One of the great examples of human-cat collaboration in the name of hilarity.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Sunday, May 25, 2008
This made me cry, and gave me hope
Look at this girl. Look at how she doesn't question her right to do what the boys do, as well or better than they do. Look how proud both her parents are of her, and how adamantly they both stand up for her. Look at how she admires and respects her female heros (sorry, heroine just doesn't work for me somehow, it's too much like "heroette"), and honors them even as she hopes to surpass them.
Yes, there's opposition to her playing, and that's a bit disheartening. On the other hand, it's so plain in this instance that not allowing girls to play with boys is about the protection of the boys' fragile egos, rather than the girls' safety, that I think it will make even people with no feminist agenda think about how unfair that is, and maybe even about how crazy the whole gender set-up is.
Because look at the boy at 1:31 into the tape. He's not threatened by her, he's proud of her, of her "greatness", which he says makes him a better player. He doesn't need her to limit herself to protect some sense of gender superiority he's supposedly got to have in order to feel good about himself. He clearly feels fine about himself, and about his awesome female teammate, even if she can run rings around him.
This is progress. It's not enough, of course, and it won't be enough for some time yet, but I have to believe we are getting somewhere, and that it's important to see and to celebrate that. Girls like this, and boys like this, with support like this, will change the world. I believe that.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Self-Plagiarism
I'm "re-purposing" this comment I just made on my fabulous friend Joan Kelly's blog to be an entry on my own, because I love this story. I mean, it's my story about my life, but I'm allowed to love it, right?
Another comment on the blog reminded me of when I was working at the strip joint in Boston (lo these many, many years ago) and this bachelor party of Harvard guys came in. I don’t know how their college affiliation came up, except the general fact that Harvard men think the sun shines out their ass and that everyone must be terrifically impressed by their prestigious alma mater that their dad probably bought them into anyway. But I digress.
So I’m trying to get one of them to buy me a drink, as that was pretty much my job description at the time (I graduated to dancing a bit later), and thinking this will get me some traction, I say, “Oh, well I go to Wellesley.” Which was perfectly true, except that I was taking time off for what one of my friends on the faculty referred to as my “Junior Year *as* a Broad”. The guy’s response was hilarious. He totally didn’t believe me, because anyone who was working there was clearly an entirely different species from a woman who might occupy his rarefied world. So he quizzes me about different places on the Wellesley campus, who’s the President, la la la, all of which I of course pass with flying colors as I am indeed a proud Seven Sisters student.
When he finally managed to convince himself that I was, shockingly, a member of his social class come to some horrible and disgraceful pass, he became very concerned, and started lecturing me on my life choices. “Where will you be in 10 years?” he asked me. “Search me,” I replied. I did in the end get him to buy me an overpriced cocktail, which was all I cared about.
Now I wish I could tell him, “Well, after 27 years, I’m still laughing at you, you pompous ass.”
Another comment on the blog reminded me of when I was working at the strip joint in Boston (lo these many, many years ago) and this bachelor party of Harvard guys came in. I don’t know how their college affiliation came up, except the general fact that Harvard men think the sun shines out their ass and that everyone must be terrifically impressed by their prestigious alma mater that their dad probably bought them into anyway. But I digress.
So I’m trying to get one of them to buy me a drink, as that was pretty much my job description at the time (I graduated to dancing a bit later), and thinking this will get me some traction, I say, “Oh, well I go to Wellesley.” Which was perfectly true, except that I was taking time off for what one of my friends on the faculty referred to as my “Junior Year *as* a Broad”. The guy’s response was hilarious. He totally didn’t believe me, because anyone who was working there was clearly an entirely different species from a woman who might occupy his rarefied world. So he quizzes me about different places on the Wellesley campus, who’s the President, la la la, all of which I of course pass with flying colors as I am indeed a proud Seven Sisters student.
When he finally managed to convince himself that I was, shockingly, a member of his social class come to some horrible and disgraceful pass, he became very concerned, and started lecturing me on my life choices. “Where will you be in 10 years?” he asked me. “Search me,” I replied. I did in the end get him to buy me an overpriced cocktail, which was all I cared about.
Now I wish I could tell him, “Well, after 27 years, I’m still laughing at you, you pompous ass.”
Thursday, May 15, 2008
The Gamut
On the one hand, hoo-fuckin'-ray! I'm so proud today that the two states in which I've spent most of my life are Massachusetts and California. It's very true that the fight is far from over, but this is cause for celebration, particularly as it's given our dear Governor Schwarzenegger a face-saving way to stop being a traitorous dickhead.
On the other one, Uh-oh. The DSM V, the new revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, is now in the works, and section on Gender Identity Disorders is up for revision. In and of itself, this isn't a problem; in fact, it might have been a very good thing, in many people's view. But anyone who listened to this two-part series on NPR on three families and their choices on how to deal with their transgendered children -- and has a functioning heart and brain -- knows that Dr. Kenneth Zucker is probably the worst possible choice the APA could have made to be in charge of the panel overseeing the revisions. I'm horrified for the profession I'm about to enter that this man would be considered to play this role. And I'm particularly horrified for the transgendered and intersexed children whose lives are warped and made hellish by this kind of "expertise". I know I'll be making my voice heard; I hope others will, too.
On the other one, Uh-oh. The DSM V, the new revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, is now in the works, and section on Gender Identity Disorders is up for revision. In and of itself, this isn't a problem; in fact, it might have been a very good thing, in many people's view. But anyone who listened to this two-part series on NPR on three families and their choices on how to deal with their transgendered children -- and has a functioning heart and brain -- knows that Dr. Kenneth Zucker is probably the worst possible choice the APA could have made to be in charge of the panel overseeing the revisions. I'm horrified for the profession I'm about to enter that this man would be considered to play this role. And I'm particularly horrified for the transgendered and intersexed children whose lives are warped and made hellish by this kind of "expertise". I know I'll be making my voice heard; I hope others will, too.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Confusion
I just re-read the "Allies Talking" post, and realized I'd misremembered what it really calls for. I guess this is because my heart went out so much to women of color when I was reading up on the controversies and threads that had brought that post about, that what I wanted most to do was just be there to listen to them, to add my voice to theirs in saying how fucked up all of that was.
But no, what it's asking for is for allies to talk to each other about how to help people who come from our same backgrounds wake up and examine and get rid of their own garbage. I don't know that I'm very good at this myself; I get so mad, because it's hard for me to recognize that sometimes people really don't see what they're thinking and doing, don't see how dishonest and hypocritical they seem to me to be.
Particularly if they're my age or older (I'm 47), I think, "You were alive in the 60s and 70s. Were you in a cocoon, did you not see what was being done to people, do you not realize it was in the service of keeping you on top of the pile, or as close to the top as the combination of the dominant hierarchy and your personal configuration (sex, race, class, gender identity, sexual preference, et al.) allows you to be? Much less what still goes on, the vast inequities in opportunity, the battening of the prison-industrial complex on POC, the balancing the budget on the backs of the poor -- how can you not feel slimed by that, how can you not want to acknowledge and denounce and destroy that? And for god's sake, if you're supposedly a feminist, how can you have the audacity to tell people who've experienced forms of oppression you have no clue about what their priorities should be? What would you do to a man who tried that with you?"
But people get tunnel-vision. They feel overwhelmed or at least consumed by their own lives, and particularly if they've never been outside the bubble of their privilege (and if we're talking about upper class privilege, that's a very sturdy bubble), then without intending to be or to do evil, maybe even with the intention to be and to do good, they can become very lazy and unimaginative in their thinking. They can forget to do any kind of check of what they see against what it might look like from another perspective. They can forget that there are other perspectives. It's one of the main things privilege allows you to do, after all, so it's an ingeniously self-sustaining system.
I think I get the most mileage out of using myself as an illustration. I'm someone who made quite a few mistakes as a young woman. I drank, I did drugs, I was highly unwise in a number of ways. But because of my skin privilege and my class background, the only suffering I did for it was emotional. I didn't get arrested, didn't go to jail, didn't come anywhere near all the kinds of consequences that can attend the exact same behavior if you didn't go to a Seven Sisters school and have judges and lawyers in your family tree. Because when most people in this society look at me, I don't look like a criminal to them, even as I'm in the process of committing a crime. No, in the socially-constructed photo album that's being pounded into us by the surrounding culture 24/7, criminals look like poor people, people of color, deviants -- not like me. I was just a nice girl with some problems.
If I can get it to that level, if I can start making people think about the fact that you don't have to want to be a racist to have racist thoughts, and that you don't have to want to be a racist to benefit from racism -- in fact that you can hate racism passionately and still catch yourself making assumptions based on race that are bogus and condescending, and getting big bow-tied presents from a system that gives you unfair advantages whether you want them or not -- then sometimes things can proceed.
I liken it to shopping at a store with fantastic low prices, and then finding out that it's a kind of price club that only people who look like you can join, and that the prices are low because all the goods are stolen from people who don't look like you. At that point, no, it's not your fault that the set-up is so corrupt and godawful -- you didn't make the rules, and you didn't steal the goods. But if you keep shopping at that store and pretending everything's okay and you have every right to shop there, then, well, yeah, you're an opportunist and a racist, and don't expect any sympathy from me if people call you on it.
But no, what it's asking for is for allies to talk to each other about how to help people who come from our same backgrounds wake up and examine and get rid of their own garbage. I don't know that I'm very good at this myself; I get so mad, because it's hard for me to recognize that sometimes people really don't see what they're thinking and doing, don't see how dishonest and hypocritical they seem to me to be.
Particularly if they're my age or older (I'm 47), I think, "You were alive in the 60s and 70s. Were you in a cocoon, did you not see what was being done to people, do you not realize it was in the service of keeping you on top of the pile, or as close to the top as the combination of the dominant hierarchy and your personal configuration (sex, race, class, gender identity, sexual preference, et al.) allows you to be? Much less what still goes on, the vast inequities in opportunity, the battening of the prison-industrial complex on POC, the balancing the budget on the backs of the poor -- how can you not feel slimed by that, how can you not want to acknowledge and denounce and destroy that? And for god's sake, if you're supposedly a feminist, how can you have the audacity to tell people who've experienced forms of oppression you have no clue about what their priorities should be? What would you do to a man who tried that with you?"
But people get tunnel-vision. They feel overwhelmed or at least consumed by their own lives, and particularly if they've never been outside the bubble of their privilege (and if we're talking about upper class privilege, that's a very sturdy bubble), then without intending to be or to do evil, maybe even with the intention to be and to do good, they can become very lazy and unimaginative in their thinking. They can forget to do any kind of check of what they see against what it might look like from another perspective. They can forget that there are other perspectives. It's one of the main things privilege allows you to do, after all, so it's an ingeniously self-sustaining system.
I think I get the most mileage out of using myself as an illustration. I'm someone who made quite a few mistakes as a young woman. I drank, I did drugs, I was highly unwise in a number of ways. But because of my skin privilege and my class background, the only suffering I did for it was emotional. I didn't get arrested, didn't go to jail, didn't come anywhere near all the kinds of consequences that can attend the exact same behavior if you didn't go to a Seven Sisters school and have judges and lawyers in your family tree. Because when most people in this society look at me, I don't look like a criminal to them, even as I'm in the process of committing a crime. No, in the socially-constructed photo album that's being pounded into us by the surrounding culture 24/7, criminals look like poor people, people of color, deviants -- not like me. I was just a nice girl with some problems.
If I can get it to that level, if I can start making people think about the fact that you don't have to want to be a racist to have racist thoughts, and that you don't have to want to be a racist to benefit from racism -- in fact that you can hate racism passionately and still catch yourself making assumptions based on race that are bogus and condescending, and getting big bow-tied presents from a system that gives you unfair advantages whether you want them or not -- then sometimes things can proceed.
I liken it to shopping at a store with fantastic low prices, and then finding out that it's a kind of price club that only people who look like you can join, and that the prices are low because all the goods are stolen from people who don't look like you. At that point, no, it's not your fault that the set-up is so corrupt and godawful -- you didn't make the rules, and you didn't steal the goods. But if you keep shopping at that store and pretending everything's okay and you have every right to shop there, then, well, yeah, you're an opportunist and a racist, and don't expect any sympathy from me if people call you on it.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
First Order of Business
I’ve been thinking about putting up a blog for some time. I mean, I definitely need one more thing to feel guilty about not doing enough of, and this really fits the bill! But what decided me to act was something important that I want to be a part of: The Carnival of Allies at The Angry Black Woman’s blog.
I’m absurdly new to the blogosphere, and don’t know whether I’ll really be having much to do with it as a whole; my main goal is just to post some funny stuff and random thoughts for my friends to read and laugh at. But a couple of weeks ago I stumbled onto the controversy that had erupted over what basically amounts to Olympic-style under-the-bus-hurling of women of color by white so-called feminists. I don’t think I need to recapitulate that whole debate, but if someone is reading this and doesn’t have the background, this post does a brilliant job of rounding up the discussion and the issues.
(Also, I’m not sure – I seem to have read something somewhere that implied that linking without permission might violate some form of netiquette. If this is true, and someone comes looking to see why the dumb newbie did that, it’s ‘cause, um, I’m a dumb newbie. I hope you’ll accept my apologies and point me to some source of info that can school me so I won’t do dumb things anymore. I know I should do my own homework, but I’m in a hurry because I don’t want to miss The Angry Black Woman’s May 5th deadline.)
I’m a straight, upper-middle-class, middle-aged white woman who’s cared about social justice all her life, although for a number of years I wasn’t doing a lot about it; I’m trying to change that now in various ways. In reading what I have of these discussions, the rage I’ve felt at people for the level of abject hypocrisy and mendacity often evidenced has had my stomach in knots. As of now, many of the people involved have, at least to some extent, apologized; some, it seems to me, more sincerely than others. Bully for them. I’m glad they’ve chosen to take responsibility for their words and their actions, and for the unquestioned and, for at least a time, hotly defended privilege that underlay them.
I’m not really interested, at the moment, in the white feminists at all. I’m interested in the WOC who’ve shut down their blogs, or who must have felt almost entirely hopeless about feminism in reading and reacting to all this crap. I don’t want a cookie from anybody, honestly, but I want to bake some for them. Because after the rage subsides, I imagine it must be so fucking tiring and saddening to still be arguing with people about this shit in the year of somebody’s Lord but not mine Two Thousand and Goddamn EIGHT already.
I understand why many women, in the aftermath of the past few weeks, are no longer identifying with, or as, feminists. I, too, dislike the idea of some kind of bogus injustice pyramid that must have a single locus of oppression at its pinnacle. I HATE THAT PEOPLE ARE OPPRESSED. I hate that women of color are oppressed. I hate that men of color are oppressed. I hate that white women are oppressed. I hate that working class people are oppressed. I hate that lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgendered people are oppressed. I hate that people with disabilities are oppressed. I hate it all, and I can’t imagine looking at anyone and telling them that they need to answer to my notions about which of those identities they have to ignore in order to have the dubious honor of organizing with me.
I want you to know: I am your ally. I want you to know that your oppression matters to me as much as mine. And for the love of everything that’s good and right, if you see me in any way contributing to it, I want you to tell me, immediately, please. Don’t wait to make sure my feelings won’t be hurt (although if you can be specific, that will be helpful). I’m a grown woman, and my feelings are my business -- I know that protecting them isn’t yours, not if I’m doing something that I’m blind to that makes your burden heavier. And I very well may be, because I am a human being, with limited powers of perception, who grew up in a thoroughly fucked-up society and is constantly having to call herself on racist, sexist, heterosexist, and other kinds of crap that has seeped into the back of my head entirely against my will. If you will help me in that endeavor, I will be in your debt, not the other way around.
I am your ally. My eyes and my ears and my arms and my heart are open to you. I imagine a world where all of our differences enrich and fascinate us, and we celebrate them late into the night. Thank you to all the women whose words I’ve read over the past couple of weeks who’ve helped remind me of how important that dream is to me, and what I should be doing to help accomplish it. I’m sorry for the bleakness you may have felt; I’ve felt it too, if perhaps not at the same depth. But we are here, and maybe others are waking up, and maybe this whole difficult and painful episode will have value in showing a lot of people what needs to change, in a way that a continued pleasant, undisturbed surface would never have done. I hope so.
And in any case, I hope we can share these cookies.
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