June 2009 – Feministe

Leaving Us Behind

What We Leave Behind by Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay
(Seven Stories Press)

Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis by Vandana Shiva
(South End Press)

Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay’s What We Leave Behind begins with a story about shit. It sounds snarky and unfair when I describe it that way, but that’s because shit occupies a rather maligned place in Western culture; the story itself is quite lovely. One of the authors (they intentionally avoid saying who writes which chapter, and although it’s often easy to tell, I’ll refrain from naming them individually), reluctant to “flush all those nutrients down the toilet,” goes outside of his house in the woods to contribute to the food chain by depositing his shit on the soil. If waste is something that’s no longer usable by anyone or anything, he explains, then the concept of “waste” doesn’t exist in nature, and sure enough, he soon sees slugs and bacteria breaking the piles down and plants growing in their places. However, he notices that when he’s prescribed antibiotics – which pass through a human’s system more or less intact – his poop starts to kill plants and soil life. “The soil in the two main spots where I relieved myself became bare,” he says. “[They] remained bare for the next two years.”

That casually terrifying observation sets the tone for the rest of the book. True to the title, What We Leave Behind is an exploration of what industrial civilization’s various endeavors – disposable products, plastics, mining, medicine, embalming and burial practices – leave behind, and the effects of capitalist priorities, “green” or otherwise, on the environment. Part I outlines each major form of pollution, from solid waste products to toxic gases, and for the most part, it’s as engrossing as it is important. The facts Jensen and McBay present should horrify you. The “Eastern Garbage Patch,” a floating island of garbage nearly the size of Africa, is only one of six six patches that cover 40% of the world’s oceans. The breast milk of women living across the Arctic, about as far from industrial civilization as one can get, contains levels of toxic chemicals that are “literally off the charts” because of wind and ocean currents. If facts like these don’t spur readers into action, then nothing will.

However.

Despite its many merits, this book is riddled with sexism and racism, empty and often bizarre rhetoric, and sheer White American Dude ego.

One Book I Won’t Be Reading

The East, the West and Sex by Richard Bernstein.

The Slate review is actually pretty good. It points out Bernstein’s troubling view of women, and “Eastern” women in particular — with “East” apparently meaning Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Bernstein basically argues that, sure, colonialism was kinda bad and racist, but the sexual interactions between colonizers and the colonized weren’t always exploitative; additionally, when European men commented on the sexual depravity of th “East,” they weren’t totally wrong. From the review:

Bernstein deserves credit for raising a tortured subject from which it is easy to avert our gaze. And yet, and yet … there is something deeply uncomfortable about a book that seems at times so complicit in the very exploitation it aims to scrutinize. It’s not just the tone, though Bernstein’s oblique confession to having his first sexual experiences in an Asian brothel is creepy. It is the fetid attitude toward women.

Bernstein’s view of the role of women in his story of cultural and sexual collision is nuanced to the point of being myopic. He is describing men who went to foreign places, toppled their leaders, stole their resources, and then tossed their women a few pennies to spread their legs. Yet he writes: “From the standpoint of the currently fashionable political morality, [this behavior] appears very bad, an illustration of the unfairness of colonial rule. … But let’s try to see the erotic history of the West and the East as part of a great human pageant, one in which the women, the girls and the boys involved were not necessarily passive.”

Wait, why should we try? Bernstein’s own attempts to claim that the women were involved in choosing their fate are extraordinarily feeble. He tells a story about an Arab queen choosing to have sex with a Western traveler, but how typical was she? He concedes that “much of the sexual opportunity presented by the East has always been, and still is, based on exploitation and injustice.” But he goes on to defend the men who took part in that exploitation. Of Burton and Flaubert, he says, “They used no force; they abused no children; they did what they were invited to.”

Shorter Ross Douthat:

The rich deserve passion. The poor aren’t entitled to that luxury, and maybe if they settled, they’d be less poor.

o hai etc

Hi y’all. I’m Queen Emily, one of this week’s guest bloggers. Some of you will know me from as one of the bloggers at Questioning Transphobia, or possibly my personal blog where these days I mostly talk about what pop music is amazing (girls with synths) and what is rubbish (boys with guitars). Thanks to Jill for inviting me, and a big wave to Holly, Cara and the rest of the usual bloggers here 🙂

Things you need to know about me: I’m a white able-bodied trans woman from Australia, currently in Louisiana with my lovely girlfriend and our four cats. Also, I have a PhD and I’m not afraid to use it.

I’m mostly going to be blogging about trans rights – in particular the on-going revisions of the DSM, why immigrating to the US is a bloody nightmare if you’re trans, health care, and why I don’t like filling out forms.

Now, I hate to do this, but since trans threads on big blogs have a habit of turning ugly, beyond the obvious rules Feministe has right up front I’m just going to lay out some fairly basic cissexist comments I may reject:

Un-gendering. Trans people are the genders they say they are. A story about a trans woman means female pronouns, and male pronouns for one about a trans man. Don’t use third gender pronouns (eg “ze” and “hir”) on a binary identified person. For genderqueer people, they may use third gender pronouns, or they may not. If you’re not sure ask (but don’t be surprised if you get an exasperated response, this may be the eleventy billionth time).

De-railing. Ok, any thread is going to have a bit of drift, but it can be remarkably hard to get cis people to focus on actual instances of discrimination against trans people. Not every thread is appopriate for a trans 101 question. If I’m talking about immigration, I don’t want to have to stop that necessary conversation by answering what “cis” means or why I felt the need to transition. If someone repeatedly insists on making a thread about the oppressor, and not the oppressed, then the mod hammer’s coming down. Believe.

Transphobic bingo. Feminist transphobia has a long and not so distinguished history. Some common memes include: “but why do they have to modify their bodies,” “reifying gender binaries!11“, “trans women has patriarchal privilege,” “my theories are more important than your lived experience (aka What Would Judith Butler Do)” and “I’m not cis, I’m normal.”

Now that’s probably a bit, but I just wanted to get that clear from the get-go, so hopefully we can minimise the drama. Ok, so now we’ve got all that out of the way, onto the posting… Any questions?

I’m back!

Hi folks! This was a bit short-notice, but I’m very glad to be guestblogging here again.

My name is amandaw and I’ll be writing here for the next couple weeks. My introduction from last year:

Who am I? Let’s get the demographics out of the way: I fall under the default personhood in western culture in every major way except these: sex (female), class (grew up poor), and societal access (multiple disabilities). I live a fairly comfortable life in a smaller urban area south of Pittsburgh, PA, sharing space with three creatures whose combined weight just about adds up to mine: the 120lb husband and the 14-and-9-lb “kids,” named Matt(w), Buddy and Mitsy, respectively.

I’ve been around the blogosphere for several years now, commenting under this name (case varied). I started my blog… to have a space to externalize and process my own thoughts on any number of issues, including my experience as a low-class kid being raised by a mentally ill single mother, in an agricultural area in central California where Latin@s actually outnumber whites, and struggling to come to terms with my increasingly-unavoidable disability as I grew older. Issues covered include feminism, disability, health care, class and race, and conventional white-male-higher-class “politics”…

As a warning, I’ve got several topics in mind to cover during my stay here, but I make no guarantees. I’m only just beginning to recover from a nasty pain flare and my coherence on any given day is impossible to fully predict. That also means my wording won’t always be the most artful. Don’t hesitate to ask for a clarification, or point out any missteps – it’s not like I couldn’t use the improvement 🙂

I warmly invite any who fancy my writing to subscribe to my blog feed and stop by for a comment once in awhile; I love to hear new voices. More information at my about page. My thanks to the Feministe writers and to the community here for this opportunity.

I’ve grown a fair bit in the past year, and my life has continued to change. If you want an idea of what I’ve been up to over the past year, try: Conceptualizing disability, the Second Shift for the Sick, “What can I do?”, My life, What is the opposite of “disabled”?, (Il)legal drugs and me, What you can’t see, and Why can’t disorder be beautiful?

I also have a Disabled Sex project going on; my flakiness is really showing here but I’d still love submissions and I will sit down and get it all organized and published as soon as I am able. Check out the post here. I’d love to get that post up while I’m here at Feministe! But time will tell.

Thanks so much to the Feministe crew for inviting me! I’m looking forward to my time here.

You didn’t think I’d let you get away without a cat picture, did you?

FNTT Season 5 Round 2, the Traditional Values episode

Feministe’s Next Top Troll Round 2 is still going, this time with some very traditional commenters. Vote below the fold.

Project Guest Blogger 2009

It’s that time again: Project Guest Blogger is starting up at Feministe. We have a great crew lined up for you, and the guesting will commence tomorrow. I’ll let them introduce themselves, and I’m very, very excited to have them all here. Enjoy!

Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday

Do your thing.

Internet Friends:

I’d appreciate some help from the Feministe commentariat.

I’m trying to buy language software. I have heard wonderful things about Rosetta Stone, but they are fucking expensive. Can anybody out there speak to whether they give good value for the money? Or recommend a cheaper alternative? I’m looking for French and/or (standard) Arabic. I need to start with the basics–I’ve never studied French and have forgotten every word I ever learned in Arabic–but would like to move up to intermediate. I want a language-learning program that teaches grammar and broad vocabulary instead of conversation and business/tourist vocabulary. I like tables and digitized flashcards.

Any online resources for conversational practice, etc., are much appreciated.

Thanks!