Friday football blogging

Y'all need to be watching the Argentina/Germany game. I am. Then I'm going to celebrate Argentina's win by getting a haircut.

Guantanamera

As of today, our prisoners at Guantánamo are subject to the Geneva Conventions, can not be subjected to military tribunals, may not be tortured (or, for those assholes who want to argue that it isn't torture if we do it, "shall in all circumstances be treated humanely" and may not be subjected to "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment"--that would be Article 3 of Geneva, by the way), and the President is not above the rule of law.

In other words (except for Scalia, Thomas, and Alito--Roberts recused himself, so we still don't know where he'd stand on this), the Supremes still believe in the constitution. Good deal.

More (and better) reactions to Hamden v. Rumsfeld (.pdf) at Lawyers, Guns and Money, Unfogged (ensuing discussion = good), Unspeak, SCOTUSblog, Obsidian Wings and Think Progress (with another long, interesting discussion thread).

In other, slightly older Guantánamo news, shortly after the three suicides there a couple of weeks ago, the Pentagon kicked out reporters. This was in part a reaction to the reporting of Michael Gordon at the Charlotte Observer. Sent there to do a profile on the Camp Commander, who's from North Carolina, Gordon's local human interest story turned into major reporting when he was the first reporter on the scene right after the suicides. His ensuing reporting upset the powers that be enough that they kicked him, and all all other reporters, out of the place.

Ever since the suicides, I've had the lyrics to Guantanamera going through my head.

Yo soy un hombre sincero
De donde crece la palma
Y antes de morirme quiero
Echar mis versos del alma
...
Mi verso es de un verde claro
Y de un carmín encendido
Mi verso es un ciervo herido
Que busca en el monte amparo
...
Cultivo una rosa blanca
En julio como en enero
Para el amigo sincero
Que me da su mano franca
...
Con los pobres de la tierra
Quiero yo mi suerte echar
El arroyo de la sierra
Me complace más que el mar

English translation here. Here's a brief biography of José Martí (along with lyrics to the poem the song is based on).

More mice!

Okay, enough with the sex chat. How about some blurry photos of mice, taken by PK himself? Plus, it gives me a chance to learn how to use Flikr. Click on the picture for a little more blurry cuteness.

Come together

Okay, so if anyone (like me) is dying to comment about the stuff that the other threads are saying, I'ma say this is the thread to talk to each other. It's been an interesting experiment, and of course, you can still post in the other, sexual-preference-specific threads as well.

Btw, on the subject of having a hard time talking during/about sex, I swear that Exhibitionism for the Shy is a really good book.

Womens' women

Okay, guilty as charged on the "lesbian invisibility" thing w/r/t the sex talk. In my defensive defense, I wrote the initial post specifically b/c there was a convo going on about het sex, and being a het chick myself, well, therein my interest lies. I thought about doing a separate thread for lesbians, but then I thought "jeez, I'll end up with four separate segregated posts about sex, and then what about the bis, or transsexuals, omg, it just goes on and on" so I decided to stick with the hets.

But! That sucks (ha ha, geddit?) and this is a feminist site after all. And selfishly I bet we het people might learn a thing or two from lesbians who are, after all, way cooler than most straight chicks. (Actually this is true, with a couple of glaring exceptions like Camille Paglia and Mary Cheney).

So here is a thread for lesbian sex talk. (And yeah, the straight guys are gonna all go "ooh!"--get over it, for fuck's sake, it isn't about you). With my apologies for (1) leaving you all out in the first place and (2) posting it so late--I had to take PK to school after those earlier posts and then I had an appointment with my incredibly irritating therapist. Let's just say I saved the best for last.

But the gay men are going to have to write their own thread somewhere else. Tough shit. I don't care about gay men. Anyway, you guys have Dan Savage.

On second thought,

I suspect that women are a lot better and more practiced at talking about sex in thoughtful ways than men are. Yay feminism! But sad for the guys.

Unfortunately, I'm a woman, not a man. So I can't really write a clever and thoughtful and conversation-starting post about how straight guys feel about sex. (This, by the way, is the perpetual problem for a feminist who, like me, wants to include men in the conversation--inevitably some men will get pissy and say "why don't you talk about our issues," to which the obvious response is, "dude, I'm not a dude; maybe you should write about this stuff yourself?") So if there's some guy who is writing intelligently and well about these things, by all means link to him and have the conversation over there.

But anyway, I haven't seen much of that sort of thing. Men's convos about sex tend to be either (1) jokey; (2) entirely positive, as if someone has to advertise that sex is a good thing. It's weird. You guys are weird about sex, in this woman's opinion. Why is that?

Anyway, if you're inclined to want to talk about it, especially (but not exclusively; I won't presume to police tone) in a thoughtful or honest kinda way, you're welcome to do it here. Although like I said, I can't really do much to get you, ah, going. You're gonna have to take care of that yourself.

Btw, same rules here as in the previous thread. That's women only; this is men only.

Let's talk about sex

In case y'all missed the Great Blow Job Debate last week, you're out of luck--I'm not linking to it because it all got tedious and bogged down in the "more feminist than thou" and "feminism is all about choices" and "real feminists don't pass judgment on other women" arguments. You can go google if you want to try to find it all.

Anyway, I wrote this at the time, thinking I might possibly post it, and then chickend out--why the hell would I post this? But now I find myself stuck for material, so what the fuck. I think that this post, as written, implies a follow-up post which I may or may not get around to, but at least it's something to talk about on a Monday morning.

Ok, now that all the guys are gone googling to read what the feminists had to say about blow jobs, let's continue. The thing is that the exchange, though frustrating, got me thinking. And while, in fact, blow jobs aren't completely heinous, let's admit it: there are a lot of heinous, or unpleasant, or just plain uninteresting things about them. And I think that part of why some of us over in that thread didn't choose to dwell on this isn't so much b/c we're fools who feel we must defend our sexbot status of serving men, or even because we were defending ourselves for being straight chicks, but because we were defending ourselves against the pernicious patriarchal myth that women hate blow jobs. You know the one I mean. The one that's behind jokes like "congrats on getting married, buddy, but you'll never get your dick sucked again."

At least, if the other women on there didn't have that shit in the back of their minds, I did. And I often do, when this subject comes up. Anyway, thinking about the argument, I realized that (duh) these kind of jokes, which are obviously offensive, are offensive in a different way than the stupidity of, say, Deep Throat or porn images of women moaning and groaning at the orgasmic pleasure of sucking cock. The "chicks hate cocksucking" thing is offensive because, while on the surface it seems to be an attack on other men, in reality it's just an unconscious piece of reverse psychology. If the powers that be talk about how much women hate blow jobs (which implicitly perpetuates the conventional wisdom that, of course, men love them), then straight women who love men are gonna feel kinda guilty about denying the men they love this fabulously hard-to-get pleasure. And in a twisted act of defending the sexual desireability of the men we sexually desire, we're gonna defend our enjoyment of this act that we're supposed to not enjoy, in order to show our men (and by extension, all the other men whose jokes about women hating blow jobs implicitly attack the masculinity and sexual desireability of our man) that, in fact, they are sexually desireable, we do like them not in spite of but because they have cocks, and no, no, dear, we're not like those women.

Which obviously is fucked. up.

Oh look, the guys are back now. Hi, guys. Listen, you really might not want to read the rest of this post or the ensuing thread, because I'm going to encourage the straight women (including myself) to be really honest about how we feel about fucking straight men. And sex being what it is in the here and now, Things May be Said that will not be flattering, and (since part of my own thesis about straight guy sexuality is that men are a lot more insecure about it than we think), you might have a few "ouch" moments. And in all honesty, not only might that be unpleasant for you, but it might create problems in your own sex life with your own personal straight woman--who may or may not be posting here, and who may or may not be thinking of you, personally, when she says how she feels about sex, generally--and, all in all, the risks of taking personally stuff that isn't are something that you might want to think really hard about before you read on, okay?

All right. From here on out, the management takes no responsibility for men's hurt feelings. Oh, and the management also wants the boys, if they *are* going to keep reading, to keep their comments to themselves this time. Again, I warn you: if you read the comment thread, there's a real possibility you might find it really, really difficult not to respond to something. And I'm going to be really, really pissed off at you if you do, and I'll just delete your comment. So don't. (However, on second thoughts, I'll do a second post so you boys can comment about man sex things there.)

Ok, so here we go. The thing that thread made me realize is that we were all saying "well, blow jobs can really suck, of course--pardon the pun--but they can also be good, because [insert various reasons here]. In other words, we all started by acknowledging the sucky parts (just deal with the puns, I'm sorry, but that's the way the language works and if you want we can parse it in comments, or not), but then we didn't dwell on them. Instead we instantly moved on to talk about the good parts. We made a brief gesture at an important truth--a big important truth--and then waved it away to elaborate, at length, about the smaller, minor, occasions when blow jobs aren't basically boring, offputting, or gross.

And, I mean, why did we do that? At feminist blogs, of all places? The "well, she asked!" excuse is a lame one, and we've all heard it, so let's not bullshit one another with it. I submit that we did it because we're touchy, we straight chicks who like sex, about being painted as heinous man-haters. Which is really fucking stupid of us.

So. I propose that we talk about what we do in fact really like about sex. And, along the way, what we really, in our heart of hearts, don't like. First, because it'll be good, in an encounter group kind of way, to get all that off our chests. And second, and more importantly and selfishly, because I suspect that the vast majority of us actually find it kinda difficult to talk about these things with the people we have sex with. Maybe it's just me and my fucked-up intimacy issues, but in my experience, those discussions can be really hard. Sometimes because we (I) do, in fact, have a certain false consciousness thing going on about wanting not to say things that might be counterproductive, that might create anxiety or hurt feelings for our partners (which is so totally not in our interests). And sometimes because we're struggling with thinking our way out of years and years of fucked up sexist conditioning about what we're *supposed* to like, or *supposed* to even consider liking (would anyone even think about anal sex if it weren't the new black?). That is, the very shape of the discussion, the list of boxes to check ("I like long walks on the beach, yes/no") is predetermined, and thinking outside of (or, fuck it, let's just embrace the puns) inside our own boxes is surprisingly hard to do.

Or, like I said, maybe it's just me and my fucked-up intimacy issues. In which case, those of you who are wiser are welcome to share your wisdom with the rest of us.

Anyway. So since the blow job thing started me off, I'll start with that. Frankly, no: sometimes I don't like them all that much. But oddly, I'm totally the kind of girl who tells boys that I *do* like them. Why do I do that?

Well, because in fact, I do like blow-job like things. At first. (Also because I want boys to whom I am telling these things to like me, but that's so obvious it's not worth dwelling on.) I like finding out what a man smells like between the legs. I like nuzzling him, and watching how he responds to that. I like finding out about his cock, which means looking at it, handling it, examining it closely, smelling, tasting. These things are important to me in the initial stages.

But of course the problem is that as soon as you start kissing a guy's belly, or nudging his balls with your face, he's thinking--or you (I) think he's thinking--"yes! I'm gonna get a blow job!" And you don't want to disappoint, and in fact, you do want to see how he tastes and feels inside, so you try it out a bit. The way babies stick everything new in their mouths. But that doesn't mean you want to get all fixated on that, but you also don't want to be disappointing, so sometimes, well, it just ends up being a blow job.

And in all honesty, sometimes--sometimes--that's cool. Because it makes the guy happy, and that's your goal. Or because you're actually really truly into it and he's one of the rare guys who smells really good, who isn't too big (more on that in a minute), who knows how to lie back and enjoy it without trying to take over and force the issue, who knows how to maybe give a li'l feedback or information about what really feels good without crossing over into bossiness. Bossiness pretty much means that I'm no longer being allowed to explore or play the way I want to, albeit with necessary feedback ("ouch!" "mmm!"). Which means it's no longer about what I enjoy, but about me serving him.

Which fine, if you're into that. But the goal here is to talk about what we (I) actually really truly enjoy. And while exploratory smelling and tasting is a big part of that, it's only a beginning.

Weekend cat blogging

PK took some pictures of the mice recently, but I haven't uploaded them.

Here, then, is a picture of Daisy the cat in one of her two favorite sleeping positions.

The other is draped across my head.

Toldja so

The way to win the pro-choice argument is to make people think about the women they know. Real women, who have real pregnancies.

A Rapid City high school senior named Kayla Czmowski, also "pro-life," said, "I'm going, what if something happened to one of my best friends, or to me? ... This is not some abstract candidate. It's your sister, or your daughter. It's your mom."

Carnival of Feminists #17

Is up over at Bitch | Lab.

Girls and politics

New Moon magazine asks girls to submit letters addressed to Congress for our Jan/Feb 2007 issue, "Letter to Congress." We'll send a copy of the issue to every member of Congress, thereby bringing girls voices and opinions to their attention.

New Moon's online survey of girls' political interest is still open as well. Almost 600 girls have taken the survey, and preliminary stats indicate that a majority of girls (76%) are interested in politics and would vote for a woman president (74%).

Happy Morning: Zogg Possible Repost

CLICK PIC

Play nice, kids

Mama had a really, really bad day.

Fuck fear

This is a follow up to this post, a little epiphany I had on Monday prompted primarily by thinking about the article I'd just finished. At some point in the discussion to that post, we started talking about whether harassment is inherently gendered, whether people are safer or less safe in public, and so on, and it reminded me of Monday's thoughts.

One of the things that my pseudonymous blogger survey responses revealed is that, by and large, women are more likely to use pseudonyms out of fear of harassment and stalking. Men say they worry about their work, and sometimes talk about privacy issues, but they don't use words like "fear," or really "worry" (that was my word). Men's choices seem to be expressed more as preferences--"I'd rather keep my work and online life separate," say. And the few guys who talked about fear tended to displace it onto their wives--"my wife worries about our family's privacy"--whereas women talked specifically about their fear for themselves and, if they had kids, their kids.

Now, initially reading this, I thought, okay, common sense. Then it suddenly hit me: really??? I mean, we're talking an online environment here. Sure, if you post your name and picture you could be recognized. If you post your addy you could be stalked. But really, it's pretty unlikely. AND, I realized, why are women more afraid of it than men? Immediate answer: well, studies have shown that women are a lot more likely to be harassed onlilne than men are. Ok, so that's conditioning women to be afraid--but it isn't the thing women fear. We don't fear being called "bitch" or "slut" or asked "are you hot?" by random internet strangers. What the women in the surveys feared, and I've seen women say this online too, is being personally and physically threatened as a result of their online presence.

And again: why would women fear this more than men? Random internet person develops some weird obsessive fixation on another random internet person, stalks and threatens him/her. I've seen this happen to both women and men. But guys don't seem to fear it the way women do.

And what hit me suddenly--duh!--is that the only reason women fear this shit is because we are trained to fear it. And of course, underneath all that training is the fear of rape. And from that follow two things:

1. Men who hassle women online ("hey baby," "you stupid bitch") or in real life (wolf whistles, etc.) are actively training women to be afraid. Whether or not they realize it, that's what they're doing. Which makes the answer to the question "why do guys do that? Do they think I'm going to say, "hey, daddy, let me give you my number?"--and we've all asked that, and laughed about it--suddenly clear. Of course they don't do it to pick up women. No women has ever responded to that, and men know this. They do it to instill fear.

God damn, that's shitty.

2. A lot--most!--of the "safety advice" and "precautions" women are advised to take, or offered, actually reinforce this fear. Not too long ago I was visiting some friends in a city where the bus system has a rule, prominently posted on the bus, that it will make unscheduled stops after 9 p.m. for women only. I thought, "why just women? Guys can get robbed or assaulted too." And then I thought, "oh, b/c if a guy is following a woman, she can get off at an unscheduled stop and he can't follow her."

But I also realized that one effect of this sign was to make me think about that possibility, to draw my attention to the idea that I should ask the bus to stop nearer to where I'm going after 9 p.m. (for the record, I never do this). And it made me think of how, all my life, I've insisted on walking home alone, walking after dark, refusing to "take precautions." And how I've always said to myself that this is because I will not live in fear, like it's a matter of principle (which it is). But I also realized: it's also a very practical thing to do: one effect of it has been that I am seldom afraid on the street at night.

Once in grad school, a friend of mine got held up, at gunpoint, after a party. Not five minutes before it happened, a group of friends and I who were leaving the party together passed the two guys who robbed my friend, who had left with us but walked the other way down the block. The party was in my neighborhood, where I regularly walked after dark, and for a little while afterwards I thought "maybe I shouldn't do that."

But the thing was, the person who got held up? Was a guy. The group I left the party with? Mixed women and men. We didn't get robbed, because we left in a group; he did, because he left alone.

And because he was a guy, he saw no reason not to--and none of us offered to walk home with him.

I wager that, with the exception of rape, men are more likely to be the victims of random street crime. But all the precautions about avoiding it are aimed at women, and they are all implicitly about avoiding rape. Even though we know that most rapes are not random street crime, but are committed by friends, dates, acquaintances, and so on. So not only is this advice bad advice to women, the unspoken corrolary--that men don't need to worry as much as women--is really bad advice to men. And the problem is, by giving women but not men this advice, we perpetuate the idea that violence is sexualized (and therefore men, who are not sexualized, do not have to worry about it), and we turn reasonable things like walking home with a friend into things women do out of fear and men don't do at all. If everyone did it, it wouldn't contribute to the sexualized fear problem: it would just be a matter of common sense, as unremarkable as having coed public restrooms. (Remember the great anti-ERA argument, that having co-ed restrooms would be dangerous to women? Well, they've arrived. And I'm not afraid of them. Are you?)

So on the street or on the internet--in public--women are afraid, and men are not. And the reason for it has everything to do with the sexualization of violence, which is perpetuated in so many ways, by so many men (and women)--both the guys who hoot at women on the street corner and the friends who give women well-meaning advice about how to be careful, aka how to live in fear.

It's Monday!!!!!

Halftime blogging

I really will do that follow up post at some point, but it's hard to write something thoughtful between games when your soccer orphan expects you to pay attention to him. Crazy, demanding kids.

Pseudonymous Kid: Mama, will you make me a sandwich?
Me: Papa, can you make him a sandwich?
Mr. B.: What do you want, PK?
Pseudonymous Kid: A sandwich with mayonnaise and lettuce.
Mr. B.: What do you want with that? Ham, cheese, bacon? Do you want a BLT?
Pseudonymous Kid: No. Just flat cheese (i.e., the pre-sliced kind).
Mr. B.: Okay, a sandwich with mayonnaise, lettuce, and flat cheese coming up.
Pseudonymous Kid: No, just mayonnaise and lettuce.
Mr. B.: Make up your mind.
Pseudonymous Kid: I don't like cheese. Just a mayonnaise and lettuce sandwich, please.
Mr. B.: No bacon?
Pseudonymous Kid: Just mayonnaise and lettuce.
Mr. B.: Oookay. Well, I'm going to make some bacon so that Mama and I can have BLTs.
Me: Mmm, sounds good.
Pseudonymous Kid: Bacon?!? Can I have some?

More world cup blogging

Or rather, not. I wanna follow up on the stalker post (as I intended to all along, and I'm pleased that the conversation has led to a point that naturally leads to the follow up post), but first I have to watch this fierce Iran v. Portugal game. Dayamn.

Hi, I'm a dumbass

Look, it's 6 am and I've stayed up all night! Well done, me.

Oh well. The Argentina game starts in three hours. Nap, or coffee and breakfast? I think I shall wander downstairs and see if Mr. B., who went down a couple of hours ago to "get a snack," is still up. Maybe I can talk him into going and getting donuts.

Really good read

I don't remember where I found it, but here's a series of really well-written posts by a woman who was stalked and threatened by someone she'd been seeing. It's a gripping story, which is reason enough to read it, but in addition there are several moments where you can clearly see how easy it is to "put up with" such behavior, as people sometimes put it, if you continue operating with normal social attitudes. As the author herself points out, the situation looks worse on reading than it seemed to her at the time, because what she's doing is recording the stalkerish behaviors rather than the non-stalkerish ones. But even so, there are details--like her continuing to talk to him on the phone in order to keep track of his whereabouts, or because if she didn't he would call and harass her family and friends and she figured it was "her problem, not theirs"; or her concern that if the stalker found her staying in a friend's apartment he might damage the apartment--that sound illogical, but that are, of course, evidence of the difficulty of dealing rationally with someone who isn't rational.

She also says, and I think this is important, that "Part of the reason it got this bad was that I naturally had the idea that this is the sort of thing that only happens in scary movies and couldn't happen in real life to a smart person like me..." I know that there have been times when I've done something despite some discomfort because I figured it wasn't really that likely that it would end up badly. As I've gotten older, it's clearer to me that what one is doing in those situations is overriding one's gut instinct in order not to be rude--"I feel uncomfortable, but I don't want to make this person feel bad..." Obviously, that's stupid--which is one reason that I think it's important, with kids, to acknowledge social discomfort and tell them it's okay, rather than pushing them to overcome "shyness" or whatever. Bad, bad thing to do, teaching kids to exceed their comfort zone in order not to offend someone. FWIW, I think that learning to trust one's gut when another person seems "off" is much safer than all those stupid fear-inducing rules about not walking alone at night or whatever. In the story, the author specifically says she feels much safer walking alone at night than she does being with this guy--which is, of course, logical and right. But most "advice" to women focuses on avoiding *situations*, rather than trusting yourself and avoiding *people* who make you feel uneasy. I think that's exactly backwards.

Another interesting recurring detail is her shock that more than once she finds herself running from him in public, or screaming for help, and no one responds. I'm afraid I forget the name of this phenomenon--psychologists and sociologists that read this will probably know--but basically the gist is that we take our cues in unusual situations from other people around us. If someone is hurt, or yelling for help, we check to see what others are doing; if no one else is helping, we won't either. I'm sorry to say that I know this to be true from my own experience: how often have we all driven past accidents or people stranded on a highway and figured someone else would give them a hand? I've even heard women yelling (twice) and thought about calling the police, and hesitated, and waited to see "what would happen." The good news is that research shows that this "someone else will take care of it" instinct is one that we can overcome, apparently, simply by knowing that it exists; in experiments, students who were taught about it later demonstrated that in situations where everyone seems paralyzed, they will step forward and be the first to help. I, too, since finding this out, have found it a lot easier to step into situations that bothered me and diffuse them.

So the story's educational in that sense, too: if something looks odd, don't hesitate to do something about it. (And lest you think "but you're a woman, that's dangerous!" in my experience being a woman is an advantage--I'm not perceived as a "threat"--and also, especially if there are other people around, being a woman and stepping forward and saying loudly, "what's going on here?" definitely causes other people to notice and, if necessary, back you up. Plus, honestly, overcoming that fear of stepping forward is really empowering; you can stand up for yourself, and others, you don't have to be afraid.)* If the situation really is okay, the worst that'll happen is that the people will tell you so, and if it really isn't, then thank god you had the courage to act.

Anyway. Read the linked posts, they're amazing.

*Obviously, though, if someone's got a gun, call 911. Duh.

Some links

1. Breast is best! So the U.S. government

is making an aggressive push for paid maternity leaves . . . greater support for nursing mothers doing salaried work . . . and, of course, stricter controls on environmental contaminants, such as mercury, known to taint breastmilk.

Hahahahahahahaha! No.

2. It's nice to have Fafblog! back:

they only committed suicide as part of a diabolical ruse to trick the world into thinking our secret torture camp is the kind of secret torture camp that drives its prisoners to commit suicide!

3. My friend the author function doesn't have stomach cancer after all. Who woulda think that "it's only kidney cancer!" would ever sound like good news?

I'm taking the day off

And watching the World Cup. Woot! Yes, I am one of those Americans who couldn't give a shit about the NFL or boring-ass baseball, but I love soccer. It doesn't hurt that soccer players are teh hottest. Mr. B., um, "arranged" cable for me (hint: we already have cable internet) as kind of a reward for finishing my article. I have said he's a saint, right? Not only has he let me take pretty much all day every day to sit upstairs in my study and mope about not writing while he does all the kid- and housecare (plus occasional deliveries of creme brulee to my hidey-hole), but he somehow thinks that I'm the one who deserves a reward for finishing.

Other plans for today: pick up my new glasses. I'm replacing the ones currently on my face, which I've had since before PK was born (he broke them twice as a baby, even). For the first time ever in my entire life, I splurged and got two pairs! I feel so decadent. It'll probably be a couple of weeks before I grow tired of the "hm, which pair of glasses do I want to wear today?" game grows old. Tomorrow, I guess, I'll maybe tidy up the mess upstairs and/or go into the office and do some stuff that's been back-burnered. And for sure turn my attention to writing other things. But today I'm kinda enjoying taking a guilt-free day off.

If, like me, you're a World Cup fan, this blog, from which I stole the image at left, has been doing some first-class World Cup blogging. In fact, even if you're not a fan of the game, you might want to check it out. Brilliant, brilliant musings on the geopolitics of soccer, and why the game is so beautiful not just as sport but as phenomenon. I'll leave you with an example, in his thoughts about the Angolan team:

The German authorities are wringing their hands over the possibility that German neo-Nazis will show up to demonstrate against Angola in its match against Iran in Leipzig on June 21. The German authorities should do everything in their power to protect black fans from the attentions of the racist filth. More importantly, it’s an opportunity — a duty even — for German anti-racists to step forward and confront the scum.

But make no mistake, the Angolans have dealt with a lot worse than a bunch of skinhead goons trying to reheat a decrepit souffle: They have suffered through almost thirty years of war, that began when the neo-Nazis of the apartheid regime sent tanks and bombers to thwart Angola’s independence in 1975. The country still has more land mines than people. And yet the Angolans have prevailed. . . . Angola represents everything the neo-Nazis despise — a proud African country that fought for its liberation and won, and has come to the World Cup with a team composed both of indigenous black players and a couple of the white children of former settlers who threw in their lot with the new society at indendence. Angola is a triumph over Nazism — their protests only confirm the fact. That’s why when they qualified, quite miraculously, for the World Cup, I added their flag to my keychain — there are many reasons they deserve the support of all decent people.

I'm an idiot

Because I've been up all night for two nights in a row finishing a long-overdue paper that I really could, and should, have written weeks ago. The first thousand words took me so much longer than I can bring myself to admit--why is that so often the case? Anyway, now the caffeine is wearing off and I need to go take a "nap" before I have to get up and drag my butt into my office (I hate going into the office during the summer) to double-check a couple of citations that, of course, I don't have here at home. Oh, and I have to make sure the whole thing is done in the right citation style, since the publisher uses one I'm completely unfamiliar with.

But hey, done. If the editors don't take one look and go "forget it, we changed our minds about you" I can call this the second pub under my belt. (Yeah, I'm slow. Shut up.)

And then after catching up on sleep I can turn my attention to the other two almost-ready-to-send-out essays I've had on the back burner since winter, and to the book idea I'm actually kinda excited about. Which is just one of four books I would like to be writing.

Oddly, it's been kind of pleasant in the last few days to just completely abandon any pretense of a "normal" schedule, and to just write when I could and sleep when I couldn't. Kudos to Mr. B. for basically taking over domestic life entirely in order to enable my insane writing process (which has never been this insane before. I have no idea what happened to me). Even though summer is filled with the insanity of too-much-to-do, I have to admit that I dearly love unscheduled time.

In theory it would be nice to be more disciplined. In practice it's kind of fun, sometimes, not to be.

Or maybe I'm just so logy that I don't know what I'm saying.

Quote of the day

This isn't substantive or anything, but the Guantanamo commander's statement about the suicides there is just too mind-bogglingly offensive not to mock:

"They are smart, they are creative, they are committed," Admiral Harris said. "They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."

Well, gosh, we can't let the terrorists win! Let's fight back.

You go first.

Update: Here, y'all, read this. At least if you're inclined to defend Harris's appalling statement.

'Nother update: One of the suicides was scheduled to be released. But no one had told him, b/c it was a secret.

Note to the universe

Really. You can stop giving fabulous people fucking cancer now. Find something else to do. Surely there's some planet out there, somewhere, that you need to create life on or something like that, instead.

A Night of Favorites

The deuce you say!

Tonight's Movie: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

Tonight's Dessert: Crème Brûlée made per the Joy of Cooking (1997 edition) with ramekins, a bain-marie, and a blow torch.

PK loves to watch the sugar melt and carmelize.

Just in case . . .

If things start getting a li'l overheated in the previous thread, feel free to take an amusement break.

I'll probably regret this

The emerging discussion about "conservative" vs. "liberal" leanings in the previous thread is really interesting. One comment, though, makes me kinda sad:

There are likely far more conservative readers than you suspect--they've just learned over time to keep their comments to themselves.

I wonder if we could talk a little bit about what, in today's political climate, we mean by labels like "conservative" and "liberal"--both as we apply them to others, and as we apply them to ourselves. What are the stereotypes? How do people feel about them? What would we like one another to understand better? And what could we do, on this blog at least, to not make well-intentioned, reasonable people feel they need to keep their comments to themselves?

We all know about the straw feminist: but what about the straw conservative, or the straw Christian, or the straw liberal? We've all seen appalling idiocy put forth under one label or another; but isn't appalling idiocy really just appalling idiocy? And if so, what happens when we refuse to concede to appalling idiots the label that they're claiming to represent?

So, for instance, a number of people have said that this is a liberal feminist blog. Basically, that's true; I skew "liberal" in the sense we now use it on things like social issues, civil rights, and economics. But in fact, as a lot of progressives on the left will be quick to point out, being liberal on economics isn't all that different from the status quo--basically it just means "yay capitalism, but sometimes we gotta regulate to keep folks from getting out of control." My feminism is largely second wave (classical liberal), with a bit of third wave consciousness thrown in (i.e., "wait, what about women of color? Oh, and is there room for traditionally femmey sex roles within a feminist agenda?").

I am a pretty conservative personality type: I'm cautious about change and have to think things through pretty darn carefully before I embrace a new position (which is why I argue so strenuously). After all, I am married, I do want to figure out how to integrate femmeyness into feminism, I like the creature comforts of the developed world, and for fuck's sake, I have a Ph.D., which you only get if you decide pretty young to stick with something you already know you're good at, rather than going off and trying something new.

I'm radically pro-choice, obviously, because I view pregnancy and motherhood as really important things; but I'm also instinctively Catholic, and yeah, I do think that in a perfect world motherhood wouldn't be a handicap to women and we would be able to view creating life as an entirely positive thing. Then again, I'm pragmatic as hell: it ain't a perfect world, and it ain't never gonna be--that's kinda the point of Catholicism--which is why I get so irked with the Church's current tendency to want to legislate morality. Didn't we Catholics invent confession for a reason?

Where I wonder about classical liberalism is on things like individual rights and the practical realities of capitalism and middle-class standards of living. I think that in some ways, we Americans have made a fetish of individualism to the point of forgetting the importance of our social responsibilities and social pleasures. For instance, the rhetoric about "personal responsibility" w/r/t common, nearly universal human needs really pisses me off: most people have kids, everyone needs health care, no one wants to be poor, everyone needs social services. I think there's a tension in the "liberal" model of individual rights when it comes to collective needs. We seem to have somehow lost the ability to talk about contributions, about being part of a group, except in negative ways. But what about the pleasures and pride of helping, of contributing, of being part of a community or a country? What about the feeling of camaraderie involved in, say, good-humoredly saying to a fussy child in a coffeeshop, "now, stop making things hard for your poor mama" instead of giving poor mama the evil eye? What about the pleasure--far too occasional in American life--of having to take care of some bureaucratic necessity and waiting with people from completely different walks of life, folks you seldom see in your daily rounds, and having an enjoyable conversation with someone new? I remember childhood vaccinations that way, and I still have pleasant nostalgic feelings of fellowship in those occasional bureaucratic moments: voting, health clinics, public schools. Hell, even griping with the other folks on jury duty about the tediousness of waiting can be convivial, if you think about it.

It seems to me that both liberals and conservatives are worried about this selfishness in American public life, though the popular rhetoric offers us different "solutions" to the problem. For me, a moment of clarity came when I was on a road trip several months ago with Pseudonymous Kid, flipping through radio stations trying to find something to listen to. Blah blah classic rock, yuck, blah blah adult easy listening, yuck, blah blah. Suddenly talk radio was even more offensive--I didn't want PK to hear people demonizing one another, that tone of outrage. I found a rap station, which normally I'd settle on, but after a minute or so realized that while I can brush off the language in a lot of popular rap, I didn't want to have to explain to PK what the singers were saying, thanks.

In the end, I settled on a Christian radio station that was playing hymns and gospel music. And I suddenly realized, you know, I've got a lot in common with conservative Christians who object to popular culture--and in fact, so do most of the liberals I know, those of us who don't buy our kids guns, who prefer wooden toys to Toys R A Plastic Nightmare, who buy our kids little aprons so that they can "play" by "helping" in the kitchen. We might disagree in some of the details, sure; I find Veggie Tales sappy, and I know that PK's long hair probably bugs some people. But we agree, I assume, that public playgrounds are a great thing, and we're all thankful for waiters who bring extra napkins with the water glasses.

So. The readers of this blog are a pretty diverse group, actually. And mostly, I hope, more interested in discussion and conversation than in simply reinforcing prejudices (our own, or other people's). And we all know that the current political climate is a fucking nightmare. What do you believe? Where do we overlap? Where do we differ, and why, and what does that mean? And what in heaven's name do we have in common?

And can we manage to talk about all without taking offense, or being offensive?

ignore this

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Do good by procrastinating!

A reader writes to ask a favor: would you all be willing to help her with her research by taking a survey?

Now, here's the deal. YOU MAY NOT READ ANY COMMENTS BEFORE TAKING THE SURVEY, as doing so will fuck up the results. The surveyor is a Ph.D. candidate, and she specifically asks that I disable comments--unfortunately, Haloscan won't let me do that, so you are all on the honor system. Please do not mess up some poor grad student's dissertation research. Ooh, neato! I can too disable comments! Okay, carry on.

Here are the directions:

The Religion and Politics in American Life Survey

This survey is about attitudes towards religion and politics. Some people think that this country is becoming too secular. They want to see more people in government who share their values. Other people think that religious groups have too much influence in politics. They would rather keep religion and politics separate. We are very interested in your thoughts on this matter. What do you think about religion and politics in the U.S.?

To participate, click here.

Ask a bitchy feminist: What about the Children?

Two readers write in to ask what to name their future children. I believe that all readers--everyone, actually--should consult with a bitchy feminist, preferably me, before major life decisions, so I am especially pleased by these questions. Reader one writes:

So what's your take on surnames for kids? My husband and I have different last names, and I'm conflicted over the whole last name thing for when/if we reproduce. I don't want to give my kids the hassle of a hyphenated name, but I don't want my identity to be left out, either. He is a really progressive, supportive guy (he plans to stay home with the kids, etc), but he thinks a kid in a married relationship should have the father's name. Anything else is making the kid a political statement, which is unfair. He grudgingly agrees to give them my name as a middle name. What do you think? What did you do? I know a lot of feminists who give their kids their husbands' names, even when they have kept their own. I'd like to know what their decision process was like, and if they ever regret it.

And reader two, whose reproductive plans are more vague at this point, asks more generally,

As a woman who recently got married and was firm about keeping my family's last name rather than "taking" his, I've been thinking a lot lately about what to do about children's surnames. The husband and I have a few ideas (pick a new name for all, hyphenate both our names for all, hyphenate just for kids, etc.), and I was just curious as to what others did. How did you choose PK's surname?

First of all, congratulations to both of you on not changing your own last names. This is obviously the right decision, and I approve wholeheartedly. Let no one ever ask what they should do about their own name; if you want to change your name because it sucks or your family was abusive or something, change it, but don't do so just b/c you're getting married. Otherwise you're just wussing out. (And at least, if you're gonna wuss out, have the courage to admit that that's what you're doing.)

But the kids thing is, for me, slightly more complicated. I suspect that the proper answer is, "give the kids the mother's last name," for a couple of reasons: first, the mother usually is the primary parent, even in families where people think they're going to parent equally; second (and more importantly), maternity is never in doubt. Seems reasonable to me that if you're the one that makes the baby, you're the one whose name it should carry--assuming that it has to carry someone's surname, which is the expectation nowadays.

But of course that's not the way we do it, given the illogical nature of ideology. The case in favor of patriarchal naming is the one I used to decide to give PK Mr. B's surname: given that maternity is never in doubt, paternal surnames function, socially, as a man's acknowledgement of his paternal responsibility. Using the man's name amounts to a public signal that the man believes this is his child, and accepts his parental role.

I actually think that this is a perfectly valid and rather nice feminist rationalization in favor of patriarchal naming, but I confess that in my own case I feel somewhat regretful about the choice for a couple of reasons. First, we had decided on a name for PK that we both liked and that vaguely recalls (for me) my paternal grandfather, of whom I was very fond, and PK's middle name is a masculinized version of my own. These made me feel okay about "balancing" his name with his father's surrname--but then two things happened. Mr. B.'s father, of whom we were both very fond, died shortly before PK was born, and Mr. B. suddenly wanted to give PK his father's name as a middle name, so we added it (thereby, in my mind, somewhat diluting the importance of my name; whether this is assholish of me I am not sure). Also, I deferred to Mr. B.'s preferred spelling of the my-nameish-middle name. There were two choices, one of which used exactly my letters, and another that was phonetically the same but spelled differently (these are two different ethnicized versions, you understand); Mr. B. preferred the latter (which reflects his own ethnic background), and we went with that, and I wish now we hadn't, because again it kind of masks the intended nod to my own name.

That said. I felt at the time that using my first, rather than last, name as PK's middle was not a bad solution--it addressed, sort of, the fact that my surname, while my own, still reflects patriarchal tradition, and since my real name is kinda unique, it pretty clearly marked PK as mine for future researchers.

If/when we have another kid, I am not sure what I will do. Definitely, however, one of my names (first or last) will be in there somewhere: either we'll trade back and forth, or we'll end up (unintentionally) with a boys-take-papa's-name, girls-take-mama's name situation (back before we had kids, Mr. B. used to propose the opposite), or we'll go with my surname as middle, or my first name as middle. Maybe even my first name as first.

I think my advice is to make damn sure that, if you defer to patriarchal naming, your own name is represented either as a middle name, as a first name, or in hyphenating. I'm not the least bit sympathetic to the whole "there's no point in hyphenating" argument; yeah, the next generation will have to figure something out when they themselves get married, but hopefully by that point no one will change surnames on marriage, and there are some good examples in other cultures of how to deal with children. My preferred way to depersonalize this whole issue is to think of it in terms of archival research: with a maternal and paternal surname, children will be easy to identify; and if grandchildren's names reflect half that tradition, the lineage is still pretty easy to trace.

Anyway. Don't, for god's sake, accept the stupid argument that refusing patriarchal naming convention unfairly "politicizes" the child; patriarchal naming is itself political, and kids are, like all human beings, social creatures and therefore part of the political public sphere. Deal with it. My advice is either hyphenate, or go with "Tommy Mama Papa" (as, you'll note, the upper class has traditionally done--which demonstrates the politics behind surnames, by the way--people with social status darn well hold onto theirs one way or another, i.e., surnames are a marker of status, and don't think that using the man's name isn't therefore political). Or, if you wish to be really progressive, "Tommy Mamapapa," which I think would actually be a lovely solution--if your surnames are too long, come up with a decent-sounding blend that uses characteristic and identifiable syllables from each.

And if one of you really doesn't wish to put mama's surname in there, for whatever reason, then use mama's first name (or some version thereof) as a middle or first name for the child. Erasing mama altogether is unacceptable. It shouldn't be this way, perhaps, but the fact is that names matter, families matter, and gender matters. So let's not pretend they don't.

Please

Blogging is a funny thing. Hell, the internet is a funny thing. You read things, written by people, and you develop this sense of an author, and you develop feelings for this sense of an author, and you become fond of people you've never met because of the things they write. And if you write things too, they read what you write, and maybe they become fond of you. And then maybe you become friends with total strangers, sometimes people whose real names you don't know. Sometimes you meet them and find out their real names, and then you maybe become sort of kind of friends in real life, too; friendly acquaintances at least. But online, you're friends, if barely acquainted.

And sometimes things happen to those author functions. And sometimes you're really pleased, like an author function might have a kid. Or take a vacation. Or get a good job, or quit a bad one.

And sometimes really bad things happen to those author functions, and then you worry. And maybe you even cry. And you write to them and say you're really sorry for their troubles, and you really are. And maybe you even pray for them, which feels like a really stupid thing to say because you don't really believe that prayer does a goddamned thing, you don't really believe in The Big Cloud Guy Who Does Us Favors, but at the same time you do believe, somehow, that caring about people is important, and that putting those feelings into words is important, even if no one ever reads or hears those words.

And really, it's not so crazy to pray for an author function, since in a way the whole concept of god is itself an author function. (You can find out what an author function is, in case you don't know, here.)

I know an author function who created a place I really love to hang out with other author functions, who I consider friends. He has a new blog now. He has cancer. He's praying to live. I'm praying he will too, because he is one of the internet author functions I care about the most. His new blog is amazing. I care about him because he's a fucking good writer, but also because he is a friend. We've had fights and we've made up, even, despite having never met. He made me cry once, and now, damnit, he's made me cry again.

I really, really, really hope he's going to be okay. If you're so inclined, I'd appreciate it if you'd pray for him.

"I love your header image!"

All y'all who dig those little girls up top have Lauren to thank for it. And she'll be happy to do a blog redesign for you, too! And she really needs the work! And she's like a single mom and a feminist and everything! So you'll look good and be able to feel all like you rock for supporting a cool young woman's self-owned business instead of, you know, some boring-ass template designed by god knows who. Right?

Friday mouse blogging

Meet Squeaky (brown) and Micky (white). They are, as you can clearly see, excruciatingly cute. Pseudonymous Kid, in fact, says that they are "weapons of cute" and hypothesizes that if they get any cuter, they might be able to destroy the world with cuteness.

They're awfully fun; who knew? And they even have different little personalities. Pseudonymous Kid favors Squeaky, because she tends to sit a little more bunched-up, which he finds cuter; I lean towards Micky, because she is bolder and cleverer at finding treats quickly. Squeaky is an inveterate nest-builder and cage-bedding relandscaper; Micky is a climber and maze-solver. Pseudonymous Kid is mostly pretty good with them; he has a hard time keeping his voice down and handling them quietly, but he loves building mazes and castles for them out of toilet paper tubes (stored in a big bin in the bathroom--"Mama, I am sick and tired of being the only tube-recycler. Would you and Papa please recycle the tubes when the roll runs out??"). Alas, he does rather like them to have "adventures," e.g. flying on airplanes built of balsa wood, no matter how often I explain that mice are not little boys and do not enjoy such things. There was an unfortunate incident with a balsa wood airplane launcher where Squeaky was flung across the room, thankfully unhurt. But as long as he sticks to castles, we're fine. I myself prefer just sitting still and letting the little tickly feet crawl all over me; Micky, in particular, is fond of climbing up on my head and nibbling my hair, which PK thinks is hilarious.

Best of all, Daisy seems to have figured out that Squeaky and Micky are pets--specifically PK's pets. As she is not wild about PK, she tends to avoid them, although if she finds her way into the bathroom (e.g., one of us leaves the door open while brushing our teeth), she does like to STARE at them. But then a simple, "come on Daisy, it's time to get out" is enough to get her to leave. Such a brilliant kitty she is. Her forbearance means that PK has stopped feeling antagonistic towards her. Previously, he'd express his frustrations with her through what seemed to me like little-kid playing--pretending to "hunt" her, jokingly saying "bad Daisy!" and the like--but since he's gotten the mice and we've realized that not only does she not prevent us from having them, she seems, with supervision, not to pose as much as a threat to them as I'd feared, he's become much more affectionate towards her (Darth Kitty notwithstanding). Apparently his playfulness was a form of hostility towards the thing he saw standing in the way of his heart's desire. Anyway, now things are better and last night Daisy even went and lay on top of him while he was watching The Little Mermaid.

So there they are. Be careful: PK says that if you stare too long at the cuteness, you might go blind.

A day in the life, i.e., no post today

There was some news story in a local paper yesterday about my "real" work, and this morning another local paper called to interview me about it for half a fucking hour, and tonight some photographer's coming over to take a picture and the house is a mess and I don't want people over, and PK has a school carnival all afternoon, and I didn't work on my STILL TOTALLY OVERDUE article yesterday so I hate myself, and the news articles are about the real article I'm supposed to be writing and what if it doesn't get published b/c it's so late, or b/c it turns out crappy, and Mr. B. thought his doctor's appointment today was at 2 instead of 1, and when he got home from grocery shopping at 1:20 and I wrote him a note to say that the doctor's office had called (b/c at this point I was on the phone with local reporter for the SECOND TIME) he got flustered and dropped a glass bottle of juice all over the porch steps, and then i got off the phone and cleaned up the glass while he called the doctor and found out we have to pay for the missed appointment and then he was upset and slamming around the house and swearing while I put some of the grocieres away and now he has to take a cake to the carnival and he and I both volunteered to work for half an hour each and PK is ALL EXCITED about the carnival and I know it probably starts right after school, i.e., in half an hour, but I'm not showered or dressed yet and b/c of all this other REALLY PETTY crap I also haven't done ANY WRITING today, either, yet, and I'm pretending that I don't know the carnival starts at 3:30 but I know PK'll be upset when Mr. B. shows up and I don't so I have to get in the shower and dress so I'll only be a LITTLE late and a LITTLE disappointing and then the photographer's coming over at SEVEN and when am I going to get some fucking writing done? And it's all my fault because I should have done it yesterday, or really, I should have done it WEEKS AGO and so anyway, that's why I'm not posting on my blog today. SUCK IT UP.