Truth & Beauty Bombs

Confessions of an Ex-Sexism-Apologist

2009-08-16T19:00:00.005-04:00

In two weeks I'll be heading back to my women's college to start my final year there. A few weeks ago, just for kicks, I checked out the Facebook group for my college's Class of 2013. Questions from prospective and admitted students on the discussion boards vary widely, but the absence of men on campus inevitably comes up. Aside from questions specifically about dating, the questions tend to run along these lines:

do you ever feel like there are too many female hormones raging at once?

I'm so used to having male friends that I'm worried it'll be a little weird.

And the answers tend to look like this:

girls here are legitimately really cool, so not having that many guy friends is fine.

I do miss my guy friends, sometimes girls just don't have the same way of looking at things.

Although all of the women here are fantastic, it gets tiring not having a male perspective because they really are different.

(I haven't read all of the 1500 posts, so I can't vouch for whether or not anyone has yet said, "Actually, there are men enrolled here," although the presence of trans guys did come up briefly in response to a question about something else.)

I'm one of those women who came to my college despite the fact that it's a women's college. When I arrived on campus three years ago, I expected to tolerate the nearly-all-female student body, not appreciate it. I expected that college classes full of women would be like just like my high school classes, only minus the men and plus some maturity. Since I was used to co-ed environments, in which the men tended to be the most assertive, funny, and eager to debate, I expected that my classes would be a little lackluster without them.

I hated women, to be brutally honest. I hated my mother for levelling feminist critiques at Disney movies ("they teach little girls that the key to happiness is finding a man!") and being our family's main breadwinner, but never making a decision without asking my father first. I hated myself for being a woman, because no matter how smart or assertive I was, I felt like I had to be a man if I wanted those to be my most important qualities. My jokes sounded tinny and my anger sounded shrill to my own ears. I hated that I liked wearing skirts and heels, because I felt like I had to give up my self-respect to do so. I assumed I was a feminist, because my parents taught me that I had more important things to do than be sexy for men, but I didn't understand that the things I hated about women—and being a woman—were because I lived in a sexist society. I didn't understand that I had mostly male role models because I admired full-fledged human beings, and I had been taught my whole life that only men could be those. I certainly didn't understand that I was complicit.

The first thing that happened was, I genuinely liked the vast majority of the women I met in my first two weeks of college. The second thing was that I learned—because I was surrounded by brave women, and because women's colleges are safe havens—that sexual violence of all types and degrees happens to real people. People I know. And the third thing that happened was that the male lecturer for my Introduction to Anthropology course told my class, repeatedly, that we were all feminists whether we knew it or not because we live in a society in which people believe that women should be equal to men.

And I didn't know why (because I was still only a sexism-apologist masquerading as a feminist), but I knew that wasn't true. This guy was implying that America is an inherently feminist society, and my stomach churned. I still hated women, though, so I defended the lecturer's comments to a friend and filed my discomfort away for later.

There were other things: several fights, a few disappointments, some anthropological theory, a bit of self-discovery. All in all, it would be another two years before I fully realized that what I hate isn't women but the corners my culture backs women into; and although I have good reason to hate being a woman in this society, I don't have to hate being a woman.

I feel freer now, of course. But I also often feel angrier. And more discouraged. I go through dark bouts of despair in which I wonder if I'll ever be taken seriously as a whole person, and I'm gripped by the fear that no matter how good a mother I am, my daughters will hate themselves and my sons will grow up to be entitled tyrants. My awareness of culturally-ingrained inequalities ruins television shows and conversations for me even when everyone else in the room is having a good time. But I'm also learning to love skirts and heels. I'm learning to love myself. I'm trying to forgive my mother.

If there's one thing I've learned from going to a women's college, it's that we're not all feminists. Feminism is often characterized as the belief that women should be equal to men. But that's too easy. I've always believed that, and I have not always been a feminist. I now think that in order to be feminist, you also have to realize that women are not, in our society, equal to men. You have to see the reality as well as believe in the ideal.

I sympathize with women who have misgivings about committing themselves to a women's college, because I had misgivings, too. But I learned that those misgivings were rooted in the outrageous assumption that sexuality aside, men are inherently different from and more interesting than women. Yeah, men have a "different perspective" and "they really are different." But most of the time, that difference is privilege, and the perspective is entitlement. There is no other factor that all men share (to some degree), and all women lack (to some degree). The women at my college are "legitimately really cool" because they've had a taste of what it's like to be people, not just lesser versions of the real thing. And if there's one thing I wish for everyone to learn, whether they attend a women's college or not, it's that women are whole human beings. It's a lesson that's harder than it sounds.

I regret to say that this will be my last regular post on this blog, as I will be too busy taking classes, holding down a research fellowship, and planning a wedding to continue writing here reliably in the upcoming school year. However, I may post something occasionally when I feel compelled, and I expect to start writing regularly again in about a year. Thanks for reading, everybody. All...seven of you.

Violence, the Domestic, and a Woman's Place

2009-08-08T20:40:00.009-04:00

I saw this commercial for the first time this weekend, during an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit*.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't just the context of SVU that had me thinking this was going to be a public service announcement about domestic violence. Lying about injury is a widely-known indicator of abuse. Instead, it's for a housekeeping product. In this commercial, victims' shame and fear of revealing abuse is revealed to be the result of domesticity—not violence. And since domesticity is the proper domain of women anyway (as you can see from the fact that only women sport those embarrassing cleaning injuries), that shame and fear is not just trivial, it's normal for women. It's acceptable. Like domestic labor, domestic violence is just a woman's place.

*The way that show reveals and reinforces damaging cultural assumptions about rape and other sexual violence is a blog post I only dream of writing someday.

What If the Environment Mattered More Than Money?

2009-07-31T20:40:00.006-04:00

...Then instead of wondering why the state of New Jersey is so corrupt, we might be celebrating its "try-anything strategy that has made it the nation's second-biggest producer of solar energy behind California."

According to Matthew Wald at NYT's Green Inc.,

PSE&G Solar, a subsidiary of the big New Jersey utility, said on Wednesday that [it] received the regulatory go-ahead to add 80 megawatts of solar capacity in its territory by the end of 2013, effectively doubling the amount of solar power in the state.

Now, I've always been a little skeptical of solar power's effectiveness. But Wald goes on to address my fears:

Although the panels may produce 80 megawatts with the sun directly overhead, their contribution to meeting peak electric demand in New Jersey will probably be smaller, because the the highest electricity demand comes after the sunniest part of the day. Also, many of the panels may be shaded by buildings or trees for part of the day. Mr. Rosengren said that the panels’ value at the time of peak electricity demand could be closer to 24 megawatts.

Still, that's more than most states are doing. And while I'm not saying that governments or politicians should get a pass for corruption, I think the visibility of these two news stories about the same state says something about our society's values. New Jersey's corruption scandals have made homepage news at nytimes.com for several days running, but its environmental achievements only made it to a special-interest blog. Failures will always make better news than successes, of course. But this country does not lack environmental failures. How big does our environmental "corruption" have to get before it trumps money or politics?

Powell Blames Gates for His Own Wrongful Arrest

2009-07-29T10:42:00.016-04:00

Last night, CNN reported that former Secretary of State Colin Powell rebuked Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. for the way he behaved the night he was wrongly arrested by Cambridge police (h/t). Powell also faulted the police for "escalating the situation beyond a reasonable level," but he focused his criticism on Gates:

"I think Skip [Gates], perhaps in this instance, might have waited a while, come outside, talked to the officer and that might have been the end of it," Powell said in an interview with CNN's Larry King.
"I think he should have reflected on whether or not this was the time to make that big a deal."

"There is no African-American in this county who has not been exposed to this kind of situation," Powell said. "Do you get angry? Yes. Do you manifest that anger? Do you protest? Do you try to get things fixed? But it's the better course of action to try and take it easy and don't let your anger make the current situation worse."

It all seems so reasonable, doesn't it? If Gates had only been more patient, this would never have become such a big deal, right?

Wrong. Putting the blame on Gates is ridiculous. The police did something wrong when they assumed he was breaking into his own home, when the arresting officer refused to identify himself, and when they arrested Gates for disorderly conduct. I see no evidence that Gates did anything wrong. It's not wrong to get upset about suffering injustice. It's not wrong to suggest that racism had a role to play in this situation. (It's very hard to prove whether that's true, but it's not wrong to suggest it.) It's certainly not wrong to expect to be able to get into one's own home without being detained by the police.

Powell is basically saying that Gates was wrong to do anything other than lie down and let the Cambridge police walk all over him. Where's the sense or justice in that?

This—patiently waiting while the people in power commit injustice—is a standard of behavior frequently demanded of racial minorities, women, and other oppressed groups. When the police do something racist, misogynistic, homophobic, or transphobic, someone (often from the same group as the victim) usually comes forward to suggest that the victim could have handled the situation better. "Yes, it's discrimination," they say, "but we all go through it, there's nothing you can do about it, and it's best not to risk making the situation worse." And everyone applauds the spokesperson's sanity and reason.

But expecting people to "just suck it up" (Powell's words) when they come up against discrimination is part of how our society perpetuates discrimination. In fact, Gates had very good reason to be upset. And yes, he was probably extra upset because he suspected that the injustice happening to him was based in racism. That is also a justifiable reason to be upset. Instead of expecting him to be calm, we should be expecting the police to be fair and just. Isn't upholding justice their job?

Telling us that Gates should have been more patient puts the responsibility on the wrong party. It sends the message that what Gates did was just as wrong as what the police did. It passes off a one-way injustice as a two-way mistake. And that's just not right.

You can watch the interview with Powell here; the relevant section is the second clip.

Why I Don't Care Whether Roethlisberger Is Guilty

2009-07-27T14:40:00.006-04:00

If you weren't looking for it, you might not have seen that Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was recently sued for rape. Even if you did see it, you might be a little confused. Was it rape, or just "sexual assault," as both the Washington Post and New York Times headlines call it? If the woman was really raped, why was there no criminal investigation? Why are feminists so upset about media coverage of the lawsuit? And why do fans, reporters, and the public seem to be unsure about who is the victim in this situation?

The important thing about this case—for everyone but Roethlisberger and his accuser—is not whether he is guilty. The important thing is how the case has been treated by the media and the public, and what that says about our culture.

Let me try to answer some of those questions I brought up before.

According to the WP (first link on this page), the lawsuit states Roethlisberger raped the woman. In some jurisdictions, "sexual assault" is used interchangably with "rape." But "sexual assault" is usually used to describe unwanted sexual contact that stops short of "rape," which is usually restricted to penetrative sexual assault. There is no question what Roethlisberger is being sued for. It's rape.

At least 60% of all sexual assault cases are not reported. I've heard some people suggest that the woman in this case might have made up the rape claim in order to get money out of Roethlisberger. But Roethlisberger has more than money; he has power, and all the legal and publicity resources his money can buy. Accusing him of rape in a criminal case would be harrowing (because of the inevitable publicity) and costly (in terms of money, time, and energy). The fact that a woman does not report rape to the police should not be taken to mean she was not raped.

Feminists are upset about the Roethlisberger story for a variety of reasons, and I can't speak for any other feminist but myself. However, I think most feminists (who have responded to the story) agree that:

We don't know whether Roethlisberger is guilty or not, and we're not arguing that he necessarily is. However,
The media and public's response to the lawsuit has been, for the most part, to discount the woman's claims, blame her for her rape, and defend Roethlisberger.
This response is damaging to our society because it sends the message that rape is okay.

For example, many reports and discussions of the lawsuit have portrayed Roethlisberger as a victim. On Saturday, ESPN quoted a fan who said of Roethlisberger:

"People try to take advantage of him. But all of Ambridge supports him. I work at a nursing home, and all the people I take care of love him and support him."

And on a Washington Post article in which the WP declined to use the name of the woman who filed the lawsuit, a reader commented,

Also, it's not clear who the victim in this case really is. The unnamed, or Roethlisberger. Seems to me protecting his identity might be just as prudent.

Both of these comments portray Roethlisberger as a victim. But accusing someone of rape is not taking advantage of him. Accusing someone of rape is pursuing justice. And in a rape case, there is only one victim: the person who was raped.

But why is this such a big deal, anyway? What if Roethlisberger is innocent? Jaclyn Friedman at The American Prospect explains why it's so dangerous to defend Roethlisberger:

This kind of public blowback isn't just re-traumatizing for the victim -- it impacts our ability to bring rapists to justice. After all, judges and juries live in the same sports culture we do -- and participate in it themselves to varying degrees. So it's not hard to guess why a study by USA Today in the wake of the Kobe Bryant rape trial found that athletes charged with rape were far less likely to be convicted or even agree to a plea deal than non-athletes. And the more athletes get away with rape, the more likely they are to rape again, and the more likely other athletes are to see it as an appealing act with few consequences.

When people publish headlines that demote rape to "sexual assault," throw suspicion on accusations of rape because there was no criminal report, suggest that women who make rape accusations are gold-digging or vindictive, and portray the accused rapist as a victim, they support rape and protect rapists. This is what feminists call rape culture: all the little things we think, say and do that make it possible for rapists to get away with raping, and make it difficult for rape victims to acknowledge, heal from, and seek justice for the crimes against them. Rape culture refuses to accept rape as a heinous crime, and instead blurs the line between rape and sex, explains rape away as a failure in communication, puts the responsibility for rape on its victims, and ultimately makes sexual coercion and violence seem acceptable—or trivial at worst.

Because of rape culture, it doesn't matter whether Roethlisberger is innocent or guilty. His story is just one example of how our whole society is guilty of excusing rapists and preventing justice.

Living Deliberately: Waste Not, Want Less

2009-07-25T11:27:00.012-04:00

Yesterday, Lisa over at Sociological Images blogged about a Chinese artist's installation piece that "raises questions about consumption, economy, and the things in our lives." In "Waste Not," artist Song Dong turned the entire contents of his mother's Beijing home into a work of art. The New York Times called the piece "a record of a life, a history of a half-century of Chinese vernacular culture and a symbolic archive of impermanence."

The NYT focuses on the piece's Chinese context (which my inner anthropology major eats up like candy while feeling vaguely uneasy about the paper's love affair with China), but SI uses it as a mirror for consumers everywhere:

Many of us live in consumption economies unlike any in human history. Consuming is a daily chore. Acquiring is easier than ever.

What do you have? How much of it do you need? Do you have things that you don’t want? How do you manage the stuff that enters your home? Does it go? Or does it stay? Do you dispose of the disposable and semi-disposable goods? Or do you try to recycle them, even if only within the boundaries of your home? How do the shelves and drawers, the nooks and crannies of your living space, obscure our answers to these questions? What would it look like if we had to look at it all, all at once?

As a college student, I have two "bodies" of personal belongings: the active corpus, which I pack up every spring and sort into boxes for my dorm storage and bags for my summer housing, then unpack again every fall; and my inactive stash—everything that's still at my parents' house—which is mostly books, and grows incrementally smaller each time I go home and sort things out to donate, dump, or sell. I'm always conscious of how much stuff I have at school, because I pack and unpack it twice a year. (This past May, I stored ten boxes of various sizes, and one standing lamp.) It's easy for me to see what I'm not using and throw it out or donate it at the end of the year.

For now, I keep my belongings to a minimum for convenience. But material minimalism is something I hope to cultivate throughout my adult life and someday impart to my children. There are lots of reasons for this. Economical: If you don't buy what you don't need, you have more money for what you really want. Aesthetic: Stuff inevitably becomes clutter; I like clear, functional spaces; and if you only keep what works and looks good, you won't have a lot of ugly, useless stuff. Practical: The less stuff you have, the less stuff you have to fix or replace when it breaks, and the easier it is to find things. Environmental: The less stuff you have, the less waste you produce; and the less stuff you buy, the less you're contributing to resource depletion. Ethical: I'm not naïve enough to think that the resources I don't use will go to the people who need them most, but at least I won't be wasting things that others need. Psychological: Consumption is consuming; the more you buy, the more you feel you have to buy. Cultural: Consumption is a powerful value in our society, and there are other ones I'd rather focus on myself or promote to my children.

And there are lots of ways to do it: Buy less. Recycle regularly. Sell to second-hand bookstores and consignment shops. Share things with your neighbors, and borrow things you only need once. Use your local library. Give clothes to younger relatives and friends. Buy or find high-quality items the first time so they'll last. When things break, fix them immediately or get rid of them. Make lists of things you think you want, and wait to buy or find them until you know you can't live without them. Make what you can with your own skills and resources. Buy things that let you cut down on what you have to buy (sewing machine, chickens). Entertain yourself by doing things that don't require lots of stuff (hint: activities outside usually require less stuff than activities inside). At holidays and birthdays, buy fewer, better presents. After holidays and birthdays, donate old things you don't want and new things you won't use.

As I recently told my fiancée, I'm excited to have our own place because I'll finally be able to get rid of things I don't want. Of course, it's not just about getting rid of things—it's about not acquiring excess stuff in the first place. In America, where our everyday activities and interactions all conspire to make us want more things, this means being very deliberate about what you really need, and why you want what you do. Living deliberately doesn't just mean recycling or donating when you're done using something. Living deliberately means using less stuff. Period.

Going to the Doctor While Queer

2009-07-22T16:56:00.006-04:00

I went to the doctor today for a regular checkup. Since my last "home" doctor was in Washington, I go to school in Massachusetts, and I'm living in New Jersey this summer, I had to go to a new doctor. I haven't been to any doctor in a while, so I was nervous about going. I was also nervous about giving my medical history, especially the part about sexual activity. I'm a sexually active woman. But I'm also sexually active with a woman, and it is daunting to have to disclose my sexual orientation to a stranger whom I have to trust with my body and health. (The first time after I became sexually active that a doctor asked me about it, I said I wasn't sexually active just so I wouldn't have to go through that ordeal. Not my finest moment, I admit.)

So the doctor I saw gets:

+30 points for asking me whether I'm sexually active with men or women
+20 points for reacting neutrally to my answer
-20 points for not asking me if I use protection
-20 points for thinking pap smears are irrelevant for young gold-star lesbians
+20 points for suggesting I get the HPV vaccine

...For a total of +30 sexual orientation competence points.

Her office had me fill out a lengthy, annoying questionnaire about my medical history. The office gets:

+10 points for using the word "sex" to ask about physical sex
+20 points for formatting it so the patient can write in "F," "M," or "I"
-30 points for not including a separate question about gender

...For a total of 0 gender competence points.

Which cursory, informal assessment leaves this particular clinic with a total of +30 lgbtq competence points, on an arbitrary scale yet to be determined. I'm sure I would have more to talk about if I were trans; since I'm cis, my actual medical care does not involve trans-specific issues, so I can't comment on how well the doctor I saw would handle them.

All this is simply to highlight the fact that it makes a difference when doctors and other health care providers are competent in talking about and dealing with lgbtq issues, even when those issues aren't directly related to health. In my case, I was relieved when my doctor asked about my sexual orientation, and her good response allowed me to be more open about my health. This in turn allowed her to do her job better, and means that I am more likely to receive adequate medical care. On the other hand, her failure to ask about protection and insist on regular pap smears leads me to think that her medical knowledge about lesbian sexual health is limited to common knowledge that assumes pap smears and protection are unnecessary for women like me.

Sotomayor's (and the Senate's) Lesson for the Rest of Us

2009-07-20T21:33:00.006-04:00

On Saturday, Sociological Images (a fantastic blog, incidentally) posted and discussed a clip from The Colbert Report in which Stephen Colbert astutely satirizes those who question Judge Sotomayor's judicial neutrality on the basis of her race. It's been well re-blogged, but I'm posting it again because I hope this is the lesson we will all take away from Sotomayor's confirmation hearings.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The Word - Neutral Man's Burden

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Jeff Goldblum

No point of view—and no race—is neutral. We just privilege some more than others. The news surrounding Sotomayor's nomination and confirmation has really brought home for me the fact that my race is not more normal, average, or neutral than anyone else's. Even more, it has shown me just how much our society assumes that white is normal, average, and neutral—much more than had I previously realized! I hope other white Americans are getting the same message.

I highly recommend you read the discussion at SI (where you can also read the transcript if you don't want to watch the clip) and check out Macon D's comments at Stuff White People Do.

Bullies and Heroes of the Week(ish)

2009-07-17T00:00:00.001-04:00

I'm leaving today to go hiking/camping for two days, and on Sunday I'll be busy hanging out with my future in-laws, so today's and Monday's posts will be short.

Today, three groups who should be taking more responsibility for their actions:

First place goes to the United States Military, which (according to a recent report) gratuitously trampled Iraq's ruins of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon—one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World—to build "Camp Alpha." You may remember a few years ago when the American media lamented the destruction Iraqi insurgents wreaked on their own cultural relics after the initial invasion? I guess it's okay if an organized Western army does it.
Then there are the Senate Republicans, who throughout Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings have harped on her race. And her gender. Which is somehow her fault, of course.
Last and certainly least surprising is Wal-mart, which despite recent efforts to appear green has tipped its money-grubbing hand by making plans to build a development on Virginia's historic Wilderness Battlefield.

And three everyday heroes:

Sunfollower at Feministing, who discusses the difficulties and importance of speaking up when the people around you are acting prejudiced.
Loren A. Olsen, who points out that there's a difference between homophobic and homo-naive, and reminds us all to be decent human beings.
Sugarleigh at Shakesville, who writes on what it means to live in rape culture, even without being "actually" raped. [Trigger warning.]

Can't Sleep, -isms Will Eat Me

2009-07-15T19:00:00.003-04:00

Sorry I've been such a bad blogger for the past week. To get me back into the habit, here is a short list of some questions I've been thinking about while not writing:

Is intentional visibility more beneficial or more damaging for women? Racial minorities? Gays? Trans people? For example, I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that "female vocalists" can be an important distinguishing feature for a musical artist, whereas "male vocalists" rarely is.
While emphasizing safe sex is a given (for me), is it more important to discourage teen girls from having sex or to teach them how to make it a positive experience?
How irresponsible is it for a public non-political figure not to know about national-level political activity? Is it responsible—or even possible—to be a public figure without being political?
Does a set of spiritual beliefs have to be encoded in social activity to be religious? Do spiritual beliefs have to be expressed in ritual practice to be fulfilled?
Sotomayor says identity won't distort her decisions. But is it more important for her to insist on her (imaginary) neutrality so she can get confirmed, or to point out that everyone's decisions are influenced by their backgrounds and experiences—especially white male judges'?
In a culture that dehumanizes women as a matter of course, how do I draw the line between the innocent and the guilty? And how do I function in society if I can't draw that line?

And then there's the ultimate question of living deliberately: how do I strike a balance between being a decent, responsible human being and sleeping at night? It doesn't make me a better person if I don't sleep at night (literally or figuratively) because I'm worrying about important social or even personal issues. For one thing, worrying isn't an effective problem-solving strategy. But I do think it is my responsibility to ask these questions, and to look for other questions that need to be asked.

Update: 50 Book Challenge

2009-07-14T14:02:00.005-04:00

14. Postcards by E. Annie Proulx. This is the first novel published by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News and "Brokeback Mountain." A cover quotation from the Chicago Tribune calls it "a rich, dark and brilliant feast of a book," and I certainly found it both rich and dark. Like super-dark chocolate, but less sweet. The novel follows the members of the Blood family—sons Loyal and Dub, daughter Mernelle, father Mink, mother Jewell—and their Vermont dairy farm (practically a character in itself, complete with conflict and development) from 1944 to 1988, as the changing post-war economy and technological development threatens to make them all obsolete. The dairy farm's death and transformation is inevitable from the first chapter, in which Loyal is forced by circumstances to strike out west. The book's cover synopsis says "Loyal comes to symbolize the alienation and frustration behind the American dream," but I think each member of the family, and the the farm itself, embodies and enacts the struggles and sentiments that arise when "the American dream" goes through a period of change, forcing Americans of the time to forge new dreams in an America that looks nothing like what they expected it to be. The novel spans Loyal's entire adult life; it's hard, at times, to understand why and how he keeps living, but all of a sudden he's an old man. As a twenty-two-year-old woman, I was challenged by the necessity of imagining the year I was born from the perspective of a man born when my grandparents were the age I am now. Most books I read don't span this length of time, nor do they so realistically evoke the changing historical time as viewed from an individual's lifetime. Postcards made me wonder who my parents thought, when they were my age, they would be now; and how foreign the American landscape will look to them—and eventually me—in old age.

Postcards is heavy on male perspectives and experiences, but one of my favorite sections of the book is when Jewell learns to drive after her controlling, abusive husband dies. This is June 1952:

At first she stayed on valley highways, but after a few weeks began to pick mountain roads where she could lean into the corners or nurse the old heap up the slope to a pull-off at the top and take in the panorama through her new eyeglasses. Continuity broke: when she drove, her stifled youth unfurled like ribbon pulled from a spool.

There was the idea of what outsiders saw in "views"—when you went somewhere you wanted to see something, when you'd been driving with your eyes on the road for hours, you wanted to let them stretch out to the boundaries of the earth, the farther the better. All her life she had taken the tufted line of the hills against the sky as fixed, but saw now that the landscape changed, rolled out as far as the roads went, never repeating itself in its arrangement of cliffs and water and trees. View was something more than the bulk of hills and opening valleys, more than sheets of riffled light.

...She felt she was young and in a movie when she drove. She had never guessed at the pleasure of choosing which turns and roads to take, where to stop. Nor the rushing air buffeting her face and whipping her iron hair as though it were a child's hair. As though they had given her the whole country for her own. Did men, she wondered, have this feeling of lightness, of wiping out all troubles when they got into their cars or trucks? Their faces did not show any special pleasure when they drove. Men understood nothing of the profound sameness, week after week, after month of the same narrow rooms, treading the same worn footpaths to the clothesline, the garden.

Postcards is not, for the most part, so reflective or analytical. Instead, it portrays people and their choices realistically. Proulx understands their perspectives and circumstances, but instead of explaining that understanding to her readers, she simply uses it to make her characters convincing.

Living Deliberately: Staying Engaged

2009-07-08T02:00:00.001-04:00

Last Friday, my fiancée and I went to a big fireworks show—the kind where people bring their families and set up picnic blankets and lawn chairs in a park four hours before sunset, and vendors sell funnel cake and lemonade, and lots of preteen girls show up in what amounts to little more than denim underwear. It was a fantastic pyrotechnic show and a truly all-American event, complete with this charming tidbit:

COVER BAND FRONT MAN: Yeah, I might have swine flu. It's under control, though. I guess I shouldn't have French-kissed that Mexican guy last night!

And this heartwarming exchange:

My fiancée and I sit down. She puts her arm around my waist.
60-SOMETHING WOMAN: *openly glares at us*
I look up and catch 60-Something Woman glaring at us.
60-SOMETHING WOMAN: *continues openly glaring at us*

This was when I realized that I've been doing a bad job of living deliberately, lately. I'd lost touch with the real world. I developed the idea of living deliberately, and of starting this blog, when I realized that while academic, cultural-studies-influenced activism is necessary, it often fails to have a large impact because it fails to connect with reality. I absolutely want to change the world for the better, and I believe my academic training and self-educated understanding of feminism and other -isms are excellent tools for the job. But it's far too easy to get lost in an activist ivory tower where everyone already understands the basic ideas of feminism, takes for granted that gay and trans people deserve equal rights, and recognizes that climate change is a threat. It's far too easy to preach every sermon to the choir.

To effect real change, it is absolutely essential to connect with the real world. Living deliberately, in a nutshell, means engaging on a daily, local basis with the average people of one's community, working to make the world a better place just by acting deliberately and with integrity.

In the real world, a racist joke might not be okay, but a racist joke couched in a news reference camouflaged as a homophobic joke is hilarious. Two gay twenty-somethings are an obscene spectacle. Strangers and authorities tell women that they do not deserve bodily integrity or autonomy. It's impossible to make responsible decisions at the supermarket because 98% of "eco-friendly" products make misleading claims. Customers prefer white men over any other group for no reason and without even realizing it. Movies, media, and social behaviors reveal that many people of all genders think of men as people and women as...women. In the real world, a mere interest in gender can be a liability—never mind announcing that you believe women (or gay people, or trans people, or Latino people) are actually human. In the real world, gay and trans people go without health care, even when they don't have to, just because they're afraid to come out to their doctors. Going for a swim is an adventure, or a bother, or a danger.

In the real world, it's a victory when people can see we're just people. And it's a deliberate, brazen act of defiance just to be out. Just to do the right thing.

10 Ways to Be Patriotic On Independence Day

2009-07-04T01:00:00.001-04:00

Read the Declaration of Independence.
Demand civil rights for all Americans.
Support the Americans who fight to protect your freedom.
Help keep America beautiful.
Remember that America is still at war.
Read a book, look at art, or listen to music by a great American woman.
Contribute to your local American economy.
Look for the America you never see.
Learn from our imperfect history; see our imperfect present.
Get excited about making America even better.

Post your own or others' recent patriotic acts in comments.

What Does God Have to Do With Sexuality or Gender?

2009-07-01T10:05:00.009-04:00

I was sitting at dinner a few months ago discussing sex bloggers with my friends. One friend brought up Greta Christina, who ze described as a "gay atheist sex blogger." Another friend (a gay woman and LGBTQ rights activist) said, "She's cool, but a gay atheist isn't that surprising. What would be really unusual is a gay person of faith."

I know that bigoted, fundamentalist, religious extremists have terrorized the LGBTQ and feminist communities; I know that religion-based prejudice is a driving force of misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia in this country. But I'm frequently shocked by how eagerly some liberal bloggers and activists condemn all religion, let "religion" stand in for "religion as an excuse for bigotry," and assume that religion and acceptance are naturally at odds.

Sexual orientation is about who you're attracted to. Religious faith or the lack thereof is about your relationship with God, your understanding of the cosmos, and whether you feel an inkling of a force in the universe beyond the physical. Sexuality and gender are things you're born with; religion is something you are raised with, develop, discover, or choose. I'm sure that many gay and trans people and feminists leave organized religion because the religious institutions familiar to them alienate them. But that has everything to do with institutionalized bigotry and nothing to do with faith. It has nothing to do with God.

More importantly, gay, trans, and feminist people of faith do exist! In fact, a significant majority of gays and lesbians say faith is important to them. Since this information comes from a survey, that means that a significant majority of people who identified as gay or lesbian reported that faith is important to them. An additional 404 respondents declined to identify their sexual orientation. And we'll never know how many respondents are gay but closeted—or faithful but reluctant to admit their faith.

I think a lot of atheistic or religiously-disinclined activists assume that LGBTQ or feminist people of faith are kidding themselves. They believe the religious bigots who say the Bible condemns homosexuality. They think anyone who realizes ze's gay or trans, or who wants equality for women, would be a fool to be religious. But that's just not true. There is nothing about being gay or trans or a feminist that inherently rejects religion, or vice versa. Saying there is only adds fuel to fundamentalist bigots' fire.

Not only does pitting equal rights activism against religion give religious people license to be bigoted, but it's insulting to gays, trans people, and women who are religious. Saying someone shouldn't be religious because of zir gender or sexual orientation is a prejudiced thing to do! Saying it's rare for gays, trans people, or women to be religious could be a neutral statement, if it were a statement of fact. But that's not a fact. Assuming it is denies the existence of a huge number of people. This only contributes to the isolation and marginalization of religious gays, trans people, and feminists. Claiming that they don't exist sends the message that they shouldn't exist. (See the irony?)

Many religious people have rejected LGBTQ rights and feminism on religious grounds, but it's time for us to stop putting up with that. There is no excuse for prejudice or oppression—not even religion; not even activism. Feminists, LGBTQ people, and allies should stop promoting the idea that religion opposes equality. Religious women, LGBTQ people, and allies should make themselves seen and heard as examples of religious acceptance and freedom. Bloggers and activists who don't categorically hate religion should be clear and vocal about their acceptance. As long as we keep imagining religion as an enemy of equality, religious bigotry will thrive. We need to fight bigotry and oppression regardless of religion.

Related: I highly recommend For the Bible Tells Me So, a documentary film that explores "how insightful people of faith handle the realization of having a gay child." It's watchable and heartening.

Stonewall at 40: State of the Movement

2009-06-29T16:58:00.009-04:00

I know progressive blogs are flooded with Stonewall anniversary coverage, retrospectives, and musings, but I can't bring myself to post today about anything else. Here's what I've been reading this Stonewall weekend:

New York Times applauds the audacity of the Stonewall rioters, concluding,

It’s a press cliché that “gay supporters” are disappointed with Obama, but we should all be. Gay Americans aren’t just another political special interest group. They are Americans who are actively discriminated against by federal laws. If the president is to properly honor the memory of Stonewall, he should get up to speed on what happened there 40 years ago, when courageous kids who had nothing, not even a public acknowledgment of their existence, stood up to make history happen in the least likely of places.

The New Civil Rights Movement celebrates LGBTQ activists' participation in America's fine heritage of protest politics. The American Prospect urges us to stop apologizing for being who we are, stop waiting for our leaders to notice us, stop waiting for opportune moments, and refuse to stand down until our bodies, loves, and desires are truly free.

That fight, sadly, is barely begun: At 1 am on Sunday, police raided a gay bar in Fort Worth, TX. People were sent to the hospital for police-inflicted injuries. The story is not well covered by mainstream news, so spread the word. People need to know that this kind of thing is still happening.

To add insult to injury, the New York Times ran a cute little story called "I Love You, Man (as a Friend)," which looks like it's celebrating the fact that gay and straight men can (gasp!) be friends with each other, while actually sensationalizing the supposed divide between gay and straight people, reinforcing the assumption that gay and straight people are fundamentally different, suggesting that gay people are more valuable for their "social insights" than as human beings, and blaming gay people—instead of our bigoted society—for the fact that gay and straight men are afraid to be friends with each other. No mention of women's gay/straight friendships, of course.

In our fair capital city, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis had to send out a warning letter to her employees after someone defaced the Gay Pride Month posters hanging in the department's elevators. Really, guys?

Meanwhile, marriage has been legally equal in the Netherlands since 2001, so M. V. Lee Badgett went there and interviewed married gay couples to find out what it's like. His book, When Gay People Get Married: What Happens When Societies Legalize Same-Sex Marriage, "compellingly shows that allowing gay couples to marry does not destroy the institution of marriage and that many gay couples do benefit, in expected as well as surprising ways, from the legal, social, and political rights that the institution offers." Well, what do you know. (Hat tip: Hunter of Justice.)

I'm a big believer in the power of gay marriage to legitimize LGBTQ people in the eyes of society, but this weekend I realized another big barrier to queer visibility. I didn't learn about the Stonewall riots in school, even though my American history classes covered other civil rights movements pretty well. So long as Stonewall and the LGBTQ rights movement is left out of our history books, LGBTQ civil rights and people are erased from our country's history. This year, let's celebrate Stonewall's 40th anniversary by reminding the people around us that queers have a place in history, that the fight for our civil rights is decades old—and far from over.

Plea for Responsible Atheism

2009-06-26T00:57:00.001-04:00

I was recently tooling around the internet and came across an atheist blog sporting the red OUT Campaign "A" of atheist visibility and solidarity, accompanied by a statement of atheist pride that equated all religious belief with "clinging to superstition."

I've also seen atheists compare religious belief with believing in mythological creatures, and I frequently see atheists argue that religious faith is in and of itself dangerous, and that it prohibits rational thought and/or scientific knowledge.

What's up with that?

I am disgusted by the fact that many Americans are so prejudiced against atheism that they would never vote for an atheist for public office. I am fervently opposed to religious justifications—indeed, any justifications other than logic, reason, and sound science—for laws or any other government actions. I also draw a firm line between faith and reason: the products of reason should be taught in schools, for example; the products of faith should not. And as a queer woman, you can bet that I've suffered from faith-based prejudice and irrationality.

I also believe in a unifying spiritual power in the universe. Spirituality is an integral part of my life. It is not the same as mythology, though spirituality is often expressed through mythology. It is certainly not superstition. It also doesn't in any way harm my ability to think rationally or prevent me from seeking provable, scientific knowledge. Spirituality isn't rational, but neither is, say, love. Neither loving nor having spiritual beliefs has yet prevented me from having reason or scientific curiosity.

Religion is often misused in ways that hurt, and even kill, many people. But those misuses all ultimately stem from intolerance, inequality, corruption, and abuse of power. Although many people use religion to justify those things, nothing about religion itself causes or necessarily promotes them. Science can be used to justify crime, too. Religion, from an anthropological point of view, is simply a social institution like economy or family structure. It is just one way that humans make meaning, bring communities together, and express wonder at the universe.

There is no reason to dismiss religion, and every reason not to. We should criticize intolerant religious people—for their intolerance. We should criticize corrupt religious people—for their corruption. We should criticize violent religious people—for their violence. But blaming religion for intolerance, corruption, and violence is no better than using religion to justify those things. Condemning religion as intolerant, corrupt, violent, superstitious, frivolous, or anti-rational is extremely intolerant and hurtful, and there is no justification for it.

I am not a member of an organized religion, so I can't speak from that perspective. However, my partner is Christian. Here's what she has to say:

When I hear an atheist compare religion to superstition, or tell me I'm a fool for believing there's life after death, or that Jesus was conceited for telling everyone he was the Son of God, it breaks my heart. I'm a queer, liberal Presbyterian woman. I've loved God my entire life, and I have never been compelled, by my own brain, or by others of my faith, to impose my beliefs on others or pass judgments on the way other people worship or don't. I realize that the religious people who use religion to justify proselytizing, hatred, or violence are the face of religion to many atheists. However, I'd like to urge those who condemn all of us who practice some form of religion, organized or not, to understand two things: first, that not all who practice religion are proselytizing, spiteful people. Many of us wish for nothing more than to be able to worship in peace. Second, attacking a religious person's beliefs is defaming something sacred. As I believe strongly that I have no right to inflict my ideologies on others, I also believe that it is my right to be able to worship my God without fear of being ridiculed as illogical for doing so. As I keep my beliefs to myself, so should those who worship differently or not at all.

Attacking religion and berating religious belief is, by definition, a deeply personal attack. It's imposing a belief (atheism) just as much as mandatory prayer in public schools would be. No matter how "logical" an argument against religion is, it's still extremely offensive. Arguing that all religion is wrong is no better than arguing that Judaism is wrong, or Islam is wrong; arguing that atheism is better than religion is just as bad as arguing that Christianity is better than any other faith.

Ironic, isn't it? Atheists who bash religion usually pit faith against reason, claiming that religion is illogical, unreasonable, and hurtful. But bashing religion is an illogical, unreasonable, hurtful thing to do.

Remedial T for L, G, B, and Q

2009-06-25T10:00:00.002-04:00

In real-world trans rights news, Obama's administration may be drafting protections for trans federal employees! Certain corners of the trans-friendly blogosphere, however, are in an uproar over recent online events:

Sinclair Sexsmith, butch blogger, recently produced "Top Hot Butches: The 100 hottest butch, masculine, androgynous, genderqueer, transmasculine, studs, AGs, dykes, queers and transguys" in response to AfterEllen.com's annual hot 100 and the dearth of butch visibility in that and similar hotlists. Feministing linked to the list; comments ensued. To sum up the conversation: Why did Sexsmith include trans guys on a list of butch women? This is transphobic. Specifically, the inclusion of trans men in a list of butches (which includes no cis men) reinforces the transphobic idea that trans men are "really" just butch women.

On Tuesday, Sexsmith posted the following quote on zir blog, Sugarbutch Chronicles:

I know what butch is. Butches are not beginner FTMs, except that sometimes they are, but it’s not a continuum except when it is. Butch is not a trans identity unless the butch in questions says it is, in which case it is, unless the tranny in question says it isn’t, in which case it’s not. There is no such thing as butch flight, no matter what the femmes or elders say, unless saying that invalidates the opinion of femmes in a sexist fashion or the opinions of elders in an ageist fashion. Or if they’re right. But they are not, because butch and transgender are the same thing with different names, except that butch is not a trans identity, unless it is; see above.

- S. Bear Bergman, from “I Know What Butch Is,” the first chapter from hir book Butch Is A Noun.

More comments ensued. Sexsmith did not reply to any of them at the entry, but has stated before that "butch (in my use of the word) has to do with masculinity on a female body."

On Wednesday morning, Sexsmith updated "Top Hot Butches":

UPDATE Wednesday, 24 June, 9:30am EST: This morning I removed 13 transmen from the list. There has been much, much critical feedback and discussion about the inclusion of transmen, and I appreciate all who have taken the time to email me and to comment and to participate in the conversation. I am reading through as many of the discussions as I can. I’m working on a full statement, which I will issue later today, and will try to figure out what to do about the holes in the 100 (now 87). Kael T. Block was among those removed from the list, for other reasons as well. – ss

I often choose to ignore sheer stupidity (especially on the web, and yes, even when its harmful effects are directed at me, though that is not true in this case), because I believe it's more important to educate widely than to correct every mistake. But this is big enough—and public enough—that I can't let it go without saying something. In case the problem isn't obvious...

Trans guys are not butch lesbians. Lesbians are women. Trans guys are men. They can be butch, femme, or neither, but they are not butch women.
Transgendered guys are not butch lesbians any more than transsexual guys are, despite several comments in discussions about "Top Hot Butches" that suggest otherwise. It's possible that there are trans guys who also consider "butch" and/or "lesbian" to be part of their identities, and there may be butch lesbians who consider "trans" and/or "guy" to be part of their identities, but only those people get to make that distinction. Transgendered guys usually identify as male. They may also identify as trans—but they may not. In any case, it is wrong for a third party to identify a transgendered man as a butch woman.

My fellow queers: it is appalling to me that this public display of ignorance (and it does look to me like ignorance rather than willful maliciousness) has come from our community. Thankfully, the mistake is being corrected. But we all need to step it up and refuse to stand for transphobia, wherever it appears. To do otherwise compromises our integrity and makes a farce of the "LGBTQ community."

Everyday Activism: What's News?

2009-06-24T10:40:00.000-04:00

I believe that to be an everyday activist, it's a good idea not only to follow the news produced by people who think like you—in my case, feminists, queer activists, and environmentalists, among others—but also to understand how other people are thinking. If I only read the news I like, I run the risk of losing touch with what news is for other people.

The Wall Street Journal has a reputation as America's intelligent, conservative, big-name newspaper. (The New York Times has a reputation as the nation's corresponding intelligent, liberal, big-name newspaper, to give you some perspective. We're not talking extremes, here, or even FOXNews-level conservatism.) Here's how the WSJ is reporting on some of the topics I've written about: environment, LGBTQ equality, health care reform, and Judge Sotomayor.

On the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill:

Get ready to make an attitude adjustment, brought to you by the federal government.

Through sweeping new environmental policies, the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress are planning an attack on the country's polluting, consumptive ways. ...New taxes and mandates, combined with billions of dollars in incentives, would alter almost every facet of Americans' lives.

- Starting a New Energy Diet, 6/23/09. This piece is not identified as "opinion," though obviously it is. The writer's argument not only assumes that government regulation is highly invasive, but also dismisses the idea that environmental protection might be necessary and therefore worth some sacrifice. (Compare with NYT coverage.)

Response to the Department of Justice's brief supporting DOMA:

A prominent gay-rights organization, long supportive of President Barack Obama, sent him a scathing letter Monday to protest the administration's recent legal backing of the Defense of Marriage Act.

The frustration, expressed in an emotional letter by the president of the Human Rights Campaign, also stems from Mr. Obama's reluctance to move on other issues on its agenda, such as allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. ...In a statement, White House spokesman Shin Inouye said it has already begun working to help gay and lesbian Americans achieve equal rights.

- Gay Group Slams Policies of President, 6/16/09. This is news reporting, but there is no mention of the brief's defamatory language—which was much more offensive than the Department of Justice's decision to defend DOMA, and the focus of HRC's complaints. The article also allows Inouye to cover for the administration without examining whether Obama has actually made any progress in LGBTQ equality. (Compare with NYT coverage.)

On Proposed Health Care Reform:

The plan from three key House committees has some important differences with a bipartisan bill taking shape in the Senate Finance Committee -- notably stricter regulations for employers, and a government-run plan to compete with private insurers. The House plan also left out details of how to pay for the expansion. Cost is shaping up as the biggest challenge in President Barack Obama's goal of fixing the health system, which could run a hefty $1 trillion or higher over 10 years.

- Democrats' New Health Plan Caps Confusing Week, 6/20/09. This is news reporting. The article focuses on the monetary costs of the health plan with little real analysis of pros and cons; notice that the public option is referred to as "government-run," suggesting invasive government intervention. There is also an opinion piece titled "Is Government Health Care Constitutional?" (which argues that government-supported health care invades privacy) and a widely-read, expert-opinion essay "The Myth of Prevention" (which claims that preventative health care is not cost-effective). (Compare with NYT coverage.)

On Sotomayor's Supreme Court Eligibility:

She is a judge steeped in the legal school of identity politics.

...Judge Sotomayor's belief is that a "Latina woman" is by definition a superior judge to a "white male" because she has had more "richness" in her struggle. The danger inherent in this judicial view is that the law isn't what the Constitution says but whatever the judge in the "richness" of her experience comes to believe it should be.

- The 'Empathy' Nominee, 5/27/09. This is an editorial, as identified in a published letter. That means it is endorsed by WSJ editorial staff. It plays on and perpetuates fears that Sotomayor is a Latina supremacist, and does not consider what her actual judicial record reveals about her views and methods. (Compare with NYT coverage.)

Although these articles are just a small sample, much of what I found was confusing, frustrating, and in some cases alienating. I wonder, do people who regularly read the WSJ find the NYT just as foreign? Although the NYT seems more news-oriented, factually complete, and critical to me, it's important to look for what I might be missing.

Obviously, I want to make sure that I get information and viewpoints that my main news source leaves out, so that I am aware as possible of what's going on in the world.

But more importantly, I need to know where everyone else is coming from. If I want environmental progress, rights for queers, universal health care, and racial equality, I have to convince the people who disagree with me on these issues that my views are sensible. To do that, I have to know where those people are coming from. The information we know constructs the reality we believe in. And I can't convince anyone of my reality if I don't understand theirs.

Related: NYT's Paul Krugman points to major media misreporting health reform news.

Climate Change Political-Climate Change

2009-06-22T16:45:00.005-04:00

Call me blind, but I've been assuming most intelligent, conscientious people know that human-induced climate change exists.

Apparently not. I was clued in to this astonishing state of affairs by my fiancée's step-father, who told me in no uncertain terms that this year's crazy weather has not been caused by human activity. When Paul says something I wholeheartedly disagree with, I listen, because he's a good example of an American who is sane, smart, and nothing like me. As it turns out, Gallup polls have found that

Unsurprisingly, the public's lack of concern translates into the government's lack of action. Mojo's Jack Harkinson writes on environmentalists' reactions to the House's Waxman-Markley climate bill, or "American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009." Debate rages between those who believe the bill is more damaging than helpful and others who think this is the best we can do right now. From the "take what you can get" camp:

“I absolutely do not know what people are smoking when they argue that the political climate is different now,” counters Manik Roy, vice president for federal government outreach at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a founding member of US-CAP. “We have huge parts of this country that generate electricity from coal, and that are very dependent on manufacturing—none of that has changed.” Nor has the American public’s willingness to overcome those interests, he adds. “Poll after poll is showing that we don’t have a critical mass in this country who are concerned about the urgency of climate change. Until that changes, I think this bill is truly the best we can get in this economic environment.”

I'm sure Roy is correct in his assessment of the current political climate. But sitting back and waiting for the political climate to change is absurd.

Instead of working on legislation that regulates (and therefore upsets) the existing energy industry, we need to either drastically restructure that industry or create new industry so that the people who are currently working to generate electricity from coal have the option to stop doing that and start working to generate energy from environmentally-friendly sources.

Meanwhile, if poll after poll is showing that not enough Americans are concerned about the urgency of something that is scientifically proven to be urgent, then our first job is to educate the American people—not let their ignorance determine policy. Start television ad campaigns that explain recent findings about global climate change's impact on the United States, especially that human-induced climate change is already affecting us. I'm sure President Obama's staff could come up with a terse, intelligent, relatable, infectious message of this sort. Start introducing clear, factual information about climate change into public schools' curricula. Above all, take the climate change "debate" above and beyond politics. I'm not concerned about climate change because I'm a tree-hugging hippie or a bleeding-heart anti-corporation liberal. I'm concerned about climate change because it's been Proven By Science™, it's a real threat to this country and the world, and we have a responsibililty to our children and grandchildren to fight it.

"Father" Doesn't Make Family

2009-06-20T10:00:00.005-04:00

You can't possibly miss that tomorrow is Fathers' Day. I don't think I've ever seen a Hallmark holiday get so much attention, and frankly, it makes me a little uneasy.

Center stage are "First Father" President Obama's Fathers' Day events and his Parade letter, "We Fathers Need to Step It Up." In the letter, Obama discusses how important it is for fathers to be both physically and emotionally present in their family's lives. Shakesville's Melissa McEwan asks,

Is it not possible that, while your administration is under fire (and deservedly so) from LGBTQI rights advocates, perhaps it was not the wisest idea to write a piece for Parade magazine for Fathers' Day that makes sweeping generalizations about fatherless families?

The question strikes home. If and when I have children, they will have two mothers, not a mother and a father. They will have male role models outside of our nuclear family, they will have a whole family, and they will have two parents who show them how to do and be all of the good things that fathers can be (providers and protectors, for example) while challenging the notion that only fathers can do and be those things. Obama's letter denies the possibility of families like ours, encouraging the kind of closed-mindedness that sustains homophobia and refuses to recognize my partner and me as a legitimate family. It's this kind of thinking that has the potential to hurt my children, not the fact that they won't have a father.

But even for opposite-sex parents, Obama's letter is weak and uncritical. Where is the call for an end to domestic violence, which is far more likely to be committed by men than by women? Where is the call for responsible fatherhood and family planning? What about the idea that parenting is a partnership, that to be a father in a two-parent family means creating a good life for your spouse as well as for your children? How about challenging stereotypical gender roles that keep women doing most of the work at home? Or, when he talks about setting an example for one's children, why not suggest working to end gender inequality, starting at home? And why the implied disrespect for single mothers, many of whom choose to bring their children up alone, or with family and friends, because that is the best situation for their children?

(And where was all this fuss on Mothers' Day? Where was the impassioned plea for mothers to be physically and emotionally present for their children? Oh, right. Mothers do that naturally. We plead with fathers just to stick around, but a mother who checks out is less than human.)

This Fathers' Day is conflicted for me. Two weeks ago, I announced to my parents that my girlfriend and I are engaged; my father still refuses to acknowledge my engagement and told me, when pressed, that he will "probably" make it to my wedding. This is only the latest incident in a trend of refusing to acknowledge, accept, and support my sexual orientation—thereby refusing to acknowledge, accept, and support me. This is not fatherly behavior, and I know there are fathers out there who are much worse than mine. It just serves to highlight the fact that fathers (or mothers, for that matter) do not deserve celebration, thanks, or deference just for creating children. I agree with Obama that fathers have a duty

to build a foundation for our children’s dreams, to give them the love and support they need to fulfill them, and to stick with them the whole way through, no matter what doubts we may feel or difficulties we may face.

But I'd like to emphasize that a father deserves no accolades unless he does those things. And that a family does not require a father to do them.

The Future of America's Climate and Health

2009-06-19T23:01:00.002-04:00

In New Jersey where I'm living this summer, we've been complaining for three weeks now that the weather has been unseasonably cool and wet. In Western Washington, where my parents live, the past month has been unseasonably dry. GOOD's Siobhan O'Connor asks, "When do we stop thinking it's just bad weather?"

On Tuesday, President Obama's administration released a report on how global climate change will affect the U.S. in this century. Economix's Catherine Rampell focuses on the economic effects of the predicted climate changes.

Meanwhile, recent studies suggest that "clean-energy investments have the potential to kick-start the economy and employ millions of workers—particularly those at the lower end of the economic scale." The Center for American Progress has produced an interactive map that shows how much each state could benefit in jobs from state-funded clean energy projects. (Interestingly, many of the states that would benefit most are interior, agricultural, "red" states.)

On Wednesday, a Senate panel approved an energy bill that would open up the Gulf of Mexico to gas and oil drilling, support a gas pipeline project in Alaska, and require utilities to produce up to 15% of electricity from renewable resources by 2021, but does not require reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

However, most of Congress's energy seems to be going toward health care reform at the moment. Shakesville's Quixote posts a chart by the Arizona League of Women Voters that compares single-payer (government) health insurance to a private-option plan. Mojo's James Ridgeway goes into more detail on public-option health care versus the reality of what Congress will eventually give us.

I just want quality, affordable health care, and energy and commodities that don't kill the environment. Is that so much to ask? It is endlessly frustrating to me that when it comes to lawmaking, politics and profit still trump health and sense.

Update: 50 Book Challenge

2009-06-17T14:34:00.004-04:00

13. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Amy Sedaris, Neil Gaiman, and Alison Bechdel liked it. What more can I say? True Diary is about a reservation Indian kid who decides to go to high school off the rez. It has all the staples of young adult fiction: identity crises, disagreements with old friends, insight into the weird workings of the adult world, slaying bullies, making new friends, awkward attractions, petty competition, family tragedy...plus it's about being reservation Native American, which is a point of view we don't see that often in literature. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Unfortunately, True Diary struck me as rather superficial overall. I liked the narrator, but I didn't feel like I knew him. His commentary is often funny and his experiences are often sad, but they never felt poignant or deeply touching. Ultimately, it's a good read but not a great one.

UPDATE: ...But now you'll have to read it. Some parents in Illinois are horrified that Alexie has dared to mention masturbation, racist language (just like Huck Finn!), and some other stuff that happens in real life.

Making Sense of the News: Benedict-Arnold Obama Takes His Stand

2009-06-16T13:29:00.012-04:00

Obama's Department of Justice releases a brief in defense of the Defense of Marriage Act, which goes out of its way to unnecessarily defame queers. The good news is, we now know for sure that not only does the Obama administration think gay rights are unimportant, but it's downright hostile towards LGBTQ people. Forgive me for ever suggesting we should wait and see what happens next before condemning Obama's inaction on LGBTQ issues!

Meanwhile, good old Harry Reid passes the buck, but the New York Times steps up its usual milquetoast coverage, publishing a scathing editorial critique of Obama's civil rights failure:

The administration has had its hands full with the financial crisis, health care, Guantánamo Bay and other pressing matters. In times like these, issues like repealing the marriage act can seem like a distraction — or a political liability. But busy calendars and political expediency are no excuse for making one group of Americans wait any longer for equal rights.

Which leaves us with the question, "What next?" Below, Rob Tish combats common anti-marriage-equality talking points with facts and logic, to help us argue with marriage equality opponents without losing potential allies (hat tip: Queers United). There's the upcoming National March for Equality, which may or may not be a well-intentioned bad idea. And I'll welcome ideas for action (your own, your friends', your links to others') in comments.

UPDATE: Dan Savage has an idea.
UPDATE: Human Right's Campaign National Field Director Marty Rouse has pulled out of the upcoming Democratic National Committee's LGBT Leadership Council Dinner in response to the homophobic pro-DOMA brief and the Obama administration's lack of action on other LGBTQ issues. Three openly gay Representatives are still attending.
UPDATE: Rex Wockner gives a full round-up of the gay tsunami just unleashed on Obama (hat tip: Dan Savage).

Not Your Average Iranian Election Post

2009-06-15T12:05:00.001-04:00

Yup, the Iranian election was probably rigged. Sucks to be President Obama, whose job it will be to forge peace with a probably-corrupt Iranian President who hates Jews and the West. It also really sucks to be the Iranian people. And I'll go so far as to say that any world government with economic or political ties to Iran should be using those ties to hold the Iranian government accountable for its integrity. It only makes sense.

But that's all I'm going to say about the elections in Iran. What I find puzzling and even troubling is the American internet uproar over the elections in Iran. It's a good thing to know what's going on in the world, and it's a good thing to care. But the frenzied interest I'm seeing is starting to look like Africa Syndrome.

What is Africa Syndrome? It's why I started this blog. It's why I'm devoted to what I call living deliberately with passion and sense. It's why you'll rarely, if ever, see me talk about foreign politics here. Africa Syndrome is a luxury of college-educated upper-middle-class liberal Americans who like reading newspapers and learning foreign languages. It's highly contagious and easily contractible. It even makes you feel good.

Africa Syndrome is when Americans whose jobs don't have to do with foreign policy spend spend their charitable energy and moral outrage on the suffering or injustices of people in other countries while simultaneously ignoring or even contributing to suffering and injustice in their own neighborhoods. The defining symptom of Africa Syndrome is the wholehearted, righteous belief that African (or Southeast Asian, or Chinese or Columbian or Iranian) problems are more important than American problems. It's characterized by insisting (or implying) that Americans who lecture other Americans on the plights of orphans in Africa are doing more noble work than Americans who simply live with integrity and work for justice in their own American communities. It's a very special kind of hypocrisy.

It's true that as Americans we are automatically more privileged than the majority of people in the world. It's true that we should pay attention to how our everyday American actions—like buying Coca-Cola products—negatively affect people around the world. It's also true that our country should take responsibility for its contributions to world injustices: I believe, for example, that the U.S. should be helping stop the genocide in Darfur that it helped create. I am not an isolationist.

But I also believe that if you, the private citizen, want to end poverty and hunger, you should start by becoming aware of the poor in this country who the media ignores, and get to know the poor people in your own community. If you want to end domestic violence, you should get to know your neighbors and be the one who breaks the silence. If you want to help orphans, you should become a foster parent or adopt. If you want to slow overpopulation, you should make sure your schools and lawmakers know you want more than abstinence-only education in schools. If you want to fight disease, you should demand a better health care system.

See, the thing about Africa Syndrome is that it lets people with huge privilege feel like they're doing something really good—because donating money to Amnesty International or world food programs or mourning for Ugandan child soldiers is pretty easy, actually—while retaining their privilege and being lazy about injustices right here in their backyards.

If you care about political corruption, you should demand political transparency and accountability in your own government. If the United States had a real standard of accountability for interfering in foreign powers and economies, we might not be fighting in Iraq right now. If you're driven to work to end poverty or bring justice to some developing country, by all means go move there and do it. Otherwise, take the plank out of your eye and look around you. There's work to be done right where you are.

Living Deliberately Means Cutting the Bullshit

2009-06-12T23:10:00.008-04:00

In April, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report on rightwing extremism, whose key findings were that

Rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues. The economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment.

The current economic and political climate has some similarities to the 1990s when rightwing extremism experienced a resurgence fueled largely by an economic recession, criticism about the outsourcing of jobs, and the perceived threat to U.S. power and sovereignty by other foreign powers.

The possible passage of new restrictions on firearms and the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.

Unsurprisingly, conservatives got offended, conservatives made a fuss, and the report was later retracted. I for one never even heard about it. Also unsurprisingly, people are talking about the report again now that it has turned out to have been scarily accurate.

But wait, isn't that unfair to conservatives? No! For one thing, the report was about extremists. Conservatives seem to have a really hard time with the difference between "extremist" and "mainstream," especially when it's applied to either themselves or to Muslims. So here's a refresher definition:

extremist
n. One who advocates or resorts to measures beyond the norm, especially in politics.

For example, the Weather Underground in the early 1960s, which was a left-wing extremist group. Or the crazies who killed Dr. Tiller and shot up the Holocaust Museum, who were right-wing extremists. (See what I did there? See how it's about extremists and violence, not about Republicans or Democrats, or even liberals and conservatives?)

But rest assured, if you want to implicate "mainstream" conservatives, it's not hard. The New York Times' Judith Warner discusses the problem in her blog post "The Wages of Hate," and Rachel Maddow talks about it with former far-right anti-abortion movement member Frank Schaeffer here (hat tip to T). To sum up: hate speech has a real effect. Even if it doesn't incite violence directly, it does create an environment in which violence seems sensible and legitimate and is therefore likely.

It's time for conservatives to reject Bill O'Reilly and other hate speakers—to stop standing by while their public voices encourage hate and violence. It's time for our government to step up to the plate and recognize domestic terrorism for the growing problem that it is, and put a stop to it. And it's time for ordinary citizens to think about why we keep letting our friends and neighbors get away with prejudice and hate. If we let our talk-show hosts, pundits, and politicians divide us, we have only ourselves to blame.

Update: 50 Book Challenge

2009-06-12T17:34:00.006-04:00

12. The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin. My reading of this book is so personal that it's hard for me to talk about it as what it is, which is really a very simple experiment in science fiction. It takes place in the same imaginary universe as the rest of Le Guin's "Hainish cycle," in which the ancient race of people on the planet Hain have established an institution called the Ekumen, whose job is to explore other worlds and learn about their societies and cultures. In The Telling, Sutty is a Terran ("Terra" being common sci-fi parlance for "imaginary Earth parallel") who works as a mobile historian for the Ekumen. She's basically an anthropologist, of the Franz Boas/Alfred Kroeber "save the dying cultures!" variety. The world she's assigned to, Aka, is obviously superficially based on China just after the Cultural Revolution, complete with slogans like "Reactionary Thought Is the Defeated Enemy" and a government effort to wipe out the old ways (which include "superstitious" religious practices and ideogrammatic writing). Sutty manages to break away from strict government supervision and find a community where people still follow the old ways, including the traditional religion/philosophy, the Telling. More a way of life than a religion, its core practice is the telling of stories—an endless canon of stories—and making everyday life sacred by "telling" it.

It would be easy for a novel constructed this way to fall flat, relying to heavily on surface similarities with real Earth societies or losing itself in the theory of imaginary ones, but I find Le Guin's exploration of personal and societal struggle and meaning-making to be quite satisfying. However, the book remains more idea- than plot-driven, so don't pick it up expecting a space adventure.

Making Sense of the News: Environment and Health Legislation

2009-06-10T19:15:00.007-04:00

The Republicans in Congress have introduced an alternative to the Democratic energy bill headed for a vote this month. According to Representative Mike Pence of Indiana,

“This is an alternative that takes us in the direction of energy independence and a clean environment without the national energy tax being offered by the Democrats.”

But guess what? The Republicans' bill prohibits regulations based on climate change or global warming! Better yet, the New York Times and other major news sources appear to have overlooked this little gem of climate denial.

Meanwhile, Slate's Timothy Noah provides an online guide to following health care reform.

Living Deliberately: Labels

2009-06-10T12:00:00.035-04:00

The subtitle for this blog is Living Deliberately With Passion and Sense. My purpose is to unpack culture—but with a real-life attitude. My goal is to use my understanding of culture to look for ways to live with justice, integrity, and practicality.

A lot of what I write about is based in identity politics. Put simply, identity politics (as opposed to distribution politics) focuses on making oppressed identities visible and acceptable, and achieving equality for people who are socially and politically oppressed by virtue of identity. Because identity politics is rooted in who people are, internet- and academia-based discussions and explorations of identity politics often center around identity labels. It's easy for these discussions to get very intellectualized (and emotional!) and removed from what actually happens "on the ground."

That's not a bad thing. We need people to challenge each other on the details and intricacies of oppression, to question the minutiae of how we interact, speak, and write. But it's hard for those discussions to make it out in the real world, where people in power—including the straight women I go to school with, the straight white cis men in my family, and the upper-class straight black man I elected President—have no time, interest, or practical use for in-depth deconstructions of the labels.

Which means I have no practical use for them either.

So I advocate a utilitarian, ninja-activist approach to labeling. This approach focuses on communicating with the person I'm talking to, establishing my identity and asserting my rights, while avoiding confusion and conflict. The key aspects are 1) simplicity and 2) distinguishing between identities and descriptors. I have lots of identities, but I'll use my sexual orientation as an example.

I identify as queer. I do not identify as bisexual, pansexual, lesbian, or gay. But I sometimes describe myself using those words, and I don't get offended when people use them to describe me. This is not a betrayal of my identity. The words "bisexual" and "pansexual" accurately describe the fact that I am attracted to people of all genders. The word "lesbian" accurately describes the fact that I have only ever dated women. The word "gay" accurately describes both my relationships and the social group to which I belong. Using these words establishes my queer identity even if I never use the word "queer." It also avoids confusing, embarrassing, or frustrating the person I'm talking to, who may not understand why the difference between "lesbian" and "queer" is important. As a member of the LGBT community, it's practical for me to demand that people treat me with respect. It's not practical for me to insist that everyone let me educate them on the finer points of my identity.

It is more important that the person I'm talking to respects me and is open to understanding my perspective than it is to make sure ze's using all the right words right now. Labels and descriptors should be effective means of communication, not tools for punishing people with privilege, badges for showing off my oppression IQ, justifications for engaging in "Oppression Olympics," or hoops that friends and allies have to jump through.

Language and labels have real effects. When news reporters use an anti-trans violence victim's birth name and incorrect gender pronouns, they legitimize transphobia. The anti-choice movement has gotten considerable mileage out of calling their opposition "pro-abortion." I identify as queer because that word expresses my identity better than any of the other words that can describe me. Being deliberate and sensible about labels means caring about these language choices.

But being deliberate and sensible about labels also means remembering that the point of language is to clarify, not to obfuscate. When I correct someone who calls me a lesbian, I send the message that the difference between "lesbian" and "queer" is of utmost importance, and that getting to know me requires rigorous intellectual work. At best, I take the focus off of the really important issues of my safety, rights, and dignity. At worst, I risk alienating the person I'm correcting and discouraging zir from understanding and recognizing my identity. Since getting to know gay people is correlated with supporting gay rights, this is a political as well as personal gamble. Are the words worth it?

The difference between "lesbian" and "queer" won't change whether my family accepts me, my neighbors respect me, my doctor heals me, our justice system protects me, or our laws treat me as a full citizen. On the other hand, the difference between "lesbian" and "queer" could be the thing that overwhelms a potential ally or shames an accepting family member. And in the perspective of that potential loss—no, the words aren't worth it.

Powerful, Subversive, Unexpected Activism

2009-06-10T04:08:00.007-04:00

I just discovered Simply Queer: Living Simply, Loving Queer. It looks like the writer, Alexandra, hasn't updated in a year, but I urge you to check out her series on "Showing Your Pride through Simple, Unexpected Ways." The posts are Show Your Forgiveness, Show Your Pride; Show Your Gratitude, Show Your Pride; Show Your Unity, Show Your Pride; Show Your Care, Show Your Pride; and Show Your Love, Show Your Pride.

These posts may seem a little woo-woo, but their message is essential: we can do activism just by living deliberately. For example,

I'm a really strong believer that some of the best forms of activism are those which transform negative stereotypes through positive personal interactions. Many homophobic people have completely incorrect perceptions of the queer community: always angry, always in-your-face, always inappropriate. While there are certainly times to show anger and firmly stand up for our rights, there are also times to show gentility and forgiveness.

...I'm certain that each of us have at least one experience of an emotionally and maybe even physically harming discrimination, and while our society's frequent hate acts are something to be angry and deeply disturbed about, let us also think about ways in which we can begin to forgive those who really don't understand what they are doing.

I recognize that this is a contentious position to hold, and I want to be very clear that I am not condoning acts of discrimination or violence, or saying that we shouldn't stand up for ourselves, but I also think that a movement toward forgiveness is a really powerful, subversive, and unexpected form of activism.

I'm working on starting my own ongoing series about what it means to me to put my subtitle—"living deliberately with passion and sense"—into action. My first post in the series should be up soon.

Making Sense of the News: Class, Race, and Gays in the Military

2009-06-09T13:52:00.010-04:00

1. Sotomayor's not racist, but let's not pretend she's an "average American," either.

2. Illdoctrine suggests a sensible way to tell people when they do sound racist:

3. Rachel Maddow takes Obama to task on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell":

Hat tips to T (1) and Pam's House Blend (2).

Talking to Privilege: Hate Crimes

2009-06-08T16:28:00.003-04:00

My partner's stepfather, Paul, is a great guy. He's pretty smart, he's kind, and he really likes me. He's also a straight, white, middle-class, cis man. He helps keep me sensible, because he helps keep me in touch with what it's like to talk to normal, benevolent privileged people. He innocently asks questions like, "But why wouldn't you two [queer women] want to live in West Virginia?" (I have nothing against West Virginia. I just think there might be, let us say, easier places for my partner and me to live.) So discussions with Paul are great practice with/examples of how to explain my oppressions to people who have privilege. For example:

Hate crimes legislation. Why do we need it? Doesn't hate crimes law give certain people special treatment? Just so we're all on the same page, I'll start with a simple definition:

hate crime
–noun
a crime, usually violent, motivated by prejudice or intolerance toward a member of a gender, racial, religious, or social group.

But why is that different from any other unreasonable motivation? Human Rights Campaign gives a good explanation of the real effects of hate crime:

All violent crimes are reprehensible. But the damage done by hate crimes cannot be measured solely in terms of physical injury or dollars and cents.... A violent hate crime is intended to “send a message” that an individual and “their kind” will not be tolerated, many times leaving the victim and others in their group feeling isolated, vulnerable and unprotected.

So we need hate crimes law because our justice system should recognize that when a crime is motivated by hatred for oppressed group, it seriously affects every member of that group, not just the direct victim. Hate crimes often have a real impact on targeted groups' ability to go about their daily lives. In fact, we may consider hate crimes to be acts of:

terrorism
–noun
the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.

Hate crimes legislation does not give anyone special treatment; rather, it recognizes that a crime motivated by prejudice against the group to which its victim belongs is a crime against every member of that group.

For information on the progress of the Matthew Shepard Act, which would expand U.S. hate crimes law to cover crimes motivated by the victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability, go here.

UPDATE: Abortion providers aren't the kind of "social group" usually protected under hate crimes law, but Dr. Tiller's assassination easily falls under terrorism. Hate crimes should, too.

Housekeeping: Gendered Language

2009-06-07T20:51:00.002-04:00

While writing "Why Gay Marriage Is For Everyone" and responding to comments on that post, it occurred to me that I should clarify two things, for myself and you, about how I intend to address gender in my writing.

From this point forward, I will attempt to use the gender-neutral pronouns "ze" and "zir" when referring to a) people who prefer them; b) people whose gender-pronoun preference I do not know and am not comfortable assuming; and c) any person whose gender is unspecified, including theoretical unspecified individuals.
I assume the validity of transgender and transsexual people's self-identified genders. Therefore, when I use the words "woman," "man," "she," "he," or other descriptors, including those describing sexual orientation ("gay," "lesbian," "queer," etc.), I intend to include transgender and transsexual people who claim those words and identities, unless otherwise specified.

I will do my best. I will probably mess up, because when I learned English, these aspects were left out. If you suspect that I am messing up, you are welcome to let me know in the comments on the relevant post.

Your Health Is Earth's Health

2009-06-06T14:01:00.008-04:00

MoJo's Julia Whitty examines how the same consumption habits that harm Americans' bodies simultaneously harm the environment:

Nineteen percent of US energy usage—about as much as is used to fuel our cars—is spent growing and delivering food to the average American who consumes 2,200 pounds of food a year. That's a whopping 3,747 calories a day—or 1,200 to 1,700 more than needed for personal or planetary health. The skinny truth is that as much as 7.6 percent of total energy in the United States today is used to grow human fat, fat that translates to 3,300 pounds of carbon per person.

The article is lengthy, but does go into more detail on how just eating less meat, dairy, and junk food (including low-calorie diet junk food) could allow us to "maintain that hefty 3,747-calorie intake but consume 33 percent less in fossil fuels doing it."

Another MoJo article by Ben Bushwalter suggests that (surprise!) Americans' obesity may be partly caused not just by what we eat but by the structure of our society. Specifically,

[A statement by the American Academy of Pediatrics], published in the June edition of Pediatrics Magazine, found that urban sprawl contributes to childhood obesity by forming neighborhoods that are impossible for children to navigate independently. As a result, many children grow dependent on their parent’s chauffering rather than their bicycles or legs to get to school or the park.

The AAP probably hasn't gone there, but I'm willing to bet that those same neighborhoods are also difficult for adults to navigate on foot or by bicycle, forcing them into their cars as well. Bushwalter and commenters on the post make the mistake of generalizing that all suburban areas are bad, which can't be true since I'm currently living in a suburban town in which I can easily walk or bike to the library, local schools, and town center. But the main point still stands: making our cities and suburbs more pedestrian-friendly would be great for the health of our children—and our planet.

Why Gay Marriage Is For Everyone

2009-06-06T10:45:00.002-04:00

1. Gay marriage is central to LGBTQ rights. Legal marriage is an official government recognition of a romantic, sexual, and familial partnership. Government recognition of such partnerships between two people of the same sex establishes a culture in which gay relationships are normal and acceptable. Government rejection of such partnerships between gay people establishes a culture in which gay relationships are abnormal, unacceptable, and/or invisible. Legalizing same-sex marriage paves the way for socially accepting gay relationships. When gay relationships are considered normal and acceptable, violence against people who have them (or want to have them) will no longer be tolerable.

2. Gay marriage is for people who never want to get married. Many people I know, even within the LGBTQ community, have argued that we should not be fighting for gay marriage because marriage excludes other kinds of domestic partnerships beyond the sexual and romantic relationships usually associated with marriage, and people in these partnerships should also receive the legal and financial benefits given to married couples. However, extending legal and financial benefits of marriage to non-conjugal partners does not fix the inequality of legally recognizing the legitimacy of straight marriages while legally denying the legitimacy of gay marriages. Gay marriage, on the other hand, does not preclude extending legal and financial benefits to other non-marriage domestic partnerships.

Others simply claim that gay marriage is only relevant to gay people who want to get married. Actually, legally recognizing gay marriage benefits everyone who has or wants a same-sex relationship, even if that relationship is just a one-night stand. The cultural ideal of marriage legitimizes other kinds of romantic and sexual relationships between people who, in theory, could get married. It's hard to take same-sex relationships of any kind seriously when our government sends the message that same-sex relationships aren't real enough for marriage. When our government and society recognize same-sex marriages as equal to opposite-sex marriages, our society will also recognize same-sex one-night stands, dating, and significant otherships as equal to their opposite-sex counterparts. This will not eliminate the social inequality of systematic homophobia and heterosexual privilege, but it will establish an environment in which homophobia and heterosexual privilege just don't make sense.

3. Gay marriage is for straight people. Equality under the law—including marriage law—is a civil right. Straight people who oppose same-sex marriage oppose full civil rights for every citizen in this country, and help maintain a system in which some Americans are legally second-class citizens. Although it is reasonable to assume that only gay, bisexual/pansexual, and straight cissexual-transgender people will want to engage in same-sex marriage, legalizing same-sex marriage does not give anyone more rights than anyone else. It gives anyone the right to participate in same-sex marriage. It gives any romantically and sexually committed gay couple the right to marry, a right every straight couple already enjoys. (There is no appreciable difference between a gay couple and an straight couple, except gender difference—which is not a legal justification for denying civil rights in this country.) Furthermore, legalizing gay marriage strengthens the legitimacy of straight marriage. Without the legal option of gay marriage, straight people who have opposite-sex marriages are participating in an act of exclusionary privilege that undermines their, and this country's, integrity.

4. Arguments against gay marriage just don't hold water. The question shouldn't be whether our government should allow same-sex marriage; it should be why our government persists in refusing to recognize it. Arguments for preserving the inequality between opposite- and same-sex couples fall flat for the obvious reason that there's no excuse for inequality. President Obama's position for civil unions but against gay marriage is utterly indefensible; we learned a long time ago that separate is not equal. People who argue against gay marriage on the basis of advocating for family law "beyond marriage" do so on the faulty premises that gay marriage precludes legal recognition beyond marriage and that legal recognition beyond marriage is sufficient to provide same-sex couples with the social legitimacy and acceptance that opposite-sex couples already enjoy. In fact, the fight for legal recognition beyond marriage is a separate issue from the fight for gay marriage. Those who detract from the fight for marriage equality need to take responsibility for their role in perpetuating homophobia and withholding civil rights.

Related: Framing the Argument: LGBTQ Rights

Local Organic Visibility and Access

2009-06-05T19:20:00.007-04:00

I somehow missed that Michelle Obama had planted an organic garden on the White House lawn and hired an organic- and local-food-friendly chef. But in an article posted yesterday, Slate's Christopher Beam discusses her efforts to set a food-responsible example and the agriculture industry's wariness about Obama's stance. Despite what the discontents say, I think the point is this:

If [the Obamas' organic garden] succeeds in shifting public perceptions about organic food, then the market for it may grow. And as with all market shifts, the most successful companies will embrace the organic movement rather than resist it. "For too long, the ag guys have said, If we raise it you're gonna eat it. You don't have options," says [Larry] Mitchell [of the American Corn Growers Association]. "Well, now we have options."

However much popularizing local and organic foods might challenge the agriculture industry, it's important to remember two things. First, there will always be a market for food. Even if we eliminate entirely the market for "conventionally," remotely-grown food, we will never eliminate the agriculture industry. Second, it's not our job to compromise our ethics (like food responsibility towards the environment and local communities) to keep an industry unchanged. An industry's structure and practices can and should only exist if they serve the needs, wants, and ethics of the community they serve—not the other way around. Consumers continually struggle with the constraints of availability: sometimes we can't buy ethically sound products, because they just aren't available. We should resist those constraints. And we shouldn't limit ourselves even more by letting corporations and industries tell us what the best choices are.

One issue that Beam does not mention is the class factor: currently, because organic and local foods have limited availability, and because organic and local agriculture are not well-supported by our current food economy, these products tend to be more expensive to produce and purchase. Making environmentally- and community-conscious food choices is still an "option" available only to those who can pay for it. We may need policy changes, not just a good example, before that option will be available to the rest of us.

Reality Check: Sonia Sotomayor & White Privilege

2009-06-05T13:35:00.001-04:00

By now, we’ve all heard reference to the “wise Latina” speech, in which Judge Sonia Sotomayor famously said,

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Some conservatives have latched onto this (and her association with La Raza), calling Sotomayor a reverse racist. Some have made the argument that if a white male said something like that about "wise white men," he would automatically be denounced as racist.

But the comparison is flawed, because a white man would have to seek out an opportunity to say such a thing, whereas Sotomayor did not. Slate's Monica Youn explains why Sotomayor and other racial-minority political figures are routinely put in the position of talking about race while white men never are. Likewise, MoJo's Kevin Drum notes that nobody wonders if white male judges are capable of ruling for "all of us."

As a white woman, I'm seeing my own privilege: I have the privilege of choosing not to talk about race. I have the ironic privilege that I can talk about and work for racial equality without being called a reverse racist. And I have the disturbing privilege that if I choose to speak for my community, most people won't worry that my racial identity or experience influences my views.

NPR's Ken Rudin, though perhaps a little blind to just how much damage her conservative opponents can do, considers which issues will really be relevant to Sotomayor's confirmation.

Not "Mysterious" to Me

2009-06-04T20:19:00.005-04:00

Today's #1 most-emailed article from The New York Times is a blog post titled “My Brief Life as a Woman.” In it, Dana Jennings describes his experiences while on testosterone-suppressing prostate cancer treatments. He suffered from hot flashes, food cravings, significant weight gain, mood swings, headaches, and fatigue. He concludes:

Even though I only got to spend a brief time on the outer precincts of menopause, it did confirm my lifelong sense that the world of women is hormonal and mysterious, and that we men don’t have the semblance of a clue.

The first comment on the post, presumably from a woman, says, “At last, a man who understands!” Other comments gush with praise. So why am I irked?

As Jennings himself points out, women suffer from these hormonal effects when pregnant, menstruating, and going through menopause. This experience is a normal part of life for a little over half of the population. Women are not “hormonal and mysterious.” Women are normal; hormones are human. But our culture sees men’s experiences as “normal” and women’s experiences as “different.”

So long as men can write off women’s normal experiences as “hormonal and mysterious,” some time “on the outer precincts of menopause” can pass for “life as a woman,” and we need a man to confirm what women's lives are really like, feminism still has work to do.

Framing the Argument: LGBTQ Rights

2009-06-04T13:38:00.015-04:00

This morning, the The Politico summed up President Obama's failure to advance LGBTQ rights:

The White House has been reluctant to spend its political capital pushing Obama’s highest-profile pro-gay positions believing, White House allies say, that it could detract from priorities like health care. And it may be even less likely to do next year, with midterms approaching.

As Pam of Pam's House Blend points out, after midterms everyone will be focusing on the upcoming election, so LGBTQ issues will get pushed back again. Obama probably figures he can put LGBTQ rights on the list of things to do in his second term, maybe even slip it in during his last, lame-duck year in office.

And that's just not acceptable. I've waffled a lot on the urgency of federal LGBTQ policy-making. But it's time to set a couple of things straight (no pun intended):

LGBTQ issues are civil rights issues.
Civil rights do not "detract from priorities like health care."

I can understand, and have even argued for, the position that we have larger, more important issues to deal with than gay marriage. If I had to choose between getting universal health care tomorrow and getting married tomorrow, I would choose health care. But that's not the choice I'm faced with. The real choice is between granting civil rights and withholding civil rights, and that choice has nothing to do with whether I choose to get married or whether my government guarantees my health care.

LGBTQ issues are civil rights issues insofar as they are about securing individual freedoms, due process, equal protection of the laws, and freedom from discrimination for LGBTQ people. LGBTQ rights are not special privileges, and they are just as important to the integrity of this country as the rights of any American citizen. Once we talk about LGBTQ rights—from the right to be out in the military, to the right to protection under hate crimes law, to the right to marry—as civil rights, the arguments for delay become indefensible. Delay civil rights? Abominable! But that is exactly what the Obama administration has done so far.

I understand that Obama has other things on his plate. Running a country, for starters. But the idea that standing up for LGBTQ civil rights will get in the way of improving health care, saving the environment, or protecting our national security is ridiculous. The best way to do a lot of projects at once is not to put one of them off until it's too late to start. The best way to do a lot of projects at once is to start early and work on each one a little bit every day. Obama has already started working on women's rights, the environment and conservation, health care, foreign policy, and other issues. He has even spoken publically on the issue of abortion, which is almost as controversial as gay marriage. If he can't manage to support civil rights at the same time as everything else, he shouldn't be President.

It is time for members of the LGBTQ community and our allies to speak truth to power, and to hold President Obama responsible for his promises. The truth is that LGBTQ rights are civil rights. And civil rights can't wait.

Coming soon: Why gay marriage is for everyone.

Culture, Power, and Purpose

2009-06-03T21:37:00.009-04:00

I was an intelligent, academically-driven senior in high school when Larry Summers, then President of Harvard University, famously told the nation that women were less likely to excel in mathematics due to innate biology. I've never wanted to be a mathematician, and even at eighteen I knew better than to blindly believe what a privileged man says about my biology. But part of me did believe him. Part of me accepted the idea that men's and women's brains are intrinsically different, and that biology alone could put women at a disadvantage. We have other things, I thought. Men might be naturally better at math, but that doesn't mean women aren't better at...something else.

Just goes to show you how deeply ingrained oppression can be, doesn't it? On Monday, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found

...that gender inequality, not lack of innate ability or 'intrinsic aptitude', is the primary reason fewer females than males are identified as excelling in mathematics performance in most countries, including the United States.

In other words, culture—not biology—is to blame. This is the power of culture. All too often, culture is ignored as a real force that shapes our very reality, not just how we feel or talk about it. But culture is our reality. We need to study human biology, to figure out just what the innate physical differences between the sexes might be, if there even are any. We need to study psychology, to figure out what is the best way to teach math (and everything else) to both men and women, whatever their natural abilities or disabilities may be. But we also need to study our own culture, so that we see inequality for what it is instead of allowing it to hide behind scientific "facts" and stand on the foundations of privilege and injustice. We need to study our own culture, so that we can use cultural power to change the way our society works for the better.

I am an activist anthropologist. I am a queer, lower-middle-class, white woman. I seek to understand my life and culture so that I can do my part to make society better for people of all sexualities, classes, races, and genders. This blog will be my platform for documenting and analyzing current events and issues, with a mind to what part culture plays in shaping our reality, and how issues of power have real effects on all of our lives.

Put Your Power Where Your Proclamation Is

2009-06-01T16:20:00.004-04:00

Happy LGBT Pride Month!

This is all very well and good, Mr. President. It would be awesome, though, if instead of just asking "the people of the United States to turn back discrimination and prejudice everywhere it exists," you did that yourself, in a tangible way. For instance, instead of telling us you want to end "the existing 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy in a way that strengthens our Armed Forces and our national security," you could go ahead and repeal that policy, and use your position of leadership to tell the American people that queers serving openly in the military does not in any way compromise our Armed Forces and national security.

Maybe, Mr. President, you could ask the Congress to take another look at the Defense of Marriage Act? I know this is a stretch, but maybe you could even consider that your own stance on gay marriage (civil unions okay, marriage not) is not exactly helping to allow LGBTQ families "to live their lives with dignity and respect."

In other news, Dick Cheney may still be the devil incarnate, but at least he's setting an example for American parents of LGBTQ people by being a better dad. Er, maybe. (Still, so long as most people read NYT's "The Caucus" and not more obscure blogs that actually got the full story, maybe some conservative parents will rethink how they might be alienating their children?)

Hat tip to my friend T for the President's proclamation and blog articles on Dick Cheney's switcheroo/bullshit.

Update: 50 Book Challenge

2009-05-28T16:11:00.001-04:00

11. The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker. Set in late WWI in England, it examines the dysfunctional division and paranoia of the nation, furiously blaming homosexuals and pacifists for the continuing war. It's roughly based on a few real events and people, including soldier/anti-war poet Sigfried Sassoon and his psychologist Dr. Rivers, and a scandal regarding a "black book" the Germans were supposed to have compiled of 47,000 English they had turned to sodomy and lesbianism, ready for blackmailing. Though it's a sequel to Barker's Regeneration and features a few of the same characters, The Eye in the Door stands well alone. My favorite character from the first book, Billy Prior, is the main character in this one, though I'm not sure his prominent narrative status adds to his character much. It sure adds a lot of sex to the book, which I'm also not sure is a good thing. A lot of the psychology in the book is probably bullshit, and I'm not sure the social interactions and political insights of the characters are true to their own time so much as they reflect Barker's present-day understanding of that era, but all in all it's a worthwhile read. The exploration of (wartime) nationwide psychosis and scapegoating is certainly relevant to our own recent times, if not the very present.

Update: 50 Book Challenge

2009-05-26T16:09:00.001-04:00

10. China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston. Not as good as Woman Warrior, and harder to get through. Took me forever to finish. It seemed like there wasn't as much heart in it. Maybe it was harder for Kingston to write, since it wasn't her and her mothers' experience she was writing about but the imagined, researched, and patched-together experiences of her fathers and brothers. The themes of memory and storytelling run in this one, too, but not as strongly; there is more emphasis on work and legitimacy. The smaller stories-within-stories, like the story of the man who took his mother's ghost back to China within the larger section titled "The Making of More Americans," are better than the larger story arcs. Brutality, too: I'd say the struggle between brutality and love, hardship and hope is one of the major conflicts in all of this book's stories.

Update: 50 Book Challenge

2009-03-23T16:07:00.002-04:00

9. Bone by Faye Myenne Ng. I kind of wish I had copied out the one passage that made this book worthwhile, so I could share it with you. On the other hand, a passage that begins something like, "I remember what it was like when things were good on Salmon Avenue, before all the bad things happened" probably doesn't read as quite so significant when you haven't read the rest of the book. Anyway, the passage of which I speak was about 85% of the way through the book, and it was at that point that I thought, "Oh! This is why I'm reading this book." Otherwise, the plot was okay and the writing wasn't terrible but I found it overly sentimental and not very engaging.

Update: 50 Book Challenge

2009-03-06T16:01:00.002-05:00

6. Xunzi, translated by Burton Watson.

7. Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, translated by D. C. Lau. Lau is a very decent translator, especially if your aim is scholarly or, especially, historical. But a reader should understand that translating Laozi is much more difficult that Lau makes it look, and Laozi's writing is also much more ambiguous than it appears in Lau's translation.

8. Zhuangzi: Basic Writings, translated by Burton Watson.

I'd love to write sometime about how these readings of Laozi and Zhuangzi influence and interact with my own understanding of Daoism and Daoist tendencies, but that will have to wait for another time.

Update: 50 Book Challenge

2009-02-08T02:08:00.000-05:00

After much deliberation, I have decided to include select books from my Aspects of Chinese History: World of Thought in Early China class in my 50 Book Challenge list. My reasoning: the ones I'll count are classics that I'd have an interest in anyway, and I'll only count them if I actually read the whole thing like I'm supposed to.

Accordingly:

5. The Analects of Confucius, translated by D. C. Lau. I'll admit, not what I expected. More flexible than I expected, and the better for that.

Fifty Book Challenge 2009

2009-01-17T01:52:00.003-05:00

I've decided to participate in the 50 Book Challenge in 2009. I don't know who started it, but the idea is to read fifty books in a year. The challenge is with yourself.

Here's what I've read this year already:

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
Adulthood Rites by Octavia Butler. Not as good as Dawn. Good writing, decent plot, but much less power in terms of science-fiction-as-metaphor.
Imago by Octavia Butler. Better than Adulthood Rites but still not as good as Dawn. I don't understand what the title refers to or is supposed to mean. One trope in this series that I really enjoyed was that the Oankali physically bond with their mates. And people can smell (by pheromones) who is mated with whom. That is really cool. Plus it's clever how this ties into the lack of hierarchical drive in the Oankali. This book explores that aspect and I particularly liked it for that.
CURRENTLY READING: The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston. So far, so very good. I love how she ties together fact and fiction, reality and myth, past and present.