Okay people, so here's the deal. I've decided that I HATE the title of this blog. I've also decided that I need to move it, although it will still be hosted on blogger. So Creeping Credentials is now Loose Talk, and you'll fine me (along with all of the posts so far) over there. If you're the one person who has subscribed to my blog, sorry to do this to you, but I promise this will be it. If you'd be so kind as to re-subscribe at the new site, I'll love you forever!
Lose the Tops, Girls
It hasn't been a good week for swimming pools here in the US, but in Sweden, they've been doing substantially better lately. The third largest city in Sweden, Malmö, has recently decided that if the men don't have to wear tops while bathing, neither do the women.
Chair of sports, Bengt Forsberg is quoted as saying, "We don't define what bathing suits men should wear so it doesn't make much sense to do it for women. And besides, it's not unusual for men to have large breasts that resemble women's breasts." Indeed.
The fact that a woman's chest must be covered at all times, it seems to me, needlessly marks her body as both sexual and taboo in a manner not enacted on the body of men. I'm not advocating for nudity here. (Although I'm not necessarily advocating against it, either, but that's not the point.) I'm merely agreeing with the official of Malmö, if it's not the law for one of the sexes, it shouldn't be the law for the other. Of course, the puritanical leanings of our society would probably shame most women into keeping covered even if we did strike the law from the books. But I think many of us believe that body-shaming in any form is reprehensible.
Continually signaling to women that their bodies somehow deserved to be covered in ways men's don't, that their bodies are shameful and unfit for normal public consumption is one reason why the female form is so easily over-sexualized in today's pop culture. Keep your body under wraps in order to function in polite society, or display yourself and be a whore (albeit a desirable whore). There seems to be no space in our culture for women to exist happily and comfortably in their bodies without choosing sides. So grab your towel, I'm ready for Sweden.
How Not to Be an Idiot when Looking at Art of the Non-West
Last night, I attended an event at the Rubin Museum of Art, which is the only (I believe) museum in the Western world dedicated to the art of the Himalayas. We were given a tour of their fabulous collection of pieces from Nepal's Kathmandu Valley, and then watched a performance of traditional dances with music, before enjoying a veritable feast of Nepalese food. But it's the tour and the art I want to talk about now. I'll admit that the tour guide was pretty abysmal, and it was clear she had no idea about any of the art on display. But what really struck me were the comments made by some of my fellow tour participants. Comments such as: "I don't like these paintings. I only like the sculptures because they have more artistic integrity [what the hell is that?] since the painting is so repetitive" and "That goddess [referring to Durga] with all of those arms sure must be able to get a lot of housework done!" And it occurred to me that even seemingly educated and thoughtful people sometimes just don't know how to look at the art of another culture. And both of the (incidentally older white males mentioned above) sure as hell didn't know how. So in order to spare you similar embarrassment and ugly glares from fellow art-lookers, I'm going to give you a few things to think about.
1) We in the West think of art as necessarily striving to accurately represent the "real world." And when it doesn't, such as in the many avant-gardes that developed at the end of the 19th century, we read those styles as rebelling against this ideal. But the ideal is foundational nevertheless. The thing to understand, is that our artistic heritage is grounded in the arts of Mediterranean antiquity, of the Greeks and the Romans. It is specifically to them we owe this assumption that art ought to be realistic and illusionistic. (Illusionism means giving the illusion of being real.) This is not the universal purpose of art.
The Rottgen Pieta, c. 1300-1325. See, not realistic, but definitely emotionally evocative.
Some art (like Medieval art, for example, Egyptian art, and Buddhist art as far as I can tell) is not interested in merely replicating as close as possible a likeness to nature. Instead, art is used as a medium through which to express ideas completely outside the realm of nature. When you look at what appears to be a crude Medieval sculpture, for example, it bears keeping in mind that the intent was not to represent accurately a likeness to Christ, but to transmit through the sculpture itself the essence of a divine being, made human. Thus the emphasis on a suffering Christ during this period. Rather than being in the service of accurate representation, the body is sculpted with an eye toward eliciting emotion.
2) We in the West assume that the most important person involved in the art-making process is the artist. The artist represents the singular genius, capable of great masterpieces. This is also an idea particular to the Western world, and a relatively recent development, to boot. It has not always been like this, and in fact, it wasn't until the development of the art market (again in the late 19th century) that the artist became the single most important factor. Before the 18th century, artists worked for guilds, which produced objects rather collectively. Even during the 18th and 19th centuries, great artists kept studios where they helped to educate students by doling out relatively unimportant passages of their own paintings to be completed by their pupils. Although the master's name was the only one to appear on the finished work, it was common for pieces to be the product of collective efforts.
So when you're faced with work that originated outside of the Western context, it would be good if you could keep in mind the fact that the artist's identity might not be the most important facet of that piece.
J-L David, Oath of the Horatti, 1784 - David's student Drouais was supposed to paint the figure of Camilla (the most important of the women in the story) by himself. It ended up that David hated Drouais' rendition of her, and completely redid it, but still, Drouais had his shot and the picture would have been no less David's had Drouais' image of Camilla remained.
3) This might be my most important point, and it's related to point number two. The idea of the singular artistic "genius" is bound up with the cult of the artist, which I described above. We in the West have been taught that the history of our art has followed some kind of linear path of development, which culminates in the modern (or post-modern, or post-post-modern) period. And the way we're taught that is through studying specific artists and the changes they made to the cannon (which, by the way, is a construct to begin with, but that's another post). Not all art is so self-consciously obsessed with development, revolution and originality. Some art is self-consciously obsessed with tradition, continuity and convention. For example, Islamic miniature painters were celebrated for their ability to maintain tradition, and to be so practiced in their specialties that they could paint without the benefit of sight (although that's a bit of mythologizing for you right there). Although artists always put their own mark on their works, it is crucial that you not judge another culture's artistic output based on it's willingness or resistance to constant change. Sometimes, change is not the friggin' point.
4) Please, whatever you do, do not use terms like "artistic integrity" to talk about, well, anything. That doesn't mean shit, and it will single you out immediately as being full of crap. Full of judgmental, self-righteous crap. And we don't want any of that.
In Response
Wednesday, July 8, 2009Thanks for the response, Adel. There are a few comments I'd like to make in turn.
First, I realize you were using the story of the men and their relationship to abortion in order to illustrate that often two people sharing a similar situation arrive at very different ideological beliefs. But I do think there is a fundamental problem when a question so basic to a woman's rights is expected to serve as a vehicle for the compromise of her brothers. Although this was perhaps a somewhat arbitrary example in the service of a broader point, I have a hard time with the image of two men sitting down to haggle over the rights of women based on their own second-hand experiences. And to me, whether or not they ever see eye to eye is irrelevant, because it is not their choice to make. Although in this country, I suppose in many ways it is their choice, but it ought not to be.
I think this series of posts also brings up the issue of different spheres of social engagement and what the responsibilities of each are. Of course, there are many, and multiple spheres, but as someone interested in politics in a professional way, compromise will be very important to you. And thank goodness we have people like you in this world, because (like it or not) compromise is the only way things are going to get done.
However. There is another sphere of social engagement, one that is more abstract, more academic in a way, and not beholden to the rules of civil engagement, of politics if you will. The making of policy and the making of philosophy are, after all, two very different things, although certainly interrelated. So while our policy makers may need to compromise, those of us interested in affecting change through a theoretical reworking of the fundamentals of the system do not. Should not. Were I given a place at that table, I would tell both men that it's not their choice to make, no matter how they feel affected by the ordeal their sisters have been through. I would, actually, refuse to see any point except the one that gives a woman maximum autonomy over her body. And the reason is because I believe that this is the *only* right thing to do.
So perhaps we can agree on this (although I know we actually agree on much). As a participant in our political system, you will foster the kinds of relationships with people that will allow you to empathize with them, to understand them, and ultimately to work with them. As a participant in academia, I will refuse to compromise my fundamental beliefs, and work to construct arguments and analyses that will allow me to deliver and justify these beliefs to a wider audience in the hopes of changing or supporting their opinions. Seems like a pretty good compromise to me.
Response to "Meeting in the Middle"
Hi, I'm the friend that Andrea mentions in her post "Meeting in the Middle." I wrote this response to her, and she has kindly let me guest post it, uncensored.
First, I applaud your decision to share this blog with me, even though it meant making an exception to your anonymity, and even though it was more the result of a slip of the lip than a conscientious decision. Allowing me to read and respond to this post is exactly the type of “meeting in the middle” that I advocate.
Secondly, I am well aware that some of what I say may reinforce some of your points, which is fine by me, because I mostly agree with you and therefore wouldn’t aspire to negate what I hold to be truths that you elucidate.
Thirdly, the point I was making had nothing to do with the men whose stories I told and everything to do with their stories. I was trying to illustrate the power of story-telling to overcome otherwise insurmountable barriers between two people, or at least elevate their fields of vision above the barrier that stands between them for the sake of realizing that there is indeed a person on the other side.
It reminds me of that TV commercial about driving safely, in which children are playing on a major highway, and families are barbecuing, and you keep thinking they’re going to be hit, and you’re cringing. The ad made the point that there are people inside those cars. They’re not just cars. Likewise, we have to remember that there are people behind their opinions. They’re not just opinions. And when we recognize the people and not just their opinions, we are more inclined to give each other the respect and compassion that a productive debate requires.
Had I known that your ears might close to my point once men and not women were revealed as its main characters, I could have changed the casting. But that wouldn’t have held the authenticity of the story intact, and I think that’s important.
The point wasn’t about voicelessness. It was about finding a voice that someone else will listen to, especially when that someone else vehemently disagrees with you.
The point was that we all have personal reasons for believing what we do. This is evident even in your own blog. Some of your best posts, in my opinion, begin with a personal story that illustrates why you hold the beliefs that you now do. I’m inclined to believe you tell these stories because you recognize the efficacy of sharing something personal to give validity and momentum to your political opinions.
The point was that two people, regardless of their genitalia, can arrive at completely opposite points of view from an identical catalyst. Yet we rarely talk about the reasons, the stories, the personal narratives that inform our points of view. If we more often encouraged, perhaps even demanded, personal narratives in policy-making or even simply public discourse about divisive topics, we might realize we have more in common than we thought. And even though you may continue to abhor the point of view of another person, you may begin to abhor the person less.
The point is that if we can find a common ground, we are exponentially more likely to strike upon a solution that transcends the divided battlefield upon which both sides are entrenched and unmoving.
Fourthly, perhaps I am being sensitive, but I cannot help but feel an undercurrent in this post of "how could my smart, articulate female friend argue such an implicitly patriarchal point?" I will admit that I may unknowingly use or accept patriarchal rhetoric from time to time, that I am susceptible to arguing within the constructs of the only society I have ever known, even as I aspire for it to be much more tolerant, inclusive, informed and dynamic, which I believe only happens when we abolish the systems that subjugate certain people as second-class citizens. However, the anonymity of your blog is just as indicative of how pervasive those constructs are – that you would voice your story, but not identify your voice.
Let me be clear that I am deeply troubled that women’s bodies are politicized. I agree with you; it’s totally fucked up. And you’re right to ask where were the women in these stories before, during, and after their abortions. You’re right to ask what are their stories, and what are their opinions of abortion. The truth is I don’t know their stories. But I know mine. And when I discuss the topic with someone who disagrees with me, I will let them know why the politics of it are personal to me.
Bloggers and Journalists
Via Open Salon, this video of the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Reader Rep Ted Diadiun whining about how bloggers aren't *real* journalists and just steal the content that *real* newspapers (read: dying newspapers) produce.
If you get through this incredibly dry video, you'll see that there's much to take issue with. Anyone who suggests the limiting of any access to information should be met with fierce skepticism. But I think this is merely the siren song of a dying and ever less-relevant medium, and the proposed limiting of rights merely a silly, last ditch effort. It's like those old time movie execs trying to stifle the advent of sound in film out of the fear that it will limit their audience. Sorry buckos, it's inevitable.
And Ted here, seems to be all bent out of shape because no one is paying him for the research he did when they reproduce that research. Man, am I ever glad I don't have to pay out royalties to all of the authors of all the books I've used for research over the years in college and now in graduate school. Yet in the same breath, Diadiun's little crony interjects that even when information does originate in a blog, such as "some of the videos with some of the candidates" as he vaguely mentions, he maintains that the public doesn't really find out about it until it's picked up by the newspapers. Now hold your horses for just a moment. When information originates with newspapers, they should have special rights to it, but when information originates with blogs, the newspapers get to latch on and disseminate it more widely? Really? And did you *pay* the bloggers for those stories? Okay, then you'd better get over that particular complaint.
The point journalists like Diadiun don't seem to understand is that there is, in fact, room for all of us. It's just that those used to claiming the lion's share of power and influence are going to see their sphere reduced in the future. And it should come as no surprise to those of us conversant in issues of feminism, race and class that the big boys at the top merely want to maintain their power. But here's my point. Blogging is often, maybe even usually, not about breaking news. Blogging is not, as it turns out, journalism. Blogging is instantaneous revisionism.
Now, the term "revisionism" may have been turned into a dirty word by the conservative right (those traditionally in power), but that's because it's their version of the story that's being revised. The adage goes that the winners write history. True. They get the first shot. For example in art history, my field, the old vanguard constructed a narrative which is not only euro-centric, but Mediterranean-centric, and which largely leaves out the voices of minority populations and women. That was the first generation of historians, and they were all European men. Now, we're revising history. We're opening it up to include feminist voices, Marxist voices, non-Western voices and the voices of those largely disenfranchised.
Blogging serves a similar purpose. Only it's much more immediate. We don't have to wait for the glass ceiling to crack to have a platform. We don't have to be hired by newspapers to present our interpretations of what's going on. Or to emphasize stories and events that might get short shrift in the mainstream media. And we must be doing a pretty good job of all this revisionism if we have the establishment all up in arms.
Of course, there's plenty of crap out there as well. But if you think the mainstream media is immune to crap, you've obviously never seen Fox news or had the pleasure of having your ears defiled by Rush Limbaugh. And anyway, isn't it immediately suspicious when you see or hear some old white guy try to claim that he has special priority in reporting and interpreting the news? Sends my red flags up a mile high.
Okay, so here's the take away message. We still need journalists who have the ability, training and recourses to gather information in the first place. For an historian, this is the equivalent of working in the archives. But once you've reported your story, it's fair game for alternative voices to offer alternative interpretations and to emphasize alternative points of view. If my advising professor had decided that all of the primary sources he'd gathered, translated and compiled were off limits for the generation of historians that came after him, well we'd be fucked. And our field wouldn't get very far.
So to Ted Diadiun, stop acting like there's some kind of Platonic absolute out there called History or News, to which you and people like you have privileged access. We bloggers don't care about your opinion anyway.
Woman Blaming as Art Form
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Let's talk art, for a moment. Artomatic, which has been running since May in D.C. is an art festival, free to the public, and boasting nine floors of visual and installation art, as well as performances. I'll admit right away that I've never been. One of the exhibits that's been given a bit of press, is Deb Jansen's installation titled Catharsis & Karma: An Open Thank You Letter to a Homewrecker, which features a quite vitriolic (and there's nothing wrong with vitriol, mind you) letter addressed to the "other woman" with whom her husband had an affair. In their column The Reliable Source, from the Washington Post, on July 3rd titled "Pardon Me, Your Heart Is Showing" (I'm giving all the specifics because I can't seem to find a dedicated link to the article), Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger, suggest that if Mark Sanford had seen the piece, perhaps he would have thought twice about straying. But whatever, Mark Sanford, I actually don't care too much about you. What I want to talk about is the piece itself.
Roberts and Argetsinger quote the letter as beginning, "Thank you from the bottom of my heart for [sleeping with] my spineless narcissist of a husband. But he was my husband -- not yours. You had no right." Jansen goes on to describe this other woman as a "chubby, boring...jan brady wanna be" and goes so far as to reproduce a photo of her next to the letter, granted with eyes blacked out.
Now, as far as I can tell, it was her husband who did the cheating, not this other woman. And if the other woman was cheating as well, it would have been on her own husband, not on Ms. Jansen. Last I checked (which was actually about a month ago, when I got married myself), that promise is made between two very specific people, and they're the only ones with the power to break it. Not only does Jansen displace the burden of blame which should be falling on her husband onto this woman, but she uses fat-hating language as though by labeling her "chubby" the artist is justified in her attack. As though this other woman's body, through both that descriptor and the use of her picture, can be hijacked and used as a weapon for attack against her.
At the end of their post, Roberts and Argetsinger attempt to elicit discussion by writing: "Compelling stuff... but is it art?" When they posed that question to Jansen, she said, "If art is something that channels right out of your soul, and if creativity can heal then yes. But no, I wouldn't want it over my couch, either." Umm, are you kidding me? Is it art? How is this even a question? It's not. It's a silly question for silly minds to debate because it doesn't friggin' matter. Is it art. Give me a break. No one gives a shit of you think it's art or not (that can't be defined anyway, so shut up about it before you even begin). The real question is why does this woman, this artist, feel the need to so publicly blame another woman when she should be blaming her husband. Sure, she blames him, but it's not his picture reproduced next to the letter. He's not the one being taken to task here for his behavior.
So, since I subscribe to the broadest possible definition of what constitutes art, I'll tell you this. Yes, it is art. Bad art.
Our Bodies. In Pieces.
In my daily blog browsing, I came upon this post on O Filthy Grandeur, to which I was compelled to respond. However, I have more to say about it than would comfortably fit in the comments, so I thought I would slightly steal her post in the hopes of expanding on it a bit.
However, I'd like to take her interpretation one step further, as (and I'm not sure she even realizes this, although I have a feeling she does) she's hit on a troupe that runs throughout art history, and therefore all visual production, since at least the French Revolution.
For one thing, let's talk about the fact that the female form, when displayed in this manner, is so often splayed out along the horizontal axis of the picture plane. In the context of her 1993
monograph on Cindy Sherman, Rosalind Krauss suggests that the horizontal plane signals "base materialism" as opposed to the vertical orientation, which suggests "the hanging together of coherence of form...further, this vertical dimension, in being the axis of form, is also the axis of beauty." In other words, a body depicted vertically is a body with agency, a body capable of action, as the silhouette on another Patterson Cover, Roses are Red. When a body is splayed horizontally, as in The Bathing Suit, agency, and therefore personhood, is removed, and the body is consigned to the realm of the object.Portraits, after all, tend to be vertical,
while still lifes and landscapes are horizontal.
FilthyGrandeur is right when she says, as I've quoted above, that this fragmentation is suggestive of violence. It is also suggestive of will. As Linda Nochlin has written, in her book The Body in Pieces, cropping of the pictorial space suggests the artist's agency, the artist's decision of where to draw the boarders of the image. She writes: "The image is understood to be cropped, cut off, deliberately, as a function of the artist's will and aesthetic decision." What she doesn't mention, is the power dynamic this decision implicitly sets up between the artist and the subject. And if the artist is traditionally assumed to be male, then the dynamic set up between the designer of the cover and his near-naked model is one of violence and subjugation.
But The Bathing Suit isn't the only Patterson (might as well stick with the same author) novel to feature a fragmented female body. One cover for his novel Run For Your Life features a pair of cut-off woman's legs, their bareness highlighted by the hem of the coat which flutters around them. She runs awkwardly on high heels, through a street seemingly newly wetted by rain. This, too, is a visual trope, which Nochlin also analyzes in the same book with reference to works by Manet, Degas, Daumier and others. For her, the cut-off female legs function several ways:
1) As fetish. These are women's legs, their shape emphasized and elongated by the fact that she's wearing heels, a fashion choice clearly incompatible with any real effort at running for one's life. These legs are eroticised and sexualized.
2) As metonymy. These legs suggest a complete body. In fact, they stand in for one, as synecdoches for the whole. They suggest the physical attractiveness of the body which is not present.
In the comments section on her post, one commentor brought up the presence of the fragmented male body on the cover of romance novels as a counterpoint. True, in those cases, the male body is equally objectified. But just because visual tropes which originated with the female form can be transposed onto the male, doesn't undercut the power of what they suggest and how they read. Further, these books are not romance novels. They're thrillers. Two completely different genres. And I have a feeling you'd be much harder pressed to find male counterparts to these female images from within the same genre.
I especially appreciate FilthyGrandeur's post because she asks us to be vigilant in critically reading the visual images with which we're inundated in modern society. There is no such thing, and there never has been such a thing, as an innocent image. Just think of the ways in which major religions like Islam and even Protestantism have grappled with the power of images if you need further proof. In this day and age, when our visual culture has been taken to such an extreme, it's refreshing when someone refuses to be a passive receiver of our visual language.
Why We can Blame Anti-Intellectualism for the last 8 Years, and for People Like Sarah Palin
Monday, July 6, 2009When I was growing up, in that conservative family I told you about, my mother emphasized education above and beyond everything else. This is one thing, especially, I continue to thank her for. And actually, she did it because she honestly thought it was the most important, empowering thing she could give to her two daughters. She, from a small town in New England, finished high school a self-proclaimed "average" student and dropped out of her self-proclaimed "average" college when she decided she didn't want to become a teacher. She picked up, and moved west, the way dissatisfied east costers have been doing since the days of covered wagons. It's at least one way to strike out on an adventure.
So I was born in the West, and the education of my sister and me became one of my mother's main focuses. I have always been told that working hard in school was the only way to ensure a successful future. And I listened. I worked hard in high school, got top grades in college, and ended up at one of the very top programs in my field for my Ph.D. (I attribute much of that to pure luck, actually, since I was also rejected from many of my total back-up schools.)
So when then-Senator Barak Obama was running for President, for the highest position in the land, and I heard my own parents dismiss him because of his education, because he possessed a degree that set him apart and above much of the rest of the population, it was hard not to call bullshit. I'm sorry, but I DO want a president who has studied, and even taught, the constitution rather than one who views it as a purely malleable document to be used to serve his own interests. I DO want a president conversant in, all of the major and complicated issues of our day. I DO want a president who is highly educated, because only through education can anyone hope to grasp the subtitles of international and national politics. I'm not saying that I understand everything I expect Obama to understand, but we've been educated for pretty different jobs.
So no, I actually don't want the "Average Joe" running this country. I don't care if he's a cool guy with whom I would want to have a beer. I don't care if she says things like "you betchya" and shoots animals from her helicopter window. But it sure as shit helps that our president is a diplomatic, intelligent and learned guy who can carry on important conversations without embarrassing himself and the country. Who here is relieved not to have to cringe every time he opens his mouth, raise your hands.
And I don't really care if this position is elitist. Bush was elitist. The Republican doctrine is elitist. It is absolutely not too much to ask that the most important job in this country be held by someone of exceptional intelligence and educational pedigree. It should be a pre-requisite. And maybe now, it finally will be.
A Girl's Best Friend
One of the great injustices is that men get to have dogs for their best friends, while us women are stuck with diamonds. I'd choose a lovely little mutt over an overblown piece of coal any day.
The single most dysfunctional relationship I'm involved in is with my dog. I would never, under any circumstances, allow anyone else to treat me the way she does. For instance, just last night, she dragged the blanket halfway off my bed, onto her waiting mat, and bunched it up for some extra padding. She left me with about one third, and I consented to share.
She demands a bite of anything I'm eating, whining and crying when I refuse. She can easily claim 3/5ths of any available room with her mere 50 pound frame. And if she needs more space, she stretches, moans, and pushes her way closer to the middle. She gets fed, bathed, scratched, petted, and rubbed on demand. I saved her life when she was on the chopping block at the pound, after living on the street, having puppies and starving for them. She'd been at the humane society for three months, was 20 pounds underweight, and no one wanted her. And I do all of this for a little cuddling on occasion, for which she almost never sits still.
We're both needy and co-dependent with one another. She likes to be pressed up next to me when I'm trying to read or work, and I like to spoon myself around her when she's trying to sleep. I'm better at keep-away than she is, and she has never agreed to actually bring a ball back during fetch, preferring instead to be chased. I live on the 5th floor of a 5 floor walk-up, so the four walks a day that she requires also mean 4 times up and down all of those stairs. She almost never gives kisses.
And she's so, completely worth it.
Fuck You Douglas MacKinnon
Sunday, July 5, 2009I've mentioned before (last post, actually) that there are certain, un-critical view-points I cannot tolerate. It's not that I'm adverse to the other side. If the other side is willing to argue critically and thoughtfully, and not heap a bunch of conservative, sexist, racist, bull-shit, rhetoric at us. Unfortunately, this article, courtesy of the Huffington Post, does not qualify as a critically analyzed position, but as pure sexism only thinly veiled as presenting the "other side".
Sarah Palin has stepped down from her position as governor of Alaska. Everyone knows this by now. Todd Purdum, writing for Vanity Fair, fairly well attacked the crap out of Sarah Palin. In general, nothing makes me happier. I despise Palin with every cell of my brain capable of analytic thought (which I like to think is most of them). But I'm not here to write about that Vanity Fair article (I don't read that magazine anyway, and it has its own problems). What I want to talk about is Douglas MacKinnon's response to Vanity Fair.
First, Doug tries to cover his ass by reminding readers that he once defended Bill Clinton, and then writes, "I will attempt to do the same for Governor Sarah Palin knowing that such a defense will be met with visceral anger and contempt by a great many readers of this site." Right you are, Doug, right you are. But guess what. It's not your defense of Palin as such that's so vomit-inducing. Is your reduction of all women to their shared vagina that makes me want to slap you with your own overblown member.
Dougie asks "Why do so many alleged feminists and female members of the mainstream media openly and gleefully despise Palin?" (emphasis is mine). Because, don't you know all of you silly alleged feminists, Sarah Palin has a vagina, and you all have vaginas, and anyway, isn't that particular part of your anatomy what you're obsessed with? How can you throw a fellow vagina-possesser under the bus? I thought you all were supposed to be on the same side. Never mind that Palin stands in complete contradistinction to everything a thinking feminist stands for. If you were a real feminist, you'd support whatever sorry excuse for a candidate some old white man munificently gives you, as long as she's female (haven't we proven that McCain's logic on this point didn't quite work out?).
And if this argument weren't sound enough, continues Doug, I have an anonymous female friend who's a psychologist with completely undisclosed credentials to back me up (really, Doug, really?). And you know what she says? She says that Maureen Dowd and all of you other pretend feminists are (wait for it)...jealous:
"Dowd 'may be threatened or envious of Palin...or both. As an aging but still attractive woman, Dowd may resent Palin's good looks. Further as a single woman of a certain age, she may be envious that Palin has a husband, a family, and has carved out an accomplished political career." Totally. That's why I disliker her, too. She's just too damn beautiful and I feel threatened. You got me. And while Doug is a self-proclaimed sceptic of psycho-babble, this particular analysis, he says, seems plausible. Right.
But guess what, it's not only pseudo-feminists under attack here for being female. It's Palin, too. Because guess why liberal men don't like her. It's not because she's the political anti-christ, with the reasoning skills of a gnewt (Gingrich or otherwise). Nope, it's because they secretly want to bone her:
"With regard to why Purdum, David Letterman, and other liberal males continually go after Palin, the answer might be as easy as they secretly lust after her while also seeing her as the 'girlfriend of the quaterback' they could never get in high school. Seriously, look at the "men" [I guess they're only hypothetical men, which makes them what? Women?] who belittle Palin on a regular basis. For the most part, they fit the description of "the pencil-neck geek" from high school. Are they now trying to make Palin pay for their long-ago inadequacies?" Christ. Jesus fucking Christ.
I said it once and I'll say it again: Fuck you Douglas MacKinnon. And no, I don't disagree with you because I want to sleep with you. I disagree with you because you are full of the worst kind of shit. The misogynist kind of shit that reeks of reducing all women to their shared baby-making parts. If you want to be controversial and get a conversation started, how about beginning with an actual argument, you know, the kind with a provable thesis statement bolstered by data that might actually further discourse in this country instead of stopping it in its tracks. This is the kind of meeting in the middle I just cannot do.
Meeting in the Middle
I have a friend who is very smart. Well-read, articulate, and she's into politics in a professional way. At dinner the other night with her and her boyfriend, she told a story about the importance of listening to the other side in an argument, something I'm admittedly no longer very good at. I was raised in a conservative household. I tried through all of high school to be a good conservative girl, but answers were never all that forthcoming about reasons and rationale. I never understood our unquestioned loyalty to Israel as a country, could never swallow that line that working class women had babies just to increase their check from the government. Had trouble flatly ignoring systemic inequalities in this society, and couldn't stomach why women should be so judged according their looks and never their merit.
Back to this friend. She told one of those pull-on-the-heart-strings stories about two men (of course they were men), one resolutely pro-choice and one resolutely anti-choice. She explained how these hypothetical men both arrived at their contrary positions through the experiences their own sisters had with deciding to have an abortion. The moral of the story was that we can learn to work together if we're willing to see the other side. Of course, that really only works if you have a story to begin with, and to have that story you must have a voice, have agency. The very structure of the fable, of course, demonstrates which characters are afforded this luxury, and it sure wasn't the sisters.
I spent my formative years listening to the other side. I tried to be anti-choice, I tried to convince myself that "those gays" wanted "special rights". I tried to believe that the system would take care of itself, rather than just taking care of those at the top of the system. It doesn't make sense. The problem is that the conservative viewpoint flat out doesn't make sense. And I can't validate what amounts to bigoted, retrograde opinions by entertaining them. Period. If you have an intelligent comment or point to make that's at odds with my beliefs, that's okay. As long as it's not based on the idea of second-class citizens, on oppression, on maintaining the power in the hands of the few. That side, I just can't tolerate.
Beginnings
This post is addressed to an audience of imaginary readers right now, and that's fine by me. Liberating, even. Because I have another blog, one on which I'm not anonymous. One that some people actually read, and one on which I censor myself and make sure I won't embarrass or offend anyone. That's the blog my mother reads, and comments on anonymously, which seems unfair. And although it's dedicated to one of my biggest interests, I find that all of that censoring starts to get a little old. Sometimes I want to swear in cyber space like I swear in real life, even if my father reminds me that "ladies don't curse." And that's a problem. But I don't want the burden of people I know reading over my shoulder in this space. So this space is for me.
I'm a graduate student, I live in urbanmetropolis USA, sometimes I'm an angry feminist, and I think that's endearing. At least, I think it's important.
This echo of a big, empty space is refreshing. But conversation is always more interesting, and maybe one day that will happen as well. But for now, I'm happy with the room to move around.
So I'll end this introduction now and think of something worthwhile to post, for real.
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