Tag Archives: bigotry

on gaining weight

20 Friday Jun 2014

Posted by in life writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Photograph by Laura Wulf

I had my annual physical last week, and for the first time in a couple of years I actually looked at the reading on the scale when they did all the usual readings. Typically, I stand on the scale facing away from the screen and the nurses at our awesome community health center don’t offer the information unless I ask.

I’d gained about ten pounds since the last time I’d bothered to check.

I was (surprising even myself) pretty unconcerned about this state of affairs.

I’m not going to share the exact number or the number(s) I’m comparing it to. The minute I did so virtually every woman reading this post would do the calculation and contrast and compare. Either I’d be smaller, and some part of them would feel jealous, or I’d be larger, and some part of them would feel virtuous. They might judge themselves for feeling that way (I do when I catch myself doing it), but for most of us it’s an involuntary reflex.

There’s a reason I don’t own a scale, and weigh myself at the doctor’s office blind.

As photographs on this blog demonstrate, I’m a 5′ 10″ woman who falls within the median weight range for American women — which is to say that my clothing sizes are usually available in many styles in most stores. This is a form of privilege, one I’ve become even more acutely aware of married to a woman whose body is actively marginalized by our fatphobic, sizest culture.

But, like virtually every women and many a man will tell you, being a body of normative size in a culture “at war” against fat (and people we judge for their size) is no proof against a disordered relationship with one’s physical self. While never diagnosed with a formal eating disorder, I spent most of my teens obsessing over food and weight, counting calories, bingeing, eating until my stomach hurt and falling asleep each night (yes: every night for nearly a decade) wishing I could just purge and have done with it.

I ended every day — every day — from age sixteen to twenty-four feeling some measure of failure for what I had eaten, and what I had done, with my body.

My own struggle with disordered eating was complicated by the fact that my thyroid condition, managed with medication until age twenty-five, meant I was almost always hungry. My appetite was not a reliable measure of what my body actually needed as fuel — my hormones were telling me I was hungry. I could (and did) eat gallons of ice cream at a sitting and my body would still tell me I was hungry.

When I finally received medical treatment that treated my condition more effectively, I got my libido back and learned what it was like to have an appetite: to eat and feel full. And not think about food every waking moment of every day.

While I was never diagnosed with an eating disorder, I was at my thinnest — received the most praise from acquaintances for having “lost weight!” — when my hyperactive thyroid was raging out of control. Did I glow with “pride” at the praise? Some part of me did. The other part of me recognized how fucked up our culture is congratulating a young woman for thinness — as if body size is some sort of merit metric. When instead, in my case, it was actually a pathological symptom.

One I knew even at the time part of me would miss, because being “effortlessly” thin (while, as I said above, obsessing about my weight and food intake on an hourly basis) was something society rewarded me for.

I was scared, when I chose the treatment that would help me heal — that would give me my sex drive back (though no doctors thought to mention this as a perk) — that would allow me to experience appetites and satisfaction — when I chose the treatment that would give me these things, I was scared that I’d just become “fat.”

Because of course, that’s what we’re taught to fear most of all.

So it was remarkable to me, last week, when I walked into the doctor’s office and discovered that I now weigh about thirty pounds more than I weighed at the point when I was the sickest (and most obsessive — and most frequently praised). It was remarkable that I didn’t much care.

I’m growing into myself. That’s what I thought. I’m growing older. And my mind meant that in a positive way. I’m thirty-three now; nearly ten years older than I was then. Bodies change. As I grow into my middle age, I may continue to gain weight slowly, incrementally. If family size and shape is any guide, I’ve likely settled more or less at the point where I will probably stay as I grow older.

And even if I grow larger, become more, I resist the notion that this is something I should categorically fear, manically avoid, judge myself in relation to. I’ve got other things to focus on, thank you very much. I refuse to spend my energy struggling to control my body size when there’s overwhelming evidence to suggest that such efforts are both futile and unrelated to one’s overall health outcomes.

I refuse to fear in myself what I embrace in others: embodiment in the selves we have.

I’m grateful for how little the number mattered. It’s been a long journey to this point, but well worth the climb.

the statement on trans-inclusive feminsm and womanism [signed!]

19 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by in think pieces

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

I’ve been seeing this statement coming through on my RSS and Twitter feed for the last few days, and have finally had a moment to sit down and sign it. 

It should be upsetting to us all that the need to specify trans-inclusive feminism and womanism exists, but it does so I want to spell out my support. I also want to take this opportunity to thank the trans people and allies who have pushed me — in person and in print — over the past ten years to learn about trans issues and un-learn toxic myths and stereotypes. You have immeasurably enriched my life and my feminism. I will do my best to live up to the vision all you have challenged us to fulfill.

[text via feministsfightingtransphobia]

We, the undersigned trans* and cis scholars, writers, artists, and educators, want to publicly and openly affirm our commitment to a trans*-inclusive feminism and womanism.

There has been a noticeable increase in transphobic feminist activity this summer: the forthcoming book by Sheila Jeffreys from Routledge; the hostile and threatening anonymous letter sent to Dallas Denny after she and Dr. Jamison Green wrote to Routledge regarding their concerns about that book; and the recent widely circulated statement entitled “Forbidden Discourse: The Silencing of Feminist Critique of ‘Gender,’” signed by a number of prominent, and we regret to say, misguided, feminists have been particularly noticeable.  And all this is taking place in the climate of virulent mainstream transphobia that has emerged following the coverage of Chelsea Manning’s trial and subsequent statement regarding her gender identity, and the recent murders of young trans women of color, including Islan Nettles and Domonique Newburn, the latest targets in a long history of violence against trans women of color.  Given these events, it is important that we speak out in support of feminism and womanism that support trans* people.

We are committed to recognizing and respecting the complex construction of sexual/gender identity; to recognizing trans* women as women and including them in all women’s spaces; to recognizing trans* men as men and rejecting accounts of manhood that exclude them; to recognizing the existence of genderqueer, non-binary identifying people and accepting their humanity; to rigorous, thoughtful, nuanced research and analysis of gender, sex, and sexuality that accept trans* people as authorities on their own experiences and understands that the legitimacy of their lives is not up for debate; and to fighting the twin ideologies of transphobia and patriarchy in all their guises.

Transphobic feminism ignores the identification of many trans* and genderqueer people as feminists or womanists and many cis feminists/womanists with their trans* sisters, brothers, friends, and lovers; it is feminism that has too often rejected them, and not the reverse. It ignores the historical pressures placed by the medical profession on trans* people to conform to rigid gender stereotypes in order to be “gifted” the medical aid to which they as human beings are entitled.  By positing “woman” as a coherent, stable identity whose boundaries they are authorized to police, transphobic feminists reject the insights of intersectional analysis, subordinating all other identities to womanhood and all other oppressions to patriarchy.  They are refusing to acknowledge their own power and privilege.

We recognize that transphobic feminists have used violence and threats of violence against trans* people and their partners and we condemn such behavior.  We recognize that transphobic rhetoric has deeply harmful effects on trans* people’s real lives; witness CeCe MacDonald’s imprisonment in a facility for men.  We further recognize the particular harm transphobia causes to trans* people of color when it combines with racism, and the violence it encourages.

When feminists exclude trans* women from women’s shelters, trans* women are left vulnerable to the worst kinds of violent, abusive misogyny, whether in men’s shelters, on the streets, or in abusive homes.  When feminists demand that trans* women be excluded from women’s bathrooms and that genderqueer people choose a binary-marked bathroom, they make participation in the public sphere near-impossible, collaborate with a rigidity of gender identities that feminism has historically fought against, and erect yet another barrier to employment.  When feminists teach transphobia, they drive trans* students away from education and the opportunities it provides.

We also reject the notion that trans* activists’ critiques of transphobic bigotry “silence” anybody.  Criticism is not the same as silencing. We recognize that the recent emphasis on the so-called violent rhetoric and threats that transphobic feminists claim are coming from trans* women online ignores the 40+ – year history of violent and eliminationist rhetoric directed by prominent feminists against trans* women, trans* men, and genderqueer people.  It ignores the deliberate strategy of certain well-known anti-trans* feminists of engaging in gleeful and persistent harassment, baiting, and provocation of trans* people, particularly trans* women, in the hope of inciting angry responses, which are then utilized to paint a false portrayal of trans* women as oppressors and cis feminist women as victims. It ignores the public outing of trans* women that certain transphobic feminists have engaged in regardless of the damage it does to women’s lives and the danger in which it puts them.  And it relies upon the pernicious rhetoric of collective guilt, using any example of such violent rhetoric, no matter the source — and, just as much, the justified anger of any one trans* woman — to condemn all trans* women, and to justify their continued exclusion and the continued denial of their civil rights.

Whether we are cis, trans*, binary-identified, or genderqueer, we will not let feminist or womanist discourse regress or stagnate; we will push forward in our understandings of gender, sex, and sexuality across disciplines.  While we respect the great achievements and hard battles fought by activists in the 1960s and 1970s, we know that those activists are not infallible and that progress cannot stop with them if we hope to remain intellectually honest, moral, and politically effective.  Most importantly, we recognize that theories are not more important than real people’s real lives; we reject any theory of gender, sex, or sexuality that calls on us to sacrifice the needs of any subjugated or marginalized group.  People are more important than theory.

We are committed to making our classrooms, our writing, and our research inclusive of trans* people’s lives.

Signed,

Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook (librarian, historian, writer)
Allston, Massachusetts
USA

[click through for the full list of signatories]

in which I write letters: NPR, I’m disappointed in you

24 Saturday Aug 2013

Posted by in think pieces

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

To: abross@npr.org
From: feministlibrarian@gmail.com
Re: Chelsea Manning

Dear Ms. Bross,

I am contacting you as a lifetime listener and longtime supporter of National Public Radio. As a teenager I began contributing to Michigan Radio as soon as I began to earn my own paycheck; my wife and I are currently sustaining members of WBUR and WGBH in Boston. I usually look to National Public Radio for thoughtful and respectful in-depth reporting that is conscious of the full humanity and agency of the individuals whom its reporters speak to and about.

Your decision to ignore Chelsea Manning’s explicit request that we honor her gender identity and use her chosen name as well as conventional female pronouns is an unethical one. It is a decision that robs her of what little agency she has left as she enters a military prison — the right to personhood, and the ability to articulate who she is. Surely Pfc. Manning is the one individual in the world who can know more intimately than any of us who she is. For NPR to contradict her own explicit self-definition is a profound act of arrogance and erasure.

I hope the coming days see reversal of your initial decision, and an apology to Manning and all of the trans people out there who have had to live through yet another round of media mis-steps around a high-profile individual who happens to be transgender. I was truly sorry to see NPR complicit in this perpetuation of trans-bigotry and ignorance.

In hopes of a better, more inclusive tomorrow,
Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook
Allston, MA

h/t to @SexOutLoudRadio for the email

comment post: unfinished thoughts on non-consensual sexualization

07 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by in think pieces

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

Regular readers of this blog may remember that over the past year or so I’ve been haunting the conservative Family Scholars Blog hosted by the Institute for American Values (IAV) think tank founded by David Blankenhorn, sometime high-profile opponent of same-sex marriage. In part, I follow the blog because my smart and funny friend Fannie is one of their guest bloggers. I am also deeply interested in the worldview of people whose understanding of how the world works, and what values will increase the well-being of humanity, are so different from my own.

Last week, I found myself sucked into a comment thread at the FSB wrestling with the subject of what I’ll call “non-consensual sexualization.” My working definition of non-consensual sexualization is public expressions which frame another person’s appearance, presence, or actions in a sexual light without their participation or consent. You might also call this plain old “sexual objectification.” I’m using my phrase here because I think it’s important to highlight the non-consensual part of what’s going on here. Continue reading →

mobility in the city [a few thoughts]

28 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by in think pieces

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Warning: This is a rambling post full of thoughts in progress.

My friend Molly is in the process of writing a book about parenting-while-feminist and in our little writing group, #firstthedraft, we’ve been talking about the politics of “babywearing” (carrying your infant and/or small child in a backpack or sling, etc.) versus strollers. My parents generally used packs — front and back — in the mid-80s when I was small, as well as wagons, tricycles, car seats, and various bike attachments, to tote us around. I don’t remember that we ever had a stroller per-se, but then we also lived in a small enough town that for daily getting around a car was essential and strollers were thus less so. But I do remember using strollers as a childcare provider in my teens, as a way to move toddlers I physically couldn’t carry over distances of more than a city block or two (about the distance they had the stamina to walk on their own). I never thought of child transport options as very political in nature.

Here in the city, though, I’ve learned, strollers are a Big Deal. Everyone has Feelings about them: how big they should (or shouldn’t) be, where they should (and shouldn’t) be allowed to travel, when (if ever) they are reasonable to be on public transportation. Parents and non-parents alike take all sides and sometimes blood is shed (or at the very least ill-will is fostered).

Last week, I suggested on Twitter that the whole problem might be solved if only we could create little steampunk baby carriers that were balloon or propeller-powered and could hover at about 7-8 feet from the ground. The caregiver could then walk along tugging the carrier along on a tether and strollers would take up the sidewalks and/or precious room on the T no more!

still from The Red Balloon (via)

(Though I suppose then we’d be arguing about low-hanging trees and awnings on storefronts. Sigh.)

I actually think identifying this social rough-and-tumble as one about strollers and parenting choices  says something about how we, as a society, compartmentalize parents and their (especially wee) children into the category of Other, a group of people who enter the public realm on sufferance from the rest of us — those of us who, we like to believe, only take up an “appropriate” amount of space on the T, on the sidewalk, who move at the right speed from point A to point B, and are able to time our inconvenient errands for those times when, even if we do take up more space then usual, we will somehow magically not slow down, crowd out, or inadvertently invade the personal space of our fellow city dwellers.

Those of us, in other words, who assume we have a right to be in public space when and how we need to … as opposed to those Other folks whose right to the public square only extend as far as their ability to imitate the space-taking habits of the default citizen (Us).

So what I want to talk a little bit about in this post is how, in an urban environment, especially if you do not own a car and/or are trying to get by using it a little as possible, you’re just going to get in peoples’ way. Even if you don’t have dependents to transport. Even if you don’t have serious mobility issues that require extra gear (walker, cane, chairAnd errands are going to take a lot of effort to complete. And chances are you’re going to need some sort of wheeled conveyance to get them done — unless you’re lucky enough that you don’t have a bad back or a bum wrist or weak ankle and can afford a gym membership and the time to bench press on a regular basis.

Errands in the city take much more time and planning, in my experience, than they did in the car-dependent town where I grew up (or perhaps, I should clarify, much more than they did for me and my car-owning family; for the folks in my hometown too poor to own a car, life was further complicated by a crappy-to-nonexistent public transit system). It’s something I’ve had to get used to, as a former smaller-town dweller turned urbanite. And I think perhaps this helps me see more clearly the similarities across types of transport-aides that some other people don’t — because we’re so used to tuning our brainwaves to “judge” when parents-and-children come into view.

Hanna and I finally bought this shopping cart this year

I’m going to use, as an example, the errand I ran earlier this week to pick up our first monthly allotment of winter veggies from Stillman’s farm where we are CSA subscribers. Stillman’s is out near Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and drives the produce into the city to various pre-scheduled pick-up locations. The closest pick-up point for us was in downtown Boston about two miles from where I work at the MHS. The pick-up time was 2-4pm.

Setting aside, for a moment, the privilege of having a job with a) an hour-long lunch break, and b) the ability to leave on an errand and not worry about getting in trouble if the subway is delayed and I get back a bit late, this sounds like a relatively easy transaction. Take a late lunch, go down, pick up veggies, return to work, take veggies home at the end of the day. If I were living in my home town, this errand would have taken about twenty minutes, maybe, leaving 40 minutes at either end to actually eat lunch.

In Boston, this errand means the following:

1. Remember to take the wheelie-cart with me to work (which means dragging it along on our morning walk of approximately three miles) so that I will be able to transport the heavy winter vegetables on my own.

2. At 2pm, walk to the closest T stop and wait for a train that will take me the right number of stops from Hynes Convention Center to Haymarket (approx. 10 minutes)

3. Maneuver the empty cart into the T, off the T, and up the escalator at Haymarket, and two blocks to the drop point (approx. 15 minutes).

4. Transfer the vegetables from the back of the delivery truck into the cart (approx. 5 minutes).

5. Stop at a nearby sandwich shop for a sandwich and iced tea — admittedly an “optional” step, though to go without would have meant foregoing a midday meal; as it was, I didn’t have time to actually eat the sandwich until I was walking home that evening (approx 10-15 minutes).

6. Carry the cart, maybe 45 pounds fully loaded, down the stairs to Haymarket station; they have an elevator but I didn’t have time to locate it; the elevators to below-ground stops are often poorly marked. The escalators go up, but not down.

7. The first T to pull into the station was headed in the right direction, but not to the appropriate stop. I got on anyway, since I was now starting to feel anxious about getting back to work roughly on time. In order to board the train, I had to lift the cart up the stairs and maneuver it around the other passengers to a quasi-secure “parking” spot midway down the car.

8. At Copley Square I had to transfer trains, meaning I needed to maneuver around standing passengers carrying the laden cart down to the platform, and then repeat the process boarding the train again. All of these situations were made comparatively easy by a) the fact I’m physically able to lift the loaded cart for short bursts of time, b) I was traveling mid-afternoon instead of rush hour, c) I wasn’t getting hate-stares from people who automatically resent the presence of strollers in the subway. (steps 6-8 took maybe 20 minutes).

9. At Hynes, I had to disembark and haul the cart up three flights of stairs (only one of which is equipped with an up escalator) to street level, and then wheel the cart from the station to the MHS. (5 minutes)

10. At the end of the work day, I knew that rush hour on the T precluded trying to get my shopping cart on the T unless I wanted to wait for 45 minutes to an hour for any train empty enough to accommodate me. Since I am able to walk, and didn’t have to rush home for any reason, I walked home — a distance of about 3 miles — pushing the cart ahead of me.

This is the labor it takes to do one errand in the city when you’re relying on public transportation and your own two feet. I’m not writing this post in a bid for folks to pity me — we made the decision to subscribe to the CSA this winter, after all, knowing the time and effort it would take to get our fresh veggies. But I do hope that focusing in on the logistics of one errand this way points out how most of us, at one time or another, even if we are able-bodied adults sans children moving around our environment, are awkward to accommodate. And also point out how the environment is as much “at fault” as the awkward human being in question.

Rather than bitching about those of us who crowd the sidewalk with shopping carts, strollers, or walkers, we might think about the assumptions that led to sidewalks being a certain width (i.e. that all those who use the sidewalk are people who can walk unaided and unburdened with goods). While some of us might be able to carry our children (or our groceries) in wraps or packs or tote bags, others may not be strong enough to carry 45 pounds of produce (or exhausted toddler) for three miles — or time our outings before/after rush hour in order to actually fit on the T without the other passengers complaining or resenting you.

More and more, I find myself thinking about how the ideal citizen-worker in our world these days is the perfectly-able young adult without any dependents, who never gets ill, and is somehow (magically) perfectly self-sufficient. Not only do they never behave awkwardly in public, take up more space than we think they should, turn up their music louder than we’d like, lose their train of thought in the grocery aisle, or fumble with their wallet at the cash register … they manage their bodies (and those of their children) and personal belongings so that the rest of us can imagine they are not there.

Oh, I’ve been there. I’ve been annoyed and judgy and exhausted and angry and in the headspace where I just want to get home and not deal with one more stranger ever anywhere. But that’s just not the way the world works. We’re all awkward, noisy, thoughtless, slow. We all take up more space, sometimes, than others think we should.

And it seems like an important exercise or practice for each of us to — regardless of how we feel and what we think of others’ choices and presence —  realize that they’re probably just trying to get around the city like we are, and that sometimes getting from point A to B is an awkward, clumsy process. One that does, in fact, take up space in the world.

And that we all, in fact, equally entitled to be mobile, and to move around the city when and how we need to in order to live our lives.

in which I write letters: dear alma mater … again

06 Thursday Sep 2012

Posted by in think pieces

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Diane De Young
Associate Director of the Hope Fund
Hope College
PO Box 9000
Holland, MI 49424-9000

4 September 2012 

Dear Ms. De Young,

Thank you for your recent letter alerting me to the upcoming Hope College Phonathon. I am writing to explain why I will not be contributing to the campaign; you are welcome to share my reasons with whomever might benefit from this information. 

As I’m sure your records indicate, I attended Hope College from 1998-2005, graduating with a BA in Women’s Studies and History (double major). During my seven years at Hope, I formed lasting relationships with my faculty mentors and received what I would consider a superior college education. While at Hope, I benefited from merit and need-based scholarships, as well as the tuition benefit awarded to children of Hope College employees (my father is Mark Cook, director of the Hope-Geneva Bookstore). The quality of my Hope College experience was part of what enabled me to make the most of my graduate education at Simmons College, where I completed an MA in History and an MS in Library Science. Today, I serve as the Reference Librarian at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and this past March I had the rewarding experience of returning to Hope College as a guest speaker at the Women’s Studies Celebration. I was recently asked to provide a letter of support for Dr. Jeanne Petit as she is considered for promotion to the rank of Full Professor, a request it was my pleasure to fulfill.

However, as a woman who will shortly be marrying my girlfriend of the past three years here in Massachusetts, I am a Hope College alumni who feels unwelcome and unloved by the institution as a whole. In April 2010, as the Board of Trustees was revisiting their support of the current Institutional Statement on Homosexuality, I wrote to then-Chairperson Joel Bowens and explained that until Hope College alters its position on human sexuality to be affirming of all a full range of human orientations, identities, and desires, I will not support the college financially. I cannot in good conscience send money to an institution that does not recognize the legitimacy of my primary relationship. I will speak up whenever given the opportunity — such as during fundraising campaigns — against the actions and words of the Board, and of Hope as an institution, that continue to create a hostile environment for faculty, staff, students, and alumni who are not straight or do not believe that non-straight sexuality is immoral.

I will continue to speak highly of the faculty who mentored me, and provide what support I can to individuals and programs that are welcoming and affirming to all (such as the Women’s Studies program). Yet I will not be participating in the Phonathon, in the Hope Fund, or any other fundraising campaigns until Hope College as an institution recognizes and affirms the lives of those of us who find joy and meaning in same-sex relationships.

I look forward to watching Hope’s progress toward a more inclusive future, and hope that someday I will be able to respond to your requests without reservation.

Sincerely,

Anna

Anna J. Cook (’05)
# Xxxxxxx Xx. Apt #
Xxxxxxx, MA
02134

booknotes: the secret lives of wives

09 Thursday Feb 2012

Posted by in book reviews

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a pre-review review of Iris Krasnow’s book The Secret Lives of Wives (Gotham, 2011). From those notes, it should be clear to you that I had major issues with the book — and to be fair, I expected to have major issues with any book by someone whose previous books were titled Surrendering to Marriage and Surrendering to Motherhood. Sometimes, you can judge a book by its cover. Or at least, the choice of language by which it is marketed. The breathless wording of the title (“secret lives” and “what it really takes”), along with the temptation-of-Eve cover we’re rocking here, signaled to me we were in for a rocky ride.

And to be honest, that’s part of the reason why I requested the advance review copy of the book. Because on some level I’m fascinated by people who continue to buy into — and actually seem satisfied with — the heteronormative, gender essentialist assumptions about what it means to be men and women, relate sexually, and form families. I didn’t grow up in a household where gender normativity was enforced, and while my parents have enjoyed a 35-year marriage — which at times took a lot of active work to maintain — they have never pressured us kids into partnerships, marriage, or parenthood, hetero or otherwise. So I just don’t get the concern trolling over kids-these-days being somehow unfit and unable to establish intimate partnerships.

Part of me hoped that Secret Lives would offer really interesting first-person narratives about long-term partnerships. I’m an oral historian by training, after all, and even when autobiographical narratives turn on values I strongly disagree with I still find life stories an absorbing read. And a preliminary glance at Krasnow’s website also suggested that at least some of the “secrets” to a successful marriage were going to be fairly benign: maintain strong relationships with male and female friends outside the marriage, don’t expect your spouse to meet every emotional need, make space and time for being alone or pursuing independent projects. Who’s really going to argue with those fairly basic pieces of advice for well-being? So while I went into this book with the expectation that there would be much to disagree with, I was also prepared to find something — anything! — redeeming in its pages.

Wow, that was hard. As my preliminary notes suggest, the “points for” list I started in the front cover was quickly overtaken by the “no points for” list. But I’m going to lay into this book fairly hard in a minute, so let me begin by observing what I felt Krasnow did — if not “well” at least “decently.” She situates herself in the introduction as a curious journalist, not a sociologist or psychologist, and (at least initially) acknowledges the anecdotal nature of her research. She later goes on to consistently generalize from that research, but we’ll deal with that below. In so many words, she acknowledges this is a book about heterosexual couples, though doesn’t talk about her reasons for limiting the study in this way. The fact it’s all about wives rather than husbands and wives is something that is never specifically addressed, though I think it’s tied to the fact Krasnow sees women as primarily responsible for securing and maintaining a marriage (more below).

She does acknowledge that there is no one-size-fits-all formula for marital happiness, writing that “there is no gold standard for marriage,” although I think her later arguments undermine this initial claim. As I said above, she is fairly consistent in maintaining that individual people are responsible for determining — and seeking out — what will help them thrive (in other words, don’t expect a husband to equal instant happiness). She argues for the importance of maintaining adult friendships outside long-term partnerships, and she encourages wives to maintain independent lives through work, travel, exercise, and other activities that will take them out of domestic life. Basically, “It’s okay to do things without your husband sometimes.” Which I think is pretty sane advice for partners of any persuasion (and I’m not sure it really counts as a “secret” given the number of people who know and agree with it).

And I realize this is a super-low bar, but I’m going to offer her maybe half a point for at least acknowledging the existence of women in hetero marriages who don’t have children with their partners, couples who aren’t white, and couples who aren’t upper-middle-class. With the exception of ethnic diversity (which isn’t really clearly delineated, though one woman is identified as African-American and one Bengali) there’s one example of non-parenting, and one example of a non-professional-class couple. Other than that, we’re basically talking about white upper-middle-class wives with children, most of whom have advanced degrees and are married to individuals similarly situated. Couples with the financial resources to support multiple homes or summer-long vacations abroad, hire (and have affairs with) gardening staff, choose to be a single-income family (and not suffer financially for it), etc. Her profiles of individual women include throw-away details about fur coats, caterers, manicures, high-end spas, and other markers of incredibly privileged lives. Granted, social and economic privilege has never proven to shield individuals from emotional distress or relational impoverishment — but I wish Krasnow has been more upfront about the demographic she was actually studying.

Okay, so those are the okay-ish things about Secret Lives. Things that limit the book’s generalizability, but aren’t particularly harmful if you take them for what they are. Several of the life stories Krasnow includes — if you can grit your teeth and get passed her editorializing — are actually really awesome. I particularly appreciated the one interview she did with a married couple, Phil and Pat, since it included both partners’ voices. Phil and Pat were articulate in describing the ways in which sexism made Pat’s career (in the tech industry, alongside her husband) more difficult, and how together they learned how to resist the external forces trying to push Pat out of the business world, or pit them against each other as competitors. Similarly, a couple of women — interestingly enough the wives who used “we” most often — described the way they re-negotiated their marriage arrangements in times of stress, to better share the tasks of child-rearing, or to open their marriage to other partners (more on the one swinger couple below). The women who used “we” were much more likely to describe equal partnerships in which they’d worked with their husbands to build a home life that supported both their individual needs and the nurturing of their relationship. Often through active re-negotiation of terms when the original assumptions or agreements had failed to serve one or both of them adequately.

So what are Krasnow’s secrets for a successful (note: “successful” in Krasnow’s world means long-lasting — no marriage which ended in separation or divorce gets a place in the book, and cautionary tales of people who did divorce feature prominently) hetero marriage? And what ideas concerning gender and sexuality is she promulgating on the way by?

Secret #1: Heterosexual marriage is what every woman “needs” because it is “essential.” So while I have no problem, per se with a study that focuses on one group of people (in this case wives) due to the questions being asked or simple logistics, I became increasingly suspicious of Krasnow’s decision to focus exclusively on “wives” as the book went on. She begins with a chapter about “why marriage,” as in why should she focus on describing successful marriage. “Who needs marriage?” She asks rhetorically, answering herself, “Women do, of this I’m convinced” (8). While Krasnow includes handful of throw-away lines to the effect that some marriages are abusive and should end, the actual message of the book is that marriage, virtually any marriage, is better than dating (and yes, if you’re single you’re assumed to be looking for a partner). The women who fail to keep their marriages intact in Secret Lives are seen as failures who gave up, who had unrealistic expectations, or who made a rash decision they now regret. “Better to stick with the first flawed union if you can; the second could be worse” (32) she concern-trolls over and over. 

This understanding of marriage as something women “need,” and the focus specifically on “wives” also speaks to the pervasive gender essentialism Krasnow offers up, in which women pursue marriage … with men whom she depicts as emotionally unavailable and brutish (I’m serious, she and Caitlin Flanagan should just go to housekeeping together) and frankly not all that appealing. While she insists that marriage is the essential ingredient for ultimate life-long happiness, her own descriptions belie those claims. In other words, Krasnow should be approached as an unreliable narrator.

Secret #2: The work and compromise of making a marriage successful, that is to say life-long, falls to the wife. There’s a telling scene early on in the book where Krasnow describes a point in her own marriage when she was a full-time mother with four children under the age of five and her husband was the full-time wage-earner. She describes her frustration at making breakfasts and lunches for the entire family while her husband sat at the breakfast table with the paper, ignoring the chaos around him, and then disappeared to work leaving her to clean the house and care for the kids. She describes calling her mother and announcing her intention to leave her husband — because anything would be better than the status quo. Yet in the end, she and her husband remained together and things got better. (Sort of. Frankly, the descriptions Krasnow provides of her husband and their interactions are filled with a level of animosity that belies her protestations of marital bliss. I was really uncertain what we were supposed to make of her more personal anecdotes and their place in the story, since they seemed at odds with one another.) But anyway, she fills the book with similar narratives in which women are miserable with the status quo, yet consistently turn back to themselves as the source of the problem. I agree that to focus on assigning blame rather than solving the problem can be counterproductive, but I cringed at sentences like this: “Recently, Alice has been ‘working on herself’ and blaming Chris less, fueling a discovery that he isn’t so bad after all” (66). Relentlessly, the exhausted mother of young children is counseled to stick it out, rather than speak up and say “This isn’t working, can we figure out how to make this more equitable?” These marriages all take place in a vacuum where sex and gender politics on a wider scale don’t exist, and it’s simply women’s lot to be the full-time parent with an unresponsive husband (who will start paying attention to her again once she stops wallowing in self-pity and bothers to put on tight jeans and sexy lipstick).

Lesson #3: Adultery is okay, as long as you keep it secret from your spouse, and having an open marriage is exactly the same as being an adulterer (except people with open marriages are mysteriously happier). So she has a really depressing chapter on women in relationships where either they or their husband maintain the marriage by cheating on one another — and not talking about it. I realize everyone feels different about adultery, but I believe trust and honesty and fidelity are really important in any relationship, and if a marriage is going to involve multiple people in any way, it should be openly negotiated and agreed upon by all parties involved. Which is why the one swinger couple Krasnow profiles, I’d argue, seem so damn pleased with the way they’ve chosen to conduct their sexual lives. Yet Krasnow folds this couple into the chapter on adultery, and seems at a loss to explain why their extramarital relationships aren’t causing anyone angst or despair.

Lesson #4: Youthfulness should be prized while young people are denigrated. Some people might see this as two separate issues, but I’m treating them together ’cause I think it’s two aspects of the pernicious ageism that permeates our culture. Krasnow uncritically accepts that youthful looks are desirable (in women) and should be maintained (by women) in order to keep the interest of their husbands, etc. At the same time, she portrays young people — I’m assuming any cohort younger than about age 35? — as lazy gits who are unwilling or uninterested in putting energy into maintaining relationships. We’ve all grown up with the “divorce epidemic,” I guess, and somehow technology has also made it easier to give up on people (it’s unclear why, but Facebook and iPads feature as emblematic of … whatever the problem is). I feel bad for her kids that she basically thinks they’re uninterested or incapable of connecting. While this book is ostensibly a look at marriage in the “middle years” (read: after your kids have gone away to prestigious colleges), it’s shot through with a heavy, heavy dose of judgement and unsolicited advice for younger folks who might think twice before marrying, not be interested in marrying a man, or who might try to re-negotiate the work/childcare arrangement with their spouse.

The entire book could really be reduced to a banner reading “Be Grateful You Have a Man, Any Man, Girls, Because Without One Life Isn’t Worth Living.” Which (and here’s where my own personal bias might come in a teeny-weeny bit?) is a really weird message to try and send with a shit-ton of examples of hetero marriages that sound fairly dysfunctional and unhappy to me. Even when you discount the one or two that are actually out-right abusive? It’s a fairly dismal bunch. Like I said, there are maybe three or four profiles in which the women speak with confidence about having negotiated a fairly equal arrangement with their spouse, and where the couple seems to be on the same page about their domestic life. But more often than not, there seems to be a lot of despair, resignation, rage, and yes, “secrets” that involve emotional and physical infidelity.

Seriously: I got to the end of this book and I was like, “If this is the world of straight marriage, I’m so glad I’m out.” I am so thankful for all of the people I know who are married to other-sex partners who aren’t actually acting out this sort of misery. Who are living lives of partnership and communication. Who don’t assume all women “need” marriage, and who don’t denigrate their own husbands by making snarky asides about how many hours per weekend they spend watching hockey.

I started out this post by observing that part of the reason I read books like this is to try and understand what people who think like this get out of their portrayal of women and men and marriage in this fashion. This book failed insofar as I still don’t understand it. One could write a perfectly sane, thoughtful, book about the compromises and negotiations one makes in a long-term relationship. One that didn’t hinge on making generalizations about how men and women operate and what they want out of relationships. But this is not that book.

P.S. I originally wrote this review prior to reading Samhita Mukhopadhyay’s Outdated, though the review of that book went live on Tuesday. While I was reading Outdated I kept thinking of Secret Lives and how this book — despite the fact it’s not explicitly marketed as a dating advice manual — fits so well into the paradigm of the hetero dating advice schlock Mukhopadhyay takes to task. Basically, if you’re going to read Secret, keep Outdated close at hand as an antidote!

Cross-posted at The Pursuit of Harpyness.

how to evaluate our elders: some preliminary thoughts as an historian

25 Tuesday Jan 2011

Posted by in my historian hat

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , ,

Gloria Steinem and two other editors of Ms. Magazine
ca. 1970s

As an historian, I spend a not-inconsiderable amount of time thinking about how we (in the present) evaulate the actions and words of our elders. Whether the person in question is still alive, or whether they have been dead for generations, individual words and actions are inescapably bound by the historic time and place in which they happened. We are creatures of history, not outside of it. Which is not to say that human beings of the past should not be held accountable for the damage they have often — so very often — wrought. Acknowledging, for example, that the majority of citizens in the Colonies did not believe women should have the vote, or that slaves were entitled to be counted as citizens (or even, radical idea, freed from bondage) does not preclude us from judging disenfranchisement and slavery as morally wrong. Understanding that a certain belief was simply “common sense” at the time does not exculpate those who accepted that “common sense” understanding from the responsibility of answering for the pain said belief caused others.

But given that, how, exactly, are we to judge the beliefs and actions of the past? By what criteria do we evaluate historically-situated words and deeds?

These questions often come up in my fields of historical interest, since I focus on the history of feminist activism, the history of countercultures, and the history of sexual identities and sexual practice. All of these areas of human activity regularly challenge us to define “right” and “wrong,” think about issues of human rights and social justice, and to understand the personal consequences of bigotry and prejudice.

I was thinking about these questions last week because Cara of The Curvature wrote a post over at her Tumblr blog about Gloria Steinem and transphobia. Cara recently picked up a copy Steinem’s anthology of writings, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1995) and in her post is specifically responding to an essay on “transsexualism” (originally written in 1977) in which Steinem writes in extremely negative terms about transsexual identity in general and gender confirmation surgery in particular. She portrays trans women as men masquarading falsely as women, and supports policies — popular at the time — excluding trans women from “women only” spaces. In her post, Cara called the Steinem out for her bigotry.

When I left a comment querying about the historical context of the original piece and saying that I hoped Steinem had since changed her views on the subject (feminist and even mainstream understanding of trans* issues has altered significantly since 1977 and even 1995), Cara wrote in response:

Of course, 15-16 years have passed since [the anthology], so it is possible that her views have changed since then, and one would hope that they have. But at the same time, I really don’t think that her views changing really count for much? I mean, admittedly as a cis person my thoughts on the matter don’t really count for all that much, either, but. I’d say she not only owes an apology, but a lot of work to address the harm that those views have done to the trans community over the decades, including the harm that the feminist movement has specifically done to trans people, especially trans women. Like, you know, this. Which has resulted in deaths. Or cis feminists keeping trans women out of domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers, which has caused deaths. Etc. Clearly, she was not only complicit in that, but an active promoter of it.

I should admit up-front that I haven’t read this particular essay of Steinem’s in years — if, indeed, I’ve read it at all.  As a teenager, I know I owned a copy of Outrageous Acts and read much of its contents. If I did read “Transsexualism” as a sixteen-year-old, I likely would have passively accepted Steinem’s characterization of gender confirmation surgery as “mutiliation.” It took me into my mid-twenties (helped by lots of reading and some trans-identified friends) for me to revisit my adolescent judgement that surgical body alterations were inherently physically and psychologically damaging. And I’m sure the fact that the 1970s-era feminist writings I read as a teenager (and throughout much of college) did little to challenge my prejudice and encourage me to critically examine my judgmental views. The transphobia within the feminist movement then and now is not okay and absolutely should be called out at every opportunity.

Yet while I agree with the fact that Steinem’s past views did, indeed, contribute to a hostile climate for trans* folks that continues to this day, I’m troubled by the idea that someone’s ability to change over time into a less bigoted person doesn’t “really count for much.”  Since I don’t know the specifics in this particular case, I won’t venture to comment on Steinem’s current beliefs concerning trans identities. Perhaps she continues to believe what she wrote in 1977 and it is for precisely this reason that she included the piece in her 1995 anthology. The thing is, this post isn’t really about Steinem’s transphobia, past or present, anyway. Instead, I am using it as a single example of the kind of dilemma that confronts those of us in social justice activism daily: How to make sense of, and judge, the quality and importance of change over time.

At the time Steinem wrote her 1977 essay, many (likely most) women who identified as feminists were not welcoming of trans women. Trans identity was misunderstood, feared, vilified; trans women were judged and found wanting as women.  Many feminists as well as non-feminists in the mid-twentieth century viewed sex and gender identity as innate, as fixed, and binary (you were either female or male, with no middle ground). Folks who transitioned from their assigned sex/gender identity to the sex/gender identity which they felt comfortable with were understood to be changing their sex, rather than confirmed outwardly the identity that they had had all along. There are still people who think this way, although during the past fifty years many people have challenged the correctness and helpfulness of those ideas — particularly for the trans* folks whose lives are most directly affected by such rigid and binary modes of thought. We now have new ways of understanding trans identities, and yet Steinem’s words from 1977 remain in stasis, on the printed page. So the question becomes: what do we do with them now? In the present?

As an historian and a feminist, here are some of the questions this particular case study (if you will) raises in my mind, in no particular order:

  • What is the responsibility of an author like Steinem to annotate her earlier writings (say, in an anthology such as Outrageous Acts) to distance her present self from her past views?
  • If Steinem did choose to annotate her earlier writings, what sort of annotation would be effective? Should she refuse to republish the piece? Write a critical introduction? Place it in historical context?
  • What would it mean to place the piece in historical context … do we need to understand it in the context of feminist writing? medical theories? queer activism? mainstream understandings of sex and gender identity? Steinem’s other work? What, in other words, are the relevent bodies of literature that contextualize this piece?
  • Does context matter from an ethical standpoint and if so, how?
  • Who is responsible for making that judgment call — feminists? trans folks? human rights activists? historians?
  • If Steinem’s views were not atypical for the time, at the time, what sort of responsibility does she bear today as an individual for holding them? (Clearly she does — we all have choices — but what sort of responsibility?) How do we understand a single voice in relation to a larger, collective, discourse?
  • Is it responsible for us, as critics, to take her work and judge it in isolation from her contemporaries?
  • If Steinem does bear individual responsibility, what would it look like for her to own up to that responsibility? (Cara suggests some avenues in her response above; there are likely many other approaches)
  • Does her position as a high-profile feminist activist alter the level of her responsibility for holding even typical views concerning gender identity?

This is just the list I put together on my commute home last week; I’m sure there are other questions to be asked.

This is the sort of challenge that ensures historians (as well as activists) will never be without work to do!

movienotes: holiday inn

27 Monday Dec 2010

Posted by in media

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

On Christmas Eve, Hanna and I watched Holiday Inn, a 1942 Bing Crosby/Fred Astair/Irving Berlin vehicle that I’ve heard was a precursor to the enduring classic White Christmas (also starring Crosby, though the 1954 film replaced Astair with Danny Kaye). I thought, vaguely, that I had seen Holiday Inn before.

I was wrong. So wrong.

To give you a taste, here’s the original trailer.

For those of you familiar with White Christmas, this earlier film shares relatively little with its “remake” aside from Bing Crosby, the song “White Christmas,” and the concept of rescuing a failing tourist hotel through the musical revue. There is much to cirtique in White Christmas if you’re in the mood — from the postwar nostalgia for the heroism of the war to the portrayal of gender dynamics and relationship expectations. I went into Holiday Inn expecting more or less the same, perhaps even a bit less based on my previous experience of late 1930s/early 1940s films — often, they are slightly less gender essentialist than after the end of the war.

In this case … not so much.  And in addition, Holiday Inn suffers from the additional problem of having been visited by the racist fairy and the weak plot fairy (yes, you really can have a film with less of a plot than White Christmas).

First, the gender issues. As in White Christmas, there are two women and two men. But instead of sisters, are introduced sequentially to two female entertainers, both of whom are expected to decide which of the two male leads (Crosby or Astair, the crooner or the dance man) she wishes to marry. The first woman, Lila (Virginia Dale) is the third member of Crosby and Astair’s act when the show opens, performing on stage the role she has clearly slid into in real life as well: a “who will she pick?” flirt. She is engaged to Crosby, who has plans to marry her and retire to the countryside and run a farm; on the side, she and Astair have made plans to marry instead — eloping at the last minute and heading off to a life of penthouses and entertainment glory.  The second woman, Linda (Marjorie Reynolds) is the ingénue who, in effect, takes Lila’s place when Lila runs off to marry a Texas tycoon … though Lila returns at the end so that both men have someone to marry and make the story a “happily ever after” tale.

There are some brief proto-feminist moments, such as when Linda tells Crosby off for trying to manipulate her into marrying him instead of just asking for gods’ sake.  But on the whole, the women come across as accessories to the friendship of Crosby/Astair, rather than individuals in their own right — something Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen are able to combat much more successfully in the later film, despite a similar trajectory of plot (i.e. that all healthy men of a certain age must be in want of a wife and that all “good” women are desperate to marry well).

After Crosby’s venture at the simple life fails, he decides to turn his faltering farm into an inn … an inn only open on holidays (thus giving him over three hundred days per year to rest and relax).  The two extremely unfortunate bits of the film are located at the Holiday Inn.

One is the 4th of July musical number, which devolves into mainlining propaganda for the war effort. We’re talking documentary footage of air raids and everything. Ouch.

The second, much more winceingly present problem is the racism.  First noticeable in the fact that the only black people in the cast is Crosby’s cook, Mamie, and her two unnamed children whom she continually orders to stay in the kitchen.

Louise Beavers as Mamie in Holiday Inn

Since watching Holiday Inn, Hanna and I re-watched White Christmas and realized anew how entirely white the cast is. And I mean no one with even a deep suntan. So on the one hand, I suppose you could argue that having an African-American woman in the cast — even as the housekeeper (a role played by a white woman in White Christmas) — is better than nothing?

But then there’s the blackface. Which was the bit where we just kinda lost it. Why blackface, you say? Well, mostly because they needed a plot device to keep Astair from finding Marjorie Reynolds too early in the film (’cause then the plot would be totally shot) so Crosby puts her in blackface as a disguise.  And then dresses himself up in blackface too, just for good measure.

To sing about Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.

*headdesk*

It’s just … not. okay. Not even a little bit okay. And after that, the whole film starts to take on this patina of wrong that it just cannot shake. ‘Cause everything trails around it this after-image of Crosby and Reynolds in blackface. And how wrong it all was.

So that’s kinda the upshot of my review folks: looking for a Christmas movie? Avoid Holiday Inn. And if you really want to hear White Christmas as sung by Crosby, rent the redux version. Really. You’ll thank me.

booknotes: nonviolence

13 Monday Dec 2010

Posted by in book reviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Mark Kurlansky’s book, Nonviolence: Twenty-Five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea (New York: Modern Library, 2006) does not pretend to be a comprehensive history of the idea and/or practice of nonviolence.  Instead, it should be approached as an invitation to consider the myriad ways nonviolence, in theory and praxis, has manifested itself in different times and places around the globe.  Kurlanksy’s emphasis here, in terms of examples, is on U.S. history, though he includes a healthy smattering of other continents represented (for example nonviolent resistence to European colonialism in Oceania, medieval European monastics, and Ghandi’s well-known campaign in India). For those interested in a more in-depth analysis of any one of the particular cases he cites, a fairly healthy eight-page bibliography of sources is included that can be a departure point for further reading.

What Nonviolence really is, more than an scholarly historical analysis, is a well-written, historically-supported argument for the effectiveness of nonviolence as a political strategy — one that has a better track record than violence as a way of improving the human condition. And taken as such, I think it is worthy of note.

I should acknowledge up-front here that Kurlanksy is preaching to the converted here: while I am not a wholehearted pacifist in practice (“pacifism” being distinct from the strategy of nonviolence, as discussed below), I am already convinced of the necessity of pursuing nonviolent pathways to social and political change. In my mind, there are no “just” wars. And I believe violence always begats more violence. So I’m an easy sell, as it were.

That being said, I think Kurlansky brings up a number of interesting points about nonviolence that should provoke us to thoughtfulness, regardless of personal stance concerning the practicality of nonviolent action in a world saturated with violence.

Kurlanksy’s first point is that there is no word for the concept of nonviolence — we can only speak of it by referrring to what it is not: it is not violence. He suggests that the explanation for this absence might be found in the fact that established political, cultural and intellectual communities “have viewed nonviolence as a marginal point of view, a fanciful rejection of one of society’s key componants, a repudiation of something important but not a serious force in itself” (5).  This linguistic marginalization, he argues, signifies a cognitive marginalization, a resistence to accepting the concept and practice of nonviolence because it requires a profound reorientation toward the world. It is a “truly revolutionary” idea, a “threat to the established order,” and thus treated as “profoundly dangerous.”

Why is it a threat to the established order? Because nonviolence is effective as a political strategy and offers an alternative to violence. In contrast to pacifism, which is a personal orientation toward life — an individual “state of mind” that does not necessarily translate into political or social action, nonviolence is an explicitly political orientation.

The central belief [of nonviolence] is that forms of persusasion that do not use physical force, do not cause suffering, are more effective, and while there is often a moral argument for nonviolence, the core of the belief is political: that nonviolence is more effective than violence, that violence does not work (7).

The rest of the book offers examples — from the American Revolution to the Jewish Holocaust — in which nonviolent action was more successful than violent action in resolving the situation that as a culture we assert war was necessary to resolve.  For example,

The Nazis are often cited as an example of an enemy against whom nonviolence would be futile. This is said despite the success of several nonviolent campaigns. Amid some of the greatest violence the world has ever seen, it was little noted that more Jews were saved by nonviolence than violence (133).

He gives the example of Denmark, a government and citizenry which — through comprehensive, cooperative nonviolent action — that succeeded in saving all but fifty-one of its Jewish citizens (who died of sickness while being held by the Germans while Denmark negotiated for their release). In contrast, France lost 26% of their Jews, the Netherlands three-quarters and in Poland 90% — despite the fact that all three nations had a very active (and armed) resistence movement.

This example can obviously be interrogated, as can all of the others Kurlansky uses. But the point remains that nonviolent tactics have, historically, proved to be effectual — and we could perhaps learn from past success as well as failure.

Why, then, do we so often ignore, dismiss, scoff at, and otherwise marginalize the potential of nonviolence? Kurlanksy argues that much of the blame lies with the state (and those who represent the state), and with the fact that war — once begun — develops a momentum of its own that, popular or not, is extremely difficult to reverse.  We have also learned to accept the (perhaps false) assertion that there are times when violence is our only recourse, when violence is the only path to lasting peace, and the seldom-challenged notion that without violence we would be less safe, less free, less alive, somehow indefinably less than we are when violence is present. (For another sustained psycho-cultural exploration of violence and war as a way human beings make meaning for themselves, see Chris Hedges’ War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning )

Kurlanksy asserts that it is war and violence, not an unwillingness to resort to war and violence, which make us less free, less safe, less alive than we would otherwise be.  It is lack of imagination, lack of a willingness to imagine a world without violence — an unwillingness to imagine the wars we have endured were unnecessary and may even have made the situation worse than it otherwise would have been that are roadblocks to seeking alternative, nonviolent solutions.

For anyone who’s familiar with theories of personal trauma and recovery, this cycle of violence is going to sound familiar: you suffer the trauma of X and it is very, very difficult not to rationalize X as an experience that made you stronger, made you a better person. It can be horrifying, crippling, to even imagine that if not for experience X you would be more whole as a human being.  Kurlansky’s theory of the marginalization of nonviolence is, more or less, this personal rationalization of trauma writ large: we experience war (trauma) and seek to rationalize it because to acknowledge war serves no constructive purpose is so horrifying to concieve of that it is literally beyond language, beyond our collective imagining. Instead, we justify it as fundamental to human existence, and therefore inevitable and necessary, and therefore a part of the human condition in which we must find value.

Which, I think, is part of the reason I’m so fascinated by it. By the practice of nonviolence. Precisely because so many of us, so often, imagine it is beyond the realm of possibility. I spend much of my time studying (historically, culturally) the lives of people who live and work and think in ways that — to the majority — are literally outside of the possible. That are understood to be incompatible with a meaningful (or in some cases literal!) existence.  And yet, somehow, these folks persist in existing.

Reading a book like this is like having someone throw down a gauntlet: You think war is the only solution? Prove to me you’ve exhausted every other possibility. No, more than that: prove to me that violence will facilitate better outcomes than taking any other action or no action at all. Unless you can prove that to me, I’m not interested in hearing how nonviolence is fanciful, impractical, idealistic. Because war kills people. Violence harms people. And perhaps the most compelling (and revolutionary) idea of them all: violence doesn’t work. 

You disagree? Prove it. Until then? I’m not interested.