A Post With No Real Title

**Disclaimer** This is not written to or about any guy in particular. But it is something I have been ruminating about, pretty much since I encountered the catalyst for this post.

A little while ago, my friend John wrote a piece on his (now defunct, as an act of protest and personal fulfillment best outlined here) Facebook page about how to react when a woman says something to him like, "men suck". It was, in short, a plea for men to not get their backs up about such a statement, to not feel personally affronted, and to not think that meant action was required. What I think was missing from an otherwise excellent and succinct piece is the meaning of a woman you're close to offering that (and, hopefully, the reasons behind it), to you. It means she sees you as a confidante, as an ally, as someone who is not going to take the experience that generated that response - her experience - and make it about you. It means you are included on a list - sometimes, a very short list - of Safe Spaces, and Safe People.

I'm not personally a fan of "men suck" exaltations, partially because I find, most often, that people in general suck, and also partially because I like to think better of men as a whole than to lump them all in with the assholes who on more than one occasion have made my gas-getting a hellish experience. That's one of the reasons why I'm a feminist. Because I believe men can be better, and should be expected to be better. Just like women. Here, in this space, I feel that it is unproductive to the max, because this is a place where at its best (and oftentimes, it is not at its best), I try to figure out why the things that irritate me about the world we live in are the way they are. And, in short, it isn't because men suck. A lot of men sucking is just one symptom of a larger kyriachical system, and it is that system that needs examining and dismantling on a large scale.

But what I am a fan of are safe spaces. I'm a fan of allowing members of a marginalized group to release the tension and anger and fear they hold toward a group with more systemic privilege (and whose members wield that privilege), in a non-violent, fairly benign fashion. Sometimes, that's saying something along the lines of "members of ______ group suck. A lot". And sometimes, as a woman, it really does feel like men really do suck. I don't mean, "Those guys don't want to date me. All men suck". I mean, "This is the third guy in as many hours who has conversed with my breasts instead of with me. Men suck." I don't mean, "That guy over there didn't hold the door open for me. Men suck". I mean, "I can't hold the reasonable expectation I will not be forcibly groped if I go see my friend's boyfriend's band. Men suck". The difference between those two thoughts are huge. The former in both cases is myopic and petty, and if that is why the girl in front of you is saying "men suck", then she, indeed, is a jerk. Just like a guy would be if he said "Women don't want to date me. They suck". But if it is the latter, if she has chosen to share with you how men suck when you are indeed of the male persuasion, then it means something about you. It means, she believes you are someone who will be sympathetic. You're going to be someone who isn't going to take this moment and say, "Not all men suck. I don't suck". Because, hey, this moment isn't about you. This conversation isn't about you. This conversation isn't about how, in order to not hurt your, Guy She's Talking To's, feelings, she needs to frame it as "The People (Because It Isn't Only Guys) Who Behave This Way Because of the Kyriachy Suck". It's just about her.

And if she's a friend, then sometimes the thing you as a guy have to realize is, what she needs is someone on her team. Someone who will understand that sometimes unwillingly being part of a dominant group of people is a no-win situation, because being enlightened means you (hopefully) are not a random bar groper; but at the same time, you don't have a sticker that says, "HI! I'm An Enlightened Non-Groper!" That is a problem for you, the man of the enlightened non-groper sect, because you automatically get grouped in with those who do grope. That's truly a serious problem. It means that you may not be able to approach a woman in a bar, on the street, after a class, at the library, in an elevator, or a bookstore. It can make it extremely difficult to foster interpersonal interaction with the opposite sex. Because, well, speaking from experience, women may be suspicious of you. Because you are a man. That? Is not fun, and also not fair. And it is logical and completely reasonable for you, as a genuinely nice guy who is a non-groper, to get a wee bit pissed and hate that women may lump you in with those other guys who do those things. It may lead to being pissed that your friend is saying, "Men suck, because they do things that lead me to feeling small, insignificant, and afraid" - because you aren't one of those guys who does that. But, as long as the "men suck" stems from something of significance, generally the "men suck" isn't so much a personal philosophy (unless they're of the Mary Daly persuasion) than a moment of utter personal frustration. A moment of personal frustration she thinks you can handle, because you are her Safe Space. And that ends up sucking doubly for you, because instead of getting a cookie for being an Enlightened Man, what you get sometimes is access to the fear and anger and hurt that the women closest to you may hold, from time to time, toward men, because of the debasing things some men do and say to them. That can become your cross to bear, and it isn't a fun or stylish cross at all.

Now, my view on what "men suck" means comes primarily when it exits a woman's mouth who has an interest in gender and gender construction, or is uttered in response to a sexist act.

There's another side, a side John didn't touch.

And that is the side of women who are either jerks, or who demonstrate a want for men to behave in the traditional masculine way, and who then claim that men suck when they do, actually, act in that traditional masculine way. That? Isn't what I'm talking about here. That "men are stupid because they can't make dinner, so I'll go home and make dinner" bit needs to be challenged, anywhere and any way it can be. Same thing with the jerky, "Those guys won't date me, so all guys suck", and it should be challenged in the same way a guy saying that same thing about women should be challenged. Because the first is a reinforcement of male inadequacy as dictated by gender norms, and the second is a personal myopic moment that has no baring on whether the greater gender in question does suck. Or even if the people who rebuffed the asker-outer suck, because they may not.

Those women are complications in an already complicated matter, because gender inequality is that strange conundrum where men and women are certain to interact. Men have mothers. Straight men have (or want) women as significant others. Women have fathers, and straight women have (or want) men as significant others. Since boys and girls are oftentimes socialized together, due to the phenomenon of schooling and also of the possibility a sister may have a brother, the dynamics are incredibly interwoven. And that's part of why men hear how much their fellow men suck. Because unlike some other groups - where whites can limit their interaction with people of other races (and thus not hear, unless they go poking around, how much they suck), and straights can oftentimes limit their interactions with people who are out and proud (and thus, again, not hear how much they suck unless they make an effort) - men and women are fairly bound together.

Because of that, in the end, I think the guy on the receiving end of "men suck" have the ability to suss out the situation at hand, to see if it is of the "a guy did something untoward, and now I'm hurting" persuasion, or if it is of the "this guy I'm dating can't do his own laundry, and instead of taking him to the washer and teaching him, I'm doing it for him and complaining about how much men suck because they can't do simple household tasks". And from there, decide if this is really the correct moment to go, "But I don't do that" or to be the Safe Space. The choice is, ultimately, yours. As it is for all of us who carry some bags of privilege around.

My Favorite Photo I've Taken

So, I went out the the Southwest. You know how you can tell where you belong? By going other places, seeing them, and experiencing them. I belong pretty much where I am, in New England, or at least in the Northeast.

Reason? The Pacific Ocean smells wrong. When I got out of my car on the monday morning after my return, I could smell the ocean. It smelled like home.

Also, the West is beautiful. Vibrant, even. And going out to California, it reminded me of Joni Mitchell's song California, how she sings that she doesn't want to stay where she is, "It's too old and cold and settled in its ways here". But I like the oldness and the coldness.

It was like sensory overload, with the sky seemingly so expansive and the mountains being so tall against the sky, and I wanted to go back where the sky seems sometimes close enough to touch and the mountains are smaller, and full of a lively green.

At the same time, though, moments like my friend frantically pulling over on a major roadway to get pictures of the setting sun illuminating the Joshua Trees on the ridge kind of made it all worth it.

Quote of the Day

And I don't know about you, Cristen, but swimming with weights on doesn't sound like much fun. It sounds like a recipe for disaster.

- Molly, from "The Not So Skimpy History of the Bikini" episode of Stuff Mom Never Told You

Keith Olbermann: Today's Worst Person in the World

Look, Keith, I like you. I listen to your show as I drive into work daily, and I would watch you live if I had access to a television at 8 o'clock on any night except mondays, when Chuck is on. Actually, I probably wouldn't, because I'm bad with commercials. I get all restless. And my method works fine for me, because it gives me something that is approximately as long as my ride to listen to, and while you're on television, your show isn't exactly on the cutting edge of the visual medium. Except for Oddball. I kind of regret not being able to see things like Justin Bieber run into glass doors.

Anyway, I think we've established, through my semi-frequent posting about how much you and your suits rock, that I am a fan. I enjoy the sports talk! I enjoy your random freak outs! I follow you on twitter! Your pictures from various baseball stadiums are cool! I even read your blog!

So. The thing that I don't expect? Really ever? Is to be hit by some weird hardy-hars about sexual harassment on my way into work. From you. Because, dude, you are a progressive. And I know, I know. Progressive≠feminist. Progressive≠good on gender issues. Progressives can sometimes be sexist dipshits. Progressives can sometimes not be sexist dipshits, but still say some really sexist dipshitty type stuff. You, yourself, have said some sexist dipshitty type stuff in the past.

I should probably let you in on what has brought on my ire, shouldn't I?

It's this:

KEITH OLBERMANN: Billo replied, "Yeah, I thought that they - basically, in the very beginning - should stuff every member of NBC News in that hole".

Maybe we should listen, Bill, because based on the Andrea Mackris lawsuit, I gather that you were the expert on unsuccessful attempts to stuff things into holes.

Whoa. That is a lot of misogyny in a very teeny tiny space!

First, there's the problem of exactly how the alleged sexual assault is framed here, ie: referring to a woman's vagina as a "hole". Problematic, for that whole "dehumanizing" aspect. Also, for separating the vagina from the woman, and vice versa.

But let's move right on the the part wherein Bill O'Reilly is subject to your derision not because he allegedly repeatedly sexually harassed a member of his staff, but because he didn't succeed in having sex with her.

No.

Seriously, no.

Let me spell this out for you: the problem is that O'Reilly allegedly repeatedly made sexual comments to someone who worked for him. O'Reilly should be derided and looked at as less of a human being because he did that. Not because he failed in his ultimate goal to loofah Mackris up.

You are mocking him as being less of a man because he didn't seal the deal. He isn't less of a man because of that. He is less of a worthwhile human being because he sexually harassed someone.

And for that, Keith Olbermann, you are Today's Worst Person.... IN THE WORLD!

Because You're a Woman

It occurred to me, whilst I was showering (which is where a lot of my good ideas percolate and then go on to die quickly because I have no way of keeping them alive because there is NOWHERE TO WRITE THEM oh my god why don't I have those shower crayons my roomies and I had in college?!) that privilege is a hard thing to fully recognize because it is essentially a passive power. You can't walk into a room and go, "I'm white, I'm a guy, give me a job!" Well, you could. But that probably would make them not want to give you a job. What you can do is walk into a room, hand them a good resume, and then have that person interviewing you be influenced by the fact you're white and a guy and then give you the job over someone who may be just as qualified but is not white and a guy. This is the problem with privilege. You could walk out of that room thinking it was your excellent interviewing skillz and a well put together resume that got you the job - when in reality it may have been those things plus.

There is nothing wrong, on the individual level, with getting a job based on a plus. Well, there might be. But for sake of argument, say there isn't.

When things get hairy is when getting jobs based on a plus happens a lot, and for the same group of plus people.

And it is very hard to recognize when that plus comes into play - when the privilege you unintentionally wield influences the events around you.

I have a lot of privilege. That privilege helps me get away with doing a lot of things and saying a lot of things someone who didn't look like me wouldn't get away with. I've always told my friends that I get away with a lot of crap because I act like I'm right; I act like I should get away with, say, yelling at a cop or telling my Old White Guy boss that we need to hire more people who aren't Old White Guys and who won't become Old White Guys as part of our sales force - in those terms. And I'm convinced that is part of it. But the other part, and why I've been conditioned to feel like I have the right to do X or Y, is what I am. I am middle class. I am white. I am small, both in height and in size. And I look like I'm twelve. These things don't help people take me seriously, but it does help me when it comes to getting away with telling people they're idiots.

And I don't think I should get away with something because of any of those factors; but I also don't know when it does and when it doesn't. So I can't really mitigate the effect that has on my life, and what it does for me. And if I weren't annoyingly obsessed with myself, I may never have examined the fact that when everyone says I look like I'm twelve, and that my nicknames at work are "Little Girl" and "Little One", those along with the other aspects give me a certain amount of protection and privilege I otherwise would not have.

Now, some of my privilege will be mitigated by age. Hopefully, when I'm in my mid-forties, no one will be calling me "Little One", although I appreciate the affectionate name now. But I have no way of truly taking that perspective others have of me and dismantling it myself. I have no way of telling a person, "Don't react to me as you would a small child". Because, like the "I'm white, I'm a guy" thing, it would probably not elicit the desired reaction.

Which takes me to this: I listen to Stuff Mom Never Told You, because Molly and Cristen are awesome. The last podcast of theirs I listened to was "Are political quotas bad for women?", and in there a couple of interesting questions were asked.

Cristen posed the question,

Is that at the same time not only dismantling our ideas of equal opportunity and democracy but also almost categorizing women once again into this, like, ind of separate, special little corner that they need to hang out in and, you know, work on their, like child care, etc., types of issues rather than allowing us to, you know, jump in the fray and get in there right beside, um, elbow our way in alongside men?

And I like the question, because it is a good one. Is forcibly making space for women in different arenas the best way to get women into those areas? But I also like the question, because it demonstrates an issue of framing. Same thing with Molly's quandary:

You'd always have to wonder if you were in power because you're a woman, or if you really had something to contribute to government.

The problem I have with how the question is framed is that in the first question, Cristen herself is separating so-called "Women's Issues" like child care and equal pay from societal issues. It is the age-old problem where men are seen to speak universally and women are seen to speak only about women.

And the problem I have with Molly's quandary is that we very rarely reverse that question and look at the invisible privilege held therein. We almost never ask of (white) men, "Are you in power because you're a man, or because you really had something to contribute?" We'll ask if there was some sort of dynasty thing at play (like with Bush the Second), but we rarely ask if a man got the job because he's a man.

So, when Molly is worried about people looking at women in power, is worried about women in power looking at themselves, and wondering if the fact that they are women was the necessary plus to push them into power, she is demonstrating something profound. We worry about whether or not women, or African Americans, or Latinos, or [fill in your minority here] got to where they are because of Political Correctness. Because they had some Plus that pushed them above the deserving White Guy. Very rarely, do we as a society, ponder whether some white guy got to where he is because he is a guy, and white. That is one of the essences of privilege: your plus not factoring into the general consciousness of why you are where you are. And because that is one of the essences of privilege, it is incredibly difficult to recognize it as such, in general and on the individual level. Because unless something egregious happened (or unless the Peter Principle is to blame), a lot of people who have the jobs they have deserve them. And the question then becomes whether or not the plus that pushed them over the edge to jobhood was earned, or was a function of an unearned quotient like gender privilege or racial privilege or even religious privilege.

Jeans, and Consent

When I was around the age of twelve, I read a quote from some judge in some rape case somewhere that basically amounted to "girls can't get raped if they're wearing jeans, because you need help to get someone's jeans off". I, for my part, was thrilled. Jeans were already an essential part of any outfit, and to learn that they were practically a sure-fire way to not be raped, ever, was just awesome. I should also mention that 12 was the age I was when I was first cat-called, so the possibility of sexual violence being done to my person was probably more present than it would have otherwise been. I excitedly told my mother the news: Jeans Prevent Rape!!

And she scoffed at me.

I was a bit confused, and she never truly explained the nature of her scoffing. Presumably, because she thought I'd figured it out in that moment. Because, well, how stupid would I have to be to think that JEANS prevented someone from being raped?

Apparently, as stupid as a judge in Australia.

I've since become aware that jeans do not stop rape. That the idea that jeans could stop rape was referenced in my Newsweek because it was just that crazy everyone reading the quote would recognize the complete lack of validity without explanation. Everyone except twelve-year old me, that is. Because twelve-year old me was still trying to figure out the magic equation that would prevent anyone from touching me in a way I didn't want, ever. It saddens me that the rest of the world hasn't caught up; that Newsweek was wrong. That the idea doesn't seem as ludicrous to a whole host of people as it should.

Long, Rambly, Stream-of-Conscious Thought

I'm not the hugest fan of J.K. Rowling. Don't get me wrong - I've read all of Harry Potter. I've read all of Harry Potter several times. One of the sweetest gifts my sister has ever given me was, using her own money, preordering Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, so I could have it The Day it came out. I got it, and read it all in about 8 or so hours. Straight. And bawled like a little baby.

Which, actually, brings me to what made me not the hugest Rowling fan. She kills so many of her damn characters! Which, yes, ironic, coming from a Whedonite. But Whedon always makes me feel like that character just *poof* died, and there was nothing anyone could ever do about it, seriously, it wasn't even his idea - it totally just happened, just like in life, ya know?Rowling's deaths always seemed a little... forced. And then, I started recognizing some bad gender themes, plus the whole "Dumbledore was always gay!" thing with little going on in the text to truly back that up, going down and I was less of a fan.

That being said, maybe I am a huge fan of Rowling as a person. Maybe I'm just not the hugest fan of her authorship of children's books. Which, you know, is always possible. Why? Because I am in love with this piece written by her, especially this part:

I had become a single mother when my first marriage split up in 1993. In one devastating stroke, I became a hate figure to a certain section of the press, and a bogeyman to the Tory Government. Peter Lilley, then Secretary of State at the DSS, had recently entertained the Conservative Party conference with a spoof Gilbert and Sullivan number, in which he decried “young ladies who get pregnant just to jump the housing list”. The Secretary of State for Wales, John Redwood, castigated single-parent families from St Mellons, Cardiff, as “one of the biggest social problems of our day”. (John Redwood has since divorced the mother of his children.) Women like me (for it is a curious fact that lone male parents are generally portrayed as heroes, whereas women left holding the baby are vilified) were, according to popular myth, a prime cause of social breakdown, and in it for all we could get: free money, state-funded accommodation, an easy life.

An easy life. Between 1993 and 1997 I did the job of two parents, qualified and then worked as a secondary school teacher, wrote one and a half novels and did the planning for a further five. For a while, I was clinically depressed. To be told, over and over again, that I was feckless, lazy — even immoral — did not help.

It isn't that I think everyone on any country's welfare is automatically someone who could become Rowling, or that we should have a welfare state because Rowlings are possible from it - that if only we support the poor, they could become multibillionaires themselves. Instead, it is about worth. It is about what we think we owe the most vulnerable in our societies. It is a "there but for the grace of the mysteries of capitalism go I" thing, too, but it is also something else.

The poor are easily knocked down. I don't mean, you can easily knock a randomly specific poor person down. I mean that, good economy or bad economy, the poor are easy targets of anger and derision. Because, well, it is the easiest way to separate the poor from us. If the poor are poor because they are lazy, they are not like us. If the poor are poor because they are shiftless, they are not like us. If the poor are poor because they choose to be uneducated, they are not like us.

Here in America, there's an awful lot of race baggage that gets mixed in with the class and - yes - gender baggage. There's the "welfare queen" stereotype, for one, and that is one that still holds strong today. As in, a woman where I work, just today, told me that there were women out there who were popping out kids in order to get state assistance and were "working the system instead of just working". My response? There have got to be easier ways to game the system. And, the women my co-worker was describing are almost assuredly minorities, because she did the "Those (Name of City) people" thing that the less uncouth people in my office do when they are saying something with racist undertones that they don't want to just say with racist tone-tones. Which I, on one hand, appreciate because, hey, it means that these people understand that saying "all (blank) people are like X" is unacceptable. But on the other hand, it makes it harder to say, "whatever do you mean, 'those (Name of City) people?" Because the only answer to that seems to be, "You know...."

Sorry, tangent there. Anywho. What I'm saying is this: those on the edges of our society - and that society over there across the pond where Rowling lives and is commenting on - are generally the ones pushed totally off the grid when someone decides we need to tighten our government's financial belt. And it makes short-term political sense. You don't want to do anything that could anger people who actually have money and power, because those people with money and power can come back and make your political career a living hell. Because they have money and power. I mean, look at what happens when you decide to not make an expensive, unnecessary, and unwanted military plane! It riles up a whole bunch of powerful people. Including one Chris Dodd! Who should know better!

Which is why J.K. Rowling wrote this piece. Because there are a ton of people on that edge. And she has been there. And they are routinely made to be less important, the dredges of society really; and because of that, cuts to the very social net that keeps them afloat are seen as being perfectly reasonable.

Other parts of the budget - the military budget, for one, or Medicare and Social Security - are more sacrosanct. Not saying they'll never be touched, but one is seen as the way to prove you are a tough politician who would never, ever endanger the country and the others are services used by huge swaths of the country, swaths of the country who have money and power. This is true to the point where Republicans (Republicans!) were defending Medicare last summer in an effort to derail health reform.

And what does that mean? Well, it means that I think we need to stand up by our poor. I think it means we need more people like J.K. Rowling - people who those regular folks respect and like and admire - to stand up and talk about what it is like to be poor. What it is like to need those government programs, and how much it can hurt when they are not there. It means we may have to reevaluate who matters, and who should be taken care of.

Who Is Like The Beast?

Remember when Speaker Pelosi walked arm and arm in a Civil Rights March across Independence Avenue, from the House buildings over to the Capitol. In three years, I have never seen Nancy Pelosi cross the street the way that you saw in that picture. They deliberately went through that crowd, perhaps to try and incite something.

- Michelle Bachmann

If she was really worried about violence and she thought these people were violent, why would you grab a big hammer and walk into a sea of people?

Did anyone say to Nancy Pelosi, "You're inciting violence. You're slapping them across the face"?

- Glenn Beck

They faked - they were trying to provoke an incident. There's no reason to walk above ground to get to the Capitol building from their offices. There's tunnels underneath with trains, subways, and so forth. They're purpose - send the Congressional Black Caucus to walk over, send Pelosi over there with a big gavel, trying to provoke an incident.

- Rush Limbaugh

Listen, I know the three people listed above can in no way really be described as serious people in search of an honest debate on the issues. But one of the things I found so interesting in their various statements was how close these come to some classic rape apologia statements - you know, the ones that go, "She shouldn't have been there", "Did you see how she was dressed?" "She obviously wanted it", etc.

I especially find it interesting how the act of crossing the street, whether or not Speaker Pelosi does so often, is deemed indefensible here.

There is something happening in this vision of reality that seems to claim any and all negative actions taken against a person should be that person's responsibility. Even if all she did was cross a street when a bunch of protesters were out there showing their might.

There is something else that I find strange here as well, and that is this idea that not allowing a protest to effect your actions - or to not respond in the manner desired by the protesters - is suddenly a call to incite violence.

If Michelle Bachmann is right and Nancy Pelosi truly never has "cross[ed] the street the way that you saw" before, then what she seems to have been doing is creating a demonstration of her own. Not a show of force, no matter what Limbaugh and Beck think about her big gavel. But a demonstration of determination, a demonstration that she and those with her were not going to be bullied or be shamed for what they saw as a necessary vote for needed legislation - no matter how much they wanted/didn't want that was left out/put in the bill.

In effect, Nancy Pelosi seemed to be giving a clear message to the protesters, and to those people like Beck and Bachmann. That message was that she was proud of her accomplishments and her vote, and she was not going to be scared underground because there were people above ground who didn't like it and who didn't want to see her walk to the Capitol Building.

Frankly, it was a message that she deserved to walk up to that particular building in the light of day just as much as they deserved to demonstrate outside that building in the light of day. That she and her rights weren't dissolved simply because this group didn't like her and her ilk very much.

And if that very action was seen as a provocation, if hanging onto a giant gavel that was first used when Medicare was passed while walking was a horrible indignity those protesting and those commenting favorably on the protests, then the problem lies more with them than with her.

She was just, you know, doing her thing. Walking along. Being proud.

Too often, doing your thing, walking along, being proud, carrying a giant gavel is used as an explanation for someone else's actions.

Hopefully, enough people will see how silly this line of thinking is when it comes to someone like Nancy Pelosi and the passage of healthcare, and think back on that giant gavel. Hopefully, enough people will see how silly this line of thinking is when someone is walking down a street, and recognize that simply the act of living is in no way something that prompts an angry, violent response.

There are the things Nancy Pelosi talks about, when she brought up her experiences in 1970s San Francisco, that could be used, by some, as a balance, a sort of, "You're all hypocrites" and "the Left talks about provocations to violence too, so she shouldn't have walked there".

For the record, Pelosi has said, "I think we all have to take responsibility for our actions and our words. We are a free country and this balance between freedom and safety is one that we have to carefully balance... ...But again, our country is great because people can say what they think and believe. But I also think they have to take responsibility for any incitement they may cause."

And a person could claim that Pelosi is simply getting hit from the Right with essentially the same stick she advocates for here. I don't think so, though. Because there is a difference between walking to a place you have to go anyway, and speaking in such a way that could incite violence. There is a difference between carrying a comically large gavel, and, say, a blogger who urges his readership to break DNC office windows in an attempt to avoid a larger - armed - conflict.

I happen to agree with Pelosi's statement. I'm a free speech advocate, but I also believe in a speaker's responsibility - along with the responsibility of the rest of us to call out speech we find to be unsavory. I am a fan of verbal self-restraint, though that may astonish anyone who has heard me babble for any length of time. I'm a fan of recognizing the power your words hold, and realizing the effect those words may have on an audience. I'm not a fan of the government making that line, and forming those distinctions.

I started this out by making allusions between rape apologia and what these three right-wing people said about Speaker Pelosi's march on the Capitol Building. But what I find interesting is that in these cases, it isn't merely that there are more often than not marginalized bodies involved. It is the weirdly fatalistic viewpoint. In rape apologia, a lot of the criticism comes down to Doing Something While Female. And in this, there may be more than a little of Being Speaker While Female.

But there is also this idea that we should beware of waking the foul Beast. Because the Beast cannot be controlled, should not be expected to control the urge compelling violence. All we can hope to do is not anger the Beast, to not draw the Beast's attention to us, to creep around as quietly as we possibly can and make as few waves as possible, lest we attract the Beast's attention. And if you do? If you awaken the Beast, if you are attacked or hurt or raped? It is obviously your fault. Because the Beast is nothing but a force compelled to action. To hold the Beast accountable would be foolhardy, and besides, only those people stupid enough to not follow Teh Rules get attacked. There's never this compulsion that maybe, just maybe, we should do something about the Beast itself. That maybe walking to work, even if there are angry people afoot, shouldn't be something that can be used to scold someone for provoking some sort of negative action, should that negative action arise. But no.

Oh, Women and Their Emotionality!

"Look at Rachel Maddow. She comes at me on the basis of emotion. She demonizes me. I don't want conservatives to win on the basis of emotion. If we lower ourselves to the level they operate on, we hurt ourselves and our arguments."

-Tom Coburn.

I happen to think Rachel Maddow's initial response to this is top notch, that being:

I was trying to do my work. But then that pops up in my Google Alert, then I read it and I become alternately so blindingly enraged and then hysterically upset and then inconsolably morose and then hyperactively giddy and then happy and then sad and then mad and then happy again that I couldn't make sense of any of the facts that I was gathering. All of which I was trying to read through the tears of joy and anger and anxiety that I just can't control! Can't you tell I'm falling apart right now? So I promise - hold on, I'm getting emotional about this promise. I promise that tomorrow, I will gather myself and offer a full analysis of today's Tom Coburn news.

But, probably given that Rachel Maddow runs a newsish show where she discusses things that are actually happening out there in the world and then giving her opinion about that stuff, she didn't really delve into what the fuck just happened there. So, being that I don't have a newsish show and just this little blog, I'll do that.

First things first: there is the belief out there that women are emotional. I know, shocker. There is the belief out there that being emotional makes women less capable. Double shocker! There is this belief that by being emotional, women are therefore also irrational. Crazy, right? Who'd ever think that?!

Truth is, I think most people believe that. Maybe not consciously. Maybe not full on, full frontal "woman=emotional=irrational=unreliable=bad! men=logical=rational=reliable=good! men≠women!"

But it is there. And it is there because it is all around us. It is there when we talk about hiring a good worker, or hiring a woman. It was there during the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings, when someone made the comparison between having a heart surgeon who'd had to struggle to get where he is, or the best surgeon one could find, even if that surgeon had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. The idea that the first (the guy (or girl) who had to work really hard) could beget the second (that guy could be the best because he had to work so hard) is missing.

There's this thing with prejudice - all kinds - that make it hard for those of us who consider ourselves to be good people to recognize it within ourselves. It isn't just that we cognitively know that prejudice is bad and we are good, and thus we can't be prejudiced, though that's definitely a part of it. It is that in order for us to recognize our own prejudices, we have to be able to recognize when our most reflexive thoughts contain prejudice. That's extraordinarily difficult to do. It is incredibly difficult to puzzle out if you find some woman emotional because she is, in fact, being overly emotional - or if it is because we are conditioned to see women as emotional, as attacking on the basis of emotion alone. And when we're confronted about our underlying assumptions, whether by friends or by articles or by blog posts, it is essentially difficult to accept that what this other person is saying may be correct. Because what we thought felt so natural and so right, and what that other person is saying - that calling women you don't know emotional and attacking on the basis of emotion - is both historically and inherently sexist - is so foreign and so obviously wrong. Plus, it probably feels like a personal attack, because you, good person that you are, would never say something prejudiced. Because doesn't that other person know this is just how the world is?

Because of that, I don't think Tom Coburn is consciously eliciting the dog whistle of "women, crazy, huh?" But that doesn't mean his remarks aren't fused with the premise that a woman's actions are borne out of emotionality, and that emotionality is bad. It doesn't mean that he is playing a really old hand of sexism, and it doesn't mean that because he's ignorant of that (because to him it is just true), his remark isn't sexist. It doesn't mean it doesn't play into the grander metanarrative about women, and their intellectual oomph.

How I Became Who I Am: My Most Influential Reading List

I'm totally stealing this from a friend of mine, but I'm going to do that whole shebang ten thing. I'm doing it because at first I wondered what books, if any, helped influence who I became - how I became who I am. As much of a bibliophile as I am (and I am), the writers who most influence my actual perceptions of reality tend to be on that TV machine. Books tend to be an enjoyable escape, because as much as I love Pride and Prejudice and James Thurber, I'm pretty sure they have not formed the very backbone of who I am. But then, I thought about the books I've read. And then I wondered how I would whittle that list down to ten. So, away we go:

1. Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett. I found Waiting for Godot in high school. It was my first, aside from Whedony works, exposure to that wide world of existentialism. I loved it. There are lines in works, moments, that blow your mind. In the first act of the play, Vladimir's ponderings about the two thieves mentioned in the Gospels was that moment for me:

   VLADIMIR: But all four were there. And only one speaks of a thief being saved. Why believe him rather than the others?

   ESTRAGON: Who believes him?

   VLADIMIR: Everybody. It's the only version they know.

   The play wasn't necessarily introducing anything new to my life: I was already an atheist, I already was suspicious of metanarratives, I was already bemused and intrigued by the absurd. But it was the dream-like quality of the play, and the follies of the various participants, the obvious allusion to an absent, if not outright fictional, god, that really struck me.
   
   
2. The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand. Now, years later (YEARS), I've come to the conclusion that I've read this book all wrong, that the philosophy Ayn Rand was expounding probably wasn't what I took out of it, and that all those people who were like, "Oh, The Fountainhead is awesome!" probably got the wrong idea about what I'm about, politically, ethically, and philosophically. And plus, there's that whole rape apologia thing surrounding Roarke and Dominique that makes the book fairly unsavory for me. Don't get me wrong, after reading The Fountainhead I had a period where I read up a lot on Ayn Rand. I knew she was a dogmatic free market capitalist, I knew she was all about the individual. I knew she was if not the than pretty close to it quintessential "pull yourself up by your bootstraps, cuz I'm not giving you one of my dimes" person. And yet. When I read The Fountainhead, I... ...not missed, but pretty much overlooked a lot of that. What I took from the book was, in no particular order, architecture=cool, selfishness=awesome, looking to society for vindication=stupid idea. All of that? I was totally down with. And then, no more than a couple of weeks ago, it occurred to me that the scene I'd always thought meant "to do charity work for society's praise is just stupid" probably was meant to be expanded to "to do charity work at all is just stupid". So, The Fountainhead influenced me greatly. But I took from the book, "Act selfishly. Actions solely to please others will end up, in the long run, being unworthy of your time and energy, and will get you down in the process". I took, "Do the right thing, even if others look down on you for it, even if doing the easy thing will bring you short term praise and success". But, for me, doing the right thing isn't really about a totally free market capitalist system. It may be about making pretty buildings. I'm not totally sure yet.
   
   
3. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys. I was going to put The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir here, because I love that book, because it intersected my feminism and my existentialism well, and because it was a lightbulb moment for me, a moment where what I had previously felt was brought into sharp relief via words on the page. But. The Second Sex, although I love it for articulating a matter that had long danced at the back of my skull, didn't really change who I am. It simply gave me another tool to utilize when I myself already knew and tried to explain to other people. Wide Sargasso Sea did something else. One, it made Jane Eyre, a book I have always despised, palatable. Two, did something The Second Sex did not. It took me beyond myself. It was like "The Yellow Wallpaper" in its gradual destruction of its protagonist. It taught me a new way to critique existing works. And, pathetically enough, it brought the issue of race in Jane Eyre into the equation. It was a book that was (I think) better written than the book it was inspired by, and it made me recognize other ways that original text failed, by fixing that failure. By illustrating the other voices in the world we would never recognize if we merely stuck to what is in the accepted literary canon.
   
   
4. A Wrinkle in Time (series) - Madeline L'Engle. I would be remiss if I were to leave this book, and the subsequent books, off my list. Much like The Fountainhead, it occurs to me years later that I again culled something from its pages the writer did not intend, though in this instance it was a bulwark for my atheism. A Wrinkle in Time, having reread it, is an extremely spiritual - and outwardly religious - book. You'd think I would have gotten that from Many Waters being about two characters meeting Noah and interacting with Seraphim, but my obliviousness (and the fact that a majority of my religious education comes from musicals) blocked that reading entirely. Instead, I took from it themes of interdependence, of looking at problems and people through love and not hate and fear, and that being weird was a pretty cool thing to be. That, and the knowledge and the first dimension is a straight line, and the second dimension is a square. Beyond that, Meg Murray was (and is) one of my favorite girl/women characters. She preceded Buffy by about a year. She was so awesomely real, strong and yet flawed, it was incredible. I should also mention that I could recite the entirety of the book A Wrinkle in Time until a couple of years ago, and I could still probably do a couple of the more major passages.
   
   
5. West With the Night - Beryl Markham. My father gave me this book when I was in 6th grade. My copy has the note he wrote to me, explaining why he was gifting it to me specifically, on the inside cover. That alone may explain why this book makes the list. My father introduced me to a lot of books - among those, The Fountainhead. And those all had personal reasons behind his love of them, and wanting to share them with me. But Beryl Markham and her story captured my dad, and made him think of me. So, I read it. And if this were merely a list about books that influenced me because of how well they were written, West With the Night would also make that list:

   How is it possible to bring order out of memory? I should like to begin at the beginning, patiently, like a weaver at his loom. I should like to say, 'This is the place to start; there can be no other.'

   But there are a hundred places to star for there are a hundred names - Mwanza, Serengetti, Nungwe, Molo, Nakuru. There are easily a hundred names and I can begin best by choosing one of them - not because it is first no of any importance in a wildly adventurous sense but because here it happens to be, turned uppermost in my logbook. After all, I am no weaver. Weavers create. This is a remembrance - revisitation; and names are keys that open corridors no longer fresh in the mind, but nonetheless familiar in the heart.

   This book, and Markham, however, make the list because she is an inspiration. The first woman to fly east to west, from England to Nova Scotia. She is attacked by a lion as a girl. She is a one time (literally, one time) horse racer. She is the first licensed woman horse trainer in Kenya. And although I still have that note in the book, I'm in awe that she made him think of me, still strive to be as cool, as confident, as ground-breaking as Markham herself was.
   
   
6. On the Road - Jack Kerouac. Yes, it is enormously cliche. And yet. I loved the book. It probably helps that I read it on a long train ride, so it felt like I was actually a part of Kerouac's philosophy and adventure. On the Road is why I spent the summer and the semester of my '50s class obsessed with the Beat and the Beat Generation.
   
   
7. Redesigning the American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life - Dolores Hayden. Every so often, a book comes along that makes me think, a la Chicken Run, "But we've always been egg farmers. My father, and his father, and all their fathers, and they was all..." And then the author fairly hits me on the head and says, "And wouldn't it be so much better if we looked at why, and what that's done for us, and maybe try to do X?" This book is that. This book is when I started thinking about how the structure of our lives and our environments shape our lives and our expectations. How we are, essentially, coveting little boxes on the hillside that are all the same. And how we can maybe go along making a different world, if we'd just change our expectations regarding neighborhoods and soccer moms and mini vans.
   
   
8. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge - Jean-Francois Lyotard. I don't mean to sound like a braggart, but I have an exceptional memory for words. Not names, and not faces, and definitely not tasks I was assigned two minutes ago, but words. Sometimes, that means I can quote what I want out of a book or television episode from memory alone. Sometimes that means I know exactly where to find the exact line I'm looking for in the book or episode. Believe me when I say, I can give you none of this work back. I couldn't even really remember the name of the book, just the author. Maybe it's because it was originally written in French. All I can say is that it has deepened my personal understanding of the world. Lyotard writes about the totalitarian nature of the metanarrative, and about the worth of the more democratic micronarrative. And, as I discovered in my quest to discover which book made the micronarrative something I believe in and agree with, I discovered something else. Before college, I was someone who believed in a reachable, objective truth. I hated anything that touched upon relativism with a passion (that may have been due to all of the moral arguments against my atheism starting with, "If you don't believe in God, there is no moral structure. And if there is no moral structure, then nothing can be immoral"; I'm just saying, those religious zealots trying to convert me kind of fucked me up). And yet, now I still despise moral relativism, and am passionately for micronarratives. Wha?! The answer, as I discovered, also lies with Lyotard. He postulated that there is an objective truth that we humans shall never fully understand. Which is basically my position. High five to Lyotard.
   
   
9. Full Frontal Feminism - Jessica Valenti. I was thinking about putting one of my favorite authors of all time, a Mr. John Steinbeck, on this list. But then I decided he is more of a Jane Austen type of person in my life: a writer I would not willingly live without, but one who has not had a profound influence on my being - aside from making me more of a snobbish reader than I was prior to picking up Cannery Row in high school. Instead, this spot goes to Jessica Valenti. It's like this: I was raised in a feminist household, so Full Frontal Feminism wasn't introducing me to anything I hadn't heard of before. But it was witty and well-written, and so not academic. And since I was reading Lyotard, I deserved some not quite academic-but-progressive reading. And if it had just been that, this book would not be on this list. But Jessica Valenti is the founder and an editor of feministing.com. And feministing led me to other, more substantial feminist sites, which then led me to womanist sites, which then led me to reading multiple blogs daily. And eventually, that led us all here. Without Full Frontal Feminism, I may never have gotten to this particular place.
   
   
10. The Short Stories of J.D. Salinger. I am one of the few people I know who did not appreciate the angst of Holden Caulfield in their own teenage years. One of those other souls is one of my 17 year old sisters, so maybe that inability to be charmed by him is genetic. Because of that, I avoided Salinger's short stories like the plague. I was wrong to (incidentally, my mother was the person who told me I would enjoy them). The first one I ever read was "A Perfect Day for Bananafish". From there, I was hooked. I quickly gobbled up "Franny and Zooey", and then moved on to the rest of "Nine Stories", and then to "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction". I loved the style of writing, the restless and unsatisfied nature of it, the people populating these stories being genuine in a way I'd never felt was true for Holden, and yet all quietly broken. Perhaps more than the short stories and the people yearning to live a life of meaning within them, it was Salinger's ability to retreat from public life that makes these stories precious to me. Salinger managed to both give me, in all, 13 stories I prize. And then, he articulated my belief about writing when he said, "I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure." I write, a lot. Some of that writing is here, the nonfiction stuff, the stuff that is separate enough from myself to share with both the people I know and potentially the people I don't who manage to stumble upon it. But my fiction is all my own.

And there it is: my list. Hopefully, in ten to twenty years, some of those books will have been bumped down the influence chain, with other books taking their place. I'm looking forward to the John Kenneth Galbraith memoirs possibly doing that.

James Thurber

I have a horrible habit of not listening to my mother's recommendations, of avoiding reading the things she says to read or watching the things she says to watch or listening to the things she says to listen to until I'm driven to doing it simply because I've gotten bored with the things I've been reading or watching or listening to over and over again. She is the person who first thrust The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler into my hands, the person who gave me The Secret of NIMH, the person who insisted I watch The Sound of Music and Dirty Dancing, the person who told me I'd really like Elton John and The Band, the person who introduced me to Simon and Garfunkel and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

And yet, with all of that, it still took me months before I read A Wrinkle in Time after she gave it to me and told me I'd love it. She gave it to me along with The Mixed Up Files and NIMH, in fourth grade, and it took me until midway through fifth to bother with it. It, and the other three books in the series, became my veritable Bible from fifth to eighth grade. It, among other things, gave my shop teacher a reason to not let me actually participate in shop class after a fairly harrowing experience with a drill, because he'd lived next to the author, Madeline L'Engle, while growing up and talked to me about this worn out book I insisted on carrying everywhere with me.

In eighth grade, I was spending the day with my father. We were driving around the state, visiting his various clients, talking, and listening to this book on tape he'd gotten out of the library, My Life and Hard Times. I knew of the book. A chapter had been in a compilation book series my parents owned and I'd poured over. Another chapter had been in my seventh grade Lit book, and I'd poured over that one as well. Listening to My Life and Hard Times with my father made me appreciate it, and the author, all the more. It was hilarious. And when I acquired the book-book, it took the place of A Wrinkle in Time as my new Bible.

I've been to the Thurber House in Columbus, OH several times. One time, my father got them to open the house early for us, because I loved it so much and because at some point we were going to have to leave Ohio, and he preferred that to be sooner rather than later. I have several James Thurber tee shirts, a lot of his books, and I still read portions of My Life and Hard Times on a weekly basis. James Thurber's Is Sex Necessary? is the book that I took out with my best friend and roomie's library card whilst in college, and then failed to return promptly (or rather, at all), and ran up a significant (around $200 or so dollars) late fee/replacement cost.

There are problems with James Thurber, as there would be with any white, straight, middle-class male author born in 1894. There are problems I've only begun to assess in my continued and continual rereading of My Life and Hard Times, with regard to race and gender and where the two meet. But his humor oftentimes comes from the ridiculousness of people, and more often than not from himself. And so, I was abso-freaking-lutely thrilled when Keith Olbermann professed to reading James Thurber to his father, because James Thurber is one of those authors who helped shape my life (and this whole beginning part is at least in partial reference to this meme), and who I feel is underappreciated - or at the very least, too much of an unknown. My happiness increased exponentially when the final segment on friday's Countdown was, in point of fact, Keith Olbermann reading a short story of James Thurber's, "A Box to Hide In". And because I love Thurber more than possibly any other author, I had to share. This story doesn't come from my personal Thurber Bible, but I do love it:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Letters to my Editor (Pt 2)

Another letter that kind of needs nothing but itself:

My US flag now flies upside down as a protest of unacceptable, unconstitutional injustice when representatives did not represent the people they were supposed to represent.

I kind of love the people who write to my paper.

Letters to my Editor

Just the letter, with minimal comment:

I have lived under 17 presidents, since Woodrow Wilson. I don't know that I will see anothe r [sic]. Our present president's style is to stride purposefully to the lecturn, jut his chin out, FDR style, and with much rhetorical skill, tell us what we want to hear but rarely see. This is proven.
Think of his campaign and presidential promises, not of his charm. I don't want my descendants to have to wonder at and ruefully pay for my mistakes.

One question: "proven", how exactly?

(Short) Saturday Sesame Street

Because I love Madeline Khan:

To Be Fair...

Here's a thing that's been bothering me for a while. It is the "to be fair" defense. I went off on David Brooks about the "to be fair", and I feel pretty confident that I was right and my righteous tone and angry face I was making whilst typing was totes justified.

But here's the thing about "to be fair". It either takes the place of an actual critique (instead of "that soup was horrid; why did they mix chocolate with salsa bits and a beef broth?", we get "to be fair, I've never had good soup here"), or it qualifies that critique and thus makes it less forceful ("that soup was horrid; but to be fair, I've never had good soup here").

There's another thing about "to be fair". Life isn't. Seriously now. Life isn't fair. Life is hard, life is not fair, and life sometimes kicks people in the gonads for things other people have done before and gotten away with.

My sisters and I played a version of the "to be fair" game throughout their childhood and my adolescence. One of us, it didn't matter who, would do something known as "starting shit". Needling the others, picking at old wounds or fresh ones, or just generally being a pain in the ass. The other person would retaliate pretty damn quickly, because we all had thin skins when it came to each other's needling. Because that is the power siblings hold - the knowledge of how a precise word in a precise tone of voice can wreak havoc with someone's emotional well-being. Anyway, this sniping would continue, consistently elevating in tone and in emotions, until one or both of my parents would become aware of it, and then try to shut it down - generally with a "That's enough!" directed at one sib in particular. It was our less deadly version of Russian Roulette. Someone was going to get a "that's enough". Someone would get some pretty serious yellage if they continued to pester the point (which, of course, we all did; cuz we were stupid). And that someone could or could not be the person who originated the circle of recrimination and doom. And the argument would be, from the person hit, "I didn't start it!" Sometimes, if the person did start it (or even if they didn't), the argument would be, "they were doing it too!"

Those arguments? Were true. Truly, we all three were responsible for the shit storm of badness that made dinner such a fun occasion in my house lo those many years. And for whomever was on the receiving end of of parental wrath, it was less than fun, even unfair.

But. We all played the game. We couldn't help ourselves, being sisters and knowing the most profound injury to hit. And having been hit, absolutely needing to hit back. And we all knew that at some point, the game would end and the arrow would be on one of us.

What does this mean, in terms of "to be fair"? Well, it means that life isn't. And if you're doing something that is profoundly unfair, it can't be mitigated by the defense that other people are doing it.

In other words, The condemnation of the action taken can be - and should be - separate from the condemnation of the system in which that action takes place.

In other words, it is perfectly reasonable to call someone out on their shit and then move on to calling everyone out on their shit.

And sometimes, there really is no "to be fair". Take things like racism. There have been claims of "reverse racism", and someone somewhere may try to take the mainstream approach to having a panel, and have someone who claims racism still exists on a panel with someone who claims that whites encounter "reverse racism" in order to make the panel "fair". The truth is, whites still, categorically, hold so much power that there is no real other side to that story in terms of race. There is no "to be fair" if someone says, "Hey, that thing you did/said/Digged? That was racist". Sometimes, fairness isn't possible.

I think oftentimes the "to be fair" is deployed by someone looking to be judicious, someone looking to be seen as impartial. It is a function employed within the lie of objectivity. I used to believe in Objective Truth, that we could someday reach it. I now believe that there is Objective Truth about certain things, and that we as imperfect beings with points of view that are skewed by the psychological things such as beliefs we hold and physical things like imperfect eyesight will never, ever be able to actually obtain that truth. The most we can do is recognize where we are blind. "To be fair"ers tend to try to obtain that objective stance. They tend to want to believe that they can be fair, that they can accurately assess the situation and impart unbiased understanding to the rest of us. I don't believe they can.

Instead of "to be fair", given those constraints to actual fairness, I would rather if we simply acknowledged that there were people we would like to defend, and give those reasons for defending them. It seems better than expecting impartial judgements from people who will never be able to deliver.

A Horrifying Tale of Parental Notification Laws

Read the whole thing. Please.

I Kind of Love...

...This tampon commercial:



It is the height of awesomeness (h/t The Sexist)!

Also, this print ad:



I kind of feel compelled to buy Kotex products now. Power of advertising, huh?

Be sure to read the backstory of the ad, and how three networks rejected it when it contained the word "vagina". Yeah, I know. How crazy to discuss the "v" word when you're advertising tampons. I'd totes reject that ad too, because I can't see the connection.

On pretty much the same note, these ads remind me of this Clear Blue Pregnancy Test commercial:


I, however, don't want to buy this one. Advertising (in general) still isn't that good.

Both the Kotex ads and the Clear Blue ad eschew what normally find their ways into tampon and pregnancy test ads. They're interesting. They're fun. They're engaging in a way women twirling around in white really very rarely are. And the tampon one even takes on the weird blue liquid factor.

Stamp of approval!

Playground Politics, David Brooks, and the Al Qaeda Seven

JIM LEHRER: Let's go to another dispute, the so-called Al Qaeda Seven. Liz Cheney and her group criticized some justice department lawyers, because they once represented some Guantanamo detainees. Where do you come down on that?

DAVID BROOKS: Ah, well, I think the ad, which sort of accused whose values do they have - do they have Al Qaeda or Taliban values, I thought it was tremendously unfortunate. I mean, it's just part of a long range of corrosive language. And to be fair to Liz Cheney, if you Google "Taliban" and "Liz Cheney", millions of people have called her a member of the Taliban and made similar charges.

PBS Newshour, 3/12/10

You know what mentality I have always hated? Since elementary school hated? The idea that just because someone once picked on you, once kicked your lunch box, once pushed you down, once cut you in line, once made your life hell, it somehow gave you license to do the same. In elementary school through high school, the idea was as soon as you got to the exalted grade of the kids who were picking on you, you could then pick on the kids who occupied the grade you were in now. It was, and is, a stupid idea. Picking on the freshman as a senior does nothing to the senior who picked on you. It just continues a cycle of meaningless and ridiculous abuse, for no other reason than because you had to deal with it and you refused to be the last one.

It is a simple-minded, mean mentality. It depends on making someone else a victim in order for the former victim to be the victor, to feel powerful.

It is an immature philosophy and displays a distinct lack of empathy. It is also what David Brooks suggests we use in order to "be fair" to Liz Cheney.

Brooks is probably right; any other week, if you were to Google "Liz Cheney" and "Taliban", you would probably garner a lot of hits comparing the two. Right now, though, most of the hits are about the ad itself and Brooks' defense of Cheney. In a normal week, a lot of those would be malicious. Most would be blatantly false. I'm saying "a lot" and "most", because I'm sure there are also pages ripping apart those other pages and defending Cheney.

You know what else? I'd bet my teeth that none of those people calling Liz Cheney a member of the Taliban are from the Department of Justice. You know, the people Liz Cheney is now directly comparing to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Funny thing, that. Funny how the school mentality can still be defended by those well into their forties when employed by people getting toward the middling of their own fortieth decade.

There is no "being fair" to Liz Cheney when she blatantly uses her non profit to disseminate the exact same tactic being so egregiously used against herself and her own father.

There should only be condemnation for so spectacularly failing to progress past the idea that passing along this sort of mean-spirited and completely baseless accusation to a whole new wave of victims. David Brooks thinks there is some sort of balance that has been reached here: Liz Cheney was attacked by someone, so she gets to attack someone else with that as part of her excuse. Sorry, but no. And that sort of rationalization calls Brooks' own assessing skills into question as well.

The other thing that gets me is how neither Jim Lehrer nor Mark Shields makes this argument; Shields should have mentioned that the DoJ lawyers probably weren't the ones slandering Liz Cheney all over the interwebs. And then he should have mentioned that even if they were, that still does not excuse Cheney's sinking to their level.

Because that is the other very real issue here. When has it become appropriate in the public discourse to pull what is essentially a "I know you are, but what am I?" smack down? This is beyond concerning. This says that somehow, no one progresses past elementary school (a thought I've often had and feared, and now discover may be the abject truth of the matter). And that? Is unacceptable.

Making excuses for Liz Cheney, calling an ad tremendously unfortunate instead of calling it out for what it is - a baseless, fear-mongering attack ad - does not make one a member of polite society. Couching one's statements and one's bets doesn't make one the better person.

And, no, the ad in question doesn't sort of accuse. It does accuse, full stop. The fact that Brooks can't even make that statement without waffling, and the fact that no one corrects him, makes me worry.

Chuck vs The Women

My monday evening routine is to wait anxiously for 8 o'clock to roll around so's I can watch some Chuck goodness on NBC. Typically, I then go on-line and look up all of the music I want to get that I heard on Chuck, get it, load it onto my Chuck playlist, and then stare and my iPod in confusion when, on shuffle, one of those songs is independently played. Because, sometimes, hearing Hall & Oats without any explanation is just odd. Actually, that should be an "always".

However. Loving Chuck is problematic. It's problematic for a multitude of reasons. Chuck had ten characters credited during the theme for its first two seasons, and then nine in its third season. Three of the ten were women in the first two seasons. Two of the nine are women in the third season. This isn't good. For me, and in general. Sure, one of the central three characters is a woman, and she gets a decent amount of attention focused on her. And yet, purely by the function of who she is and what her character brings to the series, we know very little about her. And so, we're left with 3 women who function as accessories to the male characters, as love interests and, for one, simultaneously as a sibling.

Because there are, at most, three women on the show, they don't often interact. And when they do interact, the moments don't typically pass the Bechdel Test. Sarah and Ellie discuss Chuck; sometimes, Sarah and Ellie discuss Devon (aka, Captain Awesome); Sarah and Anna discuss Morgan; a couple of times, Anna flips out on Ellie about Morgan. They talk about weddings and boys, and once, how Sarah had never been close to a gun before. But they don't talk about anything else, and thus we learn almost nothing about them. We know that Jeff and Lester enjoy playing in their band, Jeffster. We know more about Morgan than is necessary, including that he sleeps in the nude. But we don't learn much of anything about the women that does not in some way connect to the men.

But there is another issue with Chuck, almost a more serious issue. A lot of shows don't have great male-to-female ratios. A lot of shows don't have the women talking about much else but the men in their lives. It wouldn't be great, but I would be able to live with it. But Chuck fails women far more egregiously than simply not being able to pass the Bechdel Test.

Chuck, as a show, suffers from an almost chronic urge to delegitimize threats women face in the world and the workplace. It often uses stalking as an impish thing these specific guy characters do. And no other character calls these stalkers out on it. In Chuck vs Tom Sawyer, we (and Chuck) are given witness to Jeff's music video dedicated to Anna Woo, complete with stalker-footage from when Anna is leaving the women's bathroom. Later in the episode, Jeff's request that Anna fan him while wearing a hula skirt is granted. And both Chuck and the store's manager Emmett make no mention to Jeff about the completely illegal and inappropriate actions he has taken. No one mentions the tape to Anna, so she can press charges (not that she would, because stalking is totally cool!). Later in the season, Morgan begins stalking Anna as well, in vs The Best Friend. And although Chuck calls him out on it after both Anna and a group of mobsters discover him, Chuck's reasoning is less about shaming Morgan for his actions toward his ex-girlfriend than trying to save his life. Afterward, he even complains that he had to sacrifice Morgan's dignity in order to protect him. Chuck doesn't even begin to contemplate that stalking your ex is a pretty solid way to demonstrate you've given up much of your dignity anyway.

Stalking isn't just relegated to the creeps of the show, either. Chuck, himself, has been known to stalk his fake girlfriend Sarah. The one day she has off, he follows her as she goes to meet her father, because she had the temerity to not alert him to her plans. And when she discovers him, she doesn't yell at him or give him the cold shoulder. She doesn't discuss how following her is completely ignoring a boundary she has set for her own personal reasons. She invites him to stay.

And the stalking is just one part of the equation. From Morgan and Jeff and Lester using the store's electronics to get video footage of various (faceless) girls' butts and cleavage, to Jeff and Lester setting up a casting couch and then exposing various models to Jeff's penis, the show takes a light-hearted "boys will be boys" mentality when it comes to violating the various women who make the mistake of working, shopping, or knowing someone at the Burbank Buy More.

It is that light-heartedness that makes this all the worse. If the behavior was seen and treated as wrong, as being a violation of these various women's autonomy, if it were called out as being inherently disrespectful to women, then the show may be something other than regressive. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Morgan, Jeff, and Lester are seen as weird, losery guys, but they're also portrayed as lovable (in the case of Morgan), unthreatening (in the case of Lester), loyal (in the case of Jeff (and Morgan)) guys. These guys, the show demonstrates, are doing little wrong. After all, the women don't complain about it! These guys, the show demonstrates, are impotent geeks that girls don't have to worry about!

And then that is the other edge of this sword. There have been two girls who have been Nerd Herders (the Geek Squad of the Buy More). Both of them have been subject to sexual comments and what would be, in the real world, sexual harassment. They were Herders at two different times, so women have never made up more than 1/4 of the Herder staff. But what really seems to be happening here is the show doesn't only go for the "boys will be boys" and "stalking really isn't that serious" and "harassment is just playing", but is either negatively commenting on the nerdish men among us or - and I think it is the second one - giving one nerdish perspective on women and men. Perhaps it shouldn't be that surprising that only two of the nine writers are women.

A large portion of the Chuck series has been full of geekish and nerdy delights, too many to count. And that, along with Chuck being absolutely adorkable most of the time and zany writing, is one of the things that makes me love Chuck oh so very much. Well, that, and a propensity of the writers to rip off whole scenes from their other series, The O.C., and have those scenes play for more often than not comedic value. And that makes the marginalization of women within their world even harder to bear. Because it isn't just that women are absent, or that women get to discuss parts of their lives other than the men; if that were the case, this post could have (and almost was) been called Chuck vs The Bechdel Test. No, it goes deeper than that. It goes to having geeky guys consistently treat women as sexual objects, and as something other than the norm. As a girl, as a geek, and as a nerd, it feels less than welcoming to have that play out as a theme on this show that I love.

Saturday Sesame Street

I like how there were originally 1776 cherry trees in the orchard:

Rape & Sex Education, A Two-Part Rant

So, yesterday, at lunch, the women I work with were discussing their families. I generally like these discussions, since they so rarely veer off into political speak or declarations about how Fox News is just so unbiased. They're a bit on the boring side, but they also make my coworkers happy. And I'd rather have a happy coworker when I need help than the opposite. But every once in a while, a subject comes up that veers us close to the third rail of office discussion.

Yesterday was one of those days. A woman's niece, age 12, was staying after school to finish a test, and was left alone for a few minutes with two boys in her class - also age 12. One of the boys then said, "Let's rape _____". The girl asked the boy why he wanted babies (which seemed like an odd reaction to me, but wevs), and then told her mother after she got home.

Here is the first part of my rant. Everyone at lunch agreed that this was inappropriate. Everyone agreed that the mother, my coworker's sister, should report the incident to the principal. And I was one of those agreeing.

But at the same time, the incident was profoundly disturbing to me. Part of it is because in recent months, a 12 year old girl was raped, by a fourteen year old, and that rape was not seen as a serious matter by school officials. It was also because I happened to sit across from a jerk of an 8th grader at lunch, and his continuous barrage of sexual-type comments were not taken seriously by my school officials, up until I hit him with his own lunch tray. And then I was told "boys will be boys" (yes, seriously, that exact phrase was used). It is because when I was in high school, my regulation tank top was deemed as being "distracting and exciting to the boys" by my gym teacher. And it was only because I have a father who is actually pretty damn scary when he's pissed that I got an apology for that. In other words, we live in a world, even us in the liberaler states in the Union, where schools like to protect their own asses, and where the culture of boys will be boys and girls have to endure sexual comments doesn't stop at the doors of an educational facility.

It is terrible that my coworker's 12 year old niece was threatened (jokingly or not) with rape. On an individual level, it is horrible. Her mother should report the incident to the principal, to the teacher, and maybe calling up the boy's parent(s)/guardian(s) and telling them what their son said. But on a more meta and less micro level, shouldn't we be focusing part of our attention on why this statement could and is casually uttered? I know kids and teenagers and young adults say shocking and controversial things, sometimes in order to seem more sophisticated, sometimes to lash out, and sometimes simply to be seen as shocking and controversial. I'm Facebook friends with a large portion of my sisters' high school, and they have taken to FormSpring like ducks to water, so I know. Trust me. And that could segue into a post about how being gay (or bisexual, or assumed to be gay) is still ZOMG, the WORST thing to be EVER in high school, but I'll just restrain myself. The thing is, something must make it seem like it is okay for this 12 year old to talk about raping his classmate, and it isn't something that affects just this 12 year old. And we should prevent individual 12 year olds from saying such things, but shouldn't we impress upon everyone that rape isn't, actually, something to casually throw around? That it is, actually, a serious offense? That it isn't, actually, something that should be used as a threat, fake or not, faux-funny or not?

But instead, we switched over to sex education, where the second part of my rant comes in.

Mother to the 12 year old girl decided that her daughter's response to a rape threat should probably not be, "Why do you want babies?" So, she sat said daughter down for a sex talk. And talked about how much sex hurt. Always. And about how sex was bad, how sex was unpleasant, and how if you kissed someone, you were kissing every single person he ever kissed (being gay really isn't seen as an option in that house).

First my sister's reaction to the kissing line: "I would have said, 'Well, then I guess I've kissed a lot of people'". Which was, especially if you know her, hilarious.

Secondly, I understand the impetus to discuss sex and what sex is when your daughter is sheltered at age 12. I don't understand the impetus to discuss sex and not touch upon what rape is, why it is a horrible thing to say to someone. It seems that if your sex talk is happening because a kid in your daughter's class talked about raping your daughter, some discussion about rape would be in there. But, no, apparently not.

Third, though, is this: if you decide to have a discussion with your twelve year old about sex because you feel that she is sheltered and needs to have some understanding of it, what the fuck does telling her lies about sex do for her? Seriously now. And here is the crux of the post. As much as it isn't an aberration for a 12 year old boy to feel like joking about rape is acceptable, it is also not aberrant for people to not actually have solid, true information about sex. What benefit is gained from telling a 12 year old girl that sex always hurts, that sex is bad, that sexual contact is something to be avoided? None.

I'm not suggesting that parents should begin telling their children that sex is wonderful, is the best thing ever, and you should totes be open to it. What I am suggesting is that misinformation about sex is troubling, that painting sex as bad or dirty or a necessary evil is problematic, and that telling little girls that sex hurts always is wrong. Morally as well as factually.

This isn't just a problem for this specific 12 year old. This is a problem for all of the twelve year olds who do have parents who aren't open and honest with them, who go to schools where the answer to any sex question is "don't".

And that brings us to this question: is the problem teenagers having sex, or is the problem teenagers having sex irresponsibly?

I would prefer to think of my 17 year old sisters as 5 years old for the rest of their lives. I would prefer to not think about their sexual predilections or habits. But what I want is for them to have the information, to know about sex, to not feel shamed for having it or wanting it. I want them to know about contraception, and also more of the fun stuff. I want them to feel comfortable asking questions, and for them to have the reasonable expectation of honest answers. And I want that for their friends, and their friends' friends. I want sex to not be a mystery to them, not something their parents squick away from discussing, and their school refuses to touch. And I want that for my coworker's niece as well. I want sex education to contain some education about sex. And I don't think that's too much to ask.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 13th Anniversary

Thirteen years ago, I was eleven. That seems odd to type. Thirteen years ago, I was yet to reach actual teenage years. I was a preteen. My favorite shows, if anyone is interested, were Caroline in the City and Suddenly Susan. At least one of those shows were on at the same time a weird show about a teenage vampire slayer premiered. And my father made me miss whichever one that was, because he wanted someone to watch this new weird show about a teenage vampire slayer. That? Is probably a decision he's regretted for the full 13 years that have followed.

I've written a lot about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I've written a lot about Joss Whedon. I've been profoundly, scarily, affected by both.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is probably one of the reasons some people in middle school and high school were under the mistaken impression I was a lesbian (note to any other 12-17 year olds out there: if you're going to wear shirts that are black and predominately feature women, even if those women are show-specific, be prepared for questions).

Buffy the Vampire Slayer may have skewed my perception of who and what is cool. For instance: like Joss Whedon? You're cool. Mock Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You're so not.

But Buffy the Vampire Slayer has done a lot more than that. And on this, its anniversary, I'm going to list some of those things out.

BtVS was a show that fully encompassed the geeks inheriting the earth thing. It was a weird show, in that the geeks and the losers seemed to not care that other people thought of them as geeks and losers. Sure, Buffy was bothered by it, from time to time. She had, after all, previously been cool. But Xander? When Rodney Munson beat him up every day for years, he hated Rodney Munson. This was a good thing for me, being that I have odd parents, an odd name, and am both geeky and nerdy. It was validation when I hated the kids who made fun of my name, instead of hating my name. And that was good, at eleven.

BtVS was a show that had tons (and I mean tons) of kick ass women, who were powerful and righteous and strong - and emotional and screwed up and flawed in a myriad of different ways. It was also a show that had a lot of kick ass men who were emotional and screwed up and flawed in a myriad of different ways - and who were also powerful and righteous and strong.

BtVS has probably shaped my philosophical outlook more than any other singular thing. It has done more for how I see the world than Alexander Hamilton, than Thomas Jefferson, than Sartre, than Steinem, than de Beauvoir. And on things as far ranging as friendship, militarism, the role of government, atheism, feminism, ethics, life, and family.

When I want to reference why I feel a certain way, I may break out a BtVS quote. I may - in fact - point to a certain scene. Which leave those around me who have not seen the show or who are not totes obsessed more than a little confused. And I'm okay with that.

Thirteen years on, I'll still cry when I see Becoming Pt 2. Thirteen years on, I'm still in awe of what the show is. Thirteen years on, I'll still spend a day watching season 1, and loving it.

And while it is a little pathetic to pull myself out of my blogging rut by writing about this particular topic, it is also a testament to the show that I still care this much about all of these characters, thirteen years down the road.

So, happy anniversary, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'll write about you again - next year.

Dear Blog,

Wow. It's been a long time. A long, long time. I have reasons! Reasons for my sudden and prolonged absence, reasons that would probably bore you and leave you feeling insecure about your place in my life. You're probably wondering whether I simply abandoned you like I did the iTunes/iPod Genius function, only without the part where I explained why and what went wrong.

As an aside, that function and I made up. I've been working through the fact that it likes to pick Conor Oberst songs for everything, and that one song from the Whip It soundtrack I don't particularly like, and it... hasn't made any concessions. It does have three or so playlists on my iPod at the moment, though.

No, blog! I have not! I have often thought about coming here, writing my thoughts, engaging with the world, and I am coming back. Seriously. I know, I've been a bad blogger. I know, I promised I'd be back about a month ago. I know, you have no reason to trust that I will remain true to my word.

I have, however, made a twitter account. For some indiscernible reason. But twitter is kind of confusing. There's the whole being pithy and witty thing, for one. I can be pithy, and I can be witty, but it turns out that it is exceedingly difficult for me to be both at the same time.

(Which, what a sales pitch, right? Aren't you just dying to go there now? Don't answer that. Unless the answer is yes.)

No, blog, we both know that I am at my best when I am allowed to ramble and rant at length (sometimes great length). We both know that I am to return to your familiar and helpful format, where there are no hashtags that rudely take up needed space to be both pithy and witty. Where an @ sign is more of a way to send a message to someone than a way to immediately get down to business. Where there are no whales being carried by little birds.

I am back. And I will post, and post again.

Yours,

petpluto

Quote of the Day

Hi! I have had a pretty full two or so weeks, what with life and work, and a document-management system that manages to not manage my (and others') documents all that well, so I've been pretty profoundly absent. That is sad for me, and I plan to correct it tout suite. Also, I have a post percolating in my head about militarism in the works of Joss Whedon, so hold onto your hats. Until then, QotD!

But language is a symptom, not the disease. Language is a product of thought, not the thought. Language is an act, not the motive underlying the act. Language is an effect of the structure, not the structure. And although language shapes thought, gives us the tools we have to understand the world and thus limits and informs what we can know – you can get all French-theory with me in the comment section – changing language isn’t going to take us anywhere unless we change the structure itself.

Via Sady. I love the post this quote came from, and I absolutely love the theory of language and the way words are used. I highly recommend reading the whole thing, and at some point my scanners at work will actually scan and separate documents, and I'll be able to think about something other than bar codes again.