Author Archives: Anna Clutterbuck-Cook

from the archive: new collections

11 Wednesday Aug 2010

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It’s been a while since I put up a post about the work Hanna and I do during our regular working hours as librarian/archivists at Northeastern, Countway Medical Library, and the Massachusetts Historical Society (we both work independently at Countway and the MHS and then job share a position at Northeastern with one other woman).


Hanna and I have both recently finished processing new collections at Northeastern — “processing” being the archive-speak term for taking newly-acquired collections, organizing them, doing what we can to preserve them, and then making them accessible to the public. For each collection, Northeastern has a “finding aid” that details the scope and content of the collection, and provides some basic historical background on the person or organization.

One of the things I really like about my job at Northeastern is that we actively collect materials from under-represented communities and social justice organizations in the Boston area — specifically the queer community, the Latina/Latino community, Chinese and African-American communities.

Hanna recently completed processing 14 boxes of records from Fenway Health, the community health center where she and I both receive our primary care. The staff there are preternaturally awesome and we suspect that they may come from a race of highly advanced alien beings who have made it their mission to provide high-quality healthcare to the human beings on this woeful little planet that can’t get their act together to make universal healthcare a human right (Doctors Without Interstellar Borders?) You can check out the press release Hanna put together or the finding guide to the records if you’re interested in how these materials are organized and made available for researchers.

My collection was a much more modest two boxes, the papers of Keri Lynn Duran, an AIDS / HIV activist and educator, Keri Duran, who herself was diagnosed with AIDS and died in 1995 at the age of 32, after six years of organizing, protesting and educating. After working with materials that mostly date from the nineteenth-century and earlier at the MHS (although the Historical Society is still actively collecting), it was a little disconcerting to be arranging material from someone whose life and work encompassed such recent events. Her personal journals, I thought, were particularly illuminating in describing her health struggles and her anger about the slow political response as she and her friends were dying. You can read the finding guide online at the NU website.

Even though a lot of the material in both of these collections is widely available to the public now (journal articles on AIDS, public health pamphlets, brochures on artificial insemination, etc.) and may not seem very historically relevant, they are already historical in that they help to document a particular moment in the history of the queer community, in public health care, and activism surrounding AIDS / HIV. And hopefully — if we archivists do our jobs right! — these materials will now be around for decades to come, so that 200+ years down the road (when the events of the 1990s are as far behind us as the events of the Revolutionary War are to us today) these documents will still be here for historians of the future to access and recreate our stories from.

wtf; or, anatomy of a blog comment thread

10 Tuesday Aug 2010

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I’ve been stewing about this comment thread over at emily nagoski :: sex nerd for about a week now, and in an effort to learn something from the process have decided to share my observations with y’all and ask for any tips you might have!

See, I generally enjoy being active in comment threads on topics that excite me. And I also try to cultivate openness to differing viewpoints and a willingness to engage in conversation with people whose beliefs are different (even diametrically opposite from!) my own. To me, conversation with people whose ideas I disagree with (and sometimes even abhor) is a way to cultivate compassion, empathy and lovingkindness. I also find it to be an interesting opportunity to people watch, and gather information on how folks interact, and particularly how they disagree, online. Hanna encourages me to save my energy for more important things than blog thread comment wars, and there are days when I completely agree with her. But I also feel like I do learn from them — even when I’m not sure what, exactly I learn. So I keep coming back to re-engage.

In this particular case, the post in question was on differential desire vis a vis sexual activity in a long-term relationship (an opposite-sex marriage). The husband had written in to a discussion forum asking for advice on how to re-open communication with his wife over relational sex — something they appear to have dramatically different levels of interest in. Emily, the blog author, pitched her response to the question of how the couple could work together to establish better channels of communication and discover where their common ground was in terms of making love. The post is a good one, and I recommend you hop on over if you want the full context of the conversation that followed.

See, the first comment out of the gate was by a man identifying himself as marriagecoach1 / John Wilder (warning: scary man profile!), in which he made the claim that “studies show that 60% of married women with children have their husbands on a starvation diet of sex once a week or less.” Which is, of course, levels of wrong. As Emily pointed out in her response, gently suggesting that “people vary too much to use national statistics to illuminate an individual case.” Girl Detective pointed out that “starvation diet” was a pretty loaded phrase. It implies a power differential in which the wife has power over the husband (the ability to put him on a diet) and also implies that sex “once a week or less” is a negative thing for all men, which — since human beings’ desire for relational sex varies widely by person and context — is a fairly irresponsible assumption to make.

If the desired end result is more pleasurable, relational sex with his wife (what the husband with the original question seemed to desire), then surely the best avenue toward that goal is making the environment as conducive to more sex as possible. Approaching the lower-desire partner with an accusation that they’re controlling their higher-desire partner with a “starvation diet” of sex: maybe not the best opening salvo. Just sayin’.

So, okay: combative commenter, a handful of measured responses. So far so good. Then Mr. Wilder returns further downthread to re-assert his position that “withholding” sex is a power grab.

You are violating marriage vows (well not if you are not married) but for marrieds, you vowed to satisfy the needs of your partner and it is considered unfaithful to those vows when you refuse.

Men get the bulk of their affectional needs met through sex with his wife. If she decides that she does not want to do that then she ought to file for divorce.

The old cliche about: “Behind every great man is a woman” implies that she keeps him centered and content by taking care of his sexual needs.

Ooooh boy. Issues just multiplied. So not only is this man approaching the question of differential desire by framing it as a question of gender (as becomes clear further downthread, he sees this as primarily a question of lower-desire women holding out on higher-desire men), he’s also framing the question as an issue of violating a clause (the “sex clause” if you will) of the heterosexual marriage contract.

This is the point at which I jumped into the frey and posed the question I saw as central to the problem with this kind of advice-giving comment. “How exactly is characterizing the wife as a manipulative bitch who’s using sex as a weapon going to help this couple?” To which he responded

Women bash men because they are not forthcoming with their feelings and yet you acknowledge that this man is really trying for which he should be commended. The wife is refusing to talk to him about it … It is frustrating to hear you women backing up the woman’s right to refuse the man like his wants and needs and desires have no concern. It is emotionally debilitating.

Since communication was Emily’s key theme in the original post … and all of the other commenters were backing her up on this point … we’re clearly having a reading comprehension issue. I also detect strong, strong whiffs of frustrated male privilege here: Mr. Wilder is pissed because he thinks he’s giving in to the “women [who] bash men” (code for “feminist”) by “really trying” to communicate, and instead of getting bountiful sex in return he’s still being told that no person is obligated to meet another person’s sexual needs.

He says “the woman’s right” but all of us were clear on this being a gender-neutral proposition. I pointed this out (“I don’t think partners of any sexual orientation, sex or gender are well served when the conversation about relational sexuality revolves around what is owed/deserved and how withholding the expected amount/type of sex is a ‘violation of marriage vows.'”) which is when the shit really hit the fan

I agree that is not necessarily men against women or women against men but a violation of the covenant of marriage. Sex is an integral part of marriage and yes it is an obligation that you incur when you take marriage vows, I don’t apoogize for that. It might not be politically correct, but I don’t hold with very many politically correct notions. To me, it is a pass on someone’s disloyal behavior.

. . . For the record, I have never had a man demand his right to refuse sex to their women, that is singularly a woman’s notion.

So in a way, it is women against men. I am not dealing with homosexual sex as that is not my area and what they do is up to them.

Religiously-grounded sexism and homophobia for the win!

*headdesk*

How to respond to this sort of comment, gentle readers? Of course (as Hanna so often reminds me!) option one is always simply not to engage. This guy has clearly made the decision to show up on a feminist-friendly, queer-friendly, sex-positive blog and promote ideas about heterosexual marriage with an authoritative air of moral righteousness. He persists on seeing the issue as a power struggle between women and men in which men (as supposedly higher-libido beings) are at the mercy of women. The posturing over not being “politically correct” signals to me that he realizes the other commenters on this blog won’t agree with him, and rather than simply persuasively advocating for his position he hides behind the pre-emptive accusation that anyone who dislikes what he has to say is being “politically correct” (a phrase that invokes, in the popular consciousness, all manner of negative imagery concerning the “thought police” and liberals elites who have the power to force people to self-censor their ideas and expressions for fear of social opprobrium).

He goes on to write

The only ones I hear demanding the right to deny their partners are feminists and so yes, I have a real problem with feminists. I believe in equality but by demanding your right to say no, you are not advocating equality but absolute dominance which makes feminists who espouse such notions rank hyypocrites.

Again: the basic argument this guy has is what I’ll call the Lysistrata gambit, the theory that differential desire in long-term sexual relationships is not a gender-neutral phenomenon with myriad causes and possible solutions, but rather that it is a systematic plot by women to gain power over men by withholding sex. Yeah, sure, once I bring it up he tosses a few sops to the queer community and admits that women may be the hornier member of a hetero couple occasionally (who still couldn’t win Mr. Wilder’s respect since they “complained louder and longer than most men”). But the through-line is clear: women have all the power and men are at their mercy — especially married men whose wives are using a bait-and-switch tactic of luring them into marriage and then changing the rules by deciding they’re no longer interested in relational sex.

In Mr. Wilder’s universe, there is no room for human beings to change, grow, or experience ups and downs in their sexual desires as in all other aspects of their lives. “Many people start out equally with sex but often the woman changes the deal after the fact. That is disnegnious.” To Mr. Wilder, this is sort of like reverse-rape.

For feminists to demand their right to deny it is as offensive to me as me suggesting that a man force a woman to have sex against her will. After all are you not forcing a man not to have sex against his will?

Because “forcing” someone not to touch you or not experience your touch is just the same as violating someone else’s bodily integrity by sexually assaulting them.

Yeah.

*headdesk*

What I finally wrote in response was this

Look, John. Here’s the thing.

You keep writing things like “you still have the obligation” like it’s a universal truth but you’re grounding it in Biblical scripture which is something not everyone in the world chooses as an authoritative text (and which not everyone interprets as you do).

If you don’t want to be in a partnership with someone who believes that partners retain the right, even within marriage, to negotiate sexual intimacy — how, when, with whom, how often, etc. — then awesome! Make that clear to your prospective partners and have that be a deal-breaker. And if your partner decides that’s not the kind of relationship they want, then you have the option of either rethinking your own position (perhaps reaching a compromise between the two of you) or walking away.

NO ONE IS FORCING YOU to be in relationship with people who don’t share your views on human sexuality, marriage, etc. What I object to is your instructional, combative tone and the way in which you are clearly laying out one set of (Biblically-based) rules for everyone.

You can read the full exchange over at ::sex nerd::.

Here’s the thing, o readers … I feel obscurely as if I’ve failed. And I know it’s not my responsibility (nor is it possible) to get this one, clearly rigidly-opinionated person in the blogosphere to suddenly go “aha! I get it! sexual relationships are complicated and there is no one-size-fits-all solution!” just because of some comment I’ve thrown into the mix.

But I find this sort of exchange extremely frustrating because I feel like I offer up these big fluffy eiderdown pillows of inclusion — no one’s saying you can’t live your life your own way! just acknowledge the glorious diversity in the world! — and this other person (Mr. Wilder is but one example of so many!) keeps coming back with what is essentially the same argument: “I will only feel good about life and safe in the world if everyone else conforms to my expectations for correct human behavior!”

Sometimes I just want to be like “grow up already!!”

Not to mention how sad it makes me that people who think this way must not find pleasure in discovering new ways of seeing the world like I do. So much of what I love about my research and about my blogging is the chance I have to experience what the world looks like from new perspectives. To greet those new perspectives not with a feeling of joy at the boundless possibilities of human existence but rather with the intense desire to change all people into replica-yous must be so limiting a life!

Anyway, this is all a very long-winded request for your own stories and tips for engaging in online conversation with people who hold rigid, conservative views. Is it even worth it? If it is, what strategies do you recommend? How do you pick your battles? When do you bow out? What mistakes have you learned from? I’d love to hear from you in comments!

quotes of the day: "the witness stand is a lonely place to lie"

09 Monday Aug 2010

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via Pam’s House Blend.

Chris Wallace [Fox News]: Where is the right to, you talk about the right to marriage, where is the right to same-sex marriage in the Constitution?

Ted Olsen: Where is the right to interracial marriage in the Constitution, Chris? The Supreme Court has said that marriage, the right to marry a person of your choice is a part of liberty, privacy, association, and spirituality guaranteed to each individual under the Constitution. When you say same-sex marriage, you’re saying a particular type of marriage, which the Supreme Court has looked at marriage and has said that the right to marriage is a fundamental right for all citizens, so you call it interracial marriage and then you can prohibit it? No, the Supreme Court said no. The same thing here. The judge, after hearing three weeks of testimony and a full day of closing arguments and listening to experts from all over the world, concluded that the denial of the right to marry to these individuals in California hurt them and did not advance the cause of opposite-sex marriage. This is what judges are expected to do. It is not judicial activism, it is judicial responsibility in its classic sense.

And

David Boies: Right. Well, it’s easy to sit around and debate and throw around opinions appear– appeal to people’s fear and prejudice, cite studies that either don’t exist or don’t say what you say they do. In a court of law you’ve got to come in and you’ve got to support those opinions. You’ve got to stand up under oath and cross-examination. And what we saw at trial is that it’s very easy for the people who want to deprive gay and lesbian citizens the right to vote, to make all sorts of statements and campaign literature or in debates where they can’t be crossexamined. But when they come into court and they have to support those opinions and they have to defend those opinions under oath and cross-examination, those opinions just melt away. And that’s what happened here. There simply wasn’t any evidence. There weren’t any of those studies. There weren’t any empirical studies. That’s just made up. That’s junk science. And it’s easy to say that on television. But the witness stand is a lonely place to lie. And when you come into court, you can’t do that. And that’s what we proved. We put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost.

Happy Monday!

sunday smut: links on sex and gender (no. 32)

08 Sunday Aug 2010

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Lesbian Zombie Wedding by flybaby
at Flickr.com

As y’all are no doubt already aware, United States District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker issued a kick-ass opinion this passed Wednesday that found Proposition 8 unconstitutional and that anti-gay marriage arguments were religiously, irrationally motivated and therefore held “essentialyl no weight” when it came to civil law. (If I didn’t have a girlfriend of whom I am so fond, I would kiss the man).

Spiffy @ Hippyish brought us my favorite “waiting for the ruling” post.

I read the opinion with great glee and will be offering some tasty highlights throughout next week. But in the meantime, you can find a 138-page PDF of the full decision available online for your own reading pleasure (and a pleasure it is!) or enjoy Dahlia Lithwick‘s observations over at Slate.com.

The supports of Prop. 8 have already filed an appeal of the ruling, but this particular decision is far from meaningless just because the case will continue to move through the court system. Thomas @ Yes Means Yes offers us a summary of the 80 “findings of fact” that make up a substantial portion of the ruling and explains why they matter into the future. Mac McClelland @ Mother Jones asks what’s next for the Prop 8 case?

A few more notable posts on the ruling:

Marty Klein @ Sexual Intelligence | Prop 8, Minority Rights, & American Democracy.

Andrew Belonsky @ Gay Rights Blog | Judge Vaughn Walker’s Prop 8 Decision Heralds New Age of Rationality.

Dana Rudolph @ Women’s Rights Blog | Prop 8 Ruling Highlights Crumbling of Gender Roles.

Jessica Arons @ RhRealityCheck | Prop 8 Court Victory: A Reproductive Justice Win Too.

Aaron Belkin @ Huffington Post | Prop 8 and the Politics of Paranoia.

In other news.

On Thursday, Elena Kagan became the fourth women ever to be confirmed as a Justice on the United States Supreme Court. Alex DiBranco @ Women’s Right Blog observes that now the Supreme Court is one-third female for the first time in history. Dahlia Lithwick @ Slate suggests we may be in for something of a ride.

A group of Republicans is apparently attempting to repeal the 14th Amendment. That’s right, the one that guarantees us all equal protection under the law. Amanda Marcotte @ Pandagon explains how this topsy-turvy (and not unfrightening) situation is tied to hysteria over non-white, foreign-born people. Xenophobia and bigotry = NOT COOL PEOPLE.

Another story in the annals of hate, Monica @ Transgriot points out that hypermasculinity is killing our kids. A 17-month-old toddler was killed by his father for not being manly enough.

Jessica Yee @ Ms. Blog writes about how native women were the movers and shakers behind the 2010 Tribal Law and Order Act (passed this week) which will help protect indigenous women from violence.

Ann Friedman @ The American Prospect consider the new workplace sexism and how, even though the more blatant paternalism of the 50s and 60s is a thing of the past, misogyny can still have a negative affect on women’s careers. “Often these are men who would never dream of groping, making unwanted advances, or bestowing inappropriate nicknames on their female co-workers, but behind-their-back comments are also intimidation and bullying of a sexual nature.”

The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology published a “meta-analysis” of studies related to home birth recently, in which researchers concluded that while outcomes for mothers were good home birth (or rather, lack of intervention at home births) were supposedly related to significant increases in infant mortality. Amie Newman @ RhRealityCheck reports on how (much like with Prop 8!) bias, politics and sloppy research make this latest condemnation of home birthing unworthy of note, and also calls for an end to the “home birth vs. hospital birth” debate.

Where to give birth is hardly the only aspect of parenting that has political ramifications. Rachel White @ AlterNet provides a personal perspective on the kyriarchical elitism of the world of human egg donation.

And Belinda Baldwin @ Gay Right’s Blog suggests that the frustration among some queer folks over the portrayal of a lesbian couples’ infidelity in The Kids Are All Right might be misplaced. “What if,” she asks, “the price of fitting in is the loss of a cohesive group identity?”

The kids might be alright, but sluts, apparently, still don’t have a right to be happy. At least if one is to judge from the blowback from Jaclyn Friedman’s recent piece on discovering her inner slut — and enjoying it. Megan Carpentier @ Bitch Blogs muses about how it’s still culturally unacceptable for women who enjoy casual sex to, well, enjoy it. Heather Corinna @ Feministe riffs on a similar theme in the post about a one-line email she received which read: “her advice comes from fact that Heather Corinna is a SLUT.”

Consistently, it seems to me that one of the characteristics that divides the left from the right (at least in this historical moment) is that while folks on the left are primarily occupied with trying to protect the freedom of individuals to pursue happiness, as long as they aren’t hurting others, folks on the right expend freakish amounts of energy attempting to mould the world, pygmalian like, in their own image. You’d think the Christian god might have a thing or two to say about “false idols.” But I digress. As an example, Amanda Marcotte @ Pandagon shows how hysterical one conservative blogger got when Jaclyn Friedman wrote a piece about how she’d discovered the pleasures of more casual sex. Somehow, in the conservative mind the words “I enjoy this thing!” turn into “Everyone in the world must enjoy this thing just as I do!” Maybe they insert the chip when you register as a member of the GOP?

And finally: the GOP aren’t the only ones who want to stick their noses into other peoples’ personal choices. Apparently, there is a Queen’s English Society, and apparently they are annoyed by the nomenclature for women’s formal titles. Stupid women, for needing so many when men have just one! Let’s get rid of … the most universal of them? Wait! What? Courtney and Adrienne @ From Austin to A&M have more.

"both choices are radical": the decision not to parent

06 Friday Aug 2010

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In response to my last post about the children-as-people thing, my awesome friend Laura Cutter sent me this thoughtful email, which I repost with her permission. I think it’s super-important to underscore the fact that arguing that children (and by extension, their caregivers) are marginalized in our society doesn’t mean that people (read: women) who are not parents (by accident or choice) don’t face enormous social censure.

No one’s interests are served, I’d argue, by turning this into a case of oppression olympics, trying to parse out whose pain is more exquisite than the next person’s. Instead, we need to place the blame where it belongs: fucked up cultural norms that demand one single best way for women and young people to be in the world and be in relationship with one another. The human species is just too awesomely diverse for us to waste our time on that sort of one-size-fits-all crap.

Without further editorializing, here’s Laura.

I really appreciate your post from today – I find it heartbreaking when various groups (who are themselves often marginalized) insist on further marginalization. In my more pessimistic moments, I wonder if our biological minds, which from very early evolution needed to separate, delineate, and categorize everything from people to plants in order to survive, are somehow on overdrive – pushing us apart. That being said. One of the things that really struck me about your post and the links you added was this:

Our generation is one that is rapidly moving towards a time where some of us are choosing to have children. That is right now, the present. But what everyone seems to be forgetting is that many of our ideas and experiences were not formed in this cultural moment. Just as some of us remember feeling marginalized as children, others of us remember being told constantly that we would and should expect to have a child/children. I remember feeling livid as my protestation that I never wanted children were brushed aside by adults who were certain that they understood me better than I did. I am very aware that my own community and intellectual life is quite rarified – it is for many of us. But the underlying assumption to many of these arguments seems to be that it is so acceptable not to have children that the women who now choose to have them are the new marginalized poster child (red is the new black?). Many of us still must validate, on a daily basis, our choice not to have children. We experience invasive, insulting, manipulative, and inappropriate responses from people who, in other circumstances, would never pass judgment on another person’s choice. This is my point: both choices are radical. Both choices carry tremendous cultural significance and personal meaning. In my world, it is still radical to choose not to become a parent, and I carry with me all the baggage of years spent being told that my choice was wrong. But I understand and respect that for many other women, the decision to choose parenting means other sacrifices, for which they, in turn, are judged.

* * *

I feel like it happens this way (as my friend Marie-Laure says, “tell me a story”): I have kids and you don’t. In you, I see all of the people who told me that having children was a waste of my talent, a second choice, a vote for the patriarchy. I also see all of the freedom and choices that you have in your life and think it’s a little unfair and that your life must be easier than mine. In me, you see everyone who told you that you were born to have children, that it is natural and beautiful, that you would never be complete without them, that you will change your mind. I also see all of the social acceptance and special treatment that you have in your life and think it’s a little unfair and that your life must be easier than mine. But of course, that’s not who you are and that’s not who I am, but when we (especially women), have these debates, we bring into them all of this damage and judgment and project on each other with our own insecurities. I do think this parent/not parent issue really is a false dichotomy and everybody knows that progress is never made when everyone is just in fighting.

in love with new blogs: Natasha Curson – a trans history

05 Thursday Aug 2010

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A while ago, I gave everyone a head’s up on the sunday smut list that my e-friend Tasha had started a new blog, Natasha Curson – a trans history where she is slowly but surely posting snippets of her personal history, one episode at a time. As she wrote in her most recent post, the first telling

I find it hard to recognize the person taking those first faltering (and in the end failing) steps outside of the closet at the age of 21. Or, to put it another way, there’s a lot I recognize about him – his taste in books and music for example – but not a lot I recognize about her, the woman struggling to emerge, the state she was in at the time. Even a few months after transitioning things felt so different to me that it quite quickly became hard to imagine how I had managed to cope with carrying that burden. Now it has started to become difficult to remember – not what happened, but how it felt sometimes.

The stories, for obvious reasons, often revolved around gender identity, but cannot be reduced to a single plotline. Take, for example, these snippets about her schooldays and move to university in Manchester.

From back to schooldays

Summer passes and I am, predictably, rejected by all my chosen universities because I only have two A-levels, one of them a bare pass. This is seen by all and sundry, including myself, as awful news. I have a summer job at the carpet department of Fishpools which, as you all now know, is not Selfridges to tide me over, and then I have to decide what to do next.

As the autumn of 1977 arrives I attempt to study History A-level by correspondence course. This is a dismal failure – sitting in my bedroom with the textbooks and tasks they send I just can’t motivate myself. At least I am sensible enough to figure this out by myself and realize that if I’m going to get to university I need to adopt another approach. I have no real idea why I want to go there. It is just expected, although I will be the first in my family to do so. I am hoping English Literature at university will be as exciting as the A-level was. When I finally get there, this turns out not to be the case …

And from college boy, girl included (apply within)

It’s now September 1978 and I’m not feeling especially cynical but possibly slightly Cynical. I’m looking forward to going to university to study English, my favourite subject. I’m hoping it will be as exciting to study it in Manchester as it was at A-level. I’m also looking forward to being away from home, although I have only the most tenuous understanding of what that may be like. Moving to a safe distance from the deteriorating relationship between my two parents, which also manifests in an increasingly problematic relationship with me, seems like a plan. I pack my trunk full of books and clothes and box up my hi-fi and they get sent slowly to Manchester by rail. I leave after them but arrive before them. Rail freight in those days is pretty slow and clunky.

. . . Teaching…is variable. Tutorials (again Oxbridge style) are often OK, depending on the tutor. Lectures are often dull. I remember one particular lecturer on Shakespeare, although I forget his name. He would read dialogue from the plays with his two index-fingers raised and proceeded as follows.

First speaker (male) – read speech in basso profundo voice, wiggle left finger.
Second speaker (female) – read speech in ridiculous high-pitched squeaky voice, wiggle right finger.
Ignore titters from audience as they will subside in successive weeks from sheer boredom.
Continue.

In tutorials, this same lecturer would sigh about Shakespeare and say “Well, I suppose we must see the plays performed sometimes”, i.e. he’d really rather that didn’t have to happen and we could just sit in our rooms and contemplate the texts. This kind of thing sets the tone for me – some (though not all) of the lecturers would really rather the rest of the world would just stay away. In my second year there is controversy along the departmental corridors when Monty Python‘s Terry Jones has the cheek to write a book on Chaucer. Dilletante. I remember one of my tutors talking angrily (and inaccurately) about that naughty man “Terry Palin.”

Partly, I think, I’m drawn in as something of an Anglophile by the every-day details, place names, and events that flesh out Tasha’s stories. For example, in flirting with the scene

I remember two shopping expeditions in particular – one to a shop on Walthamstow High Street, where the assistant asks whether I am buying these clothes for my girlfriend. Yes, I answer nervously and she replies (somewhat knowingly I think) that she hopes my “girlfriend” likes them. Some more relaxed purchasing takes place in Miss Selfridge on Oxford Street, where I feel more anonymous and less likely to bump into anyone I know. As is often the case with those who crossdress, I have a tendency to buy highly feminine clothes, and mostly evening or partywear. I make some dreadful mistakes but in Miss Selfridge I actually make some tasteful purchases. Wendy helps me buy some shoes by proxy – I am never brave enough to try anything on and draw the line at marching up to the checkout with a pair of high heeled shoes.

I mean, really. “Miss Selfridge on Oxford Street”? “Walthamstow High Street”? Even I might be cajoled into shopping for high heels in a location like that!

because, sadly, ranting didn’t stop the pain

04 Wednesday Aug 2010

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I don’t know why, but for some reason this latest round of judgmental exclusivity over children in public spaces has really gotten to me. It’s not like I haven’t seen it happen before and it’s not like I thought I’d never see it again. I’ve been a kid. I have kids as friends. I have parents as friends. Even though I will likely never have a child myself, I have lived and moved long enough in the world of families-that-include-young-people that my radar is up, reflexively, for the hate that inevitably showers down when those people do something our fucked up family-hating/family-idealizing (you thought these were separate camps in the childfree vs. parenting war? psyche!) feels is out of line.

What’s so painful to me is that I feel like this is so fucking simple — and should be even simpler for people familiar with feminist theories about how these dichotomies work. You can’t win. You choose not (or cannot be) a parent — particularly a mother? You’re vilified. You have kids — with a greater or lesser degree of deliberation? Suddenly a whole new world of discrimination comes crashing down upon you. Both sides of the coin interact with all other forms of prejudice and discrimination like physical and mental health issues, classism, sexism, racism, homophobia, etc.

We’re being played people. The system is fucked and the people who are existing in it can’t win if they play by the rules. And it’s intensely painful to me to see people I love and respect trash each other from both sides instead of working together to dismantle the expectations that surround them. About what it means to be a child. About what it means to be a parent. About what it means to be a family and have a fulfilling life (hint: you don’t have to be a parent to be a healthy, connected grown-up).

This is all by way of a blithering introduction to a few blog posts written in response to the latest in hating (sparked by a post by Mai’a on Feministe which I thought was purposefully combative but no less insightful for it). Most of these came via my friend Molly who happened to mention the blog Blue Milk (thinking+motherhood=feminist) in a post earlier today which sent me link hopping.

Violet @ Beekeeper & Schwartz | Oh dear.

When I was four, my mom’s friend’s husband was talking about how he didn’t like kids on airplanes and you fucking tool, I’m right here. I still hate that guy. And now, whenever I fly with Little Miss Beekeeper, my heart is in my throat for hours at a time even though she’s really well-behaved (and too small not to be, I’d add) even though no one has ever been anything worse than indifferent to her presence.

This, I have to say, makes my chest all tight. Because a part of me dies inside at the thought of four-year-old Violet hearing that asshole and internalizing that hatred of herself, so that now as a grown woman and as a parent she fears that all of the other passengers on the airplane are telegraphing hate toward her and her daughter. If that’s not toxic shit, I don’t know what is.

scatx @ Speaker’s Corner | Feminism/Feministe’s Problem with Mothers?

What is bothering me about this discussion is that for the first time, I saw firsthand on an issue that directly includes me and my life choices the way that feminists can be exclusive. And that was a disappointment for me. That was a HUGE disappointment.

Because part of what draws me to feminism is that most feminist activists are working to make the world more open, more inclusive, not less. So, if you think that I am trying to say that you need to have children, or like children, or whatever, I’m not.

What I am saying is that we live in a society and part of the social contract is that we put up with each other in public spaces, even if that means dealing with children, or poor people, or minorities, or men, or whomever gets under your skin. That’s my point. It’s about a society that includes everyone.

scatx puts her finger, here, on part of what’s so painful to me about these knock-down, drag-out fights over ageism. I came to feminism as someone already acutely aware of ageism (having been a young person who was routinely in spaces not designated especially/solely for children) and I came to feminism in part because of the way this experience exposed me to prejudice and marginalization. I involve myself in feminist politics because I believe in the power of feminist ideas and feminist activism to make the world a better place for all people. And I hate it when shit like this forces me to remember how easy it is for marginalized people to turn around and replicate the bullying and exclusionary behavior they so often have to deal with on the flipside. It’s like having your lover suddenly say something transphobic, or your best friend crack a racist joke.

I get why it happens, but that doesn’t make it easy to acknowledge.

bfp @ flip flopping joy! | last thoughts on motherhood stuff at feministe.

Right now at feministe, people are backtracking. Saying that maybe mai’a isn’t such a bad mother, now that I’ve read more of her posts. But somehow they are coming up with ideas for commenting policies that revolve around “guest bloggers should not assume we know their lives” or “guest bloggers should be more aware of who they are writing for.”

And it’s kind of astonishing to me that the very simple solution of asking questions for context may be a responsibility that commenters can handle quite easily is not really being discussed.

While I believe that a blogger (the same goes for any writer) is responsible for her own work, I am also disturbed by the notion that it is the writer’s responsibility not to offend, rather than the commenters responsibility to be courteous to a guest who has been invited into their space — for the express purpose of introducing new voices into the conversation. It reminds me of the kerfluffle about whether gay actors could play straight roles, and about whether trans folks are responsible for how they are read.

People who step outside of the norm are routinely more scrutinized and held to stricter standards for communicating their views than are people who more or less fit within the mainstream. Someone who expresses a minority viewpoint is more often condemned for their “tone” or for using nonstandard language, for not being and effective ambassador for their point of view. While I’m a long-time advocate of not being obscure for obscurity’s sake, so that you can then feel smug an elitist about being smarter than all the plebeians who fail to understand you (yes, dude in my undergrad creative writing class, I’m thinking of you!) I am also suspicious of people who refuse to engage the minute an idea or the language used to express it goes outside their comfort zone. Particularly if those people then proceed to make fun of the person they’ve refused to listen to for not using BBC English or whatever the benchmark of normality and authority is.

And finally, because Molly brought it up in a comment on my last post about this, let me be clear: I don’t think this is primarily a feminist problem. Like hating on women who are overweight (or women who fit the cultural beauty norms), hating on children/parents (or hating on people who choose not to parent) are wider societal prejudices that, as feminists, I think we should seriously unpack before carrying unthinking into our lives as activists. There are plenty of awesome feminist parents, feminist not-parents, and feminist children out there in the world — and a huge part of modern feminist movement(s) have been about making the world a less hostile place for people who can’t or won’t fulfill the expectations of the ideal, self-sufficient adult. So this isn’t (in my opinion) about feminism, per se being hostile to families or children (or people who don’t parent). It’s about unthinkingly regurgitating the hostility that seeps through out skin as we move through a toxic culture without stopping to think if that’s really the orientation we want to have toward other human beings in the world.

Image: Statue of crying woman @ Flickr.com

"a very disciplined adult is required for paddling to be effective" and other wtf observations

03 Tuesday Aug 2010

Posted by in think pieces

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Last week, while looking for something completely different, Hanna stumbled upon this post on corporeal punishment in schools from Teaching Tolerance: A Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. I realize the post was published in May so that the link is a bit stale, but the comment thread was just too good a MSTing opportunity to pass up. The original post is a call to stop the practice of paddling in schools, which is still legal in twenty states. “Physical punishment is banned in federal prisons and medical facilities. It’s long past time to extend the same protection to our children,” writes the SPLC blogger. All well and good.

It’s the comments that really take the cake in that a number of them refuse to see the problem with being physically violent toward children as a “corrective” measure. Here are a few choice selections

By the fourth comment in, we’ve already resorted to the classic “it worked for me so obviously that’s what’s best for everybody” argument:

When I was young we got paddled in school. I was smart enough to know right and wrong and never once got paddled. My mother taught me better. With that being said, the “emotional” problems I got were only that I needed to behave or I would get paddled. My school did not do it right infront of the class they would take them out into the hallway and do it, but everyone knew what was going on and feared it happening to them. I believe this should still be legal in ALL schools. I can guarantee that children would behave better and, in turn, learn more.

In case a behaviorist argument isn’t swaying the crowd, someone else chimes in to suggest that children are incapable of rational discussion, moral reasoning, or compassion. Oh, and have we mentioned that hitting kids doesn’t do them any harm?

Have you ever tried to reason with a child? They don’t understand the way an adult does. I’ve spanked my seven year old son about 4 times in his life and he’s doing just fine.

But maybe not all children respond the same to physical punishment — perhaps it works better on black children than on white children.

In some cultures little Sally may receive a paddling and her whole life is ruined to where Davonte receives a paddling and it corrects his behavior. What is normal for some may be abnormal to others.

Not everyone is okay with the normalization of violence, as this comment shows

When we physically punish our community’s children, we teach them that it’s okay to hit when we’re angry. It’s okay for a man to hit his wife, okay for a child to hit a peer, okay to kick a dog–okay to use violence instead of dialogue to solve our problems.

To which someone responds with a theory straight out of Dobson.

Ah, but that is why a very disciplined adult is required for paddling to be effective. There is a universe of difference between a visibly angry and aggressive adult taking an object and striking a student with it and a very calm and controlled adult reasonably informing the student that they have done such and such a wrong and that the punishment is a few moments of pain (and I emphasize, it must be a FEW MOMENTS; lingering pain and soreness teaches a child that a reasonable adult inflicts suffering as a form of discipline and that is NOT the proper message) and a slight dose of shame because while the punishment must not be physically very painful, being bent over and spanked like a little child causes shame and shame, used properly and constructively, induces a desire in the child to avoid being shamed and thus, avoid the activity which caused them to be spanked and shamed. This is how a mature well-meaning adult physically disciplines a child for the child’s betterment.

This idea of a dispassionate adult rendering judgment on a child brings us right back to the defining narrative of Evangelical Christianity, with its dispassionate God who causes us intense pain and threatens us with abandonment in the name of our eternal salvation.

Causing human beings shame does not make them better people. Instead, it destroys their sense of themselves and cripples their ability to make meaningful, responsive connections to others. Punitive measures rarely give anyone (child or adult) greater understanding as to why what they have done has caused harm; instead, punishment teaches them to do better next time … and not get caught! As another anti-paddling commenter observes

I think the first thing we need to think about is how kids learn. What are they learing from being spanked or paddled by an adult? That hitting another person is okay? Many pro-spankers feel that pain associated with a behavior will teach a child to not do that behavior again. While that might be true for infants and toddlers, it is not the case for older children. In addition to that, for the pain/behavior association to work, the spanking must be done immediately so that the association is made. I’m thinking this isn’t the case in these schools.

The next thing to think about is what this does for the teacher- do pro-spankers feel that it gives them some sort of power over the kids? It is my opinion that if spanking/paddling a child is the only way you can get respect from children or feel powerful, you might have to work on your teaching skills.

Not that all of the anti-paddlers get full marks for discussion either, considering how quickly the specter of pedophilia come up in relation to spanking

People with SPANKING FETISHES work in occupations that give them access to children like hospitals, schools, boy scouts, etc. and over 2,500 teachers were punished in a 5 year period since 2000 for inappropriate sexual relations with our nation’s school children, and women teachers are sexually preying on children at an increasingly alarming rate, which is why PHYSICAL/CORPORAL PUNISHMENT OF CHILDREN IN SCHOOLS MUST BE ABOLISHED IMMEDIATELY!

While I’d assume at least some of the people who get off on physically assaulting children get off sexually as well as just enjoying the power rush, I also think it’s pretty damn simplistic to assume that all physical contact = sex!

Sadly, the “debate” over whether or not physical violence against children is every okay is nothing new. Americans have been arguing over the place of physical punishment in school since at least the 1840s, when corporeal punishment came under fire from reformers who protested its use against sailors, prisoners, slaves and children. While in America, at least, the slavery issue became a moot point several decades later (although race, as evidenced above, has hardly vanished from the discussion), I’d venture to suggest that violence is still endemic in all of these spaces. And I, like the reformers, raise questions about its appropriateness in any of them.

Image: A Scary Vintage Postcard @ Flickr.com

booksnotes: straight to jesus

02 Monday Aug 2010

Posted by in book reviews

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In which I review another one of what Hanna calls my “scary books.” This time, Tanya Erzen’s Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement. After hearing Tanya Erzen talk about her recent work on the religious experiences of Twilight fans on RhRealityCheck, I tracked down Erzen’s earlier work (originally her dissertation) based on a year-long ethnographic research project on New Hope, the United States’ oldest ex-gay ministry.

Straight to Jesus documents the personal experiences of those within the ex-gay movement and places their ideologies and practices within the context of the context of the religious, political and psychotherapeutic frameworks within which the ex-gay movement has come of age. Erzen argues that while gay rights advocates and the politicized Christian Right have become polarized over the question of whether sexual orientation is fixed or changeable, most ex-gay-identified individuals and their support networks resist the politicization of their sexual lives and instead focus on the spiritual transformation they experience through ex-gay programming. Just as Evangelical Christianity believes in the need for sinner to continually be born again and experience renewal in their relationship with Christ, so to (Erzen argues) ex-gay ministries see the process of becoming ex-gay as an ongoing cycle of confession and rededication which Erzen has termed “queer conversion.” She explains that

Although the political goals of the ex-gay movement and queer activists are radically distinct, by accepting that a person’s behavior and desire will not necessarily correspond with their new ex-gay identity or religious identity, ex-gay men and women enact a queer concept of sexuality (14).

What I found most fascinating in the book was the relationship between performing gender and straight sexuality. The gender and sexuality theorists of the ex-gay movement are, by and large, working with mid-twentieth century concepts of gender and sexual identity which associate homosexuality in men with what they see as effeminacy and homosexuality in women with characteristics they consider to be “butch” (like an interest in car repair). They also read male homosexuality as entirely physical — destined, regardless of the desire of the individuals involved to be a series of anonymous hook-ups — and lesbianism as entirely emotionally-driven — by its very nature “emotionally cannibalistic” because the women, rather than desiring each other sexually (women! wanting sex! don’t be ridiculous!), want to be one another (152).

Following this logic — that homosexuality is caused by a weak identification with one’s assigned gender — the ex-gay movement has incorporated lessons on gender performance into its therapeutic agenda. Women are taught to apply makeup and select clothing, men are taught how to interact with other men in a platonic fashion and play manly sports. In one particularly bizarre (to me, anyway!) exercise, the residents of New Hope’s “steps out” of homosexuality program are brought together with straight men and instructed to interview the straight men about how, essentially, to perform straight masculinity. Questions include “what physical aspect of the opposite sex turns you on?” and “Can a man ever fully understand a woman?” (108).

This approach essentially inverts the basic liberal-progressive concept of sex and gender, in which sex (one’s physical sex characteristics and sexual orientation) are biologically determined and “gender” refers to all of the ways we make meaning of those sexual differences, and the cultural roles we are expected to inhabit. Within the ex-gay movement, gender is the primary marker of identity, and deviating from the assigned gender roles of one’s sex is damaging to the very core of one’s identity — as opposed to one’s sexuality, which is seen as primarily about actions rather than core identity. (Obviously, there are lots of nuances and challenges to the sex/gender division within liberal-progressive circles, but I think the basic distinction here is valid, particularly when characterizing the mainstream liberal position).

I’m not particularly opposed to seeing sexuality as more mutable — indeed, many people within feminist, queer, pro-gay circles have been arguing for years that sexuality is much less set-in-cement than the simplistic biology-based way of understanding sexuality that the gay rights movement has so often chose (for strategic reasons) to emphasize. What seems harmful to me about the ex-gay position concerning sex and gender, however, is that they demand such rigid conformity when it comes to gender performance. This signals to me a fear of human diversity that will, in the end, become self-defeating … since human beings are, and (in my opinion) will continue to be a gloriously heterogeneous, both in sexual orientation and gender expression. To tell people who believe their non-straight sexual orientation and non-conforming gender identity endangers their relationship with God and Jesus is — to me — an act of violence. It is another instance in which the Evangelical God-as-abusive-parent narrative surfaces in a way that offers short-term relief (you can struggle with homosexual desires and not be exiled permanently from God’s love!) but ultimately the anguish of being judged and found wanting at the very core of your being.