Tag Archives: children

On the Syllabus: The Survival of a Counterculture

06 Friday Nov 2009

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The book I’ve been reading this week for my thesis research, The Survival of a Counterculture: Ideological Work and Everyday Life Among Rural Communards, by Bennet M. Berger (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981) was a find on the Brookline Booksmith $1 cart by Hanna while I was on vacation visiting family (thank you H, for thinking of me!). Even though it was published the year I was born, and written by a sociologist rather than an historian, I am still finding a lot of really good observations and theoretical musings that help me clarify my thinking about the interaction of philosophy and practice in human communities.

Berger set out to study the place of children within “hippie” communes, and although his observations range far and wide in this particular book — not focusing on children to the exclusion of other aspects of commune life, he still spends a good deal of time describing adult interactions with young people. The following excerpt is from his third chapter, “Communal Children: Equalitarianism and the Decline of Age-grading.”

In treating the history of the concept of childhood, social scientists have emphasized the differences between [the pre-industrial] status of children . . . where they are regarded simply as small or inadequate versions of their parents, totally subject to traditional or otherwise arbitrary parental authority . . . [and on the other hand] the modern, industrial, middle-class view of children [in which] children are increasingly treated as members of a distinctive social category, their social participation . . . increasingly limited to age-homogeneous groups.

. . .

The prevalent view of children at The Ranch (and other communes like it) fits neither of these models exactly. Rather than being members of an autonomous category of “children” or being inadequate versions of their parents, legitimately subject to their arbitrary authority, children and young people (or “small persons,” as they are sometimes deliberately, perhaps preciously, called) are primarily regarded as “persons,” members of the communal family, just like anyone else — not necessarily less wise, perhaps less competent, but recognized primarily, as my colleague Bruce Hackett put it, “by lowering one’s line of vision rather than one’s level of discourse.”

Berger’s later descriptions of adult-child interactions at The Ranch illuminate and refine this general philosophical approach to understanding young people in the context of the communal structure — obviously there are nuances to each portion of this description (how is the “less competent” aspect dealt with? what does it mean for children to be seen as potential sources of wisdom?). But I was struck by the re-orientation necessarily in a community where this is the starting point for adult-child interaction, rather than one of the first two positions described (and in our modern American society, the modern, industrial, middle-class ideal dominates, whether or not it is upheld religiously in daily practice). What would it be like to interact with kids primarily “by lowering one’s line of vision rather than one’s level of discourse”?

Quick Hit: UK reports home educated kids "disadvantaged"

14 Wednesday Oct 2009

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I wish I had more time at the moment to look into this report out of the UK that describes home educated children as generally more vulnerable than their schooled counterparts.

Children educated at home are twice as likely to be known by social services and four times more likely as young adults to be out of work, education or training than those who go to school, MPs have been told.

MPs on the cross-party select committee for children, schools and families asked the head of a government inquiry into home education and the schools minister to defend calls for tougher rules on parents who teach their children at home.

In his review published in June, Kent’s former education director Graham Badman recommended that all home educators register with their local authority. Councils should be given powers to refuse registration if a child is believed to be at risk, he said.

The article in The Guardian leaves me wondering what sort of measure of well-being were used to determine how home-educated kids were thriving, other than their being “known” by social services — something that, at least in the history of the United States home education movement can be caused simply by children not being in traditional schools. The idea of young adults being disproportionately out of “work, education, or training” also assumes mainstream markers of adulthood rather than asking deeper questions about how young people are or are not thriving in the world. After all, being “out of . . . education” is one description of unschooled young adults; it does not necessarily mean they are not learning.

If, indeed, children and young adults who are not in mainstream schools are struggling in British society, then it seems like something ought to be done to remedy the situation! However, I am skeptical that government oversight — especially oversight which sounds like an attempt to bring home educating parents in-line with traditional curriculum and teaching objectives — is the most productive solution. Maybe the problem is not with the home-educating families and children, but rather with a society at large that views home education suspiciously and fails to provide its young people with non-school environments in which to learn and grow into adult persons who feel capable of contributing to society in ways they feel suited to and derive pleasure from.

links list: selected shorts

26 Friday Jun 2009

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My friend Rachel’s coming to town for the weekend, so there will be no extended blogging for the next few days. Instead, I leave you with selected links from Google Reader and elsewhere in my online world.

Via MK, a story about why teenagers are still reading books — and might even be better readers than us grown up folks.

Nina Totenberg offers a review of the three rulings handed down yesterday from the U.S. Supreme Court (audio).

On a related note, Scott @ Lawyers, Guns and Money asks why some people are upset that the Redding ruling will make it harder for schools to violate the rights of young people.

And Alas, a Blog, offers a video clip of an interview with Savana Redding herself (now a college student), the young woman at the heart of the case.

Monica @ TransGriot offers some reflections on how the push to legalize gay marriage can have negative effects on already-legal trans marriages.

Rachel @ The Feminist Agenda, posts enthusiastically about a Swedish couple who have refused to identify the gender of their toddler. I’m conflicted about this story, because I firmly believe in the responsibility of parents to do what they can to shelter their children from the pressure to socially conform — while helping them discover their own ability to resist that pressure even while out in the real world. But the way the story has been politicized means the kid will likely feel tremendous pressure to be gender nonconforming to please the parents — or pressure to conform to a gender identity that is acceptable to the outside world. It seems sad that parenting inevitably becomes freighted with so much political baggage — and that it’s the kids who so often pay the price by having their lives dissected in public spaces. No person, regardless of how young, should have their own life co-opted by others as a political statement.

Finally, pspirro writes in praise of doing less @ her blog, over the wall, suggesting that “productivity” as a moral value — or even a survival skill — is over-rated. “Clever as you are, you’ll figure out how to do what needs to be done to obtain what needs to be obtained. All the rest of it be damned.”

hope you find some time this weekend to do less and enjoy the last few days of June.

Quick Hit: SCOTUS 8-1 against strip search of teen

25 Thursday Jun 2009

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Speaking of teens, schools, and power relationships . . .

This morning, the United States Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in favor of Savana Redding, a young woman who was strip-searched at her middle school after being accused by a fellow student of being in possession of over-the-counter ibuprofen (which were banned by school regulation).

Redding, who now attends college, was 13 when officials at Safford Middle School ordered her to remove her clothes and shake out her underwear because they were looking for pills — the equivalent of two Advils. The district bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs and the school was acting on a tip from another student.

“What was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear,” Justice David Souter wrote in the majority opinion. “We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable.”

Earlier this year, I posted a link to Dahlia Lithwick’s column following the oral arguments . . . I look forward to any further thoughts she might have in the wake of this decision.

Teens, schools, and power relations

25 Thursday Jun 2009

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Two recent stories out of the UK on young people in school environments have got me thinking (once again) about the way in which educational spaces are often much less spaces for genuine learning than they are spaces in which unequal power relationships between young people (students) and adult people (administrators and teachers) play out in mutually destructive ways.

First, a short piece from the “odd news” section of the UK-based website digitalspy on a school in somerset that banned snogging (kissing) on school grounds. Students who are caught “in the act” will be suspended from school. While the short piece at digitalspy gives no reason for the ban, a local Somerset paper reports the impetus behind the ban was a full-frontal snog witnessed by the headmaster. This type of reaction to students public displays of affection is reminiscent of the recent New York Times’ breathless report on the hugging “trend” in American schools. While there may be legitimate reasons for asking students to refrain from heavy or prolonged making-out on school grounds, an all-out ban seems like overkill destined to provide one more reason for students to (perhaps legitimately in this case!) believe adults are completely barmy.

In a more serious and lengthy report yesterday morning on the BBC news hour, I heard a story about online “cyber-bullying” of teachers by their pupils:

Teachers have always had to put up with personal jibes from kids.

Until very recently, however, malicious gossip and snide remarks have mostly been confined to the corridors or lunch queues.

But now with the explosion of websites like ratemyteachers.co.uk and bebo.com, teachers are suddenly finding themselves mocked in cyberspace, resulting in plunging morale and even threats to quit the profession.

. . .

Ms Wallis [a senior teacher from Cornwall] claims that the site is seriously damaging trust between students and teaching staff.

“When you’re facing a class five times a day, with 30 children at a time, and you don’t know who has actually written these things, you become far more guarded in everything you do.

“And the bottom line is you lose all trust in the students you’ve got sitting in front of you.”

What struck me about the report was the way students were portrayed as the bullies with the power to destroy teachers’ emotional well-being and reputation. Obviously mean-spirited gossip is hurtful, and adults are not invulnerable to personal slurs just because they originate from people younger than themselves. Bullying is not confined to childhood spaces, and can cross generational boundaries. Yet the journalists covering this story seemed oblivious of the complex power dynamics at play in an educational institution — power dynamics that privilege adult authority, embodied by teachers and administrators, over the authority of young people. Teachers in a classroom exercise the right to pass judgment on students in contexts that have real-life consequences for a child’s future (this is especially true in a school system, such as in the UK, with national curriculum and testing standards). And while some of the “rating” comments are cruel, the reasons for poor ratings are not necessarily just kids having a bit of fun at the teacher’s expense. As one student interviewed reflected,

“I know one teacher who I think is really rude,” says a 15-year-old boy at Haydon School in Pinner, north west London. “But there’s no-one who can tell him that so, in a way, if they look at the site, it’s good because they can change their attitude.”

In a school environment that operates on a top-down, hierarchical model, students may have no (or very few) opportunities to make their voices heard — or more importantly feel they are taken seriously when they do speak up — without fear of retribution . . . except anonymously, online. Another student interviewed said she didn’t feel bad about the negative comments she had posted online. “I rated my worst teachers,” she told the BBC, “I said they were rubbish and didn’t teach me anything.” The fact that children have found alternate ways to communicate with the world about their academic experiences is not necessarily “bullying” — it may simply be providing us with a more balanced picture of what young peoples’ lived experiences in school are actually like. I doubt it will lead to any serious soul-searching on the part of those invested in an hierarchical academic system, but it will certainly be interesting to see how the struggle plays out.

stuff I’ve been reading: weekend links

13 Saturday Jun 2009

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I’m off to the first of my all-day Saturday summer session class (LIS488: Technology for Information Professionals). I leave you with a short list of some of the stuff I’ve been reading online the last couple of weeks.

Back at the end of May, Hanna sent me this column by William Zinsser at the Powells’ Book Blog. “the national epidemic that’s most on my mind right now,” Zinsser writes, “isn’t swine flu. It’s the slow death of sequential thinking. My students, especially younger ones, go out on a story and come back with a million notes and a million quotes and absolutely no idea what the story is.” Having just finished a year’s stint as a teaching assistant with undergraduate students, I definitely sympathize with his sense that students are very reluctant to make an original argument (or, as Zinsser puts it, tell a coherent story). Yet in unoriginal contrarian fashion, Zinsser locates the cause of this “epidemic” in new technology — a model of causality that seems to me simplistic and potentially even entirely wrong. Online environments, for example, can be sites for quick-hit, disconnected thoughts and responses that have little or no through-line. They can also provide platforms for the rich interlinking of ideas and dialogue in a way that sustains dynamic, thoughtful conversation. Check out his post and see what you think.

Jesse, over at Pandagon, blogged about the conservative outrage that apparently erupted online when Google decided, on June 6th, to use their logo to commemorate the 25th birthday of the computer game Tetris instead of the 65th anniversary of D-Day. Aside from being an amusing opportunity to snark about conspiracy-minded conservatives, I think it’s a really good example of a way of thinking that seems much more prevalent on the right than the left (although, to be fair, I’ve spent much more time, geographically, around hard-right conservatives than I have around hard-left liberals): the inability to separate out their own personal preferences or ethical decisions from the preferences or decisions of the society at large. So much conservative social policy seems aimed at protecting themselves from people who have different priorities and preferences from their own — as if the mere existence of different-thinking and differently-acting people threatens their own survival. As Jesse writes, “If these fine Americans find themselves unable to handle the fact that Google may not at all times reflect their particular preferences in logo design, may I recommend using the power of the market to use any of the other dozen search engines available.” Instead, conservative folks seem to feel so besieged by non-conservative values that they’ve forgotten they have the power to “just say no,” get up and walk away.

Thanks to my mother, Janet, for passing along Ellen Goodman’s editorial about Dr. Tiller’s murder (and for being unequivocally pro-choice; I don’t take it for granted Mom!). I haven’t been able to formulate a coherent response to William Saletan’s column kinda-sorta supporting abortion access in the wake of Dr. Tiller’s assassination, while at the same time drawing moral parallels between Tiller’s medical practice and the convictions that drove his killer to murder — but Amanda Marcotte’s latest edition of the RhRealityCheck podcast helped clarify some of what I found so problematic about his language. It’s a really strong episode of the series, and includes not only a round-up of evidence of the broad anti-choice vendetta against Dr. Tiller, but also a kick-ass interview with sex educator Heather Corinna about post-abstinence-only sexuality education that provides a nice counterpoint to extremist violence and bigotry.

Rebecca Traister’s husband, Aaron, offers a witty reflection on his adjustment to stay-at-home parenting, and what it felt like to shift from parenting as a “break” from “real life” as an employed adult to realizing parenting was his life for the foreseeable future, and a necessary contribution to his family’s economic survival. I, selfishly perhaps, haven’t been able to spare a lot of emotional energy for digesting economic news lately, but the women’s studies scholar and feminist in me is really interested by the way in which material economic circumstances seem to be prompting critical re-evaluation of concepts like masculinity and work in pro-feminist ways. Also: points for describing the pregnant Rebecca (with, I can only assume, her blessing) a “giant breadwinning turtle woman.”

On the question of children and our cultural conceptions of children and childhood, yesterday morning Hanna sent me Ann Billson’s column from the Guardian online about the meaning of children in horror/thriller films:

For us non-parents, children in real life are frequently “just there” like that, buzzing around just below our radar, occasionally getting our attention by screaming, whereas children in science fiction or action movies tend to be vital narrative devices, not so much characters in their own right . . . In thriller terms, children are shorthand for something to be preserved at all costs, and we’re expected to take it on trust that one sprog is worth a hundred adults.

I would argue that, in real life, there is a huge and meaningful middle ground between seeing children as “just there” unless they hit the radar in negative terms, and seeing them as worth one hundred adults put together . . . but Billson’s analysis of the way young people are used as characters in certain genre films is certainly thought-provoking. As Hanna pointed out, Billson collapses together the treatment of children from infants to teenagers with little differentiation, a move that seems problematic for her purpose of character analysis since obviously a fourteen-year-old teen means very different things to us, culturally, than a newborn infant or toddler.

Hanna also passed on a Guardian op-ed about the murder of a museum guard at Washington, D.C.’s holocaust museum this past Wednesday. It’s a thoughtful piece that is much more articulate than I feel I could be about the need to reject both hatred and reactionary violence against those who hate — and seek a broader, more humanistic response to acts of terrorism that affirm the essential interdependence of the worlds’ human beings.

And finally, because all good things come in threes, another Guardian article — this time, hilarious columnist Stuart Jeffries on how the rich pretend they’re toughing out the recession: “Are you seriously telling me that you aren’t worrying about how your Jerusalem artichokes are faring in the new vegetable plot dug by your Lithuanian au pair at the back of your five-figure designer minimalist garden? (Don’t pretend you aren’t.)”

Quick Hit: "Someone you raise" vs. "something you have"

06 Saturday Jun 2009

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In response to a blog post up at Feministe on radio shock jocks leveling insults at gender-nonconforming children, commenter preying mantis writes,

“I always have a hard time with stories like this one, because I just can’t understand why. What’s the point of terrorizing children?” [–Jill, in the original post]

I think it goes back to the “someone you raise” vs. “something you have” attitudes people have towards children. If you’re raising your kids with the idea that your job is to bring up a happy, healthy person capable of independent functioning and a successful life of their own with as little unnecessary baggage as possible, there’s pretty much zero point to engaging in abusive behavior toward them.

If you’re raising your kids with the idea that they exist for your benefit, they’re your property, and/or their primary function is to act as a status symbol for you, you’re probably going to feel entitled to act against their best interests to a much greater degree. If you see them as a reflection or extension of yourself, and you’re deeply invested in gender roles, you’re more likely to take it personally if your children fail to be sufficiently masculine or feminine, especially if they do it in public.

The question of adult attitudes toward young people — especially the children in their care — is obviously a complicated one, with lots of nuance and complexity dependent on particular situations. But I really like the way she articulates the distinction between these two attitudes and the quality of the interactions that follow from them.

In which I am completely baffled

01 Monday Jun 2009

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According to the New York Times, hugging is the new scourge of American teenage social conventions.

Now, okay, in my experience the NYT tends to blow its “life & style” reporting totally out of proportion: whether it’s women’s communities or sexuality, or the supposed life and times of the American Teenager, their discussion of current trends is heavily skewed toward creating a sensational story rather than accurately narrating peoples lives. I realize I should just expect this and blow it off, but sometimes it really gets under my skin, and this is one of those times.

I mean, last I checked, hugging — as long as it’s wanted, affectionate touch — was a relatively harmless way to spend one’s time. It’s usually indicative of positive, rather than negative, social interactions. But clearly, I was being naive.

A measure of how rapidly the ritual is spreading is that some students complain of peer pressure to hug to fit in. And schools from Hillsdale, N.J., to Bend, Ore., wary in a litigious era about sexual harassment or improper touching — or citing hallway clogging and late arrivals to class — have banned hugging or imposed a three-second rule.

Parents, who grew up in a generation more likely to use the handshake, the low-five or the high-five, are often baffled by the close physical contact. “It’s a wordless custom, from what I’ve observed,” wrote Beth J. Harpaz, the mother of two boys, 11 and 16, and a parenting columnist for The Associated Press, in a new book, “13 Is the New 18.”

“And there doesn’t seem to be any other overt way in which they acknowledge knowing each other,” she continued, describing the scene at her older son’s school in Manhattan. “No hi, no smile, no wave, no high-five — just the hug. Witnessing this interaction always makes me feel like I am a tourist in a country where I do not know the customs and cannot speak the language.”

. . .

Comforting as the hug may be, principals across the country have clamped down. “Touching and physical contact is very dangerous territory,” said Noreen Hajinlian, the principal of George G. White School, a junior high school in Hillsdale, N.J., who banned hugging two years ago. “It was needless hugging — they are in the hallways before they go to class. It wasn’t a greeting. It was happening all day.”

And just in case you thought (as I do, actually, despite protestations to the contrary) this was yet another instance of old fogies being unhealthily interested in, and hysterical about, the cultural expressions of youth,

There are, too, some young critics of hugging.

Amy Heaton, a freshman at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, Md., said casual social hugging seemed disingenuous to her. “Hugging is more common in my opinion in people who act like friends,” she said. “It’s like air-kissing. It’s really superficial.”

Read the entire article here.

There are many layers of wrong about the way this story is being narrated, one of which is the way it is being reported as a newsworthy phenomenon in the first place. Conventions of touch change over time and from culture to culture; as one letter to the editor pointed out, in Europe teenagers tend to show more casual physical affection with each other than American teenagers have, at least historically. People who work with immigrant and exchange students can tell you that young people who come to America from certain parts of the globe — Europe, Latin America — are surprised by what the perceive as the lack of physical affection between their American peers, while young people from other cultures — for example, Japan — have higher expectations of personal space, and find Americans to be physically intrusive.

While an international, historical perspective can understandably get lost in a fluffy news story, much more upsetting to me, in terms of media perceptions of young people, is the way adolescent physical contact is portrayed as problematic. There are three facets to this, all of which I find fascinating and extremely frustrating.

1. “Touching and physical contact is very dangerous territory.” I’m most floored by the way this article totally fails to meaningfully distinguish between erotic and non-erotic touch, and also by the way it implicitly equates erotic touch with “very dangerous territory.” This isn’t unexpected, given adult hysteria about teenage sexuality, but nevertheless it pisses me off. The students in this article, who have a complex understanding of different kinds of touch and what social and personal meanings they carry, come across as vastly more mature than the school officials who hint at promiscuity. Rather than respond by clamping down, I’d say this is a perfect opportunity to open conversations about how people can communicate about wanted and unwanted touch, and respect each others’ preferences for the same.

2. “If somebody were to not hug someone, to never hug anybody, people might be just a little wary of them and think they are weird or peculiar.” Closely related to the spectre of sexual harassment is the possibility of bullying (which is very real) that gets invoked as a reason to curtail physical contact. This is lazy thinking, lazy educating, and lazy supervising. If you’re worried about bullying, then get serious about reducing the abuse of power exercised by some students over others, and protecting the vulnerable students so that they don’t live their lives in fear. Imposing arbitrary limits on touch will not make the problem go away, it will just shift it elsewhere — possibly somewhere less visible than the school hallway.

3. “To maintain an atmosphere of academic seriousness.” This is the most laughably transparent exercise of adult power in the interest of social control. I realize I’m prone to seeing schools as sites of institutional power and violence but oh, please. Touch and positive relationships are antithetical to both intellectual endeavors and “seriousness”? Some of the adults in this story need to re-think their priorities a little. As one letter-writer suggests, “those principals need to lighten up and give kids a chance to work out for themselves what is “needless” and what is important.”

No one asked me what to make of this ‘trend’ but I’m going to offer my two cents anyway (isn’t that what blogs are for?): I think young folks today are pretty much the same creatures we human beings have always been. That is, creatures capable of inefficiency, frivolity, social ineptness, and cruelty — and also creatures who by and large crave meaningful relationships with one another that include physical affection. I’d argue that casual touch, both inside and outside spaces of education, is not a distraction from learning or a trivial meaningless fad — but rather a valuable pathway toward discovering what kinds of physical intimacy feel good and communicate effectively what we desire to communicate. Instead of cracking down on physical affection, help young people find language to effectively express their desires.

Booknotes: Girls on the Stand

31 Sunday May 2009

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As news was breaking about the murder of Dr. George Tiller, and abortion provider and pro-choice activist, I sat down to read Helena Silverstein’s Girls On the Stand: How Courts Fail Pregnant Minors.

A professor of government and law, Silverstein details the real-world effects of parental notification and consent laws have on the ability of minors to exercise their rights to abortion access as currently granted under U.S. law. Specifically, Sliverstein is interested in the viability of the “judicial bypass” option that the U.S. Supreme Court requires such parental involvement laws to contain: that is, if a pregnant minor does not wish to inform her parents of her pregnancy, she must have the ability to petition, confidentially and with the help of court-appointed counsel, for an exception. Focusing on the practical workings of the judicial bypass procedure in three states, Alabama, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, Silverstein found that pregnant minors faced ignorance, bureaucracy and outright ideological obstruction in their pursuit of timely and medically-safe abortions.

For example, after systematically phoning courts in her three targeted states for information on how to initiate a judicial bypass, Silverstein and her research assistants faced a wide range of responses, from the adequate to the under-informed to the intentionally misleading. Whether malicious in intent, answers to an initial query that fail to clearly affirm the minor’s right to confidentiality, a timely hearing, and most importantly free assistance in navigating the court system, “portray the bypass as a road the minor must travel alone and risk sacrificing the minor’s right to her own vulnerability” (61). Even more egregiously, some anti-abortion judges, with the discretion granted to them under current law, have employed such intimidation tactics as requiring pro-life, Christian counseling for all minors seeking the bypass, or even appointing a guardian for the fetus who has the responsibility of challenging the petitioner at the hearing and attempting to persuade her against choosing an abortion.

“The argument of this book,” Silverstein writes, “is directed at those who have made a good-faith compromise on the parental involvement issue,” seeking to ensure that minors wishing to terminate pregnancies are given the information and support they need, both pre- and post-abortion, while still protecting their constitutional rights to privacy and bodily autonomy (157).

Those compromisers, a group to which I once belonged, have in mind a picture of what a world with such mandates would look like. Pregnant minors will be encouraged to seek guidance from parents, and courts will protect those who choose otherwise. We have seen, though [in this book], that many courts are not prepared to do their duty, whether due to ignorance, recalcitrance, or incompetence. We have seen judges who are willing to employ hardball tactics to get minors to bend to their will. Whatever the Supreme Court might decide about how much implementation failure is too much or what obstacles too burdensome, it is up to the good-faith compromiser to decide whether the reality of parental involvement mandates sufficiently approximates her picture [of reality] to warrant continued support. This is a personal decision. To my mind the case is clear. I invite the reader to be her own judge (157).

Sadly, Silverstein’s book is not as narratively compelling as I would have hoped, even to someone like myself whose heart usually quickens a the prospect of a book or an article dealing with the intersection of feminism and the law. Her prose feels clunky, and the reporting of her research — while providing the evidence necessary to make her case — nonetheless caused me eyes to begin glazing over, even at a brief 180 pages (excepting endnotes and bibliography). Given its narrow scope, a meaningful reading likely requires a fair amount of background knowledge in recent abortion politics and law.

Still, I’m glad to add it to my repertoire of resources on reproductive health and rights. The struggle over women’s right to bodily autonomy is not going to disappear any time soon, as Tiller’s murder today dramatically and tragically illustrates — and young women are among those particularly vulnerable to having their reproductive choices taken from them, given their relatively lack of experience and financial resources. Silverstein reminds us not to assume that what looks good on paper will likewise be sound in actual practice.

stuff and things to read

22 Friday May 2009

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Been a slow couple of weeks for the blog; I’ve realizes that the energy of the semester bleeds over into my blog posts and then post-semester I somehow can’t gather the momentum to write original content very coherently for a while. But here are some ‘net links for stuff I’ve been reading in the meantime.

Once more, with feeling: the sexist world of Twilight from the pages of Ms. Magazine. (And ’cause I used the title, Hanna will now absolutely require me to watch the Buffy episode).

My friend mk, a fellow fledgling librarian, wrote a nice post over on the YALSA blog about the fuzzy line between business and pleasure reading for those of us in the words and ideas business.

If you know any women age 60-75 who might be interested in participating in a survey on women’s sexuality, point them toward this post on Our Bodies, Our Blog.

I’ve been thinking a lot about language and the way it creates insider/outsider groups, whether it’s the language of a particular academic discipline (say library science) or the language of a political movement (say feminism). I might be blogging my own thoughts later on, but in the meantime Questioning Transphobia (here followed by here) and canonball at Feministing Community have thoughtful posts on the subject.

When Hanna sent me the link to this article at the Guardian last week, I took one look at the headline and knew I didn’t have enough energy to enumerate its faults and logical fallacies as they should properly be enumerated: “Sex, drink and fashion. Is this the new face of American feminism?” Luckily, Jessica at Feministing offers a concise smackdown.

Meanwhile, as if blogging while at work weren’t proof enough of my adult-onset inability to pay meaningful attention to any one thing for long periods of time, Hanna has instructed me to bone up on my multitasking skills and forwarded this helpful article on the art as homework.

The latest addition to my expansive reading list (thanks to Hanna for the link) is The Philosophical Baby, by Alison Gopnik. From an interview with the author:

One of the ideas in the book is that children are like the R&D department of the human species. They’re the ones who are always learning about the world. But if you’re always learning, imagining, and finding out, you need a kind of freedom that you don’t have if you’re actually making things happen in the world. And when you’re making things happen, it helps if those actions are based on all of the things you have learned and imagined. The way that evolution seems to have solved this problem is by giving us this period of childhood where we don’t have to do anything, where we are completely useless. We’re free to explore the physical world, as well as possible worlds through imaginative play. And when we’re adults, we can use that information to actually change the world.

I suggested to Hanna that, actually, this sounded an awful lot like the two of us, and that perhaps one of the unheralded qualities of the graduate student mind was our ability to access the learning and imagining skills we used so tirelessly as small units.