General – Page 222

Cheating’s allowed right?

Working under the assumption that the only rule to guest blogging is that there are no rules, I’m going to publish something I posted on my blog last month. It was in honor of my sister’s 23rd birthday. As the NBC promos used to say, “If you haven’t seen it before, it’s new to you!”

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It’s my sister’s birthday today.

When I realized I was going to have to step in and be her parent so many years ago I made promises to myself: to never hit, to always listen, to remember that in order to get respect you must also give it, to let her just be who she needed to be and to teach her tolerance and try and instill kindness towards others. I was young and I made mistakes but none, I hope, that did permanent damage. That’s about all you can hope for somedays.

She doesn’t know it but during some very dark, lonely times she was the spark that forced me to keep going. The person I am today was largely shaped by the person I needed to be for her. There’s no way to know what I would have been like had she not come into my life, but I can’t imagine that my life would have been any better. I’m certain that I would have felt the loss, even if I couldn’t name it.

There have been trials and tribulations, but they’ve been greatly outnumbered by the sheer joy of knowing her, of watching her figure out who she is and who she wants to be. Along the way I’ve experienced her joys and her pains. There were some things I was able to buffer her from even as I wondered if I should, if I wasn’t perhaps doing her a disservice by not allowing her to stumble and fall and learn from those mistakes. But the times when I couldn’t help her came often enough so I justified my meddling. The day that I had to say to her, “I’m extremely disappointed in you and I can not fix this” was one of the hardest, most painful, heart-renching days of my life. (It was a bold faced lie though. I would have turned things inside out and upside down to set things straight. And I almost had to.) It needed to be said, however, to wake her up from the daze that she was under. It’s such a fine line, to support someone while at the same time kicking them in the ass.

On these days I remember her first day of kindergarden. She was so excited, finally going to ‘big girl’ school. I worried that when the time came she, like so many children I’d heard about, wouldn’t want to be left behind. I shouldn’t have worried. She entered that classroom all smiles, not once bothering to look back. That’s what I’ve been striving for all these years: to fill her with the sense of security and confidence that lets her step forward without that look back because she doesn’t need to see me to know that I’m there for her. Ready to support her in all things, but also ready to kick some ass, hers or anyone else’s if necessary.

I love this girl, but better than that, I like her, a lot.

patricia … Thanks for the chance to guest blog. ♥

Random stuff from the Random Liberal

So. My name is Robert. I actually comment as randomliberal (though I don’t comment anywhere all that often), but I sign my blog, Random Liberal, as Robert. My partner in crime–Joshua–and I had gone about five months without posting there until last week; hence, the dearth of posts. Sorry. We’re slackers. We mostly post about politics from a personal point of view, although I think that my portion of the blog is going to become more of an international affairs/politics blog.

I’m a college student at TCU in Fort Worth, Texas. TCU is an incredibly monolithic campus. An enormous proportion of the student body is upper-class and white. It’s also “Greece” away from Greece. About half of the undergraduates are in a social fraternity or sorority. To make things even better, I have been recently informed that Tarrant County, where Fort Worth is located, had the second highest proportion of voters in the entire freaking country pull the lever for Bush.* Yeah. Sometimes I feel kind of lonely here.

I’m going to take this opportunity to plug an event I attended last week during my Spring Break. I was in Austin for an anti-death penalty alternative Spring Break. It was an opportunity for high school and college students (and non-students who could manage to get a few days off) to learn about the death penalty and learn how to take direct action. Last Tuesday, the 15th, we went to the state capitol and held a rally, then went inside to talk to our legislators. As you can imagine, we were not very successful in reaching the legislators, but we were able to talk briefly with some of their staff members. While we may not have had much of an effect on the representatives’ opinions on the death penalty, it was at least a good experience on lobbying the legislature. For more information on the activities of the week, or to learn more about the fight for a moratorium on the death penalty in Texas, go to the Texas Moratorium Network’s website.

My thanks to Lauren, who is awesome for doing this experiment today.

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*For those who don’t know, the county with the highest proportion of Bush voters in the nation is some obscure southern California county. I’m having trouble remembering the name, though…that one blogger guy Kevin Drum lives there…also I think there might be some sort of TV show on the DubyaB network…and it’s possible that some random ska bands are from there…why can’t I remember the name…?

Open Blogging on Women and Expectations

I’m Erin of the fshk blog, which has recently taken a swing from every day minutiae to politics and feminism because, despite attempts to ignore, I just can’t anymore. (Also, my mom helms the far more famous mahablog, and knows a think or two about where the women bloggers are.)

It’s pretty awesome to have the opportunity to guest-blog anywhere.

Anyway, since I’ve decided to stop writing about Terri Schiavo (despite my inability to look away from that, too) I’ll link to this very good post at Pandagon about a recent Salon article by Rebecca Traister (whose articles I usually like) about a new generation of men who are desperate to get married. Actually, the post is in response to the angry letters responding to the article, most of them written by men, most of them indignant that a woman dare critique male behavior. Amanda at Pandagon is much more snarky and clever than I am, so go read the post, but bask in the knowledge that all the old double standards are alive and well. *sigh*

Big & Beautiful

Intro: I’m Trish and I’m normally at Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman. Thanks Lauren for giving us all the chance to guest-blog! I thought I’d take this opportunity to share a link.

Leonard Nimoy has taken a series of beautiful photographs of large nude women. Note that this link will lead you to photographs of naked women. They’re artistic, but use your best judgement as to whether or not that’s work-safe.

Nimoy’s second book of photography will focus on the women of the Fat Bottom Revue. He says: “They are interested in fat liberation. Their self-esteem is strong. They will tell you that too many people suffer because the body they live in is not the body you find in the fashion magazines.”

via Big Fat Blog

Google Bombing and the “Culture of Life”

Hi! I’m Aldahlia.

Ms. Lauren’s recent “Culture of Life” series of posts, got me to thinking about a little thing known as “Google Bombing.”

Essentially, it’s manipulating enough links to affect Google’s page-ranking system. Like, what (mostly) bloggers have done with “miserable failure.”

What I’m proposing, is indeed… a link-based high-jacking of the question “where are the women bloggers.”

All it will take is enough folks creating a post that looks something like this:

where are the women bloggers
where are the women bloggers
where are the women bloggers
where are the women bloggers

Of course, you can add similar links to just about any female blogger (preferably political bloggers) you want to, including this place. The point is for someone to punch the phrase into google and get some women bloggers, instead of getting some moron bemoaning the (theoretical) absence of women that blog, or some singular entry by a frustrated woman trying to assert her visibility, our visibility, on her own.

another feminist blogger

I just discovered this blog (yay!), and I am way too intrigued by the idea of open guest blogging not to jump in. How trusting! Maybe some day I’ll try the same.

My blog: I have been blogging since July. My own blog (knit me more time…) started kind of as a knitting blog, but with a general lack of time to knit enough to sustain an entire blog about knitting, and other interesting things to talk about, my blog has become more of an online journal about politics, current events and surviving grad school. When I started blogging I didn’t expect for it to become such a part of my life, but it has, and I have met some great new people in the blogosphere. I have temporarily turned off comments on my blog because of some ridiculous spat in our drama-filled sociology department, but maybe in a while I’ll turn them back on. In the meantime, I love to get email from people reading my blog.

Me: I am a phd student in sociology in Madison, Wisconsin. I try not to let grad school consume my life, although that is a constant battle. I study feminist theory, the media, war, and gender. I have a wonderful partner of 8 years and we have cats (although in a couple years we would like to also have a baby). I am a media junky- fascinated by everything from alternative online media to the propaganda on CNN. I knit, but do nothing else that is crafty. I love watching horror movies with my partner (especially B movies) I kind of design websites (my own in-progress website is here) .

So, I’ll stop hogging this blog right now. I just wanted to give a shout out to everyone here at feministe!

Book Review: The Art of Raising a Puppy

I know that Lauren blogs every Friday about her cat, so I thought I would share what I think is a wonderful book on caring for your puppy. The authors of this book shocked me at first, as they are monks from upstate New York! Their approach to raising a puppy uses a lot of positive reinforcement; however, they also realize that some discipline is needed in order to ensure normal development. This book breaks down each stage of the puppies first two years and walks you through their world from not our only viewpoint as owners, but also through the eyes of the puppies themselves. Each chapter relates back to you a puppy from the litter that you follow throughout the whole book. It makes me feel that they belong to me after completely reading this book. It covers the basics of selecting a breed and breeder as well. If you want to learn more about me and my puppies (I have lots of pictures), you can find me at my blog, Jason A Myers.

Just happy to be me, thanks. Pass the pie.

Quick Intro: Hi, I’m Poppy. I’m a computer technician with a degree in psychology. I’m also a wanna-be freelance writer and photographer in what passes for my free time. Like Alleyrat, I’m cheating – this was originally posted in my cheesy little LiveJournal account a year ago. I regularly post prose and poetry, along with pictures at my ‘home’, Shadowroses, and rants or memes go to LJ.

There’s a jolt that happens, described often as being “snapped back into one’s body”, due to catcalls and street harassment. Walking along, talking to a friend or contemplating your next project, mind freer than a soaring bird, free to contemplate big things. Some oaf yells “Hey, shake that thang!” and it pops like a soap bubble. Suddenly, you’re back in your body, reminded that, think big thoughts though you may, as far as this person is concerned, you’re just a body, conveniently placed on the planet for his aesthetic pleasure. And he’s not the only one. No, not all men are assholes who haven’t grasped the concept that women weren’t placed here solely for their pleasure, but there sure are a lot of them, and they’re always the loudest ones, too. The only way I can explain it in terms that most men might understand is this:

Imagine you’re walking out of a pub after a few beers, arguing with a friend about something that you always debate together, in that friendly way that comes from a lifetime of being expected to have opinions and express them. Maybe you stop for a piss against a wall, and as you’re standing there, a guy somewhere behind you, in a voice that cuts through the buzz and sounds far closer than he really is, says “Nice ass.” You tense. Fight or flight response kicks in. Every fight you’ve ever lost flashes into your head. You’re very aware of how big this stranger could be. But you’re too well trained to show fear. Tucking your now-useless dick back into your pants, you turn around and shout back the first insult you can think of, proving that you won’t take that kind of crap from him. Your friend is nearby, doing exactly the same thing, but you don’t have any attention to spare for him. This is about survival. Congratulations. If you have a good imagination, you’ve just been snapped into your body, just experienced what it feels like to be reminded, suddenly, that you could lose, that you could be hurt. Reminded that no matter what else you can do or how smart you are, your survival comes down to who’s bigger or more intimidating.

To a certain extent, society in the early part of this millennium likes to place the blame on the offendee (I’m avoiding the word victim, which I feel is overused and has lost its original meaning). We have cases of people being pulled over for “driving while black.” During the SARS scare, there were jokes about people “coughing while Asian.” This phenomena of catcalling is just a case of “walking while female.” If you can convincingly put the blame on the female for walking down the street, you can absolve the idiots for hollering at her, because of course it’s not their fault they never learned any manners. Psychology in this case has done us a disservice, teaching us that all we need to do is reconstruct our reactions to a situation, and poof, reality changes. I won’t argue that it works. Since you can’t change how someone else behaves, the best we can do is change how we interpret events. But there is a point where a line needs to be drawn and we need to say “I’m not going to reinterpret this to absolve you from all blame. I’m not going to play that game. I’m not going to excuse you because you’re male and that’s what men do.” Just like there’s times when the line we need to draw is “No, I’m serious, that’s really not cool, and I’m not going to put up with it.” And sometimes it needs to be men who draw that line, because women have been drawing it for years, and we aren’t getting anywhere very quickly.

Not too long ago, I was talking to someone I used to date and, as I expected, he was surprised at the weight I’ve gained since we were together. I was, however, baffled by his easy assumption that my pride would lead me to lose it all and be thin and cute again. And still more baffled when, 2 minutes later, after I pointed out that I’ve stopped taking that kind of pride in my body, preferring to spend it on my mind and intelligence, his response was “it’s about time.” Um, hello? What’s with the “it’s about time”? How the hell am I ever supposed to learn and believe that I am worth something based on what I think instead of what I look like when everyone’s first reaction is to assume that “my pride” will make me decide to lose weight instead of, say, take a class in women’s studies so I can eloquently tell people who think I need to lose weight before I can be wonderful to fuck off. Is it just me, or is there a disconnect here? What’s the message, “You should believe that your brain matters, but the rest of the world will focus on your appearance”? Yeah, that’s healthy. Not.

Since then, I’ve explored being overweight (I refuse to say fat. Fat is bad. Overweight just is.) and how I feel about it. To an extent, it’s a disguise against opinions like the one expressed by my friend above. It’s a disguise against wondering if that freaky guy staring at my legs is gonna follow me home or just hit on me clumsily. It’s a disguise against all of the possible reactions the freaky guy might have when I tell him no, I’m not interested. Once you’re truly overweight (and I am talking here about more than just 1-2 inches and my favorite jeans are a little bit snug. I’m talking about replacing entire wardrobes because nothing fits anymore kind of overweight), you’re less likely to be seen as a potential sex object and more likely to be seen as a competent person. More likely to be given a chance to prove that you can think or do something useful and not just written off as “too attractive to be smart.” It’s camouflage, and it can be useful. When you waltz into a male-heavy office and expect to earn your place among the cluefull, it helps to be able to convince your colleagues that you’re not just there looking for a date. Even at 5’5” and 180 pounds, dressed in the same t-shirt and jeans as everyone else, I still had to push about 6-8 months before I convinced most people that I really was “just one of the guys” who worked there and not a man-hungry homewrecker.

Maybe if I thought it would make me deliriously happy, I might consider losing weight just for that. But I’ve tried dieting, once, I’ve tried replacing a meal with a “meal replacement shake.” And let me tell you, one of those things doesn’t even replace a snack. You’re still hungry afterwards, only you can’t eat anything now, because you just drank a whole meal’s worth of calories, and anything else you eat will make the whole thing pointless. So you suck it up and deal with the grumble in your stomach distracting you from entering data into the spreadsheet you’re working on or calling clients to arrange meetings or keeping the kids from killing each other. And, come lunchtime, you’re still hungry, so you eat twice as much lunch and feel guilty about it. I even tried exercise. I had a gym membership that I never used because it was inconvenient and too far to go. I tried walking around the block, but I got down to the corner and the problems with my ankles that no doctor has been able to find make me limp until I can’t walk any further. And, lets be honest, if the foremost thought in my head is “I’m 40 pounds overweight, so I need to walk up the stairs instead of taking the elevator and I need to eat celery instead of a sandwich,” I’m not thinking about anything else, like “That was an interesting book, but I’m not sure I agree with her point about…” Dieting becomes a way of life if you let pride in your appearance drive it. And that’s unhealthy by itself – constant weight fluctuations are more unhealthy than just carrying extra weight around, and that’s saying a lot.

So, rather than lose myself to self-absorbed navel shrinking, I would rather carry my camouflage around, give myself the leeway to do other things that I want to do. If it protects me from idiots who think that I’m only here for their visual pleasure, so much the better. Besides, I haven’t seen any proof that meeting the beauty ideal truly makes anyone happy. I have a friend who is tall and thin, and has hair light enough to pass for blonde in the summer. Meets all of the requirements, right? Tall, thin, blonde and attractive. She’s been hurt as much as I have in my short dumpy brunette life. Her happiness comes from the same place mine does – reading, keeping creative hobbies, having good friends around to laugh with.

So excuuuse me if I choose not to buy into your beauty myth. I don’t like the rules of this game, so I’m making my own. I choose to be the smart girl that I am, and to be proud of it. I choose to be unconcerned with my appearance and more concerned with my health, both mental and physical. I choose to take pride in what I can do and the way I think and the fact that I actively ponder things like why I’d rather be overweight, and I say “F*%# YOU” to anyone who thinks that I should care about being thin and attractive. You’ve missed the point, and I’m sorry you can’t see it.

2005 Update: The original entry produced a few comments, with people weighing in (no pun intended) on having themselves gained weight intentionally when leaving the “dating game” or different experiences as a woman who had lost a dramatic amount of weight. Going off of anecdotal evidence, weight-as-camoflauge certainly isn’t specific to me. Nor is accepting and living with ones body and all of its flaws.

Oh, and thanks, Lauren, for hosting the Open Mic Guest Day.

How To Survive as a Young Single Parent

This post by Bitch Ph.D. reminded me of a series I have long been thinking of writing:

How To Survive (Comfortably) as a Young Single Parent.

I would like to cover topics on

saving money
cooking
budgeting your time
discipline without losing your mind
navigating a relationship with the babymama/babydaddy (should he or she still be around)
how to advocate for your children
negotiating custody
the perils of scholastic life as a single parent
etc.

There are many things to be said on all these topics and I’m sure there are many more things readers can contribute.

In particular, I am looking for people willing to write on very specific topics such as how to look for scholarships or the legality of issues pertaining to pregnancy/parenthood in the job market and in schooling environments. I’m not looking for abstract analyses, but pragmatic advice and information on how to navigate, circumvent, and even change these problems altogether. One does not need to be young, single, or a parent to add to this project, only have knowledge about these subjects. If you think you have expert knowledge in a related area, please contact.

Please pass this post around. There is a dearth of information on pragmatic solutions to the issues single parents face, especially young single parents, and the more diverse voices we can get on this project the better. If you can think of any other topics you’d like me to discuss, or want to write on a particular topic and be featured on this blog, please indicate so in the comments or send me an email at web [at] feministe [dot] us.

Building a Better Porn

I’m cheating. I’m cross posting from my blog.

Building A Better Porn

{Disclaimer: This post is about sex. If you are offended by sex, or by women speaking graphically about sex, go away now. }

In the April issue of Playgirl Magazine ( I get it for the articles!) there’s an interview with Candida Royale. Royale is the porn star turned porn director who founded Femme Production, a feminist porn company. It’s run “by women, for women”.

Royale explains what inspires her:

“The desire, the need, and the opportunity to break through tired judgmental attitudes and mythology about women’s sexuality and inspire women to think in more self-loving and self-respecting ways…I was inspired by growing to understand how society had twisted my own young, pure sexuality, and in discovering this, I wanted to help women feelbetter about their sexuality and give them perission to explore and experience the gift of pleasure”.

Porn as therapy/self-help/sex education.

My biggest gripe with most straight porn (aside from the generally just crappy aesthetics – enough with the fake boobied blondes already! get some better music! and the lighting – ugh!) is the way women’s pleasure is depicted. I’ve seen things that look downright painful happening to a woman who appears to be writhing in pleasure. Appears to be. Because, you know, she’s acting.

You can say that it’s all fantasy and that everyone knows it’s fantasy, but I’m not sure everyone does know this. This culture is really weird about sex. Most people learn about sex from their friends, from pop culture, and from just doing it. And from porn. And by “learn about sex” I don’t mean the mechanics of reproduction or how to avoid getting an STD or that you’re a slut if you do it before you get married (all things I learned from school, family, and culture). I mean, learning how to give and receive pleasure.

Like Candida Royale says, there are lots of old tired myths out there, and they shape the sexuality of men and women alike. For example, we’ve got a long tradition in this culture of understanding pleasure in male terms. In fact, for many people “sex” is synonymous with intercourse. Many people still think there is something wrong with a woman if she cannot reach orgasm through penetration alone. Clitoral stimulation is still an “extra” for some people.

I know lots of women who didn’t start having regular orgasms during sex until they’d been doing it for five or more years, because they kept thinking it was their fault they couldn’t get off on what got their boyfriends off. They could masturbate to orgasm just fine, but couldn’t get there via sex with men. Eventually they figured it out, learned how to talk to their partners, and, being older, had partners with more experience. But that’s many years of pleasure lost, and I think it’s tragic.

So, back to my biggest beef with porn.

I think most porn contributes to misinformation about sex. Maybe all that fantasy – the women having earth shattering orgasms through being hammered by a huge penis with no clitoral stimulation, the lack of sensuality, the cringe inducing cunnilingus – would be just fine if we had some other way for people to learn about pleasure (besides trial and error). But we don’t, not really. I think a lot of people have to spend the first 5, 10, 20 years of their sex lives unlearning the crap they learned from porn. I know that I’ve wasted a lot of time breaking partners of bad habits they picked up from porn.

I am not making an argument against porn. I am making an argument for better porn. I am making an argument for porn that looks to me like what feels good to me. I want to be able to watch porn that doesn’t leave me struggling to suppress that part of my brain that is screaming No freaken way! That does NOT feel good!. I want to be able to watch porn that is creative, fun, sexy, and well lit, just like the best sex is.

Is that really asking so much?

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Book Recommendation (which I will blog about later):

She Comes First: The Thinking Man’s Guide to Pleasuring a Woman, by Ian Kerner. Every woman and every person who has sex with women should read this book. Seriously. Read it. I’ll tell you why in a later post. Until then, you can read this review.