Oh right, I'm still that crazy chick

So due to the lack of health insurance coverage (plus my own sloth, I admit), I ran out of the 37.5 mg tabs of Effexor a couple days ago. Luckily I still have the 150 mg tabs, so really I just stepped the dose down by 20%, which I meant to do anyway at some point, just to see if, you know, sunny SoCali might be the miracle cure.

Dang, not so much. Or at least, they aren't kidding when they talk about Effexor withdrawal. I'm all woozy and confused and it wasn't until I thought (erroneously, as it turned out, thankk god) that I'd forgotten I was supposed to volunteer in PK's classroom this morning that I realized "oh. Maybe I feel this way because of the meds change. Duh."

So I guess I should just suck it up and find a doc to give me a new scrip. Maybe the nice folks at Planned Parenthood will do that for me, since I have to go in there b/c I've also run out of birth control pills.

Still and all, though, it's hard to feel too bad when I read headlines like this while the yards around here look like this.

Actually, while we're on the subject...

Coming out at the end of the month, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Going Back to College. Haven't reviewed it yet, but I happen to be slightly acquainted with the author, and (1) she asked me a few questions while preparing the book; (2) she was herself a single mama doctoral student, so she knows whereof she speaks. I'll review the book when it comes out, but in the meantime, those who are interested in returning to college (or those of you who work at universities or colleges and are interested in knowing a little bit more about the situation of returning students) might be interested in pre-ordering it for yourself or for your library.

Ask a Bitchy Feminist

This week we've got letters from grownups who are thinking of becoming grad students:

I am desperately searching for advice and wandered to your blog through a search on the web. I have a MS and am seriously considering a doctoral program. I also have a husband and 3 kids (8, 4, and 1). My parents are encouraging me to wait until the younguns are in school because it will be too hard... I am torn, here. Do you have any thoughts, or insights into finishing a doctorate with kids?

And this one, which confuses me a little with its terminology--I assume the writer has either an MA and is thinking of a PhD, or else has a PhD and is thinking of what, a fellowship? Or another degree, maybe a JD or something?

I would like to ask if you have any thoughts or words of wisdom for an almost-thirty something wishing to pursue a Ph.D. My husband (we eloped and were officially married in a Goodwill thrift store by some guy whose name we found on the ULC directory) and I recently moved. I would like to begin post-graduate school next fall. I just finished graduate school and I'm up for a research associate position pertaining to standardized testing (my background is special education and social work), but no word yet.

Do you have any advice or recommendations for someone who wants to be admitted to post-graduate school? Nobody in my family has earned anything higher than an undergraduate degree and I don't know anyone personally who attempting a degree after graduate school.

Second question first, since it seems easier. The author seems pretty clearly focused on what she wants to do, which I think is the key to grad school success. The first-in-family-to-go-to-grad-school thing means, probably, that she might have a little culture shock, depending on the program. If most of her fellow grad students are fresh out of college and/or from families where dad or mom was a professor, she might have a bit of fish-out-of-wter syndrome from time to time. But, as with all mature students, I think that problem matters less than the advantages of having an actual work ethic, a life independent of graduate school (very important), and a concrete set of goals. I say go for it, with one caveat: make sure you get funding. Throwing money at a grad program is demoralizing and kinda dumb, especially if you're going into education, where you're not going to be making money hand over fist with which to pay off student loans. On the other hand, education PhDs seem to be far more marketable than a lot of humanities degrees, and there are a lot of industry/government jobs to be had in that field.

Now, the first question, which is trickier. I only have the one kid, who was born after my exams and while I was dissertating. My own personal experience was that his being around made it easier, not harder, to finish up: the baby meant that I could no longer play the "I'm going to write all day today but first I just need to do X" game with myself (a game that only leads to guilt and anxiety and therefore no actual writing). Instead, it forced me to define a few hours during which a nanny would watch the baby and I would write. And, as a bonus, when I wasn't on the writing clock I was plenty busy doing other things, which gave me the necessary time to relax, get away from the computer, and let ideas percolate. (Complete and total aside: I recommend anyone who's starting a dissertation get their hands on Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day). But that was only one child, and a baby, and Mr. B. made enough money that we could afford a nanny and, once I started teaching again, daycare. The problem is that most PhD programs, unfortunately, assume that graduate students are young single folks: you're unlikely to find a campus that provides the kind of daycare you'll need, classes are often scheduled in the afternoon and even evening, and the program will probably assume that you work (at most) 20 hours a week--and will often provide those twenty hours (or more) in the form of TAships or research assistantships, which are how you avoid paying tuition (and are often an important part of your training, at least if you intend to teach afterwards). And of course a lot of the informal networking and socializing with other grad students that you do as a way of beginning to build professional contacts (and then what about travelling to conferences once a year?) are a lot harder when you've got this mom gig going on as well.

That said. It depends in part on what you want the PhD for, and what kind of program you're going into. If your goal is to get the damn degree and then get a job at a local CC, you can probably dispense with a lot of the conference-going and networking, and just focus on keeping up with the coursework and pushing out a dissertation. Ditto if you're getting a PhD in a field where you're going to move out of academia and into private employment--agribusiness, say, or education, or environmental management or somesuch. But yeah, three school age kids? That sounds tough. How supportive is your husband, and how much money do you have to pay for childcare, pizza, and housekeeping? What's your MS in, and can you get a job with it that'll let you use your degree, build up some background, maybe skip the PhD requirement altogether? How old are you, and can you realistically wait, not until the baby's in school, but until the oldest two are in high school, at least, if not college? Because, though I hate to say this, academia is not the easiest field for women with kids, especially in the plural; and graduate school, especially when you're still doing coursework, is probably about as bad as it gets. You might get the degree, but in all honesty it'll probably end up being seen a vanity degree: you'll have worked your ass off to finish, but while you were focusing on your work, you'll have been sidelined in the minds of your department as someone who isn't going to go beyond grad school and will somehow be reabsorbed into the non-academic world with a nice diploma to hang on the wall of your home office.

I'd love to be proven wrong. If anyone out there knows how a woman with three kids can start a PhD program and get through without losing her mind, please speak up in comments.

Bitch, Ph.D. announces: book reviews for holiday shoppers

Welcome to the holiday season, B-Mart shoppers! Beginning today, we will be reviewing the pile of books sitting at my elbow every few days, as I finish reading them! I think we have stuff for everyone on your book-receiving list: self-help, history, politics, academia, fiction. We are your full-service blog, here: bra sizing, random bitching, feminist activism, mommy stories, and now holiday shopping. Yes, you're welcome.

Plus! Extra-special book review launch announcement! Today the author of one of the two books being reviewed, Susan Newman, will be doing a Q&A in the comment section. Any questions about how the hell to tell people to fuck off (but nicely!) so that you can actually *enjoy* your vacation? Ask Dr. Newman.

Okay, so. For the colleague, friend, partner with whom you commiserate about overcommittment (or for the mentee who needs to stay focused on tenure, not on agreeing to run independent studies or advise undergraduate organizations), a relatively inexpensive gift and quick read. Dr. Newman's book is called The Book of No. She generously offered to send me a copy after she read one of my many "ahh! I'm losing my mind!" blog entries, and I said sure, send it along, and if it's any good I'll write you a review. Which here it is, so obviously I liked the book.

Now, I, personally, find self-help type books a guilty pleasure. I buy them when I'm in that "god, what is wrong with me?" state of mind, and then I read them mostly to procrastinate about actually *doing* something about whatever-it-is the book promises to help solve, or else to enjoy the narcissistic pleasure of taking personality quizzes. I never, ever, go through the series of steps that the book directs you to follow in order to fundamentally change your personality, and I'm hypercritical about the tone most self-help books take: the eighth-grade reading level that the author's publisher probably insists is appropriate for the genre, and the condescending "you can do it!" thing usually gets my back up. (Though it's better than the alternative, lecturing voice some writer use.) Shit, I don't talk to my kid that way.

So I found The Book of No kind of a breath of fresh air: rather than asking you to delve deep into your personality type, or begin with a series of exercises, or advising you to keep a journal, or what-the-fuck-ever other therapeutic activity is going to take too long (for therapy, I talk to a therapist: when I buy a book, I want something I can do *now*), Dr. Newman gives you what is, basically, a series of scripts. 250 of them. Each offers a scenario, a brief analysis, a scripted reply, and an "alert"--this last is the mantra, the rationale you might need to keep in mind to help you not feel guilty. So like, for instance:

Scenario: "The members need to be alerted to the time change for the next meeting. Will you send e-mails to everyone?"

What's going on here: Why me? There are six other people in the room who can do it. For sure, someone's e-mail address has changed and the e-mail will bounce back. You'll have to track down the new one with a phone call. All this takes time.

Response: "No, can someone else please handle the emails?"

Alert: Dodging is more than an acceptable solution for overload.

I chose this one because "I'll email everyone" is precisely the kind of crap I always volunteer for. "It's easy and short," I think. "Someone has to do it." I do not think "someone else can do it" or "what if an email bounces?" and yet it's true, some email usually *does* bounce, and even if not, the emailer always ends up in charge of keeping track of the responses or whatever. It's one of those "little" things that ends up being a pain in the butt. So what I like about the little scenario here is that it gives you either the internal dialogue you have (but don't voice) or, in my case, offers you the internal dialogue that you should be having, and then gives you a tactful way to say no, and a little rule to keep in mind for parallel situations.

The scenarios cover work (obviously), family stuff (e.g. passive-aggressive bullshit like "your [irritating] sister will be so sad if you don't invite her and her [asshole] husband"), and situations with friends. The scene/dialogue thing, which initially I thought "huh? what if your situation isn't in here?" actually turns out to be pretty helpful, for a couple of reasons. The repetition kind of trains you in doing the quick think-through of situations where you want to say no but don't feel like you can; and, importantly, the scenarios' brevity and fixed form make them surprisingly fun to read. It's kind of like reading an advice column, or anecdotal blog comments: here's someone with a manipulative mother, here's someone whose friends all think she's super-competent, here's someone whose boss loves to ask for overtime. If you or someone else has the paradoxical problem of finding it hard to say no but also appreciating a no-bullshit approach to problems, The Book of No cuts to the chase.


On the other hand: Arianna Huffington's On Becoming Fearless? Eh. If your mom or aunt or someone has relentlessly middle-brow reading habits, little to no real feminist awareness, and is at a crossroads of some kind--a divorce, a death, kids moving out, a job change--then maybe. This is a book for the woman who finds Lifetime movies inspirational. You'd think that Arianna Huffington might be able to offer some interesting gossipy biographical detail, or a window into the internal monologue of a pretty successful woman; at least, that's what I was hoping to find here. Instead we get relentless name-dropping ("The consequences of speaking out fearlessly cut even closer to home when my daughter Isabella's godmother, who happened to be Elaine Chao, married Senator Mitch McConnell, whom I had often castigated. . . .") and dubious pep talks about how important it is to get enough sleep. ("One of the benefits for me is how much less food I need.") I mean, what is there to say about this kind of thing? If you need a gift that looks pretty (seriously, the art designer who did the cover did a lovely job), looks semi-feminist but isn't going to offend a living soul, and isn't something you'll be tempted to keep for yourself, then maybe this is it. Otherwise, don't bother.


Don't forget: if you have questions for Dr. Newman, leave 'em in the comments section; she'll be around for the rest of the day. I, myself, am going to try to get my study cleaned up.

Um, so, who's going to the MLA?

And like, are any of you in need of a roommate? I'm terribly terrible about doing this stuff at the last possible minute, and if I can't find a roomie I'm going to end up staying at the Motel 6 ten miles from the conference hotel, or something.

That was quick. Roommate achieved!

So instead of finding me a place to stay, y'all can help a fellow panelist out. Scott's trying to measure the speed of memes. Copy his link into your blog, pretty please, and ping Technorati (via the link from his blog, I guess--I have no clue how this stuff works), so that the clever little software program he's written can generate his results for him.

Sadly, I, who have no clever software writing skills, am going to have to write my damn paper the hard way.

Michael Richards, role model

Here is the video, which everyone's already seen, of Richards losing it on stage and yelling appalling racist shit at some black audience members.

Obviously Richards is being a dick. Obviously he's being appallingly racist. I, personally, suspect his intent was to be "edgy" and "outrageous"--which doesn't absolve him of being appallingly racist, but I say this because I find it difficult to believe that any half-educated semi-liberal in this day and age would just pop off with this shit without some rationale operating in their mind for why it's okay.

In any case, whatever. Richards = racist dick, outburst = inexcusable nonsense. End of story. The only remarkable thing about the incident, I think, is that the audience fell into a disapproving silence and, according to the reports I've read, most people got up and walked out. Which is pretty cool.

Here is the video, which ditto, of Richards' apology on David Letterman.

The apology, on the other hand, makes this into a story. I find it impressive. While Richards himself says "I'm not racist"--and I believe him, in the sense he himself means that statement, i.e., he is not accustomed to thinking of himself as a racist, he consciously disapproves of racism--he *also* says, at the end, that he has to do some "personal work." That, and his expression throughout, and the clear sincerity and angst of the whole thing for him, indicate to me that he's one of the very few famous (or not famous, to be honest) people I've ever seen caught in public saying or doing something bigoted to realize that there's a conflict between their inner sense of themselves--not a racist--and the obvious manifestation of ideas, thoughts, or impulses that clearly *are* racist.

Which is why the arguments over "is he a racist" or "isn't he a racist," and whether his outburst demonstrates racist thoughts or "just" his attempt to say the most offensive thing that came to mind are kind of beside the point (and I think Richards himself realizes this, to his credit). Clearly, like most people, he thinks he's not a racist; clearly, like most people, he nonetheless believes and thinks some racist things.

And the way he handles that realization is exemplary.

More tired thoughts about parenting

Okay, so, like, this mostly full-time mama thing. I feel like I'm back in the baby phase, where I can't think. PK has been, literally, clinging to me practically 24/7 since Wednesday. At the time of writing, he is using his new light saber* to hit dominoes around the living room like baseballs, and though I've asked him several times, in that resigned I'm-not-really-going-to-enforce-this way, "PK, please stop doing that," "PK, I thought I asked you to clean up, not make a mess," "PK, that's really annoying, please knock it off," he has been doing it for about half an hour. And to be honest, I'm allowing it because it's keeping him off my lap and giving the poor cat a much-needed chance at me, and because it means he's not asking me endless questions or crawling under my arm or demanding that "Mama, come here! Mama, look! Mama, I need you!"

Tillie Olsen was so right.

*He got it at Disneyland. He's been bucking for one for ages, and iIve been putting it off for obvious reasons, and it was the ONE thing he most wanted in the WHOLE WORLD at Disneyland. And, as we all know, they pipe some kind of gas into the air there that makes it impossible for parents to say no.

Pseudonymous Kid explains why homophobia is wrong

I'm putzing around this site, randomly watching tv news bloopers clips. Pseudonymous Kid squirms over on the couch to see my screen.

PK: What are you watching?
Me: Oh, little videos of tv news people making mistakes. (I scroll down, looking for one that might be PK-appropriate.)
PK: Oh, look! Sponge Bob!

I think that the caption for that video seems harmless enough, so I clip on it. It turns out to be a news clip about some asinine "Christian" organization objecting to a dvd provided to schools to promote "diversity and tolerance," on the grounds that Sponge Bob is popular with gay people. (?!?!?!?) When it's over, I tsk.

PK: Why did you make that noise?
Me: Oh, because that makes me mad.
PK: How come?
Me: Well . . . PK, do you know what people mean when they say someone is gay?
PK: No.
Me: Well, you know how when people grow up and fall in love, sometimes men fall in love with women, and sometimes men fall in love with other men, and sometimes women fall in love with other women?
PK: Yeah.
Me: Okay, well, when men fall in love with men, or women fall in love with women, people call that "gay." Like A and M and their kids S and N and K, you know? A and M are lesbians, which means they are gay women. And if men fall in love with other men, like S and A . . . do you remember them?
PK: No.
Me: Hm. Do you know any gay men?
PK: No, I don't think so.
Me: Okay, well, anyway, now you know what the word means, right? Anyway, there are some people who think that when people are gay, when men fall in love with men or women fall in love with other women, that that's bad. And those people don't like Sponge Bob, because they think maybe he's gay, because he and Patrick live together, right? Or maybe they're just best friends, I don't remember, but anyway, they think maybe Sponge Bob and Patrick are gay.
PK: Okay. Why does that make you so mad?
Me: Because A and M are not bad, and people who think other people are bad just because of who they fall in love with are mean. (I draw a breath, preparing to continue by talking about A and M being good mamas, homophobes thinking gay people shouldn't have kids, yadda yadda. . .)
PK: And because I would hate it if Sponge Bob got cancelled, because it's a really good cartoon.

Happy fucking Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving, I'm really fucking thankful I'm not one of these kids. For that matter, I'm really fucking thankful I'm not one of those soldiers, either. But hey! I'm going to go to Disneyland with my kid, where we'll spend *tons* of money on all sorts of crap we completely don't need, and doubtless buy bottles of water we'll end up spilling half of!

We probably deserve to choke on it instead.

Link courtesy apostropher.

This blog continues its slide into irrelevance

Yesterday at Taekwondo (thank you Flea, for blogging about your own boys' TKD experiences!), Pseudonymous Kid had to sit down early in a game of Simon Says. He was quite distressed about it, but I was secretly cheering, because I had the sudden realization that the entire point of Simon Says is that it teaches small children to pay attention. With any luck having had to sit out most of the game will be what we call a Learning Experience.

My new solution to the "ahh! housework!" problem is to (slooooowly) straighten up my study, then institute a "no one allowed inside except by explicit invitation" rule. AKA, the "room of one's own" solution. Of course, what this means in practice is that I am being the worst kind of lazy partner vis-a-vis housecleaning, and what little has been done in the last week or so has mostly been done by Mr. B. At some point we really are going to just have to hire a housekeeper, but I feel much better about this when I realize it's because we're both slobs.

And on that note--my slovenly domestic habits, I mean--get this: our Thanksgiving Day celebration?

We're going to Disneyland.

The mind-boggling appropriateness of this tickles me pink. Thanksgiving, while it's supposed to be a holiday about gratitude and humbleness, is really a holiday about gluttony and enforced Family Togetherness (TM). I realize that for many people, Family Togetherness (TM) is a joyful time, and no doubt there are a lot of genuinely good souls for whom Thanksgiving really is an opportunity to reflect on one's good fortune. These are good things to do, and in other moods and at other times of my life I have embraced them wholeheartedly.

But this year, I'm feeling a li'l frazzled, and I don't want to get into the whole family psychodrama of "if you invite dad, mom won't come," and I *really* do not want to clean the kitchen, make a big fat mess, and then clean it again, and I always find the modest Tgiving on everyday plates kind of depressing and the Proper Tgiving on Good Plates a ton of work, and we don't have any good friends around here quite yet for whom I would genuinely enjoy putting on a spread.

So! We are going to celebrate the proximity of the other great monument to American consumption and Family Togetherness (TM). And while we're at it, we're going to enjoy the short lines and perfect Southern California weather (mid-60s, suckers, and projected to be the same on Thursday). I'm sure one of the Disneyland restaurants will have turkey dinner.

Oh, and lest you think we're too awful, we are bringing my mom.

Other things I hate!

Puppies
Days in May
Innocence
Daisies
America
Men
Babies
Music
God
Kittens
Dancing
Bunnies
Candy
Pom-poms
The pitter patter of little feet
Friendship
Ladybugs


This puerile post brought to you courtesy of a busy weekend. Feel free to join in in comments.

Why I hate my child

Because he has NO CONCEPT OF PERSONAL SPACE.

That is all.

("Scoot the fuck over. Stop leaning on me! Get your feet off me! You're heavy, damnit! God, no wonder my back hurts.")

happy friday

We are now officially and completely debt-free. Including even my student loans, twenty years after I started borrowing 'em.

New pro-life bumper sticker: a fetus is like a broken muffler

Courtesy Jessica at Feministing, just when the hangover from the post-election celebrations is starting to wear off, the Bush administration pours some rotgut in your coffee:

the Bush administration has hired Dr. Eric Keroack to oversee Title X funding—the only federal program devoted entirely to family planning and reproductive health.

Keroack, who is currently the medical director of a Massachusetts "pregnancy crisis" center (you know, the folks that lie to women), will be the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs.
...
The good doctor has also explained his use of ultrasounds in anti-abortion counseling by stating, “even Midas lets you look at your old muffler before they advise you to change it.”

See the WaPo (thanks to Apo at Unfogged for the link) for more goodness:

Eric Keroack, medical director for A Woman's Concern, a nonprofit group based in Dorchester, Mass., will become deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the next two weeks, department spokeswoman Christina Pearson said yesterday.

Keroack, an obstetrician-gynecologist, will advise Secretary Mike Leavitt on matters such as reproductive health and adolescent pregnancy. He will oversee $283 million in annual family-planning grants that, according to HHS, are "designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons." [...]

The Keroack appointment angered many family-planning advocates, who noted that A Woman's Concern supports sexual abstinence until marriage, opposes contraception and does not distribute information promoting birth control at its six centers in eastern Massachusetts.

Opposses contraception and won't tell women about birth control? That sounds like exactly the kind of person who's best qualified to be in charge of Title X money!

Job Announcement

I am not going to start becoming the Chronicle for Higher Ed here, but someone sent me this and I find it interesting and worth passing on:

Here in KY, where my partner and I try to live, I fought against police brutality and racism, and for queer inclusion in human rights and then reluctantly for the benefits that rallying people around not outlawing queer marriage might bring. We won some coalition and changes on everything except the not outlawing queer marriage thing.

Now we have a chance in the largest city in Kentucky to get a brave person to teach at the university. Please take the following position description, the first of its kind for our university, and spread it to the true believing PhDs who read your page. Maybe they could be inspired to come to Kentucky, which has a lot of challenges and pretty natural resources as well as a troubled history.

Editorial amendment: Actually, I really love Kentucky. It's beautiful and although yes, the mainstream culture is pretty Bible-belt, one of the hidden facts about the South is that there are a lot of very cool people tucked away down there, and ime it's surprisingly easy to have a most excellent social life among all sorts of counter-cultural folks without really noticing the Normals most of the time. Plus, like everywhere else, the cities actually swing blue rather than red.

Anyway, with that out of the way, here is an interesting job announcement for an activist, ambitiouis, highly energetic academic:

___
Position Description
The departments of Women's and Gender Studies and Pan-African Studies at the University of Louisville invite applications and nominations for the Audre Lorde Chair in Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality, to begin August 1, 2007. The Audre Lorde Chair is a tenure-track, assistant professor position jointly based in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies and the Department of Pan African Studies
in the College of Arts and Sciences. We seek a candidate who can contribute to the intellectual life of both departments and whose teaching and research emphasis is the intersection of race, gender, class and sexualities across national boundaries. The Audre Lorde chair will teach courses in both Women's and Gender Studies and Pan African Studies, and will develop coursework in lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/queer studies. A preferred area of focus is the study of social activism along and across these axes of difference, and the optimal candidate will serve the university's urban mission by enhancing both departments' connections with the local community.

For information about the Departments of Women's & Gender Studies and Pan-African Studies, see our web sites.

Applicants must have Ph.D. in hand by July 1, 2007, discipline open. Interested candidates must apply on-line at: www.louisville.edu/jobs. In addition, applicants must mail an application letter describing teaching and research interests, a curriculum vitae, a writing sample (article or chapter), and evidence of successful teaching to:

Nancy M. Theriot
Department of Women's and Gender Studies
University of Louisville
Louisville, KY 40292.

Three letters of recommendation must also be sent directly to Dr. Theriot from the recommenders. In order to be given full consideration, materials must be received by December 15, 2006.

Equal Employment Opportunity

The University of Louisville is an Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity, Americans with Disabilities Employer, committed to diversity and in that spirit, seeks applications from a broad variety of candidates.

"Here's your Patriot Act. Here's your Fucking Abuse of Power"

Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a UCLA student, was repeatedly stunned with a Taser and then taken into custody when he did not exit the CLICC Lab in Powell Library in a timely manner.

Community Service Officers had asked Tabatabainejad to leave after he failed to produce his BruinCard during a random check at around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday.
....
A six-minute video showed Tabatabainejad audibly screaming in pain as he was stunned several times with a Taser, each time for three to five seconds. He was told repeatedly to stand up and stop fighting, and was told that if he did not do so he would "get Tased again."

Tabatabainejad was also stunned with the Taser when he was already handcuffed, said Carlos Zaragoza, a third-year English and history student who witnessed the incident.
....
During the altercation between Tabatabainejad and the officers, bystanders can be heard in the video repeatedly asking the officers to stop and requesting their names and identification numbers. The video showed one officer responding to a student by threatening that the student would "get Tased too." At this point, the officer was still holding a Taser.

The video--which another student captured with a cameraphone, smart thinking--is too blurry for a good screen grab. Click on the link and watch it. Then tell me if this doesn't have the lyrics of "Ohio" running through your head for the rest of the fucking day.

I'm not on a university campus this year, but those of you that are really ought to help the students organize some protests about this shit. They should be up in arms.

Fire this man.

CNN's Beck to first-ever Muslim congressman: "[W]hat I feel like saying is, 'Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies' "

Watch Ellison's reaction throughout the video clip, and when Beck interrupts him during his attempt to defuse the situation with a neutral answer.

Other than that, I cannot think of a word to say.

Ask a Bitchy Feminist

Aww, it's so cute that people are writing to ask me job advice!

So, I'm applying for jobs now. Mostly at liberal artsy places but also at a few Research 1 schools. My CV is pretty solid; I have too many publications for someone my age and enough teaching experience that I don't think they'll sneeze. My research program is in its infancy, but it's in an area that has been essentially ignored for 50 years, and has recently become very sexy. There are others like me, with more or less teaching or research experience.

Question: assuming I get some interviews, should I wear my wedding ring?

I don't mind "false advertising;" moreover I don't think it's germane to that I have a wife and kids. Nonetheless, someone without family but with an equivalent CV will kick my ass. I've provisionally decided to keep the ring in my pocket or leave it in the suitcase for the potential interview(s). What do you think?

The answer to this depends on several things. Are you a man or a woman? Is your interview at one of those liberal artsy places or at a Research I or is it at a lower-ranked research school or a community college? Is the school in the middle of nowhere, or is it in a big city?

Different departments--and regardless of the identity of the school, ultimate the department will be making the hiring decision--have different atmospheres. At a school where there's some anxiety about "hanging on" to people, your being married could be a major plus: you're more likely to settle. At a school that wants its faculty to be part of the university or college community, ditto. If you're a guy, being married is probably neutral, and maybe a plus: it implies that you're stable and have spousal support, thereby freeing up your time. If you're a woman, it may very well do the same (I believe it did for my job); in other departments, it may raise questions about whether you have or will have kids, whether having kids is an "issue," and so on.

In other words, I don't think you can game the system. More to the point, I don't think you should try: the reality is that academia hires adults, and that adults often come with families. And that adults who don't have families may very well form them, or may have other committments (elderly parents, ailing pets, time-consuming hobbies) that are or aren't visible to hiring committees. Not all people who are married wear rings; not all people who are coupled are married; not all people who have children can *get* married. So, on general principles, I think those of us who are married and wear rings shouldn't try to hide our spouses; nor should committees assume that people without rings are unattached. Every hiring committee should make sure that every candidate is told about the department and university's climate and policies w/r/t families, parental leave, domestic partner benefits, gay-friendliness, family-friendliness, help finding jobs for spouses, and what structures are in place to provide support for women, ethnic minorities, folks with health problems (including mental illness), and so on.

That said, the reality is that most hiring committees don't do this, lip service to the EEOP notwithstanding. I doubt, honestly, if people are going to be checking out your ring finger unless they're plotting to make a move on you in the fall. But it's possible that not having it on may mean you miss out on being told about relevant benefits, or (ironically) it may force someone to ask (technically illegal, but it happens) or, if they're tactful and up on hiring law, they may volunteer information about their own family on the chance that doing so may draw you out and give them an opportunity to tell you about the things they should mention anyway.

I say job candidates should stop worrying about this nonsense. You can't know in advance how people are going to react, and spending time fussing over it just stresses you out. The academic job market being what it is, we all want to try to control every little possible impression; but the truth is that you are interviewing them as well as vice-versa. If you get the job, you are going to be making a serious emotional and material investment in moving and settling in. Do you want to do that without knowing whether or not you and your family are likely to be satisfied with your new position? Based on my experience, it's as important (more important) for you to pick the job as it is for the job to pick you, and although the realities of academic hiring mean there are more candidates than there are jobs, letting yourself get panicked into the "I need a job, any job" mindset is a poor way to make important decisions.

Go into the interview as yourself. Pay attention to what the committee seems to be paying attention to: are their priorities compatible with your own? Do these seem like people you want to work with for the next few years (at least)? Is the department and the college in a position to provide you with the support you need to do your work--not just family-wise, but also resource-wise and research-wise? Do the students seem like students you will enjoy teaching? Do the folks you meet seem reasonably affable and welcoming?

If your interviewers are so freaky that they're checking out your left hand and making hiring decisions based on what they see there, beware: either they're massively insecure (and therefore probably difficult to work with) or else they're massively unselfaware (and therefore probably difficult to work with). Might as well find out before you sign the contract.

How does a couple decide where to live? Due to the nature of his work, my boyfriend is rather limited in terms of viable cities for finding work. I'm currently in school, studying to do something that will be slightly more flexible geographically; I am, however, totally in love with the city we're currently in and totally opposed to moving to some godforsaken pseudo-city simply because they are in need of my boyfriend's services.

I think if it were just a case of the two of us having different ideas about possible locations, it would be one thing. But right now I feel like he's saying his job is more important than mine -- which it is currently, given that I don't have one, but I chose my school specifically because it had a strong network and reputation in the area and so moving away does put me at a disadvantage I had been hoping to avoid. And I worry that giving in to my boyfriend's professional goals right now will set up a model in which his job is *always* more important (than mine, than the family, than my free time, than childcare, etc.).

At the same time, I do realize some compromise is required in a couple, and I don't want to dig in my heels simply for the sake of digging in my heels.

Thoughts?

(One of his possibilities is actually Southern California, which I pretty much loathe on principle but have little experience with in reality, so I'd also love to here if you have thoughts about how a lefty intellectual just beginning a career and possibly a family might fare down there. I really don't want my clients or my potential children to end up Republican!)

My first thought--okay, my second thought; my first thought is "did I write this letter?"--is don't cross that bridge before you get to it. I say this as an inveterate bridge-crosser, so take it from someone who's right there with you in the middle of a non-existent bridge: you don't know what the options are until you know what the options are.

That said, it sounds like you know some of the options already. It sounds from your letter like you're done with school--you talk about "clients"--so I'm going to assume that you're working, though you also say you don't have a job. If you're not done, then keep in mind that the long-distance dissertation is another issue, and one thing you'll definitely have to budget for is travel.

To start with the most concrete thing: seriously, Southern California is really nice. The stereotypes have some basis in reality, but they aren't everything. There are tons of liberals down here, especially in the coastal areas (although there are liberals and then there are liberals; we've got everything from upper-middle-class do-gooders to new immigrants, remember). The weather is divine, the housing is expensive, the traffic fucking sucks, and people are by and large pretty friendly and easygoing. Believe me, there are worse places. If SoCali ends up being a serious option, drop me an email and come for a visit. I like it here.

On more general topics: I say, decide as clearly as you can, without reference to the whole "his job vs. my job" thing (we'll deal with that separately), what your priorities are. Does it *have* to be a big city? How big? Does it *have* to have an arts scene? An opera house? An ocean? Public transportation? Affordable housing? No snow? Four seasons? Just like when buying a house, try to distinguish between what you need and what you want. If you cannot stand crowds and apartment living, then don't move to Manhattan. If small cities drive you up a fucking wall, don't move to Idaho. If you're terrified of driving, stay away from California. On the other hand, if you really love world-class theater but you also like movies and enjoy community theater, then moving to some place that doesn't have a major theater company might be okay, depending on what else it has or lacks.

So figure that stuff out first, because that's the easy part, actually. The hard part is all this second-guessing about your goals and ambitions and your committment to your partner and his goals and ambitions. I don't really know how to not do that, but I do know that for me, the way to live with it is to try a similar bottom-line strategy to the one I advocate using on the "where to live" question. What are the things that you really cannot compromise without making yourself miserable? What are the things your partner really cannot compromise? If his bottom line is that he will always regret not pursuing an academic job, then he has to do that, and you should support him. If your bottom line is that you need X kind of client base to pursue your own work, then you need to prioritize places that will provide you with that.

Once you've got the mutual bottom lines established, then you can start thinking through negotiations. If your client base is (say) skiers, because you are a ski instructor, then you cannot consider moving to a place that's flat or that doesn't have snow. Cross those places off the list. If he needs to pursue a line of work that requires him to move, and the only mountain town that has a university with a department in his field is Denver, then the two of you need to figure out how to get a job, or jobs in Denver. Narrowing down the possibilities helps a lot.

As far as the gender/family/his job/my job thing goes, all I can say is that the only way I know of to try to keep from making fatal mistakes is to be clear about needs, wants, and options. If you are both committed to making sure the other person has support meeting his/her needs, then it's okay to compromise, hopefully temporarily, on the "wants," as long as you have a plan for how to work on those once the needs get taken care of. I.e., if you want a family, but you need to have a solid client base and he needs to have a t-t job, then get him the t-t job and establish a client base before you go and get knocked up. If you want to live someplace awesome, but you need to pursue your career, then make sure that you establish some workplace credentials before you try to move to Nirvana City. Your job is a priority for you; but his is for him, as well. It doesn't mean one has to take precedence; it means you have to figure out a way for both of you to have satisfactory work lives. If you're willing to move, then focus on finding the right place instead of worrying about whether moving means that he "wins"; if he can look for a job in your area, then focus on doing that instead of worrying about whether that means that you "win." It isn't, and shouldn't be, a zero-sum game.

And remember, if you make a mistake you can always do something else. You will not get stuck unless you give up trying. Communicate with your partner, check in regularly, recognize that moving is going to be incredibly stressful (not least because you will lose your immediate support group), and try to go easy on yourself and each other. If you make a decision in good faith, give it a year or so and see how it goes; if it's not working, then you can start making other plans or putting out feelers for new ideas. If it is working, but you're still not sure it's a lifetime committment, then agree to stick with it for another year, or until your partner has tenure, or whatever timeframe is *acceptable to you both*.

Just as with the job-seeker in the first letter, keep in mind that you are half of the equation, and that any decision that gets made will have to be one you agree to. And that it's okay to make mistakes, because while being a grownup means worrying about a lot of responsibilities, it also means that you get to change your mind if you find yourself on the wrong path.

Pseudonymous Kid cooks with gas

Hearing me hack and wheeze and cough, PK decided yesterday that he was going to "be sweet to Mama" and make her some soup. Here is his recipe.

1 bunch leafy stuff (kale)
5 or 6 carrots
2-3 cloves garlic ("for taste")
1/2 onion (my idea)
lots of pepper
salt
2 boxes chicken stock ("because chicken is good for colds")

Put it in a BIG pot. If it's hot, you can put a lid on it and put it outside in the sun to cook. But if you want it to cook faster ("oh, all right, Mama"), you can put it on the stove. Then Mama can go take a shower. When she gets out of the shower, she can have soup! And since Papa's not feeling very good either, he can have soup when he comes home. Plus, since there's lots, you can remind Mama on the walk to school the next morning that she can have some soup when she gets home, and then when she comes to pick you up, you will remind her again that she can have soup when you get home. That should help her feel much better, because it has lots of vitamins and stuff in it, plus it's a little spicy, to kill the germs.

Why I haven't talked about Gonzales v. Carhart / Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood

Because, really, aside from the confusion of having three cases with similar names (Stenberg v. Carhart--in which the ban on D&X was struck down--and the current two cases being argued about a minor variation on the same fucking law, [Attorney General] Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood), I don't get why this is in front of the court at all.

Basically, the law in question outlaws D&X procedures. A big part of the argument is that it does not ban D&Es. It's not an attempt to ban late-term abortions. It's an attempt to ban just one kind of medical procedure, and the argument for upholding it is that it won't prevent women who need these abortions from having them. That is, it isn't going to "save" a single fetus. (Leaving aside for the sake of argument the fact that most D&Xs are performed on non-viable fetuses anyway.)

So basically we have the SCOTUS deciding whether or not it's a good idea to second-guess, not the decisions women make, but the decisions doctors make. I can believe they'd do the former; the second, I must admit, surprises me.

And I think we have to view Roberts' questions (as reported by Slate and the WaPo, respectively) as very revealing:

"If a woman can take into account the impact on the fetus" and its suffering, "why is that beyond the scope of things the Congress can take into account?"

Because, dummy, Congress can't rule on a case-by-case basis; individual women, by definition, are doing precisely that. Next?

"marginal benefit in safety" from using the procedure is "enough to override the state's articulated interest?""

Bzzzt!!! Whose safety are we talking about? Do people no longer have the right to decide which medical risks they are willing to run and which they are not? Don't we really think that this kind of thing is better judged by medical professionals than it is by lawyers? Do we fail, Justice Roberts, to see the ironic contrast between your concern for nuances of fetal suffering--death inside the uterus v. death inside the vagina--and nuances of women's suffering--losing a baby but retaining the ability to have another v. losing a baby and your uterus.

It's completely illogical for the court to be wasting time on this. I fail to understand why the Chief Justice thinks that blanket advance prohibitions on safe medical procedures are a good idea, or that lawyers are better judges of medical safety than doctors, or seems willing to overlook "marginal" safety benefits on other people's behalf.

Unless he's playing devil's advocate, which I suppose is possible.

Abject Sunday post

Am I a horrible, awful, bad person if I have "something" done about the emerging age spots? When it was just the little one at the tip of my nose, I thought fine, and bought some moisturizer that promised to fade it a bit, which it did. Then there emerged the largish one in the center of my forehead, right at the hairline. Crap, I thought, and continued to apply the Vitamin K. It's fading a bit, I'm adjusting. Now there seems to be an emerging motherfucking constellation running from my right brow down to the cheekbone. Goddammit! I'm not 40 yet!

I know I'm supposed to gracefully embrace aging, and I have every intention of becoming a formidably handsome old woman. I'd love to feel like I don't give a shit about these fucking sun spots, but I do.

So: skin peel/laser/whatever? Or should I just buy myself a copy of Annie Liebovitz's book and tell myself to stop being an idiot?

Calling graphic designers...

Who wants a job? I need to get some help putting together some decent designs for bitchy holiday tshirts, and as we know, graphic design ain't my area. I'm definitely gonna jump on the "lesbian ninja assassin" idea, and maybe for the guys some "Nancy boy" tshirts. Note that by listing these ideas I am hereby claiming ownership of the marketing rights for them (and hoping that Joe Drymala, who actually came up with the idea, won't sue me). And yes, there will be "Bitch PhD" stuff, though I'm not sure about the header photo (for reasons I won't go into, so don't ask).

Note that I probably won't/can't pay a lot, although I admit I actually have no idea how much this kind of work pays. Email me, if you are interested, with a price and (if you have something readily available) a .jpg or two of stuff you've done in the past.

Contest!!!

Holy crap, Bush really *did* say "In my first act of bipartisan outreach since the election, I shared with her [Pelosi] the names of some Republican interior decorators who can help her pick out the the new drapes for her new offices."

While my jaw was lying on the floor, apparently an idea crawled in. Here it is:

Who can come up with a more tone-deaf statement about the importance of Pelosi's becoming the highest-ranked woman in American history? I'll come up with some appropriately partisan gift if anyone can top Bush himself.

(If, like me, you had to miss the press conference because you were dealing with a kid, or something, you can get a streaming video over at C-SPAN. At the time of posting, it's the top link under "Video/Audio," right under "Featured Links.")

Wait, it's too early for Christmas!

Awww, Rummy, don't cry!

After all, someone else is gonna have to clean up your goddamn mess for you.

(Extra bonus dose of schadenfreude: here's a screen cap of the google results for "Rumsfeld" as of 10:40 PST, and check out the top couple of headlines.)

Oh noes!!!! It's all gone horribly wrong!!!!!

Who knew we'd miss Rick Santorum so soon?

Yes, Ma'am

I'm hoping to see a lot more of this "now hold the fuck on" expression in the next couple of years.

Go get 'em, Speaker Pelosi.

Sometimes I heart America

My li'l patriotic story du jour:

I went to vote at around 11 pm; me and a bunch of retired folks, basically. All the poll workers were cheerful and so was I. Despite having read that all of California is now doing electronic voting, we had the "complete the arrow" ballot, which we then put into a scanning machine and got a receipt (yay receipt). I momentarily wavered over whether or not to vote for the Green candidate for Insurance Commissioner, being as I'm really not especially impressed by Bustamente, but did my duty and voted a straight Democratic ticket. I did end up voting yes on 1B, as per someone's recommendation in the thread below this one. Whole thing took about fifteen minutes, pas de problem. There was a funny moment when the elderly poll worker said, "uh, where do you want me to put the sticker?" because I was wearing a cleavagy top, and I said, "oh, right there" (about halfway down the V-neck) and then yay! I had my "I voted" sticker.

Which turned out to be a cool thing, because next I went to get the car smog checked. At Tune Up USA in Oxnard. If you live anywhere near the area, go to these guys.

I walked in and Shorty, as I'll call him, asked what I needed. "Smog check," I said, "how long will it take?"

"Hm," he looked around. "I can get you in right after we're finished with this truck. Give me your keys and I'll move your car for you."

I handed him my keys, and went into the shop. There were a couple of younger guys talking about gang activity in English when I entered, but they switched immediately to Spanish. I kinda smiled, and eavesdropped. The talkier guy was bemoaning the rise of gang activity; apparently there's even been something going on at the local mall, which is quite swank. Talker guy said that that was why he had to get out of that scene, man. Listener guy nodded and agreed. I sat down on the couch and opened my book. Eventually they left, and I looked around.

On the television, Faux News--ironically advertising an upcoming focus on immigration with everyone's favorite asshole, Tom Tancredo. (Never heard of him? Start here, or here. Or, if you prefer, maybe here. Or, possibly here or here or here.) Shorty comes back in with a form for me to sigh--which he brings over to me on a clipboard so that I don't have to walk over to the counter--and I ask if he's watching Faux? No, he says. Would you mind changing it? I ask. Sure, he says, just a second.

The young guys have come back in, along with another man Shorty's age (slightly older: 40ish?), and they talk a bit in Spanish about I don't know what. I hear Shorty asking the other older man, who I'm going to call Papa for reasons that'll soon become clear, where the remote is? Papa says he doesn't know, why? "Ella," short explains, gesturing towards me, "no le gusta" something something, presumably the channel that's on. Papa looks over at me.

"How come?" he asks, while Shorty looks around for the remote.

"Tom Tancredo's on, and I can't stand him," I explain.

"Who's that?" he says, surprising me.

"He's a Colorado Republican whose staked his political reputation on being anti-immigrant. He's a complete bigot." I'm thinking, this could go either way. For all I know, these guys are conservatives who are strongly anti-illegal immigration themselves.

Papa smiles. "All those guys are basically anti-war," he says.

I'm surprised. "In what sense?"

Shorty interrupts; he's found the remote. "What channel do you want?"

"I don't care, anything but this," I shrug.

Shorty flips channels, and Papa walks over to perch on the table next to me. "They're anti-war in the sense that none of them want to pay for anything the troops need," he says. "No materiel, not enough personnel, no weapons, nothing."

I smile. Papa may be a li'l more conservative than I am--after all, I'm anti-war too--but we're on the same page. "Well, none of 'em know anything about war," I say. "None of them's ever been to war. They're just a bunch of fake patriots."

Shorty, who's settled on Court TV, interrupts again. "You've found someone to talk to!" he laughs to Papa. "She looks like she knows what's what," smiling as he gestures towards my li'l "I voted" sticker.

Papa smiles too. "I'm just hope we can do something about this school board," he says.

"Oh!" I jump at the opportunity. "Tell me what's going on with that. We just moved here, and I thought about moving to Oxnard, because my husband works here, but everyone warned me about overcrowding and gangs, and in the end my husband found a house in another city. But we're only renting, and we'll be looking to move in a year."

So Papa tells me about the Oxnard superintendent, who apparently sued the district after she was fired. According to him, the super and the district administration has been grossly mismanaging funds: they got a big bond issue passed a while back for schools, but "the only people who've been getting paid are the architects," he says. "They keep just making designs and then changing their minds, and nothing is being built. It's taking forever, and where's the money? Everyone says 'more money for schools!' but the real problem is that the money that they *have* is just being wasted. Not," he adds quickly, "that I don't support more money for schools. More pay for teachers, great; they deserve it. But when the former super sues the district and gets a big settlement and ongoing benefits, what good does that do the kids?"

"Wow," I say, "that sounds really shitty. I come from a family of teachers, and I admit I have a real knee-jerk pro-teacher, pro-teacher's union point of view; but yeah, sometimes the entrenched bureaucracy and overhead just really pisses you off. Focus on getting good teachers, putting them in smaller classrooms, and let them teach."

"Exactly," he agrees.

"I do wish that we had more money for that," I allow. "For smaller classes. Last year, my kid was in a school where they had less than ten kids in his kindergarten class. It was *awesome*. The teacher was really experienced, and he got a lot of attention, and she was really impressed with his attention span. Now, this year, there are nineteen kids in the class, and the teacher's telling me his attention span is too short, but he's the same kid. The only difference is that he's not getting as much attention from the teacher. Now they want me to hold him back, maybe."

"We held our second son back," Papa says. "He was really having trouble; he's hyper. We took him to a doctor, but she said better get him therapy than just stick him on meds. The principal wanted to put him in special ed, but I thought, what? Special ed? But she invited me to come to the school, see the classroom, meet the teacher. One teacher, two teachers' aides, fourteen kids."

"That's not bad," I say. "The principal sounds good."

"It's great," he says. "My son's really doing well. The teacher is really involved and creative, and the kids get a lot more attention. My son used to hate school, but now he loves it. He's doing really well."

"That's fabulous," I say. "A good teacher, a good principal, that makes all the difference."

Shorty comes back in and explains that my car failed the emissions test again.

"Ugh," I say. "What do I need to do?"

"Well," he says, "we can run a diagnostic test on it, but that'll be $65 in addition to the emissions test."

"That's okay," I say, glancing at the clock. "We need to get the car to pass emissions." Shorty comes over again with the clipboard and a new estimate for me to sign, and Papa goes out to start the diagnostic, I guess.

A couple of women come in. One of them kisses Papa on his bearded cheek as they pass in the doorway; the other goes over to the coke machine and buys a coke. Mama settlesdown in the other couch, and coke girl leans on a stool by the counter.

I look around idly. Behind the desk, there's a large open area that's drywalled off from the garage. It's furnished with a couple of weight benches and free weights, a couple of speed bags, a heavy bag, some mirrors. On the wall are lots of framed photographs of fights and kids sparring with adults; a couple of belts, a couple of trophies. I don't recognize anyone in the photos from the guys I've seen, but obviously someone's really into boxing.

Coke girl, who is a very large woman indeed, stands up and sets her coke down on the counter. She walks back into the back room and goddamn, starts hitting one of the speed bags. Idly, she's not working out, but accurately--she obviously knows what she's doing.

I'm impressed.

Shorty comes back in and says the car needs a new catalytic converter. I get up and walk over to the counter to ask how much this is going to cost.

"Well," he says, "we have two. The older ones, the ones they used until about 1990-something, cost $150. The ones for the newer cars are $350. But no one wanted to pay that, so we just started charging the $350, but not charging for labor on those."

"Really?" I ask, surprised. "Well, how long would it take to put one in?" I'm thinking that I can come back tomorrow, probably, because it's about 1:35, and I have to pick PK up at 2:15.

"Maybe half an hour?" Shorty says.

"Really?" I ask again. "I need to get out of here by 2, because I have to pick my kid up at school at 2:15."

Shorty looks at the clock. "Okay," he says, "we can do that. Let me go tell the guys to get started."

I sit back down and return to my book. Five minutes later, Mr. B. calls.

"Where are you?" he asks.

"At the car place," I say. "The car failed again. They say it needs a new catalytic converter, so I told them to go ahead."

"How much?" he asks.

"$350?" I ask back.

"Really?" He sounds surprised. "The dealer quoted me $850."

"Damn." I'm impressed. "These guys aren't even charging me for labor."

"That's why I told you to go to that place," Mr. B. gloats a little.

"They're damn nice," I admit. "I'm glad you recommended them."

"Well," Mr. B. closes, "I guess since you're there you can't check and see if my wallet is in the pocket of the shorts I wore yesterday."

"Nope."

"Okay, I'll check when I get home. Talk to you later." He hangs up.

I read for about fifteen more minutes, and then Shorty comes back in. "Okay, you're done. They're testing it again now."

"Great," I say, "thanks!" I put the phone back in my purse, pick up the purse and book, and walk over to the counter. Coke girl crosses behind me to do a little more sparring practice. Bap, bap, bap goes the bag.

"Oh, let me move that for you," Shorty says apologetically, moving a box that's leaning on the counter to one side.

"No biggie," I say, pulling out my credit card.

Shorty slides it through the machine and hands me the invoice to sign. I look at it. "You didn't charge me for labor?"

"No," he says.

"You should," I say. "The dealership wants to charge $850 for a new catalytic converter."

"That's why they have more money than we do," he says.

"That's why you'll have more business from me than they will," I respond. He smiles.

Papa comes back in to say that yeah, my car's passing emissions now. "Good," Shorty smiles. He prints out a form, signs it, staples it to the invoice and receipt, and hands it to me. "You're good to go now. Come on back if you need anything else."

"Don't worry," I wave. "I will."

As I get in the car, Papa, who's walked back into the service bay, looks over. "Bye!" he shouts.

"Bye!" I shout back over the top of the car. "Thanks!"

He waves.

I have never in my life felt so good about spending an afternoon getting a car fixed.

Vote

This morning on the way to school, PK said "I know why there are so many flags out today."

"Why?" I said.

"Because today is voting day."

Go to the polls and cast a ballot. I don't care if you're on "my side" or not. Just vote. And make sure to ask/remind your coworkers, neighbors, housekeeper, boss, secretary, fellow playground moms, students, professors, auto mechanic, and grocery store clerk to vote, too. If you're in charge of someone's work schedule, give them an hour or so off to go cast a ballot. If someone needs it, offer them a ride to the polls.

If you run into problems--machines not working, registration "lost," long lines, people walking away without voting because they need to get to work--go here or here to report it.

Or, if you prefer, call any or all of these numbers:

1-866-OUR VOTE (1-866-687-8683)
1-888-DEMVOTE (1-888-336-8683) (DNC hotline)
1-888-SAV-VOTE (1-888-728-8683)(voting machine problems).

As well as your local news station and newspaper.

And if you would, leave a comment about how things looked at your polling station. I'm curious about what people's voting experiences are like across the country. I just heard on the radio that elections in my county are being monitored because of complaints last time, and I read an article in the paper today where someone from the board of elections was saying that if people have problems with the new voting machines, it's because "they weren't paying attention." So I'm going to be keeping my eyes open.

Update: Great. Here it's still early on the left coast, and I'm still feeling patriotic and optimistic and shit, and I start running into stories like this....

Nudder update: My girlfriend in Denver reports that she showed up at 8:30 am to vote, waited an hour and a half in line, and was late to work. And yes, she saw other people leaving the line without having voted.

Bitchy voter guide

Ah, what the hell. Tomorrow is election day--vote early! Vote often!--and my location's no longer a Top Sekrit, so herewith find the Official Bitch PhD California Voting Guide, which I hope will be opinionated enough to be interesting to non-Californians as well.

Propositions--the easy ones

Prop 85: Girls under 18 have to tell parents if they're having an abortion, and then spend 48 hours being yelled at before they can have the procedure. DUH. Vote no.

Prop 83: Track former sex offenders with GPS bracelets (or whatever) for the rest of their lives. Also, they can't live here, there, or there, either. Big Brother is watching you, perv. Vote no.

Prop 86: Up cigarette taxes by $2.86/pack; use the proceeds to fund health care for uninsured kids and a bunch of other health-related stuff. Look, people, I smoke and I'm voting for this. Vote yes.

Prop 88: More money for education! But let's keep a big chunk of it for only the *good* schools. It pains me to hate on education funding initiatives, but this one is stupid. Vote no.

Prop 89: Public election financing, limitations on lobbyist contributions. Dude, it can only help. Vote yes.

Prop 90: Ahh! The gubmint is going to steal your land! This one is pretending to be a reaction to Kelo v. New London, which was admittedly a stupid ruling. But since California already has eminent domain laws and this one, from what I can tell, forces the state to compensate landowners who are found to be violating health or environmental laws, this just seems like typical western private property fetishization to me. Vote no, but it'll be an interesting test of California's political winds to see if this passes.

Propositions--the not-so-easy ones

Props 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E: Respectively, keep gas tax for transportation funding alone; bonds for transit, port security, and seismic retrofitting of bridges; bonds for low-income housing; bonds for repair and construction of K-university school buildings; bonds for levee repair/upgrade.
Okay, first of all, can we *please* not do the package a, b, c, d, e stuff? It makes it impossible to keep this shit straight. Thank you. Second of all, I *hate* this bond crap; I mean fine, if you want to build a stadium or have some other one-time expense that's not part of regular government budgeting, go for a bond initiative, but jesus, people, can we have some fiscal responsibility and not rob Peter for the next 30 years to keep Paul afloat? If you wanna see what I'm talking about, have a looksee at California's own assessment of its current bond debt: $45 billion plus an extra $37 billion that's committed but hasn't yet been sold. Ahhhh!

That said, and in order:
1A: This is one of those stupid libertarian things that's all about only paying for the things I, personally, use. As if the California state budget weren't hamstrung enough. Vote no.
1B: Okay, port security and seismic retrofitting are important, and yeah, roads matter too, but on the grounds that bond funding is irresponsible and at some point California has to fix its stupid-ass tax/budgeting structure, I say no. Make the fuckers figure out how to do this shit right.
1C-1E: I think I'm going to hold my nose and vote yes on these. They're all pressing issues that really do have to get taken care of, even if issuing bonds is the wrong way to go about it. But I won't blame you if you pick one or two out of three to vote no on, just on general principles.

Prop 84: Bonds again, this time for water control and safety. Shit, people! Quit with the bond stuff! Okay, fine. Vote yes, water's a big issue here. But write an angry letter to the local paper bitching about needing to repeal Prop 13 and do some overhauling of public financing afterwards.

Prop 87: Tax oil companies and use the money to research and invest in alternate energy sources. Why is this one in the "not so easy" column? Two reasons. One, it seems *such* a no-brainer that I'm suspicious. Two, frankly, I'm kinda crappy at economics and I'm not sure I really get how this one would work/be handled in practice--how the hell are they going to ensure that oil companies don't pass the costs on to consumers, as the proposition "guarantees"? Also I don't get how it's going to *reduce* state revenues in other areas, as the Cali Voter Information Guide says. And I hate voting on shit I don't entirely grasp. That said, what the hey: vote yes, unless you know something I don't.

Officeholders

Governor: Vote Angelides. No, he probably won't win. But at least he knows something about how to run a budget.

Lt. Governor: Vote Garamendi. The Lieutenant Governor doesn't do shit, but Garamendi's been around for fucking ever and isn't evil and he's a democrat.

Secretary of State. For god's sake, vote for Debra Bowen. Her big issue is creating a PAPER TRAIL for these goddamn begging-to-be-tampered-with voting machines. (Bonus: Times Select is free this week, so you can read this article on how fucked up the Diebold bullshit is. Also see a genuine lawyer's take on the issue.) Oh, and while you're at it? If your precinct is using electronic machines, ASK FOR A PAPER COPY OF YOUR VOTE. I don't know if you can get one--it's not included in the California voter bill of rights--but at least make a point of asking.

Controller: Vote John Chiang, whose platform is about closing corporate loopholes and making sure schools get their money. The other guy's on about "cutting waste and fraud" being all we need to do to fix the state's budget, which is obvious bullshit pandering.

Treasurer: Bill Lockyear, who at least went after the energy companies after the 2000/2001 energy "crisis"/price-gouging. Plus the opponent is a jackass who's endorsed by Howard Jarvis' bullshit "Taxpayer's organization" (hint: HJ was the genius behind Prop 13), who uses way too many exclamation points and scarequotes in his candidate's statement, and whose railing against ""Middle Men" from "Wall Street"" (sic, including scare quotes) sounds suspiciously anti-Semitic.

Attorney General: Dude! Jerry Brown!

Insurance Commissioner: Dear god, this is an important office and neither of the guys running strikes me as being especially good for the job. That said, I'll go for Bustamante because he's a Democrat and because he says he favors moving towards universal health insurance.

That's it for statewide elections, but one added note. If you're in District 11 (Central Valley and south Bay, mostly), GET YOUR BUTT TO THE POLLS AND VOTE FOR MCNERNEY. The district was supposed to be a safe Republican seat, but Pombo is such a crook and an ass that McNerney can really win it--but only if you people get out there and cast a ballot.

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Non-partisan voter information for all 50 states can be found at the League of Women Voters site, which also has links to look up your polling place if, like me, you need to find out where the hell it is. Enter your zip code and scroll down the left-hand column for the link.

Opting out's a shitty option

In comments to the post just under this one, supremely astute reader Shunra said,

I cannot even begin to tell you how disturbing that is.

Not the shoes or the bras - they're fine.

The piece of the story that is "man goes back to providing and now we have cash" - after "we live in exalted poverty because the man is making the supreme sacrifice and being homemaker while I do the earning".

It's the sort of thing that makes bright girls (like my daughter, for instance) wonder if the whole equality thing is even worth a fight.

Which is not to say that you shouldn't enjoy the shoes. And the bras. But the society? It's not changing enough. My little girl is consigned to some serious struggling that I'd hoped our generation had gotten out of the way for her.

Amen and hallelujah. Sometimes the less we say, the more we mean.

One of the things that's characterized my feminist consciousness has been the jarring realization as I've grown up that my adolescent feminism was no protection against getting the shaft. As a teenager and in college, I was a feminist; but I was the kind of feminist who figured that because I was a feminist, I was equal to any man, and I was going to be able to do whatever I wanted to do.

I remember two very telling college experiences.

In my sophomore year, I asked the Dean of Arts and Sciences to be my advisor. She was a woman who I admired very much; she continued to teach, had an important administrative position, seemed to really have her shit together. She warned me that since she was Dean, I might not get as much time as if she weren't, but I pointed out that on the other hand I'd also get a look at the administrative side of things, so she agreed.

She nominated me for a pilot project the university was running to train promising women undergraduates for leadership positions. It offered training and mentorship and involved weekly on-campus evening meetings--a minor inconvenience since I lived off campus, but not too far to bike or take the campus shuttle.

I turned the project down.

Partly this was a little bit of nascent depression, I suspect--the having to get myself to campus in the evenings seemed like an overwhelming prospect--but part of the decision, or at least the rationalization for the decision, was that although the program sounded really neat, I didn't really need it. I was already a feminist, already ambitious, already committed to having a career. I regret that decision to this day.

The second story is smaller, but bigger. In my Spanish class, there was an older woman who was returning to school. Over the course of the semester, we found things out about her: her husband was a doctor and she'd been a homemaker. He'd agreed to "let" her go to college as long as--she emphasized this--nothing changed at home. She was to continue to do all the housework and all the childcare (if memory serves, they had two school-age children) and could take classes and do homework in her spare time. I thought, of course, that this was fucking horrible, and although it was clear to me that her husband was a jerk, there was part of me that wondered why the hell she'd married him, and why she stayed married to him.

I don't remember what prompted her outburst one afternoon, but I do remember her saying, passionately and seemingly on the verge of tears, "you young girls look at me and you all think you can have it all. You think that you won't end up like me. But I'm telling you, you can't have it all. Just wait. You'll get married, and you'll think you're marrying someone who loves and supports and respects you, but that's not how it works. I know you look at me and you think I'm crazy, or you feel sorry for me, but I'm telling you: look at me and realize that this is where you'll be in twenty years."

That really struck home for me. Oh, I still thought that *I* wasn't going to end up like that, but I looked around the classroom and figured that the made-up sorority girls probably would, even though they didn't realize it. I thought yeah, this woman is right: most women will still end up not having it all. Probably only a couple of us in this classroom will choose our husbands carefully enough, prioritize our careers enough, to not end up stuck like that.

But I did take a little warning. I put off Mr. B.'s marriage proposal in my senior year for six months, then turned him down while insisting that I move in with him so that we could try the relationship out while living in the same city. When we decided to get married, I insisted on a formal promise that he would support my getting my Ph.D., even if it meant living apart, and he did. We talked very seriously and at length about our plans for children and careers: he was loving his job, and that was great, but because it involved so much travel (plus the potential, however remote, of death or injury in a war), I would not have kids while he was in the military. Which wasn't extortion, I always made clear: if we didn't have children, that was fine, but if he wanted children, he would have to have a job that was safer and meant that he would be able to be a full-time dad. He thought that putting young kids in daycare was a bad idea, and I didn't, so I said that if he thought someone should stay home with children, he was welcome to be that someone; this was his plan, too.

So that's what we did, as readers of this blog know. Only there ended up being certain problems that neither of us had really thought through--I'd considered them, and we'd talked about them at length, but Mr. B. had reassured me that we would make them work, and I'd decided to take him at his word. First, we had no choice about where we lived. All my friends had always told me how "lucky" I was to have a husband who was willing to follow me on the academic job market (and I'd objected to that word); but even though I knew there were places I really didn't want to live, I hadn't thoroughly considered whether *I* was willing to follow me on the academic job market. It turns out that I wasn't, that part of the self-assurance that made me a young feminist also meant that not having control over where I lived made me deeply unhappy. Second, my salary was not quite enough to support a family on the early tenure-track. We'd talked about not being able to buy stuff, and again Mr. B. had said he was willing to do what it took, and to his great credit he shopped at thrift stores and pursued bargains and spent three years mortifying me by asking for discounts, haggling, arguing over bank fees and installation charges and all sorts of other petty crap in order to save us money. But we lived a long way from our families, and we needed new clothes for the climate, and while Mr. B. continued to wear old clothes I need to buy some things I could teach in, and we ended up racking up my credit card to about $10,000 in three years. And we seldom had babysitters, and certainly couldn't afford to hire someone to watch PK for a whole weekend, so we never had time together much. And, it turned out, Mr. B. wasn't as good a housekeeper as he'd hoped to be, and I wasn't as flexible about that as I might have been. Not least because I preferred to work at home as much as possible so that I could be around for PK, because while I was okay not being the primary parent in theory, I wasn't okay with not making him a priority in practice.

So yeah, I got stressed and depressed, and Mr. B. tried to deal with it and got frustrated and quietly resentful, and the money situation sucked, and neither of us was all that happy with where we were living. So we both looked for jobs.

And, because Mr. B. had a former career with more than ten years' worth of highly specialized experience, and I was just starting out on my career and wasn't publishing as fast as I "should," what with depression and teaching and job-hunting and depression, he was able to get a job and I wasn't. In fact, in the end, he came close to jobs at some hard-to-get-hired-by companies in some pretty nice places, and then finally landed a job for which he is perfectly qualified (actual quote from an interviewer: "is there anything you haven't done?"), one that--as a result--pays him quite nicely indeed.

So I'm "on leave" and "staying home" for now. And I'm spinning it positively: I want to write. But I'm having to accept a couple things with that spin. Even if I manage to get paid for writing on a pretty regular basis, there's no way I'm going to approach Mr. B.'s earnings. Being economically dependent does not make me happy.

But more to the point, it's one of those realization moments that for all my feminist fierceness, the little things wear you down. In graduate school, I had to realize that some of my confidence was ebbing over small issues like being advised by a fabulous advisor who nonetheless, occasionally had a moment of discomfort over my being a woman; like not having any women teaching in my area; like only being able to connect with the high-achieving feminst profs on an occasional basis, because they all taught in fields far from my own; like being the only person to bring a baby to meetings; like realizing there was no place to change him except a bench in the hallway that advertised "hi, I'm a mommy dealing with a poopy diaper" and required me to apologize to everyone who walked past.

And today I'm realizing that the mature student in my Spanish class was right. Here I am, twenty years later, in a position not unlike hers. Not because I've married someone like she did; but because whether or not my own personal husband insists on those expectations, my own personal society does. It's okay for me to have a career--as long as my house is clean, I spend a lot of time with my kid, I give up control over where I live, I accept economic dependence (on my husband or on the Bank of America), and I live with the depression that's surely partly the result of all these "choices."

But the ambitious determined girl inside me says fuck that shit. I don't accept those choices, and I'm not going to agree to compromise, and I'll spin these decisions positively but I'm not going to pretend that I've got it all because I don't. And I'm not going to accept that I'm not entitled to it all. I'm ambitious and overeducated, damnit, and I'm going to make this shit work. Somehow.

Because it's not a question, really, of whether this whole equality thing is worth a fight. It's that there's nothing else to do but fight. Giving up isn't really a choice; it's just giving up. And I'll be damned if that's going to happen.

Conspicuous

Yesterday I bought new shoes. Today I bought new bras.

God, it's nice to have money again.

I kinda like fish

But I'm not sure if I should give it up or enjoy it while it lasts.

All of the world's fishing stocks will collapse before mid-century, devastating food supplies, if overfishing and other human impacts continue at their current pace, according to a global study to be published Friday by a team of scientists from 12 academic institutions in five countries.

Already, 29% of species that are fished . . . have collapsed and the pace is accelerating, the report says.
....
co-author Stephen Palumbi of Stanford University. . . . warned that "unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the oceans species together, as working ecosystems, then this century is the last century of wild seafood."

And that's without global warming, I guess.

But don't worry! Move along, there's nothing to see here, if we sit on our thumbs everything is going to be just fine:

The National Fisheries Institute, a U.S. fishing industry group, questioned the findings, saying that federal statistics "show more than 80% of fish stocks are sustainable and will provide seafood now and for future generations."

The group said that for the past quarter-century, wild fisheries worldwide have provided between 85 and 100 million metric tons of seafood annually, and that aquaculture, also known as fish farming, is filling the growing demand.

Good logic, that. For the past twenty-five years we've harvested 100 million tons of seafood every year! There's no overfishing going on! We'll just farm fish as we destroy the world's oceans, there should be no problem atoll.

Please let this be true

Ann Coulter may have voted illegally.

RIP, William Styron

The only books of his I've read are Sophie's Choice and Darkness Visible. I read the former probably twelve years ago? While visiting Brit Friend in Minneapolis, actually. I've only read it the once, but I still remember the beauty of the writing to the point of recalling specific sentences and details of scenes quite vividly. I remember the room I read it in, too: spare, red bedspread, wood furniture, old house. And I remember realizing by ten pages in that I'd put off reading it far too long, something I sometimes do with great novels for some reason. And I remember sobbing at the end, quietly, because it was late and I didn't want to wake Brit Friend. If you haven't read it, please do: it's one of those good reads that's also a really profound experience. Not as rare a find as you might expect, but the sensuality of Styron's prose is.

I should re-read it, actually. Also the Confessions of Nat Turner.

Ask a Bitchy Feminist

This time we have a delightfully fun question from a newish blogger with a pink pony and a five o'clock shadow.

Dear Bitchy Feminist,

Hi! I'm an avid reader of your blog and was wondering if you would care to offer your perspective on something for my friends and me (or at least direct me to previous posts where you've already addressed the topic).

My questions center around the word "bitch." A few of us have been having a rather extended conversation surrounding its use, and the general consensus is that it's an extremely gendered term (and not in a positive sense) used to oppress opinionated women and to marginalize stereotypically feminine behaviors in men and women. The controversy we've been discussing surrounds the reclaimation of this term and if it's even possible to do without having to explain your gender politics extensively. (Let's face it, cunt was a lot easier in this respect...)

As an opinionated woman who embraces an online identity as a bitch with gusto (which I share as well), what is your perspective on the term? Toward men? Toward women? Do you see this word as able to be reclaimed? If so, how? Any sepcific/unique obstacles? What about women who use the word as a term of endearment amongst each other? Or gay men referring to themselves as being bitchy? What about it's bearing on class/power (for example, to make someone your bitch)? Are there any unique manifestations or uses of the word you've encountered?

Any input on this topic (or just completely random information) you'd like to bless our little contingent with would be much appreciated. Feel free to espond in your own time. There's no hurry. Most likely my friends and I will still be arguing about it a year from now...haha.

I agree. "Bitch," which as everyone and their dog knows means an unspayed female dog, gets used colloquially not so much to oppress opinionated women (who don't give a rat's ass) as to oppress women who hesitate about observing, commenting on, or arguing about the world around them. No one wants to be a bitch or, as the kids are calling it nowadays (and dear god, how I hate it), "beyotch." Let us declare a moratorium on "beyotch" immediately; it only gets used in a nasty, mean way and if you're too delicate to just come out and call someone a bitch, you have no business bitching about them.

Now, bitching means complaining ceaselessly and fruitlessly, much like whining or nagging, which no one wants to do or suffer through. But the thing is, it's the fruitless part that differentiates bitching from critique, polemic, and argument. And, as we all know, the primary reason bitching is fruitless is because it's dismissed as bitching. The primary reason people bitch is because they don't really expect whatever's bugging them to change, and so they fall back on frustrated and frustrating complaint. I recommend against this activity.

Ironically, though, I started the blog under the pseud "bitch, ph.d." because I was feeling kinda stuck in academe, not sure I wanted to be there, and not sure I really had the right to feel that way. After all, I'd gone through this grad program, my husband had faithfully supported me the whole time, I'd gotten a t-t job my first year out, I was teaching in a department that had a new grad program I'd have the chance to help shape, I wasn't especially worried about my ability to get tenure. I'd won the grad school jackpot. How dare I look the gift horse in its toothy mouth? How dare I mix my metaphors this way? How dare I spend my office hours blogging and web surfing rather than writing my next article, punching my not-half-bad dissertation into a monograph, revelling in my ability to spend the rest of my life researching, thinking, writing, and teaching about stuff that I genuinely think is kinda interesting?

And yet, here I was, bitching about it. Ah well, I thought flippantly, in that shruggy way of mine, fuck it. If I want to bitch about shit, I will; no one is going to read this damn blog anyway, and if they do, then that's fine too. Whatever.

And lo, not two weeks into the thing I ran into a few like-minded bitchy academic women: Profgrrrl, Dr. Crazy, and a few other folks who weren't quite so bitchy, like New Kid, Mel, and Becky Hirta. And over time, we ran into other like-minded academic men, some bitchy, some not. And then I started bitching about Big People, like Larry Summers and Kevin Drum (well, he's big in blogland), and boy howdy, nothing gets you noticed like bitching about important guys. And then, like, all of a sudden people were paying attention to my bitching!

Which, does that make it less bitchy, by definition? No, and yes. No, because when you start bitching big, and people start actually paying attention to it, a lot of people will respond to your bitching by telling you what a bitch you are. That is, they'll try to define what you're doing as "bitching"; as pointless, uninformed, and petty. But, see, they're doing that because in fact your bitching is getting noticed and is in danger of actually making a difference to someone. After all, the bitching of academic women contributed to Larry Summers losing his job, and the bitching of blogging women led Kevin Drum to reconsider his blogroll and the ways he thought about women opinionators, and the bitching of other blogging women led to BlogHer and the death from ridicule of the "where are the women bloggers?" question and a lot of raised consciousness around the notable absence of women on op-ed pages everywhere. And the more I realized that my own personal bitching was, in fact, interesting to read, the more I realized that I don't have to be a good girl and follow the yellow brick road of academic achievement. I can use my fancy red shoes to go home, to move back and forth between home and Oz, or to go find some new path, and my friends will help me if I just ask.

So I think that's kind of the thing about bitching. If you're doing it all alone, and it's falling on deaf ears, and you feel powerless, it's easy to feel like bitching is pointless. And that, of course, is why some people call other people bitches--to try to isolate them, marginalize what they're doing, keep other women from joining them in bitching. But when bitchy women start bitching at each other, and then bitching together in a kind of bitches coven, it does make a difference. It makes you realize you're not alone, and you do have the right to feel ticked off about whatever's twisting your knickers, and hey, now that you mention it, my panties are in a bunch too, and why the fuck don't clothing manufacturers make underwear that doesn't ride up your crack? It's not that my ass is uniquely wedgie-prone! It's that bikini panties suck! Fuck this shit, we want briefs, and damn the idiots who try to tell us that "granny panties" are unflattering--like pulling your bikinis out of your ass is becoming, give me a break. And some of us want boy-type briefs, darn you, and I don't care if you think that's dykish: I am a dyke, or at least some of my best friends are. Or maybe we actually do think thongs are comfortable and don't care if you think they're slutty, or look cheap if they ride over our waistband, or reveal our cellulite-pocked ass cheeks.

Okay, I went kind of off-topic there. But you get the point. If being a bitch means being isolated and shoved to the margins, then that fucking sucks, and most reasonabe people will try not to end up there. But then again, if enough reasonable women reason out that it kind of sucks to wear stupid underwear, or hear that women are innately untalented at math and science, or be told that they don't exist when we are standing right here, damnit, and the lot of us start bitching about whatever it is, then we get used to hearing ourselves complain and it sounds a lot less unreasonable to do so. And the cacophany of bitchiness gets so loud that everyone else finally hears it and realizes that they need to move the hell over to where we are and include us in their conversations, and join our conversations, bring us into the party, or else the party is effectively over. Man.