents did not help them navigate gender are in a sad state. The girls long to find a rich man to care for them so they can drop out of school. The boys long to be that guy who can one day buy a prostitute-wife. And surprisingly, when I teach texts by gay authors, they are totally thrown. "Is this a typo? Did he just say 'boyfriend'? I don't get it. You didn't tell us he was gay!"

I'm often grateful for my rural gender-ignorant girlhood. In the country, until you're a teen, you're just a kid, and no one's worried about whether you'll land the right kind of man or become an exemplar of masculine, successful vigor. Suddenly, then, your innocence is ripped from you when mama and papa sit you down and say, "It's time you cut that hair," and "A little lipstick will make you look pretty." But I often wonder if rural kids don't have the advantage of city kids in this regard. They play without supervision and create their own gender-utopias. While city-raised kids on either side of the patriarchal fence have always been exposed to the Way Things Are, they rarely get the opportunity to make the world for themselves out of nothing.

Don't worry; this is going somewhere. Thoughts?

A Caveat to the Interim Works of A White Bear

The opinions reflected by this guest columnist are A White Bear's own and do not reflect those of her illustrious host. Although Professor Bitch has unwisely offered A White Bear loan of her mighty sun-chariot, knowing full well that A White Bear knows not of "the middle way," she knows there is probably no damage that A White Bear can do that the she cannot right or at least explain away with a blithe "Pshaw, silly Bear." Any and all personal anecdotes by A White Bear with regard to Her Bitchliness shall be understood to be outright lies. Any and all manifesti by A White Bear shall be taken as gospel, or something very nearly resembling it. A White Bear is a moniker derived not from any kind of kinky racist group of dudes, but from A White Bear's most favoritest work of literature and, more particularly, a part about epistemological inquiry. See this old thing if you're into lengthy self-important explanations. A White Bear's home blog, if you feel a burning urge to read more like-minded things in a day, is here. We'll speak no more of it, except to say that "Is there no sin in it?" is also home to Phutatorius' Chestnut, who is capable of anything while A White Bear's back is turned. Your favorite Bitch and mine will return to your lovin' arms on Sunday.

The difference between a baby and a fetus

A baby can abort a fetus, but not the other way around.

And with that little bit of absurd news, the world of Lacrosee-playing hate criminals, really moving abortion stories, and exposes of academic secrets will have to wait a week or so, because I, am, outta here.

But I won't leave you without entertainment! That would be wrong. I will leave you in the good hands--er, paws--of A White Bear. Not just any white bear, mind you, but a sinless, Brooklyn-dwelling white bear.

Don't piss her off. White bears are unpredictable, you know, and have no natural enemies. So if you annoy her, she won't be afraid to take off your head.

Linky link

Lazy blogging, but I can't help it. I wrote a conference paper today, I have meetings piled on top of meetings tomorrow, the good reading links have been accumulating on my desktop, and I still have to read for tomorrow's class. I don't care how late I end up staying up, though, I'm gonna watch some more Battlestar Galactica! (Mr. B. borrowed the DVDs from the SIL I'm not speaking to, so I guess I owe her some credit for that, b/c it's an awesome show! Who knew?) Mr. B. is my hero, because he arranged my conference travel which, as always, I left until the absolute last minute because I suck like that.

Anyway, without further ado, some of the contents of my desktop "blog this" file:

Garance Franke-Ruta, What's Lost When Women Aren't on the Op-Ed Page?

Ema explains medical abortion regimens.

The Dems are running women. Pay attention, vote for them, and send them money.

You have to read this weird letter by one of the Missouri politicians who wants to de-fund birth control.

A South African AIDS activist charges the former deputy P.M. with rape. His supporters yell, "burn the bitch!" which doesn't exactly incline one to think that he's innocent, somehow.

Not all Christians are anti-abortion. Link via Erudite Redneck, one of the good guys.

Lani Guinier, The Meritocracy Myth, via BlackFeminism. As she says, this is a must-read.

A very satisfying abortion rights rant.

Ema again, this time on another ridiculous anti-abortion law, this time in Michigan.

Alabama's working on one of those no-abortion-under-any-circumstances laws, too.

Hey, that's supposed to be my gig!

I hope Lil Green Chicken doesn't mind me swiping her picture, but how could I resist?

Thanks to Doctor Dave for the heads up.

How many of you that sit and judge me

Know what song that's from?

Buck Owens died today. He was a particular favorite of my country-music loving uncle, who listened to nothing but KUZZ radio.

You can explore a little bit of The Bakersfield Sound via this link. (The audio's down, but the video works.)

Update: ER, who I swiped that obit from, changed his own link to the Wikipedia entry which, as usual, is more through. Duh.

Don't like abortion? Become a feminist.

In case you haven't yet seen Amp's post explaining why those of us who are pro-choice repeatedly point out that the so-called "pro-life" movement is really about punishing women for having sex, you really should. Amp points out that

Although I've met some rank-and-file "pro-lifers" whose policy preferences were consistent with a belief that a fetus is morally indistinguishable from a child, those folks usually have policy preferences which are totally out of step with the abortion criminalization movement as a whole.

In contrast, the leaders of the abortion criminalization movement have consistently put their political weight behind policies which make little or no sense if they genuinely think that abortion is identical to child murder.

Amp also provides a handy chart, above right, explaining the clear hypocrisy of the "pro-life" movement (click to read).

Also, by the way, the author of the piece about the dearth of women op-ed writers in the NYT points out, in passing, that not one "pro-life" organization is also pro-birth control. Not one.

Now. I accept that there are individuals who are opposed to abortion for consistent moral reasons. And I accept that those individuals are not opposed to birth control, to sex education, and to funding for women's health organizations. But I have a real problem with such individuals trying to defend pro-life positions on pro-choice blogs, at least if they aren't also putting themselves out to argue, vehemently, with the leadership of the movement they claim to support. And I have a real problem with people who seriously want to prevent abortions calling themselves "pro-life," to be honest, because that label is used by political organizations that are opposed to women having sex and that actively pursue policies that increase, rather than decrease abortion. If I had a serious moral problem with abortion, I think that I would try to find myself another label specifically in order to distance myself from what is clearly a well-known and well-organized movement that, for better or worse--okay, let's be honest: for worse--has claimed "pro-life" to describe policies that clearly aren't.

The "pro-life" movement is demonstrably anti-woman. It is demonstrably more concerned with punishing women for having sex than it is with preventing abortion or saving children. Arguing otherwise demonstrates either ignorance or shockingly bad faith.

And if you care so much about the issue, there's no excuse for such ignorance. Which leads me to suspect that those who call themselves "pro-life" are full of shit, frankly. If abortion bothers you, get off your butts and form a real pro-life movement, one that works to actively prevent unwanted pregnancy, to support women who are forced to make hard decisions between carrying a pregnancy and protecting themselves from poverty (this includes young women who abort in order to continue their educations--being a h.s. dropout, or even a h.s. graduate, is not a really great move if you hope to make a living wage), to support single mothers with real, concrete, material initiatives.

Get over here with the feminists and start working to make motherhood a truly respected and supported institution, not a shit sandwich that ya'll talk about as if it were chocolate. I am telling you people, we pro-choice feminists are doing more every goddamn day to promote real respect for motherhood, real options for young women, real opportunities for women's economic independence--and therefore, real support for women with children and real help for women who don't want kids to avoid pregnancy in the first place--than the goddamn "pro-life" folks.

And if you can't see that, then I feel pretty damn entitled to say that the real problem is that no, you don't trust women.

Urg

Tomorrow I begin teaching knitting to elementary school kids for the next six Friday afternoons. I was supposed to teach them how to make books, but the office confused some papers, I guess, and I'm doing knitting along with another woman. I called her tonight and her plan is to teach the kids to make padded hangers! WTF? What kid wants to make a padded hanger?

Of course, you'll notice that I'm calling her to see what her plan is. Why? B/c I don't have a plan of my own. Which is, of course, kind of how I teach in real life, too. Although to be fair, I was supposed to be making books with them, and only found out on Tuesday that wasn't the case, so at least in this case my procrastination served me well.

So I spent tonight googling around for simple patterns appropriate to elementary school kids. I think I'll offer them the option of making cat toys, a headband, a small knit bag, or a Harry Potter scarf--although that last won't be something they can complete in six hours, so I will warn them that it is ambitious and will require "homework." But at least they'll have all summer to finish it up. (Yes! I am planning to give summer homework to elementary kids! Aren't I just the best!) Tomorrow I have to go out and buy the yarn and needles and somehow write up patterns b/c, of course, none of the ones I found online are simple enough--but they gave me the ideas I need to come up with ones that are.

Of course, Other Mom told me she's already cast on stitches for all the kids, yadda yadda, and I'm realizing that I don't have samples or pictures of what they'll be making, so I'm feeling like the Inadequate Elementary School Volunteer. Which is idiotic, I realize, so you don't need to bother to tell me. She's gonna love me b/c I'll be gone next Friday (I shouldn't have volunteered, but I forgot), and I'll leave her to supervise my kids working on Not Her Projects. Bleah.

Why did I volunteer to do this? Oh, you know why. Because I had an attack of "I'm not really as involved with Pseudonymous Kid's school as I Should Be, and I'm a teacher, I Really Should Do This, blah blah blah."

Goddamn mother bullshit.

Oh, and if you knit and know a really really simple project/pattern appropriate to 1st-6th graders, feel free to tell me in the comments. I can't imagine that they'll take all six weeks to finish headbands.

Heroine of the week

Cecilia Fire Thunder, the President of the Oglala Sioux in South Dakota, speaks truth to the white boys who think they run things in her country.

“I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.”

Another blogger called Pine Ridge, spoke to Ms. Fire Thunder, and posts snail mail and email addresses where you can send checks and letters of support to help fund such a clinic. She also points out, correctly, that like most Indian Reservations, Pine Ridge is not flush for cash, so if you have a little extra, you might want to consider donating to the rez directly. Pine Ridge, by the way, is the location of one of only four Indian colleges in the U.S. that is accredited to issue its own bachelor's degrees. Schools on Pine Ridge are in the bottom 10% of funding by the Dept. of Education and the BIA, teacher turnover there is eight times the national average, and the dropout rate is the highest in the nation, according to their education web site.

The mailing address is:

Oglala Sioux Tribe
ATTN: President Fire Thunder
P. O. Box 2070
Pine Ridge, SD 57770

or

ATTN: PRESIDENT FIRE THUNDER
PO BOX 990
Martin, SD 57751

For donations specifically for the Planned Parenthood clinic, make checks out to OST Planned Parenthood Cecelia Fire Thunder. General donations may be made out to the Oglala Sioux Tribe.

Fuck Custer, fuck the Seventh Cavalry, and just for the record? The Crazy Horse Memorial and Indian Education Center in South Dakota are way more interesting than that stupid Mount Rushmore bullshit.

Thanks to C.P., A.E., and No Nym for sending me links to the article. Thanks to Ben Wolfson for the heads up on the blogger with the mailing addys.

Rape in the OC

Pinko Feminist Hellcat has been tearing up teh internets with her coverage of the OC rape case.

You can read local news coverage here. Also, a reader writes that she is running

a letter drive for Jane Doe of the Haidl Rape Case in Orange County, CA. I have contacted her civil lawyer and received permission to send letters of support to his office. Will you please post on the blog to send letters of support to ihiroe at yahoodotcom? Please address the letter to Jane Doe if it’s a letter meant for her. I will be collecting and printing e-mailed letters to send to her lawyer’s office.

If people that have progressive blogs can forward and post this info, I would be grateful. Those that are aginst these heinous actions need to stand up and also let the victim know that there is support for her. Your support in publicizing this will be greatly apreciated. I have a goal of at least 500 letters, and I'm currently slowly reaching the goal.

It's time for . . . the strawfeminist!!!

Lauren just introduced me to a new blog that's got a fancy-schmancy new declaration: this is blog against strawfeminism week. Luckily, we've already started celebrating. Click all the way through--there are fun graphics! Including the one I've stolen here!--and then read the funny, snarky, right-on posts. Some of them seem to be reading my mind....

Liberal media bias! In action!

Only, not so much. According to this American Prospect piece, in the last two years, op-ed pieces

about abortion on [the NYT] op-ed page . . . consisted almost entirely of the views of pro-life or abortion-ambivalent men, male scholars of the right, and men with strong, usually Catholic, religious affiliations. In fact, a stunning 83 percent of the pieces appearing on the page that discussed abortion were written by men.

Surprisingly (not), given how much heat there's been in the blogosphere over whether or not abortion is a "central" issue for the left, many of the pro-choice pieces--by men--

raised the abortion question only to discount its continued importance as an issue.

Garance Franke-Ruta, the author, points to this as a problem specific to the NYT, pointing out that by contrast

During the same 2004 to 2006 period, more than a quarter of abortion-related op-eds in the Los Angeles Times were written by women -- a number that rose to 38 percent in the months after the resignation of editorial desk editor Michael Kinsley

I can't say I'm impressed by 25-38%, though, given that women are 51.5% of the US population and have 100% of the abortions.

Apparently we're too busy waiting 24 hours for our abortions to have time for opinions, though.

Koufax Finalist Voting now in progress

Your very humble blogger is pleased and gratified to be a finalist for Best Expert Blog. Please vote in the comment thread to that post or via email to wampum @ nic-naa.net. (subject: Koufax).

In all seriousness: despite my successful pretense at sheer, unmitigated entitlement (what bitch worth the name isn't certain she's entitled to everything she gets, and more?), I am really grateful to everyone who voted for me. I know it's just a blog award, but it is amazing to me that this blog has generated the readership and respect it has. Thank you all so much.






(Now get over there and vote for me or I'll never let you hear the end of it.)

This week's reading

A serious collection of recent abortion-related links and blogging I've been saving up. Some of it you may have already seen; some not. Do read it all: links include personal stories, evidence and argument, and pending legislation.

Ema tears into the political rhetoric and bullshit around abortion and contraception, and points out the difference between actual science and empty received truths. She also explains the facts about the recent deaths from RU-486--facts that the major news outlets have been misreporting.

Some sobering stories of the kinds of things I fear we may see more of with abortion "restrictions": a girl who self-aborted, and died, rather than tell her parents she was pregnant, an infanticide by a family who could not afford another girl child, a woman who successfully self-aborted after being gang-raped, and two stories about why the health exemption matters. (Commentary on that last link also available at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Majikthise.)

A really, really intriguing argument that we shouldn't challenge South Dakota in court. I find the reasoning here very sobering, and wonder what y'all think. Via Broadsheet.

Molly's been getting some news coverage and hate mail for talking about what to do in a post-Roe world.

Just in case y'all have missed it (it's hard to keep up), a few other places planning to ban abortion: Mississippi and Missouri. Missouri also wants to deny contraception to poor women--you know, it encourages promiscuity--and declare Christianity the official state religion. No I am not shitting you.

These assholes don't want to prevent abortion. They want women not to have sex unless they're planning to have babies. And they want to shame and intimidate women who resist them.

Why college professors are "liberal"

We don't accept straw man arguments and we do accept evidence and expect students to think for themselves. The horror.

Be sure and check out that first link. Really.

Happy birthday, Iraq war!

I need to do a massive link / public noticeboard post soon. Maybe some actual original content, too. In the meantime, however, yesterday was the three-year anniversary of the Iraq war! In celebration, if you missed Paul Eaton's op-ed in the NYT, you should read it now. And you should also go look at the revolting Abu Ghraib photos up at Salon, even though I'm being a total hypocrite in saying that b/c I couldn't stomach viewing the whole set. Oh, and this other NYT story about the so-called Black Room.

By the way, here's what the war is costing us. That's dollars spent, mind you--not Iraqi civilians or American soldiers killed. I can't find a site that lists Iraqi soldiers or American civilians.

Anyway, my Iraq war coverage sucks. Try Today in Iraq instead.

American casualties page via Veterans Against the Iraq War.

Neat!

Household Opera links to a seriously cool music encyclopedia: Musipedia. Hum part of a tune into your computer's microphone, and it'll tell you what it is.

Abortion and motherhood

A reader named Julie left this amazing commment in a old thread, and I think it's a story that deserves a broader audience. So here it is.

I know it's old, but I read this a few days and wanted to comment on something CCP said (sorry to pick on you CCP!) about not calling pregnant women mothers. And while I understand the sentiment, I think it discredits a lot of women who have abortion specifically because they are mothers and care for that child too much to allow them to die painfully (think tay-sachs) or live lives destined to be filled with surgeries and pain for a slim chance of survival. I actually did what is called elective induction for fetuses with anamolies incompatible with life when I was 27 weeks pregnant with my son. I wasn't comfortable with a D&E or a D&X, because it wasn't necessary to preserve my life or health and I caouldn't bear the thought of that happening to my child for no valid medical reason, but I knew I could not let him go on suffering. He had a limb wall body complex- a hole in his heart, scoliosis, underdeveloped lungs, no kidneys (this was the fatal part), and his liver, intestines and spleen were outside of his body. Because he had no kidneys, I had no amniotic fluid, which meant he couldn't move or grow properly and he had a clubbed foot because of it. In addition, my body was literally beating him because he didn't have fluid to protect him from the walls of the uterus.. he was actually born with one eye so swollen he couldn't open it and bruises on his head. I didn't elect to induce labor because I didn't think he was a child. I did it specifically because he was a child, MY child, and it would be over my dead body that he would suffer any more than he had too. I held him while he passed away and we took pictures of him that I treasure to this day, but I certainly consider myself to be his mother and him to be my son. I was lucky that I was able to have that time with him... I know women who are facing severe health risks or don't want to be associate labor with such a negative outcome or who choose a D&X/D&E over labor don't get that chance. But they are still mothers.. they are doing, what they as mothers think is best for that child. And even if I don't agree, I respect that they as the child's mother made the best possible decision they could.

When it comes down to it, I think that's really how I feel about abortion. I absolutely believe that it's up to pregnant women to decide if they think of themselves as mothers or not, and when; and I'm down with the argument that a lot of women feel liberated and relieved by abortions; and I know plenty of stories of women who say they never once thought of the embryo or fetus they were carrying as anything but a threat, an intruder, a parasite.

But this story captures my own personal feelings about abortion perfectly. It must be legal--and if not, women will do it anyway--because, in the end, a pregnant woman is a mother. And it's up to mothers to decide what's best for their children. And if in the mother's judgment, it would be unconscionable to continue the pregnancy or to bring a child, this child, into the world, then women who abort are, as Julie says, making the best possible decision they can.

And anyone who wants to second-guess that, imho, doesn't give a damn about motherhood.

Occupational hazard; or, what are friends for?

Me: I think I'm becoming the professor with the bad breath. All I've eaten today is coffee.
Madame X: What?! That's disgusting. You have to eat something. A banana.
Me: I don't like bananas.
Madame X: I don't care! You're not allowed to be the professor with the bad breath!
Me: I know, I know. It's gross. I never really thought about why professors have bad breath.
Madame X: Go eat a banana right now, or I am never speaking to you again.

I know y'all can do better than I did

Go, write a limerick for JP.

Pseudonymous Kid makes fruit salad

1 pint strawberries
1 pint grapes
1 pint cherry tomatoes
sprinkle liberally with sugar

"You gotta try this, it's delicious. It even has sugar in it."

Things fall apart

1. I overslept
2. I was a few minutes late for my morning class.
3. I forgot the handout for the next assignment.
4. I had to run home between class #1 and class #2 to return the car, since I had to drive rather than take the bus this morning.
5. I therefore didn't have time to prep for my *second* class.
6. I let them go early.
7. I got an email reminding me that I'm way late in turning in an incomplete grade.
8. Problem is, I lost the paper that the student turned in.
9. I emailed the student begging him to resubmit the paper two weeks ago, but haven't heard back.
10. I have a series of meetings that have been scheduled for me for the rest of this month, but I have yet to enter them into my calendar and figure out when they are.
11. I'm supposed to start teaching an afternoon elective at PK's school starting Friday. (Yes, volunteering for this was stupid.)
12. I haven't yet bought the supplies (for which I'll be reimbursed).
13. That conference paper? Not written yet.
14. That essay that's due the same weekend as the conference? Not written yet.

Can I go back to bed? Pretty please?

Pseudonymous Kid learns the "F" word

Scene: the boys have returned from grocery shopping. Mr. B. hands me some toothpaste to take up to the bathroom. It has three Disney princesses on it and is pink, pink, pink.

Pseudonymous Kid: That's my new toothpaste.
Me: Yeah? Did you pick it out yourself?
Pseudonymous Kid: Yes. But please don't tell anyone about it.
Me: Why?
Pseudonymous Kid: Because they will laugh at me, because it looks like it is for girls.
Me: Well that's very silly if they laugh at you over that. It's just toothpaste, toothpaste isn't for boys or girls, it's for everyone.
Pseudonymous Kid: But boys aren't supposed to like princesses.
Me: Oh, PK, that's not true. That's like the stupid people who say boys aren't supposed to have long hair. It's ridiculous, you can like whatever you like.
Pseudonymous Kid: Well, none of the girls I know think that it's okay for boys to like things like that. Well, maybe only girls like Tante A. and Sheila (the babysitter). I don't know what they think.
Me: I can guarantee you that Tante A. does not think it's silly for boys to like princesses.
Pseudonymous Kid: Well, but all the girls in my school think things like that.
Me: Okay. PK, is it okay if we talk about this?
Pseudonymous Kid: Yes?
Me: Ok, listen up. There are a lot of people in the world who think that boys aren't supposed to like nail polish, or have long hair, or like princesses. And there are a lot of people in the world who think girls aren't supposed to like some things, either...
Pseudonymous Kid: Like what?
Me: Oh, they think girls aren't supposed to like rough play, or being loud, or being naughty, or stuff like that. Anyway, you're in school, and some of the kids you go to school with will think those things, because they have heard people say stuff like that. Just like you have heard people say that boys shouldn't like princesses. But those ideas are stupid, and they aren't true. People can like whatever they want. Some people think that men aren't supposed to take care of children, but your papa takes care of you. And some people think that mamas aren't supposed to have jobs, but your mama does. You can't let other people tell you what you're supposed to like.
Pseudonymous Kid: But what if the kids at school tease me?
Me: Well, when I was a kid, I got teased sometimes for liking boy things. Like I didn't like to wear dresses, and I always wore pants. And I liked math and science. And my sister really liked sports, and some people thought girls weren't supposed to like sports. And I can tell you what I did.
Pseudonymous Kid: What did you do?
Me: Well, when people teased me, I would just go like this. (Huge dramatic eye roll.) And I would say, whatever. That's just a dumb idea.
Pseudonymous Kid: And then would they not tease you?
Me: Well, it worked for me. Because, if you get all mad and argue with them and say "That's not true! I am too a boy!" then they know that it makes you mad. And if they want to tease you, they know that that is a good way to do it. But if you act like the whole thing is just (rolling eyes again) really really stupid, then that makes them feel silly, and they might leave you alone. That's how I dealt with it when people teased me. But maybe your papa had other ways of dealing with it, you should ask him too. (Turning to go outside for a smoke.)
Pseudonymous Kid: Papa, what did you do when kids teased you in school.....?

(I come back in a few minutes later.)
Me: Pseudonymous Kid, can we talk about this boys and girls thing a little bit more?
Pseudonymous Kid: Sure.
Me: Okay, let me explain something. A long time ago, before I was born, most people used to think that girls should be quiet, and pretty, and well-behaved all the time, and they should wear dresses and grow up to be mamas and take care of the house and not have jobs. And they thought that boys should be louder and boisterous, and they should grow up to work hard.
Pseudonymous Kid: I think someone told me this once. People thought girls should be lazy, and boys should work hard.
Me: Well kind of, yeah. Anyway, right about the time I was born, a lot of women decided that that was stupid. They wanted to have jobs, so they started arguing that they could too work. And they raised a lot of girls like me to do things that girls weren't "supposed" to do. But a lot of people thought that was wrong, and some of them raised their girls only to do girl things. And so girls like me, who were doing boy things too, we got teased. But we were right, and we had to learn not to let it bother us. And now, mostly, people think that girls can do whatever they want to do. But now it is the boys' turn. A lot of people think that boys aren't supposed to do girl things still, like have long hair or wear nail polish or whatever. But that's stupid too. You can do whatever you like. When your papa and I got married, your papa said, "I like taking care of little kids and cleaning the house." And I said, "I like having a job and earning money." So that's what we did. And there are still people who think that's wrong, but who cares what they think?
Pseudonymous Kid: Right. Because that's stupid. You can do whatever you want.
Me: Exactly. And that idea, that girls and boys can do whatever they want, that's called "feminism." Your papa and I are feminists, because we think it's silly to say that girls have to be one way and boys another way. The only difference between boys and girls is that boys have a penis and girls have a vagina. And you are a boy, because you have a penis. You will still have a penis, even if you wear dresses and paint your nails and have long hair and like princesses or whatever it is you want to do. And if people say you're not a boy because of those things, they're just being dumb.
Pseudonymous Kid: Right. And I'll tell them that's a stupid idea, and I don't care what they think.
Me: Good for you.

Scene: A few hours later. We're watching The Blues Brothers. The scene where Aretha Franklin is about to sing "Think" comes on.

Matt Guitar Murphy: Listen. I love you, but you are the woman and I am the man. And I am in charge of what I'm going to do with my life.
Aretha: You better think about what you're about to do. You better think...
Pseudonymous Kid: Mama, is he doing something wrong?
Me: Well... sort of yes and sort of no. He made a promise to her, and they are married. And now he wants to go off with the Blues Brothers and play in their band. He's right, because it is up to him what he's going to do with his life. But he's wrong, because that doesn't have anything to do with him being a man or her being a woman.
Pseudonymous Kid: Right. Because anybody can decide what they're going to do with their life.
Me: Right.
Aretha and the backup singers: Think! Think about what you're trying to do to me....
Pseudonymous Kid: All of the women in the restaurant think she's right.
Me: Well, it's kind of...
Pseudonymous Kid: Is this that feminism thing you were talking about earlier?

Describe motherhood in one sentence

You don't know the meaning of true love until you interrupt your dinner, every night, to go wipe someone else's ass.

It's Friday. Thank you, baby Jesus.

I have all sorts of exciting ranty thoughts about abortion and rape and why the Bush administration sucks and exciting things going on in my private life and how neurotic I am and PK has said some cute things lately too. But it's Friday, and I'm really motherfucking tired. So I'm gonna make you guys do the work. After all, it's Friday; it's not like were were gonna get any real work done.

So, pick one of the following topics:

1. What I wish someone had actually told me when I was a student (or, if you are a student, what you wish someone would just fucking explain to you, already);

2. Which is preferable: living someplace where a house costs half a million bucks and there's a lot to do, or living someplace where a house costs under $100K and there's nothing to do? Justify your answer;

3. Yes, yes, I know that we all want universal health care and a more egalitarian economy and all that, but I have to admit that I have a fatal weakness for spending stupid money on ___ (do not say "books." "Books" is like the job interview answer where you say "my biggest flaw is being too much of a perfectionist").

If you don't want to do any work at all, though, not even in the form of blog comments, I highly recommend reading this thread, which made me laugh out loud twice and also made me feel really wistful that all of life isn't like that.

Ten is a nice round number

The Tenth Carnival of the Feminists went up a couple days ago--tons of great reading. The next one is at Angry for a Reason.

Published without comment or explanation

Bad dream, woke up early, tense, jaw clenched, stomach tight.

Mr. B. and I were up with PK very late, finally getting settled having to get up in just a couple of hours, i don’t remember why. a knock at the door, we turn down the lights, b. goes to see who it is, it’s a family, mother, father two small kids, boy and girl. plus a pet of some kind, a dog. they have had some problem, i dunno, b. lets them in. the girl comes over to the bed to talk to pk, the dog comes along, they introduce themselves, the girl has lovely manners and is a cute, dark curly round-faced brown-eyed dark little thing. her brother is older, also with long dark curly hair, and slightly sharper features. he makes a joke of some kind, i ask him his name and point out that he didn’t introduce himself like his sister, i introduce us, i am sitting on the floor. he says his name is something odd, unexpected, and maybe he’s a little embarrassed--plimpton or something weird like that. i say, “plimpton”? and he says, no, listen, and repeats it--plimpton. then he makes a joke about it, “plimp-plimp” or something like that, and his mom comes over and calls him that, and he is kind of embarrassed and i or his mom say it is cute, and he rolls his eyes but smiles and says “yes, it’s adorable,” and i’m amazed and impressed that this kid, maybe 8, gets the concept of speech communities, that it *is* cute--he’s not mocking--but that it’s cute in a family way, not really for public consumption, where it’s actually a bit gross. as i write this the kids remind me, sort of, of a's kids.

then we are all out on a deck, and the mom and dad who are visiting are smoking, and i’m wanting a cigarette, and we’re talking. their dog is doing some kind of really amazing and cute trick, standing on his head or something, and our dog, who is kind of besenjiish and named, apparently, pyewacket, is a bit envious and feels out classed. we joke about that. i realize that this family kind of makes me feel bad: they’re clever and funny and apparently very warm and happy with each other, and by comparison i feel kind of strained and earnest. i notice that the father’s fingers, holding his cigarette, look like my uncle k's. then some other people arrive, some grad school acquaintances, maybe? two of them, and one is a guy who smokes and i move away because his smoke is bothering me and he moves closer again, and i am annoyed at his rudeness.

b. is driving us around in a plane, an rc-135 that looks like pk’s toy playmobil airplane. we are driving up and down rocky roads and offramps looking for something, but our normal route is blocked. we have to back up and turn around, and there are other cars and trucks arriving, also finding out that this route, which we’ve all been using to cheat traffic, is now fenced off with high cyclone fences. as we turn around and scoot back up the road, i see one of the other cars driving a bit too fast on the verge and it runs into another cyclone fence and dents its bumper, and i think, the driver will be angry.

we are at some mediocre hotel and someone is visiting, they raise their eyebrows a little at the place but say nothing. apparently this is the hotel we were staying at when the family showed up, because they are there and everyone is sort of out on a patio talking. there is going to be some sort of event for us, perhaps associated with the air force or a conference, i’m not sure which, and my mother is there and there is also apparently some other event that is being catered and at first i think it’s for our event but then realize it isn’t. the caterers mistakenly bring me a meal, and then my mom shows up with another one, something more appetizing, and says, “this is yours,” and the caterer says, “no, that’s not what she ordered,” and i say, “no, it’s not mine” and my mom glares at me and says “yes it is!” with that “play along with me now!” tone in her voice. i refuse it, and the meal the caterer brought, and the caterer says that if i don’t eat either there will be a $50 charge. i know this is all a mistake, and the caterer thinks i’m someone i’m not, that i’m with the other party, and i start to try to explain but mom kind of hauls me away thinking that she doesn’t care about the charge since it’s not her bill and probably they’ll work it out anyway. we’re walking through the buffet tables on our way to a bathroom across the large room, and she is annoyed with me for refusing the meal, and i say, “mom, but it was illegal,” meaning stealing the meal, and then apparently she had tried to sign something with someone else’s name, too, but she says, “oh no it’s not,” impatiently, and we go into the bathroom. the attendants are wearing awful black outfits with fake vinyl bobby-type hats on their heads, they are all indian, and i smile at them and say, “i’m so sorry about the hats,” and they look somewhat puzzled. we go in and the bathroom is dirty, the toilet is covered with vomit or blood or diarrhea and i am afraid to sit down on it and i really have to pee.

i wake up feeling terrified and incredibly tense and with a feeling i’m about to make a terrible mistake.

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH

I left my @&#?^%! power supply at work today. Expect something to read some time tomorrow before, say, six pm.

I hope.

South Dakota sucks

This is not, of course, news. And I'm sorry to say that because I'm playing single mama this week, I haven't time to work up a lather on the fact that the governor signed the no-abortions-you-heinous-sluts law over thataway. But luckily other people have. A couple you might have overlooked: Bioethics Forum (apprently they lack permalinks; scroll down to Hilde Lindemann's post, "To Be a Mother," which is awesome), and a horrifyingly revealing video over at Susie Bright's place:

A real life [exception] would be, to me, a rape victim. Brutally raped. Savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized, as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.
...
When I was growing up, here in the wild west, if a young man got a girl pregnant out of wedlock, they got married. And the whole darn neighborhood was involved in that wedding. I mean, you just didn't allow that sort of thing to happen, you know, they wanted that child to be brought up, in a home with two parents, you know, that whole story. And I happen to believe that can happen again.

Welcome to the brave new world, where if you're not a religious virgin, you better be prepared to marry your rapist and raise that baby in a home with two parents.

Breakfast with the working mom

banana
cold coffee (leftover from yesterday = fine)
orange juice
yogurt or ice cream (pretty much any flavor is good, including chocolate. No, I'm not kidding.)

Throw it all in the blender. Sounds gross, but actually it's good. Protein, potassium, calcium, vitamin C, and caffeine. All 5 food groups.

How to win the "healthy snack prize" at school when peanut butter isn't allowed. Required staples: small tupperware containers, box of plastic cutlery (or little cheap kid's cutlery). Bonus: five seconds of spooning yogurt/salsa/etc. into tupperware = saves a ton of money.

Yogurt w/ a spoonful of jam (or fruit--pomegranate seeds + mango = extra super impressive)
Avocado + plastic knife and spoon
Tortilla chips and salsa/smashed beans (quick guacamole: mash yesterday's leftover avocado w/ a little lemon juice and a spoonful of salsa)
Apple + little "vache que rit" cheese
Cherry tomatoes + mozarella cubes
Baby carrots + hummous/yogurt/sour cream
Half bagel, quartered, made into a sandwich w/ cream cheese and smoked salmon
Tuna salad, w/ or w/out bread
Leftover cucumber sushi
Beans & rice (cooked w/out meat, to avoid food poisoning)
Dry cereal + spoon + school-provided milk

Pathetic pre-Oscar post

Of this year's Oscar nominees, I have seen:

Brokeback Mountain
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (nominated for costume design)
Wallace & Grommit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit (nominated for best animated film)

God, my life sucks.

Pseudonymous Kid: Sunday notes

"Mama, I'm naked because me phobic."
"Phobic about what?"
"Germs. Pee germs."

Me, to Mr. B. via chat: He's naked.
Mr. B. Right now?
Me: Yes!
Mr. B.: Why?
Me: Obviously b/c he's in that phase where he doesn't want to wear clothes, like, ever.
Mr. B.: We should turn down the heating, I think we're keeping it too hot in here.

Pseudonymous Kid is really cute naked, what with his wild-head of shoulder-blade length hair.

Breakfast for PK: I wake up, pour myself some coffee, grab a package of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups off the shelf, and hand it to him. I have every intention of fixing him something better after I've had my coffee, mind you. I tell him I'm going to go outside and drink some coffee and get some sun. "I need breakfast," he says. "I know," I say, "I'll get you something as soon as I get back. Or you can get yourself some juice or toast." "I'll get it myself," he says.

When I return, he's cut himself some unpeeled carrots, put them in a bowl, and gotten out the sour cream to use for dipping sauce. He's poured himself a glass of water.

So, his breakfast this morning: Reese's PB Cups, carrots, sour cream, and water. I find this perfectly acceptable.

Koufax Voting Now Open

Just in time to eclipse tomorrow's Oscars, voting for the Koufax Awards opens up. While it's an honor just to be nominated (yeah, yeah, right), I admit it: I'm greedy! I want to win! I won't wear a hideous dress or give a boring speech!

Y'all can vote for ME ME ME in the categories of Best Blog (non-professional), Best Writing (aw, shucks), or Best Expert Blog--apparently I am an expert in "Academia/Gender."

In all seriousness, thank you to whoever nominated me. I'm really surprised and touched.

Where I'm from

One of the red states.


create your own visited states map

By comparison, the world map is kinda underexplored, although I like how a childhood visit to B.C. nets me half a continent.

create your own visited countries map

Maybe what we need is a 36-hour day

The NYT has a new article on women's mother's participation in the labor market: though, as the article itself concedes, it's impossible to know if the hypothesis being presented is accurate, I must say: it feels right to me.

. . . the research suggests that women may have already hit a wall in the amount of work that they can pack into a week. From 1965 to 1995, Professor Bianchi found, the average time mothers spent doing paid work jumped to almost 26 hours a week from 9 hours. The time spent on housework fell commensurately, to 19 hours from 32.

Then the trend stalled. From 1995 to 2003, mothers, on average, spent about the same amount of time on household chores, but their work outside the home fell by almost four hours a week.

"Looking toward the future," said Francine D. Blau, a professor of economics at Cornell University, "one can question how much further increases in women's participation can be had without more reallocation of household work."

Part of what I like about this argument is that it provides a clean, clear, human alternative to the endless ridiculous "mommy wars" that we all know are wrong, but can't help fighting: if, broadly speaking, we've wrung about all we can out of the 24 hours in a day, then it makes sense both that some women would step back from the grueling regime in favor of a more balanced personal life, regardless of the possible risks they run in doing so: when you've reached the limit of your energy, you can't keep going and that's all there is to it. It also makes sense that women who are still trying to hang onto the stressful balancing act of career, children, and coupledom would feel that they're singlehandedly carrying the world on their shoulders. And given the pressures on all of us, of course we're all defensive and insistent and argumentative about our choices. When you're half-exhausted, you're gonna be impatient and irritable, and when you've made a reasonable but painful decision, you're gonna be touchy if someone questions whether or not it was the right one.

I wonder if the guys are as tired as we are. And if not, whether they'll have to get to this point, too, before things will change.

Another survey!

Every year, Blog Ads (the folks who run the big ads over there to your right) does reader surveys--they pick 200 of their advertiser blogs and survey the readers of those 200. It's typical advertising stuff: sex, age, income, magazines you read, political ideas, etc.

But here's the thing: they use the survey results to market to people that buy ads on blogs. And, to tell you the embarrassing truth, even though this blog is, essentially, a hobby, and something I enjoy for its own sake, that ad revenue, I gotta admit, is currently helping pay the bills. Which is, of course, not your problem or your concern. But it would really help me and bloggers like me out if you would take a few minutes and complete the survey, so that advertisers get the big ol' clue: yes, blog readers are smart; yes, they have money to spend (some of 'em); yes, they are politically aware; yes, they are a desireable audience.

More and more, I think that good blogs are going to end up following the model of free alt weeklies: free because the ad revenue makes it possible. (Note: my upcoming article talks about comparable commercial antecdents to blogging, and the importance of advertising to virtually all forms of periodical publication, regardless of medium.) If you have a firm philosophical belief that all advertising is evil, then skip the survey; but if you're willing to play the game in a good cause (well, I hope it's a good cause), then please take a few minutes to fill it out. (If you're interested, the results of the 2005 and 2004 surveys are available.)

Here is the link. At the end of the survey, you'll be asked which blog referred you. This is blog #23. Fuck, my bad. I misread the instructions (which, to be fair, were written very unclearly. Judging by comments, those of you that have been ignoring me were right: just put Bitch Ph.D. to question #23. Duh.

Thanks.

Better late than never

Every academic I know (including yours truly) should print this out and tape it up on the wall next to their desk. Ideally, one would have one's friend/partner/spouse/kid commit it to memory and chant it as a kind of background noise for deep breathing meditation when one starts to spin out of control.

Funnily enough, I had one of these shit-I'm-so-behind-I-can't-move-ahhh-help-me-please days today. Fortunately, as I was arriving on campus after an argument with Mr. B. at the ridiculously late-running procrastinatory time of mid-afternoon, I happened to rush past my cool mentor on my way to the elevator. She was talking to someone in the hall, and I decided, "fuck it, I am going to go dump my bag in my office, put up a note saying that my office hours will start a bit late today, and come back down here and beg her to come grab coffee with me and dole out a little bit of emotional support because she's totally cool and is always offering emotional support which I am too ashamed to accept but today is the day, by god." So I did--dump my bag and put up a note, I mean--and then I went back down, knocked on her door, said "do you have ten minutes, please? I really need to talk"; she replied, "you know, I'm glad you're here because yesterday when I saw you you had the body language of someone who is putting up a good front and I was thinking earlier that, as a friend, I should make some time to ask you how you're doing," so we went over to the library, got some coffee (because I really, desperately needed more caffeine to fuel my mental hamster, not) and I 'fessed up about various and sundry crap that I've been putting off/want to do/can't manage, etc. etc.

And, as always, Cool Mentor empathized, pointed out that the real problem is essentially an embarrassment of good things, did a little bit of supportive commisserating griping of her own (it's so reassuring when people we admire admit their own frustrations), said, "ok, your priorities are A and B, in that order" and asked me to keep her posted on how things shape up for the rest of the month. So I wandered off, did A and B during my office hours (god bless the students for not showing up today), dealt with a couple of other stupid things I've been putting off, tried to deal with another and realized I'd lost the necessary paperwork, decided not to futz around trying to cover up for having lost it and sent a frank email to the paperwork provider saying, "please send me this again, I've misplaced the original" and went home, where I took a nap.

Oh, and I also decided to finally check and see if that thing that looks like a bus stop that's closer to my office than the one I usually hike to is, in fact, a bus stop, even though every time I notice it I decide that walking that direction would "waste time" if I were wrong and it were just an intersection with a no parking sign. And guess what? It is a bus stop. Unlike the one I've been using, it even has a bench.

Coolness.

Chicago attorney Patrick Campanelli is an evil son of a bitch

Jessica at Feministing posts a truly horrific and antediluvian story of the kind of rape trial we'd like to believe couldn't happen any more in the U.S.

The woman answered questions from prosecution and defense attorneys for about an hour. But when Missbrenner's attorney, Patrick Campanelli, placed a video monitor in front of her and said he was going to play segments of the 20-minute videotape [of her gang rape] as he questioned her, she stated emphatically "I don't want to see it."
....
The videotape was viewed in the March 2005 trial of Christopher Robbins of Brookfield, who was acquitted of sex charges after arguing she consented to sex with him in an incident that wasn't videotaped. Robbins allegedly is seen on one segment of the tape, but not engaging in sex with the woman.

Prosecutors allege that the videotape first shows another defendant, Burim Berezi of Brookfield, having sex with the woman, then it shows Missbrenner. They say the tape shows her unconscious as people spit on her and write derogatory words on her naked legs and abdomen.

Berezi fled the country after being charged and remains at large. Missbrenner also fled but returned from Europe in May 2005. A jury convicted him of violating his bail bond, and he was sentenced to six months in jail, which has been served while he was being held without bail on the sex charges.

The fourth defendant, Sonny Smith, 20, of Brookfield, who operated the camera, pleaded guilty to child pornography and was sentenced to the Illinois Department of Corrections boot camp.

Scott Lemieux offers an excellent analysis of the judge's/defense attorney's legal rationalizations bullshit reasoning. Or lack thereof.

Passing along a plea for help

I am swiping this wholesale from Dorcasina's blog, because I can't write it up better than she did.

A page has been set up to raise funds for medical expenses for Annika Tiede, a five-year old who needs a liver transplant (and not her first...).

Annika's mother keeps a profoundly beautiful and heartbreaking blog here. And she has a powerful post on how even with so-called "excellent" medical coverage, her family has been devastated by the financial impact of Annika's illness. Read her post about why we should all live in abject fear of the medical insurance industry and any health disasters, here. We academics, even with "good health care," are all one hospitalization away from bankruptcy...oh, wait, we can't file for it anymore. Okay, one major illness from living in cardboard boxes and holding signs saying, "will lecture on the Modernist aesthetic for food." And we are, I realize, so much more fortunate than vast numbers of Americans. (How does a poor American stomach the news that his or her government is spending billions in Iraq, while rending the last vestiges of a safety net? People die in this country every day because they can't pay for care. And we accept that. I'm not talking about last-ditch efforts or expensive procedures with minimal expectations of results. I am talking basic and even preventative care for things that are often readily controlled or curable. We think it's normal. Until someone lost in the bureaucracy says to us, "Sure, we have medication that will help. It costs $562.00/week." Which is basically a death sentence: "you are too poor to be worth saving.")

Except in the larger scheme of things, (stage II cancer, terminal cancer, death of my beloved husband), our family was "lucky"; I have incredibly generous family members and friends, and my husband managed to spread his crises out over several years' worth of coverage. My colleagues helped out so I never had to take unpaid leave (the only kind available to me unless I myself am having chemotherapy). We had enough support and savings to allow us to pay the exorbitant premiums, staggering numbers of co-pays, and additional niceties throughout his terminal illness, while keeping a roof over our heads.

Moreena's posts strike terror in my heart; perhaps the only thing worse than losing my husband would have been having my daughter seriously ill. All the fear, pain, and helplessness; incredible financial anxiety, and the heartbreak of knowing that my child didn't—couldn't possibly—understand why she had to suffer in this way.

In honor of her own husband's brave struggle, and to honor the survivor spirit that he and Annika share, Badger (who has her own troubles), has contributed a piece of Mr. Badger's powerful, moving artwork to help Annike's cause. Bid for it and read more here.