Laughing, of course. Via Ms. Musings:

In a surprise move expected to send shock waves through the world of TV journalism, CNN, the original cable news network, and NBC, which owns cable channels MSNBC and CNBC, announced a deal to consolidate their news divisions into a single giant network. The new network, to be called Where the White Women At or WWWA, is set to debut this week. CNN spokesman Jack Little explained the deal at a press conference Monday.

JACK LITTLE: For most of history, journalists could afford to spend their time covering wars, famines, politics and business. The reason for this is that everyone knew where the white women were at - at home, probably in the kitchen, minding the kids. Sometimes they were out shopping or knitting at a friend's house or, or even working as elementary school teachers, but by and large, the location of all white women was known. However, society has changed, and the business of journalism has changed with it. These days, with the increased opportunities available to white women, as a nation we are losing track. . . .

First of all the Supreme Court refuses to revisit Branzburg v. Hayes. Then, when we have two reporters who are willing to go to jail to protect their sources, Time Inc. steps in and decides to release its reporters notes to a grand jury.

This statement pretty much sums up the situation:

Zachary W. Carter, a former United States attorney in Brooklyn, said that media companies and their reporters have different obligations. "I don't believe that a company has the right to put the assets of it shareholders at risk in an act of civil disobedience," he said. "On the other hand, the reporters are only faced with the consequences to them personally. They have the absolute right to put their liberty and fortunes at risk."

Why is this a big deal? Because we have the force of the state, which is very powerful, threatening individuals who are adhering to a fundamental democratic principle: the public right to information abou the functioning of the government. A reporter who finds evidence of lawbreaking in the course of her work is not acting as a private citizen; she is acting as an instrument for the public interest. By threatening to jail reporters for doing their jobs, the state is attempting to intimidate them in order to suppress public information; at the moment, the only thing protecting the public's right to know is a professional code that most (not all) journalists believe in, which is that if necessary, they will go to jail to protect their sources.

In other words, by accepting jail time, reporters sacrifice their personal interests for the greater public good. Perhaps they should have to do this. Perhaps it is unsafe to create a blanket protection so that freedom of the press to publish--not the legalistic, "yeah sure, you can publish whatever you like, as long as you're willing to go to jail for it" but an effective version of freedom of the press that doesn't present individual reporters with an obvious and serious conflict of interest and ask them to function as heroes in order to uphold the constitution--can function. I don't know, although I think it sucks that the Supreme Court wasn't willing to entertain the argument. But we should recognize that, as long as we are relying on individual reporters' willingness to go to jail to safeguard their access to information, we're accepting a pretty shaky foundation for democracy. If and when professional ethics change, if and when individual reporters decide that their self-interest is more important to them than the public interest, we are fucked. Because if reporters won't go to jail to protect their sources, there's no reason to expect sources to go to jail to tell reporters what they know--which means that the power of the state will effectively intimidate all but the most heroic. Heroes are nice, and we all admire them; but do we really want our freedoms to hang by that thread? More to the point, do we have the right to expect heroism if we won't stand up for ourselves?

What's really scary here is that Time, Inc. is doing an end run around that problem by deciding that its corporate profits and fear of bad publicity, I guess, are more important than the democratic process. If we decide, as that idiot Zachary Carter is saying, that the "right" of shareholders to maximize profits are more important than the right of the public to know what the hell the government is doing, then, yeah, that's fascism: what else would you call it? Basically we've got a situation where the corporate profit interest and the state interest are colluding to persecute individuals and undermine the public right to know.

If we expect individual reporters to go to jail to keep us informed, but we do not expect individual shareholders to make a little less money, we do not expect corporations to back up employees who do their jobs in accordance with the highest standards of the profession, then we are moral cowards, selling our souls for a mess of pottage.

How much is our freedom worth?

Just for the record: I think that whoever leaked the Plame information is an asshole, and should go to jail. Because the leak, too, constitutes an attempt to intimidate whistle-blowers and suppress freedom of information. Even so, the larger principle is more important than the specific case.

Chocolate milkshakes made with tonic water taste a lot better than chocolate milkshakes made with milk. Less sweet, more like real chocolate.

Pseudonymous Kid slept waaaay in today, 'til about 2 pm. It's really hot, too; so when he woke up, he was incredibly cranky, because it's hot, and because he hates sleeping in (even though, like his parents, he's really not a morning person--I'm sure that the tension between his natural nightowl tendencies and his abhorrence for "wasting time" will haunt him, as it has me, his entire life, poor kid. In fact, he actually made Mr. B. go buy him an alarm clock the other day. A really loud one. Which he insists on setting and then sleeps through every morning. This, he gets from his father).

Scene: Pseudonymous Kid lying sprawled on bed. Enter Mama.

Pseudonymous Kid: NO! I'M SUPPOSED TO GET UP AT THE EXACT SAME TIME AS YOU AND PAPA!
Me: Honey, it's okay, you haven't missed anything. Papa and I have been sitting around on our computers.
Pseudonymous Kid: It is NOT okay.
Me: I see. Well, I have a nice cold washcloth here, if you want me to cool you off a little before you get up.
Pseudonymous Kid: NO! I don't want to cool off! Don't make me wet! (Throws a toy at me.)
Me (annoyed): Do not throw things at me. Do you want help getting up, or do you want me to go away?
Pseudonymous Kid (grumpy): GO. AWAY.
Me (short): Okay, fine. Get your own self up, get dressed, and come downstairs when you're ready.

Scene: Five minutes later, Pseudonymous Kid arrives downstairs wearing light cotton pants and a long-sleeve t-shirt.

Me: PK, I really think a long sleeve shirt is going to be too hot today.
Pseudonymous Kid (calmly, as if observing the weather): Mama, um. I really don't like being told what to do, or bossed around right now, because I just woke up.
Me: Okay, I understand. I'm not really bossing you, though. I just think you'll be too hot.
Pseudonymous Kid (patiently): Mama, I really don't like being told what to do or bossed around right now, because I just woke up.
Me: Okay. Are you hungry?
Pseudonymous Kid: Yes, a little.
Me: What do you want for breakfast?
Pseudonymous Kid: I don't know. Mama, 'scuse me, can I say something else?
Me: Yes, sure.
Pseudonymous Kid: A lot of people don't like being told what to do or bossed around when they first wake up.
Me: Yes, this is true. I understand. What do you want for breakfast?
Pseudonymous Kid: I said, I don't know.
Me: Okay. When you figure it out, let me know.
Pseudonymous Kid: Okay, I will.

1. Haloscan had some weird burp last night, where all the comments Sassycat left in various threads got somehow marked to automatically update, so that any time someone else left a comment, Sassy's comment would move to the bottom of the thread. I tried fixing it by manually changing the times on her comments, but now they seem to have disappeared altogether. Sorry, Sassy! And everyone else, if it looks like I (or someone else) is replying to a comment that isn't there, that's why.

2. Notice two new additions on the sidebar: one is a little blank blogads thingy, and another is a little paypal button. I may take the latter down; I put it up there planning on doing a little blegging so that I can afford to pay Lauren or someone to do a site redesign to accomodate the ads, but I am embarrassed about blegging and think, frankly, that it's pretty shitty to ask y'all to pay for my hobby, so instead I am fiddling around with templates and coding on a dummy blog I set up. In any case, expect some kind of new look at some point relatively soon, I hope.

That is all for now. It's hot, and I am out of cigarettes.

1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005

I absolutely adore I Blame the Patriarchy.

"I'd forgotten for a moment that feminists are required to waste at least half of their waking hours reassuring skittish fans of the status quo that we aren't man-hating nutjob conspiracy-theorists."

Love her.

It is hot and I have some severe crankitude going on tonight, so in lieu of Deep Thinking, I present. . . a meme! You have Elise to thank for this.

1. What were three of the stupidest things you have done in your life?

Je ne regrette rien. However, in the spirit of the thing...

A) When I was a sophomore, the Dean of my college invited me to be part of a pilot project in "training young women for leadership roles." I turned it down because I lived off campus and didn't want the committment.

On second thought, I actually do regret that deeply. Ok, je regrette une seule chose.

B) I stopped taking Spanish that same year, because I was fluent and had worked through all the lower-division courses and didn't want to move on to take Spanish lit. That was stupid. I've since lost fluency, too.

C) Not buying a house or condo in Grad School City when I started grad school. We thought about it, but opted not to, because I wouldn't be there "long enough." Stupid, stupid, stupid.

2. At the current moment, who has the most influence in your life?

I find this to be an odd question--myself, obviously, and Mr. B., and PK, and my boyfriend, C. A non-obvious answer: Katha Pollitt, whose career I would like to emulate, and who I am trying to get up the guts to write to about that.

3. If you were given a time machine that functioned, and you were allowed to only pick up to five people to dine with, who would you pick?

A lot of my standard answers to this question would give away my academic specialty, and since being cagey about that has become second nature, I will, with regret, decline to invite those people, and I hope they will forgive my offense and accept my invitation another time. For this particular gathering, then, I will invite:

Dorothy Parker
Emma Goldman
Oscar Wilde
my boyfriend (who volunteers to cook! Yay!)
Thomas Jefferson

4. If you had three wishes that were not supernatural, what would they be?

A job that excites me in a city I love.
A good national health plan.
Infinite frequent flyer miles.

5. Someone is visiting your hometown/place where you live at the moment. Name two things you regret your city not having, and two things people should avoid.

Two things this burg needs: Nightlife. Sidewalk cafes.

Two things to avoid: Asking the locals where to eat. The mall.

6. Name one event that has changed your life.

Learning to read.

7. Tag 5 people.

Oh, let's see. Mimbreno, Jo(e), Dorcasina, Dr. Crazy, and Theory Girl, who introduced herself to me today and promises to be pretty interesting.

1. In honor of the POTUS's speech last night, I thought I'd pass along a little context to what's happening, at least some of the time, in our fighting of the insurgents. Here's a sobering--indeed, upsetting--news I found over at Travis's place, from a recent speech by Seymour Hersh. It's about a massacre of a bunch of soccer-playing kids in Iraq:

soldiers ran out, saw some people running, opened up fire. It was a bunch of boys playing soccer. And in the digital videos you see everybody standing around, they pull the bodies together. This is last summer. They pull the bodies together. You see the body parts, the legs and boots of the Americans pulling bodies together. Young kids, I don’t know how old, 13, 15, I guess. And then you see soldiers dropping R.P.G.'s, which are rocket-launched grenades around them. And then they're called in as an insurgent kill. It's a kill of, you know, would-be insurgents or resistance and it goes into the computers, and I'm sure it's briefed.

Update: in the comments, Ed links to a letter, purportedly by the Lieutenant who led that attack, explaining the circumstances of it and refuting the claim that the people killed were soccer-playing kids rather than actual insurgents firing on his platoon. Obvoiusly I have no idea which version of the story is true, but I have to admit the letter sounds genuine to me. Hersh may be wrong on this one.

2. On the domestic front, we have the so-called Parent's Right to Know Act (S 1279, HR 3011), introduced in both the Senate and the House on 14 June. What's it say? That clinics receiving federal funding must notify the parents of minors seeking prescription contraceptives (i.e., girls--boys can still buy condoms all on their own) five days in advance of writing the prescription.

I got my prescription for the pill when I was seventeen. Under this law, the Planned Parenthood clinic I went to would have been required to notify my parents that I was seeking contraception--which almost certainly would have meant that I wouldn't have done it. Not because my parents were particularly awful--my mom found the pills in my purse shortly after I started taking them, and her only response was to make sure I knew about possible side effects--but because my parents were fighting all the time, the family situation was uncomfortable, I knew that talking to them about my sex life would just give them something else to fight about, and also because it was a private matter and none of their damn business. I was being responsible; I knew about safe sex and contraception, and acted accordingly. In part because I had the option, despite being a legal minor, of acting in a mature and adult fashion about my own reproductive health, and because my right and responsibility to do so were reinforced by the clinic and my own parents, I have had exactly one pregnancy in my entire life. If we want girls to be responsible about sex, then we need to let them be responsible about sex.

Write or call your Senator and Representative and tell them to oppose this bill.

3. I also promised you something beautiful. Here it is: a brand new, very old poem by Sappho (trans. Martin West).

[You for] the fragrant-blossomed Muses’ lovely gifts
[be zealous,] girls, [and the] clear melodious lyre:

[but my once tender] body old age now
[has seized;] my hair’s turned [white] instead of dark;

my heart’s grown heavy, my knees will not support me,
that once on a time were fleet for the dance as fawns.

This state I oft bemoan; but what’s to do?
Not to grow old, being human, there’s no way.

Tithonus once, the tale was, rose-armed Dawn,
love-smitten, carried off to the world’s end,

handsome and young then, yet in time grey age
o’ertook him, husband of immortal wife.

Pseudonymous Kid: Spank me!
Mr. B.: What? You want me to spank you?
Pseudonymous Kid: Yes! Hard!
Mr. B.: How hard?
Pseudonymous Kid: As hard as you can!
(Mr. B. grabs Pseudonymous Kid and spanks him a few times)
Me: Um,I really don't think that's appropriate....

Several recent posts have made me think again about this question of having a space of one's own in which to write. That, and the summer. Summers are nice because, even though they don't increase your actual space, they increase the sense of space: you can go outside without spending twenty minutes suiting up, you can open the windows, you can move about more easily. And your sense of time (if you're an academic, and you're not teaching): suddenly there are a lot fewer places you "have" to be, a lot fewer scheduled demands.

Both of these things are really important parts of the whole "room of one's own" construct. It's not only the physical space, but the mental and temporal space, one craves. Not just freedom from interruptions, but freedom from the threat of interruptions, the possibility of distraction. So, for instance, even if Mr. B. is in charge of Pseudonymous Kid, hearing them argue over whether or not it's time for a bath is still a distraction. Or even, big picture, the fact of marriage and children at all: having a running tally in your head over whether you're out of milk and yogurt, whether your husband's been watching the kid for two hours or three and is it time for me to step in and give him a break yet, wondering if your partner remembered to call the bank or not. It's amazing, when you get a break from all that, to realize how much of a burden it is to carry around all the time, how much it imposes on your ability to think and write.

Or, of course, even if you're not writing. Even if you just enjoy the privilege of deciding on the spur of the moment that it's a nice day and you want to go for a walk, or call a friend and see if they can meet you for a drink. I'm rather wistful, often, about the incredible mental and physical freedom I remember having pre-PK.

I often fantasize about the year I spent preparing for my qualifying exams. Now, I know for a fact that a lot of that year I spent being incredibly stressed out, but in retrospect, I had it so good. Mr. B. was living in another state, and I had a little apartment that was half of the third floor of a house on top of a hill. The other half was rented by a woman who was a nurse, and often worked nights, and she and I shared a balcony out back where we'd sometimes join each other for a beer and a view of the mountains. I would walk a few blocks to the not-too-big yuppie grocery store and think, "huh, ostrich. I wonder what that tastes like," so I'd buy some and take it home and cook it with a little bit of soy sauce for dinner (verdict: extremely good). I'd buy myself fresh flowers every week and put them on my desk. I was done with my coursework and only teaching one class, so I'd sleep 'til whenever, stay up 'til whenever, go to campus, teach my class, and have the rest of the day to do whatever I wanted or needed to do. I'd get bored late at night and flip on the TV to find "A Few Good Men," and lacking anything better to do, I'd watch it and phone up my girlfriend to give her a running commentary on how awful it was. I'd make messes, but they would be my messes, and things would stay where I put them until I tidied them up, rather than multiplying because my mess constituted tacit permission for others to add messes too. I read stuff, putzed around, wasted time.

And now, of course, I think sometimes, "wow, how much I could have gotten done then," but more often I think, "not trying to get things done was what was so wonderful about that year."

Now that I live with Mr. B. and PK, I not only lack that time and space, I have to really struggle with relaxing into the time and space I do have. There's a strong tendency to feel guilty about being "selfish" for wanting my own office, when we only have a two-bedroom house; to feel jumpy and defensive about spending time on the computer; to waste too much time online because having my head in the computer gives me something to occupy the front of my brain so I can stop being available to PK and Mr. B. for a while; to feel angry at myself when Pseudonymous Kid is "bored" and floating around the house whining, and then to get angry at Mr. B. because he's not engaging PK so that I don't have to feel bad for not doing it myself.

I can't live alone again. I won't say "and of course I really don't want to," because the fact is, I often do. But I won't. Nonetheless, I want to try to find a way to integrate what I now realize about how valuable that is, to recapture the important parts of it somehow. Part of that was realizing, last winter, that I needed to shed my guilt about wanting the second bedroom to be my office, just mine--not shared with Mr. B., not half a playroom, not half a guest room. Part of that is not feeling guilty at all about having a boyfriend. Part of that is accepting that yeah, I do want to move away, and feeling okay about that rather than beating myself up for "dragging" my family hither and yon, "making" them come out here to support my career, "making" them go back because I frivolously changed my mind. Part of that is wanting to step back from the anxious academic mindset I learned in graduate school (whether or not I end up in or out of academia), the mindset that you should always be doing something "for" someone or something other than yourself.

I want a room of my own, but mostly I want room in my own head.

Jessica drew my attention to Katha Pollitt's new piece on this whole let's reframe abortion argument. As Pollitt points out, Lakoff's argument notably overlooks the key word "women," who are, of course, the only people who have abortions (with very rare exceptions).

Now, I've already proposed my own "reframing" of the abortion argument as a question of trusting women's moral agency. There's also the argument that abortion is a responsible decision, but I think that flows from the premise that women are moral agents and that we can't second-guess the life decisions of strangers. I recently had a kinda of long email exchange with Adam Ash on this very question, actually. So, in lieu of an actual essay, here's what went down:

Adam: Dear Bitch,

Something to blog about:

"A Reframing I’d Like to See: Government-Enforced Childbirth

For all the talk about “reframing” the abortion debate, the reframing I’d like to see never seems to come up. The issue is government-enforced childbirth. Right-wingers want government-enforced childbirth; lefties don’t.

The issue is not whether we favor or oppose abortion. Plenty of people who are personally opposed to abortion are still pro-choice. You can’t tell the difference between pro-choicers and pro-lifers by asking, “do you favor abortion?” You can tell the difference by asking, “should there be government-enforced childbirth for pregnant women?” Government-enforced childbirth is the defining issue; wanting government-enforced childbirth, not wanting abortion, is the difference between the opposition and us."

IT'S on Alas, a Blog.

Me: Thanks.

I dunno about this particular framework, though. Because that question they ask--"should women who get pregnant be forced by the government to bear children"--is one that's pretty easy to just answer "yes" to, by saying, "it isn't the government forcing them... it's nature/god."

But this "government enforced" thing, yes. There's something in that. Ideally, of course, one simply wouldn't have laws regulating abortion...

Adam: Yep, but you could say god or nature wants them to bear the child, but the gummint shouldn't force them. They should stay out of that particular decision, the way they should stay out of Terri Schiavo matters. It becomes almost a privacy issue.

Me: Right, but the argument would be, it isn't the *government* forcing them--the government didn't knock them up. It's "just the way things are."

The problem with the "privacy" argument is similar: like property law, private decision-making is always subject to the argument that there's a state interest in limiting it. More and more, I think the argument is just, either you think that (the vast majority) of women are smart and responsible human beings, and know what's best for their own particular lives (and their children's)--or you don't. If you do, then the privacy/government arguments follow; if you don't, then those arguments aren't going to work, either. Because it really does boil down to the simple fact that men don't have abortions.

Adam: Are you saying there is no legal argument for abortion; no legal reason to legislate in favor of pro-choice or against government-enforced childbirth?

Hmm.

Could be there are things -- maybe porn is another -- that exist not to be made laws about: and the fact that we still make laws about them, proves not that the law is wrong, but that we still live in some pre-age-of-reason Unenlightenment. We're socially behind ourselves, so we look to laws to protect us. Today, for example, having moved on a bit, we don't need laws for or against slavery.

Me: Yeah, maybe I am. At least, I think I'm starting to believe that any argument about legislating abortion implies the reasonableness of an argument for legislating *against* it. When more and more I fundamentally think it's just not something you can legislate. People will do it, regardless--because, like I said once, women "get" that having children is a Really Big Deal, and we're not going to do it under circumstances where we think we aren't up to the task.

Although I'd say that that position is a post-Enlightenment position, not a pre-Enlightenment one; after all, a big part of the enlightenment was the invention of the importance of the rule of law.

BTW, do you mind if I post this exchange on the blog? I think it's interesting.

Adam: I wonder what other things there are -- besides abortion, slavery, smoking pot, maybe porn -- that will one day be extra-legal, because they've passed beyond the rule of the rule of law; they've become so socially acceptable/unacceptable, they don't need laws. Eating meat or not, for example, is extra-legal, even though people have strong views about it. Perhaps if animal rights become important, we'll make laws against eating the poor creatures, on the way to there not having to be laws about it -- because maybe in the end no one would think of doing what would be regarded as such a horrible thing.

Perhaps all laws are an intermediate stage to morality, and eventually we won't need any laws at all. Paradise is a world without laws. Didn't Marx stay the state would wither away?

P.S. Sure, post this exchange.

....

Adam again: Dear Bitch,

Some reframing options besides "government-enforced childbirth" --
1. Mandatory motherhood
2. State-controlled childbirth
3. Parent-controlled childbirth (i.e. State-controlled vs.
Parent-controlled childbirth)
4. Government-controlled childbirth
5. Government-controlled breeding
6. Nationalized childbirth
7. Nationalized breeding
8. Nationalized breeding industry
9. Government womb control
10. State-controlled wombs
11. Womb oppression
12. Womb rights
13. Womb liberty
14. Womb freedom
15. Womb ownership
16. Womb ownership rights
17. Body liberty
18. Body rights
19. Body ownership
20. Full body freedom
21. Forced full-term fetal evolution
22. Government womb take-over
23. Uterus colonialization
24. Uterus usury
25. Embryo imperialism

Some work better than others. No doubt your readers could think of more. I wish I could stop thinking about this. Mind too pregnant. Need a thought abortion.

So. Thoughts? Ideas? I agree with Pollitt that "reframing" is weak, and is perceived as such. My argument is that what we need is to hold the line, and articulate *why* it's a line--specifically by doing a better job of making the argument personal (real people's stories) rather than abstract, and by pointing out that limiting or prohibiting abortion--especially limiting it--means that we think that we / the state are better moral judges than individual women. I think there's a strong argument to be made like such:

"Think about the women you know in your life. Your mom, your sister, your wife. Or, if you're a woman, think about yourself. Do the women you know take children seriously? Are they responsible people? If they have children, are they good mothers?

I bet most of you are thinking, yes. Yes, the women I know are good mothers, yes they are responsible people, yes I respect them.

But when we talk about abortion, we talk about it as if we didn't think that women were responsible people, as if we didn't think that women take abortion seriously. We talk about it as if women get abortions for "convenience," as if women didn't think any more about it than they do whether to call for pizza delivery on a busy school night. We talk about the things that concern us when women consider abortion--how far along is the pregnancy? Is the fetus human? Is it a baby or not? Was she using birth control? Shouldn't she have tried not to get pregnant in the first place?--as if we didn't think that women, when they're forced with that choice, think of those very same things.

But if you think about it, that's not how the women we know think about these decisions. When the women we know are thinking about whether to have or not to have a child, to try to get pregnant or to try to avoid pregnancy, they think long and hard. If the women in your life are anything like the women I know, they're pretty smart, and they're pretty good at decision-making, and they take these questions about pregnancy and children very seriously indeed. Most women do. Including women who have abortions.

Let me tell you a few stories...."

When you need a break from thinking up reasons why sixteen-year old boys shouldn't have abortions, you might spare a moment to swish and flick your way to undermining the war effort, as Adam, Michael, and lots and lots of current and former military folks are doing.

That last link came from Shakespeare's Sister, who I think was the original model for Macbeth's witches.

Seriously, check out Ema's post about a 16yo boy who had surgery to remove a 3-lb fetus from his abdomen.

And don't give me that "but it was a sixteen-year old dead fetus!" argument--no one seems to care about whether or not a fetus is dead when they go around outlawing dilation & extraction.

Update: Dadahead points out I didn't read the article closely enough--the fetus was alive. Even better. C'mon, all those who are "uncomfortable with late term abortions"--can you get any later term than sixteen years?!? Let's hear your explanations of why this young man should not have had the surgery.

I sincerely hope that you are not planning on plagiarizing anything I've written on the subject. If you are, you should know that it is incredibly easy to find this blog via google, that I know your host name, ip address and ISP, and that I'm totally willing to rat you out. You'll also notice that there's a little "creative commons" copyright button down there below the blogroll. It's there for a reason.

If you were just looking for something to read, however, I hope you enjoyed it. Don't forget to cite your sources.

In response to three of you, and in honor of pride weekend, and because I've been thinking about this a little bit myself (why, in a moment), here are my musings on that question. (In which I do not once cite Judith Butler or anyone else for the simple fact that I've never read a word of queer theory in my life. Because I am an ignoramus, but we can discuss that another time.)

The case for, beginning with an anecdote:

I have two colleagues, a couple, who I've told about the blog. Of course, whenever I tell someone about the blog, I also feel like I have to tell them in person about the open marriage thing--it seems kind of lame and passive-aggressive to expect people to just stumble on it, and then there would be the whole awkward thing of "she told me about the blog, so she must have known I'd find out, but what if she didn't think about it, and am I supposed to mention this in person, or is the stuff written on the blog that she doesn't bring up in person meant to remain in the realm of politely unacknowledged facts, like overhearing someone farting?" Plus, I like them a lot, and so does Mr. B.

Now, as it happens, these friends are an out lesbian couple. The initial reaction to my big confession was very matter-of-fact: "yeah, I used to have an open relationship." And we talked, a little bit, about whether people's reaction to a man/woman open relationship, where the other partner is a woman (i.e., the openness hinges around a bisexual woman who has partners of each sex) would be any different than people's reaction to a het couple, like us, having an open relationship. And I mentioned, not that I needed to, that I really don't want other folks in the department to know about the blog--for a variety of reasons, one of which is the open relationship (though that's not the only, or even primary reason). And one of my friends said, again very matter-of-fact, "do you really think anyone would care?"

Now, one of the things I really like about this friend is, she didn't say it in a challenging way; the message intended wasn't, I think, "you realize that by passing as a monogamous heterosexual couple, you're skating on a kind of privilege that my partner and I can't take for granted." It was really just a simple question. And I thought about it for a second, and then had to say, much to my surprise, "actually, no. I guess not."

But it got me thinking. Over the last year, since the boyfriend became a real fact of my life, I've started slowly "outing" myself to some people. Most of my graduate school friends already knew that Mr. B. and I had an open relationship (although my friend Emily D.--who herself had a long-standing open relationship with her girlfriend for ages--asked me, recently, "didn't that used to be mostly theoretical?"). I told my sister about C. a few months ago, and she asked, "are you sure everything's okay with you and Mr. B.?" and I said yes, and she said, "well then, it's really none of my business." And then more recently, I told sister in law #3, and she asked the same question, and then had basically the same response, plus a lot of interesting conversation about cultural expectations and so on. And sister in law #1 apparently discovered the blog, unbeknownst to me, a while back, and finally confessed to me while we were on vacation, immediately followed by "of course, it's none of my business" (though I understand she later asked Mr. B. the obligatory, "but is it really all right?" question). And then the other day I told my good old friend R., who promised to marry me the next time he wants to get married (I told him to stand in line), and he also had the, "is it really okay?" question, and I said, "everyone asks that," and bless him, he laughed and said, "ah. Well, I'll try to come up with more original questions."

Of course, there are still people I haven't told. Parents--but then, there are a lot of things I prefer not to tell them. My best friend--who loves me but who would be, I think, "concerned." The most judgmental of my sisters in law. My brother in law (no real reason, just I haven't seen him in a while). On the other hand, most of C's family and friends know. Partly this is because he just has a more loosely "screw it" kind of attitude than I do; but partly it may be because he's less invested in the status quo than I am, less "establishment" as he jokingly put it once.

So, she says, winding around to the point, there's a case to be made that we are "queer," and closeted (or in the process of coming out). Certainly the arrangement we have challenges normative definitions of heterosexuality, not to mention marriage. Obviously the freedom I have to be out about my sex life is one I owe, in large part, to queers--when told, people often say (after they ask if it's "really okay"), "well, I guess a lot of gay couples have done that for a while now." Being out about it can make people rethink their ideas of what's "normal," reconsider the public and private aspects of sexuality, challenge the default constructs they're carrying around in their heads. It also, of course, opens me up to judgement, to questions about "private" things, to curiosity about things that "normal" straight people don't have to answer for. If we weren't in an open relationship, people wouldn't have the temerity to say that we're heading for divorce absent any evidence; they wouldn't ask personal questions about whether or not I sleep with my husband; I wouldn't have to worry about whether or not people are willing to "tolerate" me; they wouldn't have any reason to wonder if things are "really okay."

For my part, I'm increasingly realizing that being closeted about it is untenable and uncomfortable; C. is part of my life, not just a "friend," and I'd like to be able to acknowledge him as such in casual conversation, to consider having him visit me without having to negotiate introducing him to my friends, to not have to keep him on the margins of my life. I realized Pseudonymous Kid would have to meet him, would have to know where this other place is that mama goes to visit sometimes, will have to know (more or less) about that aspect of my life in order for me to have a healthy relationship with my own child, one that isn't built around secrets and having big parts of my life off limits to him.

And of course, even if I manage to construct a life in which I'm comfortably out about my relationship with C., we don't have any "official" standing beyond what our friends and family allow us to have. My sister knows about the relationship; I have no idea, however, what would happen if I tried to bring him along to a family gathering. My friends are cool with it; but if I went to visit them with him, rather than with Mr. B., it would probably be slightly awkward. We obviously couldn't marry or put each other on our health insurance plans--even under "domestic partner" type rules, which always presume that "partner" has only a singular form. I struggle with not wanting my relationship with C. to be "secondary," or "on the side," although of course the fact that Mr. B. and I are married and have a child, while C. lives in a different city, means that structurally the latter relationship "accomodates" the first more than the other way around. I find it interesting (and annoying) that this fact gets overlooked by people, who are always concerned about Mr. B.'s happiness with the arrangement, but seldom even think to wonder about C.'s (or mine, since the presumption is that I'm having my cake and eating it too)--a fact that I think is kind of a testament to how much we unconsciously still reflect marriage as a patriarchal institution.

In all those senses, I think, sure: one could say I'm queer.

The case against:

On the other hand (and why, careful readers will have noted, I said "one could say" rather than "I say"), it seems to me there's a fairly big difference between any queerness heterosexual open relationship types might claim, and the queerness that gays, lesbians, and transsexuals claim. Primarily, I think, it's a question of whether "queerness" is about identity, or action. The fact of the matter is, society broadly considers open marriage something one does, rather than something one is. Now, of course, historically speaking (and in some cultural contexts), this is still the case for homosexuality; but for the most part, here in the U.S. being gay or transgendered is thought of as a question of identity, not action. Probably because of this, the fact is that, though I might risk social awkwardness or possibly being quietly disqualified from consideration for a job or a promotion because of my "lifestyle," I'm not really very likely to get beaten up.

While I don't think that monogamy is "natural," I do think that being monogamous vs. being non-monogamous is primarily a question of choice and negotiation between couples. I suppose it's possible that I could have a monogamous marriage, although I think I would be less happy in such an arrangement. Off the top of my head, I don't think that I'd consider it a fundamental violation of my identity in the same way I'd consider being married to a woman. Being as I'm not sexually attracted to women. (Though I do confess that there's a certain kind of soft butch--think k.d. lang--look that is a little swoony for me.)

But then maybe I would. And certainly it's also true that much of the theory behind "queerness" is about challenging precisely the idea that there's a static correlation between identity and action. But I confess I'm hesitant to identify as queer, though not for the same reasons I'm hesitant to be open about the open marriage; precisely the opposite. Mostly, I guess, because I'm not really sure I have the credentials to be part of the club. But I'm not entirely part of the straight club, either. I think I'm coming to the realization that I'm queer enough that I owe it to other, "real" queers to be out about my deviations from the norm, because obviously passing is not only uncomfortable for me personally, but also implicitly a kind of perpetuation of the idea that heterosexual = straight and GLBT = queer (an idea that's obviously still one I'm thinking my way out of). And I'm also realizing that a lot of what I miss about Grad School City is that we were part of queer culture there--my therapist was a dyke, my ob/gyn was a post-op mtf transsexual, my friends were all over the map. Hell, maybe it's significant that the people I like best at my current job are mostly (though not exclusively) lesbian or gay.

Results: inconclusive

So I dunno. To some, I'm sure, that's queer enough. To others, I'm sure it's just a half-assed self-serving appropriation of p.c. cred. Me, I think at the moment it's about halfway in between. If someone wants me to sign the affadavit of queerness so that they can collect their toaster oven, I'm quite happy to do so; and if Tinytown had a pride parade, I'd certainly go; but I don't think I'm quite ready to argue that we oughta expand "GLBT" to "GLBTP(oly)."

But I'm not going to argue that we shouldn't, either.

Baby cheetahs!

(If the link doesn't work, try this one, and click on the "photos" link--use bugmenot if you need a password.)

Just yesterday a friend of mine who is Icelandic was asking me about American public education. (Our kids are in the same class.) I gave him the rundown of forced integration, the property tax revolt that started in California in the 1970s, white flight and the ongoing abandonment of the public sphere, and so on. We talked about taxes and the public sphere, whether or not the heterogeneity of the United States (as opposed to Iceland) creates a particular suspicion of the public sphere, and what the respective benefits of state funding vs. volunteerism vs. private funding of public goods (education, health care, etc.) are.

And then today I flip open the virtual NYT to find this article: Philadelphia Mandates Black History Course for High School Graduation. Wow! In the age of standardized testing, of arguments for school vouchers, of the always foolish arguments about what people do and do not want "their" tax dollars paying for, the Philadelpha school district has the insight and intelligence to mandate a course like this.

"You cannot understand American history without understanding the African-American experience; I don't care what anybody says," said Paul G. Vallas, the school system's chief executive, who is white. "It benefits African-American children who need a more comprehensive understanding of their own culture, and it also benefits non-African-Americans to understand the full totality of the American experience."

Absolutely right. And I really get a kick out of that little phrase, "non-African-Americans"--what a turnaround from the usual locution of "non-white," what a subtle little reversal of the margins and the center.

Of course, there are the expected objections: it's divisive (yeah, if you're a bigot), now every minority group will want a course like this (well, yes; but that doesn't negate the fact that the African-American experience is absolutely central, or the crime that most white kids--and not only white kids--can't name more than a handful of important African-American figures-- G'wan, especially if you're white, try it: MLK, Malcom X, Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver (or, as I once heard him referred to, "the peanut guy"), Shirley Chisolm . . . how much can you really say about any of them beyond a simple soundbite like "the peanut guy"?) Ideally, of course, "American history" courses would already contain tons of African-American history, tons of Spanish and Mexican history, tons of history of American Indians (including the fact that they still exist), the Chinese, the Filipinos, etc. etc.--but that hasn't happened very well. Ya gotta start somewhere, and quibbling with the centrality of Black history in the U.S. is pretty dumb.

There's one line in the article that speaks to a particular worry of mine, the way that multiculturalism can be (and often is) dumbed-down to an essentialist idea that cultures are distinct (do, if you haven't already, read Michael Bérubé's fantastic blog entry on the distinction between culture and society) and the implied corrolary that segregation is progressive:

A friend of Mr. Budnick, Arbi Ferko, also 16, said, "It's not our history to learn."

Okay, admittedly this kid is only sixteen. But he's pretty typical of what I see in my undergraduates: if they're conservative, they deny that racism exists; if they're liberal, they essentialize and divide. Drives me nuts.

Hopefully this course will equip some of the college freshmen of the future with a better understanding of history--not just content, but how it works. That histories, plural, are part of history, singular; that individuals as historic actors draw on, and are shaped by, lots of different cultures; that "multiculturalism" means more than "you have yours, and I have mine"; that dialectic exchange is an important part of the process. Certainly the book they're using looks pretty darn good. I might just see if I can get my hands on a desk copy.

Quite a while ago, Grace sent me an email about grading. I thought it was really interesting, and promised to post something about it, and then, being a big dork, I forgot. And then, as you see, she reminded me. And I went "d'oh!" and dug through my old email and.... voila!

Grace:

I've been an adjunct slave this year at a couple of local schools. . . . The thing I've found most difficult about it is grading (I can do the classroom part OK). What intrigues me about this is WHY I find grading difficult. Yeah, it's boring and time consuming and repetitive and one's students write asinine things in illiterate ways, but what really bugs me is the intimacy. I find it really embarrassing, invasive almost, to read my students' work and tell them what they should think. I can just about do what's necessary in my lit course, but I suspect that I would never make a decent comp teacher, however long I tried, because I find it so painful to rip up other people's writing. (I found it embarrassing to have my own writing ripped up in college, and maybe those memories are just a bit too close.) Even at the end of my second semester, I still dread sitting down and confronting the students' writing.

. . . . I'd be interested in your readers' responses to my attitude to grading, and what they feel about grading. Do they actually enjoy it (which I would not find weird at all, if teaching IS their vocation)? Is it an emotionless chore? Or are there those who feel as I do?

Speaking for myself, I hate grading--but mostly just because it's agonizingly hard work. I don't feel guilty or bad at all; and I don't feel like I'm "ripping up" what students write or say. I think of it, instead, as trying to help them articulate their ideas, analyze the material, explain what they think. The hard part is having to really attend to figure out what it is they're trying to say; to figure out how to articulate that without putting words in their mouth or thinking for them; to think of comments or questions that will help them realize the gap between what they think they're saying and what's actually on the paper. I'm a big believer in a fairly Socratic method of teaching; but that method's a lot of work; and while I do enjoy working with students on their writing, when you're looking at piles and piles and piles of papers, a big part of your thinking has to be "how do I get through these as quickly as possible?" So part of the hating grading thing is the tension between how I *want* to grade and how I *have* to grade, as well as the sheer labor of (often) paying more attention to what the students write than they themselves do.

The up side is that I've found, when they figure out that you really do try to treat their writing with respect, it gets a lot better. Which is irritating as well as encouraging, because it suggests so much of the crap that we have to read is crap because they really won't try very hard unless they see that you are. It's kind of like pushing a rope, sometimes.

So, the rest of you: I know it's summer, and grading is the farthest thing from everyone's mind, but maybe it's a good time to think about it, when we're not caught in the midst of it all. What are your feelings about the process?

Via The Heretik, who's been on the case, this news:

U.S. Acknowledges Torture at Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan.

The acknowledgement was made in a report submitted to the UN Committee against Torture, said a member of the ten-person panel, speaking on on condition of anonymity.

UN sources said it was the first time the world body has received such a frank statement on torture from US authorities.

The document from Washington will not be formally made public until the hearings.

Downside: the hearings aren't until May 2006. Also,

"They said it was a question of isolated cases, that there was nothing systematic and that the guilty were in the process of being punished."

The US report said that those involved were low-ranking members of the military and that their acts were not approved by their superiors, the member added.

It's something. Not a lot, but something.

I wonder how this news will affect the White House's refusal earlier this week to have hearings on the subject...

Ah, thank god for the good guys (though I suppose it's kind of sad to be thanking god that there are men who get the basic fundamental concept that women are their equals). Mimbreno gave me the heads up to a couple of great posts, indirectly inspired by the foolish fallout after Gilliard stumbled on his dick while trying to say that school trips to Aruba should supervise their charges, but somehow ended up saying that women who leave bars with men they've just met ought to know that this constitutes consent for sex.

From that first link:

I have never raped anyone. I don't think that's somethig to be proud of. It's the default fucking setting that every goddamned man on this stupid fucking planet ought to have. You can't be proud of not raping anymore than you can be proud of not shitting on yourself whenever you laugh. Most men*, as far as I know, have never raped anyone, and in a normal world you'd think that not being an evil, violent monster would make one more sympathetic to one's fellow human beings, IE women, who are also not monsters.

Apparently, that's not the case, as tons of male bloggers are stepping over themselves to equivocate and fiddle back and forth on the subject of rape. Sure, they lazily toss in 'tributes' to women who have been assaulted before lecturing thse women on how they ought to behave, but the truth is that they seem more worried about giving some kind of cover, understanding, to the victimizer.

These sad douchebags seem to think men can't control themselves. They seem to think that it's somehow the woman's responsibility not to get raped, rather than society's responsibilty to punish and prevent rape in the first place.

While I'm ranting, sexually liberated women are the best women on earth. God bless 'em. They ought to be praised, not blamed for a culture that seems to think that sexual openess somehow justifies assault.

From the second link:

The old "unlocked car/flashy jewelry/running naked" in a violent neighborhood at night argument is a common tactic in favor of shaming the victim. The idea seems to be that by somehow giving temptation to rapists, the victims of rape, while not actually to blame per se for their predicament, ought to endure greater responsibility for their situation.

It's also completely wrong.

The thing people (mostly male, though occasionally females as well) who make this argument are forgetting is that women, simply by being women, are on display at all times.

Exactly. Abso-fucking-lutely. Telling rape victims--including drunk 18yos in Aruba--that they ought not to be flashing the goodies reduces women to, well, to goodies to be flashed. Dude, if I get drunk off my ass and stumble down the street, I'm not flaunting "goods" to be "stolen." I'm getting drunk and stumbling down the street. If you see it as anything else then bingo, baby: that's what we call rape culture.

And speaking as one of those women who is, for the most part, sexually liberated, I'm glad that there are some guys out there who get that. Because the ones who don't sure as hell aren't worth fucking, and a girl has to get laid once in a while.

"Mama! Come wipe my butt!"

I find myself completely devoid of bloggable material. Mr. B.'s job offer might be disintegrating--it's contingent on the person who is hiring him taking another position (the idea was that Mr. B. would replace this guy on a contract job he was doing, and the guy is thinking he might not take the other position b/c the company is dicking around). On the other hand, he has a job interview lined up for a Really Big Company that you've all heard of, but which I won't name. Annoying things are happening at work, but I've gotten too paranoid to blog about work. My motivation to do much of anything is in the toilet. The first round of job applications I sent out didn't lead to anything, and I've got a ton of new leads I need to follow up on, but I'm feeling exhausted (nonetheless, I shall doubtless rouse myself to action by the end of the week). House painting and prepping for (we hope) a move is a hassle; currently the bathroom is in, well, a "state." Political blogging has kind of worn me down, and I'm feeling rather that it's like spitting into the wind anyway--plus there are lots of other bloggers over there under "liberal bias" who do a better job than I do. I'm wanting to get back into the personal/political stuff, but I think my ongoing disengagement from academia is leaving me rather at a loss.

Or maybe it's just summer.

Anyway, the point is, throw me some ideas! Anything, from writing workshop type exercises ("describe an orange") to nosy personal questions (which I might or might not answer, you realize), to "assignments," like "write an essay about X timely issue." What would you be interested in reading?

I dreamed that I bought a house in Spain. First I was there visiting some people who kind of had a hotel. We were at the top of the house and had to come down many flights of stairs. I don't remember who "we" were. Something odd was happening coming down the stairs--I was in my pyjamas, or things were very dirty, or something. But then at the bottom I went outside and there was a pond in the front yard and the tiles around it were sandy earth, and there were little invertebrate animals living in the sand and I could see them for a minute before the wet sand smoothed back out again. I was swinging on a rope from the overhang by the doorway. The doorway itself was a double door, painted on front and back with four different paintings, but all related. They were sort of fauvist, and there was a woman in all four panels, but also I think one had a big lake with lots of little animals, so maybe she was only in three. The woman whose house it was came out and told us about the painting, me and one of my girlfriends (but still, I don't know who--my sister? Madame X?) and they were beautiful, and we asked to take a picture of the whole but she said no, only one panel at a time.

Then I bought a house somewhere else, in Girona, outside of Barcelona. Sight unseen, I bought it over the phone, as a place for me and C., the boyfriend. We were at a friends house, in their long white kitchen, and I was leaning over the island talking on the phone saying, "yes, okay, I'll buy it." And Mr. B. was there, and I was thinking, I hope he doesn't have a fit that I'm buying this place. But he was smiling at me, so I figured it was okay. Then I got off the phone and told him about it, and it was fine. But I had to start a job the next day for Donald Trump, and I needed to go look at this house and see how much work it would take. So I called C., who was working in some non-existent European country south of Spain, and told him about it. But he couldn't go see the place either, and he had hurt his back, so he wouldn't be able to do any work on it anyway, so I said, "well, I'm sure that if I just tell Donald Trump that, you know, I've just bought a second property in Spain and I really have to go check on it, that he'll understand." And then I guess I had a conversation with Trump where I said that I knew I was just starting a new job, but I obviously couldn't possibly get to Girona and back in 48 hours, so I needed a Friday and/or a Monday just to go check on the place. And this was fine.

So I went. And somehow a lot of my friends went with me. And we arrived on the doorstep, and there was this guy who I knew was living in the place and would keep living in it, probably, after I bought it, until I was ready to go fix it up and really take possession. He was a big white guy with a big white moustache, in a tank top. I said, kind of apologetically, "Hi, I've bought this house" (he knew my name) "and, uh, we're here to look it over." I felt kind of embarrassed at having drug all these people along, but the guy seemed pretty unconcerned and let us in. The place was kind of cluttered and really run-down, and there'd been some weird modifications made. Like in the entry way, there was a stone wall with an arched nook in it, but in front of it someone had put a diagonal wood wall, half covering the arch, and painted it turquoise. Lots of crazy things like that, but I could see it would be easy to tear them down, although it would take some time.

And then I went in the kitchen. It was an old house, so the kitchen layout wasn't ideal. It was long and all red, with a big window in the center of the outside wall over an old-fashioned sink, but no counters on either side. But someone had modernized it all along the opposite wall--with two refrigerators, one of which was a freezer, and had a built-in cooler for three bottles of wine. And then a counter, all along the wall, only the cabinets below were all for wine--pull out drawers in which bottles were nested. And there were lots and lots of wine bottles in there, labels I'd never seen. And I thought, "I have to call C. and read these labels to him, he'll be so pleased." But I also wondered: what if the tenant drinks the wine? And if I ask him not to, am I being an asshole? I was torn over that--obviously he'd been here all these years, and the fact that the property had changed hands didn't really mean anything to him: he was the one living on it, and he hadn't had anything to do with the sale; squatter's rights and all. But I wanted the wine.

And then I discovered a whole drawer full of little champagne bottles, and one full of chocolate champagne filled candies. The candies were all different shapes: some of them had hand-painted wrappers, some were lollipops shaped like little animals, and so on. They were really intricate, beautiful candies. I knew that because we were all on the road, we couldn't get drunk, so I decided to just pass out the candies to everyone, even the kids. I don't remember who the kids were or who they belonged to--I think they represented my sister's kids, but weren't actually my nieces. Someone said their mother wouldn't want the younger one eating alcoholic candy, so I found another chocolate that was kid-safe, a tiny flat piece of chocolate that was shaped like a heart, with white piping on the outside and an eye and a little curled tail. A heart-shasped mouse. I gave her that. And then towards the end we ran out, but there was another woman there, who I don't know, who said she hadn't eaten hers because, really, she didn't care for that kind of thing, but she'd had to take it because she never knew what to do when people thrust things at her and told her to take them, so then there was an extra and everything was fine again.

And then I woke up and, half-awake, had some additional idea about how exactly to solve the problem of the tenant, or the wine, or how to fix it up, or something. But now I've forgotten what it was.

Seriously. This is a crazy story.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia -- A 12-year-old girl who was abducted and beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage was found being guarded by three lions who apparently had chased off her captors, a policeman said Tuesday.

Of course, the real "news" in the story comes at the end: according to the U.N., seventy percent of marriages in Ethiopia begin when the husband and/or his friends kidnaps a woman.

Sadly, there are apparently only 1,000 lions left in Ethiopia, which means that most Ethiopian women can't count on "rescued by lions" to protect them from this abominable practice. And I'm sure that being rescued by lions is a pretty terrifying experience. But as stories go, this is a really good one.

So Mr. B. has a job offer in Grad School City. It's a temporary job, two months (i.e., the rest of the summer), but dig this: it pays about half of what I earn in a year. 'Member how I said his earning potential is way more than mine? Well that's the proof.

So this job would be enough to: 1) pay off most of our debt (except the student loans); 2) maybe bank the extra; 3) probably replace Mr. B.'s laptop (which is basically so unreliable as to be pretty much defunct), and possibly mine if I quit and have to return it (bought on research funds = not mine to keep); 4) it'll get him out to GSC and maybe, just maybe, help him land a permanent job, in which case....

'Course, it also means I'll be a single mom in July and August. And, if the job goes over, which it'll probably do, for part of September, as well--unless, again, he's found a permanent gig by then--in which case single mom and Pseudonymous Kid will take on the super-fun task of getting the house ready to sell, putting it on the market, packing, and wrapping shit up for a cross-country move.

It's really strange, this possibility of moving before the new semester. Of course, there's the concern over the department having to scramble to cover my classes--but that kind of thing happens, and I'm trying not to make it my problem (though of course, if it comes down to that, I'll give as much notice as I possibly can). More to the point, there's the concern that the department will have a hissy and threaten to sue me, or something, unless I at least stay for the fall semester. And of course, Mr. B. might not find a permanent job he wants, or at least he might not find it in time, and we might hang out another year...

Or possibly I'm a self-sabotaging freak. But in any case, it looks like it'll be a busy summer.

Some of you may have seen me recommend Allison Crews's story, When I was Garbage as an excellent narrative about being a very young, single mom. Very few of you, however, know that I met Allison once, and worked with her a bit online on a now-defunct discussion board for Hipmama.com. I came to blogging through hipmama, which was my first real online community; I moderated there for I don't remember how long (a year? less?) and sadly, the boards ended up coming down because the community started falling apart over the problem of racism. I kind of miss it: though as an older, married mother with tons of formal education I wasn't exactly the target audience, I did find a real sense of community there and I learned a lot--a LOT--from those women whose lives were different than my own, and who were by and large incredibly fucking smart and, by virtue of their "marginal" status, really intelligent and provocative cultural critics. So, for instance, this statement by Allison:

'To radically accept and defend a woman's right to choose, we must acknowledge the multiple ways that women come to make reproductive choices. By marginalizing teenage mothers, even within the feminist community, we are failing to recognize the realities of countless women and their children.'

So I was horrified this morning to open up my work email to find a message from the Association for Research on Mothering saying that Allison had died, at the age of twenty-two. A little more information, including a description of the funeral, can be found over at Ariel Gore's site.

It's terribly sad. Allison was really young; her son, I guess, would be about seven now. And she was shockingly intelligent, yet (my impression) rather quiet and very sweet-natured in person. I ran a few errands for her at a hipmama conference, and she and I were together on a workshop/roundtable for student parents. You've probably never heard of her, but she made a big difference to a lot of women, including me; I met her briefly, many years ago, but never forgot about it and to this day "When I was Garbage" brings tears to my eyes. Apparently there's a livejournal site, Letters for Cade's Journal that's been set up for anyone who wants to post memories of her for her son to read later. I remember a few people saying that "When I was Garbage" had touched them too, and I thought that, even if you never met her, you might want to leave a note if that was the case.

As y'all know, Mr. B. is a stay-home dad. Just yesterday, he and I were talking about working, parenting, and balancing the two. A couple of days ago, I got into an argument with one of my (three) sisters-in-law about, in essence, whether or not I'm a crappy wife. Now, in fact, I really like this sister-in-law, and it was a good discussion, so I'm not really bitching about the argument--rather, leading up to a point.

When Pseudonymous Kid was born, s-i-l (she's the third of three sisters, so from here on out I'll designate 'em by number) was living with us. This was a very cool deal, as it meant we had help around the house, and good company (and she's still PK's favorite aunt). The down side was that, well, Mr. B. and I fought a fair bit in those first months. And it won't surprise most of you to find out that, in fighting, I'm usually the louder and more forceful arguer. And then, even after she moved out, when the initial high emotions had died down and we'd settled into parenting, Mr. B. was working incredibly long hours and I was dissertating, and I was very no-holds-barred in insisting that, despite his hours, he had to do housework, he had to be a hands-on dad, he was responsible for fifty percent of all that.

Now, what sil #3 (and her brother, who also lived near us and hung around a lot) saw was me bitching at my husband--and not really being terribly grateful, not saying "thank you" very much, for all he did. What she failed to see, of course, was that within our marriage, in an odd way, this was me being a Good Wife: Mr. B. and I both agreed that parenting is important; he really wanted to be a good dad and a good feminist father; and what I was doing, in my mind, was holding him to the standards he himself had set and agreed to. My "bitchiness" came from my own anger that I had to do that: I was writing my dissertation and yet I was also the primary caregiver; I voluntarily limited my writing time to three hours a day; I organized daycare and nannies and pretty much ran the household; and yes, I resented that my conscious balancing of work and family included the task of making sure Mr. B., too, had some kind of balance in his life.

Now, I'm the working parent, and I've got a stay-home caregiver--one who isn't writing a dissertation. And you know what? I gotta say; I don't, in some sense, really blame what I call in my mind "the fifties dad" for doing that traditional dad thing of going to work, coming home, sitting on his ass, and "letting" mom the homemaker continue to take care of everything. Because, in fact, doing that is incredibly, incredibly tempting and easy. You go to work, you come home, you want--you deserve!--some down time. And unless there is something pushing you out of your La-Z-Boy--a nagging wife, a pesty kid, a Larger Principle--it's all too easy to just say, "hey, honey, I'm home. Where's dinner?"

And, to Mr. B.'s credit, he pretty much lets me get away with that. We agreed, yesterday, on two things; when he was the primary wage-earner, he was a better hands-on parent than I've been since I became the primary wage earner; and also, when I was the primary care-giver, I was better at insisting he be a hands-on parent than he has been about insisting I do my part. Sister #3 is right; I am a bitch, and he's pretty much a nice guy. But what she failed to realize is that our marriage--like any marriage--is a dialectic; there are two people involved in making it. My role is to keep us honest: I want X, you want Y, we want Z: ok, now we're going to make those things happen, and nothing--including our own fears or laziness--is going to stand in the way. His role is to be kind of the moderating influence, to remind me that yes, we want these things to happen, but they don't all have to happen Right Now.

So. We are a couple that argues. We aren't, for the most part, a couple that fights (although since PK's birth, there has been more actual fighting; on the other hand, we're starting to re-learn how to argue, instead). We both know what we want, we both have our own bottom lines, and when those things conflict, we argue--and argue, and argue--until we figure out how to achieve, not compromise, but a way to get both our needs met. If this means we live apart for three years while he enjoys his career and I pursue a Ph.D.; fine. If this means that my bottom line is no children while he's in a career where he travels a lot--even if this means, no children--and he changes careers when he's ready to have kids; fine. If this means that, after a couple of years of working ridiculously long hours he completely stops working for money in order to develop a really close relationship with PK--even if this means living on the knife's edge of not-paying the bills every month; fine. And if this means arguing about whether to quit this job tomorrow, or whether to do it next year--arguing over my fear of another winter depression, versus his fear of having to take the first job that comes along, and my insistence that hell yes, I want him to make shitloads of money, but don't forget, honey, how much you hated your last job, so I don't want you taking one like that again--then we will argue about that. And if this means that I have to put up with my in-laws thinking that I'm a heinous bitch who is dragging him hither and yon, "making" him quit his job, "making" him go back to work, because they don't realize that, in fact, a lot of our arguing boils down to "look, I really want X, but I want to know what you want because we are not going to do X unless it doesn't cancel out Y. So make sure you know what you want, and then we will fight this shit out from our respective corners because I am NOT going to steamroll you, I am NOT going to accept a peaceful compromise, I am NOT going to let either one of us "sacrifice" things that really matter. We will figure this out, no matter who it kills," well, that's fine too. Because ultimately what matters is that it works for us. All three of us.

And it does. I'm sure as hell not an easy person to be married to; in terms of "ease," I got the better end of the deal. I'm not really very good, actually, at the couch-potato-in-the-comfy-chair style of marriage. On the other hand, I'm really really good at making sure that everything's ergonomically correct; that we don't slouch our way into scoliosis; that we don't stagnate. That we don't end up, in five years or ten, living with a shitload of regret, resentment, or guilt over having done what seemed expedient, comfortable, at the time.

And I'm really glad that I had the good sense to marry a man who appreciates all that.

So, happy father's day, Mr. B. No, I didn't forget. But PK and I agreed to pretend that we had, because as you know, he loves loves loves to "surprise" his papa.

Now get your butt to the hardware store, so that I can wake up PK and we can get going on some of those "surprises" before you get back.

So, via Screed, I was reading Overheard in NY (note to self: put this on the blogroll and RSS feeds, b/c it's a great source for dialogue), and reading some of the lines out loud to Mr. B. Pseudonymous Kid overheard and started doing this kind of annoying loud little kid fake laugh thing he does--"HA!"--when he knows something is funny but doesn't really get it.

So I paused for a minute and told him a joke that I thought would be appropriate for him:

Me: What kind of key doesn't open a door?
Pseudonymous Kid: I dunno... what?
Me: A MON-key!*

So now PK is running around telling jokes that follow the same model, but don't make any sense:

Pseudonymous Kid: What kind of money doesn't pay for anything?
Me: I dunno... what?
Pseudonymous Kid (shouting): Bag money!

Pseudonymous Kid: What kind of vacuum cleaner pipe doesn't pick up dirt?
Me: I dunno... what?
Pseudonymous Kid: A pipe! HAHAHAHA! Yeah, I got a million of 'em.**



* I found this joke earlier today on this blog.

** Yes, he actually said this. No, I don't know where he got it.

According to this NYT article, at least $75,000:

Kelli Gabriel, a Washington financial consultant, hired Myrna Alphonse in 2002, not just to take care of her five children but to run her household while she and her husband, also a financial consultant, were working 10-hour days with long commutes. Ms. Gabriel had employed nannies before, but she had never considered paying anything close to the $75,000 annual salary Ms. Alphonse asked for. But on meeting Ms. Alphonse, who is taking a master's degree in psychology and who presented herself as capable of a lot more than baby-sitting, Ms. Gabriel began to think that the price might be reasonable.

"After I listened to her," she said, "I thought, 'Can we afford not to hire her?' "

I absolutely love this article. It's like the feminist dream: women getting paid for doing wifely duties. It amuses me no end that it took women getting "men's" jobs--notice that in this anecdote, the woman who hired the nanny does the exact same job her husband does--to start getting (other) women paid to do the household work. And it's funny, too, that it's the "working" women (not the men) who are hiring the "wives." It's also kind of funny that the employer in this scenario is separating from her husband:

"I feel very blessed to have her in my life right now. She's the one constant we do have."

Doesn't that sound exactly like the traditional things one says about wives and mothers? It's impossible to resist the temptation to say that it takes a woman to appreciate the worth of a wife.

And by "appreciate," I mean, "pay for"--as opposed to "pay lip service to."

Next step: salaries for stay-home caregivers. And social security. And unemployment benefits. And health insurance.

Sorry, I know how tired that question is, but it's catchy. Anyway, this post is to call attention to a Technorati contest: winner gets a free plane ticket to attend BlogHer in Santa Clara at the end of July, along with two nights in a hotel and conference registration. All you gotta do is write a post on "how blogging changed my life" and title the post "TechnoratiBlogHer" BY THIS SUNDAY, THE 19TH OF JUNE. And you gotta be a member of Technorati.

I wish I could try--and even if not, I really wish I could go, because the conference sounds fabulous--but alas, my summer plans are way too up in the air. (And yes, this is insane, given that it's nearly the end of June. C'est ma vie.)

But one of y'all needs to win this thing. So, get writing.

First, THANK YOU SO MUCH to all the subs--PoJ, Pseudonymous Colleague, and Pseudonymous Rocket Scientist--for giving me the freedom to ignore the blog for days at a time (and for not minding that I'm such a huge pain in the ass that I can't even go on vacation without continually calling back to check and see how everything's going). Let's see, I think while I was away we had: gender; politics; pop culture fluff; high heeled shoes; open relationships... yep, that covers most of it. I don't know if it's reassuring or humbling--probably both--to have my issues covered so well in my semi-absence. Thanks muchly, y'all.

By the way, y'all do know that 2/3 of the subs aren't bloggers, right? Total novices? All the more impressive.

Second, the grand bitch cross-country tour. I (and sometimes we) met a lot of people.

I got my sister-in-law to agree to invite Orange and her kid over for lunch, and then we went to the park. Her little boy is the cutest thing ever, and he and Pseudonymous Kid got along beautifully--holding hands, playing hide and seek, it was great. I don't even remember what Orange and I talked about, except that it was just one of those relaxed afternoons, hanging out with a good friend.

I had dinner & drinks with Kotsko, Weiner and Wolfson; unsurprisingly, the conversation was kind of meta-conversational at least part of the time, and we found out that Matt is really really good at identifying 70s pop songs (but I think Ben was a little bored). Later, I also had dinner and drinks one-on-one with Pseudonymous Colleague, and we talked about academia and men. In, I think, that order. Plus she liked my favorite restaurant!

I had lunch and beer with Unique, who hooked me up with a really nice woman who gave me lots of job leads; and the whole family had brunch and bloody marys with Mimbreno, who is rather shockingly good-looking, and who got along really well with Mr. B. Perhaps because I refrained from saying how shockingly good-looking he is until afterwards.

I hung out with Elise and the boyfriend over happy hour. I believe she is the only friend of mine--other than Pseudonymous Kid--who has ever met the boyfriend. Talking to her was a lot like talking to my old grad school friends, and she got me kinda drunk!

Not only did Sergei and Mona take us to dinner (twice!), they cheerfully allowed themselves to be manipulated into offering us a place to spend the night at the last minute. And I have to admit their kids are way better behaved than my own. See Sergei's blog for more scandalous details...

Sadly, this time 'round, I missed seeing Screed again, though I did get to hang out with her buddy JP--who taught PK a little Spanish and teased him about whether mice do or do not eat pancakes. I also, unfortunately, overscheduled myself and didn't manage to hook up with Sean, even though he had kindly arranged a mini-conference on women in science right when I happened to be there. I'm sorry. I suck. I didn't get to see Flea again, either, even though I was really hoping to--she's so cool, and I wanted to buy stuff out of her garage--but she had some work thing to do. Bah, work. I also missed out on meeting Pseudonymous Rocket Scientist and Dorcasina, despite her being an old friend of mine. See above re. me sucking.

So thanks to everyone we met for being so lovely, and for agreeing to maintain the pretense that I am interesting and reasonably good company in real life. It was great meeting all of you.

A final post to sign-off as one of the Guest Bloggers here at BitchPhD. I've really enjoyed the opportunity. I want to profusely thank Dr. B. for allowing access to the Palace. Its been real.

Blogging well is more difficult than it looks. As you probably know - if you are regular reader - Dr. B. is a woman of prodigious talents. I don't think we've come near to matching the engaging mix of the personal, political, and philosophical that she cranks out regularly. I'm looking forward to her return.

I did want to note something about a post I wrote but did not post. It concerned getting flamed for an earlier post - I was going to link it to this post at the Chronicle on "Academic Flame Wars." Basically, I realized (after the comments thread seared a hole through my monitor) that most readers interpreted a "cheeky" remark to be an insult to cross-dressers in general (and one in particular). I thought I was only humorously historicizing issues of convenience in women's fashion. It was quite an eye-opener, and it made me realize the difference between publishing in print and in this format. Anyway, I defended myself on the comments thread, thus commiting "ABM" - "Author's Big Mistake." If you haven't read Paul Fussell's essay, I highly recommend it. One of his major points is that all writing - scholarly or otherwise - is communicative. If the author cannot communicate his/her ideas clearly enough or without the required precision, then the author must own that mistake. To fight it out - to complain that one is being "misinterpreted" - only compounds the problem and demonstrates the great vanity all authors attempt to deny. If you need to explain it a second time, you didn't explain it well enough the first time.

So in the process of putting together that post, I decided to junk it. If I want to be serious about my writing, I'll have to accept criticism with a bit more grace (and learn to write more clearly).

One parting note: this past week my wife and I confirmed that I'll be a daddy for a second time. Very joyous news. Should be a great father's day. But there is also (as with everything in life) an undertone of uncertainty and anxiety. Managing change is difficult. This is going to be pretty tough on little Sprout - who will be under 3 years old when his sibling arrives. What about the money? How is my life - and my marriage - going to change? Will I still be the same person?

Why is it we grow old too soon and smart too late?

Runnin' through this business of life,
rarely time if I'm needed to-
Ain't so funny when things ain't feelin' right,
then daddy's hand helps to see me through...

Changes come before we can grow,
learn to see them before we're too old-
Don't just take me for tryin' to be heavy,
Understand: it's time to get ready for the storm.

Did anyone else notice this story on a new study of the effect of virginity pledges on sexual behavior?

Challenging earlier findings, two studies from the Heritage Foundation reported yesterday that young people who took virginity pledges had lower rates of acquiring sexually transmitted diseases and engaged in fewer risky sexual behaviors. The new findings were based on the same national survey used by earlier studies and conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services...

The earlier study found that a majority of teenagers who took the pledge did not live up to their promises and developed sexually transmitted diseases about the same rate as adolescents who had not made such pledges... The new study, reported at a meeting in Arlington, Va., sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services, found that over all, adolescents who made virginity pledges were less likely to engage in any form of sexual activity. If those who made promises did become sexually active, their array of sexual behaviors was likely to be more restricted than those of adolescents who did not make a pledge, Dr. Rector's team said.

To me this story was a bit too much of that great he-said-she-said but there's no objective truth story that's so popular in journalism today. Not having read the studies, I remain agnostic on their scientific conclusions. But one study was published in referreed academic journals by professors including the head of a prestegious sociology department, and one study was given as a conference paper by researchers at the Heritage Foundation. To be fair to the author, the story does mention several criticisms of the new study:

Independent experts called the new findings provocative, but criticized the Heritage team's analysis as flawed and lacking the statistical evidence to back its conclusions. The new findings have not been submitted to a journal for publication, an author said.

But they don't even mention for the reader that this study was conducted by a self-described "conservative think tank", whose "mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies... based on traditional American values". Might be a useful factoid for those trying to draw their own conclusions about how seriously to take the new un-peer-reviewed study.

(literally).

I've been traveling the past couple of days, but in case you've somehow missed this story, I'd say it still deserves more play. In a nutshell: Last night, the Senate passed, by voice vote, a resolution issuing a formal apology for failing to pass federal anti-lynching laws. Why a voice vote? Well apparently Frist didn't want to force an on the record vote, since that might have put some of his republican colleages in the uncomfortable position of having to show their die-hard followers that they thought the prevalence of hanging innocent black men and law enforcement turning a blind eye might not have been such a great chapter in our nation's history or be called racist! Fifteen republican senators apparently found this quite a dilemma.

John Aravosis at americablog has been all over this story, helpfully pointing out that a senator actually is able to add his name to a bill as a cosponsor after it has passed, so there's no "Oh, I just forgot" excuse.

From Aravosis yesterday:

We complain about the far right trying to amend the Constitution to ban gays, about Bush lying his way into a war, about the GOP trying to take over and usurp the entire federal judiciary, yet 27% of Republican Senators are still holding out on the wisdom and morality of lynching black people. Think about that. And then ask yourself is it any wonder all these other legislative crimes happen when these bastards can't even agree about lynching? And you thought we had it bad.

And now he's got t-shirts! If you're from TN, UT, MS, TX, ID, WY, IA, NH, UT, AZ, OH, or AK, first call your senator(s) and ask him why it was so hard for him or her to support this resolution, and then be the first on your block to get one! (If you are from Texas, New Hampshire, Utah, or Missourioops, Mississippi, lucky you: BOTH your senators refused to take a stand against lynching!)

What a trainwreck. An unmitigated disaster. Do you remember when Michael Jackson was a little kid, belting out "Rockin' Robin" on American Bandstand with a dynamite 'fro? I remember being amazed - and mesmerized - every time the Jackson 5 appeared on one of those crummy 1970s variety shows.

Since the media is overcovering the story, I thought I'd give a little peek at some of what you wont see discussed about this case. In the early 1990s I was a journalist. In Southern California. And I covered MJJ's first case. The media didn't tell you much of what they knew in that case. Let's go beyond conventional wisdom for a moment:

The child who settled out of court for $20 million was named Jordan Chandler. Chandler's case was pretty strong. It helped that he had one of the best civil litigators in So Cal: Larry Feldman. Few people learned at the time that Chandler's father, Evan Chandler, solicited Jackson's assistance (as part of the settlement) for his movie career. It turns out that Mr. Chandler - a dentist - wanted to break into movies in a big way. Luckily for movie audiences, Robin Hood: Men in Tights seems to have destroyed the movie career of Dr. Evan Chandler, DDS. Pretty unsavory stuff.

To be clear: I think Michael Jackson molested Chandler. Read the case. But I should note that $20 million was far less money to Jackson in 1993 than today, so it seems reasonable that he paid it to go away (regardless of guilt). But Chandler was able to identify certain "telltale" characteristics of MJJ's genitals, for instance, thus bolstering his case.

Now, in this case, we've got some complicating factors that Jackson never had to face with Chandler. Chandler never appeared on a video supporting Jackson (thus contradicting his sworn testimony). You have the mother's testimony at times insulting and other times amusing the jury (Sneddon obviously did not coach her well enough). And you have all those receipts, visits, and airplane rides. And phone calls to celebrities.

But here's what nobody is touching: the mother was a severely abused woman. She is also a minority. Chandler was a wealthy, white, and sympathetic victim. Perhaps the "pimping my son out for a movie deal" might have emerged in the 1993 case but we'll never know. We do know that as soon as Dr. Chandler discovered the abuse he angrily confronted Jackson with many witnesses around (something the present victim's family never did).

The victim in this case was also battered by his father. He was clearly dazzled by the gifts and attention Jackson lavasihed upon him. Jackson's decision to befriend (at the least) a child from an impoverished minority family (as opposed to a wealthy, well-connected white family) probably proved the deciding factor in this case.

There are additional ways that race and class impacted this case. For instance: Feldman, it appears, will probably not continue to represent the present victim in a civil suit. Reportedly, he told CNN's Larry King over lunch that "the accuser's mother was making up the molestation allegations." Feldman denied this on the stand, however. Earlier, Feldman put the family in contact with a child Psychologist to find out what happened, and once again The Smoking Gun was there:

Jackson "is a guy that's like a 10-year-old child. And, you know, he's doing what a 10-year-old would do with his little buddies. You know, they're gonna jack off, watch movies, drink wine, you know. And, you know, he doesn't even really qualify as a pedophile. He's really just this regressed 10-year-old."

I think that says more about the shrink than MJJ or the accuser. Perhaps Feldman is leaving unstated that a minority, impoverished victim is far more of a legal risk for him, so he'll blame his refusal to go forward on the Mother.

There are a lot of sad parts to this case. I don't know if Jackson abused this victim or not. But I do know that another thing the media will not tell you is that the Mother re-married. Her name is now Janet Jackson. That's really sad for her son.

Having said I don't read Kos and have no plans to start, today one of the Kos diarists puts up her first and last post, and it's a great one.

Perhaps no one has ever concretely, and theoretically explained strategically, why abortion, and abortion providers, and women who have abortions must be stood beside and actively supported if you have any intention of living anywhere other than a fascist snitch culture of State-ist and vigilante control.

It's in response to a stupid post by Markos basically saying (like Drum before him, and like a lot of other people) "stop making so much noise about abortion, ladies, you're scaring the voters and it's only a fringe issue anyway." Which is part of the whole "mainstream" strategy, I guess, of trying to win elections by having the big boys agree among themselves that only the votes of boys count, and that it's all just one big game of chess anyway--we don't care about *people* or *issues*, damnit, we care about *strategy*! You know, maybe the guys are right. If that's politics, I don't, in fact, want to play. Then again I don't think of politics as merely a game of who's in power, "us" or "them." That's not the point. That's substituting the means for the end.

And that particular post does a good job of explaining why.

Thanks to Ding for passing it on.

No time to really post anything substantive. (I've got a couple of things sort of waiting in the wings, but you might have to be patient--we hit the road again at 0-dark-30 on Tuesday morning, so tomorrow is busy packing and stuff--and then we'll be travelling again for a few days. Hopefully the subs will gather their stamina for the home stretch....) But I did want to pass on this WaPo article about what's currently going on, not only with United defaulting on its pensions, but with Senate testimony and possible future legislation protecting worker's pensions. The story has a great lead, too:

Ellen Saracini lost her husband, United Airlines Capt. Victor J. Saracini, when his Flight 175 crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Now she stands to lose more than half of her widow's pension in a very different kind of crash -- United's default of its $9 billion pension obligations.

Thankfully, Saracini says that in fact she believes she will be financially okay anyway (although a lot of less famous people won't be), so I don't feel ghoulish saying that this woman--who sounds very willing to use her story to draw attention to the pension debacle, and good for her for standing in solidarity with her dead husband's colleagues--could do some serious political damage.

Scene: a grand black-tie type party for Madame X, on the occasion of her graduation.

Madame X (swooping in grandly, as she does): Ok, I have to try on your shoes.
Me: Oh, of course. (I slip them off)
Madame X: These are such fantastic shoes.
Me: Aren't they? I bought them on sale just a few days ago. They're so femmey, and yet they have those mirrored spikes at the front.
Madame X: You could do such damage with these.
Me: Exactly. One might be tempted to use the mirrors to look up my skirt, but if you do, I will kick your ass with the pointy spikes, so watch it.

(later)

Emily Dickinson (big hug): It's Bitch and her famous cleavage!
Me: Really? I have famous cleavage?
Emily: Oh yes.
Jenny Calendar (from across the room): I'm mesmerized by your cleavage.
Me: Stop being mesmerized and come sit next to me so we can talk.
Jenny (moving to the couch): Speaking of cleavage, I mentioned Myrna's bra size on purpose because I knew you would correct me. You're such the bra proselytizer.
Me: Of course I would. Actually, just yesterday two people thanked me for getting them into Wacoals.
Jenny: You're like the Wacoal spokeswoman.
Me: I totally am. They should pay me.
Jenny: They should.

(still later)

Me: That's a beautiful dress.
Mira Sorvino: Thank you! Mr. Sorvino bought it for me at this little boutique which, when you visit us, we will go to.
Me: Okay, done.
Mira: And I have the nursing breasts to show it off now.
Me: That you do.
Mira: Only, I have to ask you. Will they look all awful when I'm done nursing?
Me: Actually, no. At least, mine don't.
(Mr. Sorvino's ears perk up)
Mira: Reallly? It's not just the corset?
Me: No, really, they're fine. They look great.
Mira: Only all droopy?
Me: Not even.
Mira: They're the same?!
Me: Well, no. They're softer. But they look fine. I'll show you later, if you like
Mira: Oh! Please do! (to Mr. S.) Sweetie, she's going to show me her boobs!
Mr. S. (with a sweet, just barely rakish smile that's all his own): So I heard.

(later, across the room)

Me: You know, I really love that you said that.
Emily: Really? You do?
Me: Absolutely. First, of course, because it's fantastic to have famous cleavage. But second, the real reason is, there's just something really nice about being among friends and realizing you have kind of a sort of role to fill. "Oh, it's a party, and therefore Bitch will wear something that shows off her cleavage." I'd never really thought about it, but it's true; I do do that at parties. And it's nice, to be around people who sort of know that, and expect it, and kind of think of that as part of my identity, something I don't even realize myself.
Emily: Well, it's true. I do think of you that way. You and your décolletage.
Me: That's so sweet!

(as we're all preparing to leave)

Mira: I'm afraid my breasts are needed elsewhere.
Me: So I see.
Mira: Really?
Me: Yes, they're bigger than they were when you arrived.
Mira: Are they really?
Me: Yes. Oh wait, I was going to show you mine! Do you still want to see?
Mira: Of course. (Turning to Mr. S.) Honey, I'm just going to go to the bathroom really quickly to see Bitch's breasts.
Mr. S.: Okay.
Me (unhooking corset): Ok, they're a little squished from the corset, but see? They look fine.
Mira: They do! Wow!
Me: So you shouldn't worry.
Mira: I feel so much better.
Me: And luckily you didn't have a c-section, so you don't have to worry about the real horror, which is the c-section belly...

(returning for our goodbyes)

Me (hugging Mr. S.): It was so great to see you.
Mr. S.: Great to see you too. You have to come down to Smaller City to visit us, okay?
Me: Absolutely. And I showed your wife my breasts, so she feels better about that too.
Mr. S. (smiling fondly in a newlywed way that really, he's not entitled to because they've been married for years): Mira is always going to look beautiful no matter what.
Me: Yes. She is.

Says it all, don't it?

Apropos of Ianqui's post on Blogger meet-ups, I would like to announce that I have finally met one of my favorite pseudonymous bloggers IRL. Yes, I had dinner with our hostess, Prof. Bitch herself, last night. She is cooler and sexier and, well, more of everything, in person. Except that I thought she'd be taller and more Amazon-like. It was a little weird, because, like Ianqui, I was a bit intimidated by her fame. But not by her as a person. We had a great conversation about passing for normal, something that's been on my mind for a while. B certainly comes off as normal in person. She could be any nice, middle-class college professor with a normal life. So could I. But what I now wonder is how much of our ideas of 'passing' come from the fact that we really are normal. At least in academia, normal includes a fairly broad range of relationships, from the heterosexual marriage that is and always will be monogamous and stable, to the many-times-divorced, to the new-partner-at every-conference, to the gay families ... so what's a little polyamory? I've spoken to some of my colleagues about it, and they don't seem to be fazed. Of course, I've spoken to colleagues in Womens' Studies and Psych, so they wouldn't be, would they?

One of the thing that stikes me about multi-partner relationships is something that came up quite serendipitously yesterday before I met with B. There was this article in The Guardian about Simone de Beauvoir and her relationship with Sartre. One of the things I inferred from the article was that the author felt that de Beauvoir was somehow living the open relationship because it was what Sartre wanted, subsuming her own desires and mores to his, as it were. It made me think a lot about the way gender plays a role in how we see open relationships. Generally, I think we, at least those of us whose moral compasses are not tweaked by her being married and having a boyfriend, tend to see B, and women like her, as empowered and in charge of their sexuality. But what happens when the roles of the participants are reversed?
I'm in the Conoisseur's position. My friend and his long-term partner are artists who have an open marriage. Each has a couple of friendships that are generally sexual in nature. Like B's relationship with the Connoisseur, they are also serious and long-term. In their social circle, local artsy community of Metropolis, it's pretty well accepted. The difference, and where it get back to this image of de Beauvoir, is this: in the arena where Artist and I interact absent his wife, aka the fringe of wannabe edgy academic lit folk, there are people who know his marital status. Perhaps because I am a woman, perhaps because we have this "mistress" word to fall back on, I think it's very likely that, as people see us together more often and figure things out, my own position and authority will be diminished. People will demonize me as "the Other Woman," a position that at least allows agency; or they will infantalize me, imbuing their image of me as some poor, deluded dear who doesn't realize she'll never get her man. Because, you know, even de Beauvoir, the woman to whom we owe everything, was just a patsy for her man.

But hey, we already knew I was "humorless," "sanctiomonious," "tedious," "arrogant," and a bona fide "knee-jerk" feminist.

Somehow, though, I find this rundown of his bullshit funny. Go figure. Follow her links, too, if you're interested in seeing yet another one of the so-called top liberal bloggers talk about how abortion isn't really a core issue for the Democrats, and those who think it is are just a bunch of whiners.

Link via everyone's favorite unfunny blogger, flea, who writes, humorlessly, of:

the He-Man Woman-Hater's Club that is The Daily Kos. What a shame I can't de-link him. Wouldn't it be nice if all women stopped reading Daily Kos. He seems stats-conscious, and that would give him, finally, a reason to ask where all the women bloggers are at.

The rest of her post is about foot fetishism, and it's not funny either. I wouldn't bother reading it if I were you, because everyone knows that feminists "don't want women to have any sexuality at all."

I'm pleased to see that this kind of story is finally getting front page and network news coverage. The story details how a former oil industry lobbyist significantly edited several government climate change reports to highlight and overstate uncertainties within climate science. The lovely fellow responsible for this, who was previously a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, is currently chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Mr. Cooney has no scientific training, but nevertheless thought it would be useful to, for example, add the word "extremely'' to this sentence: "The attribution of the causes of biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is extremely difficult.'' Well, perhaps. But not as difficult as it's going to be for your children to see snow on Kilamanjaro or for your grandchildren to visit Holland.

This is just the latest and one of the most blatant examples in a long line of examples of how the administration has distorted and suppressed science on climate change. The Union of Concerned Scientists has a great summary of these efforts here. In a few decades when Florida is underwater, they might finally rethink having voting equipment crappy enough that it allowed a couple of votes to be stolen away from this guy.

Of course, climate change isn't the only area where the Bush administration has felt that its lawyers, industry pals, and religious buddies are better at making scientific judgements than scientists. This lovely behavior has pretty much extended to the entire scientific domain in the United States in the past couple of years, including food policy, workplace safety, missile defense, stem cell research, and of course with reproductive policy way up there with climate change as the number one target for rooting out scientific inquiry and replaceing it with idealogy and pandering to the base. If you haven't been keeping track, Representative Henry Waxman has been doing so for you -- check out his website on the topic for lots of gory details.

The shortsightedness and stupidity on these topics never ceases to amazes me. Do the President and his supporters think that the US got its economic and military might by being good at baseball or by having cool cowboy hats? That we would be able to keep that power if we all just read our bibles and kept the women in the kitchen? That if we just don't talk about sex that no one will have it? That if we just ignore the fact that the artic is melting then rich oil guys will make it go away? Okay, I've strayed from climate change, but the Administration's war with science really makes my blood boil. US power in the world today came from investment in basic research and from the fact that the smartest people in the world have wanted to come here for decades. Many of them no longer do. It ain't gonna last much longer.

So although I already added a semi-retraction update to the bottom of this post, on reading Amanda's latest on the subject, I think a more obvious pull-back is in order. Apparently the guy was abusive; the young woman had bruises on her face and arm; her family actually wanted her to get an abortion (so their desire to pursue the guy wasn't based on that, presumably); and she had been keeping up her doctor's appointments until the fifth month, which doesn't look like a girl who wants to abort to me. Obviously it's impossible to read her mind, and I shan't really try to; it's very frustrating that, in this "abortion" story as in so many others, there's very little information on what the pregnant woman actually wanted or needed. But on learning more, it certainly doesn't look like an abortion story at all. It looks like an abuse story.

Like Amanda, I think it sucks that the State of Texas thinks that killing a baby is worse than stomping on a pregnant woman's belly, and I still say that those fetal protection laws are crap; if you want to protect fetuses, make assaulting a pregnant woman a crime. Rethink all these "deadbeat dad" child support laws that are designed to make the public feel better about not supporting single mothers through government subsidies ("let the father support his baby!"), laws that give men an obvious incentive to coerce women into aborting, assault them in an attempt to force a miscarriage, or even kill them outright (not to mention that those laws contribute to acrimonioius custody battles).

It's very sad, and telling, that in this case the girl was blamed by her abuser and that she herself stood by him, and that these issues are brushed aside to focus on the prosecution. As I said rather dramatically before, sounds like the psychological damage has outlasted the physical. And as Amanda pointed out in the comments to the previous post, it really does dramatize the insanity with which anti-abortion laws and rhetoric completely erase the role of women in bearing and having children. We care about what the man did, we care about what happened to the fetus; what the woman did and thought and felt, and what was done to her gets brushed aside.

Via blackfeminism.org, a really good article about the importance of listening to women about abortion--specifically, women who've had abortions. I like the piece because it's a different take on my argument that yes (duh), women *do* think about the moral/ethical issues involved in abortion, that thinking we don't shows a lack of trust in our moral agency. And also because it strikes me as a rare, balanced, respectful criticism of feminist abortion rhetoric--without dismissing it as "tired" or "cliched" or "politically correct," the piece makes, I think, a good point that pro-choice arguments may dismiss (or be seen as dismissing) the complex feelings women have around abortion by emphasizing the bottom line that whatever those feelings, the choice is ours to make. And finally, I like it because it emphasizes the importance, yes, of material, experienced reality: broad principles are important, and I surely have mine, but in the end the point is that every person's experience is their own, and respecting that is a big part of what (my) feminism is about. Here's another story on the same subject, and a link to the new nation-wide post-abortion talkline, Exhale, that's featured in both stories.

A couple of interesting things. First, this:

"When I finally went, it was in a hospital, and I had a nice doctor who explained the procedure to me, and plenty of counseling beforehand," she said. "I was so grateful for the positive medical experience, despite my ambivalence."

She assumed that at some point, though, someone at the clinic was going to tell her how to get follow-up counseling. But no one did. "I didn't bring it up myself because if it's not something that they do, then I figured that my feelings were abnormal and would go away," she said.

They didn't. In fact, her confusion and sadness only increased.

A couple of weeks ago, when I was reading The Story of Jane, one thing that really stood out was the author's description of how respectful the service was, how it involved women in the process of their abortions, explained to them what was happening, increasingly came to understand abortion (and by extension all women's health care) as something that not only ought to be, but is, within women's power. As a consequence, Kaplan explains, many women who went through the service said it was one of the most positive and empowering experiences of their lives. There's an interesting anecdote, toward the end, of one of the service members who, after Roe v. Wade, went to work in an abortion clinic where she ran into a woman who'd gone through the service; the patient asked her, "how can you stand to work here, when Jane was so much better?" and she quit.

So, in light of having read that, it strikes me that in the excerpt above, Aspen Baker says she is "grateful" for the doctor's explaining the procedure. That's some damning stuff; having to be grateful for a doctor telling you what she's doing with your own body. And I can't help but wonder if that might not contribute to feeling ambivalent afterwards--later on in the piece, the point is made that abortion is "supposed to be a secret." Secrets imply shame. I can't help but wonder if thinking of abortion as a purely "private" matter might not create problems, no matter how politically expedient it is.

Here's another section I liked:

"Every woman who is pregnant wonders if she has a bedroom for that child; can she afford to take off the time to raise that child? Why flatten the decisions around abortion to just abortion? When women don't have jobs or health care, where is the choice? There is nothing worse than a woman aborting a baby she wanted because she couldn't support it."

Ross notes that black women were the first to resist the pro-choice/anti-choice dichotomy. "A very large percentage of [black] women are personally opposed to abortion but are pro-choice," said Ross. "Women of color agree with not giving unborn children more rights than grown women, but even when they're terminating a pregnancy, they call it a baby. This has been going on as long as we have had the debate. What women of color mostly say is that we have the right to . . . decide what children are born or not--that is part of women's power."

Near where I'm staying, there's an anti-abortion billboard that says, "God created me, Mom and Dad adopted me." The thing offends the crap out of me every time I drive by. Here we have a supposedly pro-life argument that *completely erases* the role of women in creating children; the child's birth mother isn't even acknowledged. A more chilling demonstration of the wrongness of a lot of so-called pro-life rhetoric, I cannot imagine.

I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where abortion wasn't seen as a private matter, but instead as a right, an innate power of women. Where pregnancy and childbirth were seen, likewise, as power--truly, not just in the lipservice way we now have. Where creating life was treated with real respect. A respect that includes respecting women's ability and right to decide when they are or are not ready to wield that power.

The fact that lovely, beautiful tobacco smoking causes so many diseases pretty much proves that there is no god.

Commenter Alex sent me this article via email:

Nineteen-year-old Gerardo Flores of Lufkin was sentenced to life in prison Monday in a landmark test case of a state fetal protection law. An Angelina County jury deliberated just under four hours, finding him guilty on two counts of capital murder for his part in killing his unborn twins.
...
Flores' girlfriend, Erica Basoria, 17, was led sobbing from the Angelina County Courthouse by her mother and older sister. While her family testified against Flores, Basoria stood by his side, maintaining she was involved in causing the at-home miscarriage.
...
Under state law, a woman cannot be charged for causing the deaths of her own fetuses for any reason. A similar federal law went into effect in April 2004. . . .
...
Basoria, then 16, was five months pregnant when Flores stepped on her bulging belly more than once the week before she gave birth prematurely in a bathroom at Flores' house the night of May 6, 2004.
...
His girlfriend coerced him into it, Flores said in a taped police interview. . . . [The defense argued that] it was Basoria's fault for egging Flores on, he said.

"She invited violence into their relationship," he told jurors.

Absolutely horrifying. The real question here is why did these two kids have to resort to such a violent method of inducing miscarriage? In Texas, minors are required to notify one of their parents 48 hours before an abortion (and according to the story, the girl's family was mostly happy about the conviction, and they cried as the prosecuting attorney talked about how the "babies" couldn't say "No, Daddy no." So I'm inclined to think that her parents would not have "allowed" her to have an abortion. She could have applied for a judicial bypass--and maybe she did--but such exceptions can be very hard to get. And when you're a kid in trouble (like most adults) you're more likely to want to just do what needs to be done than to go through a long and unlikely court procedure.

So, this young man--who was trying to help his girlfriend, who was trying to safeguard his and her futures--is now supposed to spend the rest of his life in jail. We're going to sacrifice his life to punish him for showing us the idiocy, cruelty, and impossibility of anti-abortion legislation in this country. In trying to save his life, he had to blame his girlfriend, the girl he was trying to help; and though she tried to defend him, she had to stand by in the end without being able to, listening to his defense attorney blame her for "inviting" a boyfriend to hurt her. She's legally safe from prosecution, but not safe from the age-old "she asked for it" form of defense; and her boyfriend has to offer that heinous defense in order to save his own hide. (And people say it's gay marriage that threatens the stability of heterosexual relationships.) Here we have a young man who, in desperate circumstances, tried to stand by his girlfriend, to help her, forced to hurt her and punished by the state because no, we will not allow women to think for themselves. We will portray women who do as victims, as crazy, as invisible; we will not listen to what they have to say; and we will punish the men who try to stand by women, who listen to what women say instead of "listening" to the imagined words of a five-month old fetus.

The whole thing is an absolute tragedy. A metaphorical punch in the gut to Flores, to Basoria, and to everyone who cares about women's rights. She's recovered from the miscarriage; if the sentence stands, neither she, he, nor we will recover from the blows of the state.

Let us hope that the appeal process ends in justice for Gerardo Flores.

Update: According to a comment over at Lauren's, the appeal process will have to go through the 5th Circut Court. Which just swore in Priscilla Owen this week. Yes, that Priscilla Owen. But, hey, the congressioinal compromise on the filibuster turned out okay, because the wheels of government are still turning. Too damn bad for Gerardo Flores.

Let's hope it goes to the Supremes; and let's hope that the Supreme Court doesn't end up with someone like Owens serving on it.

Second update: Apparently other news stories than the one I linked suggest that Flores was, in fact, abusive. In which case, as I said in comments, I retract my defense of his character. Nonetheless, the law under which he was convicted is a bad one; it does seem to me that it criminalizes those who would help a woman obtain a home abortion or induce miscarriage, it muddies the waters, and it implies--as do all these Laci Peterson-inspired fetal protection laws--that merely beating a woman, or killing her, or trying to kill her isn't really all that bad. Not as bad as killing unborn fetuses. If the people who passed those laws really cared about women, they'd simply make it a crime to assault or kill a pregnant woman, and leave the whole issue of defining fetuses (which is, as some have pointed out, likely to scuttle these laws) out of it.

Funny that PoJ posted about gender and clothing--just a couple of days ago, while I was down visiting Grandma (we went for ice cream, she's doing as well as might be expected, it was a great visit, she feels ready to die, and that's really basically okay in a sort of sad but somehow acceptable way--she's 89, after all), my dad took me and Pseudonymous Kid to Wal-Mart (I know, but beggars can't be choosers) to buy PK some new summer sandals, since he had gotten a blister from the old ones (which were last summer's, and on the smallish side now and I hadn't yet gotten around to replacing them). (Wow, three parenthetical asides in a single sentence--that's gotta be some kind of record. Bear with me, I have terrible allergies or maybe a head cold and my sinuses feel like they're stuffed full of viscous liquid. Which they are.)

Anyway. Kid's shoes. So we get to the kids' shoe section, and I start pulling down sandals. Now, one of my big complaints about kids' clothes, you'll be unsurprised to hear, is how freakin' gendered they are, especially at places like Wal-Mart. Not to mention the fact that I think cheap kids' clothes are cheap in part because they're all subsidized by movie tie-ins or some crap like that. Now, I know that a lot of progressive-type parents complain about girls' clothes being all girly-girl, which they are; but you mothers of sons will know what I am saying when I say boys' clothes are somehow, in the age of girl power, even worse. They're all about military crap, or sci-fi movies with fighting in them, and they're all black or olive drab or some kind of hideous boring colors. So what I do when I shop with or for PK is go for the middle: bright colors, preferably solids or stripes or perky flowers (PK loves flowers), avoiding the militaristic crud or the Star Wars logos. So I pulled down some dark red sandals with an embossed flower, but they were the wrong size; some plain brown sandals, which PK deemed boring; some Buzz Lightyear sandals with flashing lights (we try to pretend that Buzz's laser beam is a "wrist flashlight," which so far works about 75% of the time), which again, wrong size. Finally my dad hauls out some, yeah, Star Wars Darth Vader sandals which PK decides are "cool," so, again on the beggars-can't-be-choosers theme, I said, "okay," and we bought 'em. PK loves them, so ok, whatever.

And then later, in the car, my dad and I talked about gender and kids' clothing. Now, when PK was in utero, we knew he was going to be a boy; but we didn't tell anyone else. You'd be surprised how offended people get when they know you know but aren't telling--including total strangers, oddly. It's quite revealing of how important gender is to us in categorizing the world. At one point, thinking of names, we called my dad to ask what Grandma's middle name was--her first name is very feminine, but I thought perhaps her middle name would be one of those feminized boys' names, like "Georgette" or something (it wasn't), and I was thinking of naming PK after her.

Well, Dad assumed that my asking meant that PK was destined to be a girl, so apparently he bought a hat for PK as a baby gift. A hat I have never seen. Because when PK was born, and he was indeed a boy, my dad called and said, "well, darn, I guess I'll have to save this hat for the next one." And I said, "why?" And he said, "well, it's a girl's hat." And I said, "so? He's a baby. He won't care. Dad, I'd really love to have the hat you chose for my first baby."

But no can do. The "pink hat" has become kind of a family joke, but it has occasioned some really interesting conversations. Back then, I was really shocked--because my dad raised both my sister and I in pretty feminist, progressive ways; we wore girls' and boys' clothes, my sister in particular played a lot of sports and was the only girl on one of her high school teams--a fact my dad was extremely proud of. And my sister's daughter often wore "boys" clothes, including a shirt that said "boy" on it, when she was a baby. So I asked my dad about it, and he said, "well, it's just different." I pushed him, and he told me some story about some "effeminate" boy in his class (my dad teaches elementary school), and how awful it is for that little boy that he just doesn't fit in. And I said, ok, dad, first of all, I doubt a pink hat on an infant is going to lead to a lifetime of ostracization; and second of all, the reason things are awful for effeminate boys is because of homophobia--what we need to do is fight it, not cave in to it.

Now, to my dad's credit, he's come a long way. PK has really long hair and is often mistaken for a girl; Dad seems unfazed by this. He didn't blink at my pulling down both girls' and boys' sandals at the store--although he did say in the car that he'd noticed it, and was a little surprised. And I said, well, a lot of boys' stuff is really militaristic and drab colors, and PK likes bright stuff, and his winter boots, in fact, are solid blue but have a blue flower on the velcro flap and he loves them (and I think his snow boots are probably "girls" boots too, on the ground that the snowflake pattern is kinda shiny). And, I said, really it's important to me that he not feel constrained about things like enjoying having his fingernails painted, which is fun for kids b/c who doesn't like to play dress up? Or the fact that he likes flowers, or the fact that he's really fond of small furry animals and cute things. I think it's reassuring to my dad to see that even though PK enjoys all these things, he's still not a sissy--although, as a measure of how far we've come, he again told me a story about an "effeminate" ("I don't know what word to use, I guess that's the right one") boy in his class this year. But this time, the point of the story was that my dad is impressed that the other kids don't seem to tease the little boy, rather than that the boy is going to have problems fitting in for the rest of his life.

So, as someone said in the comments to the post below, yeah: one reason it's cool for girls to dress in boys' clothes (but not the other way around) is that boys are "higher" on the hierarchy than girls. It's cool for dads like mine to want their daughters to achieve, to be as good as boys, to have every opportunity. It's a little less cool when their feminist daughters want their grandsons to enjoy nail polish and flowers, to be complimented for being cute as well as for being clever, to get to indulge the little-kid love of all things sparkly. There's a down side to it, of course--as PoJ points out, things that are marked as "feminine" cost more (because women are expected to be good consumers; because "femininity" is an act that's meant to advertise indulgence and luxury; because sexism ain't dead yet). On the other hand, men pay a price to maintain masculinity, too. Crafty stuff is "girly," enjoying nature is "girly," taking care of small things is "girly," being coddled and petted is "girly." I'm pretty happy that PK gets to enjoy those little luxuries.

And I'm not too poor to spring for the occasional bottle of Hello Kitty nail polish so that he can have sparkly toes inside his Darth Vader sandals.

Things are really slowing down around here. Is this a function of June?

Not to depress you, but in just a few weeks the summer solistice is going to hit and the days will start to get shorter. Yeah, I'm a "glass half-empty" type of guy (sometimes).

Anyhoo, to keep things moving along:

Here is a story about an adjunct whose proclivity for cross-dressing is causing some problems for his career. My favorite graph:

The Herald-Leader article quoted Kerr as saying that he used cross-dressing to illustrate shifts in gender in which women dress in some clothing (such as jeans) that was once considered male, but that men do not enjoy the same options to dress in clothing that was considered female. “I’m turning it around. What’s good for the girls is good for the guys,” he said.

O.K., this might make sense except for the inconvenient fact that guy's clothes are a lot less of a hassle than women's. That's why girls have started to wear them instead of the other way around. But I could be wrong here. Perhaps I'll toss on a bra and full-length hoop skirt tomorrow to test out my theory. Oh yeah, I'll try to remember where my wife put her bonnet.

Finally, re: the relative class, economic, and social situation of the college professor, here's a fine little ditty from CNN.com about a community college professor in Florida who stole some of his student's IDs to procure credit cards in their names. Here's my favorite part:

Slosberg had asked his students to write their names and Social Security numbers on a sign-in sheet, students said. "We all signed it," Amanda Bracewell said. "We figured, 'He's a teacher, what is he going to do with it?"'

And, of course, there's a whole lotta WARD CHURCHILL goin' on over in Denver. For those who can't avert their gaze from a career going up in flames.

Did anyone besides me find Friday's Chronicle article about going into debt to take a sabbatical deeply idiotic?

I remembered the first time I had had a sabbatical at three-quarter's pay, back when I was a frugal assistant professor living alone in an apartment. Back then I didn't end up in debt at all. I had decided to take the spring off, so I sublet my apartment for the year, moved in with a pal for the fall, while I was teaching, and then hopped on a plane to Europe for the spring semester. I lived on lentils, took public transportation, and stayed within my budget.

Eleven years, a partner, a child, and a dog later, it's a whole different story. I can't spend the semester at the overseas archives I used to use, can't leave my partner with all the child care, and can't find any way to cut our expenses. My research takes place in my own study or in the libraries of neighboring research institutions. And even without international travel, the debt rises, despite my best efforts to economize.

Ok, to begin with, the implication here that the pre-tenure sabbatical is okay because you can get a roommate and eat lentils is ridiculous. Firstly, because not all assistant professors are single; second, because many of us aren't in our mid-20s; third, because in theory the job of an assistant professor should pay a living professional wage; and fourth, because part of that job involves research--which one shouldn't have to support out of pocket. Oh, I realize that not everyone gets a pre-tenure sabbatical--believe me, I realize this--and that most of us do support our jobs out of pocket. I, for instance, had a problem yesterday charging *one bra* (I left my luggage at the boyfriend's--paging Dr. Freud--and yes, a woman needs at least one bra to get through the week) because my credit card is maxed out because my university has still not reimbursed me for my last conference trip. They won't, of course, reimburse the interest I'm paying on the charges; I'll eat that. And my "conference funding" will, at best, only pay for about 25% of my expenses; most of the cost of conference-going comes out of grants that I have to apply for a few times a year, even though of course if I don't get the funding and don't go to conferences I will therefore be seen as not doing my job. Oh well.

What really chafes, though, is the end of the article. Having pointed out that taking leave is necessary to get research done, and that this involves going into debt to do your job, we end up with a pollyanna conclusion that Suze Ormond says the only reason to use credit cards is to supplement "a job in a field you love, with advancement potential."

[If] the job does not pay enough for you to live on, use a credit card to get by, and work like hell to advance in your career. Soon you will be promoted, your salary will rise, and you'll be able to pay off your credit cards systematically over the next year or two. Think of it, she said, as an investment in yourself.

That sounded good to me. I'm using the semester to work like hell to advance my career, and I can pay back the credit cards when I get back onto full pay. In fact, I'll even be getting a good raise this year. The interest on $8,000? It's an investment in myself.

This is ridiculous. The author of the piece is *eleven years* past her pre-tenure sabbatical; she's not in the early stages of a career. This is the stage at which one's salary, according to Suze Ormond, is supposed to *have risen* already, so that you can pay *off* the credit cards, not rack 'em up paying the mortgage because your job expects you to produce research on your own dime. In fact, if you think about it, *graduate school* is supposed to be that early, debt-accumulation phase; once you get the assistant professor job, you ought to be paid enough to do the research. Waiting until after tenure to make a professional salary (in the author's case, about $65,000, apparently) is completely insane.

But in fact--and I've talked to other junior profs who say the same thing, it isn't just me--the assistant professor years are sometimes poorer than the graduate school years. Maybe you buy a house, or have a family. If you have young kids, probably they need to spend more hours in expensive daycare than they did in graduate school, when you taught fewer classes. Maybe now that you've finally graduated, your parents aren't supporting you any more. Certainly you're no longer taking out student loans. Perhaps after all those years of wearing grubby grad school thrift-shop clothing, you feel kind of compelled to create a semi-professional wardrobe. Maybe all that postponed dental care or those new glasses you've needed for years or the uncovered moving expenses involved in crossing a continent or needing to travel for research or conferences starts to come due. Possibly your partner, having quit her or his job to follow you, has taken a fairly substantive pay cut. Lots of factors--the end result of which is that junior profs often end up taking on debt just when they thought they were finally going to start paying it off. My debt load has gone up 400% over what I was carrying when I left graduate school, but my standard of living has gone way, way down.

Oh yes, I know: it's the life of the mind, we're supposed to be above material wants and needs. But as I've been saying for years: we aren't brains on sticks. Bodies have to get dressed, kids expect books and toys, research requires software and hardware and books and travel. Tuition costs are rising for students, state and federal governments are paying less and less of the expense of college and university education, and the faculty--like public school teachers have for years--are (increasingly? I don't know, but it certainly feels that way) holding up the institutions they work for by taking on personal debt. This may not be as true for those in the hard sciences, or the business school; on the other hand, it's even worse for adjuncts. It's a ridiculous state of affairs.

The emperor needs some damn clothes.

I'm always happy to be one step ahead of the Daily Show. Jon Stewart made the same obvious joke as me, but of course, his was funnier. From last night's show, referring to the President's latest difficulties with the dictionary.com word of the day:

Actually Mr. President, "dissemble" means not to tell the truth. "Disassemble" is what we did to Iraq.

And this, after a serious of clips of W, Cheney & Rumsfeld talking about progress in Iraq:

It's not that they live in a world that doesn't really exist, it's that they really don't know what the word "progress" means. They think it's something bad.

He also nicely ponts out that Rumfeld, who now says that Amnesty International has lost "any claim to objectivity or seriousness", used human rights reports by Amnesty International on Iraq as pretext for war. Anyways, the whole clip is great, and they actually posted it this time. Check it out...

On a more serious note (and, honestly, I think this is one of the most serious issues out there, there is almost nothing that this administration has done in the last 4 and a half years that has appalled me more than their toture policy), Sydney Blumenthal had a nice article in salon on the topic on Wedneday.

Middlebury College sits squarely in the middle of the most homogeneous state in the USA (according to the census figures, Vermont is 96.8% "white"). I know (cannot say how, but suffice to say, I know) that this has been a problem with recruiting faculty of color to the College.

The efforts to bring minority students (and faculty) to campus might be about to get much more difficult. This article in the Village Voice discusses the case of one O'Neil Walker. Walker was due to graduate this spring when he was punished with an "indefinite suspension" from the College. The case is pretty complex, and I'm afraid it is going to escape my attempts to summarize. I strongly recommend you read the article before reading my summary (or commenting).

The atmosphere at Middlebury was ripe for an event of this kind:

According to school records obtained from Addison County court files, paranoia started building last November, when a male student in the large dorm complex Ross Commons woke up to find a figure crouched on the floor at the foot of his bed. It was dark, but the student could see that the intruder had close-cropped hair. The alleged intruder said nothing as he crept from the room and disappeared, leaving only a calling card—a pair of Tootsie Roll lollipops—on the floor, sticks crossed, like some sort of symbol.
About a week later, in the same dorm, another student reported waking up after a night of partying to find a strange man "rubbing his penis." The victim reported that he tried to grab the intruder but the man—described as a black man with long "nappy" hair sticking out of a dark hoodie—ran from the dorm.
A campus alert went out, warning students to be on the lookout for a college-age man of that description. The rumor mill went into overdrive.

Middlebury Senior David Hawkins switched dorms from where the incidents had taken place, and then...

The first night in his new room was January 30, according to documents, and Hawkins had had "six or seven" drinks—he originally told investigators that he had had only two drinks—before he crashed in his room at 2:30. Hours later he awoke to find a kid he didn't know lying, possibly sleeping, on his floor. The two argued, according to Hawkins. The crasher said it was just a mistake, that he'd crashed there because he thought it was still the room of his friends from the previous semester. But Hawkins didn't believe him and later told the college's director of public safety, Elizabeth Boudah, that he wanted his uninvited guest caught. Hawkins pointed to three black students from the Middlebury face book who he said resembled the intruder. Fortunately for each of them, none were on campus that weekend. That might have been the end of it, but two weeks later Hawkins spied Walker and his friends on a beer run. Hawkins later told campus police, according to records, that he was "95 percent sure" Walker was the intruder.
But O'Neil Walker looks nothing like the description Hawkins gave Boudah. Hawkins reported that the intruder had high cheekbones and a light complexion, while Walker's cheeks are rounded and his skin is a rich, dark-brown color. Hawkins also said the intruder had an "African" accent, while Walker's diction is crisp and unaccented. Nevertheless, it was decided that Walker was not only a serious suspect in this case but in the others. He was absolved of all but the Hawkins incident.

This case involves a lot of issues. There are many obvious racial ones. Interestingly, Walker was a Posse Foundation scholar. The Posse Foundation is a terrific program, well known for effective college prep in the New England area. There are, of course, class issues that should not be ignored as well.

I'm particularly interested in the fact that Middlebury, as a private college, can legally conduct the judicial proceedings in absolute secrecy. While I understand the benefits of secrecy (it serves to protect the innocent from baseless accusations and can be helpful in bringing forward reluctant witnesses or victims), in such a high-profile case it exacerbates the existing underlying tensions. The secrecy makes everyone involved look bad, and serves to feed rampant rumors and speculation.

As Jim Booth (?) posted on his blog (SirPaulsBuddy):

This is certainly a racial problem, but it's also an academy problem. Until colleges, whether public or private, learn to act in such cases as these in transparent ways that reasssure both victims and suspects that their aim is fairness and not expediency, we can only look forward to more O'Neil Walkers.

One anonymous commentator took issue with Booth's description of the case, stating:

The [Village Voice] article does not mention other facts that have come up since this case broke, such as the fact that O'Neil's dorm entry card was used to open doors in the dorms where the incidents occured in the middle of the night. Or that the accuser had a 5-minute conversation/argument with the accused before he fled. I don't know about you, but if I woke up in the middle of the night, found someone in my room and argued with them for 5 minutes, I would trust a positive ID.

Georgia Peach has also posted on the case at Waiting for Bubba.

You can also read an interesting comment from a sister of one of Walker's classmates at the Academic_anon posting on the story. At least among the students, Walker seems to have many supporters.

My old car, a Ford Escort, is getting very old. Over 150k miles. I've been thinking of replacing it with a Hyundai or a Japanese vehicle that gets respectable mileage. But now, as long as Ford can come up with something that gets me similar mileage, they're back in the running. Why?

Because the AFA is boycotting them!

One of the interesting things about this article is that it points out that AFA also has plans to boycott Carl's Junior. I seem to remember boycotting them myself because Carl Karcher, the founder and part-owner, gave lots of money to people like Operation Rescue ...

Go figure.