What I want for Christmas, dammit

Inspired by a thread about crappy gifts people have received, over at Unfogged, here is a fantasy list.

1. Someone to come to my house and sort through shit and get rid of all the stuff that's half-broken, no longer fits, or doesn't ever get used. Preferably by donating it all to people who will use it, or by recycling it, but I won't ask any questions if you just get it out of my life.

2. Someone to follow up that task by tidily storing the crap that we do sort of need to keep but don't need very often (e.g., holiday decorations, sentimental family stuff).

3. Someone very generous and with good taste to go shopping with me and buy me a decent wardrobe, as most of my nice clothes are now old enough that they look pretty shabby and/or are too dry-clean-only for my present lifestyle. Honestly, this is like a fantasy of mine, but without step 1, at least, its would be almost pointless. I've sort of gotten to the point where I no longer remember what I own or where it is.

4. To replace the two very nice antique chairs that we use every day in the t.v. room with like a nice couch or something, because our using them is causing them to age really quickly. I am afraid--and believe me, the bourgeoisity of this annoys me, but what can you do?--that the chair that belonged to great-grandma and the gorgeous modern rocking chair that I bought for PK's babyhood really both need to be "occasional" use chairs, mostly for looking at. Sigh.

5. Two nice 3 qt-ish saucepans to replace the crappy Revereware Mr. B. won't let me throw away. Also, the 15-year old stand mixer needs replacing. Exciting shit, eh?

6. To actually *want* to quit smoking, b/c I've promised PK I'll quit by my birthday, but I really don't want to.

God, I've become so boring. What kind of stuff do you secretly wish for?

And Now for Something Completely Hilarious

Dig this email I just got:

My name is A. and I am contacting you from DETAILS Magazine in New York to tell you about an article in our latest issue which may be of interest to you and your readers at Bitch Ph.D.. We think that uber-boobs are unattractive and have gotten out of control, so we wrote about it in our latest issue.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!

Details thinks "uber-boobs" are unattractive! I bet all the girls are just falling on their knees thanking god that we've got permission from Details magazine not to get breast implants.

Isn't that white of them? No lady wants to have "out of control" boobs!

I just feel so much better about my feminism now that I know that Details doesn't approve of breast implants. Whew.

The article, if you're bored shitless and don't have anything else to read, is here. I have no idea if it's hilarious or wrath-inducing, because I can't be bothered to read some wanking article from Details about breasts. But hey, if you're so inclined, there's the click.

(P.S. to A. from DETAILS Magazine: actually, we bitches don't care what you think of our bodies. Sorry about that. Go buy yourself something nice and feel better, honey.)

Shapely Prose nails it again

I realize that the last time a poster at this blog linked to Kate Harding's Shapely Prose, some commenters here acted like assholes, but that's not going to prevent me from doing it again, because Kate Harding is fucking brilliant and a great writer. Her piece, The Fantasy of Being Thin, is an absolute must-read for anyone who's well, a woman in this country. The Fantasy of Being Thin is not just for fatties like me, nope, it seems to be a mainstay of pretty much every woman I've ever met who has body image issues, which is to say, most of them.

If any of you act like assholes, I will come find you and hunt you down.

And I'd like to say here what I said there, because it's something I'd like to say aloud, not just way at the bottom of a thread of sympathetic people. This post and the comments are phenomenal. What’s really impressive is people managing to tease out where they are in terms of [fat acceptance] and still dreaming about weight loss, self-hatred, etc.

Myself, I’m really not sure. There’s so much of a flurry of thoughts about fat that’s been going on since I was a pre-teen that I can’t even make heads or tails of it. I do know that I’ve never really tried to diet, although I think about it pretty regularly. I’ve never had deliberate weight loss of more than about 10 pounds (I did lose 20 pounds over six months without trying when I moved to Chicago just because of the additional walking), and I’ve steadily gained about 80 pounds in the eight years since I graduated high school.

I don’t think I’ve accepted my size. I still wish that I were back at my overweight-but-much-less-so high school size. But I don’t really think about “when I’m thin I’ll do [X].” I used to think “when I’m thin I’ll be able to land an awesome guy” (as opposed to attractive, depressed, apathetic self-hating types), but then I started dating someone fucking fantastic and I don’t think that anymore.

I dream about what it would be like to be strong and fit, and then remind myself that I can be those things and be fat; they’re not mutually exclusive.

Mostly, I’m in denial. I don’t have a good sense of what my body looks like; my image is stuck at about 50 lbs ago. When I see full-body pictures of myself, I’m shocked, and then I look away. I convince myself that I look “curvy” instead of “OMG FAT LADY” which is how I’m sure most people see me.

When I was in 8th grade, and probably weighed around 150 (although I really have no idea), I was cast as the lead in the junior high musical. I was easily the best in the school, so I was an obvious choice, but after the casting, the director had the choreographer talk to me about losing weight for the role. For a fucking school motherfucking play. She and I were going to engage in some kind of “program.” I said ok, and went home and cried and cried. My dad thought it sounded like a great idea. It never materialized, probably because someone with a brain told the director “WHAT ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY,” but still.

I tell all kinds of stories about why I didn’t end up pursuing theatre after my first semester in college, but a lot of it is lies. When I got to college, and saw how beautiful and thin all the girls were that were in all the roles, I knew it was never going to work for me. I was the best there was in junior high and high school, but with all these other beautiful [thin] girls who could really, really sing, too, AND were passable at acting and dance, I was never even going to register as a blip on the radar screen.

When I was in law school, there was an annual “follies” where they did little skits and sang and danced. The first year, I was worried about school, so I didn’t audition. Then when I saw the production, I felt like shit. All the women were thin, and wearing tight/skimpy clothes. And dancing. The second year, I found another reason not to audition. And the third year, I auditioned, and the very next day retracted my audition and asked them not to cast me. Just knowing that I would get cast in some “character” role because of how I looked, even though I was one of like three people in the school who could sing worth a damn, was too much to bear.

I’ve just realized it. Being fat was a major reason I didn’t pursue a career as a performer. It brings tears to my eyes now. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be an actress and singer, and I just totally abandoned the dream when I was 18 without even waiting around to get rejected, just assuming that I would. Of course, I don’t think I would want that profession now; I’m a lawyer and the work I do is Really Fucking Important.

But I couldn’t stand the thought of getting rejected and knowing/thinking it was because of the way I looked. Maybe it was a self-protective move, but now I have this mega-talent that’s just sitting there, doing nothing at all.

And it hurts.

Book Review: The Terror Dream

I have a confession which will please some and dismay others.

When I first read reviews of Susan Faludi's The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America, I thought, "oh dear. 9/11 is a feminist issue? That's taking it too far."

Reader, I was wrong.

What's at stake in this book isn't the argument, as the reviews I read seemed to be saying, that 9/11 in and of itself was a feminist issue. That's not what Faludi's saying. She takes pains in her introduction to point out that she's looking, not at the event itself: "This is not a book about what September 11 'did" to women or men." What she's examining are our *reactions* to it, specifically the way "We were . . . enlisted in a symbolic war at home." Faludi argues--and it's a provocative argument, even to this feminist--that that symbolic war was largely (if not exclusively) about an American myth of invincibility that is, and has always been, deeply gendered.

Taken straight, that argument seems both insufficient (oh, come on--gender matters, but it's not at the center of *American* identity any more than any other nation's!) and obvious (well duh, of *course* American invincibility is all about cowboys and frontiersmen). What's great about this book is the way it marshals a lot of specific, thought-provoking evidence in support of that argument. In the end, I think the project Faludi's aiming at is, by definition, too huge for a single book to contain, but she does a lot to make open-minded, and even reluctant, readers start thinking, hard.

The Terror Dream does three things. First, it collects a fair bit of evidence that post-9/11 popular discourse *about* 9/11 (and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) was weirdly focused on gender. From the director of "Idaho Chooses Life," who said, bizarrely, that

a 30-second television advertisement that contends that while some 4,000 people died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center (a picture of the smoking towers flashes on the screen) at least that many deaths, and maybe more, occur every day in the United States from abortions [was] an effort ''to take advantage of the 9-11 events to press our case for sparing the lives of babies.''

(cited on page 23) to Sarah Wildman's intellectually bankrupt implication, in The New Republic, that feminists were ignorant of (or silent about) the oppression of women in some Islamic countries (page 42), Faludi collects a number of completely wacko statements linking 9/11 to feminism--not by feminists, but by anti-feminists. The ludicrous argument that 9/11 was a feminist issue isn't ours; it's theirs.

Faludi goes on to detail a number of really heart-rending, infuriating, and frankly amazing examples of how this ridiculous meme distorted the news, and our reactions to the event. There's an upsetting chapter about how all the fuss over the "heroes" of 9/11, the NYFD, were in fact some of the Twin Towers' most pitiable victims:

about three times more firefighters than office workers died on the floors below the impact of the planes. . . . James Murphy put it this way in his report: "We were just victims too. Basically the only difference between us and the [other] victims is we had flashlights." (p. 66)

Even worse was the radio failure that kept rescue workers inside the second tower from communicating rescue plans, knowing the first tower had collapsed or hearing the fire chief's order to evacuate before the second tower went down--a problem that had been known to the city since the 1993 bombing of the WTC and that was repressed, after 9/11, for three and a half years by Giuliani's office even in the face of protests by the family members of dead rescue workers. (God I hope the Dems will hammer on this in the general election if Giuliani is the Republican candidate.) There's a chapter about the focus on 9/11 widows that talks about how widowers were marginalized, apolitical women or those supportive of the War on Terror were trotted out in front of the media, and the Jersey Girls--a group of stay-home moms led by a former Republican who, after her and their husbands died in 9/11, became vocal critics of the Bush administration's failures leading up to and after 9/11 and helped form the 9/11 Commission--were praised by Congress but dismissed by the Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh, and (of course) the assholes on Free Republic and other conservitive jackoff sites. By this point of the book, though, those assholes don't seem so marginal any more; they're merely saying, in less decorous language, the same things that Faludi's been documenting from more mainstream sources for over 100 pages.

That said, the chapter on widows is the weakest, because Faludi seems to tiptoe around the story of Lisa Beamer, the widow of one Todd Beamer, who was broadly considered the hero who had led the passenger rebellion on Flight 93. In an earlier chapter, Faludi points out the fact that no one really knows what happened on that flight, since there were no survivors, and reminds us of the way that the male passengers on that flight were lionized as heroes while little attention was paid, for example, to the fact that mothers and wives encouraged the men to attack and that apparently two flight attendants boiled hot water they intended to use to scald the hijackers. (Faludi also mentions, in passing, that one of the attendants, CeeCee Lyles, was "a former police officer trained in hand-to-hand combat", something I don't remember having heard about before reading this book.) Because she's doing cultural criticism rather than conventional history, Faludi isn't making an argument one way or the other about Lisa Beamer's actions or intent--but the question kind of hangs in the air. What Faludi thinks of Beamer shouldn't matter, but the argument comes across, at this point, as somewhat equivocal because she doesn't tell us.

In a way, though, that problem highlights the book's strength; one of the reasons we wonder is because we're aware throughout of Faludi's presence as a woman and a feminist, and so we want to judge the merits of her argument by assessing her character in terms of whether she's sympathetic (or not) to the real women she talks about. In other words, she's right: we *are* preoccupied with gender. The chapters about Jessica Lynch and the last election's "Security Moms" reminded me, anyway, of how easily I bought into gender norms when it came to those two stories. I thought the Security Moms were nuts, but it never occurred to me that they didn't exist. Faludi shows that the argument that married women voters were preoccupied with the war on terror was bullshit. The Lynch story I'm more familiar with, so that in that chapter I could see most clearly the way that Faludi's analysis was working: she points out, again, the ways that Jessica Lynch was first lionized as a hero, then cast as a damsel in distress (complete with staged rescue), and how the rumors that Lynch had been (or could have been!) raped worked to reinforce the "dark threatening male vs. fair endangered woman" stereotype. Faludi even points out the way that mainstream press neglect of Lori Piestawa (who was, in Lynch's words, "the real hero") worked in recasting Lynch as the damsel who needed to be saved by men.

(I can't resist throwing in a tidbit about Lynch's and Piestawa's relationship--in Janauary of this year,

Lynch gave birth to a baby girl. She named her Dakota Ann, in honor of the Indian woman [Lori PIestawa] she regarded as her true protector and comrade. "Ann" was Lori Piestawa's middle name, and "Dakota" is Sioux for friend or ally. (p. 188)

Piestawa is Hopi, not Sioux, so the anecdote doesn't entirely counterbalance the racism of the way Lynch's story was told, but it's a really touching story on a more personal level.)

The last third of the book, I thought, should have come first, evidence-wise; but undoubtedly reorganizing the book to postpone the current events angle would have severely affected readership and sales. That said, make sure and read the last three chapters, which give a good thumbnail sketch of early American Indian captivity narratives, Indian wars and witch trials, pioneer stories and the glorification of Daniel Boone, all by way of demonstrating that the "(white) male protector" aspect of American security (and its correlates, the damsel in distress and the threatening Indian/black rapist) is a well-established trope in American mythology. To Americanists, historians, and much of the English department, this is old news; if I'd thought about it when I first heard of Faludi's book, I would probably have been less skeptical. But presumably the general audience to whom she's really writing aren't familiar with this stuff, and beginning with it might have made the founding claim that gender matters to "America" easier for most readers to swallow. In a sense, The Terror Dream has dessert first, by talking about contemporary culture while postponing the meat-and-potatoes argument about history. Then again, Americans might be said, like children, to be impatient and fond of sweets. In any case, Faludi's book does a pretty good job of demonstrating that we're not entirely past the Oedipal stage.

Two Things

1. I think I am in love. Another academic mama who writes a lot about gender and childrearing! Be still, my heart.

2. I have always sucked at meditation. But the following paragraph finally helped me "get" it, and it's a fabulous, fabulous exercise. I found it on the back page of The Sun, which is a magazine that skews quite a bit crunchier than I usually do, but in ways that I always find really thought-provoking. Try it.

As soon as you finish reading this paragraph,

Stop reading for a moment, and imagine that you are going to die in one minute. The last things you are going to experience are reading these [words], sitting in this room, thinking and feeling what you are thinking and feeling right now. This is the end of your life. . . . You have no time to write a note or make a phone call. All you can do is experience what is, right now. This is a very simple exercise, but it is quite profound. It brings you into presence very quickly. You stop fighting, you stop needing, you stop being concerned with physical comfort, you stop wanting, you stop achieving, and you stop maintaining. Enlightenment, attainment, realization all become meaningless. You are just present.

- Ken McLeod

Paris Bleg

O you traveled and worldly denizens of the Bitchosphere, would you like to give me some advice? I (and my boyfriend) am planning a trip to Paris round about next March. I've been to a lot of places in Europe, and even France, but I've been saving Paris. You see, I took French classes for oh, like, twelve years, and am kind of a Francophile generally . Articles like this one just reconfirm my belief that France is my spiritual home. They're aggressively secular! And they eat awesome food and drink a shit ton of wine! And and and!

Anyway, my current dilemma is accomodations. We're planning on going for about a week to ten days. My objective is to spend very little, while not sharing a room with other people. Hostelling is great when you're alone or with friends, but sometimes you need some privacy, know what I'm sayin'? So I'm thinking either a) cheapass hotel, b) private room in a hostel, c) rent a small studio.

Suggestions, advice, pornographic descriptions of crepes recommended.

Post-Family Holiday Consequences

After crawling into my bed this morning, Pseudonymous Kid asked me,

"Mama, are you still angry?"

"Huh?"

"Well," he explains, pressing his index finger between my eyes, "if you're not angry, what do you have that crease right there?"

He's redeemed himself, though, by reading the first thirty pages of Gulliver's Travels this morning, all by himself.

Tis the Season

Now that travel season is in full force, this news from Salon's Broadsheet is especially relevant.

the Jewish Funds for Justice, the Progressive Jewish Alliance, and the Jewish Labor Committee [has] collaborated to launch the Travel Justly campaign. The effort is designed to call attention to -- and perhaps even improve -- the relatively crappy working conditions of many hotel housekeepers. Ninety percent of these workers are women.

You can support their campaign by reading and agreeing to a pledge that you will:

- avoid hotels where workers are on strike;

- support union hotels (the site, unfortunately, requires you to enter the name of a specific hotel in a specific town; it would be a lot nicer if you could just search by city, assuming a full list would be too long to effectively navigate).

- TIP YOUR MAID $2-$5/day*

- be considerate by putting trash in trash cans, leaving dirty towels on the counter or racks so the housekeeper doesn't have to bend over to pick them up; and stripping your own bedsheets;

- leave complimentary comment cards if you are happy with your maid service;

- keep a copy of the pledge in your suicase to remind you of it when you travel.

After you sign the pledge, you can buy a luggage tag to remind you of the pledge, plus make your luggage identifiable. 75% of the cost of the tag is tax-deductible. And maybe, if you're lucky, occasionally give you an opportunity to talk to other travelers about the campaign.


*I always try to tip $1-2, but I often forget, and apparently I've been being a cheapskate. I'll do better in the future. I find a lot of people don't know that you should tip the maid, and I'll always remember the woman who cried and hugged Mr. B. because, after cleaning the rooms of Mr. B.'s entire class of Air Force Weapons School guys for an entire summer, he was apparently one of the very few people who tipped her--$100. For three months of maid service.

Transgender Remembrance Day

Today is (was, for those of you on the east coast) Transgender Remembrance Day, which began in 1999 as a candlelight vigil on the date of Rita Hester's murder.

Other people to remember.

Still more.

Rethinking Adoption: Birth Mothers are People, Too

I've just finished reading a book called The Girls Who Went Away, which is about "the hidden history of women who surrendered children for adoption in the decades before Roe v. Wade."

Adoption's an issue I'm interested in for a lot of reasons. I know people who were themselves adopted, and women who placed children for adoption. And I'm well aware of the argument that anti-abortion people often make that women with unwanted pregnancies should "just" place their children for adoption--an argument that, after watching a couple of people go through that process, I'm inclined to think is one of those offhand remarks that people make without actually thinking about what they're saying.

For instance, listen to what "Nancy," whose story is one of those told in the book, has to say:

It's hard to convince others about the depth of it. You know, a few years after I was married I became pregnant and had an abortion. It was not a wonderful experience, but every time I hear stories or articles or essays about the recurring trauma of abortion, I want to say, "You don't have a clue" I've experienced both and I'd have an abortion any day of the week before I would ever have another adoption--or lose a kid in the woods, which is basically what it is. You know your child is out there somewhere, you just don't know where. It's bad enough as a mother to know he might need you, but to complicate that they make a law that says even if he does need you we're not going to tell him where you are. [My emphasis.]

Or "Karen":

The only way to heal from this is to be accepted by your child and for the public to know the truth of what's really happened. And understand it's the truth. Instead of always pushing adoption as this loving, wonderful, rescuing thing. Yes, that may be the case for people who adopt. It is not the case for us. You never are whole. Never. It's a hugely damaging thing. It's an enormously injuring, painful, fracturing amputation of families. . . .

We were not criminals. We're mothers. The difference was I was not an authenticated mother. I was an illegal mother. I was a denied mother. And I had to come home and live my life after being robbed of my child. It's as if I was an unwilling accomplice to the kidnapping of my own child. So you have to live with the trauma of losing your child and then you have to live with the trauma of knowing you didn't stop it. How do you do that? [Emphasis in original.]

Moreover, the years between 1950 and 1980, which were the high point of formal adoptions of white babies in the U.S., were atypical in ways that discussion around adoption [and abortion] usually fails to acknowledge. In 1950, 66 percent of Americans were married; in 1960 it was 68 percent. But

in 1980 the percentage of the population that was married was the same as in 1900: 54 percent. In the U.S. Census for 2000, the percentage was also 54 percent.

Also,

the median age at first marriage in the 1980s was the same as in 1890, roughly age 22 for women and 26 for men. However . . . [in] 1950, almost 60 percent of women between 18 and 24 years of age were married.

The point here is that

Even though marriage and child-rearing norms of the time [are] seen as characteristic of traditional American family life, in fact they were abnormal in comparison with marriage and childbearing patterns throughout the twentieth century.

And part of that abnormality was a serious punishment of [middle-class, particularly white] young women who got pregnant out of wedlock. Homes for unwed mothers, which had previously focused on helping young women find stable jobs and social support to keep and raise their children, started becoming baby factories where young women were pressured into giving their children up to married couples who "needed" a child to fulfill the new nuclear family "norm", and told that they were unfit mothers because, being unmarried, they *didn't* fit this model. There was a very, very strong--and abnormal--image of the "proper" family, one that caused a lot of grief to women who didn't conform.

This kind of thing is implicit in any argument about what constitutes a "good" mother, whether or not people "should" have children if they're "too" poor/young/single, and in the flip side "pro-family" pressure that everyone "should" have children and "should" behave in particular, narrowly-defined ways once they do.

And there's a lot in this book to demonstrate the results of this kind of thinking--panicked parents who beat or ostracized their daughters for becoming pregnant, parents who colluded with adoption agencies to coerce women into signing blank papers, girls who were talked into placing children for adoption so they could "get on with their lives" only to find that the emotional trauma of the adoption made doing so impossible, women who lost jobs when their adoptions were found out, women who went to their graves never telling their siblings, parents, husbands, or children about having once placed a baby for adoption.

Crazy, crazy shit. An absolute must-read if you're adopted, if you're thinking of adopting, or if you know someone who is having to think about the options for an unwanted pregnancy. And highly recommended, really, for everyone.

On The Habits of Ladies

Last night, I went to a gathering with a bunch of people I didn't know. I actually had quite a good time; there was food, there was football, and there were hilarious stories. But there was something happening that bothered me. A lot.

The friends that I've had for years know that I simply won't tolerate the self-hating, diet-obsessing, oh-I-couldn't-possibly-eat-that mode of interacting with food that is so common among women. I think we would all feel a lot better if we didn't reinforce each other's food neuroses, and I tell them so. So it's odd to be around women that I don't know very well, and experience the phenomenon all over again.

The four women there last night must have spent at least ten minutes being like "omg, those cookies look so bad for you, holy shit but they look tasty," and the like. After very much public hemming and hawing and no-way-am-I-going-to-lose-weight-now, each, of course, had a cookie. These are fucking cookies, people, not slabs of pig fat sauteed in butter. No man there seemed to display any concern about what he was eating and whether it was too much; they all just ate.

This shit drives me batty. I fail to understand the purpose of all the "oh-I-couldn't-eat-that," especially when, most of the time, the person just eats the damn thing anyway. I firmly believe that the main point is to make it known that even though you are going to eat something, you feel Very Very Bad about the fac that you don't eat only rice cakes and celery all day long, because you are a Fat Fat Fatty who needs to go on a diet. You know, even when you aren't.

I refuse to engage in this kind of talk, mostly because it's hugely unnatural for me and because I know exactly what's going on and hate it, and it makes me feel really really bad.

You know what? Actually fat people never do that shit, because they don't want to draw attention to what they're eating or not eating. And the effect of the non-fat people going "oh I am so bad for spreading butter on my toast" is pretty much damaging to the person saying it, and everyone who has to hear that shit day in, day out.

So why not try this for a day? If you're going to eat something, eat it. If you're not, don't. Beating yourself up about food, privately and publicly, much as you think might help you stay thin out of guilt, doesn't actually work.

Pseudonymous Kid is self-aware

Mama, close the door! You're colding me!

Colding?!? What kind of a word is that, goofball?

It's one of those little-kid words. Duh.






In other news, why does my blog suddenly no longer seem to have an RSS feed? Grr.

Neighborhood

Overheard on the street, outside my office, a white woman, 50s or s, loudly, to no one in particular:

"It's hard out here for a pimp!"

(pause)

"It's hard out here for a pimp, when the crack man take over."

New Policy re: Terms of Endearment

On a fairly regular basis, I have men of various sorts think it fit to call me "baby," "honey," "sweetie," "sweetheart," and other similar terms. I find "sweetheart" to be probably the worst, as it has an associated extra dollop of patronizing on it. See, e.g. "Trust me, sweetheart." Say it in your head. Doesn't it just sound like a patronizing, self-satisfied motherfucker? Yes, it does.

Last week, I was at a bar where the bartender must have used five of these terms in under the space of a minute. Going over to my group of friends, who were like "wtf?" we were discussing possibly humorous response strategies. I suggested that when responding to the users of such terms, we should use the most over-the-top cutesy-name we can think of in response.

I have now resolved that, whenever anyone I don't know calls me "sweetheart" or "baby," to let them know that I hope they "have a good one, Sugartits."

What do you call the first major party woman candidate for president, the opposition party front runner, and the probable next POTUS?

If you're a McCain supporter, apparently you call her the bitch. Watch the video.

(Which leads a fellow supporter to make a "joke" about his ex-wife.)

To his credit, McCain looks acutely uncomfortable and even disapproving. Guess it must suck to realize that your supporters think assholishness is funny.

Oh, and preemptive response to "but you call *yourself* a bitch!!!" Yeah, well, I call myself a lot of things that aren't appropriate for people who don't know me to call me. And I'm not running for president, either.

History, holding on, and giving up

Three days ago, I raised my right hand and said, "I, [name], do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the State of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge my duties to the best of my ability."

I don't really know when I decided I wanted to be a lawyer. It's not one of those stories that involves me dreaming about courtrooms when I was seven, or following in a parent's footsteps. My father is a graphic artist, painter and sculptor who I think always hoped, or at least dreamed, that one of his children might follow him into the arts. It looked as though I may, for a time; in high school I devoted all my time to theater and choir, writing poetry, playing piano, singing, writing songs. My mother was a school teacher, who taught English and French and History to junior high students. She too, was a musician, a singer and pianist and guitarist and poet.

These people raised me with a deep appreciation for art and music. Both sustain me and inspire and move me. But during my first year of college, I found that theater seemed hollow. I wanted something more stimulating, something harder, something where pure blunt intellectual force and determination were going to bring me to success. I changed my major to Mathematics, and then a semester later, added English to it. I wanted to be a math teacher for a while, and then a math professor, but it lost its luster when I got rejected from a bunch of summer research programs.

During my junior year, I attended a pro-choice activists’ workshop in Austin, Texas. A representative from Jane’s Due Process, an organization that works with a team of attorneys to help minors in Texas get judicial bypasses of the parental notification law for abortions, was there and spoke briefly to us. I remember my heart jumping almost immediately. I thought, “I want to be one of those guys! I want to do something like THAT!” I wanted real power to help actual people.

But becoming a lawyer seemed like something foreign to me. I didn't know any lawyers growing up; I'm not related to any, either. No one I knew in college was planning on applying to law school. My family and especially my father seemed to think it quite weird, and an odd choice of profession for me. My college boyfriend was unsupportive, and everyone kept telling me "but how will you ever afford it?"

It was a challenge from the very beginning. I didn't have any money to pay for application fees. I didn't have money to take an LSAT course or even buy LSAT books. I didn't have a support system and I couldn't go visit any law schools. Three weeks before the LSAT, I broke up with the guy I'd been dating for four years, and found myself totally alone in a 350-sq-ft apartment with almost no friends. What else was there to do, but study? It paid off--I did well. But then came the frustration of trying to get schools to waive my application fee, applying, trying to figure out what my chances were. When I started getting accepted to schools and picked the one I liked best, they required a $500 deposit that I didn't have. I begged, and they waived it. I moved into a house with 4 other girls to save money.

When I moved, I was totally broke. All I had were some clothes and a futon I slept on for a year that gave me back problems. Of course, I didn't have money to pay for school, and I didn't qualify for the private loans that everyone else got to cover tuition and living expenses. I didn't have a cosigner. But I wanted to attend. I showed up to class, hoping that despite my non-payment the school would find a way to let me stay, and they did. I cried so many days that first semester because I had no money and I thought I was going to have to drop out.

When I graduated, everyone I knew enrolled in a bar-study course that cost $3000. I didn't have the money to pay for it and couldn't get a loan. Didn't have a cosigner. I cried and cried, and then I decided to toughen up. I cut off my internet and cable, quit the gym, and tried to find a job. I failed. I ate the cheapest food I could find, and I bought someone's bar study materials off Craigslist. I studied hard, relying heavily on my friends who were in the course. I made it through the whole summer on the charity of others and a few hundred dollars I had saved. I didn't pay my rent for a month.

I passed the bar. I've been complaining about how hard it was, but I should say that I've been incredibly lucky. I have extremely supportive friends who gave me money, rides, quizzed me, and offered advice. My boyfriend bought me countless meals and delivered umpteen pep talks. I am blessed with a mind that made it relatively easy for me to understand large amounts of material. But almost every day I wanted to break down and cry. I'd made it so far, and still, I had to struggle so hard to stay afloat.

And now I'm here. At the ceremony, tears streamed down my face for most of it. One justice of the Illinois supreme court mentioned that in the morning, all around the country, in criminal courts attorneys are presenting and defending against motions to suppress evidence, trying to get the 4th and 5th amendments right. I had to choke back a sob, because getting it right is what I want to try and do. I believe in due process. The notion of due process is what limits the power of our government to take away our liberties or our property. We consent to being governed because we need protection, but we reserve a certain power, to maintain autonomy unless the powerful go through a long and arduous process where we finally decide they may deprive us of it.

So I want to help people get this process that is their due. I want to advocate for them, I want to help solve their problems. No one comes to a lawyer on their best day, they come on their worst day. People cry in my office, they whisper because they are ashamed of their problems, of what they've done, of what they have to endure. And I assure them that if there is a way I can help, I will.

Our lives are not our own; they belong to the people who desperately need us.

::Trumpet Flourish::

Announcing a new feminist phrase for the lexicon.

Instead of "balls," as in "have you got the balls for that?", etc.--or "ovaries," which come on, let's all admit it: so reductive, and definitely has that "trying too hard" vibe, admit it.

From here on out, the phrase is "do you have the skirt for that?" Variations include, but are not limited to, "she's really got the skirt for that," "that really takes the right kind of skirt," "you haven't got the skirt for that," etc.

Extra bonus points for being a man who uses this phrase. Extra super brilliant bonus points for my brilliant and hilarious boyfriend, who realized that my saying "well, I have the skirt for it" was appropriatable for these purposes, and declared his intention to steal the phrase and make it his own.

a modest proposal

Media Matters - MSNBC's Carlson suggested women may be "so sensible, they don't want to get involved in something as stupid as politics"

You know, maybe black people shouldn't vote, either.

I mean, we are under stress. Lynching and blackface is making a comeback, we all end up in prison, AIDS and hip hop is killing us - it's no wonder we all die before we get old! Clearly, we have some major issues to address before we can even start to think about voting. We're struggling for survival, people! What is voting compared to basic human survival??

And maybe other brown people should forget about voting, too. They have other things to deal with - like avoiding deportation, Gitmo and waterboarding. Why do they want to vote? They have serious legal issues to deal with.

And the gays - the gays should definitely look the other way on Election Day. Their fight for civil rights is so important they shouldn't even bother voting. They need to keep their eyes on the prize, certainly not on the White House.

You know who else shouldn't vote? Poor people. Poor people (sorta like black people) are too busy trying to find food. And shelter. And a job. Voting is trivial.

In fact, voting is so trivial it should be reserved for smug, white, privileged, heterosexual men.

(fucking asshat.)

[h/t feministing]

I told you vote, dammit

Go! Vote for the bitches!! Beat those Red State/Pajamas Media Nazis!

Then when you're done, go visit JP, who has been known to guest blog here on occasion. Now he's living in China, and wants us all to contribute to his annual Haiku festival. I recommend a poem about what the fuck is a Filipino doing running a Haiku festival in China. Here's my entry.

Filipino man
Writing Haiku in China:
They all look alike

Men are more visual! They have better eyesight!

Welcome to today's entry in "but wait, gender stereotypes totally don't make sense." I was reading Figleaf's Real Adult Sex, which is a great (though occasionally NSFW behind the cuts) blog if you haven't read it. There are a lot of excellent posts on the main page right now, but I was particularly struck by the comments to this post. This:

[I]t's nuts to say women aren't "as visual," though really what they mean is that women are supposed to leave ogling naked bodies up to men.

is fucking dead on. I haven't much thought about the claim that women aren't as visual as men, usually made in defense of 1) the fact that our culture is obsessed with female attractiveness, or 2) pornography.

But it's totally insane! What the hell does that even mean? If women aren't as visual, why are they, by the same cultural narratives, more concerned with fashion, interior decorating, sunsets, and pretty flowers? Why does being an artist make you a girly-man?

Perhaps what "women aren't as visual" really means is that "women aren't as easily aroused by visual stimulation designed to arouse." However, we have a problem. Stimuli designed to arouse (i.e. porn) are usually designed to arouse men. No wonder. Even so, these same stimuli often arouse women anyway.

I call total bullshit. If I saw a bunch of pictures and videos that were designed to appeal precisely to my sensibilities, I'd pay for that shit in a hearbeat (as it is, porn's okay, but mostly not worth shelling out for) (and I mean "it's okay" in that "it's kinda hot," not "it's morally unproblematic," which it isn't). I don't think I'm that much of an anomaly, and yeah, I spent most of the evening lustfully eyeing my boyfriend, who was sporting a very flattering jacket he'd just purchased. With my eyes. You know, visually. I see attractive men and women everywhere I go, and I enjoy looking at them (non-obviously, of course). Like everyone else, I'm intensely visual, and tactile. And sometimes I get turned on by smells. Or sounds, or the thoughts in my brain.

Also the "men are more visual!" line tells untruths about men when it propounds that men are so wedded to visual stimulation as a source of arousal. Find me a straight man who prefers looking at tits on a computer screen to having his cock touched by an Actual Woman and I'll pay you a hundred bucks.

Don't forget!!

Vote, bitches.

all work ain't no play

While going home on the bus last Thursday I realized that my surgery is next week and my Need to Get Laid Clock is ticking and no frolic is in sight.

I'm a lasagna of tension about the upcoming surgery date. The first layer is, of course, the celibacy frustration. Then there's the tiny, hard wire of anxiety when I allow myself to think about the procedure for more than a few minutes. And laid on top of all that is some work stress. If last week made me bleed from my eyes, this next week might just make my head explode. Our legislative agenda and government relations strategy won't write itself and I need to wrap up my desk so it won't fall into chaos by the time I return after the New Year. Letting go of work for this long is hard for me.

Dr. C- asked what I think of work and my place in it; I told her that I am my best self at work. I am intuitive, quick, focused, funny, strong, supportive, and assertive and I hit my targets. In short, it's at the office where I know what the fuck I’m doing. It's outside of work that my footing is less sure. Clearly, there will be plenty of time to think about that while I’m on medical leave.

(Did my parents love their work? Maybe. Before the showdown with his associate pastor, I believe my father loved his work. My mom, well - ok, she hated her coworkers and her job gave her a stroke. My parents might not be good models.)

Sometimes I think that women who love our work almost exist in shadows. Stories about us on television or in print make us out to be angry, dour, dysfunctional, bitter, unnatural, mannish or weird - even if we're running for President. Teachers, doctors, do-gooders and artists get to love their work; after all, they're shaping minds, helping people, and creating shit. If the rest of us talk about our work, no matter our work, our stories are required to be begrudging or sheepish; we work, you know, because we have to. We're only working, you know, to pay for what we really wanna do. If we all won the lotto, we'd stop working in a heartbeat and spend the rest of our time helping people and traveling the world.

I'm not saying that it's a moral imperative to love our jobs. Maybe we have crappy jobs. I just wish I could hear more about women who not only love working but really love what they do. With all these articles over the past five years about 'opting out,' 'off ramping' or 'dropping out', you'd think not a single woman likes her work. Wouldn't it be great to hear about women who are excited about their work, who find their work energizing and thrilling? Wouldn't it be a welcome change to read an article about a woman who baldly says, 'I freaking love what I do. I'm fucking great at it and it makes my nipples tingle.' Or maybe that's just what I want to read.

You know, this post was supposed to be about how pissed I am that I haven't had sex since Labor Day (and probably won't until after January 2008) but it turned out to be about work. Huh.

Shares have gone up 20% on your cock

I've been mulling for a couple of days over this quiz, which asks "Fox News Business Anchor, or Porn Star?" For the record, I did awful on the quiz; I got 8 out of 10 incorrect. It was kind of a painful exercise to take it, though, so maybe I wasn't on top of my game.

But I found it very disquieting. What a bizarre exercise. What does it reveal about our culture? What does it say about me? I came up with a few assumptions involved in the creation and execution of a quiz like this, and intended conclusions the quiz-taker is supposed to come to.

1. Assumption: There is such a thing as a "slutty" face. This is perhaps the most disquieting. If you are supposed to be able to tell by looking at someone's face that that person is a porn star, and thus, a "slut," there must be some porn star face-quality. What is it? Parted lips? Lots of makeup? Being really thin? I'm still surprised that I'm capable of a thought process that involved looked at a woman's face and deciding "yeah, that's a porn star."

Given that "slut", in theory, is a description of promiscuity (which is a flawed notion in the first place), what is it to evaluate slut-dom based on a face? Moreover, on a picture of a face? I'm reminded of how, in middle school, someone wrote that I was a slut on the wall next to the public telephone. I was baffled. How the fuck could I be a slut, when I'd barely as much as kissed a boy? It was clear to me then, and remains so now, that having big breasts was in and of itself enough to deem me a slut. How this makes any sense, I'm still trying to divine, but it seems to still be the case for adults, too.

2. Conclusion: There is something funny/entertaining about mistaking a television anchor for someone who has sex on camera for money. This quiz is clearly intended to be funny, given the jokes/puns throughout. This rests on yet another assumption. If it is funny to mistake A for B, then there is something fundamentally different between A and B. In this case, it's the time-honored virgin/whore dichotomy.

3. Assumption: Porn stars are whores, and television anchors are not-whores, that is, they are virgins, or the more era-appropriate "good girls." This dichotomy does not exist for men; I don't think anyone would be surprised to mistake the face of a male porn star for the face of a male television anchor. I suspect that another part of the entertainment intended in this quiz is the debasement factor. Ha ha, this television anchor looks like a porn star!

4. Conclusion: Porn stars and television anchors actually look alike! This should be a pretty uncontroversial notion, but the fact that it's implicit here means it's supposed to be a surprise. But the point is not to show that porn stars look like normal women, it's that normal, "professional" women look like porn stars. The sluts!

What other assumptions and conclusions do you think underlie this cultural artifact?

(N.B. If any part of your answer contains the words "you're reading too much into it," or any similar sentiment, go away. It's my job and my hobby to analyze things in great, excruciating detail. That's the point.)

Now Better Than Ever

God only knows how this blog manages to be nominated for some blog award or other every year, but rock on! Someone loves me! This year, though, it isn't just "me", it's "us", and we're up for Best of the Top 250 Blogs.

Now, presumably nominations reflect past performance, but I'm sure you'll all agree that with Bitches M.A. and J.D. (aka Ding and LeBlanc) on board, this blog is three times bitchier and better than ever. So obviously WE MUST WIN.

I'll also point out that most of the blogs on that list are (boring) boy blogs, many with actual real money behind them. We're the only feminist blog, and one of the few that's written and maintained by, you know, three regular women writing this stuff in their free time. We've come a long way since the days when this was "just" a personal academic blog and people were asking where are the women bloggers? and "why do women only mommy blog? and "how come women don't blog about politics?" I bet most current readers don't even remember all the bullshit about this kind of stuff. But that's where feminist blogging was just a couple years ago, and now here we are, right up at the top.

So support real, independent, blogging, and help shove the boys' noses in it.

Click on the link and vote, already. You can vote once per day.



Update: My picks for the other categories, where I have picks. In some cases I didn't vote, either because I don't know the blogs on the list, or because the actual Best Mommy Blog wasn't among the candidates. You can find the full list of all categories here.

Best Individual Blogger: Lindsay fuckin' Beyerstein, no question.
Funniest Blog: Jon Swift, who's so funny people take him seriously.
Best Liberal Blog: tough category, and I'm thrilled that women are well represented. I voted for Shakesville, but it was a hard call.
Best Political Coverage: I admit I don't read these, but Foreign Policy Watch looked the most actually useful to me.
Best LGBT Blog: Pam's House Blend
Best Literature Blog: how can you not just love the fact that someone's blogging Pepys' Diary?
Best Diarist: Still Dooce
Best of the top 251-500: Feministe
Best of the top 501-1000: The Poor Man
Best of the top 1001-1750: Obsidian Wings
Best of the top 2501-3500: Creek Running North

"They want to keep vagina all to themselves"

This douche is just begging for a fisking.

It seems like Eve Ensler and Gloria Steinem are unenthused about adding "vajayjay" to the lexicon. And a Manhattan OB/GYN was actually quoted as saying the word is a step backward.

After hours of reflection, and in consultation with my man friends, I think I have it figured out.

Ed: Oh, this is gonna be good.

Pardon my directness, but I refuse to beat around the bush.

HAW HAW

The feminists, it seems, have a proprietary interest in female genitalia.

Those bitches! How dare they try to take vaginas away from me and my man friends!!!

No matter what you call it, many feminists don't want guys attracted to it. If it were up to them, there'd be an image at www.dictionary.com with a sign next to "vagina" reading "No men allowed."

Ed: Yes, yes, feminists hate men. We want men to hate vaginas. Because that's always worked so well for us in the past.

This is why I think they like the status quo.

Feminism is ALL ABOUT perpetuating the status quo.

Vagina is a tough word that refuses to roll easily off the tongue.

Ed: This guy may need speech therapy--"vagina"'s actually a pretty sibilant word.

It has such a sense of taboo that nobody feels totally comfortable talking about it - not even women, but especially men.

And this is all the fault of feminists like Eve Ensler.

So use of the word remains almost exclusively to the feminists.

Who forbid the rest of us to use it by themselves being comfortable with actually saying the names of their own body parts! No wonder everyone is afraid of them. Also, I have lousy syntax, but I bet no one but some humorless feminist will bother to point that out.

I can't quite put my finger on it,

HAW HAW, geddit?

but it seems that vajayjay is different. Unlike the starkly clinical vagina, I see a vajayjay as a happy and inviting place, with a warm and fuzzy connotation. Vajayjay says "hello . . . welcome" and "open for business." "Vagina" screams textbook. "Vajayjay" says Facebook.

And I think vaginas should be "open for business." Vaginas that I can't put my fingers on in scare me. Textbooks, which require thinking, are bad, and women who aren't perpetually "happy and inviting" are "starkly clinical" castrating bitches.

In short, "vajayjay" has got us thinking outside of the box,

HAW HAW I slay me!

which makes the feminists nervous.

Because they want us to all be thinking inside the box constantly. Feminism is all about obsessing about vaginas and not challenging existing paradigms. Also, feminists do things like point out the difference between vaginas and vulvas, clinical pedants that they are.

They want to keep "vagina" all to themselves.

By using the word, they forbid everyone else to do it because no one wants to be like a feminist or take orders from a woman. Also, how dare they think that women should keep vagina to themselves? Dykes.

That is why they are vajayjay naysayers. (I recognize, of course, that linguists may disagree.)

I'm talking out of my ass and I know it, but that's okay, because my ass is not a vagina, and any excuse to indulge in misogynist humor for feminist-bashing is awesome.

Years ago (when I was much younger than I am today),

I'm a middle-aged man now, so you should listen to me, because I am the voice of authority.

I had lunch in a men's club (of course),

I bet those humorless feminists will be offended by this, which only demonstrates how unwelcoming their vaginas are to men.

where I made the acquaintance of an older, distinguished gent.

The authority of generations past. Really, he was kind of like god.

We were randomly seated next to one another. I'd bet two generations separated me from my dining companion.

But we both had penises, so of course we had a lot in common. Like our right to open, welcoming vaginas.

As the hour progressed and we warmed to one another,

In a totatlly non-gay way,

I asked him what he did for a living. With a sagelike glint in his eye, he said to me: "Son, I spend my daytime doing what you'll spend your lifetime trying to accomplish."

You probably figured out that he was an OB/GYN. Some things don't get lost in translation.

HAW HAW HAW! That'll show those feminists! When their doctors go hang out in men's clubs after work, they brag about how fingering their patients gets them off, and there's nothing women can do about it! Ah, those were the days.

I can't help it: Go, John Edwards

"If you're looking for heroes, don't look to me. Don't look to Elizabeth. We have support. We have healthcare."

Amen. The woman pouring coffee in the diner, and the mom kissing her son goodbye, really get to me. You're goddamn right that the moms working minimum-wage jobs and running their asses off trying to make sure their kids get to school and doing their damndest to insulate those kids from the worries of real life are heroic.

How can you not vote for someone who gets that?

Baby, you sexy: Equal Opportunity Edition

Lest anyone claim (and lo, they already have) that I am some kind of man-hating bitch who is just trying to rob all men of their god-given right to let women know they want to sex them, I bring to you tales of this morning's adventures.

I was down the block getting my standard breakfast to go from the greasy-spoon-cum-derelict-hangout, when a person who appeared to be a woman (although displaying several male-like characteristics), got very, very close to me. Like, as close as possible without actually touching. Thisclose. I was standing in front of the cash register, attempting to order, though I quickly got quite flustered (and I don't fluster easily).

"Hey baby, you here with your boyfriend?"
"No."
"I'll be your boyfriend."
"I'll have uh, an english muffin with egg and cheese..."
"I said, I'll be your boyfriend."
"And two coffees, one medium, no, both medium, uh, one black and the other cream..."
"That's like you and me baby, black and cream."
"Excuse me?"
"I said, I'll be your boyfriend."
"No."
"Why not?"
"I already have a boyfriend."
Cashier: "English muffin with what?"
"She said, English muffin with egg and cheese. Now why are you getting two coffees?"
"One's for my friend."
"Your boyfriend?
"No, my friend."
"Well, why can't I be your boyfriend then?"
"Look, I said no. I'm not interested."
Cashier: "Do you want some sugar in the bag?"
"No, that's okay."
"You're really pretty though. We could have a booty call on the side."
"No, thanks."
"What do you mean no? You thought I was talking about sex, didn't you? No, I mean, going to shows, movies, whatever, and then see what happens."
(Silence)
"Where are you from? I mean, what's your nationality? Italian?"
"No."
"Hispanic?"
"No."
"Well, where then?"
"I'm arab."
"Ohhhh. Well, that's why you're so sexy." (Exeunt)

What the fuck? Goddamnit, it's fucking 9 motherfucking 30 in the morning, I am just trying to get some coffee for me and my coworker, leave me alone! This was one of the pushiest hittings-on I've ever had by someone who wasn't obviously drunk. And I dare say, it was incredibly uncomfortable. I've been thinking about how so much of the world we live in is governed by gender roles and automatic behavior, by code. I didn't know how to react. For some reason that I couldn't identify, I didn't feel that I could be flat-out rude. Like, tell her to fuck off. Why is that? Is it because of this "politeness" code that we're inured with? A code that I've managed to turn off when it comes to men yelling at me in the street, but not with respect to anyone else?

It's causing all kinds of cognitive dissonance in my mind about my be-rude-to-harrassers policy. This policy is not really compatible with living in the world much of the time. Fisrt, there was today, where I just couldn't muster rudeness because of this ingrained politeness code (plus, I was indoors, which doesn't help). Just a couple days ago, I was out with a woman I don't know that well (although really like) and some dudes (teenagers--probably 16 or 17) yelled at us out of a car, and I yelled back. They stopped and tried to engage in some kind of colloquy about how they meant "you sexy" in a nice way, hello! My companion got quite upset with me for talking to them, saying it was best to ignore people for safety reasons. I felt very, very bad about making her uncomfortable.

What do you people think? My policy makes me feel better a lot of the time, makes me feel powerful and unafraid, but it can also make things seem awfully complicated.