Happy Memorial Day!

Kind of an oxymoron, I know but, still, enjoy your Memorial Day weekend. Its a nice long one. You can stay out late. You can sleep in late. You've earned it.

At the little house on the flowage, we're honoring the Sacred Dead in the customary American Way. Water balloon fights in the morning, softball in the afternoon, booze-up, BBQ, and karaoke in the evening.

Summonses for violating county noise ordinance Tuesday morning.

The house is crammed. Friends and relatives have homed in across a three state area. Presently there are eleven adults, two teenagers, seven kids under the age of nine plus the regular household staff.

I'm not exactly sure where everyone is sleeping. All I know is my entire well ordered routine is undone. Entirely.

This morning I woke up with two little boys curled up next to me and I know they weren't there when I retired for the evening. By the time I got their tooths brushed, faces scrubbed, and butts parked at the kitchen counter for breakfast, there were three more shorties, mouths tipped open like house finch nestlings, chirping for the morning worm or, in this case, fried egg, to be flung into the gaping maw.

Once I had them egged and juiced and corn-flaked and packed off to back yard with blistering admonitions and dark threats of severe punishment if they didn't stay 20 or 30 yards back from the shoreline, another squad, like a third hockey line, had filled the benches along the kitchen counter and were shrieking their breakfast orders.

Not all our time has been spent breaking the night's fast. Several of the young persons accompanied me to a nearby cemetery where we helped to flag veterans' graves. On the way over I talked a little bit about what we were going to do and why we were going to do it. I warned them to behave themselves and show respect for the people laid to rest.

I was, nonetheless, worried about their deportment but, you know, they acquitted themselves soberly and (relatively) quietly. When one of their number did forget him or herself, hollering or capering about, the others shooshed with authority and restored the gravity of the undertaking.

There was not a lot of chatter on the way home.

Well, that's not true. There was the usual amount of chatter but none of it really penetrated my reverie without the chatterer raising the volume a goodly bit and repeating the query, Uncle Taddy, are you listening to me?

I wasn't. I was thinking of my buddy Spoon and how he would have loved messing around with a pack of kids. How he would have had so much fun with them and how they would have had so much fun with him. The way I remember Himself, he was a half a kid anyway.

Of course, he had only just emerged from kidhood when he lost everything in Thua-Thien-Hue province.

When we lost him.

And that's what I was thinking. Spoon should be here. That's the way to honor our Sacred Dead. Keep them alive. Keep the country out of these useless, endless, pointless, colonial wars.

Then we can enjoy our beers and BBQ on a beautiful Memorial Day Long Weekend. With Spoon and the rest of them.

Here's to you Spoon! Slainte, brother!

It's the money, stupid

Sigh.

Take it from this former-professor-turned-stay-home-mom-with-gardening-aspirations: "feminists" didn't "denigrate foodwork."

Nor are "untold generations of men" to blame for "not getting into the kitchen." If you want to blame untold generations of men, blame them for creating capitalism, dammit, not for refusing to cook.

The real issue for modern feminisM is, and always was, the social and economic s tatus of women *as a class*. Housework comes into it because housework, in a capitalist society, is unpaid--which means that "women's work" makes "women" both economically vulnerable/dependent and socially inferior. Housework, in fact, doesn't count as "work" because it doesn't generate income.

THAT's the issue. And that's why all the locavore / slow-cooking stuff, at this point, is associated with the upper middle class: because it only "counts" socially if it generates money. Reduce/reuse/recycle, same thing: sure, poor people have done this all along, but no one's writing about that shit: it's only important socially if it can somehow be monetized, either in terms of savings or by getting consumers to purchase recycled goods (which, like organic / locavore food, bizarrely cost *more*--and yes, I understand why, but again: not when poor people do it, it doesn't).

Which is why, although I liked Lindsay's take on this NYT article, I ultimately wasn't entirely comfortable with it (and hence started and abandoned a blog post about it back when it was published a couple of months ago). Being a stay-home-mom is *not* an economically sensible move, no matter how much damn money you think you're "saving" by growing your own vegetables and keeping chickens.

But it is--or at least, has the potential to be--a kind of critique of capitalism, if not an actual political movement. To fulfill that potential, urban gardeners and (shudder) "femivores" would have to start recognizing and making common cause with farmworkers and domestic workers. Envirohipsters would have to start forming alliances with the poor people they shop alongside at Goodwill.

I wonder, though, if it works the other way (and I'm hoping Taddy and Delia, specifically, will comment on this, as the bloggers who work in farming and political advocacy, respectively). I don't see that farmworkers and domestics, who already have political organizations and representation, need to do any kind of "outreach" to suburban gardeners in order to establish themselves *as* political players--though I wonder if that kind of move might (or is, for all I know) generate new donors. And while I think that educated, environmentally aware urbanites are fairly likely to be politically active, and even to think of themselves as poor, I don't think that that young, dumpster-diving urbanites, as a group, are particularly likely to actively support, say, the Southern Poverty Law Center or the Children's Defense Fund. (Although even as I'm writing this, I'm realizing that in fact most of the poor young people I know are extremely involved in local organizing, so I'm quite likely wrong. Still, what I'm trying to get at is the kind of duality that The Onion mocks here, where young, single, educated, white folks organize "for" groups that are often older, parents, less educated and browner. Or am I stereotyping?)

In any case. My point is that it irritates the hell out of me when I see an argument about feminism in which neither side seems to actually remember that feminism isn't about what women or men "choose" to do: it's about the way society is structured.

We Gonna Shake that Wang Dang Doodle or The Fetish of Commodities

Each time you think the GOP has finally perfected its stupidity, that it has reached the uppermost Everest of stupidity, that there is no summit of stupidity to overtop the height of stupidity it has currently attained, that it has ascended the last ridge of stupidity and now overlooks the broad plain of human ignorance and stupefaction, observing, with a certain smugness, the exhausted forms of the ideological sherpas and porters littering the wake of its traverse, it flings a grapple over a rocky spire rising up from the tower of stupidity above which you thought nothing could tower and begins, anew, to hoist itself to higher heights of cognitive austerity from which it may fling itself into the void of its own drooling dumb-ass-ness.

I speak, of course, of Dr. Rand Paul, GOP nominee for the United States Senate for the state of Kentucky.

Now, I've been out of range of civilization for about a week. One of my brothers and I have been floating the Chippewa River for that period, coming ashore only to revictual and refresh and barter with the locals for marijuana, whiskey, corn meal, and deer-fly repellent.
You may judge of my surprise when, upon landing for good, we discovered the political debate had been carried back to Ole Kentucky of 1964 and the re-animated ghosts of Jim Crow and the Night Riders were rallying the GOP behind the late, lost, cause of segregating the lunch counter at the Woolworth's Five and Dime.

Its enough to revive my faith in the two-Party system. No matter how inept and incompetent is my beloved Democratic Party, no matter how cynical, expedient, feckless, corrupt, and cowardly its leadership, I can always rely on the good old GOP to save it. I can always count on the GOP to demonstrate to the voters that, no matter how fucked up things are with the Democratic Party in charge, they will only get worse if the mandate of Heaven is passed to the GOP.

Thank you Republican Party. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I wish I could buy you a drink or something.

I almost feel like sending a donation to Mr. Paul's campaign.

Almost.

Apparently, it was this interview of Paul by Rachel Maddow that kicked over the beehive.
I'm sure you've seen it. Hell, even I have seen it. And if I've seen it, you have sure nuff seen it.
So, I won't go into it. There are so many things wrong with his assertions that you greatly overestimate the analytic ability of taddyporter if you think I can unwind them all. And its ground that's been covered and re-covered so many times you wouldn't think it necessary to cover it one more time.

Not that the outrages defined by Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act have been disposed of. Not by a long shot. But the notion that defiance of Title II has some basis in principles of individual self-determination or free speech (!?) has been disposed of. Many times. To the satisfaction of all except those yearning to revive the Confederacy.

Defiance of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is recognized as the act of a splitter and a scofflaw. There are no defenders of Mr. Paul's position. Not even the usual suspects among GOP deep thinkers have come to his aid. Well, almost none. I believe Mr. Paul has, himself, blithered something meant to be a repudiation of his defense of Jim Crow.

He continues, however, to mingle the concepts of personal and private property, injecting confusion into the public discussion. He wants to revive the old arguments about so-called rights of property that were marshalled against the enemies of Jim Crow in the first place. He thinks he can trick voters into believing GOP opposition to desegregation isn't violent or racist or anti-American but based on defense of some abstract and mistaken belief in the rights of property.

Even when property is employed to harm citizens, the GOP will defend the right to do damage; I disagree with your destruction but I will defend to the death your right to destroy.

Here's the deal; personal property is a thing, a possession. Private property is a relationship, a concept of ownership that treats an enterprise as if it were personal property.

Even if the enterprise is organized as a for-profit business subsisting on the labor of thousands of workers and the savings of thousands of investors, the convenient fiction of private property permits treatment of the enterprise as if it were the creature of a single proprietor, subsisting on the labor and savings of a single individual. Absurd, I know, but there it is.

Confusing the two categories, personal property and private property, leads or rather, misleads, to the error that the owner of private property may dispose of it as she or he desires. The owner may serve who they want and may exclude who they want. It is, after all, their property.

But, you know, it tis and it tisn't, as my grandmother would've said.

Any profit making enterprise depends on the wider community for its profits. Even if you believe the capitalist mode of production is the highest form of human economic organization, it must be understood that no profit making enterprise stands on its own.

The enterprise depends on the fire and police protection provided by the public organs of order. It relies on commerical codes to regulate its transactions. It relies on courts to enforce its contracts. It relies on public thoroughfares to carry on its commerce. It relies on public utilities to provide heat and light. It relies on public sewage and water treatment systems. It assumes that clean air and water and soil will be guaranteed. It relies on a standard system of weights and measures. It relies on a public currency into which all commodity values can be translated.

Private property is embedded in a vast web of goods and services provided by the public and its agents, without which, profits would be impossible. No business could carry the expense of providing all the services required for its operation and many of those services are simply beyond the reach of a single private property enterprise, no matter how vast.

The public provides these goods and services for the consumption of all because we know a well ordered community provides a living for us all. We do not begrudge the private property owner's profiting from the public goods. We encourage it.

However, having benefited from the public's largesse, the private property owner may not exclude custom from their property for any reason other than ability to pay.

After forty-five years, you think the GOP would have learned this. Its the salvation of the Democratic Party they do not. Or will not.

Against the Name Change: a Polemic

By popular demand! A couple days ago, I was having a conversation with a few Twitter friends about name-changing. As most of you know, I'm getting married soon--only a couple months now! But I'm not changing my name. I think the last time I seriously thought that I would change my name upon getting married, I was in high school. I've been pretty unswervingly anti-name-change for quite a while, and I didn't seriously consider it for even a moment after I got engaged. So, while it seems obvious to me, I guess people are hungry for a post about it, since when I said "obviously I should blog about this," I got many tweets, direct messages, and even emails telling me that I really should.

I know I will get a lot of flack for this. I know I will offend readers and upset them. Even ones I really care about (sorry, guys. I really do love you). But, you know, I gotta be me. I'm not going to go and criticize women who changed their name ten years ago. What's done is done. However, I will continue to encourage any woman who has not already changed her name to NOT DO IT. To that end, I want to first debunk all of the arguments I've seen in favor of the name change.

First, a CAVEAT: I know there are men who change their names to their wife's name after getting married. However, the number of them is so small that, for all practical purposes, they might as well not exist. The existence of occasional exceptions does not prove the absence of major cultural phenomena which, face it, we can all agree on: the vast majority of women change their names when they get married, and the ones who don't either keep their birth name or hyphenate. For the most part, I would guess at least 90% of the time, men keep their own names. I would provide statistics, but I can't find any, because people haven't really studied this issue.

Now, to the arguments!

1. It's my father's name. No it's not. It's your name. It's the name you were given at birth, and the name you have had and pronounced as yours for twenty or thirty or forty or however many years now. Let's say you were named Shannon, after your father, who was also named Shannon (it used to be more popular as a man's name). Would you just give up your first name with no protest, because hey, it's your father's name! No, when a name is given to you, it becomes yours. I don't care whether the name originally belonged to your father, your grandfather, or fucking Adolf Hitler, it's yours now. You can tell this argument is bogus because it's almost never used in service of men changing their names. Funny how that works. Also, it doesn't make sense. Yes, taking your father's last name is a patriarchal naming tradition. But taking your husband's name upon marriage is a way more patriarchal tradition that is based on the notion that women belong to their husbands and give up part of their identity when you get married. Whereas, when you're born, you don't really have an identity. The two things are just not in the same league.

2. I'm not that attached to my name. That's because you were born into a culture where women are expected to change their names upon getting married, where an unmarried woman is regarded as an incomplete person who hasn't really grown up yet. Ever heard a man say "I'm not that attached to my name"? Maybe, but you don't see them saying that and then deciding to just give it up. No, what you are doing is you are using this as a justification for a default rule which, as we all know, is bogus.

3a. I want to have the same name as my children. Assuming this is a reasonable goal, that's not a justification for choosing the default of changing your name to your husband's. Just as easily, your husband could change his name to yours and you could name the kids after you. But, once again, we hardly ever see this argument used toward this end--it's another justification for the default rule, which really means "I don't want to make waves."

3b. I want to have the same name as my children. I actually don't think this is a valid reason. Why is it necessary to have the same name as your kids? No one has ever been able to give me a straight answer. Where I come from, which is a culture way more patriarchal than this one, kids don't have the same name as their fathers OR their mothers. A child takes his dad's first name as his last name. And yet! There is no family destruction! Somehow, everyone knows who is related to who. The schools do not implode because they can't figure out which parents and which kids go together. I think this need is an excellent demonstration of burgeoning American anxiety about the new cultural reality: there are many different kinds of families, lots of step-parents and divorces and legal guardians. Thus, people want to have the same names to reassure themselves that they belong together. No, unlike all those other things, this is real. It's a way of signaling that your bond with your kids is biological or "real" in a world with a lot of fluid families. But when you support the notion that biology is the most important factor in forming a family, you are supporting a harmful status quo that privileges heterosexual, married, biological families. I want all kinds of families to get social, political, and economic support and validation. Don't you?

There also seems to be this bizarre aversion to answering questions. "People will be confused," the name changers say. So what? It's a confusion that is really easy to clear up. If you are named Mary Smith and your daughter is named Candice Jones, and someone cocks an eye at you, you just say "I kept my name when I got married." EASY. Or whatever short explanation applies to whatever you decided to do. See how easy that was? The world did not fall apart. You are going to get questions that are way more annoying that that from the kid that you just had. Frankly, I think that a lot of the reason that women who changed or are planning to change their names get angry at people who are anti-name-change, like me, is because they picked the choice that they thought they would never have to defend, and not having to defend it was a major draw. It seems like the easy choice. I get that. But that doesn't make it the right one.

4. I want to change my name to show my husband that I love him. I don't even know what to say about this one. I don't understand why you need to change part of your identity, the name you are known by, how you think of yourself, for love. Aren't you showing him you love him by getting married, by agreeing that you want to spend a non-insubstantial part of your time, energy, and money for your entire life on him?

5. I want the world to know that we're a unit. Great! I don't see why you're going to need to change your name for this. Once again, him changing his name would accomplish the exact same thing, and I don't see this argument being used to support men changing their names. But, to be honest, I think having the same name is kind of a ridiculous litmus test for people being a unit. People are going to know you're a unit, no matter what you are named. Because you are going to show up at a party, or a family reunion, or at the parent teacher conference, and you are going to say "This is my husband, Joe." Done! Everyone knows. How you act, what you do together, and the fact that you love each other is going to be way more important than what you're named. As I explained about, the notion that you need to have the same name to be regarded as a unit is an improper, illiberal, unjust privileging of married heterosexual families and partnerships over all other kinds of families and partnerships, a privilege I reject.

6. It reminds me of my commitment. This is another one I don't get. Do you really need a reminder? Are you going to forget that you are married? Are you that worried about your ability to stay monogamous (if, indeed, monogamy is your goal. It isn't mine, but I realize a lot of people prefer it)? No, again, this is another bogus reason that is used to support the default. Men do not need to change their names to remember that they are married. Why do you need to?

7. It's easier. Actually, as far as I can tell, it's not. Look, for example, at this helpful list of things you should do to change your name. Does that sound easy to you? It sounds like a real pain in the ass. I guess the "it's easier" part is that if you call the credit card company and say you are someone's wife, they'd be more likely to believe you if you have the same last name. But in this age of pre-authorizations and security, how often do situations like that come up? Also, if the credit card/bank account/insurance/car loan isn't in both of your names, then it's in his name, which means he should be taking care of his own damn business anyway. Problem solved!

8. It's tradition. This is the real reason, that's at the bottom of most of these reasons. It's usually more than enough for people who don't think about gender a lot. But liberal women and feminists have spent most of their time arguing that tradition is stupid, and so that's why they have to resort to the reasons above. But the fact is that women changing names at marriage is one of the most traditional traditions of all. And it's a bad one. It's based on the idea a woman goes from belonging to father to belonging to husband, that regards the man as the head of the family, that regards women as inferior to men, that assumes that the public sphere is for men and the private sphere is for women. And when you decide to change your name, you are supporting and enforcing that tradition. You just can't make this choice in a vacuum.
-------------------------------------

Now that I've sufficiently demolished the case for changing one's name, which I must confess, I find to be a very flimsy case indeed, here's the case for keeping one's name. It's a sign of autonomy in a world where women are still regarded as inferior and are expected to defer to their husbands. It requires that you do no paperwork. It requires that you make no announcements about your new name, or that you ever have to visit the Social Security Administration related to your name. Your old friends will still be able to find you. All the work that you've already done under your name will continue to be identified with your current self. You will be, in your small way, working to change the culture of male-dominated families and male-dominated societies. Even those dreaded questions, that people will ask you, will give you an opportunity to present a different model and advance the cause of gender equality.

Plus, you'll be kind of an iconoclast, until everyone else starts doing it. And who wants to follow tradition? Come on, we all know tradition sucks.

silence.

"the police threw a “flash bang” through the front window. it blinded everyone inside; it lit aiyana on fire.

the news reported a tussle with the grandmother, during which the firearm discharged. everyone in the family says there was no tussle, that the grandmother was throwing herself over the baby when aiyana was shot in the head.

what do you call the blinded, terrified groping of a grandmother who knows her grandchildren are in the room, blasted from safety and sleep into chaos and danger, whose granddaughter is on fire? how do you comfort a man like aiyana’s father, which was forced to lie face down in his daughter’s blood by the same police officers who killed her?

the police shot and killed aiyana. they shot her in the forehead. her family saw her brain on the couch. by accident, perhaps. which doesn’t even matter to a 7-year-old. you don’t get let off any hooks for your intentions in this case, officer." (source)

I want all of us to think about how often these 'accidents' happen.
I want all of us to think about where these 'accidents' happen.

Because they aren't happening in New Trier.
They aren't happening in Westwood.

Then I want you to think about those to whom these 'accidents' occur.

And that's all I want you to do.  Think.
No talk. No discussion.

Because I am too goddamn angry to say another word about this.

Bad Feminist

Thank god for this must-read piece in IHE today. I very seldom keep up with academic news any more, but an old Internet friend posted the link on FB. It happens that she herself is also an unemployed adjunct, but I probably only clicked it because in my head she's filed under the category "mommy" rather than "academic"--I met her online via a mommy forum--and "mommy" is where most of my identity lies these days.

Which, you know, I'm not all that thrilled about. I'm quite happy with my actual *life*. More so than when I was an academic. But it bugs me that my public identity is so limited. PK will be off to college in 10 years, and what the hell will I do then? I'm fairly happy channelling my training and skills into supporting the teachers at PK's school, but it's K-8; I don't see myself hanging around on the PTO once he's off to high school.

On a day-to-day basis, though, that stuff doesn't worry me much beyond hoping I don't sound like an asshole when I use the phrase "as an educator" during a PTO meeting, or feeling embarrassed when the guy at the plant nursery asks me about the title "Dr." on my debit card. What bugs me more is the feminist problem: having no money of my own.

That and the exchange I had yesterday with Pseudonymous Kid, who wants to be an amateur scientist--ie, to do pure research without being beholden to a university--when he grows up.
PK: But how can I do that?
Me: Well, you can get a different job for money, like working in a restaurant.
PK: But how would I get people to give me money for a lab, or fancy equipment? It seems like the days of the amateur scientist are over.
Me: Well, that's why most researchers work at universities these days. You get a lab and you can do research, but you have to teach.
PK: But that's not an amateur like people used to be.
Me: No. Back during the Renaissance, amateur scientists were usually people who had inherited money. But nowadays, you need to get a job. Unless you want to marry someone rich*.
PK: No way. That's for lazy people. I want my own job.
Me (slightly stung): Well, wait? I don't have a job. Am I lazy?

He's right, though. Amateur educator I may be, these days, but it boils down to the money, which for most of us means a job. Which more and more seems to me like THE modern feminist problem. We live in a capitalist world. With money of one's own, one can buy not only a room, but solutions to most "women's problems." Abortion access? Not an issue if you have money. Political influence? Write a fat check, or several; hell, start your own news outlet (just please make it better than HuffPo). Work/life balance? Hire a housekeeper and a nanny. Domestic violence? Move the fuck out of town, and/or hire a private detective and a good lawyer, even a bodyguard.

But like I said, most of this stuff doesn't bug me in my day-to-day life. Because in my day-to-day life I have a husband with a good job; I married rich. Which is great, for me. But it doesn't quite solve anything on a *systemic* level; after all, if he gets sick of me, or I him, there goes that. I might be able to get alimony and PK (along with child support), but only if he were generous, or if I went through long and ugly court bullshit (and how would I pay for a lawyer?).

If you were thinking, a couple of paragraphs ago, that domestic violence is a little trickier than that, or that having money might solve most of A woman's problems, but that Feminism is more about systemic injustice than whether or not a small group of individual women can buy their way out of (or into) Teh Patriarchy, well, of course. But like I said, on a day-to-day basis I'm good; it's only when I think more broadly, about my public and social identity, that I start to feel like being a housewife, rather than a professor, is a problem.

Of course, even with a job, one ultimately depends on The System, as a hell of a lot of people have been finding out lately. The article above is pointing this out, too: like the newly laid-off middle class, adjunct faculty have been confronting the fact that the personal ultimately depends on the political for a while now.

Which, as I started off saying, is a thought that makes my own personal situation feel a little better. At least in the sense of assuaging my guilt about having "chosen" to leave academia--which I didn't. I just chose to leave a single job. The fact that that decision jettisoned my career? I blame the system.

As another FB friend--in this case, also a mama-academic I met online, but differently; she's a blog reader who, it turned out, was also a buddy of one of my underemployed local PTO mom friends--also pointed out today via a link, the system makes bad feminists of us all.

So, ok.

This is going to be long.

No lie, the thread on that post below about friends and their relationships to one's kid made me feel crazy. And it's come up again enough that I want to take a few to revisit, revise, clarify. In a long and intertextual way. I didn't give that much space to the claims about kids and bigotry in the original post because, frankly, I didn't think they were all that controversial. They are, in large part, rehashes of shit B has written here for years. Some examples ...


From this post:

Why do we take the institutional status quo as authoritative, as normative even, and NOT take basic facts of human biology as authoritative and normative? Yes, individuals can choose not to have children. More power to them. But collectively, on both the social and species level, we cannot make that choice. Being living creatures and all. Moreover, the economic disadvantages of having kids pretty much accrue because we've all agreed to alienate our labor. Ok, fine, but let's don't pretend that it is the children, rather than the social structure, that is the "choice."

From this post:

[Children] are human beings. Actual members of society. Who, yes, happen to be in a dependent position. Nonetheless, inasmuch as they are members of society, they have a claim on society to help care for them in their dependence so that they do not starve. Now, since they have parents, there are many aspects of their dependence that society needn't bother with: y'all don't have to wipe Pseudonymous Kid's ass, you don't have to give him his bath, you don't have to read him mouse books over and over and over again. [...] But yeah, goddamnit, you do have to deal with his presence in public spaces, even if he's acting like a little turd; you do have to recognize that because I have all that other stuff to do, I might be slightly less at the disposal of my employer for a few years (then again, no one should be at the disposal of their employer 24/7 anyway); you do need to deal with the times when I bring him into work because there is work I can't put off and there is no one else who can care for him on that day; and you do, I think, have an obligation to figure out social and economic policies that take into account the fact that this is not only my life, but the life of most adults at some point sooner or later. And in exchange, my friends, I and he have an obligation to deal with you when you have had a shitty day and are being a turd in a public space; or when you have to leave work early to pick up a friend at the airport or because you have opera tickets or a hot date; or when you have to call in sick; or when your illness turns out to be acute and far more expensive than any individual can afford; or when you get old and need to retire, and yadda yadda yadda.

And note this: I am not saying you have to deal with children because someday they will deal with you; or that other people have to deal with you because you have dealt, or will at some point deal with them. I am saying we have to deal with each other because refusing to do so is wrong, anti-social, anti-human. Everything else comes after that.

And then this one:

[T]his "children are okay, as long as I never have to deal with them" thing--including the resentment of people who get "more" resources because their health insurance covers their family, or because their kids get tuition breaks at the colleges where they teach, or who breastfeed in public, or whatever. Children are part of society. They are human beings. They are not exotic pets. They get to go into restaurants; they get to eat in places other than public bathrooms; they get to have bad days; they get to have their needs met, too.

Yes. Kids have certain needs that are specific to being kids. [...] Admittedly, other people are inconvenient sometimes.

Now, to what I wrote. I want to pull out the paragraph, the one of thirteen, that everyone responded to:

Now, maybe I meet someone who doesn't necessarily dislike Little V in a personal way but who is "not really a kid person." And here I mean not necessarily someone who doesn't want to have kids or who doesn't have any experience being around kids or someone who lives a lifestyle that doesn't produce any exposure to kids. I mean someone who is expressive about a "I don't really like kids" attitude or a "I hate going to restaurants or museums where kids are making noise" attitude or a "of course it's fine for other people to have kids but I don't want to be around them" attitude. This sort of thing is a deal-breaker for me. I've gotten pretty rigid about it in recent years as I become more assured in my certainty that it's an anti-feminist attitude and you suck if you hold it. Kids are a vulnerable, disempowered, inevitable portion of the human community and you do not get to "not like" them or to wish that weren't a part of your public space. Not allowed. I invite you to swap out "kids" for any other disempowered community in the above phrases ("women," "schizophrenics," "hispanics," "the blind") and notice what an asshole you sound like. If you are the type to espouse this position, you and I are never going to be close.

There were several comments I made that I feel like expand on this helpfully, and there were lots of comments by readers, both helpful and not, that nicely illustrate some of the problems here, but the post is getting way too long, so I'm gonna not pull them. Instead, I will condense and reiterate some things -

I do know that my rhetoric got increasingly polemical as the thread went on, but seriously, y'all, that is a way measured contention up there from the original post. It would be a measured thing for my real-life self to say, let alone for Sybil Vane to write on a blog called Bitch PhD.

I understand the extent to which people understand their 'I don't like kids" attitude as connected to their feminism. One of the very important works of feminism has been to authorize non-child-bearing/non-maternal subjectivites for women, and that has only been shakily accomplished. I understand, or know of and intellectually understand at any rate, the cultural pressures for women to be mothers and to feel maternal. I endorse wholeheartedly the rejection of those pressures. I reject the naturalness of maternity or maternal feelings.

I also understand that the deployment of an analogy about hatred of other marginalized groups was problematic for people. And I understand why - an analogy implies equation or comparison, it makes a rhetorical gesture that seems to level differences and eliminate nuance. There is, of course, a reason that some people ban analogies. It's rhetorically cheap, I concede. But listen: the way I deployed it in the first place was to ask people to think about how it sounds when they say, "I hate X people." And then, by extension, to think about why it is that it sounds assholeish when they say such things. In other words, it was with awareness of the progressive sophistication of my audience (or hopefulness of it anyway), that I used the device. With awareness that bigotry and stereotypes emerge from unexamined privilege and assumptions, that the presumed sensibility of this blog's readers is such that they know enough to be too damn embarrassed to ever say something like, "I really hate it when there are a ton of deaf people at the store," and that a quick examination of the reasons *why* they would feel shameful about saying such a thing should reveal that those same reasons apply to a statement that places "kids" in the same spot.

I never anywhere suggest that the struggles or lived experience of children are equivalent to or look like even the struggles of gay people or Arab Americans or the blind. I took care not to. I can understand why the rhetorical gesture seems to veer close to this, and again, I concede it was a kind of shock tactic, but really, this is not something I suggested. I do in fact continue to think that it's intellectually credible to think about why some biases are stigmatized and some aren't. In that service I deployed the analogy.

Ok, so. Some people have pointed out that I am being an asshole by accusing people of being bigots when bigotry against children is not an actual thing that exists. In some cases, people compare the non-oppressed status of children to the actually oppressed status of gays/Jews/the disabled/whatever. This oppression Olympics game is not interesting to me. "I am actually oppressed, and any discussion of this bigotry offends me." Just not interested. Until the oppression gold-medal winner is raised up we aren't allowed to think about the runners-up? Good luck with that. Or with thinking in any way about your oppression as you use a computer and the internet and communicate in English.

Does bigotry only exist if we can measure oppressive effects? That is, if you are a bigot alone in a forest, are you still a bigot? People remind me all through the comments that they are never mean to women and children, they do their best to be civil, they just don't enjoy the time. And as I say repeatedly, whatever. I don't care what you feel really, insofar as I can't ever really know how you feel, just how you act. Act decently, that's really the baseline. But there's really no reason why I oughtn't have an opinion about the feelings you feel authorized to express. And to attach values to the source of that authorization.

Certainly no one disagrees that children are a vulnerable and exploited class. Not up for debate. And we know they are more vulnerable to all sorts of things (poor nutrition, economic disadvantage, laxly enforced regulations about product safety, insular individualistic behavior) than their adult counterparts. I don't know, as I asked in a recent comment, what precise data you would want to see if you wanted to see information about the systemic and institutional implementation of anti-kid bigotry. I assume you want to know that children suffer as a result of your hating them before you feel compelled to modify your attitude, yes? Is that a good-feeling position? Obviously, employment stats, earning potential, imprisonment rates, these are not the right metrics. I do think this should be legible to everyone: when you drop a friendship with a person because he has become a parent, when you roll your eyes or make a shitty comment to a parent or kid about that kid's (not pathological or destructive) behavior in a public place, the kid may not experience what you are putting out there, but you alienate/isolate the parent. You do. And that sense of alienation/isolation trickles down to the care the kid receives and to the messages she gets about her role in the world the role of parenting in society at large. It does.

People repeatedly justified hating kids on the basis of kidness being temporary. Those unlikeable behaviors are the result of incomplete socialization, they say, and will eventually be left behind. I will treat, this logic implies, that creature as fully human when she leaves behind her partiality. The silliness of this should be apparent - firstly, because while each individual kid may grow up, kids as a class will always exist (I think I ripped that line from Twisty but I can't look for it); secondly, because it full-on admits the figuring of childhood as something to be gotten over, a handicap to be cured of, a regrettable but necessary stage on the way to full humanity. Which, I assume, is again relinquished once one enters a stage in life, either by virtue of age, disease, or accident, when one is not capable of fully autonomous and self-contained existence. This is - and here is my most basic point - the thing you are supporting when you say, "I hate kids," and then insist on claiming it is just a social preference, a little personality quirk, perhaps one you even feel proud of, and one that no one has any business assigning a moral value to. You are contributing to the discursive reduction of children to sub-human status. Childhood is not a bad smell you get to hold your nose around until it passes. It is an iteration of humanity.

When I called this attitude antifeminist, I didn't even originally mean the thing some readers mentioned, which is the extent to which kid hatred tends to disproportionately isolate women and/or be a veiled discursive gesture towards critiquing mothering. What I mean is that as an intellectual/activist sensibility, feminism (and so here I guess I mean something more like radical feminism than cultural feminism - terms that may not really work as oppositional, but for illustration's sake ...) is fundamentally opposed to patriarchy. That is, to systems that are based on oppression/pathologizing of the powerless by the powerful.

[ETA: I just noticed that blogger published this without my final concluding paragraph - it had FLOURISH!! - which I can't find the energy to remember/retype, so I will conclude with this instead.]

Happy fucking mother's day

So I just got around to reading the comment thread to this post. Jesus fuck, no wonder I hardly blog any more.

I hope Sybil is having an awesome fucking day and that all the kid-haters get therapy.

The Groove Slightly Transformed

The general discourse surrounding the end of the semester is one of exhaustion. People talk of wanting to slump on their couches for days after frantically grading the last exam, or of taking 3 days to just sleep and do yoga after the last paper is commented on. I approach the end of the semester the same way I approach all transition periods: with a manic burst of organizational energy and ambition.

My opinion about whether or not you should go to grad school notwithstanding, and the puniness of my paycheck also notwithstanding, and the dehumanizing components of the profession even more notwithstanding, living life on a school schedule is sweet. Not in the "oh my, how terribly tiring it must be to spend 12 hours a week in the classroom and grade while sipping mint juleps' bullshitty kind of way, but in the 'semesters always start and end' kind of way. Everything about my person loves inhabiting rhythms. And while the manic transition is part of my own personal version of the rhythm, it probably emerges as a partial response to the part of the cycle that is more free form: a month in December/January and 3 months of summer with relatively minimal structure.

So anyhoo, I am planning a lot of shit these days, as I do in any transition. [This applies to thing like moving as well. Years ago, Mr V and I were moving overseas for a bit and needed to put a bunch of shit in storage. So we did those pod things, and they like you to be able to give a rough inventory of what's in each pod for insurance purposes. And I think most normal people interpret this as, "pod 1 has clothes and boxes, pod 2 has furniture, pod 3 has all the electronics." The end. I spent a week taping notecards to every single item in the house - "microwave"; "box of silverware"; "office supplies"; "sofa"; "bed frame." Then, when our friends came to help us move, I taped 4 gift bags to the front porch in a configuration that mirrored the configuration of the 4 pods in the driveway. As you moved your item to a pod, you simply removed the notecard and dropped it in the corresponding bag. It is no exaggeration for me to call the effective execution of this process one of the most serene and proud events of my life.] So far, here's how the vision for the summer looks:

- We are spending 5 weeks on vacation. Gah, what assholes! I know. But really: for a 2 week stretch in June and for a 2 week stretch in July, Little V, Mr V, and I are staying at rental houses in/around the town Mr. V works in M-Th. So he will still work for 4 days each of those weeks, but we will have lunches together and dinners together and much sleeping together. So, those are versions of vacation, but, I mean, I'll be spending 4 weeks in rental houses with Little V all day and not a super clear sense of what we will do with ourselves. They are definitely vacation-y locations though, so.

- We are spending 1 week at the beach with Mr. V's whole family. Yes. Yes, we are.

- This leaves me with, starting next week, 8 uncommitted weeks before school start, 5 of which I have childcare for. During those 5 weeks I want to accomplish:
- Writing the introduction to a special issue of a journal I am co-editing with a friend.
- Turn 2 diss chapters into something resembling articles and send off
- Revise an article that I sent off and had rejected in December
- Put together 3 syllabi for the Fall. All 3 are new preps.
- Read something.
- Quit smoking.

Can I do this internet? Probably not. But it makes me feel so peaceful to map it all out and fill in my google calendar with different colors. Got any good summertime plans? Are you psychic and aware of where I am spending 4 weeks of family time and aware also of nonobnoxious things I can do there? If so, call me.

policy camp day 2: when you're not a leader but ok with it

It's not that much of a loss, really. I've always known that being a number 1 makes the goosebumps rise, and not in that good way. This is not to say that I am crushed or abashed. It's a confirmation. And it's not to say that I am the one who follows.  The pleasant surprise in this whole day was that it confirmed that I am...uncomfortably neutral about control.

The day started with our policy elevator speeches; I was paired with the NJ Supreme Court law clerk who frankly said, "I don't think these work. But go ahead." And I laughed.  Then she laughed. I got what she was saying.  When she said it in the larger group though, you could feel the room pull away from her.  But she stood up there and just shrugged. 'I've worked on staffs,' she said. 'And these are nice, but they don't remember these. You have to build the relationship and negotiate.'

It was a pragmatic view of the political process and the room full of advocates didn't really shine to that. For most of us, we like to think that if only folks knew the extent of the issue, that's all it takes.  But it doesn't.  It takes politics.  And I admired her guts for saying that, for injecting an element of real politik into the morning. It was a lesson for me:

Don't get so caught up in your issue that you forget you operate in a very real world where having the facts and telling the story isn't enough.
Being the smartest girl in the room is not enough.
Being the smartest girl who knows the right people sometimes is.

I hope I stay in touch with her after this; in a few years, this woman will either be a very good, and very connected, lobbyist or a very good, and very connected, state senator, congressman or judge for New Jersey.

How was my elevator speech? Ah, it was serviceable; it won't set the world on fire but no one called it crazy.

And that's another thing; it is so incredibly nurturing here! I imagined a policy shark tank, a boot camp of sorts. But while the group discussions get heated, and positions are strenuously defended, there is always consensus to make us whole again.

Consensus. A word that used to make me itch in impatience. But now I see the use for it. In our session about Effective Teams, we had to agree on what helps or blocks teams; we couldn't take a simple vote and any disagreements had to be resolved through consensus. I found that I'm mostly ok with switching my vote. Oh, I'm wed to my position but often I will see the value of another person's view and give way. But only if their view is valuable and they made a good case for it - or if there was a greater good that could benefit and didn't depend on my position.

What was also surprising was figuring out what each of us valued in our teams. Half of us wanted everyone to contribute; the other half, only if the contribution was value-added. Most felt that conflict was a block to progress, but ok if framed as debate; most required structure and felt that personal feeling talk could be a slippery slope for losing focus. Above all, we felt it was important, no matter individual positions, for the team to enjoy working with one another.

Of course, when we compared our findings with actual research about effective teams, we discovered that some of what we preferred wasn't supported. Fascinating. Who knew conflict was a boon? Who knew that assuming equal competency levels was a block? (Lesson: always identify your weakest link and allocate resources appropriately!) It definitely made me stop and evaluate my current team and how I work in it.

Which brings me to the FIRO-B test. We all submitted an assessment before we arrived and received the results. Wow. It measured on Inclusivity, Control and Openness, on a 54-point range. (You can look up the FIRO-B to see how it works.) Spookily accurate.

I had an overall score of 14 - out of 54!! My Inclusion score was low: I prefer being alone vs. interacting with others.  My Control score was also low; I like little structure, don't care about controlling others and don't give a shit about you trying to control me, because you won't. (I paraphrase.) And my Openness score was medium; I prefer some but not a lot of warmth and closeness in 1-1 relationships. Again, spookily accurate.

In other words, I'll be part of your team but only as long as I agree with the direction; as soon as my and the group's interests diverge, I will bounce. Interesting, isn't it? (Perhaps I should warn M-.)

I don't think I was the only one struck with their results. Perhaps it was seeing ourselves rendered in print that made us all head for the bar immediately after the session.

A Love Bizarre

We all want the stuff
That's found in our wildest dreams
-Prince
Before chemotherapy and psychotherapy and physical therapy and presurgery and surgery and postsurgery, I had a pretty rich dream life.
There were several recurring themes.
There was taddy and the lady barber. There was taddy and the woman who worked Wednesdays at la Panaderia de Guadalajara. There was taddy and the lady letter carrier. There was taddy and Dr. Michelle, the horse vet. There was taddy and Mrs. Ibarra, Poco's first grade teacher.
There was taddy and my buddy's wife. I'm not proud of that one but, hey, I don't plan 'em, I just dream 'em.
Still and all, as you can see, a pretty diverse somnambulant universe. One had only to tuck the covers under the chin, wade through the previews of coming attractions, settle on the night's soporific stanzas, and wiggle into the downy bower of my very own fantasies.
After a couple weeks of chemotherapy, though, the whole dreamscape business went to shit. My waking hours flattened out, divided into those hours I spent dreading the approaching drip, the hours spent enduring the drip, and the hours following the drip during which I watched stuff drop off my body.
Sleep was no longer a distinct state, merely a deeper form of blockheadedness. Dreams disappeared along with my hair.
I have never slept the same since. After a few weeks to recover from chemo, I went into surgery which recreated the previous appalling conditions, only at a single shocking strike instead of over a period of a month or so.
Following surgery there was a period of intense withdrawal and self-pity, neither of which really feeds the imagination. Then there was therapy to deal with the withdrawal and self-pity. Time spent with the therapist should have given me material to deposit into my fantasy bank but only increased my appreciation for self-pity.
In the last couple weeks, my physical strength has begun to return. That has been the most important thing for improving my mood, just like I told the therapist. I have a regular physical therapy routine which used to be torture but is now paying dividends. Healthy mind in a healthy body and all that.
In another month, I should be able to go swimming and a month after that, start a weight lifting program. Once that happens, stand back, world!
My dreams have returned but not in the way I hoped. Gone are the soporific afternoons with the lady horse doctor. The happy hours spent trading lesson plans with elementary teachers have been, apparently, sent to detention.
No. Now I have spooky, demented dreams. In my dreams, I argue with myself about the dream I'm having.
The other night, I dreamt I was coming out of a building, a bar or somewheres, and I walked to the spot where I'd parked my SUV. The SUV was gone. I experienced great anxiety and, for the next hour or so, in dreaming time, I hunted all over for my SUV before concluding somebody boosted my SUV.
At this point, meta-taddy appeared and reminded me that I didn't own an SUV. Regular taddy replied that, of course I didn't own an SUV in real life but this was a dream and maybe in dreamland I owned an SUV since I always wanted an SUV but never was able to justify buying one and it could be important to the integrity of the dream to find or, at least, to believe in, the SUV.
Meta-taddy sneered (there's a lot of sneering in my dreams, too, lately). He said only a chump wants to drive an SUV, especially now. Hadn't I heard about the deep water wells blowing out and fouling hundreds of miles of coastline? Not to mention that the national appetite for petroleum is driving our whole foriegn and national security policies.
Then regular taddy says, look, its a fucking dream you fucking fuck; do we really have to have this fucking argument again for the chrissake and at that point I wake up with a pounding headache. I mean, what fun is that shit? No wonder I can't get more than two hours sleep at a time.
Send for Mrs. Ibarra. Rapido.

Mayday

Dear Democratic Party:

You are in trouble.

At my local May Day pro-immigrant rally yesterday, run by the UFW, the rally leader finished up the speechifying by thanking the Anglos who had turned out, pointing out to the small and mostly Latino audience* the various white organizations/allies that were represented.

The woman representing the local Democrats had to announce her presence. "And the Democrats!" Apparently the rally leader didn't recognize her.

His response? "Yeah, well, they gotta start doing something."


When the local Democratic party rep has to announce her own presence to one of your long-time core constituencies, and the rally leader is unimpressed, you might have a problem.


*Local politics also has a problem when the division between Latino activists, in a community with an enormous Latino population, and white activists, is so strong that most of the Anglos clearly know each other from their previous campaigns/activism, and the Latinos clearly know each other from their previous campaigns/activism, but the two groups clearly don't recognize each other at all.