August 2009 – Page 10

So long for now…

…hey folks, it’s been a great week. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to post more, but I’ll be back in September and I look forward to talking with you again. I enjoyed the discussion of feminist mothering; thanks, all, for your comments.

Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday

Go for it.

The End is Near

Well all, my time here at Feministe draws to a close. First, I would like to thank the Feministe Crew for having me back this go ’round…and I will admit I am thrilled that I got to see the women gamers come out of the woodwork and speak up about the aggro! Made my week y’all…Gamer Girls Unite! However, as this is me, and I did say I was curmudgeonly, I am going to end my guest stint here with the following thoughts and observations:

Great Expectations (no, not the damn book)

As I sit down to type this I realize I am in a foul mood about so many countless things it is not even funny. Which hey, ain’t an excuse, but if I swear more than usual…you’ll know why.

Now, true enough, you cannot please all the people all of the time. Who the fuck would want to anyway? But something I have noted this go around here at Feministe, and I am sure plenty of other bloggers notice all the time, is that other people, no matter what you write, have some amazing expectation that you are going to write exactly what they would want you to write in the way they would like you to write it. People will totally fucking nitpick to death a line or a paragraph in a much large piece because you did not say it the way they wanted you to say it, or expected you to say it, or they way they would have said it themselves…or, they totally fucking ignore the whole or the majority of whatever the hell you wrote to ask you why you did not write about something that they think is more important…after all, what the fuck were you thinking, messing with their expectations like that? And were not talking a simple question or request for a clarification, we are talking a full out assault on how you are doing it wrong! How you should be writing (insert whatever here).

Jesus fucking Christ people. If you’ve got something to write about that is so damn pressing and no one else is living up to your expectations or addressing every single one of your needs and concerns…write it yourself already.

I mean come on. I do not get paid to do this. Many bloggers do not get paid to do this. The majority of us are writing about what we want to write about, things we find important or interesting or annoying or whatever the fuck else. We do not have built in data feeds which tell us what topics should be addressed and how we should address them (okay, I lied, I do have one of those because I am a cyborg and all, but the circuits are offline).

So, do us all a goddamn favor and cut us some slack. I have no desire whatsoever to go pawing through people’s mental panty drawers in order to make sure I am addressing whatever issues they think are most important or blog about what they think needs blogging about. In short: Fuck your Great Expectations.

Now I am gonna go grab a diet Mt. Dew and play some City of Villains…some of you should have expected that! And if I failed to write what you think I should have written about- well, here’s a suggestion: Do It Yourself.

And on that note, thank you and good day!

Another magazine another photoshopped woman

Seriously, why do magazines think that we won’t notice? Or are they truly going with the “a photo is just the beginning of our art project” theory? Becuase if photos are just an art project for them, then just fucking say it.

This time around Kelly Clarkson is the winner of the photoshop diet.

self-GMA-clarkson

We’ve seen this done to plenty of other women in Hollywood, including my favorite America Ferrera. Kelly Clarkson’s weight has been an issue since her “American Idol” days and she seems to have weathered all the talk very well and with all the confidence most of us wish we had when it came to our bodies. That must be why “Self” wanted to feature her in their magazine. But why then would they photoshop her multiple sizes down? Even looking at the ‘behind-the-scenes’ video you can see that Kelly’s arms are larger in real life. “Self” comments that, “Our picture shows her confidence and beauty,” which reveals to me that they admit that they photoshopped the hell out of her, but hey she still oozes confidence!

Instead of pining over what corporate America wants us to look like, even when we love our bodies, I want to mention a new blog that I learned about at Blogher 2009: we are the REAL deal. It’s a body image blog whose core bloggers include the amazing Claire Mysko, Kate Harding, and Roni of RoniWeigh. It looks like a great site to gather to discuss how we came to hate our bodies, what some of us are doing to love ourselves, how we can get to be healthy and all that body loving stuff.

EWW! Is That Period Blood?!

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is people’s aversion to menstrual blood. Perhaps I’m just super comfortable with my body or took one too many reproductive health classes or maybe I’m just gross, but I really don’t get why people are so thoroughly disgusted by menstrual blood.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently because I got a Diva Cup a couple of months back. I brought it up one day when I was talking about traveling because I was excited that I wouldn’t need to carry loads of pads and tampons anymore — just my little Diva Cup and a Lunapads pantyliner. Everyone [all female] turned around and looked at me as if I had just said I drink urine with my breakfast or something. I’ve shared my excitement with other people, and they also seem put off by this.

Then yesterday, I somehow ended up on a link about menstrual art, which I shared with a friend of mine [also female] and her reaction was “EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.” I didn’t think to myself to save the link (because I’m a moron sometimes), but here are some menstrual art links for you to enjoy! So anyway, she freaked out, but I thought it was cool. I think some of it is really rather beautiful.

I know we’re taught to hate menstrual blood. We’re made to believe that it is unclean, smelly, gross, and every other negative thing you can think of. This fact is nothing new to most of us who read and write about feminism on a regular basis. Yet it still strikes me as odd whenever I see another example of this, especially from women I know. Somehow I expect more from them I guess…

I just can’t see what is wrong with inserting a cup into your vagina, collecting your menstrual blood, dumping it, and then doing the process over and over again. Many of us have no problem inserting other types of foreign objects into our vaginas, so what makes this different exactly? The fact that your skin might come into contact with your blood?? *GASP* OH, THE HORROR! And if people want to keep that blood and then turn it into art… I just don’t see what the problem is.

Does this cross some sort of blood tolerance line that I wasn’t aware existed? Am I really just so incredibly feminist that these things don’t faze me anymore? And can somebody please let me know what they might say in my position so I can start having my responses ready?

(Cross-posted at Jump off the Bridge.)

Buzz’s Girlfriend? Woof!

Oh John Hughes, you will be missed.

The Last Abortion Doctor

There’s a must-read piece in Esquire about Dr. Warren Hern, the last doctor in the United States to specialize in late-term abortions. It’s an interesting, nuanced piece, and I would recommend reading the whole thing — it neither lionizes nor demonizes Dr. Hern, and instead casts him as a complex and good-hearted human being. The article is written in the shadow of Dr. Tiller’s murder, and the fear that Warren Hern lives with is a major theme in the piece. (To make the formatting work, I’ve bolded where the original article italicizes).

So, What Is Feminist Mothering?

Following up on my earlier post about AP, sacrifice, and feminism, I thought it would be good to try to nail down some guiding (but not limiting) principles for feminist mothering. Andrea O’Reilly has written tons about this topic; in fact, her new book, FEMINIST MOTHERING, is one example. Let me quote from the book blurb for a distinction I think is really helpful (I have not yet read the book, but I heard her speak a couple of years ago and she made this distinction then, and I liked it a lot):

“O’Reilly makes a distinction between motherhood as an institution filled with tradition that can possibly lead women to a sense of isolation and feminist mothering that recognizes ‘that mothers and children benefit when the mother lives her life, and practices mothering, from a position of agency, authority, authenticity, and autonomy.'”

So, “motherhood” is that patriarchal institution, essentially, and “mothering,” especially feminist mothering, is a more active, positive place from which to move. I like this separation because it allows us to critique societal expectations of mothers without getting to a point where the only way out is to jettison being a mother altogether. It suggests that, dammit, yes, mothering can be a feminist practice, it can be a creative practice, it can be a liberating practice – an expanding practice, as La Lubu suggests. (O’Reilly has drawn on WOC writing and theorizing about mothering, in fact, in her work, and I think she is informed by what La Lubu was talking about in her comment (55 on the other thread – I can’t figure out how to link directly to it.)

Just as we struggle to move mainstream feminism to recognize issues like immigration and poverty and transphobia as central “women’s issues”, a practice of feminist mothering must recognize that such issues are also central to our parenting. Yes, feminist mothering means support for breastfeeding so that all women are supported and able to breastfeed (simultaneously, those women who choose not to or are not physically able to must also be supported and not made to feel like they are lesser mothers). Certainly, feminist mothering means rethinking how we participate in our communities as mothers and with children, and it means demanding that our communities don’t isolate us (childfree folks: I’m not advocating that children invade grown-up space, but simply that we shape society so as not to exclude mothers from it).

But it also means that we are thinking more broadly, beyond “me and my baby,” and out to the impact of – oh, for example, our diaper use on other mothers who have to live near the trash our communities dump in their communities (yes, I used disposable diapers. I’m pointing the finger at myself, here). It means that we support mothers whose children are taken away from them. It means that we hold child social services to a much higher standard so that poor women and women of color and women who love women do not have their children removed from their care because they can’t afford a crib, or because they have a boyfriend their social service worker doesn’t like, or because they are Black and are held to a different standard than they would if they were white, or because the social service agency sees all sex outside of marriage as evidence of the mother being unfit.

It means that mothers should be on the front lines protesting immigration raids that separate mothers from children (and fathers, too – no need to be exclusive).

It means that the epidemic of incarceration of Black youth is something that all mothers should take personally (and take to the streets).

It means that the first response to a community problem – such as the building of a trash incinerator, a site for a new group home, incidents of police brutality in a particular neighborhood – should not be “here is how this affects my child,” but rather, “how does this affect the other children in this community? Are there solutions here that will benefit all children?”

It means that we need to be thinking globally: how does this bottle of water I take to the gym affect the mothers in India, who don’t have access to safe water because Coke has bottled it up and shipped it to the U.S.?

In other words, feminist mothering means, to an extent, that we “othermother,” as Patricia Hill Collins calls it (scroll down) (though I think I may be applying this term more broadly than she does; IIRC, she was using it to describe the kind of helping out and watching out for each others’ children that women in Black communities do, and I’m expanding this definition). We need to be responsible for, not only raising our own children, but helping to ensure that the mothers around us can raise their children. We are not only raising our children to make feminist change, but we need to use our mothering to make feminist change. That, to me, is feminist mothering.

What do you all think? What is feminist mothering to you?

Senate Confirms Sotomayor

Awesome.

Sotomayor would not have been my first pick for a Supreme Court justice for a lot of reasons — chief among them her disturbing deference to law enforcement and her lack of regard for privacy rights. But she is undoubtedly a highly-qualified and seasoned jurist, even if I don’t agree with all of her judicial philosophies. It’s embarassing on the part of the Republicans who didn’t vote to confirm her.

And not bad that we finally have the first Latina@ Supreme Court justice, and the third woman.

They don’t really like you, you know…

Okay then. Last eve, well, technically early morning, the Renegade happened upon a post which asserted that all “sex workers” who claim to love their jobs must be in denial. You know, sex workers (no quotes please) who do anything but claim to hate and despise their jobs hear that a whole lot. This, true believers, pisses me off something fierce. And, as usual, this statement was framed with the assertion that we poor deluded sex workers have no idea how men- namely those who deal with sex workers in a business sense- feel/think/speak about us when we are not in their presence. We’ll assume, for the sake of this post, that only men hire sex workers (which hey, totally makes sense seeing as 90% of the people who hire me for pro-domme stuff are women, but lets not fuck with the majority and overriding theme here…)

So yes. Denial and we have no idea what those men think/feel/say about us…

Uh huh. Wanna bet? You see, as a sex worker, and well gee, an actual living, breathing, thinking human being capable of listening, reading, comprehension and all those other things I would have to disagree a great deal with both of those assertions. I figure I, as a sex worker, know my own mind, thoughts and feelings about what goes on in my life- both on and off the job- better than some observer from the peanut gallery and thus, know better than they do if I am or if I am not in denial, and secondly, I am well aware of what not only many of the men who deal with women in the sex industry in a business sense- but gee- a whole lot of people- think of sex workers. Hell, I do get “fan mail” occasionally, dudes are not always real shy about just saying what they think of you, and why yes, since I can read I have subjected myself to the comments made in posts about people like Jenna Jameson, so on, so forth…it’s pretty evident what people think, and no, gee, a lot of it is not flattering in the least. Shoot, you can even be murdered and people will still talk a whole lot of ugly smack about you. But as for the what do they think, and the denial us silly whores are in…

Hell yeah, let me break it all down, just so you know.

When one is a sex worker, they will often be thought of in the following ways:

-A poor idiot dupe who is deluded or in denial.
-A poor idiot with no other possible options.
-A poor idiot who is in the business because they lack education, common sense, self esteem and desperately desire attention, validation, and love.
-A greedy, gold-digging home-wrecking whore.
-An amoral hedonist. (Okay, I am possibly guilty of those leanings; you may stone me at dawn).
-A fake, inhuman creature deserving of the worst possible kinds of pain and death.
-A skank, slut, dirty whore, blah blah blah.

Often, men who deal with sex workers (any type, across the huge not-monolith of the business) may think of sex workers as any/all of the above, and:

They may not “think” of us at all, any more so than they would think of a plumber they had paid for a service. And believe it or not, why yes, some of those people might even oh, like us as people, enjoy our company, so on, so forth. Are they the minority? Why yep, I actually happen to think so, but do they exist? Why yes, they do.

But, little secret here, and sure enough, I am just speaking for me, one sex worker, of course others are free to chime in as they like…

Personally, between you and me, dear Internet…I do not care what they think of me. Simply put, I fail to care if they think of me as witty and charming or a worthless dirty slut. I am not paid to care what they think. These people are not within the circle of people in my life whose opinions of me matter at all. I do not think sex workers are any more subject to caring about what their customers think of them as people than anyone in any other business is. If one were a help desk operator and someone called them a moron, or a bitch, or whatever else do you think the average help desk operator would be crushed by this and have their self esteem reduced to rubble, or do you think they would hang up the phone, say “what an asshole” to the coworker next to them, who would probably nod, then they would go about their day and life and whatnot? Why would sex workers be any different, really? Sure, we deal with assholes. Like everyone else in the world. We also deal with people who are not assholes. Like everyone else in the world.

But wait, I know, it will be coming! With all I’ve said here- about the horrible way we can be and are treated- by everyone from asshole customers to “concerned citizens”, how is it possible to say a sex worker can like their job?

Watch this!

Well, personally, I am fond of the money and the way it allows me to set my own hours. I generally like most of my coworkers. I do dig my work attire way more than business casual (except the spiky heels, I do not like spiky heels, more of a platform gal myself). I absolutely admit without fear or guilt that I love making my own porn, you know, stuff that is depictions of what I like sexually and is a creative process for me and all. I like not having to deal with the whole corporate world thing. I love not being at a desk, in a cubicle, in a building with no windows. In fact, the whole idea of that sort of a working life is enough to make me want to put a gun to my head. I would have to be in serious denial to say I liked or wanted that in my life. Some people do love it, I am sure, but I am not those people. Likewise, I know there are people who would hate or would have to be in denial to like what I do for a living…but see, there’s that catch again, that peeve I was talking about before. We’re all different, so why would we ever be expected to like the same things? I happen to like my job, and of the jobs available to me, I prefer it to all others. Hell, I have a friend who absolutely loves his job. Quit a good position at an accounting firm to start up his own company and everything. What does he do now? Professional crime scene clean up. Would everyone want to do that job? I seriously doubt it. Is he in denial that he likes it? I sure do not think so. When I quit the sex biz, maybe I will go work for him!

That’s not smoke and mirrors, humans, that’s just the way it is. No denying it.