by the light of the moon...

There's so much to blog about I don't know where to start, so today you just get links.

John McCain thinks that calling Hilary Clinton a bitch is part of an "excellent question." More discussion here.

Somebody is finally noticing that the majority of animated characters are boys - even when they are worker bees...which are always female.

And finally, in Seattle, a collection of apartments designed to get chronically alcoholic homeless people off the streets that does NOT require them to stop drinking.

Here is another article about it. Here is their official site.

I support this idea wholeheartedly. Yes, take my taxes, please. Alcoholism is a mental illness like any other, and poverty and homelessness are not likely to help anyone quit. Why deny someone the social supports that keep them off the street because they can't cure their illness alone, or because it isn't cured yet? The idea is inhumane and preposterous.

The quote that really got me is this one:

"Finally, he asks, what kind of equation of humanity is this: Since you refuse to stop drinking, since you refuse to address your disease, you must die on the streets."

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The Republican Mayor of San Diego has had a change of heart and decided, after years of saying that he supported civil unions but not civil marriage, that "separate but equal" is not acceptable. In a deeply moving speech, he speaks of his decision and mentions his circle of gay and lesbian friends and family, including his daughter.

For as long as Youtube will host it, here's the video. It's truly lovely.

If you want to send him a note of thanks, please do so! His website, with contact info, is here.

This video is even more timely to me because over the last few days I have been tinkering with my thoughts on what would be the most effective and exciting research that I would like to pursue in a PhD program. I've toyed with research that would directly address access to higher education in California (locally practical application of my passions) or developing techniques to increase empathy in loaded situations like the middle east (the dreamer's route).

Over the past few days the latter has been mutating a little, and I've begun to think that perhaps I'd really enjoy researching the tipping points for groups in power.

The question is, when do people with power and privilege finally realize that they are holding untenable positions?
What is it that convinced the mayor?
What is it that finally made it clear to white people, or at least to some of us, that the n-word is never funny, that "Separate but Equal" is not?
When did enough men in America realize that women were entitled to vote?
And how does the "tipping" of a small percentage of people spread to the majority of a society? When can it become policy change?
What is the moment, the "face", of comprehension?

Turning the questions to practical future applications: What would be the tipping point to convince the majority of Israelis that they are holding an untenable and immoral position in terms of the Palestinians? How could I influence straight Americans to accept transgendered children as normal and beautiful?

Is there some collection or conjunction of factors that could be described - and then perhaps created - that can be expected to open the eyes of a majority in power that is committing a crime against humanity to see that their position is immoral?

I wonder what's already been done in this arena...

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Q. Why did I turn off the movie "V for Vendetta" after 30 minutes?

1. The main female character (and in the first 30 minutes, the only one with any significant lines) is threatened with a brutal rape in the first ten minutes of the movie. She escapes this fate because she is rescued by a masked white man.

This is not a plot that I want to submit myself to watching. Rape is not a casual shorthand for brutality - it is a tactic of war used against women. I don't want to see it casually onscreen as a minor plot point.

2. Unless I missed one when I blinked, every person in the first 30 minutes of the movie was white. (*OK, turns out that there is a convenient 'ethnic cleansing' plot that explains this....but I am not convinced it was necessary.)

3. The violence was unnecessarily graphic.

Q. Why criticize this movie when it's a remake of a comic book? That comic is the original source of any sexism, racism, or violence in the story; the filmmaker was just bringing that story to the screen.

Well, I probably wouldn't buy the comic either, but more to the point, the stories that we tell shape who we are. If all of the powerful anti-Bush movies (as well as, of course, all of the summer blockbusters and the large majority of American movies in general) are also sexist, racist, and violent, then we are telling ourselves - and especially our children - that only white men:

- have the power to beat Bush
- are interesting enough to build a story around
- have the power to stop rape, and only when it serves their purposes

We are telling our children that women:
- are helpless and dependent
- are instantly rendered terrified and helpless by a threat of rape
- do not fight back

We are telling our children that people of color:
- do not exist

Q. Why do I feel the need to criticize a movie that many progressives support as an anti-tyranny, anti-Bush movie? Shouldn't we be supporting art that supports our cause?

I freely admit to having mixed feelings about this. Yes, I do want to support art that supports the causes that are vital to our survival as a species and to general issues of social justice. But I also feel that in order for social justice to proliferate, I need to remind those with more power than I (like V for Vendetta's male white movie director James McTeigue, and white male writers the Wachowski brothers) that just as it's not cool to invade Iraq, it's also not cool to use rape as a quick way to establish a repressive backstory, or to leave out people of color as if they do not exist.

I am tired of watching women be helpless, brutalized, terrified and useless in movies, whether those movies depict the Hulk or the "War on Terror". I am tired of white men getting all of the good lines and all of the good roles. I won't give those directors my money because my power clearly doesn't matter to them.

When I make my hundred million dollars, my movie production company will tell the stories that I feel need telling: of strong women, multicultural societies, people who fight to end racism, etc. The stories we tell shape who we are.

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I can be VERY fond of Stephen Colbert. Enjoy!

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Read this article today in the New York Times about the controversy surrounding the newest Newberry Award-winning book, The Higher Power of Lucky. Librarians and parents alike are appalled that the nine- to twelve-year-old audience for this book (about a strong and gifted girl, no less!) would be exposed to the word "scrotum" in the first page.

To quote the New York Times, here is the context of this frightening and shockingly corrosive word:

The book’s heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.

“Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much,” the book continues. “It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”

What a wonderful way to capture the experience of a bright child learning about life! I am so frustrated by this kind of knee-jerk paranoia in this country. Why would you deny a child the correct name for a perfectly normal part of the human body? Are we supposed to tell little boys it's a hooha (oh, no, sorry, that's actually a vagina, if you live in Florida) and keep little girls from knowing anything at all about male anatomy until they get married?

Please. If anyone has a good idea for changing this country from a puritan state to a place where we learn about healthy bodies, and treasure them, at all ages, let me know.

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Studio Ghibli, under the direction of Hayao Miyazaki, has produced several excellent animated features that star strong, independent, and non-sexualized women. The best part is that these women and girls actually stay strong throughout the films instead of becoming helpless and needing to be rescued by men at the climax. (For just a few of the countless examples of this frustrating archetype, see Belle in Beauty and the Beast, Liz Sherman in Hellboy, Susan Calvin in I, Robot, etc...).

Many of Miyazaki's films also have anti-war and pro-environment themes, and all are exquisitely animated!

I think my favorite is Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind. The main characters include two "princesses" who carry their titles and their ethics very differently, and both are strong and active agents of their fates. (No Disney princesses here!) The character of Nausicaa is a joy to watch - smart, joyful, gifted, persistent, hugely ethical and caring. Plus the movie is thrilling, with exciting action, and characters I cared about. (For those of you who like scene-chewing cameos, listen for Uma Thurman, Patrick Stewart, Chris Sarandon, and, wonder of wonders, Mark Hamill on the soundtrack.)

I've also enjoyed:

- My Neighbor Totoro. This one is a lovely, simple story of two little girls' friendships with a benevolent forest spirit. What I like is that the girls' father believes in the spirit, too, thus avoiding the usual frustrating tension between parents and prococious children in movies about the supernatural. It's also a lovely, gentle tale with only minor stupid plot contrivances - mostly they just have a good time. The girls are very believably created. Watch for a really neat cross between a cat and a bus!

- Spirited Away is the story of Sen, a spoiled girl who saves her parents from an enchantment by becoming a chambermaid in a magical resort for the gods. (It's better than it sounds!) This film has some scenes of real beauty, especially a sequence where Sen rides a train across a floodplain. Suzanne Pleshette is great in a dual role as two powerful witches. And it's great to watch Sen become a strong, inventive, and powerful force.

- Perhaps the most well-known of Miyazaki's films in America is Princess Mononoke. It's been a long time since I saw this one, but I remember a strong heroine, some great commentary on the grey areas of environmentalism vs. polluting technology, and beautiful cello music on the soundtrack.

- Howl's Moving Castle stands out for its heroine's particular battle: she is "cursed" with old age, but I seem to remember that she comes to find a lot of joy and solidity in her new "old" body. And how many animated films have you seen recently that starred a powerful, interesting, spirited grey-haired woman?

Posted by Lythande at 06:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Excellent article in the New York Times this week about the current state of medicine and activism concerning intersex children.

Short version: doctors and parents have been terrified for decades (I suppose longer) that intersexed children -- children born with genitalia that do not conform neatly to one or the other of our two acknowledged genders -- would be permanently scarred if left to grow up whole, as they were born. I do not use the word "terrified" lightly.

These children were and are subject to multiple surgeries without their consent, lied to about their bodies and their memories, and assigned genders which sometimes do not fit their gender identities. It was and is a person-made and completely unnecessary tragedy. I pray it will be ended in my lifetime.

A couple of quotes that stand out:

1.
When I met Melvin Grumbach, one of the doctors who cared for Chase as an infant and who went on to become one of the most respected pediatric endocrinologists in the country, he’d clearly heard Chase’s line of reasoning many times. He participated in forming the consensus, and he also signed it. He knew what he was supposed to say. “We say, ‘Don’t do surgery unless it’s necessary, unless it’s important,’ ” he told me in early summer in his office at the University of California in San Francisco, where he’s now an emeritus professor. “But I think if the external genitals are really masculinized, you work it out with the family. I mean, good grief. What about the parents? The parents are raising the child. Don’t they have some say?”

I love the The Intersex Society of North America's (ISNA) simple and stark take on this: "Parents’ distress must not be treated by surgery on the child."

Especially in the light of:

2.
(Eric) Vilain has a clinic devoted to treating disorders of sex development, where he sees 40 to 50 new intersex patients a year. When he first left the lab and started seeing patients, he said he couldn’t believe that surgeons were performing genital reconstructions with so little data. “To me it was shocking, because where I come from, molecular genetics, we’re under extreme scrutiny,” Vilain told me on the phone in July. “If you want to show that a molecule causes something, you have to show it with a bunch of excruciatingly painful controls. And here I was looking at a lot of surgeons who were saying, ‘We think it’s good to do genital surgery early on because the children are doing better.’ So each time I would ask, ‘What’s the evidence that they’re doing better?’ And in fact the answer is there’s no real evidence. Then I’d ask: ‘What does it mean doing better? How do you measure it? Are you talking quality of life, or quality of sex life?’ And there was never any convincing answer.”

And for me, this is what it comes down to:

3.
Building on work on the Colombia case, in 2004, Chase and the Intersex Society were involved in persuading the San Francisco Human Rights Commission to hold a hearing and address the question of medical procedures on intersex infants in the United States. Over the course of three hours, dozens of intersex people and parents of intersex people testified. When it came time to ratify the report, Chase addressed the commission. “What the Human Rights Commission has done. . .is to recognize me as a human being,” she said. “You’ve stated. . .that just because I was born looking in a way that bothered other people doesn’t mean that I should be excluded from human rights protections that are afforded to other people.”

In the end, intersexuality is like being gay: the problem is that it bothers other people.

Those imagined scenes of children being taunted in a locker room that drove doctors and parents to unnecessary surgery...when will it become our first thought to educate the other children, instead of mutilating the one that stands out?

---------------------------

More resources:

The Intersex Society of North America (ISNA)

Their main points:

* Intersexuality is primarily a problem of stigma and trauma, not gender.
* Parents’ distress must not be treated by surgery on the child.
* Professional mental health care is essential.
* Honest, complete disclosure is good medicine.
* All children should be assigned as boy or girl, without early surgery.

And here is a great list of books. I have read One of Us by Alice Dreger and really enjoyed it. I also plan to read As Nature Made Him by John Colapinto.

--------------

On a slighly different and unexpected hand...I found myself stunned by the first line of this same article, not because of the reaction described therein to an intersexed child, but because of the treatment of her mother:

When Brian Sullivan — the baby who would before age 2 become Bonnie Sullivan and 36 years later become Cheryl Chase — was born in New Jersey on Aug. 14, 1956, doctors kept his mother, a Catholic housewife, sedated for three days until they could decide what to tell her. Sullivan was born with ambiguous genitals...

(bolding mine.)

The arrogance of that system floors me. The doctors' extreme reaction to a baby not conforming to gender roles - this, at least, I am used to. This is why Cheryl Chase and people like her are so important: we are making a difference so that gender lines can be blurrier and no one has to be mutilated or die for their gender identity or physical appearance.

But the wanton drugging of a healthy woman, to shield her from the truth of her baby's healthy body...

I understand that it was the 1950s. Perhaps this woman was so programmed by a repressive society that her reaction upon hearing about her child's intersexuality would have been so extreme as to justify her involuntary 3-day coma.

But I gravely doubt that. It was surely the doctors who had been programmed to believe that a woman had no right to a say in her own access to consciousness.

We have not reached a sane or just society. But an image like this unexpectedly hits me in the chest with a reminder that we have come some distance.

Posted by Lythande at 03:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Feministing.com has posted the "winner" of their annual Disturbing Products Poll.

This is a real t-shirt design, sold here.

I have no words.

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Found a great essay by this essay by Ben Barres, a male-to-female (MTF) transgendered scientist who has experienced profound changes in treatment after becoming male.

His stories include being denied credit for solving a math problem as a women when an MIT professor accused her of having her boyfriend solve it, and a colleague who rated Barres' research much more highly once Barres had transitioned to male gender.

The piece that really speaks to me (from a sidebar):

By far, the main difference that I have noticed is that people who don't know I am transgendered treat me with much more respect: I can even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man.

There's also a great bibliography, including a book called Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women which looks very interesting.

photo is from http://pages.prodigy.net/fljustice/faith_pics/hypatia.jpg. It is of Hypatia of Alexandria, an early woman scientist.

And thanks to feministing.com for the heads-up!

Posted by Lythande at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I saw this question the other day, and started thinking about what it meant for me, especially in terms of fighting for spocial justice.

If I didn't care what people thought, I would:

• shower less frequently, to save resources
  
• worry less about my weight
  
• buy fewer new clothes
  
• use fewer (or no) beauty products
  
• dance in public
  
• roll down grassy hills in public
  
• wear only comfy shoes
  
• push gender appearance norms more
  
• have the tattoo that I've wanted for 15 years
  
• wear a more noticeable nosering, and fairy wings
  
• giggle more
  
• speak my mind more often, and more loudly
  
• more consistently confront people who say racist, sexist, classist, etc. things
  
• more consistently confront people who don't think their personal choices (driving, buying sweatshop-made products, choosing to live in neighborhoods that have no poor people and don't have sidewalks) have a global impact
  

You may be noticing a trend: This blogger, were I to become ...unfiltered by caring what people think...would spend a lot of time outside of social mores. And specifically, around issues of changing the world, well...would have few friends and might even generally be an unpleasant & judgmental person to be around.

In fact, the more I thought about it the more I realized that the person that I would be without paying attention to other people's opinions is very similar to the rude, pushy, fiery, ungroomed, principled, judgemental, out and proud, passionate, focused, free, secure, confident, obnoxious, powerful person that I was in college.

Now that made me think...what has changed since then? Why do I pay attention to my looks now? Why do I moderate my opinions, cover them when necessary, not call out every injustice that I see? Why do I worry what people think now, when I didn't before?

And am I happy with the results?

Well...Y'all who know me already know that I toned down my rhetoric because it wasn't working. Surprise: people don't seem to like communications without social niceties - or to put it another way, paying attention to what people think of my communications style is the tool that I have learned to hopefully have my message actually heard. And to not get fired from jobs.

In fact, this is the PhD thesis that I want to write: when people feel attacked, they will defend themselves and not be open to new ideas.

Humility is a huge part of this. What makes me think I have the right to tell other people what to do at all? It's a slippery slope. My convictions tell me to stay on that slope, and continually push the people I love to reconsider their driving, shopping, eating, etc. habits, but...to push gently, and with open ears, and accept it when people tell me they can't be pushed any farther right now. As much as I want to make the world a more progressive and secure and unpolluted place, I can't tell anyone else what to do. We all find our own paths.

I've learned how to pay attention to what people think, in order to gauge how best to reach them, and share my values, in hopes of perpetuating those values. I think that's a good thing, even if it does come at a price.

But some of these changes I feel more mixed about.

I've adopted many of the grooming rituals of "normal" people because the way I look affects how powerful I am in this society. (There's a fabulous and nasty cognitive dissonance when the grooming rituals I use to get power feel demeaning to me, such as shaving my legs!) This power is, of course, limited: I only have access to the powers that are granted to conventionally dressed white women in our society. It's not really the kind of power I want. But it's the kind I am currently choosing, at least sometimes. I'm showing by my grooming habits that I prefer to have the meager power I can get as a conventionally groomed female then the even more tenuous power I would have as a female who dresses outside gender and class boundaries.

I personally would rather not be dressing only in women's clothes, for example, or using so many gallons of water every day, but the alternative is to feel that other people will judge me for being grungy or "ugly" or having bed hair, instead of listening to what I have to say.

Some days I feel resilient enough to put my water use, my nosering size, my gender identity, my fairy wing attire before my social comfort. Other days I don't.

I wish I could completely stop caring what people think. It's a tremendous amount of work for me to conform to social norms I don't value or which hurt me, and to keep my mouth shut when I want to speak out. It's scary when I realize how much I've internalized that I don't want.

Is some degree of conforming the best path for me to keep my job, keep my friends, and effect social change? It's an interesting question.

I do think that paying attention to how people want to receive messages of reform is crucial to actually communicating those messages effectively. It takes lots of patience and skill (which I don't necessarily claim to have!) but perhaps this is the most effective way for me to influence this world. Not many people like to be yelled at.

But have I gone too far in the direction of conforming? Is it time for me to give up some of my perceived social power and recreate the inner power of trusting in myself and caring a little less what other people think?

hmmm...

In the end - when I no longer need to keep social power - I hope to be as hairy and smelly and in-your-face as I ever was. And maybe that will be a good thing.

But this not rolling down a grassy hill thing? This I plan to change, effective immediately.

Posted by Lythande at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I have so many ideas I want to blog about, and no time to do it. Rather than let the site languish without any changes, here are snippets of things that have caught my heart over the past week:

Went to see The Da Vinci Code movie:

* Was reminded of how much I appreciate the alternate media, where women have choices besides whore or wife (which apparently Mary Magdalene does not). It was so sad to see Audrey Tautou (from Amelie) spending a movie getting passively yanked around by Tom Hanks.

* It was also sad to see that Ian McKellen's character conveniently does not mention persecution of the LGBT community when he is describing the ways in which the church oppresses. I am guessing that that omission is a concession to ticket sales. I wonder if that was a painful omission for McKellen, out and proud as he is. It was painful for me.

* In this movie, I noticed that the fat person is evil; the albino is evil; the disabled person is evil; and I was only tracking race consciously for part of the movie, so I may have missed something, but it seems that only one person in all of France is a person of color. In Ron Howard's world, only the pretty white people have lines, and are good. It's the Amelie's Paris phenomenon.

Yet another English-only amendment:
As part of the new immigration reform bill, the US Senate passed an English-only amendment on Thursday, May 18th. If you think this is inappropriate legislation, call your senators.

Not crossing picket lines:
Al Gore, Howard Dean, State Assemblymember Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) and State Senator Liz Figueroa (D-Fremont) have all refused to honor speaking engagements at Cal this month because doing so would require them to cross picket lines.

I am so impressed and thankful! How fabulous to see examples of people in the spotlight valuing workers and social ethics. Thanks you, thank you, Howard, Al, Fabian, and Liz. Thank you so much.

Allowing transgendered children to identify how they need to, and allowing their parents to support them
A five-year old with male genitals identifies as a girl and her parents are supporting her. O goddess, do my eyes deceive me and are my prayers answered? Can this be a trend? Can an increasing number of parents really be supporting their children who don't conform to societal gender expectations? I heartily cheer, cry, and holler for these wonderful people, and pray that their local (or national, for that matter) government does not interfere.

It is not usually so. Said government took Aurora Lipscomb away from her parents in 2000, and I have not been able to find out yet if she was ever able to return home, let alone attend school as the girl she wished to be. I have a call into GPAC; we'll see if they have any news of her.

image is the cover of one of my favorite books on transgender issues, She's Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan.

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...from NPR to 94.1 KPFA, an independent radio station here in Berkeley.

I've been an NPR junkie for years. Raised on Karl Cassell. And I don't think I'll swear off entirely.

But over the past few years I was spending more and more time annoyed or frustrated with the coverage I was hearing. Most of the voices I was hearing seemed to be American, white, and male. The business stories seemed to lean towards supporting the companies described...who were also sponsors. There was so little coverage of protests and liberal activities...and never, in my experience, an interview with a true left-winger, like Noam Chomsky or Dolores Huerta. And I'm always wondering what stories are not being told due to Republican pressure or corporate funding...

Even Car Talk, my beloved Car Talk...I'm just tired of hearing them quote tired stereotypes of women.

(BTW, FAIR.org has catalogued these phenomena, and more, in their studies of several center-to-right biases on NPR.)

So I'm taking a break and giving my ears, and my pledge money this year, to KPFA. I can get my center-to-right news from so many places, and I get enough of it, by golly! Let's hear what else is going on!

And if you're interested...KPFA's mission statement.

Posted by Lythande at 03:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sorry for the radio silence this week. I was traveling. Had an interesting encounter on the road with women's history...

In San Diego, I found myself in a model train museum, in front of a display about women working in railyards. It was a typical photomontage about how women had to fight, and sue, their way into these "male" fields, starting in the early 20th century. It had all sorts of inspiring photos of women in coveralls and engineer caps, doing hard physical work and, seemingly, having a lot of fun.

What struck me was that as a woman in my thirties, raised in a feminist liberal environment, I still felt awe and grief looking at these photos. I still feel cut off from that sort of world. I know that my experience is not everybody's, but I think it may still be typical for many women to feel Other, Not Good Enough, Second Best, and not free to pursue - and be respected - in non-traditional fields. I know that's what I feel.

That same day I randomly stumbled upon the May 16th, 1999 edition of the New York Times Magazine, and really enjoyed an essay within: "The Future is Ours to Lose," by Naomi Wolf. I love her passionate reminder that women need to know our history, to keep the stories alive of the paths we have already worn, and the places we have already fought to get - lest the next generation not know that it has happened, or at what cost. My experience in the train museum was just today's manifestation of how little I know of what women have already fought for. How little I have internalized of what we should already be able to have completed.

A second resource (and I know the list could be very long) that I have found useful in the struggle to learn of the history of women is Manifesta. The first chapter of this book was very eye-opening for me as a young feminist. It lists how things were for women in 1970, as compared to in the 90s, when it was written and when I read it. The differences were astounding.

So why don't we know these things? Why don't I viscerally know these things? Why did the photo of the women changing a track signal with a two-foot long wrench make me feel so sad? Why was I surprised, years ago, to read that the classified ads for lawyers were listed as "men's jobs only" as recently as 1970?

As a cynic, I already knew what Naomi Wolf is saying: society fights for us to not hear these stories, to numb us, and to sedate young women into thinking that we are "post-feminist."

I need to read more women's history, and I need to read it every day. We need to tell these stories every day. To ourselves, and to everyone else, of all genders.

---

As to Naomi Wolf's article: I haven't been able to find a copy online so I can't link to it, but there seems to be a copy of it in this Columbia Press book, The Columbia Documentary History of American Women Since 1941.

Posted by Lythande at 03:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

...and also, (surprise!) it's kinda helpful not to use the idea of a hierarchy to keep oneself from examining a system where one has privilege.

There is a lively debate going on at blac(k)ademic about a comment she's encountered (and I've heard it, many times) saying that "Gender trumps race." Another way to say this is that "women as a whole are oppressed across color lines, and so the fight to end sexism is more important than the fight to end racism."

Woh. I can see how people would get there, but I have deep problems with that sentiment. Especially when voiced by white women. We are essentially saying that the system that gives us power (racism) isn't as important to us to fight as the system that oppresses us (sexism).

Convenient, eh? Not surprisingly, this idea was the source of a decades-old schism in the American feminist movement.

It is my firm belief that I get nowhere fighting oppression unless I am able to acknowlege the privilege that I have, sitting side by side with my oppressions. I need to own and examine all of my identities, target and agent.

Here is the comment I made in response to Nubian's critiqe of that idea. Warning: expletives.

Excellent post, Nubian. My thoughts….In my work, I used to describe a hierarchy of oppression, but in the opposite direction: it’s been clear to me that as a white, bisexual, disabled, Jewish, American Citizen, upper class woman, my race and class have powerfully protected me from much of the oppression that I face through other aspects of my identity. So I felt for a long time that racism actually was the most powerful oppression that existed in my world, and that I would do well to prioritize fighting racism over fighting other oppressions.

These days I see things as more complicated. It’s kind of a both/and situation. BOTH I need to acknowledge that my race and class privilege are very, very powerful, & I need to make sure that I keep fighting to tear down those systems of privilege and that I do not become complacent, AND I see that all of the systems of power and oppression in this society can kill and are grievously hurting people. All of us.

The shit I face as a woman, and as a queer woman, sucks, and I’m only just starting to really see it. (A very painful process.) But the shit that white women give communities of color when we claim “race work needs to wait until gender work is finished” (which is what I read in “gender trumps race”, let me know if I’m misinterpreting) only serves to derail our activism. It perpetuates the system that is killing us all.

Everybody’s work needs to happen. No one is free when others are oppressed. Hey…haven’t I heard that one before?

Yeah.

Posted by Lythande at 09:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Found out about a new organization today that I think I'm gonna love. GPAC - the Gender Public Advocacy Commission.

Here's their vision: "To ensure every American can participate in the workplace, the classroom, and the community regardless of whether they meet ideals for masculinity or femininity."

Ahhhhhh...a breath of real air!

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Why did I hear about them today? Because I got an e-mail about their reaction to this awful ruling that "upheld an employer's right to compel female employees to wear make-up."

Unbelievable.

Posted by Lythande at 03:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Nubian points out one of the many ways in which the Duke rape case is bring told with inherent racism and sexism: comparing this women's story to that of Tawana Brawley.

A quote:

"when the media and other folks continue to compare her story to tawana's, they yet again, reinforce the idea that if a black woman claims rape, she must be lying. that black women cannot be trusted. that black women who tell their story of sexual assault, have a secret agenda. that black women are out to get white men. bullshit. these two cases are exceedingly different on many, many levels and we must remember that.

it's also interesting to note that, no one rushes to evoke the numerous stories of lynched black men who were accussed of raping white women. when white women lie about being raped by black men, no one resurrects photographs of black bodies hanging from trees, or the mangled and bloated body of young emmitt till who only whistled at a white woman."

Posted by Lythande at 08:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

CODEPINK has just published a report documenting that life for women in Iraq is much, much worse than before, and that Americans are DISTINCTLY making the problem worse...read it all here.

(and keep up on all their great work here.)

from the e-mail I received describing the report:

"The report shows that from 1958 to the 1990s, Iraq provided more rights and freedoms for women and girls than most of its neighbors. Though Saddam Hussein's dictatorial government and 12 years of severe sanctions reduced these opportunities, Iraqi women were active in all aspects of their society. After the occupation, with the exception of women in Iraqi Kurdistan, women's daily lives have been reduced to a mere struggle for survival."

A choice section from the report:

"THE U.S. IS PART OF THE PROBLEM. Some U.S. military personnel have committed crimes of sexual
abuse and physical assault against women. Many women have told stories about rapes and routine sexual humiliation, particularly at detainment centers....U.S. military tactics have also victimized women and their families—displacing them from their homes, subjecting them to aerial assaults, and occasionally using women as bargaining chips in exchange for suspected male insurgents."

Posted by Lythande at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I put together a list I've been saving up for years of great books with strong, complicated, interesting, and smart girl protagonists. I wanted to make sure that these books were on my children's shelves - kids of any gender - to reinforce the idea that girls can be powerful and smart and strong.

The good thing is that these books were wonderful, fabulous, fun, and empowering. They taught me that being strong and smart (and Jewish, some of them!) was OK.

The problem is that it is also a list of all WHITE, able-bodied, American or European girls. Sexuality was, of course, never mentioned.

It's really remarkable to me to look back and see how my book choices were exclusively about white girls. I even remember reading pretty much every Judy Blume book except Iggy's House, which I seem to remember was the one where the typical white girl protagonist (gasp) encounters racism! no!

How young I internalized the concept of "other," and my society's racism. That wasn't my story, and I wasn't interested in it.

...I'm definitely going to have to broaden this list. Off to the bookstore and library! Here are some with more diverse characters that have been recommended to me that I plan to read:

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Island of the Blue Dolphins and Zia

And here is a website that seems to have some very promising leads...I will update as I find more sites and books.

Other recommendations? Our bookshelves will need strong, smart queer girls, disabled girls, immigrant girls, girls of color, and more...

Oh...and here is the original totally racially biased list (but still books which, as part of a more diverse list, are beloved favorites of mine that i recommend highly), for your reference:

A Wrinkle In Time and other Meg Murray books by Madeline L'Engle
Someday Angeline by Louis Sachar
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Caddie Woodlawn and Magical Melons by Carol Ryrie Brink
Anastasia Krupnik (and all the other Anastasia books) by Lois Lowry
The Laura Ingalls Wilder books
The All-of-a-Kind Family series by Sydney Taylor
The Real Me by Betsy Byars
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
A Summer to Die by Lois Lowry
Beat the Turtle Drum by Constance C. Greene (although I don't remember this one as well, I need to reread it)
The Westing Game (which does have diversity in it, just not the bright girl character) by Ellen Raskin

More books of all kinds to be added as we go.

Posted by Lythande at 04:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)