In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Month: August 2010

Happy birthday, tigtog!

It is the birthday of our rather incredible (jaw-droppingly so) tech whiz, tigtog of Hoyden About Town! On this glorious occasion, Rufus Sewell presents her with a birthday candle!

A picture of a bearded Rufus Sewell, holding a large candle.

And I present her with my best wishes for a wonderful year ahead. You may present the same in comments!

And This is the Post on Love

During the 2008 Democratic National Convention Joe Biden’s son told the story of the death of his mother and the way his family rebuilt itself after tragedy. Halfway through his speech he uttered a line that still plays in my heart, “And then we married Jill.”

I didn’t have the world’s best childhood. The first 13 years of my life were mirthless and often violent. It is with no sense of hyperbole that I say I am lucky to be alive and writing with you today.

But it wasn’t luck, honestly, it was my mother. My mother took me out of a bad situation; my mother literally saved my life. We left hell and we learned to live – on our own—together. She taught me how to be independent; she taught me how to be happy again.

And then, in time, we met Dennis.

My mother started dating Dennis when I was a teenager and their connection was instantaneous. Within months they were deeply in love and I had a father figure that would make Seth Cohn jealous. Like Jill Biden, when Dennis married my mother, he married into a family. The years between then and now are filled with beautiful moments of a family coming together, of a girl learning to trust a father figure and of a man learning to be a husband and father.

Dennis isn’t a white knight; he didn’t rescue us from a bad situation. My mother rescued herself and rescued me. I’d like to think of Dennis more as karmic retribution. We’d been through the worst, so the universe sent us the best.

I’ve written before about my history of abuse and even the dating violence I experienced. Through the lessons of my mother and my friends I’ve tried not to allow that victimization define me. I think it’s so easy to get so caught up in the aspects of hate and victimization — especially if that victimization happens at a young age — that we don’t trust or accept love and happiness when it presents itself to us.

But I’ve learned – and am continuing to learn – about love and how to appreciate it. And I have to credit a lot of that to the love found between my mother and Dennis.

It’s Money, Honey

Firstly, thanks to everyone who commented on my post about self-sabotage. So many of you had interesting things to say (I’m definitely going to get checked out for ADHD) and the feedback really contributed to my ability to think about how to start making positive changes and get rid of self-defeating habits.

It also got me thinking about why this problem is so much worse lately (it has REALLY intensified in the last month). A few months ago, with steady work as a temp, I was doing much less self-sabotaging. I was also very unsatisfied with my job. But, for the most part, I showed up to work on time and got shit done. I was also posting regularly on my blog in my free time, although I still opted for watching The Bachelorette when I had the choice.

Flash forward to now, and I’ve got two internships, both of which are with organizations where I would kill to get a permanent position. Okay, I wouldn’t actually kill, but I would go pretty far. I’m thrilled with the work I’ve been doing and can’t believe my luck at landing gigs like these. So what gives? Why the feeling of listlessness and slight depression that has been nagging at me?

I think one huge contributing factor is this: money. Yes, my new endeavors are incredible, but they are also unpaid. Looking back, I realize that while the work was unsatisfying, one of my favorite things during my time at a job I hated was writing my rent check every month. I grew up with an extreme complex about financial security (we didn’t have much in my family), and I had never imagined being able to pay my own rent. Writing that check every month, despite dissatisfaction at work, gave me such a huge feeling of accomplishment.

To take on these internships, I’ve had to swallow my pride and ask extended family to help with the monetary side of things while I pursue unpaid work for a few months. I realize I am beyond lucky to have someone I can ask, many people do not have that luxury. But for some reason, it seems to me that I have (subconsciously) placed such extreme value on financial success, that regression in that dimension of my own success has put me into a tailspin. The most frustrating thing is that logically, I would say I am more successful now than when I was paying my rent, because I’m heading in the right direction on a career path I’ve chosen, rather than just doing something for the sake of having a job.

One of the commenters hit this right on the head:

I came from a very not-successful family background, and experienced crippling anxiety at every rung I climbed of the narrow ladder of social mobility. This resulted in a lot of the behavior that Tyla describes. Yes, I always knew that if I didn’t keep on my game, I might wind up back exactly where I came from. Which would have been horrible in ways that exceeded merely not having money.

But sometimes that pressure was more paralyzing than enabling. And sometimes the abuse of repeatedly reminding myself of how horrible my life would be if I didn’t leap through the next hoop successfully only resulted in my being a complete wreck after getting through the hoop.

At this moment in time, I am moving forward at a rate that astounds me in every aspect of personal success, except for finances. I think that the fear of financial failure is so crippling at this point, that it is largely contributing to my self-sabotage. As I described before, the other time self-sabotage reached an all-time high in my life was immediately after I moved to New York, and I wasn’t able to find work (largely because of my propensity to spend my time doing things other than looking for work). Evidently, the larger the possibility for financial ruin, the more paralyzed I become.

So the question becomes this: When I consciously value financial success so much less than other types of success (job satisfaction, good relationships, etc), why does the possibility of financial failure paralyze me? I need to figure out how to get my subconscious on board with the idea that when it comes down to it, the things I am working on now are so much more important than making a lot of money. If I don’t, I won’t be able to fully take advantage of the opportunities in front of me, which are unbelievable.

I’m afraid this may be easier said than done. Although, maybe I really do have ADHD and these problems will be easier to address once I’m medicated. I’m going to go call my doctor now…

Marginalized folks shouldn’t always have to be “the bigger persons”

originally published September 2009 on What Tami Said

Teaching moments are wonderful, but I think that no marginalized person is obligated to swallow justified hurt and anger to better “teach” the privileged or “squash” the mess or racism. That people of color are nearly always asked to do so in the face of prejudice is spiritually wearying and a tyranny.

I wrote this over on Love Isn’t Enough in response to a parent who wondered how to address the impact of his aunt’s racism on his mixed-race family. But, you know, it’s not just people of color who are constantly expected to show extraordinary compassion when faced with bias. It is women, gays, lesbians and transgendered persons. It is the disabled, the obese, immigrants and the poor. Ask any marginalized person and it is a safe bet that they have been told “have a sense a humor,” “don’t be so PC,” “that’s just how so-and-so was raised,” “here’s a great teaching moment, “you have to understand some people won’t be comfortable with x, y, z,” “he didn’t really mean it.”
Today, when an “ism” shows its face, too much public sympathy rests with the offender and not the offended. As I’ve written before, in these times, hearing someone branded a racist is likely to upset more folks than encountered racism. Stick any bias in there–sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia…and the result is the same. It is, I think, the way the status quo defends itself when it gets tired of treating certain people equally.
Certainly, the point of calling out bias is to make people more aware of it and to reduce it. And, as the old adage goes, one catches more flies with honey than vinegar. Cajoling and gentle prodding is often more effective than angry shouting. And women, people of color and other groups learn early to pick their battles, lest they be branded bitter, angry or over-sensitive. There are just some dull aches that have to be swallowed. We try to pick our battles strategically, but it is stressful and ultimately soul-destroying to have to work so hard to ignore so much–to constantly be forced to show benevolence in the face of rude and dehumanizing treatment.
This notion of “being the bigger person” and handling bias gently has popped up around my Google Reader this week. In a response to the ARP post, one commenter suggested the man whose white aunt had forwarded a racist “joke” to his Puerto Rican/black wife respond as follows:

I’d say, “Aunt Mary, I know you didn’t mean that the way it came across, but that e-mail hurt my wife’s feelings and she felt it was kind of derogatory. I’d like you to meet my wife and son and be a part of our lives, but do you think you could not send us jokes like that or make comments like that?” The end. Give her the benefit of the doubt. She doesn’t know better, she didn’t mean to hurt you, and she is part of your family. If she keeps doing it, you can always limit contact.

I responded to this commenter that statements like “kind of derogatory,” “do you think you could…” soften what was an ugly offense. And she said:

In this situation, I’d give her a graceful way to save face while also letting her know that it offended the wife and would probably be offensive to other people. “I know you didn’t mean it that way, but this is the way my wife saw it …” If Aunt Mary has any sensitivity, that’s enough to make her think, “Boy. Maybe I SHOULDN’T make jokes like that. I’m so embarrassed.

See, it is important that the offender be able to “save face” even if it means implying that the person of color took the joke in the wrong spirit or maybe is extra sensitive and maybe it wasn’t all that bad, but hey other people might find it offensive, so…
Over on Los Angelista’s Guide to the Pursuit of Happiness, Liz is wrestling with how we discuss racism productively online. In a response to “No, You Cannot Touch My Hair,” about a woman who went on a racist tirade after Liz refused to let her touch her hair, a commenter suggested that Liz show some consideration:

She may have mental health problems and bad issues? Who knows? Suppose this interaction made her relapse or slip into depression?

It is our calling and duty to educate the ignorant on matters of race and history, she probably was sent as a potential angel that was looking for direction and love- this was probably her only way of establishing connection and conversation? Supposing she had never spoken to a “black” person before and this is her only contact. Perhaps a lesson was missed, she could have been enlightened with love and understanding?

We all possess amazing powers of compassion, fairness, judgement and forgiveness.” Read more…

It is the duty of marginalized people to educate. The duty sounds almost spiritual–God-given–in this comment. No word on what this commenter believes God says about people who arrogantly dehumanize others by attempting to paw them like a petting zoo resident.
Anna N. at Jezebel analyzes an article by Janet Turner in the London Times and writes about silence in the face of misogyny–the idea that women should “lighten up” and hold their tongues, lest they be seen as humorless “ranty-pants.”

…It’s a lot more fun to be the person uttering snide jabs (i.e. “So – Harriet Harman, then. Would you? I mean after a few beers obviously, not while you were sober.”) than the one getting mad about them, and the allegation of humorlessness is a pretty hard one to defend against. Saying, “I do too have a sense of humor, just not about this” is pretty unfunny, and in my experience tends to prove my opponent’s point. Making feminism even harder to sell is the fact that it often attacks things that men are supposed to find hot — the pursuit of ever-younger partners, for instance, or surgically enhanced breasts, or mainstream pornography. I’ve had more than one depressing conversation with a man in which it’s clear that he thinks I’m “against” anything sexy. I turn into the fun police, and whatever I’m supposedly forbidding becomes taboo — and thus even more exciting.

In elementary school, I learned that the best way to deal with someone who’s bothering you is to ignore them. And indeed, some feminist-baiters, especially on the vast fringes of the Internet, are best left alone. But as Turner points out, silence is also implicit permission. And since many of the engines of misogyny aren’t individual people who depend on reactions for their continued existence, but big corporations with a stake in female insecurity, this is a big problem. Read more…

I am all for humor and compassion, but I reject the notion that, as a woman and a black person, I need be extra compassionate and jovial in a society that often affords people like me neither of those things. I reject the notion that we ought to spare more empathy for the homophobe than the gay men and women her bias hurts. I believe in using the most effective means to change, but I also believe in calling “isms” for what they are and not coating them in equivocations and wishy-washy language that lets oppressors feel good about themselves.
Sometimes, someone else needs to be the “bigger person.”

The Digital Me and the Digital You

I’ve met some of my closest friends online (heart you, tumblr), found soulmates through twitter and consider gchat a form of foreplay. It’s through the Internet that I’ve been allowed to spend these weeks writing with you.

As it’s been on feministe, my writing on my blog is pretty personal. We’ve all been told to write what we know and I’m guilty of taking that to an extreme. I post photos of myself; I ask for advice on even the most mundane of things and share experiences ranging from a difficult childhood to funny conversations with coworkers.

On the whole it’s all been positive. I’ve received great advice from total strangers and turned those strangers into some of my closest confidants. In short, the Internet has done right by me.

But then I decided to cut my hair.

For years I’ve wondered what it would be like to chop off my hair. Finally, in March, I did it. (Coco Chanel once said, “When a woman cuts her hair, her life is about to change.” Considering that I moved 3,000 miles about two months after chopping my locks, I think Coco may be on to something.)

Before I went through the actual hair cutting process I asked for opinions. Multiple times. Some of you may guess what happened next. I received an influx of e-mails from people who had a deep opinion on the length my hair; strangers who seemed invested in what I did with my appearance. Dudes sent in notes about how they have thoughts about what it would be like to run their hands through my hair. They said they’d regret it if I chopped it all off, that I’d be less attractive, that it would ruin their illusion. These people seemed to feel some sort of ownership in my appearance. To be crude, their e-mails felt like stockholders who had misgivings about design changes in a new line of products.

The responses shocked me; in some ways I was even a little scared. I took my personal e-mail address off my blog and reassessed the ways in which I present myself online. I realized that I’d allowed strangers to see intimate sides of me, but wasn’t necessary ready to deal with the ramifications of that false sense of intimacy.

A few creepy e-mails haven’t stopped me from posting mundane notes about my life, but it has made me reassess certain online safety precautions. Yes, I still do post photos of myself (with short hair!) but I’m more cautious.

I imagine that many of you also keep personal blogs and perhaps you also struggle with the level of intimacy you create. As I continue to learn and grow from my own experiences, I’d love to hear more about yours. How do you talk about your personal life? And if you do post your image on the web, how do you deal with that?

The Motherhood Discounting

This is the second in a series examining a post written by Chamber of Commerce Senior Communications Director Brad Peck, and the subsequent apologies for it by himself and Chamber COO David Chavern.

Peck decided to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the recognition of women’s right to vote by writing that the well-documented gender pay gap is mostly due to “individual choice,” then suggesting that women who want equal pay have a “fetish for money,” and recommending that women focus their energies on “choosing the right partner at home.” The apologies were cold comfort, considering the Chamber’s lobbying history. Part 1, here.

Numerous workplace studies, including those conducted by government agencies, have demonstrated that given equal levels of education and experience, women get paid less than men.

Mothers have it worse. Not only are they paid less than men, mothers are usually paid less than women without children, while fathers are usually paid more than childless men. (If you were wondering, no, the premium paid to fathers wouldn’t make up for the lower wages of mothers even in families with both a mother and father in paid employment.) Since about 80 percent of women become mothers this represents a quite large and consistent shift of wealth away from working women compared to their male peers.

Read More…Read More…

Hey you, get out of my way!

I’ve always been a high achiever. One of the only people in my high school class to move farther than five hours away for college, I attended a top ten school then moved to New York to start my real-person life.

I’m simultaneously proud of what I’ve accomplished (woohoo! Go, me!) and frustrated about where I’m at in my life at this point (currently doing three unpaid (albeit amazing) internships, borrowing money to pay my rent, and praying that at least one of these turns into a job), because I know that I should be farther along. Frustratingly enough, I also know that throughout all of this my biggest obstacle has been (drumroll please)…me. I am a master of self-sabotage.

I’m not sure when this started exactly. I’ve always procrastinated more than normal. Case in point: My freshman year of college, I waited until the night before a 17-page research paper was due to even begin doing my research. I got an A+. (I didn’t even know you could get an A+ in college.) This trend continued throughout my college career; I always barely finished my work before the deadline, but even when I thought the finished product was sub-par, it received high marks.

I’ve got a few theories here. Maybe, the reason I always did this to myself was because if I waited until the last minute and ended up receiving low marks, I’d feel as if I had an excuse for my failure. Or maybe it was because the feeling of accomplishment was that much larger when I got a high grade AND pulled an all-nighter, completing huge amounts of work in record time.

The scary thing is, I’ve carried self-sabotage with me into post-collegiate life. I waited until the month I graduated to apply for jobs, and even then, I only applied to one. When I got to New York, I didn’t spend my time diligently hunting for employment. Instead, I sat on my ass (in the apartment my boyfriend at the time was paying most of the rent for) watching tv and feeling sorry for myself. This was probably the low point in my life. I let myself spiral into a depression so deep I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning.

Finally, I fell into a job. The temp agency found my resume online and called me. If they hadn’t, I might never have gotten my self-esteem back up to a respectable point; I might have continued to stew in my lack of confidence, putting my expensive education to use at Banana Republic. Thankfully, the job, while not a job I particularly liked, reassured me that I am smart, I have skills, and damn it, any organization would be lucky to have me as an employee. I worked there for eight months, until the position became full-time and (despite my stellar performance) they hired someone else.

At this point, I’d like to say that I had kicked self-sabotage’s ass. It certainly looked like it. Within a few short weeks, I secured two very different internships in a field I’m really excited about, something I couldn’t have managed to do a year beforehand because I was too busy stabbing myself in the back.

Unfortunately, I’m starting to realize that while things are much better, I haven’t stopped undermining my own success. I sit watching The Bachelorette instead of writing blog posts. I hit the snooze button so many times that being on time for work is no longer an option, even if I skip a shower and take a cab. I drink too much wine even though I know it is going to make me feel hung over, really hindering my ability to be an asset at work. I scrape by on the bare minimum, because I know I can.

And all of it makes me want to scream. “What the fuck, me?!?! Why are you doing this to yourself? Over and over? You have opportunities in front of you that many would die to have, and you’re going to fuck it up because you want to sleep fifteen more minutes?” (I curse at myself a lot.)

Just this morning, I sat here researching self-sabotage for this post instead of reading the notes that will prepare me for a meeting I’m hoping I’ll be asked to sit in on later this afternoon. (I DID take a break to read the notes.) But I’m back to research now and HOLY SHIT. I just found a list of questions about how to tell if you’re self-sabotaging, and it’s not even funny how many of the questions I answered “yes” to.

When will I stop being my own biggest enemy? My life is pretty incredible despite all of my own efforts to hold myself down, what might happen if I didn’t create obstacles to my own success? What might we all do if we could stop, take a deep breath, make a decision to stop getting in our own way, and then stick to it?

How do you get in your own way? How do you choose not to? I could really use some tips.

When Does Life Begin

Another anti-abortion law is about to go into effect in Missouri. Once again, a state legislature thinks it can settle a question that no philosopher, lawyer scientist or other expert has ever been able to figure out. “The life of each human being begins at conception,” according to Senate Bill 793, which will add new regulations to the state’s 24-hour informed consent law for abortions. “Abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being.”
Those words will be displayed “prominently” on brochures that abortion providers will be required to hand out to every woman seeking the procedure, reports StLouisToday.com

The site adds that providers will need to display that information even if they don’t agree with the “Christian position.” In that brief phrase the most common misunderstanding about abortion is presented as fact. Of course, they meant to say the “Catholic” position and even that is wrong. The best kept secret about Catholicism and abortion is that the Catholic view of when the fetus becomes a person is precisely the same as that asserted in Roe v. Wade. Whatever definition one wants to posit about fetal personhood, the fact is nobody knows. To paraphrase Roe, the justices declared that science, law, philosophy and theology had not been able to answer this question and neither could the Supreme Court. If you read various Catholic documents, the same opinion emerges. Over the centuries theologians and popes have suggested when they think God might confer personhood on the fetus, and they have come up with different answers. When the fetus first moves, when it is 40 days old if it is a boy or 80 days old if it is a girl, when it is viable, when it can no longer split in two and become twins. But in the end the church says what the court says “We don’t know.” Of course the similarity stops there. The court says we do know that women are persons and therefore we will leave it to each of them to decide what they think about the fetus and what they think about giving their body over to its development. The church says, even if we don’t know, women are required to treat the fetus from the moment of conception as if it were a person and make whatever sacrifices, including their life, to enable it to become a person.

No other human being is required to risk their life for another. To do so is considered crazy or heroic. A parent need not give a kidney to a dying child. A potential soldier can object conscientiously to risking her or his life in war. But, we are told, a pregnant woman has no say in defending her life in pregnancy.

In large part, legislators and priests, in fact most of us, never think about what we consider “natural” or “normal” in terms of women and gestation. For most of history, pregnancy and death were very closely related. Even today, every pregnancy carries the risk of dying for the woman. In the developing world, between 350,000 and 500,000 women die each year giving birth or dring pregnancy.

Even normal pregnancy involve, fatigue, excessively high heart stress, changes in hormones and blood supply, the risk of temporary diabetes, and a long list of other “normal” changes.

Is it not time to focus at least to the same extent on what pregnancy means for the person whose body is occupied by the fetus as on the fetus? Is it not time to recognize that the woman gets to consent to this visitation and that coercing her into providing her body for another “being” is not a routine event, but an heroic gift. A gift that must be freely offered?