I’m having “connectivity issues,” and the earliest a repair person can get to me is Thursday. In the meanwhile, I probably won’t post much, and the moderation process (i.e., approving posts that Wordpress suspects of being spam and so wants a human to check out) will be slowed down a bit. Sorry!
Also, my email access is going to be pretty minimal until this is fixed, so my email-answering rate - already pretty awful - will be even worse than usual.
In the comments to a recent post, Jenn asks:
And I’m still curious to know how many animal rights activsts refuse medical treatment for themselves or someone they love based on its history in animal experimentation?
I have no idea what actual animal rights activists think about this question (speak up in the comments if you’re an animal rights activist reading this). I can only speak for myself — and as animal rights activists go, I’m a pretty sorry excuse for one, since I still occasionally eat meat when traveling or visiting. Nevertheless, I don’t think it’s necessarily hypocritical for someone committed to animal rights to accept the use of a medical treatment whose development required animal experimentation.
Taking Sydney to the grocery store can be a challenge, because she really hates being put into the cart. (Sydney hates anything that straps her down and keeps her in place).
Read the rest of this entry »
In the midst of all of the blowjob debates that were going on people seemed to miss the number of posts and the discussion on interracial relationships. Usually, it’s just me and Mixed Media Watch discussing IR’s, but last week several people got in on the debate. I’m not sure who it started with, but Shannon was the first person to comment (that I noticed), so I’ll start with her
1. It seems that Shannon at Egotistical Whining set of the debate–here and here.
2. MaxJulian had several responses–1st is his response to Shannon. He continued the debate here. Then he entered a debate with Racial Realist here.
3. Nubian at Blac(k)ademic also weighed in on Shannon’s post here.
4. Skyscraper responded to Nubian’s post here.
5. I also found this response to Nubian’s post here from a blogger named Stephanie S.
6. Here is Racial Realist’s post on why she thinks black people should marry and date each other.
7. Apparently some multiracial activists organized an event called “Loving Day” to celebrate the Supreme Court’s Loving v. Virginia decision which ruled that bans on interracial marriage where unconstitutional. Reappropriate has a good post on why she will not be celebrating Loving Day here. (Her position is similar to my own.)
8. I also found this post by Mojoey. Apparently, James Dobson has a position on interracial marriage, which is interesting.
One of the nice things about the dialogue going on in posts 1-6 is that the debate is entirely between people of color. (Although I don’t see many White people besides myself blogging about IRs, most of the time anyways.) I agree with some of the posts, and I disagree with some others. I think Shannon makes a valid point about stereotypes of Black women and how they affect IRs, but I think she overgeneralizes about how this affects interracial relationships. My sense is that most relationships that are based on racial stereotypes don’t make it beyond the dating stage.
One thing that really gets me frustrated when I read about interracial relationships the whole normativity of same race relationships. When people marry or date people of the same race, their racial views are not interrogated; the racial nature of their relationship is not questioned or noticed largely because it is considered normal. It reminds me of the normativity of Whiteness and how the discussion of race for many people means it’s time to talk about people of color, while whiteness remains unquestioned and invisible. The same can be said for same race relationships, and I think many of the comments in some of these threads reflect a sort of unquestioning acceptance of same race relationships, as if they do not need to be interrogated, as if they are somehow flawless, as if race doesn’t matter in them. I’m not saying interracial relationships do not need to be studied or questioned, but I don’t think it is fair for people to be constantly obsessed with questioning the motives of IR couples when they refuse to do the same for couples where both people are of the same race.
By Pat Parker (1944-1989)
You know, some people got a lot of nerve.
Sometimes I don’t believe the things I see and hear.
Have you met the woman who’s shocked by two women kissing
and in the same breath, tells you she is pregnant?
BUT gays, shouldn’t be so blatant.
Or this straight couple sits next to you in a movie and
you can’t hear the dialogue because of the sound effects.
BUT gays shouldn’t be so blatant.
And the woman in your office spends an entire lunch hour
talking about her new bikini drawers and how much
her husband likes them.
BUT gays shouldn’t be so blatant.
Or the “hip” chick in your class rattling like a mile a minute
while you’re trying to get stoned in the john, about the
camping trip she took with her musician boyfriend.
BUT gays shouldn’t be so blatant.
You go in a public bathroom and all over the walls there’s John loves
Mary, Janice digs Richard, Pepe loves Delores, etc., etc.
BUT gays shouldn’t be so blatant.
Or your go to an amusement park and there’s a tunnel of love
and pictures of straights painted on the front and grinning
couples are coming in and out.
BUT gays shouldn’t be so blatant.
Fact is, blatant heterosexuals are all over the place.
Supermarkets, movies, on your job, in church, in books, on television every day
day and night, every place-even- in gay bars and they want gay
men and woman to go and hide in the closet.
So to you straight folks I say, “Sure, I’ll go if you go too”
BUT I’m polite so, after you.
–Pat Parker
Let’s go back to writing about something I actually know something about.
The headlines say climate change causes wildfires. And indeed, a new study (pdf) found a strong correlation between the increase during the 1980s in the number and length of wildfires in the western US and increased temperatures.
But before we rush off to base our wildfire policy on these findings, two grains of salt are in order: 1) explaining a phenomenon is not the same as explaining the problem associated with that phenomenon, and 2) the solution to a problem is not simply the cause applied in reverse. This post will deal only with the first issue, hopefully I’ll be able to post on the second tomorrow.
Y’all know the drill - feel free to post whatever you like in this thread, including links to cool stuff I wasn’t smart enough to link to (posting links to your own stuff is encouraged, too).
Here’s what I’ve been reading:
The Patient-Consumer: The Patient-Consumer Parade - First Edition!
The Gimp Parade: Lots of Links
Lots of interesting links here (some of which I swiped for this post).
All Girl Army - a new groupblog for young, feminist women.
Not only is this blog’s content utterly cool, their logo, drawn by Hope Larson, is absolutely gorgeous cartooning.
Martha Nussbaum: Review of Manliness
One of the best feminist critiques of anything I’ve read this year.
AngryBlackBitch: Bullying
In addition to the main posts, I found many of the comments interesting, especially regarding the worth of apologies.
American Academy of Pediatrics: The Effects of Marriage, Civil Union, and Domestic Partnership Laws on the Health and Well-being of Children
Curtsy: Mombian.
Sunlit Water: Asymmetry In Female and Male Sexual Fantasies
Mauzy’s Musings: Appalling, Offensive, Disgusting Exploitation of Children With Down Syndrome
Here’s my theory: Sufficiently advanced insensitivity is indistinguishable from bigotry. Curtsy: The Gimp Parade.
Concurring Opinions: Are False Convictions More Likely In Death Penalty Cases?
Capital juries are likely to be less sympathetic to the defense because they are death-qualified (i.e., only people who are willing to impose death are permitted to be jurors in a capital case.) This eliminates a not insignificant portion of the population that is most attractive to the defense. [Curtsy: The Debate Link.]
Crooked Timber: Why Are Bombthrowers Like Hirshman and Flanagan Dominating The “Mommy Wars” Debate?
Diabetes Mine: The Horror of Depending On The Kindness Of Strangers
Curtsy: The Gimp Parade
Hugo Schwyzer:The Hard Wiring Of The Human Brain Is No Excuse
Prosphoros: Passing, Privilege, and Intelligibility
My feeling is that, no matter how hard I work, the best I can hope for is to be treated as a “man” who wants/expects to be treated like a “woman”, but that requires stepping into the trans narrative, something which I cannot do with good conscience
Balkinization: Anti-Intellectual Republicans in Florida Pass A Law Against Post-Modernism
The Debate Link: How U.S. Torture & Ignoring Human Rights Hurts Democracy Promotion
Solidly Average: Response to Tekanji’s Post on “Alas”
“Alas” guest-poster Rachel S. and I both contributed to the discussion in comments. See this post too, where occasional “Alas” comment-writer Crys T has some excellent comments.
Slant Truth: On The Need For People of Color To Have Their Own Spaces
The Nation: How Conservatives Scuttled Juan Cole’s Hiring By Yale
Every right-winger who has complained about the supposed bias against conservatives in University hiring, but who makes excuses for or ignores this case, is a partisan hack hypocrite and nothing more.
Punk Ass Blog: The Kitten Defense. (Awww, itsa wee sooooo cute!)
Big Queer Blog: Roundup of Articles About the Anti-Marriage-Equality Decisions in NY and Georgia
The Happy Feminist: Three Feminist Stories From One West African Country
Granny Gets A Vibrator: Round-Up Post Regarding Cultural Appropriation and “Reverse Racism”
New Mobility: South Park’s Timmy Is The Best Disabled Character on TV
According to a poll of British TV viewers, that is. Timmy also polled better among disabled than nondisabled viewers. Curtsy: Gimp Parade.
SuperBabyMama: “Sim Isle” is Racist and Sexist
Taking Place: The Internet’s Future Is In The Hands Of The Hopelessly Clueless
Cross-posted on Creative Destruction, where moderation is lighter.
In describing his efforts at recognizing privilege and becoming a better (pro)feminist, Malachi at Feminist Allies writes:
A major part of the problem is that I *do* have a lot (some say an excess) of self-confidence, a forceful personality, and some take-charge instincts. Thanks, patriarchy. But disentangling what’s really me form what’s the patriarchy’s influence, what’s self-confidence and what’s self-aggrandizement, what’s inspiring leadership and what’s privileged domination is no mean feat.
What interests me about this bit is the implied distinction between the “real” self and the constructed self, which is a common one in thinking about the effects of oppression systems on individuals. The model here is that there’s some inherent pre-social and morally neutral real personality. Then patriarchy came along and added some stuff on top of that, stuff that is bad because it leads to harming others. Malachi’s task is then to strip away this fake addition to reveal the real egalitarian person underneath.
I mentioned this in a comment to Amp’s post about the “ad hominem defense,” but then I decided it was worth a full post. An ad homiem defense is when a liberal rattles off their lefty credentials in response to some specific criticism from the left (or mutatis mutandis for any other ideology). There’s a particularly egregious example at the end of this Hank Fox post. Fox came in for a lot of criticism for saying that he wouldn’t eat at an Arby’s where one of the employees had a facial piercing, because he finds piercings disgusting. (In the linked post, he tries to defend himself by claiming that his problem is that people with piercings care too much about what others think, as if the clean-cut and wholesome look isn’t just as much a show put on for others, and as if his vocal boycott of Arby’s isn’t essentially a demand that other people should care what others think about their appearance.) After his painfully self-righteous rationalization, Fox hauls out his liberal bona fides to prove that his anti-piercing views couldn’t possibly be a case of bigotry.
Fox’s post is interesting to me because it makes so clear one important element of the ad hominem defense: its use of the Us vs Them frame. He asks us to imagine a room full of people, and reminds us that if Rush Limbaugh and his ilk were on one side of the room, he and his critics would end up together on the opposite side. This is a vision of politics in which there are only two camps. Criticism may only be made against the other camp. If someone’s liberal enough to get into the liberal camp, then they’re one of Us. If you criticize someone, you must be implicitly seeing them as one of Them, an enemy on the same level as Rush. The choice is between total solidarity and total animosity. The only debate is over where to draw the line — to we, like the users of the ad hominem defense, draw a magnanimously wide tent in order to focus on our real enemies on the far right? Or do we, as ad-hom-defenders’ critics are assumed to, draw the line narrowly to include only a pure in-group on the “Us” side?
But of course this is not how politics works. So far as I know, nobody who criticised Fox’s views of pierced people thinks that he’s therefore wholly in Rush Limbaugh’s camp. As I said to Hugo Schwyzer a while back,
… a person’s membership in the cause is never all-or-nothing. Your sins don’t wipe out the other good work you’ve done, but the other good work you’ve done doesn’t earn you indulgences.
I think the mentality behind the ad hominem defense goes some way toward explaining why white people are reluctant to engage in deep discussions of race (and men in discussions of feminism, etc.) — and I don’t claim that I’m immune to this. There’s a fear of discovering that while you thought you were one of Us, you are actually one of Them. It’s easier to pretend that race doesn’t exist than to risk feeling lumped in with the KKK because you said or did something racially insensitive. Strategies like the “don’t you have bigger fish to fry” argument that Amp discussed serve to keep the fundamental line between Us and Them in a comfortable spot. (Note that this is a problem with the assumptions privileged people make, not with anything that their critics are doing.)
Cross-posted at debitage
I’m going to reprint a comment I left at another blog - but a bit of context is required first. Over at Prawfsblog, a post introducing a new blogger, who is female, was responded to by a male poster who wrote “New permaprof is easy on the eyes as well.” Ann Bartow responded by saying to the new blogger, “I was going to wish you good luck even before reading that bit of assholishness. Now I wish you good luck more emphatically still.”
This led Bart Motes (lots of “barts” in this discussion) to respond:
3. Do you not think that there is a valid point to be made that criticizing the misapplication of the male gaze, or lookism, or whatever, is a misapplication of valuable and rare resources? Or do you think that having some guy go “hubba-hubba” on a message board about the picture of a priviledged, powerful, indepedent member of society aka a law professor is really a more pressing issue than wage inequality, having control over one’s body, etc.?
Bart, I’ve commented on “the pettiness” charge at some length at my blog. But, briefly:
1) Your question assumes that Ann faces an either-or choice between discussing “pressing” issues and objecting to a sexist comment on this blog. In fact, Ann can do both, and does do both.
2) You’ve written more on this thread than Ann. Surely there are more pressing issues you could be discussing, by your standards. Why aren’t you holding yourself to the same standards you suggest Ann be held to?
I’d suggest it’s because the standard you suggest is in practice unreasonable, for either you or for Ann. A standard that says we can never engage any issues but the most pressing is simply too restrictive.
3) Your belief that sexist comments about professional women is not a pressing issue is dubious at best. You’re ignoring that sexism is systematic. Wage inequality and attacks on reproductive freedom don’t happen in contextless isolation; they happen in a context of a society in which women are consistently devalued.
Sexism directed against female law profs is bad in and of itself, and that alone is enough to justify Ann’s comment. But it’s also bad because such ordinary day-to-day sexism normalizes sexism, and makes the more “pressing” concerns you cited more difficult to overcome.
4. Do you think that when you get to the point where you are mau-mauing a guy who read Katha Pollitt’s column in the Nation from age 16, whose sister went to Smith, and who considers himself an equality feminist that you might be out on the fringes of mainstream political opinion? Just asking.
It’s refreshing to read an ad hom defense, rather than an ad hom attack. But even as a defense, ad hom is still a logical error; who you are is not logically relevant to if your arguments are bad or good. And whether or not Ann’s arguments are “mainstream political opinion” is not logically relevant, either; mainstream views can be mistaken.
That said, I’m glad you self-identify as a feminist (the more the better!). But with all due respect, a feminist self-identity shouldn’t rule out taking feminist criticism of oneself seriously.
* * *
Further reading on this subject: Law and Letters has an extremely thoughtful and well-written post inspired by the discussion on PrawfsBlog. And Being Amber Rhea has a wonderfully angry post about “you’re not only smart, you’re hotttt!” style compliments - and also the “you’re stupid and ugly” counterpart.
Cross-posted at Creative Destruction, where moderation is less heavy-handed.
Yeesh. Fearing for their safety and their ability to lead an unharassed life, a Jewish family has fled a town in Delaware. From Jews On First.com:
The complaint recounts that the raucous crowd applauded the board’s opening prayer and then, when sixth-grader Alexander Dobrich stood up to read a statement, yelled at him: “take your yarmulke off!” His statement, read by Samantha, confided “I feel bad when kids in my class call me Jew boy.”
A state representative spoke in support of prayer and warned board members that “the people” would replace them if they faltered on the issue. Other representatives spoke against separating “god and state.”
A former board member suggested that Mona Dobrich might “disappear” like Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the atheist whose Supreme Court case resulted in ending organized school prayer. O’Hair disappeared in 1995 and her dismembered body was found six years later.
The crowd booed an ACLU speaker and told her to “go back up north.”
In the days after the meeting the community poured venom on the Dobriches. Callers to the local radio station said the family they should convert or leave the area. Someone called them and said the Ku Klux Klan was nearby.
Gosh, why would any Jew decide to move out of a swell town like that?
Jesus’ General contacted the folks at the Stop The ACLU Coalition, who had encouraged harassment of the Dobriches (they even posted the Dobriches’ home address and phone number on their website). The director of Stop The ACLU responded:
Pogrom? I’m not sure I want to call it that. That is not an appropriate term, however, I am pleased that we had an effect in this case.
Bitch PhD worries, justifiably, that blogging something like this is pointless:
…My first thought was, “blog this.” And then I thought, “what for? The only possible reaction is “those people suck,” and it’s one of those atypical weird cases that, if anything, surely demonstrates that the country as a whole doesn’t think that way.”
I think Bitch has a point; but at the same time, I think this case is an interesting illustration of the dynamic between centering and othering. The anti-semitic bigotry which so many Christians in the Indian River School District began not with “Othering” - that is, with singling out Jews for treatment as deviants - but with “Centering” - organizing their town’s institutions to center on the assumption that being Christian is the default.
So, for instance, school vacations are called “Easter Vacation” and “Christmas Vacation,” rather than being called spring and winter breaks. School facilities were used for Bible Club, and Bible Club members were given special privileges (such as skipping to the head of the line in the school cafeteria). School board meetings and graduation ceremonies begin with invited ministers leading a prayer to Jesus.
None of the above acts are implicitly anti-Jewish, and all of them are things that many Christians might well decide to do even if there were no Jews (or any other non-Christians) around to discriminate against. These policies and acts reflect a belief that being Christian is a default state. And some of these policies I approve of; for instance, schools should give Good Friday off, because that’s a reasonable accommodation. Bible Clubs shouldn’t be given favorable treatment compared to other clubs, but I think schools should facilitate them (by letting them use classrooms) just like they should facilitate chess club.
Centering is harmful to minorities not only in material ways, but also because of the message sent that minorities are not part of society. For instance, when Christians are given their holidays off, but classes are scheduled on major Jewish holidays, that obviously gives a material advantage to Christian students. But it also sends a message to the Jewish students that they aren’t full members of society the way Christians are. Centering sends the message that Christians are the default citizen; Jews are some sort of weird exception to the norm.
Othering refers to acts and policies which directly position Jews as deviants. From Jews On First:
Among numerous specific examples in the complaint was what happened at plaintiff Samantha Dobrich’s graduation in 2004 from the district’s high school. She was the only Jewish student in her graduating class. The complaint relates that local pastor, Jerry Fike, in his invocation, followed requests for “our heavenly Father’s” guidance for the graduates with:
I also pray for one specific student, that You be with her and guide her in the path that You have for her. And we ask all these things in Jesus’ name.
Samantha Dobrich was thus “othered” at her own graduation ceremony - and by a pastor who, I have no doubt, is convinced that he acted only out of love and a concern for Samantha’s best interests. But the Dobrich kids also felt less “benevolent” kinds of Othering, such as schoolmates labeling them “Christ Killers.”
What’s important to understand is that Centering and Othering are not opposites or flip sides of a coin. They are manifestations of the same problem, different in degree but not in kind.
Some people may disagree; they will say these two acts are vastly different, not just in degree but in kind. That’s true if we frame the comparison between calling someone a “Christ Killer” and a prayer at a School Board meeting by saying “was this a hateful act? Was the person acting out of bigotry and a desire to hurt Jews?” Clearly, someone yelling “Christ Killer” is acting out of hate for Jews, but a Paster leading a prayer to Jesus at a school board meeting may be acting with total indifference to how his (or her) act affects Jews.
But I think that framing - asking “what did the Christian mean? Were the Christian’s motives bad?” - is needlessly Christian-centered. We can come to different conclusions if we frame this in a more Jewish-centered way: Instead of fretting about the inner moral state of Christians, let’s ask how does this action harm Jews? While the Othering action (calling Jews Christ-killers) is more extreme and hateful, that’s a difference of degree, not of kind. Both Centering and Othering have the same effect, which is to make Jews feel less like citizens, less like equals, more like freaks.
I think it’s important to understand that Centering leads fairly naturally to Othering. The Christians of the Indian River School District don’t view themselves as anti-Semites aggressively chasing deviant Jews out of their nice Christian town (although that is what many of them in fact are). Many view themselves as victims of aggression; the ACLU, along with one local Jewish family, is attacking their right to live Christian lives. It is because these folks think their entitlement to worship is under attack that many of them have escalated their acts of Othering to such an extreme level.
But where does that sense of entitlement come from? It is only because of Centering that many Christians have confused their right to practice their religion with being entitled to have a Christian Paster open public meetings and ceremonies; only because of Centering that many Christians consider themselves entitled to take time off from class for Bible study, or to proselytize Christianity in the classroom. If society hadn’t taught them that they are the norm and others are deviants from the norm, then they wouldn’t feel so entitled to have every aspect of public life kow-tow to their religious beliefs.
Bitch PhD wrote that “the country as a whole doesn’t think that way.” But I think much of the country does think that way, if we can take “that way” to mean Centering Christians and Othering Jews; it’s just that the Indian River School District takes it to an uncomfortable extreme. The same kind of Centering is going on throughout the country, whether it’s the unwritten but ironclad law that says all serious Presidential candidates must publicly declare their allegiance to Christianity, or the assumption that if someone says “happy holidays” rather than “merry Christmas” that means Christmas is under attack, to “one nation under God” and “in God we trust.”
* * *
Note: Throughout this post I’ve mapped Othering and Centering onto Christians as Center, Jews as Other. But of course, the same basic mechanism operates in many other ways. Men are Centered, women are Othered. Whites are Centered, non-whites Othered. “Masculine” men are Centered, non-”masculine” men are Othered. Slender people are Centered, fat people are Othered. The ablebodied are Centered, the disabled are Othered. Cisgendered are Centered, Transgendered are Othered. And so on.
UPDATE: Also on this topic, I recommend this post at Even the Devils Believe.
(Cross-posted at Creative Destruction, where the moderation is less stringent. And a curtsy to Heron61.)
Hey, folks. My productivity has been a little slow lately as I started summer teaching last week. I have a few posts in the works. I’ve been composing a follow up to the “I Want My Period Post,” which has taken at least a month. I am also writing my follow-up to the “The Feminist Blogosphere Needs to be More Inclusive of Older Women.” The post is on grandmothers raising their grandchildren. I didn’t realize when I picked both of those topics what I had gotten myself into. I found thousands of sites and articles on grandmothers raising their grandchildren, and the period debate was way more contentious than I thought. Periodically, I get overwhelmed by the vast amount of info. out there and writing a nice concise blog length post is very difficult. I am an academic after all–we are know as the world’s most needlessly verbose people.
I’m also writing my profile/bio for the site. Is there anything people would like to know about me?
Expect me to finish a post this weekend.
John McGrath makes an offhand remark citing Hurricane Katrina as evidence that Bush’s climate change policies have led to disaster (analogous to the way his WMD policy led to the disaster in Iraq). I agree that Bush’s policies on climate change are deplorable, and that Bush’s deplorable policies bear a fair bit of responsibility for the Katrina disaster. But the share of the Bush-blame that can be attributed specifically to his action on climate change is very small. Climatologists remain divided on the question of how much climate change will alter the frequency of severe weather events, and how much of that alteration is already visible.
Blaming Katrina on Bush’s climate change policies may be politically convenient as a way of generating pressure to change those policies. But it’s politically inconvenient in a broader sense, because it reinforces the “natural disaster” frame for understanding what went wrong with Katrina (and what continues to go wrong in many other hazard events).
The “natural disaster” frame envisions society as moving along innocently, minding its own business, when wham! it gets hit by an extreme geophysical event that causes destruction and death. Causal responsibility, and hence blame, lie on the side of the geophysical event. So therefore interventions to prevent or mitigate disasters focus on controlling the event, a “hazard-side” strategy.
Over half a century ago Gilbert White — the father of natural hazards research, and hardly a political radical — pointed out that “natural disasters” are actually the result of the intersection of natural and social conditions. Whether there is a disaster, and what kind of damage it does, depends on how social practices and individual choices put human values at risk of being undercut by changes in the natural environment. Later more radical thinkers elaborated the idea of “vulnerability,” with the slogan “there’s no such thing as a [purely] natural disaster.” We have to focus on the reasons why humans become vulnerable to extreme geophysical events.
Framing Bush’s responsibility for Katrina as a matter of his climate change policy places our focus on the hazard event. The problem becomes the fact that there was a Category 5 hurricane, and the change we need is to control greenhouse gas emissions so as not to increase the frequency of Category 5 hurricanes. This focus ignores the central role in the disaster played by New Orleanians’ (and our whole economy’s) vulnerability to hurricanes. This vulnerability is the product of an economic system dependent on oil and the creation of economic inequalities, a system of racial oppression, and a hubristic attitude to the environment. Across a broad range of issues, Bush’s policies have served to maintain this system (though he is of course far from the sole creator or sustainer of it).
The “blame climate change” redirection of attention is especially unfortunate given that the sources of vulnerability in the case of Katrina are so fundamental to what’s wrong in so many other facets of modern America. Big events like natural disasters are powerful political-rhetorical resources. They need to be used wisely, to cut at the most fundamental problems.
Cross-posted at debitage
Ann at Feminist Law Professors directed me to this excellent Katha Pollitt piece about the two leading generals in the Mommy Wars:
Caitlin Flanagan, scourge of upscale working mothers, meet Linda Hirshman, champion of same. You’ll like each other, you have a lot in common: a bomb-throwing writing style, a gift for oversimplification and a deep conviction that your life is the one true path to happiness and glory. […] Here’s another thing you two agree on: Whatever women are doing wrong is feminism’s fault.
In the article itself, Pollitt spends relatively little ink on Flanagan, instead concentrating on Hirshman, who Pollitt finds some good in - but still criticizes.
Hirshman’s weakness is her assumption that the social problem of women’s inequality can be solved if enough women make the right individual decisions. She mocks “the same old public day-care business that has gone nowhere since 1972.” But really, isn’t the stay-home vogue at bottom a response to the fact that society has failed to adapt to working mothers? Isn’t choice feminism itself a way of dealing with the whole complex range of resistance to women’s equality, by throwing up your hands and saying, Let each woman make her own tradeoffs? Unlike Flanagan, who wants women to give up the struggle, Hirshman wants individual women to fight harder and smarter, and that’s great. But it only goes so far. If better personal decisions could bring about gender equality, we wouldn’t be having this conversation today.
I agree with this critique of Hirshman. But I’d add another weakness: her unkindness. Her writing - especially in the initial Prospect piece that made her a household name (well, among certain households!) - has a sneering tone which makes it unpalatable not only to many stay-at-home mothers, but also many people who are friends of stay-at-home mothers. Hirshman - and Pollitt- are right to say that feminism shouldn’t blindly condone all choices made by women. And one choice we shouldn’t condone is Hirshman’s choice to be gratuitously cruel to women who have chosen, or “chosen,” stay-at-home motherhood.
Pollitt also writes:
“Choice,” moreover, assumes people have, and know they have, real alternatives. But what if the “choice” is the forced, or at any rate predictable, result of a lot of previous choices you didn’t realize you were making?
This reminds me of this old cartoon of mine, which - despite the lame-ass drawing - is imo one of the best political cartoons I’ve done:
By the way, Pollitt - who is my favorite non-academic feminist writer - has a new book out. Anyone who wanted to take this as an occasion to hit up my Amazon wish list, please feel free. :-P
PLEASE NOTE: Comments at “Alas” are sometimes heavily moderated. If you’d like to avoid all that, you can leave a post on the same post at Creative Destruction.
Hi there. This is Stentor Danielson, best known on the web as the author of debitage, the top Google result for both “utilitarian view of homosexuality” and “deontological view of homosexuality.” I’m a heterosexual white middle-class non-disabled cissexual unitarian male. I was born and raised in Pennsylvania, but I’m currently living in Richmond, NSW, Australia while working on my PhD dissertation, “Discourses About Wildfire in New Jersey and New South Wales.”
I’m honored and just a bit intimidated to be given such a large podium (debitage averages 30 readers a day), but I’ll try to make the most of my time here. I write about things across the spectrum of progressive politics, but my main focus is the environment. I’ve got some ideas about what I want to write this month, but I’m quite open to suggestions.
I have lost my watch. It’s somewhere within a foot or so of my desk, or perhaps on my desk. I can tell because it beeps once an hour. But I can’t find it. I’m torn between being annoyed and amused by the situation.
Anyway, some links:
Ink and Incapability: 18th Carnival of the Feminists!
Written World: The 1st Carnival of Feminist Fantasy & Science Fiction Fans!
Obsidian Wings: Anti-Illegal-Immigrant Policy Could Throw Over A Million Americans Off Medicaid
A strong example of why - bad as Democrats are - Republicans are either thoughtless or malicious when it comes to writing policy. And see also Respectful of Otters.
Education Sector: “Boy Crisis” in Schools Debunked
There’s no doubt that some groups of boys—particularly Hispanic and black boys and boys from low-income homes—are in real trouble. But the predominant issues for them are race and class, not gender. Closing racial and economic gaps would help poor and minority boys more than closing gender gaps, and focusing on gender gaps may distract attention from the bigger problems facing these youngsters.
BallastExiztance: Being autistic is not a disease and requires no cure
An impressive collection of quotes from a wide variety of autistic people.
Blac(k)ademic: Why Are We All So Hostile?
why, then, do we continue to blog? obviously, no one is really engaing in any valuable exchange. we are waist-deep in valid arguments, experiences, ideas and perspectives, but we don’t see that because we are to quick to point out how “stupid” that other woman was when she said (insert anything that you disagree with right here).
Women’s Space/The Margins: Female Soldiers Die of Dehydration Trying To Avoid Rape
UPDATE: I’m not sure I can stand by this item. See Ginmar’s questioning of it in comments.
Capitalism Bad, Tree Pretty: Raising Children Should Not Be Treated As A Hobby
Official Shrub.com: Maybe your time could be spent better elsewhere, but you do not speak for me.
Good rebuttal to the “why are you wasting your time on activism that isn’t my area of interest?” line of criticism.
LA Times: Our Brains Are Hard-Wired To Ignore Global Warming
The fact is that if climate change were caused by gay sex, or by the practice of eating kittens, millions of protesters would be massing in the streets. [Curtsy: Feministe.]
Real Men Are Not: On Black Male Compensation and White Over-Compensation
I’d particularly recommend reading the exchange between Lindsey and Luke in comments.
Reappropriate: The Voting Rights Act and English as The Official Language
…When the government tells its people that those who do not speak English are “less American”, they not only challenge our access to basic constitutional rights and civil liberties, but send us the message that despite their best efforts, they — us, our sisters, our brothers, our mothers, our fathers, our aunts and uncles and grandmothers and grandfathers — non-English speaking immigrant populations — are not welcome here.
Feminist Law Professors: The Real Toy Story (photos from factories abroad)
Nathan Newman: Ulysses Grant: Best. President. Ever.
If Grant is not more respected, it is because the fight for racial justice and Reconstruction that he oversaw has been so rawly defamed over our history to the point of almost being forgotten. (Curtsy: Mahablog).
Big Fat Blog: Town To Fat People: We Don’t Want Your Kind Shopping Here
The Colorblind Society: Chris Matthews Defends Segregation
Granny Gets A Vibrator: Black Immersion Month
This is an experiment for me. I’m not trying to be black, or become black or pretend like I’m black or any of that stuff. I’m just very curious to learn how looking at the world through this lens will affect me, my white thinking, and my white perspective.
Red State Feminist: Some Men’s Rights Activist Sickos Defend Murder and Attempted Murder
Girl Wonder: The Sexist Treatment DC Comics Gave the Death of the Female Robin
Lots of activists demand monuments, but this is the only one I’ve ever seen demand a monument be erected in a fictional space. But I found the essay quite persuasive, and I hope DC gives in to their demands.
Feminist Allies: Alpha Male Feminism
Photo Essay: Our Weight-Obsessed Culture
Curtsy: Big Fat Blog
True Confessions of an Hourly Bookseller: Feminist Critique of Y, The Last Man
Pretty much gets at all the reasons I stopped buying this comic book. Curtsy: Melinda Casino
BlackProf: Still Struggling For Our Inalienable Rights
Today, another class of political elites–incumbent politicians and various partisan officials–seek to govern without the people’s consent. They do so by manipulating an ever-changing matrix of election practices, such as district boundaries, antiquated voting machines, and barriers to voting. These practices determine who votes and how votes get counted.
Egotistical Whining: Racism FAQ
Vigilance: Cross Burned At Gay Man’s House In Tennessee
Spiegelman was right! Cats Who Look Like Hitler
Curtsy: Punk Ass Blog.
PLEASE NOTE: Moderation on “Alas” is sometimes heavy-handed. If you’d like to avoid that, you can leave a comment at the same post on Creative Destruction.
One of my favorite bloggers, Rivka of Respectful of Otters, has returned after a nine-month break. (This actually happened last month, but I didn’t notice until today!)
Oh, and if you’ve been missing my “link farm” posts, you’ll probably enjoy this post over at Heart’s blog.
Last week i focused on the U.S. Congress’ attack on Net Neutrality. Sticking with the theme of the internet, i’ve decided to highlight a case involving Yahoo!, the Chinese government, and a journalist. The following information is from Amnesty International:
Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist, is serving a ten-year prison sentence in China for sending an email. Writing about a Communist Party decision, Shi Tao sent the email to the USA using his Yahoo account. The Chinese authorities accused him of “illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities”.
According to the Court transcript, the evidence that led to Shi Tao’s sentencing included account-holder information provided by US internet company Yahoo. Disturbingly, it has recently come to light that Yahoo may have also released data which could have contributed to the arrest of another dissident, Li Zhi.
Shi Tao was accused of sending an email summarizing an internal Communist Party directive to a foreign source. The Communist Party directive had warned Chinese journalists of possible social unrest during the anniversary of the June 4 Movement (in memory of the Tiananmen crackdown), and directed them not to fuel it via media reports. Imprisoned for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression, a right entrenched in international law and the Chinese Constitution, Amnesty International considers Shi Tao a prisoner of conscience.
Companies must respect human rights, wherever they operate. Yahoo’s actions are not justifiable: the company unconditionally met the Chinese government’s request for information on Shi Tao, and allegedly contributed to Li Zhi’s detention.
Paradoxically, Yahoo has stated that it believes in the core values of “excellence, innovation, customer fixation, team work, community and fun”. Yet, the company has signed the Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the Internet Industry, effectively agreeing to implement China’s draconian system of censorship and control.
Amnesty International has raised its concerns with Yahoo. The company has responded but has not addressed all the concerns raised.
Find out more about Yahoo’s and Amnesty International’s position on the Shi Tao case
Learn more about human rights in cyberspace from Amnesty International
Write to Yahoo now, expressing your concern about the company’s role in assisting in the violation of Shi Tao’s rights. Yahoo must use its influence to secure Shi Tao’s release. You can check out this page for a sample letter or you can write your own letter and send it to the following (send all emails to both Jerry Yang and David Filo):
Jerry Yang and David Filo
Co-founders, Chief Yahoo & Directors
Emails: jerry@yahoo-inc.com; filo@yahoo-inc.com
Alternative emails:
Michael Callahan, Senior VP General Counsel: callahan@yahoo-inc.com
Gregory Coleman, Exec VP Global Advertising Sales: gcoleman@yahoo-inc.com
Yahoo Customer Care
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, California 94089
USA
If you can, call Yahoo Customer Care to make your points over the phone: 001-408-349-1572
You are currently browsing the Alas, a blog weblog archives for July, 2006.
