December 2010 – Page 4

Happy birthday, Ellen Willis

Iconic feminist writer Ellen Willis was born today in 1941. Willis was a leftist writer, a music critic, and a pop culture philosopher. Her writing is incisive and brilliant, and shaped feminist discourse in invaluable ways. Willis passed away in 2006, but her amazing daughter Nona has preserved much of her work online — you can check it out here.

Happy birthday, Ellen.

Feministe Feedback: Dealing with racist relatives during the holidays

A reader writes in:

I’m dreading going home for Christmas this year. At Thanksgiving one of my family members made an ugly racist comment that really made my blood boil. I stated that the comment was racist and I was met with condescending laughter. I left the house for a while because I was so angry, and when I got back, others tried to explain to me why their racist beliefs were important, and why I should believe them too. I was so horrified I basically didn’t talk to anyone for the rest of the day. Everyone I’ve talked to so far has told me “they don’t know any better”. This doesn’t seem at all adequate but I don’t know what else to do- the oldest generation of my family has no idea that hating people is even wrong. Where do you start with people like that?

Suggestions? Thoughts? How do you deal with racist / bigoted / sexist family at the holiday dinner table?

As a reminder, you can send questions to Feministe Feedback by emailing Feministe -at- gmail -dot- com.

Cultural Constructions, Part 3

Part 1 and Part 2.

So, let’s talk about shifts towards whiteness, the phenomenon of groups “achieving” status as white. I’ve mentioned that Greeks and Italians in Australia have in recent years shifted from non-white to white status. Most of us here are probably familiar with the history of groups like the Irish in the United States and their shift to whiteness. Here and there, I’ve been picking up a thread in my reading from the United States discussing the assimilation of Asians, the “model minority”. This thread is one of Asian Americans being absorbed into whiteness, or not being as properly non-white as other non-white groups, which gave me quite a jolt. The underlying idea, as I’m reading it, is that a group achieving some degree of whiteness’ favour in a particular place and historical moment gets to be absorbed into whiteness. Difference and discrimination get to be done away with together.

That really disturbs me: I think non-white identities should be allowed to be sustained, and that acceptance as white shouldn’t be necessary to lessen discrimination or for a group to be accepted as people. (That’s not to say that discrimination is in actuality being done away with; it’s reminiscent of “postracialism” as a deeply racist substitute for anti-racism. The notion that absorption into whiteness – or at least white approval – represents the moment harmony, happiness and so forth starts should make that evident from the get go.) I’m not trying to take away anyone’s identity here: if you identify as white but have this kind of history of non-whiteness, that’s cool. I’m simply troubled by the idea that this particular shift towards whiteness supposedly must be necessary as a part of the evolution of racial relations, rather than a shift towards acceptance of all kinds of identities.

Growing more accepted seems to be contingent on shifts towards white cultures, constructions as white, assimilation. I don’t think a choice to assimilate into a dominant culture not one’s own is necessarily a bad thing, necessarily a mark of oppression. The expectation that everyone be a part of it, that everyone wishes for whiteness and white cultural acceptance, makes me feel really scared. I don’t think my Australianness should be contingent on my giving up my culture (or relating to it in majority-approved ways), my community identification, the kinds of things that make me me. Irrespective of whether someone wants to hold on to their ancestral culture(s), or participate in dominant ones, or live in a fusion such as suits them, I don’t think that their cultural identification or practice needs to be held up with reference to a white ideal.

I want to be accepted, but not at the cost of my identity as non-white. I think it’s perfectly possible to achieve acceptance and, dare I say it, harmony across racial difference without the elimination thereof.

What (white) Progressives Don’t Understand About Obama

A must-read:

Progressives have been urging the president to “man up” in the face of the Republicans. Some want him to be like John Wayne. On horseback. Slapping people left and right.

One progressive commentator played an excerpt from a Harry Truman speech during which Truman screamed about the Republican Party to great applause. He recommended this style to Mr. Obama. If President Obama behaved that way, he’d be dismissed as an angry black militant with a deep hatred of white people. His grade would go from a B- to a D.

Ishmael Reed is right — if Obama got mad, he would An Angry Black Man. He would be a “thug.” He hasn’t even gotten mad and he’s already portrayed by the right as an angry black militant with a deep hatred of white people. There’s certainly a lot to get mad about, but Obama’s cooler-than-a-cucumber demeanor is part of what has gotten him so far. And the demands to “get mad,” in addition to erasing the political realities of what “getting mad” means when the person getting mad is part of a class that is widely perceived by white Americans as too loud and too dangerous, are kind of too little too late, aren’t they? Dems didn’t get it together for the midterms, and now some are going as far as suggesting that the party nominate a different presidential candidate in 2012. Which is quite frankly asinine. But sure, take your toys and go home.

Reproductive Justice and the Law

Law Students for Reproductive Justice commissioned a study of reproductive rights legal courses in American law schools, and the results are pretty predictable: Only 18% of U.S. law schools have offered reproductive rights law courses at some point over the last seven years, and half of those courses were only taught once. On the LSRJ blog, Liz Kukura writes:

Having dedicated reproductive rights law courses in the course catalog is critical—not only as important training for those law students who will pursue careers in reproductive justice and social justice work, but also as an opportunity for all future lawyers to be exposed to the many complex and compelling reproductive justice topics that raise issues of criminal law, constitutional law, property law, contract law, health law, family law, bioethics, and more. We miss entirely too much when discussion of reproductive rights is limited to a day’s worth of Griswold and Roe in con law class.

Above the Law’s writers and commenters, though, seem to disagree. Ami Cholia says:

But given that most lawyers take constitutional law (to say nothing of the interested parties who take family law, health law, and whatever the hell else 3Ls take in order to maintain an unblemished GPA), is a specific course in reproductive rights even necessary? Academic classes rarely give one a true representation of how the concepts we study play out in real life (think back to your middle school sex-ed class for a minute). That is usually learned on the job. You are trained to ask the right questions and argue your point effectively — a rounded understanding of law, then, should prepare you to take on a reproductive case, regardless.

Should we interpret the dearth of repro-rights courses as representative of gender-imbalance at schools and within the profession at large? Again, I don’t think so. It’s not about man v. woman or even life v. abortion. It’s about rights. And as a trained lawyer, you are taught about those rights. Reproductive rights aren’t special rights, are they?

But am I missing something entirely?

I think what Ami is missing is that reproductive rights law is a highly contentious, continually evolving area of law that in part because of its divisiveness isn’t given the class time necessary to really feel out all of the issues involved. And, while this probably wasn’t LSRJ’s point, one of my biggest frustrations with law school was that the reality of how the law impacts peoples’ lives was totally divorced from what we were learning in class. Class discussions were rarely justice-based; we were taught how to pick apart a legal theory or cobble together a “correct” conclusion based on legal precedent, but didn’t get so much into how a common-law system normalizes certain experiences and erases the realities that a lot of people live (and particularly realities lived by marginalized people). Reproductive justice coursework, I would hope, might force students to get a little bit beyond the comfort that reliance on consistency can bring. It’s not just that the topic itself is important (although it is) but also that legal discussions about the fundamentals of human existence — sex, reproduction, birth — inherently require law students to diverge from the hyper-logical, consistency-above-all pattern of thinking that we spend three years relying on. That of course doesn’t mean that you take the legalism out of it, or that repro justice courses would be more like liberal arts classes than law school ones; it does mean that when we’re discussing how the laws actually impact the human body, it’s a little harder to take the human being involved out of the conversation.

And my personal theories about how legal education could be improved aside, reproductive justice courses should be logical offerings in law schools that regularly feature classes on things like environmental law, immigration law, art law, health law, critical race theory, feminist legal theory, and on and on. All of those specialized courses address legal issues that are dynamic and important, but aren’t covered in-depth in other law classes and may not end up being what one does as a career. Reproductive justice fits into the type of legal coursework that law schools and law students value, and I suspect that the reason it’s avoided is because it’s so controversial. That’s a shame, and law students are missing out because of it.

Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday

Post a short description of something you’ve written this week, along with a link. Make it specific – don’t just link your own blog.

Matthew Boyle steals from the government to prove that poor people don’t need food.

Wow, this is really horrible you guys: Did you know that you can use food stamps to buy actual food? Thank goodness right-wing investigative “journalists” are on the case.

Matthew Boyle lied on his food stamps application, thereby defrauding the government and receiving social services to which he was not actually entitled. He then went to Whole Foods and bought a single gourmet meal with the generous $105 in benefits he received for the whole month. The next month he bought $100 worth of candy.

The point, I guess, is that since Matthew Boyle defrauded the government and spent the money he stole on organic food and Rite Aid candy, food stamps are bad. Because poor people should not buy food. Definitely not organic food. Definitely not non-organic candy either. Or maybe the point is that the government should regulate what people are able to buy with their food stamps? (Boyle, of course, is a small-government-promoting Tea Partier). It’s unclear, actually, what the point of his article is, other than to admit to the world that he stole from the government — which is exactly what Republicans routinely accuse poor people of doing. Apparently he couldn’t find an actual poor person who wanted to spend their $105 for a month of food on Skittles, and so he did it himself. Awesome.

Amanda has more. Perhaps poor people just don’t need to eat more than once a month?

No system is fail-safe.

A must-read column by Nick Kristof. Sometimes courts and judges get it wrong. When no system is fail-safe, do we really want the state handing down death as a final punishment?

Naomi Wolf: Assange captured by the “dating police”

Way to fly that feminist flag, Naomi. As Jessica Valenti points out, it sounds like Wolf just doesn’t read the internet or do much of anything in the way of research before she suggests that Julian Assange is accused of sexual assault because he was texting and a bimbo got mad. It’s embarrassing.

Now, I don’t doubt that Interpol’s response to the sexual assault allegations against Assange were politically motivated (does anyone really doubt that?). No reasonable person is under the impression that Interpol regularly scours the continent for every man who is accused of assault — Interpol can hardly be bothered to track down big-time human traffickers who sell women and girls to men who pay to rape them, so it’s not like they got their act together because Assange’s alleged predatory behavior was so horrible that they had to act swiftly and thoroughly.

But just because the vigor with which Assange was pursued was clearly politically motivated doesn’t mean that the accusations against Assange are totally incredible, or that it’s unjust that he will have to face them. It doesn’t make Interpol the “dating police.” It doesn’t mean that the women are motivated by “personal injured feelings.” In fact, it is totally possible to support the WikiLeaks project and to think that the international response to Assange and the project is thoroughly fucked up and to think we should withhold judgment on whether or not Assange is actually a rapist and also to think that we should withhold judgment on whether the women are lying, and to not discredit the women involved, and to not create a hostile climate for rape survivors, and to not play into every tired old stereotype about women and rape.

Seriously, we can chew gum and walk at the same time.

Call for Participants: FREE 12-week workshop on sex, safety, and getting What You Really Really Want

A great workshop to check out:

When it comes to sex, should I always avoid the things that make me uncomfortable? How do I know if the person I’m flirting with is safe to date? Is hooking up always damaging? What do I say to a friend who’s making sexual choices I think might be bad for her? What if that friend is questioning my choices? How do I encourage others to be safe and sane about sex without teaching them shame?

All women have questions at the intersections of sex and safety. And it’s no wonder: our culture bombards women and girls with mixed messages every day. We’re supposed to be innocent virgins who excel at stripper-pole workouts. We’re failures if we don’t act sexy, but we’re sluts if we actually pursue sex. We need to be protected from rapists lurking in bushes, but deserve “whatever we get” if we have a drink at a party and wear a skirt.

In her anthology Yes Means Yes, Jaclyn Friedman laid out a vision of a world in which we all have the right to experience the pleasure of our bodies without shame, blame or fear. Her second book, What You Really Really Want, due out next Fall, will help readers create that world for themselves, in their own lives. Using research, reality-based advice, revealing quizzes and creative exercises, What You Really Really Want will show readers the way to separate fear from fact, decode the damaging messages all around us, and discover a healthy personal sexuality. We’ll build new skills for safely expressing that sexuality with lovers, explore effective ways to talk about tricky issues with family and friends, and learn how to make the world a little safer for everyone else’s sexuality along the way.

But before the book can reach the page, Jaclyn is looking for a dozen volunteers to be the very first people to ever read the book, engage with the exercises, discuss the process with each other and with Jaclyn, and help shape the finished book.

The twelve-week workshop will be run by Jaclyn herself on Sundays at 3PM EST, from January 9 to March 27, 2011. We’ll use the unreleased first draft of the book as our text, and we’ll rely on the internet and conference calls to bring together women of a variety of backgrounds.

Check out Jaclyn’s site for details on how to apply.