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

Month: August 2012

Quick things

I am writing a rather complicated post at the moment for Feministe, so in the meantime..

Quick things to look at – some pretty, pretty pictures in “Yes These Bones Shall Live” over at the International Museum of Women, which is an exhibition of photos of Roller Derby mothers in Canada. (My HTML is not working for some reason at Feministe so here’s an old-fashioned link: http://mama.imow.org/yourvoices/yes-these-bones-shall-live )

Quick things to read and think about –

“When feelings run deep, as they do about mothers and motherhood, the temptation to make extreme statements is high… Motherhood is a raw, tender point of identity, and its relationship to other aspects of ourselves – our other aspirations, our need to work, our need for solitude – almost inevitably involves a tension. It is hard to sit with that tension, which is one reason discussions of motherhood tend toward a split view of the world.

Where we side depends on what we see as the most essential threat. For those working for gender equality over the past forty years, an enduring concern has been that women will be marched back home, restricting the exercise of their talents and their full participation in political and economic life. Efforts to mobilize public opinion against that regressive alternative have at times oversimplified women’s desire to mother and assigned it to a generally backward-looking, sentimental view of women’s place. When taken to the extreme, the argument suggests that women’s care for their children, the time spent as well as the emotions aroused, is foisted on them by purely external economic and ideological forces. Locating the sources of the desire to mother “out there” may temporarily banish the conflict, but ultimately it backfires, alienating women who feel it does not take into account, or help them to attain, their own valued maternal goals.

For those who identify most strongly with their role as mother, the greatest threat has been that caring for children and the honorable motivations behind it will be minimized and misunderstood, becoming one more source of women’s devaluation. Such women feel they suffer not at the hands of traditionalist ideology but rather from the general social devaluation of caregiving, a devaluation with economic and psychological effects. At times, proponents of this position insist on the essential differences between the sexes and the sanctity of conservative-defined “family values”. Such views end up alienating both women who question such prescriptive generalizations and those who feel their own sense of self or their aspirations are not reflected by them.

Most of us feel ill at ease at either pole of this debate, because though the poles represent opposing position, they both flatten the complexity of mothers’ own desires”.

From Maternal Desire by Daphne de Marneffe. This was such a thought-provoking book; I recommend it.

Better that children are hungry than fat

New York City Council looks like it’s going to approve a resolution in that will provide for breakfast in NYC classrooms. NYC currently ranks last among cities that provide for free breakfast programs, with only 34% of kids who qualify for free/reduced lunch getting breakfast at school. Bloomberg, obesity-fighter extraordinaire, is opposed. He’s worried that having a bowl of cereal in the morning will further contribute to childhood obesity, especially those fatties who will eat two breakfasts, one at home and one at school.

Except that skipping breakfast has been linked to weight gain. And eating breakfast has been linked to better performance in school. And, of course, school performance contributes to to financial success later in life which is correlated with lower rates of obesity. So even if you *do* buy into the idea that we can make fat kids thinner, this is clearly a good thing.

So, basically, even though Bloomberg says that it’s all about making healthier and happier kids, ultimately it’s just about trying to make kids less fat. And, despite the rhetoric, those aren’t the same thing.

For what it’s worth, my high school provided breakfast (free for kids who qualified) and most of my teachers allowed food in the first period of the day. Because they realized that it’s important for kids to get proper nutrition in order to learn and grow.

On Simone Weil

In 2004, I read this line: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” It so intrigued me that I decided to learn more about the woman who wrote it. Her name was Simone Weil and she was a French philosopher, activist, and mystic, from the 1930s. I was amazed by what I discovered.

And about Tattoos…

(I casually mentioned in my previous post that I might be concerned if my daughter got chest tattoos. I thought it might be interesting to look into that concern a little more.Take what you like and leave the rest.)

In college I was a proud “dread-head,” going to a salon every 8 weeks to have my 72 dreadlocks tugged and tightened into even, clean ropes. I LOVED having dreadlocks. I felt bold, and sexy, and I liked the way I got attention, good and bad. Most of all, I felt like they somehow gave me EDGE. Having “edgy” hair announced to the world something about my terminal feelings of uniqueness that I struggled with inside. It announced I might have issues. (I did.)

Fast forward 10 years to the present. I no longer have dread locks. But I was having a conversation recently with some friends about women and tattoos, specifically the larger, impossible-to-hide type on the neck and chest, or less extreme arm sleeves. The men friends of mine were saying 1. they thought they were sexy, and 2. that they felt like these types of tattoos were indeed some kind of public announcement about “edge,” “issues,” even anger. I related to this understanding only in the feelings I had years ago with my hair. Someone in our family recently began the process of a huge chest piece; I can’t help feeling like it’s a cry for …something. (Help? Attention? Is it armor? Is it just sexy?)

What do you think? Please discuss, especially if you having chest tattoos and/or arm sleeves. (and is there a difference in the extremes of both?) Does it depend on the design? Etc, Etc…

image courtesy of squidoo.com

Note: I also find it interesting that I don’t have such concerns about males having extreme tattoos– what does that say about me? our society? What if anything in the transgender community do tattoos translate differently than I present above?

p.s. I love tattoos! I have 2, and am planning a 3rd. (not on my chest.)

Hair Part I: Legs

I’ve never been particularly consistent about shaving my legs. They were already pretty hairy when, at age 12, I asked my mother for my first razor. It was pink and disposable. After my evening shower, I grabbed it and the shaving cream, and attempted to de-hair my legs. It took a long time. The razor kept getting clogged and I nicked my heel. It gushed blood, as heel nicks do, and the bleeding took forever to stop. But, by the end, I managed to get most of the hair, save for a few random patches. I pretty much always miss a couple spots.

I never shaved my legs in the winter. Sure, I agreed with the commercials that “silky smooth” felt great, but I just couldn’t be bothered. I’d have fits of embarrassment in gym class because we had to wear shorts, but an extra five minutes of sleep trumped that embarrassment. Thus went my first experience as a hair nonconformist.

I maintained my non-diligence through college, shaving (mostly) during skirt season and covering my hairy legs with long skirts and tall boots through the winter.

Then I moved to Seattle, where pretty much every season is skirt season.

I started dating my soon-to-be-husband and gained my leg-shaving motivation. After all, why would a great guy like him stay with a fat, hairy woman like me? One strike or another might be OK, but tolerance of both just seemed like too much to ask for.

And, well, I couldn’t be less fat, so I would be less hairy.

For the first few months of our relationship, I shaved without fail. Then I started testing the waters. A day without shaving. 2 days. 3. A week.

The STBH didn’t say anything.

Finally, the secret came out: the STBH didn’t actually care about silky smooth legs. In fact, he thought the whole hair-removal thing was pretty weird.

I didn’t really understand. Didn’t he know that women were supposed to have smooth legs? Didn’t he know that I was supposed to be ashamed of my stubble? Didn’t he know that “hairy” is one of the worst things a woman could be?

I continued shaving regularly for a bit, but it became a less and less frequent regimen. I haven’t yet reached the point where I feel comfortable with my hairy legs all the time, but it’s a process. I haven’t replaced my razors in a while, though I did shave before the last wedding I went to. Sometimes I have a fit of wanting to feel feminine, and my brain still thinks that I can only do that with smooth legs.

Most of the time, my logic goes as follows:
1. “I should shave my legs! I will look prettier with shaved legs!”
2. “I have no razors. I need to get razors.”
3. “I totally don’t have time to get razors. Maybe on the way back from work…?”
4. “Wait, fuck this. Why should I go out of my way to shave my fucking legs? I’m no less of a woman when I have leg hair! Smash the patriarchy!”

As I said, it’s a process.

I really wanted this to be some story about how I made an enlightened decision that razors are tools of the patriarchy and cast them away in a fit of rebellion. But really it’s the story of claiming back a bit of time and money for myself.

I’ve been challenged on that, mostly by other women, even feminist ones. I’ve gotten side-eyes while in bathing suits and comments while in dresses. I’ve been asked whether I’m making a statement, and sometimes I feel like I am.

But most of the time, the statement is that I just don’t feel like it. And that’s OK.

In many ways, my resistance to shaving feels like my resistance to dieting. It’s work that I’m supposed to do in order to maintain patriarchal standards of beauty. Even if I’m not intending to be subversive, I am, simply by enjoying and living in my fat, hairy body. It’s selfishness, and women aren’t supposed to be selfish. It’s abstaining from a beauty requirement, and women are supposed to uphold a certain paradigm of beauty. It’s a challenge to what patriarchy says a woman should look like and it’s a challenge to women who buy into those standards to consider why they spend the time and money.

What’s sickening is that even something as simple as letting leg hair grow out has its consequences. I don’t wear skirts while on job interviews or while presenting at conferences, for instance. My clean, soft leg hair would be seen as unkempt at best, a sign that I neglect self-care at worst. But I think that’s just another reason to be more public about my hairy legs. An army of hairy-legged feminists sounds scary to a lot of people, other feminists included, but I think it’s just the thing we need. I hope that the more women are upfront about not wanting to shave their legs, the more accepted it will become to abstain completely.

Greetings from Western Mass and an offering of Sagan

Hey folks, I’m Brigid. You may remember me from last year. I’m a queer femme writer, sometime environmental researcher, and anthropologist at heart. I recently relocated from Washington, DC to Western Massachusetts, where the beer is crafty and the humor is always self-referential. I enjoy science fiction, political art, and arguing amicably about things I love. I believe asking the right questions is at least as important as knowing the right answers. I’d like to be a romancer of reality. My mission is to drop truth and beauty bombs.

I don’t have a regular longform, original-content blog of my own at the moment, but you can follow me on Twitter (@whatmakesitgo), Tumblr (ordinarymachines), or Goodreads (ordinarymachines).

No long treatises or important insights just now, but I thought I’d share with you that I’m reading Contact by Carl Sagan (1985). It is an absolute joy — solid writing full of interesting science and compelling characters and meaning of life stuff. It also has tidbits like this:

[Ellie] set out to broaden her education, to take as many courses as possible apart from her central interests in mathematics, physics, and engineering. But there was a problem with her central interests. She found it difficult to discuss physics, much less debate it, with her predominantly male classmates. At first they paid a kind of selective inattention to her remarks. There would be a slight pause, and then they would go on as if she had not spoken. Occasionally they would acknowledge her remark, even praise it, and then again continue undeflected. She was reasonably sure her remarks were not entirely foolish, and did not wish to be ignored, much less ignored and patronized alternately. Part of it—but only a part—she knew was due to the softness of her voice. So she developed a physics voice: clear, competent, and many decibels above conversational. With such a voice it was important to be right. She had to pick her moments. It was hard to continue long in such a voice, because she was sometimes in danger of bursting out laughing. So she found herself leaning towards quick, sometimes cutting, interventions, usually enough to capture their attention; then she could go on for a while in a more usual tone of voice. Every time she found herself in a new group she would have to fight her way through again, just to dip her oar into the discussion. The boys were uniformly unaware even that there was a problem.

Sagan isn’t making a revolutionary observation here. But I find it particularly refreshing that as he introduces important male characters throughout the novel, he continues to remark on their willingness or reluctance to listen to Dr. Ellie Arroway when she speaks. He doesn’t soapbox about it, just includes it among the details he chooses to reveal about a person. Kind of like … the way I log whether people ignore me among other characteristics when I meet them in real life. Truth in fiction!

And I grinned a little to myself at “physics voice.” I know that voice; I’ve been refining my own since third grade. It’s not the only way to respond to Privileged Selective Hearing Syndrome, certainly, and it doesn’t make the problem go away (see also: “shrill,” “strident,” “know-it-all,” “bitchy”). Still, for what it’s worth, that voice is a part of me. I’ll bet I’m not the only one here for whom that’s the case.

Daddy’s Little Girl

While my daughter was away, she—my beautiful, hilarious, little girl—started growing up. I don’t want her to bemoan the inevitable; she will grow up. She IS growing up. I want to be in complete control of the kind of woman she turns out to be: strong, smart, powerful, unstoppable, and feminist. I want that affirmation, and my routines, to be enough armor against the effects of a mostly-absent father.

But I can’t really—really really—control the woman she is becoming, regardless of which coast she’s on. So what’s a mother to do?

Hello I’m Kim and Sometimes I Overshare

I’m Kim and I’m going to be guest blogging for next two weeks. I am thrilled to be here and have been looking forward to this all summer. Thank you for reading! If you’re on Twitter, I’d love to connect with you there: @kimconte.

As introduction, I’ll tell you that I live in Brooklyn with my boyfriend and a dog I talk to constantly. I work as an editor for a parenting website (despite not being a parent, which I’ve come to accept as one of life’s great ironies). I’ve done a lot of writing, both professionally and for myself. For years I wrote about food. I’ve also worked as a feminist blogger covering issues in the news like reproductive rights, healthcare, ignorant policy makers like Todd Akin, and wage equality. Lately, I’ve been writing a lot about my life.

Something that happens when you write about your life for a while—besides not being able to shake the worry that you are the most narcissist person on the planet—is a smudging of the line between what in your life is and is not appropriate to share. You lose perspective about whether you are being brave, open, and honest or blatantly oversharing. It’s a topic that writer Sarah Hepola insightfully addressed in her article for the New York Times Magazine, “Watching a Spectacular Public Meltdown With Just a Hint of Jealousy.”

Her piece is primarily about Cat Marnell, the former beauty editor for xoJane who became equal parts famous and infamous for writing about drug abuse, mental health, and other messy parts of her life. But the more sticky part for me is how Hepola responded to this woman’s work based on her own experience as a personal essay editor and writer. She admitted that there’s value for both reader and writer in personal essays about private pain—for her it was alcohol abuse—because they can be powerful aids in helping to process what you’ve been through. Then she said:

“Yet sometimes, I feel as if we’ve tipped the scales too far. Way too much skin on display. People are too readily encouraged to hurl their secrets into the void.”

It’s tempting to rationalize that people overshare because they want attention and to pick up a slew of followers. Of course, that plays a part. But I think it’s only scratching the surface of people’s motivation for “hurling their secrets into the void.”

A while back I wrote a blog post about my divorce for the website where I worked. It’s a topic I occasionally write about, but this post was different. Different in a bad “Holy crap did she just write that?” kind of way. It’s not that I was spilling juicy details of what went wrong in the relationship. (That’s what the screenplay is for! Oh, I kid! Sort of!). But it was very soon after the initial separation. And, I was unabashedly open about the pain I was feeling in a way that begged readers to shower me with sympathy and virtual hugs to help me feel better—versus, you know, find comfort or come to some bit of understanding of their own failed relationships through reading about mine. I get nauseous when I think back on it.

I published the post on the website, and then a coworker submitted it to the Huffington Post. Once it went live, I had a really icky feeling. It wasn’t that off-kilter feeling you get when you put something you are proud of out there and are a little worried about how people will react to it. Instead, it felt exactly like: REGRET.

I’m purposely not including the link here, but if you really want to read it, you could probably do some digging and find the train-wreck of a piece. But you have a life and, frankly, it’s not about my piece. It’s about the fact that at some point we all overshare.

We all have stuff, sloppy stuff, that’s happened to us that we want to talk about. If you choose to write online—a blog post, a comment to a blog post, an update to your Facebook status, anything at all—then you know first-hand how we are all constantly negotiating what is and what is not a good idea to share. It’s the upside and the downside to instant publishing. And sometimes we misjudge it. There’s no getting around it. It happens.

Here’s how I worked through this particular miscalculation: I forced myself to process why I wrote it in the first place. I wasn’t looking to ramp up online traffic or become a divorce influencer on Twitter. No, not at all.

I wrote that post about my divorce because I was really, really sad.

I don’t have to tell you that reading and writing about shared experiences can be tremendously therapeutic and healing. Why else would you be here? And I’ve always emulated writers who are able to get in touch with their emotions and aren’t afraid of what bubbles up to the surface. I’ve gradually become less hard on myself about the divorce post because I sincerely believed that’s what I intended to do in writing about it.

But, did I write about it way too soon? HELL YEAH I DID. My mistake was not writing about the experience, it was failing to process the experience before I unleashed it on the world. In other words, I had underestimated how awesome awareness can be. And I learned the hard way that writing without it can be a stinky idea. I accept that, too.

The last thing I want to be is a self-conscious, too-careful writer editing the heart and soul out of my work for fear of sharing too much. But this experience did teach me to put at least a little space between writing about my private life and pushing the “publish” button.

Did you ever share something online you regretted?