Category Archives: think pieces

two recent and unrelated news items on which I have thoughts

26 Thursday Jan 2012

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1. On Cynthia Nixon and choosing one’s sexual identity. According to Cassie Murdoch @ Jezebel, actress Cynthia Nixon said some things about choosing her current partner, another woman, which have irritated other people also in same-sex relationships. In response, Nixon told the New York Times:

Why can’t it be a choice? Why is that any less legitimate? It seems we’re just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don’t think that they should define the terms of the debate. I also feel like people think I was walking around in a cloud and didn’t realize I was gay, which I find really offensive. I find it offensive to me, but I also find it offensive to all the men I’ve been out with. [NYT]

“Why is [choosing] any less legitimate” is my favorite line from this quotation, because regardless of where we, as humans of all sexual persuasions, fall on the innate/culture continuum vis a vis our own personal sexual desires, I think it’s really important not to throw fluidity, change, and personal growth over time under the damn bus. By limiting “legitimate” or “authentic” sexuality to that which is fixed, innate, and ostensibly knowable from birth, we demand certainty on an issue which — for some if not most — is far from certain, or perhaps serially certain — we know ourselves, and then we know ourselves again in a new light. Both equally true.

And, of course, even if you want to argue that sexual attractions/desires are innate and fixed, sexual identities and the language we use for them, are creations of culture — so, yes, actually, we all of us “choose” to be “straight” or “gay” or “lesbian” or “bisexual” or “asexual” or “queer” or whateverthehellother label du jour we decide to slap on ourselves. Underneath those words are actual corporeal human beings, with attractions and desires no one can wrest from us or know better than ourselves — but we do choose to politically identify with language. We choose to affiliate, organize, categorize. And we’ll probably choose at some point to re-categorize human sexuality in new ways.

So I’m glad Ms. Nixon isn’t letting people bully her into silence or repentance on this point for the sake of political expedience. That would make me sad for the future state of discourse on human sexuality.

2. On parents, children, and workplace negotiation. A friend of mine linked to an NPR story yesterday, on Tumblr, about parents advocating on behalf of their adult children with human resources representatives at their childrens’ workplaces. I was thinking about this one on the way to work today, because I come from a family where — okay, this hasn’t happened and likely won’t ever happen — but where when I was growing up my parents often asserted their right to participate in discussions about (for example) our medical care, even when doctors thought it was “hovering.” My parents were always clear to ask us, as their children, whether we wanted their support — and backed off the moment we asked them to. But that experience has led me to be wary of cultural outrage over “helicopter parenting” and other family systems that Americans read as intrusive. Because things aren’t always what they seem on the surface. Two thoughts:

a) Sometimes, tag-teaming is an important function of families. Sometimes, even grown-ups need the support of other grown-ups to self-advocate, particularly around things like healthcare? It can be as simple as  calling to report a spouse is too ill to be at work that day, or it can be more complicated — like asking a family member to attend medical appointments with you. We can’t all operate in isolation 100% of the time, and while I have no idea what the particulars of these HR situations might be, I hesitate to be judgy. Yeah, it could totally be an overbearing sense of entitlement. But it might also be desperation and/or simply family groups operating to support one another. Which leads me to:

b) This seems outrageous to us because we’ve decided as a culture that it’s outrageous. Think for a moment about arranged marriages. In cultures where extended families facilitate marriages, parents and other adults are involved in something (courtship) which we, in America, have decided is essentially a private matter between the two people directly involved. Parents getting involved in their child’s courtship decisions (e.g. a partner asking the parents’ permission before proposing) is seen as intrusive. But seen in a different light, it’s not intrusive, it’s expected, and serves a purpose. We might, as a society, decide we dislike the purpose it serves — but that’s neither here nor there. By analogy, it would be interesting to back up and consider how multi-generational involvement in workplace situations operates. What perceived problem is this involvement seeking to remedy? Is it serving a function that, until now, has been met in some other way? Why has the old way stopped working, or why do people perceive it to have ceased working?

These are the things I think about on the way to work.

first, we’d actually have to find a pro-choice politician … [blog for choice 2012]

22 Sunday Jan 2012

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For previous Blog for Choice posts see 2011, 2010 and 2008. This post has also been cross-posted at The Pursuit of Harpyness. 
Thanks to all the Harpies who contributed to the discussion that led to this post.
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The theme for the 2012 Blog for Choice action day is “what will you do to help elect pro-choice candidates in 2012?” Which frankly is something I don’t have a whole lot of energy to blog around. 

Bad feminist activist me.

I’ve voted Democrat in every election since I could vote, so it’s not like I can make the radical decision to start voting “pro-choice.” And I’m not a big political organizer, so door-to-door canvassing is pretty much out. And to be be perfectly honest, most of the politicians out there aren’t speaking my language anyway. I talked with my mother on the telephone last Sunday and she asked when my partner and I were going to make plans to move to Canada. It was a joke, but only quasi in jest, since my mother and I — though not identical in our political thinking — share a politics that’s to the radical left of the Obama administration, and certainly shares little in common with any of the Republican candidates.

So how do you go about taking action to “help elect pro-choice candidates” when, essentially, you don’t feel there are any pro-choice candidates?

via

You work to change the culture. Which sometimes has the feeling of being that dung beetle from Microcosmos. It’s a long, slow slog and you’re probably never going to get the majority of folks to agree with you. At least, I know I’m not. If I woke up one morning and the majority of Americans suddenly shared my priorities for health and well-being I’d be flabbergasted, gobsmacked, and tongue-tied — not to mention bewitched and bewildered. But, you know: Not going to happen. And I accept that — or, at least, have learned to live with it the way one learns to live with a bum knee.

And this isn’t even a question of “feminists” vs. “everyone else” ’cause it’s clear that self-identified feminists are anything but 100% unified on the question of abortion, on the question of reproductive rights and justice, on the question of what “pro-choice” politicians should emphasize. When I asked Harpy readers to describe their ideal pro-choice politician, here are some of the responses I received:

  • Drahill: “The first thing I’m going to look at is whether they support policies that make it easier to be a mother… to be pro-choice, a candidate needs to support comprehensive maternity leave reform, favor WIC, favor food aid for mothers, favor comprehensive healthcare reform, favor reforming housing laws to make it easier to own a home and stay in your home, favor educational reform to make it easier for women and children to go to school, be invested in promoting preventive and mental health services… you get the idea “
  • BearDownCBears: “My fellow Americans, as of this morning I have exercised extraordinary executive privilege by dissolving the United States Congress and establishing martial law. All private insurance will be nationalized and reorganized and doctors’ medical debt will be socialized to make up for the lower compensation they will receive. Publicly funded parental leave will be instated and an abortion clinic will be available within every 100 miles.”
  • baraqiel: “Pro-choice has to come with pro-the ability to make choices to be meaningful … for example, pro-comprehensive sex ed (required in public schools, private schools, homeschooling…). Pro-education about contraception and access to contraception. Pro-enthusiastic consent.”
  • Jenn_smithson: “I want a candidate who understands that the right to control my own body is the foundation of all other rights …  Any candidate who is prochoice needs to not only understand this but needs to articulate it as well. My rights are not a bargaining chip, full stop, and I’m sick of them being treated as though they are.
  • BeckySharper: “It’s essential that we keep the church, the state, and everyone else OUT the business of policing women’s uteri.”

While I won’t replicate the whole conversation here, since it went to 50+ comments, the salient difference that emerged in our own little corner of the feminist blogosphere was the divide between those who focus on abortion rights qua abortion rights and those who see the issue of abortion access as part of a much larger, densely interwoven, set of issues surrounding reproduction, family formation, and human rights. This exchange captures, in a nutshell, the larger disagreement:

mischiefmanager argues that: 

Historically, the term “choice” was used by women’s advocacy groups to avoid the loaded word “abortion.” If you want to expand it to mean other things, that’s your own personal interpretation. Check the websites of pro-choice groups and you’ll see that although safety net questions are sometimes discussed, the focus of their work is on keeping abortion legal and accessible. That’s hard enough these days without bringing anything else into the equation.

to which Drahill responded:

Pro-Choice, now, is a political slogan. That does not mean that’s what pro-choice SHOULD mean. It sounds better and softer than “pro-abortion rights.” Let’s face it. Just as pro-life sounds nicer than “anti-abortion rights.” But that’s what they are, and I don’t see how you can argue otherwise. I’d really suggest you take up reading some blogs (seriously, Womanist Musings) that address pro-choice as reproductive justice. Because that is all about helping women in whatever choice they make. In reproductive justice, if a woman who wants to parent has an abortion because she fears not being able to find a place to live, the movement is regarded as having failed her. Because the movement did not fight for her choice and what she needed to exercise it. That’s why just defining pro-choice as abortion rights is easier – because once you look at reproductive justice and what it means, it’s so HUGE it can feel hopeless. But I think we still have an obligation to those women who want to parent. It’s thinking about all the women you DON’T see at the clinic and their families. 

So on the one hand, we have folks who argue that “pro-choice” equals eliminating legal barriers to reproductive care and abortion specifically. So: focus on keeping abortion legal, obstructing fetal personhood amendments, keeping Planned Parenthood and other women’s health clinics open, and critiquing the misinformation campaign of Crisis Pregnancy Centers. All of this is important, obviously. Yet in my mind it stops short of what a robust “pro-choice” agenda should look like, because it does nothing to address pre-existing inequalities. Keeping abortion services legal, safe, and available across the nation is awesome and important — but that alone doesn’t ensure that those without resources or with constrained autonomy (prisoners, minors, women in the military, trans* folks, women of color, immigrants, those with limited financial resources, disabled women, queer women … the list could go on and on) will be able to access those clinics.

We always have choices, but our ability to make meaningful choices is limited by our material circumstances, by knowledge, and by fear. Some choices are over-determined by the systems (sociocultural and material contexts) in which we live and deliberate. As Talk Birth so eloquently argues, in a recent post on birthing and informed consent:

While it may sound as if I am saying women are powerlessly buffeted about by circumstance and environment, I’m not. Theoretically, we always have the power to choose for ourselves, but by ignoring, denying, or minimizing the multiplicity of contexts in which women make “informed choices” about their births and their lives, we oversimplify the issue and turn it into a hollow catchphrase rather than a meaningful concept. 

Women’s lives and their choices are deeply embedded in a complex, multifaceted, practically infinite web of social, political, cultural, socioeconomic, religious, historical, and environmental relationships. 

And, I maintain that a choice is not a choice if it is made in a context of fear.

(via Molly @ first the egg) 

I’m with Drahill and others on the discussion thread, then, when I argue that to be “pro-choice” in our world can and should mean actively fostering an environment where women will be trusted to make decisions, and have the material ability to meaningfully act on the choices they make. Our material resources — as individuals, as a society, as a globe — are not infinite. Many people on the comment thread pointed this out, and I agree. Yet our ability to prioritize, to re-shuffle the cards and place human health, well-being, and individual agency at the top of our list of what government at its best can ensure for its citizens … that is endless and constant. To return to the rhetoric of “choice,” we — as a society — have chosen to prioritize certain types of activities (wars of aggression, banking, environmental plunder) over others (sustaining human and environmental well-being). I believe as a society we aren’t hostage to those previous choices — though some of the consequences will continue to ripple for generations to come. We can make new choices, and craft new priorities. 

That’s what I will continue to push for in 2012: The ideas of those people — inside and outside of the political machine — who want us to build a future in which all human beings will be able to make meaningful choices about their lives, their families, and their futures.

wee ones ftw [two articles]

23 Friday Sep 2011

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There’s been a lot of talk in the mainstream media in recent years about child-on-child bullying. Rightfully so, in many cases, since kids can be as cruel as adults and often their cruelty goes just as unchecked as the cruelty of grown-ups. As a culture we’re still enamored with the myth of childhood innocence (and its doppelganger the narrative of childhood depravity). Children are either seen as beings of sweetness and light to be sheltered from the reality of the adult world or they’re seen as barely-civilized monsters a la Golding’s Lord of the Flies — ready to devour one another (and probably the adults around them) at a moment’s notice. We are both terrified of, and disdainful toward, young people.

Between these two poles of “good” and “evil” it can be very difficult for us to see young humans for what they are: people with a wide range of experiences and behaviors. People who can grow and change and respond to their environment in the same way adults do. Sometimes their learning happens at the encouragement of adults. Sometimes kids learn incredibly well without adult management and, in fact, can teach us a thing or two about what it means to be decent human beings.

To whit: two recent articles that have come across my dash in which the young people behaved in a significantly less bigoted and freaked-out fashion than the adults. First, a recent article in Bitch magazine by Avital Norman Nathman, Pink Scare: What’s Behind the Media Panic About ‘Princess Boys’? (Summer 2011). In discussing the panic over boys who express and interest in “feminine” activities, clothing, and toys, Nathman quotes a mother who was harassed for letting her son choose accessories seen as “girly” by other parents:

“I picked up Dyson from gymnastics and some parents spoke about his pink butterfly backpack,” she recalls. “A mother: ‘What a shame that mom buys girls’ stuff for her son.’ A father: ‘I’d never allow my boy to be anything but a boy.’ Then the son asked Dyson, ‘Where did you get that backpack? I like butterflies.’ As Dyson answered, the father grabbed his boy [away]. Kids are not the problem.”

You can read the full article over at Bitch Media. In our rush to explain children’s behavior with theories of gender or innate evopsych proclivities (“human beings are just naturally selfish creatures”) we forget that from the moment they are born children are steeped in a dense network of relationships in which human behaviors are modeled for them. It’s a wonder, really, that despite adults cueing children so relentlessly that pink butterflies are for girls there are kids with a strong enough sense of self to disregard those messages and simply express an delight at something they like.

Similarly, via Jos at Feministing, we have the story of a 10-year-old trans girl who has been accepted as no big deal by her age-mates while the adults around her totally spaz. While parents went ballistic and called the child a “freak,” demanding she play on the boys’ sports teams and change in a private bathroom, the kids seemed completely chill. As the girl told her local news outlet, “They haven’t really said anything … my friends stick up for me and say ‘he feels like a girl so he can be on the girl’s team.’ ” Jos writes of the story:

I hope it’s clear that the acceptance she’s felt from her peers is much more important than the specific pronoun they use. Yes, language matters, but I know I greatly prefer the support I get from a friend who genuinely accepts me as myself, even if they’re not up on all the lingo, to someone who talks the talk but doesn’t ultimately treat my identity as valid.

So I just wanted to take a moment this Friday to give a shout-out to the wee ones of this world who are refusing to cater to adult anxieties and instead continue to interact with their friends (and, hopefully, relative strangers too!) with kindness, generosity, interest, and enthusiasm. It’s people like you who give me hope for the future of this planet — no matter how young in years you may be.

articlenote: setting the record straight

09 Friday Sep 2011

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Thanks to a recent issue of Education Revolution E-News, I was alerted to the existence of the Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning, a free online resource for scholars in the field and interested others. Yay! More stuff to read! The journal has been going since 2007 and all five of the annual volumes to-date are available in HTML and PDF form. Yes: I’ll be working my way through the back catalog.

But today, I want to highlight an article from the current issue: “Setting the Record Straight: Interviews With a Hundred British Home Educating Families,” by Paula Rothermel (JUAL 5, 2011: 20-57). I was super excited when I saw this article because it sounded very much like the type of research I thought about doing back in 2006, when I applied for a Marshall scholarship to do an independent research project in England under the supervision of Professor Clive Harber. The scholarship didn’t come through (obviously), but I’ve remained interested in research on home education and Rothermel’s comprehensive study of the styles and outcomes of home-based education does keep cropping up. On my reading list is her recently-available e-book Home Education: Rationales, Practices, and Outcomes (Thesis UK, 2011), which is an in-depth exploration of home educated based on interviews done with one hundred British families who had chosen to homeschool in some way, shape, or form. “Setting the Record Straight” (html, PDF) is a summary of the findings from that project, and Rothermel makes a few really interesting initial observations. Continue reading →

in which I write letters: dear netflix

19 Tuesday Jul 2011

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Okay, so Hanna and I joined the tens of thousands of Netflix customers who expressed their displeasure at the planned price hikes for the popular DVD rental and online video streaming service, and particularly the way in which the company announced the price changes.  I’m not going to replicate the whole thing here, but I have thrown the letter into a PDF document so anyone who’s interested can read it and/or steal from it.

Mostly, I wanted to offer the contact details I was given by the customer service representative who answered the phone when I called the 1-800 number. Why did I use the telephone you ask? Because I’m apparently the only Netflix user on the planet who managed to discover and then forget that Netflix doesn’t like actually receiving meaningful customer feedback. Nowhere on their site do they have a form for communicating with them about any aspect of their services, nor do they have a customer service email through which to express positive or negative feedback about their company. Instead, I had to call on the phone and insist on obtaining a mailing address where I could direct the letter. I’m serious: the (very courteous) man whom I spoke to really really really wanted to take my feedback via telephone. I explained I already had it all written out and wanted to send it by email or mail thank you very much. He put me on hold and then finally said he’d been given “permission” to give me the corporate headquarters address to send the letter to.

I’m supposed to address it “Attn: Corporate.”

WTF.

they don’t get it either

I mean, even the Massachusetts Historical Society has someone who handles PR, right? We’re an organization of fifty employees! And you’re telling me that Netflix doesn’t have a Customer Service office staffed by people whose sole responsibility is to field incoming letters, emails, telephone calls, texts, tweets, Facebook messages, you name it?? I’m supposed to send my letter to corporate?

Excuse me while I pause to feel a little teeny tiny bit jerked around.


Anyway, here’s the address if you want to lodge a complaint:

Netflix
Attn: Corporate
100 Winchester Circle
Los Gatos, CA
95032

Or, apparently, you can use the popular method of leaving a message on their Facebook page.

thoughts on the death of a man

02 Monday May 2011

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Hanna and I woke up this morning to near-ceaseless NPR coverage of Osama Bin Laden’s death during an American military raid on his compund in Pakistan. I have a lot of ill-formed thoughts here, and reading through the blog posts that have gone up over night on the topic is making me rather sick to my stomach so this is not destined to be the most cogent of blog posts. But with all of the media speculation about what this means for the “war on terror” and with the coverage of celebrations of death that seem to be taking place across the United States, I feel compelled to point out

a human being died last night.

Yes, he was a sick and twisted person who was responsible (directly and indirectly) for the suffering of thousands upon thousands of other people.

Kind of like we, as a nation, are responsible for the suffering of thousands upon thousands of people due to the two wars we started ten years ago in retribution for the suffering we held this man responsible for.

And now here we are celebrating death in the streets.

I’m just not comfortable with that.

The first thing my mind presented to me this morning when I heard the news was a memory of hearing, ten years ago this coming October, that the United States had begun bombing Afghanistan in retaliation for 9/11. I was huddled around a campfire on a beach in Oregon among a group of folks with whom, for the past month, I’d been reading about the horrific things human beings do to one another in wartime.

It’s hard to imagine bombing or invasion is the way to solve the pain of loss or to drive away the fear of vulnerability when the first thing that comes to mind is the seige of Sarajevo or the violence of South African apartheid or the war of attrition that is (to this day) taking place between Israel and Palestine.

It’s equally hard for me to imagine that assassinating Osama Bin Laden will bring any sort of political or personal resolution to the violence of the past decade (and beyond).

A human being died last night.

The world that he (and we) created remains. There is still suffering, there is still inequality, there is still anger … there will still be violence.

Adding to that violence will not make us safe.

And the purposeful killing any human being should never lead to dancing in the streets.

UPDATE: My friend eskenosen @ kai ho logos sarx egeneto has put it much more eloquently than I ever could:

I mourn with those who still mourn, after 10 years, the absence of their friends, coworkers, and family members. I understand those who celebrate the death of bin Laden as long-awaited justice.

But I also grieve for our nation, that instead of crying out to God in our shock and horror, we cried for bombs, for guns, for shock and awe. That a human has died, and people sing in the streets.

blog for choice: on the privilege of having real choices

21 Friday Jan 2011

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Today is Blog for Choice Day 2011 in which folks around the blogosphere take a moment to write about abortion access and reproductive justice. You can read my previous contributions for 2008 (the radical idea that I am a person) and 2010 (the radical act of trusting others) by clicking through. This year’s prompt was: “Given the anti-choice gains in the states and Congress, are you concerned about choice in 2011?”

It’s a tricky word: “choice.”

I believe that human beings always have choices, and thus we must always make choices. Most of the time, we make those choices, decisions, based on complex internal and external equations of risk vs. benefit, right vs. wrong — equations we often aren’t fully aware of laying out and solving before we say: “this. this is my choice.”

Yet we move through the world making choices. Some small (what to wear to work today; what to have for breakfast) and some large (whether to speak up when a colleague bullies you; whether or not to carry an unplanned pregnancy to term).

Philosophically and ethically speaking, I’m a big supporter of the concept of “choice” and the recognition that people are moral agents constantly making moral choices. Even in situations where there seem to be few or no options — or no good options — left. As I wrote last year, one of the most radical acts we can choose to perform on this earth is the act of trusting other human beings (even those we do not know and have no control or influence over) to make decisions about what is right (and moral) for them.

Yet the language of “choice” can also be used as a weapon, as a judgment. “Whatever; that’s their choice”; “They’ve made their bed, let them lie in it.” With increasing frequency, I hear the language and concept of “choice” being used in ways that punish those with the least agency, the fewest options, and those who are facing the highest cost for exercising their decision-making abilities. I see people being punished for brazenly acting as though they had moral agency, as if they expected the people around them to trust them to make moral choices for themselves and their families.

You see, while everyone has the ability to exercise their freedom of choice, only some people are considered worthy enough to actually exercise that ability without being judged. Rich, white, straight folks to be exact. People with enough material autonomy to act independently (and thus privately), without needing to rely on extensive formal and informal support networks to actually access the resources they need to follow through on the moral decisions they have made.

You need help and support to follow through on your choices? You need some public assistance to raise the child you decided to give birth to? You need your health insurance to cover that abortion you decided was best for your family? You need affordable daycare? A job with flexibility in order to balance the demands of care-giving and career?

Fuck you: Having kids was just a “lifestyle choice” … why should we as a society help you out?

Fuck you: You “chose” to have sex when you know the only completely reliable method of birth control is abstinence. If you can’t afford to pay out of pocket for an abortion? Tough.

As I said, it’s a tricky word: “choice.”

The pro-choice movement has been advocating for decades now that we recognize women as moral decision-makers when it comes to their reproductive health and choices. This is all well and good, but I think it’s important to realize that those who are anti-choice, anti-abortion, anti-reproductive justice are perfectly willing to recognize that women can make choices.  Anti-choice politicians and activists just want to make sure that we lack the ability to follow through on those choices in a meaningful way.

So you bet I’m “concerned about choice” this year, as I am every year. I’m concerned at the way our culture and our political system seem unable (or more likely, I suspect, unwilling) to take a long, hard look at the way in which we collectively constrain access to meaningful choices for the majority of the population. Particularly the way we target already-vulnerable populations and strip away their ability to be moral decision-makers who can actually act on their decisions in ways that promote well-being. Children and adolescents, people of color, people living below the poverty line or on severely limited incomes, immigrants, people without health insurance, folks without job security, folks in non-hetero-normative families. As a nation, we should be making it possible for all of these folks to make — and follow through on — moral choices for themselves and their families.

Instead, we seem hell-bent on stripping those abilities away even further. And I see the rhetoric of “choice” in some ways aiding and abetting that evisceration. Because, after all, if someone is “free” to “choose” … then what do they need from us?

It’s the responsibility of those of us who are pro-choice on abortion and reproductive health to articulate what people do need to follow through on their choices. Because if we don’t, we might have a “choice” … but not much of a chance to act on it.

a word about words, unschooling edition

09 Thursday Dec 2010

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After a discussion with Hanna last night about unschooling vs. homeschooling vs. home-based education (as vocabulary choices and as philosophies), I wanted to clarify a couple of things re: word choice in my blog posts about nontraditional learning.

We were talking about the language I used in my recently-published interview as a “grown unschooler.”

In my life, I tend to use all three of these terms (and variations thereof) to talk about myself and my life experience. As a child, I used “homeschooling” because that was predominantly what my parents used. As a teenager I discovered “unschooling” as a term to differentiate more child-directed forms of homeschooling from those which sought to replicate school-at-home (this usage dates back to the 1970s), and found it more usefully described my particular experience of homeschooling — particularly as a way to distinguish myself from the majority of homeschooled teenagers in my area who were politically, socially, and pedagogically conservative.

More recently, since I’ve been doing scholarly reading and writing on the subject of education, learning, schooling, and pedagogy, I’ve become more varied and more deliberate in my choice of words to describe learning and teaching experiences. In my academic writing, I tend to use the word “school” to mean formal, institution-based educational experiences specifically — while “education” means learning and teaching experiences in a broader sense. Learning, of course, can take place even when deliberately-planned educative environments and/or experiences are absent. But home-based education is, usually, planned. Even if to the extent that parents have chosen to allow their children to grow outside of the default option which, in our culture, is formal schooling (public or private).

“Unschooling.” It’s an unsatisfactory word to me for a couple of reasons. One is the prefix “un” which right away gets us into negative territory. Instead of being for something (home-based education; learner-directed education) we’re defining ourselves against something (institutional school). The second, related, issue is that it still frames learning as something to do with school — even if set up as school’s opposite.

In fact, I think — and I imagine most self-identified unschoolers would agree — that learning and education are much, much bigger than mere school or its opposite. Learning can take place in, but is not bound by, formal schooling or deliberate educational activities. So these days, I try to move away from “school” terms as much as possible when I describe my own learning background pre-college.

At the same time, I continue to use all of these words, depending on the audience, the context, and the topic. I’m happy to accept the label “unschooler” when it allows me to talk about my experience outside of school; I’ll use “homeschool” or “home-based education” when that seems like the most useful choice. At the end of the day, I believe words are what we make of them — words are tools — and the more and the more varied the words we have at our disposal to describe our experience (and, most importantly, the more willing we are to be flexible in our language use) the better-equipped I think we are to articulate our being-in-the-world in all its myriad permutations.

trans day of remembrance

20 Saturday Nov 2010

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Today is the 12th Annual International Transgender Day of Remembrance, on which folks around the world take time to remember those who have died as a result of anti-transgender hatred or prejudice.

For most of this week, I didn’t think I had anything to offer for today — at least here on this blog. Being involved in feminist politics, and caring about intersectionality, I’ve become increasingly more aware of trans issues over the past decade or so.  Particularly in the last few years, I’ve come to know as personal friends a couple of people who self-identify as trans in one way or another.  And — in the way of such things — as the issue became more concrete (in the shape of people whom I crossed paths with in daily life) in my life, the once-abstract theoretical and political issues began to matter in a way they had not before. But I don’t have anything very profound or original to offer when it comes to memorializing the dead.

But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about gender, sex, and body policing, and I realized this week that that sort of community policing has a lot to do with anti-transgender hatred and prejudice, and the violence that hatred and prejudice can beget. So today, for Transgender Remembrance Day, I want to write about the importance of understanding about how personal opinions about other peoples’ bodies, when expressed in the world (and enforced through a variety of sociocultural mechanisms) aren’t just assholery, insecurity, or stupidity. Well, yeah, they are. They’re the opinions of stupid, insecure assholes. But in the past, much more than now, I think I believed it was in the power of people to just blow off stupid, ill-informed opinions. Sure, they hurt. Sure, they should not have been said. But you can’t control what other people think or say (still true) so … in the past I’ve focused on how to make those asshole opinions matter less to the individuals who were being bullied, harassed, ridiculed.

And all of that is as good as far as it goes.

But recently, I’ve been thinking way more about the collective power of body policing, and how combating it on an individual level just isn’t enough.  We need to connect the dots as much as possible between everyday, individual acts of body policing (passing judgment on whether someone picked out the right shirt, whether they should lose a few pounds, whether they “pass” as their chosen gender, whether X act is appropriate for their gender identity) and a culture that normalizes that pressure to conform to such an extent that folks who are prone to violence feel justified in exerting physical and emotional force in order to exact “correct” behavior from their victims.

We all make snap judgments about our fellow human beings. We’re socialized to do so: it’s part of the process of making sense of an otherwise untenably chaotic world. And I’m sure a certain amount of that categorization activity is necessary for us to function successfully as organisms in our environment.

But today, I’d like to point out that not all interpersonal judgments are necessary for our (physical and social) survival. Assessing whether someone’s likely to be an abuser? Probably a good skill to have. Passing judgment on whether or not someone made “good” or “bad” decisions about how to dress this morning? Whether their food or exercise choices are healthy? Questioning their self-identified gender or sexual orientation? Making them feel somehow dirty or wrong for being who they are in the world … when who they are is hurting exactly no one?

It’s just not cool. And it helps to perpetuate a culture in which we make it our business to police the gender and sexual identity of those around us, according to our own personal understanding of what boundaries should and shouldn’t be crossed. And that includes the personal understanding of those of us who think queerness is cool and the gender binary is passe AND those who think that any deviation from gender essentialist, heteronormative world is a fucking nightmare. And will resort to violence in order to protect themselves, and those around them, from it.

So next time you find yourself judging someone else’s identity or self-expression? Take a deep breath and think twice. I’d like to believe each time we do that, we make the world a little less violent than it otherwise would have been.

And maybe, collectively, we can stop so many people from dying just because someone stupid found their existence offensive.

"you should call it the doppler effect. then people will shag you."

08 Monday Nov 2010

Posted by in think pieces

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shout and scream by Mindaugas Danys
available at Flickr.com

So this past weekend I was enjoying some stimulating, thoughtful conversation over on Emily Nagoski’s blog about teaching women’s sexuality in higher education. A student in the semester-long class on the subject recently contacted Emily and suggested that the course material was “unintentionally heteronormative.” This provoked an interesting conversation on the comment thread about how to teach the biological aspects of human sexuality to students more comfortable in the world of sociocultural analysis — students who are (rightly) suspicious of simplistic truth claims from the world of hard science, but who are perhaps hastily dismissing an entire way of seeing the world that could be useful, as long as it remains one of many tools we have to increase our understanding.

I digress. If you’re interested in that conversation, you can head over to the original thread.

The thing is, a commenter jumped into the conversation and suggested this student — solely on evidence that they used the word “heteronormativity” was an “unhinged crank,” who “sees ‘heteronormativity in A/C plugs and sockets.” When Emily replied “I know with certainty they are not,” he begged to differ:

Anyone who would accuse the Emily Nagoski I know of ThoughtCrime – excuse me, “heteronormativity” – is nearing the straitjacket stage of gender politics.

The thing is — this guy obviously knows and wants to defend the thoughtfulness and openness of his friend. Both of these impulses are laudable. But I really, really wish we had a Godwin’s Law for references to ThoughtCrime, ThoughtPolice, 1984 and the derogatory use of “politically correct”  and the label of  “language police.” Attempt to invalidate someone’s argument by accusing them of being the thought police? You lose.

Like with Godwin’s Law,  the Feminist Librarian’s Law of Accusations in Place of Honest Reflection, allows that there are instances in which it is legitimate to speak out against genuine instances of attempted censorship or policing of other peoples’ life experience. I believe policing other peoples’ sexualities, identities, bodies, clothing choices, food choices, and yes, even language choices (when it comes to self-identification and description at least) is not okay. It’s their life, not yours. And unless their actions are causing you or other people demonstrable harm (for which you have to show not just claim causal effect), it’s none of your damn business. And if there were actually state-sanctioned censorship going on here, it’s legitimate to challenge it. (Although I’d suggest accusing the proponents of being the “thought police” might not be the best way to get your message concerning freedom of speech across.)

The thing is: No one in this scenario has tried to thought-police anyone.  A student in a class has raised concerns that a class on women’s sexuality is unintentionally perpetuating heteronormative culture. Heteronormativity is not a “thought crime”: it’s the accumulated effect of myriad cultural cues that suggest to us that the normal (and best) form of sexual identity and expression is one in which individuals’ gender matches their assigned sex, that gender expresses itself in only two mutually-exclusive ways (“male” and “female”) and that the most appropriate expression of human sexuality is through opposite-sex pairings.

Far from acting as the Thought Police (who, ahem, had the weight of the government behind them), the student in Emily’s class is raising a question from the margins. Our government supports heteronormativity not its opposite. One cannot literally act as the “thought police” unless one has the power of cultural, political, and/or legal authority behind them.

In my experience, the people who get most often accused of policing other peoples’ thoughts or words are people who are challenging the status quo.  People with no political authority or cultural weight behind them. While the people who respond to those challenges with accusations of language policing and characterizations of the first person’s challenge as a call for “political correctness” are defending the status quo.  They’re skeptical of the first person’s challenge, dismissive of their concerns, and all too ready (as this gentleman has) to label the challenger as a “crank” or “unhinged.”

This is not what Orwell was talking about, people. This is not censorship.  This is just, you know, people bringing up ideas that are outside your comfort zone.

And crying “thought police” just ’cause you’re a little uncomfortable is, shall we say, slightly over-egging the cake.

In my experience, the only goal of this tactic to get the challenger to shut the fuck up by telling them their question-asking is an hysterical over-reaction or a calculated power-play (probably both!). It signals to me that the accuser the doesn’t understand the crucial distinction between the exertion of power-over with the full weight of the Powers That Be behind it and the actions or speech of those who are challenging the Powers That Be the passive or active abuses the often come with those Powers.  It signals to me that the accuser does not care enough about the challenger as a person or about their ideas to give them due consideration, even if that person and their ideas make the accuser uncomfortable.  Reflexive defensiveness: Not. Cool.

Had similar experiences? Discovered ways of dealing with this sort of response effectively? Share in comments!