Your Place in Hell

I don't believe in hell, actually. But Bill Donohue makes me wish so badly for it. See his recent full-page ad in the NYT claiming that what the church is dealing with always has been, and continues to be, not a pedophilia crisis but a "homosexual crisis." Note that this ad takes as its primary purpose the attacking of the NYT as anti-Catholic.

What we have here, in other words, is a failure to communicate,

My god, how lucky we are that someone is around to stick up for the poor disempowered Catholic church.

Sometimes I ask my students in 100 level classes to discuss the extent to which we are living in a patriarchy. I do the thing where I say, 'if an alien came to the planet and look around, would it conclude as much?' And while most of them realize, yes, it would, always a handful of students (always male) want to talk about how if the alien could somehow look at how far we've come, the progress we've made, could compare our enlightened culture to the barbarians in the middle-east, well, surely then the alien would realize how commendable we are! Just happened yesterday, in fact. Always someone is unwilling to look at the actual unflattering thing I asked him to look at, asks us to avert our eyes for the sake of context or comparison.

I'm with Amanda on this: what we have here is actually a rape crisis, and more exactly a crisis produced by rape culture.

And Im with B, who announced via FB or twitter or something last week that she is probably done identifying as a Catholic. I think I'm done, too. The points I made in this post still hold and are still identification points for me. But the dogma, the actual belief-system, the ideology - all the abstractions - are too irrelevant to my own paradigm for me to continue to claim any connection to what remains. The culture, being culturally Catholic, is too poisoned. Probably has been for a long time, but I am looking hard this time. The culture is poisonous and it wants no redeeming from me. And so, fight the real enemy, I now feel sure. (goddamit I wish I could embed that)

Dr. Vane Goes Nowhere Exciting Becuase Her Workplace Isn't That Flexible Or Lucrative

I'm often enough feeling the Get Disappointed By Someone New vibe, but today am feeling psyched about mommy-bloggers at the White House. Even if I wish she would throw us a "Ms" in the title there. I mean, jeez. But still, workplace flexibility, holla!

Do your research

The women who wrote that Newsweek article about sexism at Newsweek, which is getting a lot of pub, have started a blog. Which is awesome. It seems to be aiming to be kind of a feminism-101 thing going on over there, which is great, because a lot of feminists simply don't have the patience for that shit. I certainly don't. But come on, even if you're doing 101 stuff and not getting into deep analysis, you've gotta be accurate, people. From this piece on Sexuality at work, comes this bizarre quote:

On the other [hand], any subsequent promotions or success will be poisoned by self-doubt: was it because I deserved it or because my boss likes the way I look?

Once upon a time, working women hid all semblance of feminine attractiveness for purely this reason. But as young women, we balk at having to subvert our sexuality. Which is fine when we’re roaming the halls of the high school cafeteria, or out at happy hour, but when we’re hunched over our cubicles in a male-dominated workplace, its easy to spin into a paralyzing cycle of self-doubt.

Huh? When was the time that women in the workplace "hid all semblance of feminine attractiveness"? I don't even know how that's possible, since widespread rejection of grooming and beauty rituals isn't even happening now, much less in some halcyon back-in-the-day.

Also relevant: Jill at I Blame the Patriarchy:

Fear of retribution (ridicule, ostracism, harassment, abuse in the workplace) — and by extension, guilt and the imperative of self-sacrifice — is why the overwhelming majority of Vagina-Americans own mirrors and buy carcinogenic products that supposedly make them “shiny,” “radiant,” “glowing,” “pouty,” “smoky,” or “baby-fresh.” Fear of retribution is why even those women who identify as feminists cling with Revlon-coated claws to the “right” that us man-hating feminazis would take away from them: the right to be pretty (or sexy or fuckable).

She goes on to some conclusions that are certainly controversial, but that paragraph is pretty much spot-on.

Open Marriage

Oh my god, CNN has an article about open marriage. Guess what? It's terrible.

I really wish people would stop writing about marriage using their own experiences as universal truth. There is only one universal truth: communication and honesty are good. Everything else is up for grabs. For a good example of this principle, I refer you to the great Megan Carpentier.

Don't want an open marriage? Don't have one. And definitely don't write crap like this:

In my opinion, open marriage is pretty much the opposite of marriage. It seems to be about avoiding commitment -- one of the cornerstones of a happy marriage.

I don't know how you could possibly think that open marriage was about "avoiding commitment." After all, you're still getting married, sharing a house, having kids. It doesn't affect your commitment. It just affects your monogamy.

I think it's funny that Ms. Salmansohn fails to realize that there might be--gasp--women who want open marriages, too. There are two of them on this very blog. But that would get in the way of her judgy-mcjudgerstein take, which is "men want open relationships because they are 'self-indulgent' and 'reckless'".

So let me set the record straight a little, shall we? It's got nothing to do with being reckless. In fact, it's less reckless than the alternative, if you happen to have a real, occasional desire to have sex with someone else. Your options: try to repress the desire and hope you don't screw up, or cheat. Both suck. (Now, of course, I'm not talking about people who have desires that they never intend to or really want to act on. Those people are fine being monogamous and good for them).

The bottom line is, different things work for different people. There's nothing wrong with wanting an open relationship, and there's nothing wrong with wanting monogamy. What's wrong is assuming that your desires represent some kind of universal truth. Why do people do that? It's so obvious that there's a range of human behavior. For example, I have a mild-to-moderate desire to have sex with other people. It's not something that would be a requirement, that I have an open relationship. I would do just fine at monogamy. But I happen to like this better. I'm well aware that there are people who have both less desire than me to do those things, and much, much more. If I don't think there's something wrong with people who want monogamy, then how could there be something wrong with the people who not just prefer, but require non-monogamy?

It's like that old saying. If you've slept with n people, anyone who's slept with n+1 people is a slut. Everyone thinks their own personal boundaries form the outer limit of what's acceptable.

I guess I should have expected as much from a woman who compares men to dogs and think that women "soothe themselves with chocolate". But still. Honestly.

(Via Feministe).

No Child Left Behind

Some (not all) of the things my 4.5 yr old kid has learned in Montessori school this year:


The world used to be all stuck together and called Pangaea.

Baby Jesus once walked on water to make a point.

Romeo kills Tybalt and everyone gets flat on the stage at the end to show that they are dead. And also BOYS used to play the parts of GIRLS. And also, as part of this lesson, all the words and choreographed hand motions to Taylor Swift's "Love Story":



Martin Luther King Jr was shot in the back.

One planet is named for a guy with flying shoes, while another is named for the Little Mermaid's dad (who has several aliases). Also, she most definitely learned there are 8 planets.

Dinosaurs are extinct.

A very short man named Zacchaeus stole a lot of money from a lot of people, then climbed a tree and got to be friends with Jesus.

Lilly is boring because she always tells the same story about her mom's birthday party.

Just a little snapshot for y'all.

Back Stabbers

Digby passes on a report from National Review Online, for whatever that's worth, that talks between Speaker Pelosi and Mr Stupak have ended.

What is the real reason for Mr Stupak's opposition to the Health Care Reform bill? It can't be his stated reason. I mean, why is he even in the Democratic Party if he can't support the Party's fundamental legislative positions?

What could it be? What could it be? Can you protect an abstract notion of motherhood by denying health insurance to real mothers? Something is not right here.

Feminist Pop Culture Friday

In no particular order, things that I have seen/heard/read recently that make my feminist brain go "YESSSSSSS!"

1. Parks and Rec. This Amy Poehler show is awesome, and Poehler's character is a feminist. A funny feminist! Her character is simply awesome. She manages to make fun of herself without making a laughingstock of herself. It's great. Bitch Magazine gets the feminism angle exactly right by saying the show is "chocked full of awesome feminism, and in a way that was never preachy and did nothing to take away from the comedy." In my opinion, it adds to the comedy. Because, you know, feminists can make fun of themselves.

2. Will Forte's song celebrating Women's History Month on Saturday Night. I wanted to write a big post about how awesome this was, but time got away from me and now I just want to make sure y'all see it.



There's a transcript here, but if you can watch the video you really should, because it's a song and as we know, singing always adds to hilarity. (Also, yes, there is a crappy ablist joke in the song. Sigh. But the rest of it is good).

3. Here's Roger Ebert's review of the new swedish film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. How awesome is it that Roger Ebert is clearly a feminist and gets feminism? Really awesome, but probably not even as awesome as the movie will be. I'm going to see it tonight.

4. LADY FUCKING GAGA. Oh my god, how have I not discovered her before this? If you haven't watched the Telephone video, you need to.



The video is incredibly visually and thematically dense. It's already spawned a bunch of great textual analyses/deconstructions, so if you're interested, here are some of them.

Also, I love the song and video for "LoveGame," which is about as unapologetic a representation of female sexuality and desire as I've ever seen in something so popular.

5. The new Kotex ads. The premise? Menstrual-products ads are dumb. I think it's a little too heavy-handed (for example, did they really need to end the ad with a screen saying "Why are Tampon ads so ridiculous?" Come on. Leave a little interpretation to the viewer. But otherwise excellent).



There's also a New York Times piece about the ad campaign. Fun fact: apparently you can't say "vagina" on television. Even in a tampon ad.

5. More companies should really start using feminists as consultants. I'm telling you, this is a really good way to sell products/television/music/movies. They've just got to figure it out. But women like me and the readers of this blog and all the other feminist blogs are dying for content like this, and when it comes we will promote it heavily.

Take note, people holding purse strings.

i went to grad school and all i got is this lousy non profit job

Is a College Education Essential for Americans? PBS NewsHour March 17, 2010 PBS (exerpt)

Education & the Economy, Miller Ctr of Public Affairs (full debate)

When my father received his Masters, the whole family was there. He was the first in his branch of the family to graduate college, much less receive a Masters degree. When my sister and I graduated college, both our parents were proud, confident our college degrees would mean we wouldn't suffer their childhood troubles. When I went off for my doctorate, my parents were even more thrilled.

But what do we have to show for it?

My dad became a pastor for a small/medium congregation; now he teaches ethics and philosophy for a city college. My sister is an AP Spanish teacher; I aggravate Springfield for a large non profit.

Should we have even bothered?

I caught the excerpt of the debate on PBS last night and the argument against an essential college education made me really uncomfortable. Utilitarian arguments often make me uncomfortable. Those who will make use of their education and become part of the professional class will, and should go; but those from the 'margins' won't and should not. (Unless I'm being too reductive with what dude was saying.)

I guess I'm uncomfortable about the prospect of our country becoming a place with a teeny professional, skilled class and a massively undereducated 'servant' or service class.

Thoughts?

Lá Fhéile Pádraig

Anahorish
Seamus Heaney

My "place of clear water,"
the first hill in the world
where springs washed into
the shiny grass

and darkened cobbles
in the bed of the lane.
Anahorish, soft gradient
of consonant, vowel-meadow,

after-image of lamps
swung through the yards
on winter evenings.
With pails and barrows

those mound-dwellers
go waist-deep in mist
to break the light ice
at wells and dunghills.

the lottery

In my efforts to be a well-informed citizen of Illinois, I read this blog every day. In today's post, it poses an interesting question (which I'm reframing slightly here to be a series of questions):

What are the merits of a randomly selected general assembly made of ordinary Joes/Janes vs. a two house structure with one chamber (House) being randomly selected and the other (Senate) being elected?
What would make either of these ideas practically or theoretically feasible?
How do you think it would work?
Could a randomly selected group of citizens govern better than the folks we have now?

You folks are smart. I'm curious to know what you think.

Go!

Tuff Titty Rap

Want to do some temperature taking. Just finished reading this piece about extended breastfeeding. Coincidentally, I also had a conversation about same with some womenfolk this weekend.

Now, maybe I am doing some compensating. I admitted, ages ago, on this page a tendency I had right around when I stopped breastfeeding (8mths) to react in a judgmental way to women who were beastfeeding way over a year. I knew, as I then avowed, that this reaction was *not* about an actual tendency toward sacrifice or martyrdom on the part of the mommies and was instead about my own insecurities about having stopped when I did (because for me breastfeeding was largely coded as sacrificial, something which I am still sad about). So maybe I am trying to make myself feel better about what I know was a wrongheaded reaction, but at this point I genuinely feel none of the weirdness that I take it I am supposed to feel about someone breastfeeding a 4, 5 or 6 yr old. Is it for me? No. Do I feel like there is anything ick about it? No. Further, the ick reactions are so transparently emerging from irrepressible needs to sexualize both breasts and the mommy/kid relationship, combined with culturally proprietary feelings about tits, that I cannot for the life of my imagine how intelligent thoughtful adults (like my two women friends with whom I was discussing this) justify in non-emotional terms their objection to the practice. How, I ask you, is it possible that extended extended breastfeeding is viewed as more deviant than spanking? Is that not fucked up in the extreme?

Cultural norming, yadda yadda. Please explain it to me in a way that does not involve a patriarchal take on women's bodies, a puritanical repression about bodily functions, or a draconian illusion about childhood autonomy and independence. I genuinely would like to know.

No "s" on Saving.

Piss, I'm cranky.

Is there anything worse than this: last day of spring break, during which I did very little breaking, an hour of my life lost to a questionable manipulation that sucks once you have a kid and that is always incorrectly pluralized, struggling over a conference abstract about something I don't really understand while the less encumbered Vanes bustle around getting ready to spend another day in the parks?

Yes, there are lots of things worse. But none of them are what I am doing.

It is my belief that 'spring forward' day should be a day when, in protest/acknowledgment of the artificiality of the whole time-keeping endeavor, we do things in an utterly unscheduled way. We eat whenever we want, we sleep precisely when we feel tired, we do not make appointments or engagements and we do not look at timepieces. We try not to know exactly how much time we have spent not writing this abstract (about Lyell, ironically) since we sat down at the computer. Doesn't that sound fun?

It makes me want to barf actually, so bad am I about being unscheduled, but it's a good exercise now and again.

The other day I was getting the little V ready for a bike ride. In so doing, I filled up her sigg bottle with water. I handed it to her and she asked, "Is this juice." "No," says I. "But I wanted juice," says LV. "Tough business," says I.
She looked at it for a moment, looked back at me, then shrugged her shoulders and said, "Ah, fuck it," before taking a healthy pull of water. I took a moment to think about the magic of idiomatic expressions and decided to let it roll. That's the kid of day I am working up to on this one. Happy Sunday.

Taps

In a letter I sent to my folks from Vietnam, during the period of hostilities there, I used a racial epithet to refer to the citizens of the host country.

This drew a red hot reply from my father. He dressed me down in the harshest terms. He reminded me that I had not been raised with that kind of language and if he ever heard me talking like that, Hell wouldn't have it.

He said that it was a matter of personal shame that he, himself, had used that kind of language while campaigning in the Pacific in World War II. It was only later that he realized terms of racism and hatred were part of a deliberate program of brainwashing, intended to dehumanize he and his shipmates so they would do any damn fool thing they were told to do.

War was brutal enough, he said, but there's little you can do about that. What you can do is not take it into yourself, make yourself brutal and coarse.

It was the first time my Dad ever talked to me about his experience of war. And one of the few times.

Not that I didn't try and draw him into discussions. I was dying to exchange experiences and feelings and observations. He just didn't care to discuss.

Oh, he would talk about wild nights in Perth or getting into bar fights with Marines or crossing the equator and being initiated into the Order of Neptune; goofy stuff like that. But to talk seriously about the tedium and terror of hunting and being hunted? No. He would bat those questions away with some bit of stirabout and wax eloquent about cocktails made from torpedo fluid.

Only two more times did he share any thoughts on his experience.

One time, apropos of nothing that I can remember, my Dad started talking about Okinawa. It was late at night, we were each in our cups. Without any prompt or cue, he began talking about cruising off Okinawa.

He was a signalman, a radio operator, on a submarine, stalking Japanese shipping across the Pacific. By the beginning of 1945, there was not much Japanese shipping left to stalk and he was transferred to a destroyer/minesweeper.

At the invasion of Okinawa, his ship was one of the radar pickets screening the invasion fleet. They were flung out 50 to 200 miles in the direction of the Japanese air bases. They scanned the sky to give the fleet early warning of Japanese air attack.

The Japanese gave special attention to sinking the picket ships. The kamikaze were employed in their greatest numbers for the Okinawa campaign and took a heavier toll of the picket ships than of any other US Naval units engaged in the campaign.

My Dad spoke of the terror of kamikaze attacks against the ships of the picket line. He talked about how they couldn't be driven off like other attacking aircraft. They had to be shot down.

He spoke of the clever tactics used by their pilots. Some aircraft would come across the water just above the wavetops at the same time their comrades were diving out of the clouds. The effect was to divide the attention of the anti-aircraft gunners and gun directors, reducing further the low odds of shooting down the attackers.

The pickets were were small, unarmored, and lightly armed ships. They did not mount massive batteries of anti-aircraft guns like the cruisers and battleships of the main fleet. They were not protected by fighters swarming overhead in a combat air patrol like the invasion fleet. They were far out to sea and isolated from the rest of the fleet.

They were expendable. The Japanese were implacable. My Dad said that, at Okinawa, for the first time, it occurred to him that he could get killed.

The only time he ever responded directly to a question I asked him about his experience in the war was when I asked him about the atomic bomb. I asked if he remembered where he was when he heard an atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima. I asked him if people understood what had happened, what it meant.

He said he was in a barracks in the Phillipines when he heard the news. His unit was training for the invasion of Japan. It was expected there would be a million US casualties. It was expected the fighting would go on for years.

He said neither he nor his shipmates knew from atomic bombs. They knew it was a weapon of great power. Scuttlebutt was that the entire city had been obliterated in a flash.

He said his first thought was that there would be no invasion of Japan. It occurred to him he just might make it out of this thing without getting killed.

I'm thinking about this now because I've been seeing promotions for the series Pacific over the last couple weeks. Its going to be on one of the cable channels, I couldn't tell you which one.

I'm not really a fan of war movies but I'm going to make a point to watch this. See what its about, at least. Its put on by the same people who did Band of Brothers and I hear good things about that series. If I can get some sense of what was happening with my Dad back then, I'll be content.

I'd like to know how he was able to move through brutality and not take it into himself.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Do not adjust your screen.

We will return you to our regular programming for discussion of issues that really matter momentarily.

But first - taddyporter's latest Hair!

People, not systems

I have a confession to make: I'm horrible at networking. I've realized over the past few months that it's really my achilles heel. But I'm not just talking about networking like, oh who can I meet that can get me a job? Networking isn't about that. Networking is about realizing that people are what makes the world go around, people make social change happen, people make the rules, enforce the rules, and decide when the rules deserve to be broken.

I've noticed this gap when I deal with older, more experienced lawyers who've been around the block a few times. It didn't really make sense to me at first, and it's just started to creep into my consciousness and really take hold. They always want to know "who," not "how." Who works in the clerk's office? Who is the judge? Who is the lawyer on the other side? Who does the defendant know? Who do I know who might know someone who might be involved?

Someone told you no? Who is that person? Who do they know? Do I know someone else who might tell you yes? Do I know anyone who's done the thing that you're trying to do? Who? Who is it?

I don't know if it's an artifact of my personality, or an artifact of the kind of lawyering they teach you in law school, but my approach is too formalistic. I'm too focused on the rules, the system, the procedures, how things are "supposed" to work. I rarely regard people, the people that I know, as resources. I think part of it is arrogance. I think a bigger part of it is timidity, fear, fear of asking for help, fear of seeming weak. Maybe those two parts are part of the same thing. The law is a system, yes, but it's a system made of people trying to abide by a certain set of rules that were enacted by yet more people.

And I think coming to terms with this is a big part of growing up for me. Learning how to ask for help, learning how to reach out to people without pride, turning to others as my first resource rather than trying to do everything myself. This will be better for me. This will be better for my clients. This will be better for everyone--not duplicating efforts, not wasting time, sharing knowledge. It's an important aspect of the kind of community I want to be a part of.

I have a lot to learn.

Life of the Mind

Nobody wants to turn into the person who just writes about being busy.

Do you want to know something, internet? I grow tired of my commuter marriage. Perhaps a phase, perhaps not. Perhaps I am thinking for the first time in a serious way about the possibility of quitting my job because perhaps it is increasingly the only plausible and financially sustainable way we can get back together. Perhaps I am losing my goddamn mind perhaps caused by the preceding an evidenced by the fact that this sort of reads like asking the internet for advice. Hell.

Likewise, I don't want to be the blogger who only writes about her own damn self. I still read things, internet. I am irritated about this, I am amused by this, I am wondering why I don't see more people responding to this (myself included I guess).

I try to always write about being happy when I am. I felt certain that this first year on the t-t would give me tons of blogging material and impetus. But between the tired and the kind of amorphous impulse towards self-protectiveness I feel, I have trouble knowing what I want to get out.

Circumstances have changed just a little here but enough. Mr. V's commute has shifted such that instead of going between here and the place we used to live, he has to go between here and a place that sort of sucks and where we don't know anyone and which is lonely and lame. This makes the commuting harder. For sort of complicated reasons that are dumb so it hardly matters if they are explicable or not, if I am not in this job we will be able to arrange it (we think) so we move back to the original town. But as long as we are doing this, he is doing that. And I have little overheard capacity remaining, for my kid's missing of her dad, for his loneliness, so my own tiredness.

Does it read like I am trying to convince myself? I am. It would be one thing if I felt disappointed by my job; I'm not. I'm not at all. And my colleagues, boy howdy. Last month Little V was wicked sick with a nasty virus, out of school for nearly a week. During that week, I had 1 to 4 colleagues calling me daily to check on her and to decide who was best equipped to cover my classes, whether it meant proctoring or leading discussion. When she was better enough to be out of the house but not quite in school all day, I had colleagues bringing pillows and colors into their offices to set up a little spot for her while I went to the classroom.

But increasingly it is clear that if I want to have this job with these colleagues (I do) and live in the place I want to live with respect to both mine and Mr. V's commutes (I do) and have a working spouse with an income that keep us able to focus on our first world problems (I do), then I need to commute 2 hrs daily, he needs to commute 10 hours weekly, the kid and I are on our own for most of the week, and he is on his own.

I really hate the idea of quitting my job. Because I like it and because it feels defeatist on so many levels. But I really hate the idea of this being the new normal.

Wait a Minute Mr Postman

I hear the United States Postal Service is considering eliminating six-day-a-week delivery. Drastic cost cutting steps are, evidently, called for to bring expenses into line with revenues.

If carried out, this would be the second major retreat from customer service by the Post Office in my lifetime. It will come as a surprise to many here but there used to be twice daily home delivery. In many cities, small towns too, an intracity letter or package, handed in before noon would be delivered in the afternoon. The person who, not finding an eagerly anticipated communique in the morning post, could appease their anxiety with the hope it would arrive with the afternoon deliveries.

Its a cliche to say that the revolutionary development of the internet and other forms of digital transmission have rendered obsolete the old pulsing postal forms of of personal communication but I'll say it anyway. Well, I guess I did. I'm not proud of it but then I'm not one to leave a handy cliche just lying around, idle.

But its sad, too. I'm a paper and pen man, myself. I like sending cards and letters and I like getting them. I like the scritch of pen across ecru stationery or card stock. I like holding a letter in my hand, running my fingers over it, knowing it was touched by the correspondent. Try doing that with an email.

Since going through this cancer bullshit, my affection for the handwritten word has only increased. I have dozens and dozens of cards and letters and drawings wishing me well and bidding me good health and they mean more to me than I can express. I have them on display all over the house, everywhere I'm likely to see them and everywhere visitors are likely to see them. I'm that proud.

My nephew Poco has sent me a series of hand drawn, uh, caricatures of every creature on the home place. I have his artistic interpretation of both dogs, each cat, every cow, the fox that lives under the pump house, a trout he caught out of the reservoir, his mama, his great auntie, my guitar, and several fantastical critters not belonging to any known phylum or genus.

A text accompanies each drawing. Sometimes it explains the subject of the composition, usually it tells me what he's been doing in school and which cat used to belong to pirates. The narrative always ends with an exhortation to GET WELL! and I LOVE YOU!! and COME HOME SOON!! and sincere wishes for a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!! The lad is very economic minded. He'll not lavish postage on a message unfreighted with the fullest supercargo of sentiments.

I have a few people I regulary correspond with in the old way. I send a card to my mom just about every day. I think she enjoys getting them, its hard to tell. Anyway, I send them more for me than for her. She may not remember me but I remember her.

I correspond with Poco just about every day. Its important to me he not forget me. So far it seems to be working.

I correspond with my stepdaughter's little boy, Ch-. He's seven and writes me pretty regularly. He recently sent me a drawing of a six armed robot warrior. Ch- says this robot can fight and defeat anything and should he turn him loose on my cancer?

I wrote him back to let him know I think I've got the problem well in hand and he doesn't need to spend any time worrying about me. Kids.

I have a friend, Miguel, in Denver and we correspond regularly in Spanish. He's helping me to keep up the minimal fluency I have already and, hopefully, expand it. I suppose we could do it more efficiently by email but this is more fun.

There is a risk to history in relying on digital communications. I don't suppose I'm the first one to notice that emails and IM's and others of that species don't leave much in the way of an artifact that can be archived.

This was brought home to me last week when my Auntie Jean sent me a box full of penny postcards that had been sent to her Da, my grandfather. Not only did they give me an entirely new insight on my grandfather but also on my grandmother.

You see, the cards were all from young women of my granddad's acquaintance, sent to him in the days before he courted my grandmother. Most of the cards are postmarked from 1915 to around 1918, the year he married my grandma.

And let me say, any notion that young ladies of the day were inhibited by Victorian strictures or conventions should be lowered over the side. Beguiling doesn't half cover the blandishments offered my grandfather in these incandescent communique. Bewitching, maybe. Behubba hubba, definitely. Oh You Kid!

So, its fun to see my grandfather as one of the lads, cutting a dashing figure across the social scene of rural St Croix County Wisconsin and wartime Washington state. But it also revealed my grandmother as a bit of a sport, too. She outlived my grandfather by nearly thirty years. It was not Himself that preserved these postcards for posterity. It was Herself.

The rather stern, parsimonious, and austere figure that I'd always known to be my grandmother turns out to be much more romantic than I could have imagined. A shoebox full of postcards knocked a lot of the rough corners off that flinty old woman and gave me a grandmother softer and more indulgent than I knew.

Try that with a box of emails.

Thank you, abortion providers

Today is the National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers.

If you know someone who works in an abortion clinic, take them out to dinner, buy them some flowers, or just sit them down and tell them that you appreciate what they do. If there’s a clinic that performs abortions near you, drop in and say a quick thanks. And if you’re online reading this right now, head on over to the National Abortion Federation website, and write a note of appreciation.

If you’re able, today would also be an excellent day to financially support those organizations that make abortion access possible. The National Abortion Federation (NAF) is a professional association of abortion providers in the United States and Canada, that offers training for abortion providers and referrals for patients. The National Network of Abortion Funds helps women with limited funds to afford their abortions. And Medical Students for Choice work to destigmatize abortion care and make it a regular part of medical training. They would all be worthy of any donation you could give.

Fake

If I can, I'm going to get a hold of the most recent photos of my shaggy pate and post them. I think you'll get a kick out of them. My hair has moved right past wavy and is now positively nappy. I crap you negative.

My stepdaughter took some photos of this curiousity last weekend. I haven't seen them yet but I know she showed them to my friend T-, the snowplowing man, cause he sent me some hair care items he had left over from the eighties. I think that's when he last had hair.

So, I call him to thank (?) him for his thoughtfulness. We naturally fall into a discussion of how things were back in the day. He asserted everything was better then.

I respond he only thinks that cause he was younger and had a full head of hair and no responsibilities. I remind him that he's forgotten Ronald Reagan and the awful music of the era.

He concurs re the ghastly Reagan regime but dissents about the music. I challenge him to name three decent tunes from the eighties. He rattles off about two dozen. Most of his choices, I agree with as being tunes that can either stand the test of time or stand for the best of the era's musical expression.

I'll list some of his choices here, omitting the Michael Jackson and Prince selections only because they have mostly entered the canon of American pop music.

Poison - Bell Biv Devoe
Fake - Alexander O'Neill
Ain't Nobody - Chaka Khan
Word Up - Cameo
Give Up the Funk - Parliament/Funkadelics
This is How We Do It - Montell Jordan

I'm not sure that last one meets the timeline criteria but it is a pretty danceable song, so what the hell.

There are probably plenty of other candidates that could go on this list. Feel free to add your own nominees. I've learned my lesson about making sweeping generalizations for an historical epoch.

Oh, the particular hair care item that prompted the call to T- and the subsequent intense discussion about the music of the era bygone was a half used up bottle of jeri curl. He thought I could use it and he thought that would be hilarious.

I told him I was holding out for dreadlocks. He said that would just be stupid.

I will never understand the African-American sense of humor.

if only the poor were more like me!

If only poor people understood nutrition! The Fat Nutritionist

That post up there, btw, is brilliant. Unfortunately, she had to shut down comments because some folks were deliberately misreading her thesis, which I will repeat and clarify for you:
You want people to eat better? Give them enough money, a place for cooking and storage, and access to a decent variety of food.

There. That's her thesis in a nutshell.

I'll boil it down even further:
So, if we want other people to shop and consume like us, in our hip, healthy, and globally conscious ways, then they're going to need what we have.

What do I have that most really poor people (earning less than $16k/annually) do not?

I have a properly operating kitchen, with counter space and lighting.
I have a gas stove that lights when I turn it on. (And all burners that work.)
I have a large refrigerator that freezes the things that need to be frozen, and a fridge that keeps my butter from melting and my food from spoiling.
I have a pantry that is free from bugs and mice so I can store dry goods there.
I have a running sink with water that isn't all gunky or rusty.
I have a mexican mini-mart, a walgreens, AND a large, clean Dominick's all within short walking distance.
I have a dude who sells fresh fruit/veg from the back of his truck during the spring/summer.
I also have about a $50/week grocery shopping allowance. Sometimes, I go over my allowance and buy $100 in groceries/week.
I live in a part of town that does not have slum landlords.
I have a few bus lines within walking distance and a train line.
I work in a part of the city that hosts farmers markets during the summer that I can visit on my lunch hour.
I have Bon Appetit, Saveur, Cook's Country Kitchen, Cook's Illustrated and a stack of other cookbooks from Borders and friends in my kitchen.
I have internet access to Epicurious.com.
I have a wok, pots, pans, serving platters, mixing bowls, forks, utensils, measuring cups, cutting boards and towels.
I have a place to store them.



I also have a job, no kids, healthcare, access to public transportation, flexible work hours, and adequate housing.

Basically, I am middle class, with typical bourgeois middle class tastes and habits.
...
Here is a completely irrelevant personal story (irrelevant because personal stories, while illustrative, are not prescriptive):

My parents were poor before they were middle class; the clothes I wore were not my own but hand-me-downs from another family. We received bags of groceries from anonymous church members - there would be a package of Peppridge Farm cookies in one of those bags. Or a bottle of Tang. A block of gov't cheese could last a really long time - for tacos, grilled cheese sandwiches, ham/cheese sandwiches, on crackers, in the toaster oven slapped over white bread.

We were poor but we ate dinner every night: chicken, pork chop or steak, a salad, rice and a desert (jello or ice cream). A glass of whole fat milk. In the morning, it was a hot cereal, orange juice or toast with butter and then to the bus.

Eventually, our meals got more complicated - coinciding with my mom going back to work and my dad getting a better job. Then we were shakily middle class.

There was a Chinese supermarket two blocks away for emergencies (we didn't trust their meat after one bad incident), and if we had to drive to a supermarket, there was a Vons or Ralphs only 15 min away by car. I remember going with mom every week after she got home from work to do grocery shopping. I hated unloading our 10 or 12 bags of groceries, my arms held stiff, the plastic handles making red rows in my skin.

Think of that. 10-12 full bags of groceries. Every two weeks. For a family of four. Without fail.

Whether we want to acknowledge it, this is the middle class standard most of us have running in the backs of our minds when we tell poor people to eat, or grocery shop, better. We never have their memories in our heads. We don't think about how the hell they're transporting 10-12 heavy shopping bags from the supermarket 2 miles away from their house, on foot, with only a couple small kids to help them.

Much less from organic farmers market to farmers market.

...

Do you know where poor people live? Oh, not your hipster living in Ukrainian Village in an apartment no bigger than two cubicles at your office. Real poor people. Like, over in Greater Grand Crossing or Austin. Or Lawndale. Or Chicago Heights. Like, in those places you can see from the Green Line headed toward Cottage Grove. Or those places you see if you take the #66 bus all the waaaay west to the end of the line. Ever check out the apartments in that neighborhood that always sees the police action? Or the 'hood that always gets the helicopters hovering over it? Do you know how really poor people live?

I've only been in my Aunt D-'s apartment two or three times. It is so stuffy, I want to gag. Incense smells try to cover up other smells, but don't. And in the hallway outside, that splotch is either shit or vomit. I won't go in her kitchen. (I have never been invited to see her kitchen.) I don't dare ask to use the bathroom.

Once, when I dropped off some clothes and extra pots/pans/cooking pans, she kept us standing in her living room. There are only two bedrooms in this 'garden' apartment and I think she sleeps on the couch in the living room, giving the bedrooms to her daughter and son. She complains about the landlord who won't fix anything; he just collects the reimbursements from the gov't for providing Section 8 vouchers. She says, though, that once my cousin reaches 18, their rent is going to double or my male cousin will have to move out. (18 year old black boys, it seems are a threat to building.)

Down the street from Aunt D-, there is a KFC, McDonalds, a fried fish shack, a Chinese joint and a couple of gas stations, where you can buy cigs, bottled water or soda pop. The nearest real supermarket is in Hyde Park which is about a couple of different buses away. That's where the Walgreens is, too.

She doesn't have bus cards, so I gave her a few with $10 on them. In Chicago, one bus ride is $2.25. How far can she get on that? And how often? You do that math.
...
At my very tony Presbyterian church we once had a social services program to help provide healthier meals to really low-income neighbors. (You'd have to find these neighbors with a magnifying glass and move a few neighborhoods over, but they're there.) A friend served on this task force and they were told to help develop and test cook menus for this project.

But there were rules:
Think healthier ingredients, not necessarily 'healthy'.
The meal's ingredients couldn't cost more than $10, total.
It would have to be enough to serve at least 4.
Meal preparation couldn't involve more than 1-2 utensils.
The meal had to be cooked/served in the same dish.
It had to be able to be cooked on a hot plate.
Task force members could not assume refrigeration was available.

When you or I are cooking 'healthy' how many of these rules do we break?

It isn't class warfare to point out that the poor live differently from us. To ignore that fact maintains our caste system rather than demolishing it.

So until we are prepared to solve the 'problem' of their poverty first, perhaps we should keep mum with our 'advice' to poor families about making better nutritional 'choices'.

(And that means you, Jamie Oliver.)

I'd Horsewhip You If I Had a Horse

Boom Boom Boom Boom
I like the way you walk
I like the way you talk
That baby talk
How How How How
Boom Boom Boom Boom


The right wing assault on the US Court system and American values of justice continues. How they wrangled President Obama to aid the attack is beyond me but, if reports from the barking media are correct, they have done.

The decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM) in a so-called military tribunal is a disgraceful decision. It insults our Republic and our people. It shames us in front of the world. It betrays our history and dismisses two hundred years of jurisprudence, of experience in dealing out justice to spies, pirates, rebels, saboteurs, traitors, assassins, terrorists, bandits, brigands, and every kind of foul excrement masquerading as a human being.

Worse, it turns the job over to flag officers of the United States Armed Forces, a group of people I wouldn't trust to babysit my Australian Cattle dog. These fools would fuck up a two car funeral. Lets see, in the nearly nine years since the September Attacks, this brilliant corps has not only failed to successfully conclude two campaigns against inferior opponents, they have convicted, what, eight accused terrorists? In the same period the US Courts have convicted and imposed justice on over 200 captives. I rest my case.

Further, the decision elevates the creature, KSM, to a status he has not earned and does not deserve. He is not a warrior. He is not a soldier. He is not even a criminal. He is a pitiful, wretched, being who commits a crime each time he breathes in air that could be used to sustain more delightful portions of creation; the Norwegian Rat, for example. Or its fleas.

So far as I can tell, he is Snuffy Smith in a bedspread, pretending he is an Ikhwan fighter when he is merely a coward who flim-flams confused young men into dying for him.

But I digress. I think m. leblanc is preparing to address the issues of this decision. She is better suited to it than I in every way. There is only one aspect I would like to address.

That is the thesis put forward by the barking media and their right wing masters that the US Court system is too cramped and legalistic to deal with these insidious al-Qaeda critters. All this concern with due process and Miranda rights and fair treatment and the right to confront witnesses, etc., is so, what's the word; archaic? Quaint? It may be OK for dealing with jaywalkers and folks who hold up gas stations but it will prevent us from dealing effectively with these enemies of the state. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures and so on and so forth.

What they are trying to say but are to chickenshit to come right out and say is they want these people tortured. Hell, they want us tortured. But the US Courts and the Constitution, finicky as they are about these things, won't permit it. So, bye-bye Courts and Constitution and let that be a lesson to us.

Which only reminds us how far removed from reality these millionaire pundits are. Its hard to believe they are the ones charged with explaining the world and its events to us when it is quite clear they inhabit some different world. The Upper West Side. Martha's Vineyard. Saddle Ridge.

I don't know where it is but its not our world.

Let me explain with a little story about my friend T-.

T- is a working man in his late 40's, a father with three kids. He lives on the north side of Milwaukee, with wife and kiddies in a well maintained brick house in the working class neighborhood of Sherman Park.

To maintain home and hearth and feed three healthy teen agers, T- works more jobs than you can count.

He has a first shift job in a stamping plant on Milwaukee's South Side. After that, he goes to work cleaning offices in downtown Milwaukee. He runs a big floor buffing machine, looks kind of like a zamboni. He does this until 10 or 11 at night.

On weekends, he works at any number of sidelines. He has a snow plowing business. He details cars. He drives taxi. He cleans beer lines (a very lucrative craft, I might add). He mows lawns and does landscaping.

The point is, he is a solid citizen and works all the damned time.

In mid-January, there was a big snowfall in Milwaukee. To T-, that's money in the bank. Around midnight of a Friday, he was sitting in the cab of his Ford F-250, idling at the curb in front of his house, waiting for his helper to show up so he could get started plowing out his clients.

While he waited, he blew himself a big spliff.

At the psychological moment, an MPD TAC Squad cruiser rolled by. The TAC Squad are the heavies for the organs of public security in Milwaukee. They patrol the city late night to suppress threats to the public order. They observed a nimbo-cumulus cloud emerge from the passenger side of T-'s pickup and investigated.

The upshot was that T- was busted for smoking a joint.

The TAC squad lads bundled him into the back seat of the cruiser, wedged between a beefy Polish sergeant on one side and a beefy African-American sergeant on the other. For hours they drove him all over the county while they tried to persuade him to fall in with their plans as follows: they wanted him to make some crack buys for them. At the end of their shift, they would pay him $1000 for his troubles and release him without a stain on his character. It was their assumption, I guess, that any Black person knows where to buy crack. T- is Black and, so, ipso facto, just the man for the job.

T- declined to participate. First, he knew the offer of $1000 was bullshit. Second, he had no fucking idea where to buy crack. He's a working man. Third, he would not have gotten involved even if he did. These crack dealers tend to be bad hombres and its a smart fellow that steers clear of them.

None of this made the least impression on the TAC squad boys. They rode him around till sunup, denying him any contact with his family. In the morning, they took him to jail.

He did not see a magistrate until Monday morning. When he was brought before his honor, it turned out there was no charge or, at least, no charge paperwork, so he was released.

The point of this amusing anecdote is that, for working people, the requirements of the 14th amendment and other pertinent protocols are more often honored in the breach than as a matter of routine. So we don't appreciate being lectured by Mrs Greenspan and Chris Matthews and the rest of the millionaire gasbags on how the minions of the law are tied down like Gulliver by the uncallused wonder that is American justice.

Law enforcement will find a way to make its case, don't even trip. If they would go to those lengths with my friend just to turn over a few penny ante drug-dealers, imagine the schemes they can employ to convict Snuffy Smith. I mean KSM.

We got him. He's not going anywhere.

The idea is to punish him, not the Constitution.

Everybody's Got a Thing

60 days ago, almost to the minute, consciousness was seeping into my organism and rousing me to a dazed appreciation of my surroundings which I subsequently learned were the Intensive Care Unit of Froedert Hospital.

I was sore, I was babbling, and I was, by turns, pissed off and demanding to know who the fuck was in charge around here, and laughably flirtatious, encouraging my attendants, of both genders, to join me in my scantily clad state. Cooler heads prevailed and both moods were medically ignored.

Its been a long sixty days and it will likely be another long sixty days before I start feeling like my old self. That means the trip to Fairyhouse is out. Horses and riders and turf accountants will have to get along without me for one more year.

I've learned not to be impatient. I've learned not to be angry.

A week after being discharged from the hospital, I was readmitted for two nights for failure to thrive. My weight had dropped 25 pounds, all my blood counts were fucked up, my kidney was on the verge of failure and I was, overall, a hard case.

The root cause was diagnosed as clinical depression.

I told them I wasn't depressed, I was pissed off. Same-same, so far as they were concerned. Either way, I wasn't eating, I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't following the regimen laid down for me and I was driving my dear caregiver, Meche, out of her mind.

So, I've had a couple three therapy sessions since then. The doctors have peered into the dark recesses of my soul and flushed various critters from the garret of my brain. Its fun. But its not that much fun. It would be a lot more fun if they would break out the medical marijuana but I suppose they're doing the best they can.

Not that I haven't learned a lot. I have. Some stuff I'd rather not get into here. Drop me a line if we've corresponded before and you're all that interested. We can discuss.

Some stuff was already apparent to me but deeper, more intense than I realized. My Dad, for example.

I hadn't realized just how much I miss him. The therapists picked up on that right away, I don't know how. They just did. And they made me cry about it, too. A lot. A whole lot. I don't know why I cried as much as I did. Its just that he...Its just that I...and we never...OK, I need a minute, here.

I have a lot of anxiety over my Mom and taking care of her. That unmoored my psyche from time to time. All my life, no matter how bad things were with me, my Mom would always pat my hand and pet my brow and murmur, there, there darlin, everything's going to be alright.

I could really use a little petting now but its beyond her powers. She's the one who needs reassuring.

I also learned that a lot of my anger was over my fear that I was not going to be able to do all the things I'd done before. That I was not going to be the man I was before. That I would not be a whole man, if you take my meaning.

And I was afraid my rascally, irresponsible, Rover days were over. That I was doomed to be a solid citizen. Which, lets face it, is only a little better than a death sentence.

I mean, sure, you're not dead and that's not nothing, but really, what's the fuckin point?

But they showed me how those fears were misplaced. In every way. If you know what I mean.

So, there's a sort of peace has settled over me. Its unlike anything I've experienced before. The closest I've come to it before was an age ago in Thua Thien Hue province when I realized the ground had stopped reeling under the weight of Soviet splosives.

One of the therapists told me that for all the bad things cancer does, there is one good thing that almost cancels everything else out. Almost.

They claim it's a sure cure for neuroses.

And you know what? I'll be damned if they're not right.

I Just Don't Know What to Say

Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to write something elegant and coherent. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to write a better defense of trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed than I wrote back back in November, a more persuasive one. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to breathe and engage in a cool, calculated discussion about where individuals charged with committing terrorist acts should be tried.

Not today. Today, I'm too angry.

President Obama's advisers are nearing a recommendation that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, be prosecuted in a military tribunal, administration officials said, a step that would reverse Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s plan to try him in civilian court in New York City.

They do one, one thing right when it comes to the detainees in this whole year, and then they're ready to backtrack. There is no credible opposition to trying KSM in a civilian court. Cost is not a sufficient objection. The fact that he will have an opportunity to speak is not a sufficient objection. The publicity is not a sufficient objection. The possibility of acquittal is not a sufficient objection.

All these things together do not even approach a sufficient objection.

They do not deserve special treatment. They deserve the treatment of common criminals, which they are. Common criminals, common courts, American justice.

They are not that powerful. We give them too much power, by fearing them so.

ETA: Read Serwer and Ackerman for something with a bit more information and a bit less frothing at the mouth. I can't give you that today.

where have you been all my life?

This is the blog I've been dying to find: American Indians in Children's Literature. The author, Debbie Reese, teaches at the University of IL-Urbana-Champaign and is a member of the Nambe Pueblo. Her blog aims to help teachers and parents be responsible educators by providing resources and information about American Indians, kids' lit, history, and pedagogy.

Research shows, however, that it is not enough to provide children with better information. Teachers must also actively work towards helping children develop an ability to identify racist, biased, and outdated information about, in this case, American Indians. These depictions—whether they appear in children’s books, television programs, movies, as school mascots, or in products at the grocery store—far outnumber the factual and realistic portrayals of American Indians. For decades, Native scholars have addressed these problematic images. . . . The content of the website is designed to help people develop a critical stance when evaluating American Indians in children’s books. This means recognizing negative and positive stereotypes, both of which stand in the way of seeing and accepting American Indians as people of the present day (from her about page).

So, so awesome. Definitely going to Pseudonymous Kid's schools and finding its way into the teacher library...

Time + Someone Smart = Money

I'm kind of seething a little bit over this Washington Post story talking about their comment section. Post reporter Christian Davenport basically acknowledged that the Washington Post's comment sections are terrible. Despite the fact that they claim to moderate them, it's obvious that they're doing a terrible job. The Washington Post, like the comment section of every other newspaper in the country except the New York Times, clearly doesn't understand moderation. What's their moderation strategy?

The Post uses automated filters to screen out some offensive language from comment boards; in addition, reporters and producers check the comments and take down posts that they find to be unacceptably abusive or tasteless.

Dear post: no wonder your comments suck. Here's a tip: you need to hire someone. Websites with a much smaller and more homogenous (and thus, less abusive) readership, like Feministing and Jezebel each have people whose specific job it is to moderate the comments, because moderating is hard work. It takes time, and it takes expertise. Especially when you've got a site with hundreds and hundreds of comments with people just mouthing off.

They don't seem to get it. When you don't effectively moderate comments, you might as well not have a comment section at all, because it is unreadable. And it chaps my hide that they're just now realizing that it might affect the quality of the journalism, because sources are reluctant to talk to them for fear of the WaPo comments treatment. Even if there's not a source out there who does this, it already affected the quality of your journalism, because the racist, sexist, incoherent, trollish, offensive comments were appearing right there on your pages alongside the things that your writers painstakingly reported and wrote.

Hire someone. You could even hire me. There are a ton of knowledgeable people who understand comment moderation. Look, for example, to Ta-Nehisi Coates, who has one of the best comment sections on the internet. You know why? He worked on it. He was in the comments, banning, deleting, cajoling, steering the discussion and responding to those who were on the fence of trollishness. Now, the comments are an absolute pleasure to read.

That's probably too much to hope for from you, Washington Post. But you could at least make it so the comments don't send your sources running scared and your readers turning away in disgust. But you have to spend some money. Comments may seem free, but no truly good content is ever free.

More on Men and Sex

Via Feministing comes a new PSA from Sex Really which is one of the worst PSAs for safe sex I've ever seen. (Note: video contains graphic language).



If you don't/can't watch the video, Feministing has a transcript at the post I linked above. The upshot is: men are assholes who don't respect you and say gross things when talking to their dude friends about sex, so practice safe sex. The video is a conversation between three guys who are making a variety of remarks about sex. Some are banal but explicit: "And I'm able to grab one titty as I'm doing it and I grab the other titty this way and I was very happy." Some are offensive and rape-y: "I know, if she's gonna wear a dress like that who's not gonna lift that shit up."

Jos at Feministing and Shelby at This is Misogyny have already covered the basic ground: this video is misogynist, offensive, and trafficks in tired and harmful stereotypes. But there's something I find more insidious about this video, and about the wider narrative of men talking about sex, that I want to address.

There's this notion that men discussing sex is disrespectful, period. If you've ever heard the phrase "kiss-and-tell," you know what I'm talking about. The principle is that boys and men aren't supposed to talk about their sex lives with their friends, because...I don't know? They aren't supposed to acknowledge that they have sex with their girlfriends/lovers/wives because then everyone will know that the woman is.. a slut? I really don't know what it is.

This video is choppy--not a narrative conversation--so it's clear that what the video is conceived of as a bunch of choice lines picked out from a longer conversation that are supposed to make the (female) audience think: wow, what an asshole. And some of the lines are assholish things to say. But a lot of them aren't, they're just explicit.

I deeply resent and reject the idea that men aren't allowed to have explicit conversations with their friends, or it makes them disrespectful of women in general, and the women in their lives specifically. Some of that "what happens in the bedroom stays in the bedroom" mentality spills over to women, too. Some of my best conversations with friends have been about sex. Whether it's talking about some great sex, or talking about contraception, or bad sex, or sex problems, or telling funny stories. It's fun. Sex is a part of the human experience, and it's ridiculous to think that we share that with our partners and our partners alone.

The prohibition on adults talking about sex with people other than their partners is a huge contributor to the problem of sexual violence, domestic violence, emotional isolation within relationships, a cocoon of shame that surrounds sex and sexuality and our bodies, and sexual dissatisfaction. I have always told my partners that they are free to talk about their sex lives with anyone they trust. Frankly, if the thought of your boyfriend talking to his friends about having sex with you makes you feel unsafe, your boyfriend needs new friends, which means you need a new boyfriend.

After making this clear, I sometimes check back in to see whether they actually have. To a one, none. Because of this narrative, and men's emotional discomfort with one another, "good" men are unable to have conversations with other men about sex. Some do with their female friends. But with other men? Rarely. That's because of the idea that talking about sex in a way that is respectful doesn't exist. Men don't know how to do it. So they don't.

This puts huge pressure on women. I don't want to be the only person in the universe that my partner has frank conversations with about sex, but I think I probably am, and I think most women are.

So, "sex really"? Your PSA sucks. Your representation of men is wrong, your representation of women is wrong, and your encouragement of the narrative that men talking about having sex with women is disrespectful is actually harmful to the cause of safe sex that you claim to promote. Get a clue.

Pleased as Punch

This study has been making the rounds. It's by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, and it produced the somewhat surprising result that when you ask couples who are trying to avoid pregnancy how they would feel if they did get pregnant, men reported almost double the frequency of being "a little pleased" or "very pleased." Men were at 43% for those two categories, women only 20.

Jill at Feministe calls this "kind of terrifying." Amanda Hess at the City Paper says "So, politely, what the fuck is going on? How many women out there are having sex under the assumption that their male partners are invested in teaming up to prevent pregnancy, only to discover that the guys are privately ecstatic about the idea?"

But is this really surprising? I think there's something less sinister going on here. And I also like this study, because as Amanda notes, this completely debunks the notion that men don't want to have babies and women do, and so women are constantly angling for pregnancy/sabotaging birth control/under the influence of a raging biological clock. It's funny that that myth persists. Anecdotally, I know quite a few women who are in the "I do not want kids period" category, but every dude I know is in the "definitely" or "maybe" category (yes, of course, I know there are men who don't want kids. I just don't know them).

And why shouldn't they? In a patriarchy, having kids is basically a net plus for men. They get a lot of approval, social status, pleasure, and benefits from having children, especially children that they parent. Of course it bears costs for them, but far fewer costs than it does for women.

[ETA: Now I see that Kate Harding basically made the same point in her piece at Salon: "[I]s it because of the cultural reality that women are still most often the primary caregivers and more likely to have to put careers and dreams on hold when a child comes along, so men might not feel they have as much to lose?"]

Hess formulation that they are "privately ecstatic about the idea" rings true for a lot of women, too. I'm ardently trying to avoid pregnancy, and have been for the last ten years, because I don't feel ready for a kid yet, even though I do want to have a kid/kids eventually. So if I were to get pregnant right now? Yeah, in a sense I would be happy. I think my partner would too. But for me, the negatives would be higher than for my partner, and certainly would have been a lot higher several years ago. The physical toll, the impact on my life, my ability to work or go to school during pregnancy, my health care costs (AHEM, I am currently uninsured), my entire future. For my partner, those costs are just less. It makes sense that men would be more positive about an unplanned pregnancy because, across the board, even in the most egalitarian relationships, the costs are just lower for them. Much lower. And the benefits higher. Men who have kids are seen as more responsible workers, and women who have kids are treated poorly. It's a double standard and it sucks. But, naturally, it affects men's outlook on the prospect of having babies.

I also think there's something positive about this result, that isn't just a reflection of patriarchy, or increased social benefits for men who have kids, or the natural impact of increased costs imposed on women's bodies and lives by pregnancy.

More and more, I see my generation of men becoming really, truly conversant with the language and philosophy of reproductive choice, and realizing that they should try to limit the extent they try to influence women's reproductive choice. I've discussed pregnancy with every guy I've dated seriously, just because a) it comes up, when you're having sex (or it should, anyway), and b) I like taking temperatures on people's attitudes, because I think it says a lot about how they'll be in a relationship. To a one, even the ones who were kind of jerks in retrospect, they all seemed to understand that were I to get pregnant, the decision as to how to address the pregnancy would be my decision and my decision alone. They knew that they would be called on to talk things through with me, comfort me, support me, but never, never tell me what to do.

Now, I'm not sure that all of the guys would have or would now actually do that were the situation to arise. The prospect of being a parent can, I'm sure, make people behave poorly. (See, for example, how often the first incidence of domestic violence occurs during pregnancy). But at least they all knew what they were supposed to do and how they were supposed to feel.

And so I see this group of men, who are pleased with their partners unintended pregnancy, not as engaging in some private sabotage, but as recognizing that the choice is not theirs to make, and so defaulting to a relatively neutral position. Being displeased with someone else's unplanned pregnancy isn't a neutral position. Given all the possible outcomes of an unplanned pregnancy, I think being "displeased" is a worse outlook. Being displeased can mean you encourage an abortion when your partner might not want one. Being displeased can mean you tell your partner that you're not willing to provide support for the child, emotional, financial or otherwise. Being displeased can mean that you don't help your partner during the pregnancy. Being displeased can mean a lot of bad things. Whereas being pleased can mean that you support your partner in doing whatever she wants to do, whether it's going forward with or terminating the pregnancy. I suppose that being pleased can also mean that you pressure your partner to continue the pregnancy when she wants to terminate it, but it also seems likely to me that you will be able to share whatever grief your partner might have about terminating (if she does, which of course, lots of women don't.)

This is all very nebulous. Am I totally off base here?

but the important thing is they pay for my hotel

Welcome the newest member of the National Women's Law Center's Spring 2010 Policy and Leadership Institute - better known as PLAN!

Public office plans or no, the opportunity to participate in this makes me shiver.  How cool is this to me? It was a national competition and only 20 women were chosen - and I was one of them!!  Jesus, I haven't gotten this excited about an offer since grad school!

(And let's be honest; my excitement about grad school was more about moving 2000 miles away from Los Angeles than setting the academic world on fire. This, what I'm feeling right now, is like having a hand reach down from the sky and pat me on the back.  It's huge validation for me.) 

If you haven't checked out NWLC's policy work, you should.

Sigh.  The espresso bean-like mood (dark and bitter) I've been in for the past few weeks has begun to dissipate.  This is exactly what I needed to hear.

(Oh, and the White House Project is coming to Chicago in May.  I'll be checking that out - and y'all other like-minded women out there should, too.)

Know what else is weird? On the registration form, I listed M- as my emergency contact. Huh.