Rachel’s Note: This is for all of those people who like to blame hip hop for everything.

We have a problem in this country–classical music is corrupting our middle aged white male population. It has really gotten out of hand when you have middle aged white men fighting each other to hear this music. Egged on by the violent melodies of the Boston pops, two angry white men disrupted the performance with a violent altercation. The fight was so bad that one man had his shirt ripped off, and women were screaming with fear.

Any music that could drive people to such violence, must be regulated. These conductors and musicians are bad role models for the middle aged white men in this country.

You can check out this shocking video, which shows how our middle aged white men are reacting to classical music.

You decide. Classical music–has it become too violent?

From a recent article in The New Yorker:

After making allowances for countries that have, or recently have had, an officially imposed atheist ideology, in which there might be some social pressure to deny belief in God, one can venture conservative estimates of the number of unbelievers in the world today. Reviewing a large number of studies among some fifty countries, Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist at Pitzer College, in Claremont, California, puts the figure at between five hundred million and seven hundred and fifty million. This excludes such highly populated places as Brazil, Iran, Indonesia, and Nigeria, for which information is lacking or patchy. Even the low estimate of five hundred million would make unbelief the fourth-largest persuasion in the world, after Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. It is also by far the youngest, with no significant presence in the West before the eighteenth century. Who can say what the landscape will look like once unbelief has enjoyed a past as long as Islam’s—let alone as long as Christianity’s? God is assuredly not on the side of the unbelievers, but history may yet be.

I attended the launch of All Our Rights - a campaign to repeal the “Homosexual Panic” defence. This defence is used by straight men who murder gay men. The argument is basically that for some straight men, the mere existence of a gay man causes the straight man to panic and beat the gay man to death. Therefore there was no intent to kill, therefore the killer deserves a lesser sentence. All Our Rights - a campaign to repeal the “Homosexual Panic” defence. This defence is used by straight men who murder gay men. The argument is basically that for some straight men, the mere existence of a gay man causes the straight man to panic and beat the gay man to death. Therefore there was no intent to kill, therefore the killer deserves a lesser sentence (No Right Turn has a good post on the campaign).

It is less than a week since Judge Michael Lance imposed no penalty on Craig Busch for assaulting his partner. The judge said that Craig Busch’s violence was the ‘human and inevitable’ response to seeing his partner in bed with another couple.

I don’t believe jail does anyone any good. I don’t support the judicial system. I’m not even really arguing for tougher sentences. If Craig Busch’s sentence was the standard sentence for assault, I wouldn’t complain.

What I am arguing against is a judicial system that openly states that some of us are not fully human and deserve violence.

Another photo from our trip to the glasses store. I can’t think of the right caption or thought balloon to go with this photo, but Sydney’s expression here really cracks me up.

Read the rest of this entry »

My friend Pip has a blog called Great Expectations. She’s only got a couple of posts up but she’s asking some really interesting questions:

Are there white middle-class butches? If so, where are they? I found Judith/Jack Halberstam’s book, Female Masculinities, particularly disappointing in this regard. It seems that J/J identifies as butch (??). But although she shows how butch history has been ignored by middle-class feminism, she doesn’t admit that being an academic means that working-class butch history doesn’t simply belong to her. She doesn’t use this opportunity to share her own experience of butchness, and instead uses the (often extremely personal) stories of others to illustrate this story. It’s this kind of behaviour that allows white middle class men/women/butches to claim a rich history and identity, while hiding our privilege over others of the same gender (just like white women using pictures of black mothers to symbolise the fertility or spirituality of all women).

You should go and check out her blog, leave some comments and encourage her to write more.

*******

Also check out Super Babymama who has been writing an excellent series of posts on the reality of life on food stamps. As a feminist I believe the right to have (and be able to raise) a child is as important as the right not to have a child. In both New Zealand and America that right is severely curtailed. Super Babymama explains exactly how little food you’re allowed if you’re raising children by yourself.

Brownfemipower informs us that several WOC bloggers are raising money to attend this year’s Allied Media Conference (see BFP’s post for more details and links).

If you’ve got a little to spare, and if you’re a fan of some of these bloggers (as I am), here are some tip buttons that could use it. (I’m sure that even the embarrassingly small amounts I can afford to give are welcome):

Brownfemipower
Fabulosa Mujer
Hermana Resist (donations can be made via Paypal to csdistro@gmail.com )
Please Professor Black Woman
Black Amazon
The Primary Contradiction

I feel almost like an anthropologist exploring unfathomable territory when I read about American electoral politics. No matters how much I read, it doesn’t make any sense to me.¹

The Democrats are considerably to the right of the Labour party, the major left wing party in New Zealand (who I would never support, because they’re too right wing) and I suspect they’re also to the right of the National party, the major right wing party in New Zealand. I read people whose analysis is to the left of the Labour party in terms of the NZ political spectrum, and yet they still support this incredibly right wing party?

How much Democrat support for the war in Iraq is too much? How many women denied access to abortion are too many? How much Homeland Security is too much? How much welfare reform is too much? How many children dying from sanctions are too many?

I can understand taking a pragmatic approach and always voting for the least bad lizard.² But for those who claim that they’re supporting something positive when they support the Democrats, when would you stop believing that? When would you say fuck this shit there are better ways to reach my goals?

1. Not the actions of elected politicians that makes perfect sense, and it’s what you’d expect from the electoral and economic system. It’s left-wing people’s attitudes towards the electoral system that baffles me. (back)
2. Oh I miss Douglas Adams. (back)

I had read about this before, but to my shame, I didn’t follow links or watch videos. I was distracted by other things. I don’t know what they were. But I didn’t follow up on this when I first heard, and I should have.

Other feminists weren’t as tunnel-visioned. They, and various kinds of civil rights activists, were on it. And they did get linked.

But in case any of you all were satisfied, as I was, to absorb few scraps and statistics as you skimmed through your blog reading, and then gloss past the rest of the story — here are a few pieces of the story that have moved, and enraged me.

The ACLU describes conditions at Hutto:

While Hutto authorities maintain that “residents” are treated humanely, they are, in many ways, treated like prisoners. At the time of the ACLU’s initial court filings, child detainees had to wear prison garb. They received one hour of recreation per day and opportunities to spend this hour outdoors were very rare. Children were detained in small cells for about 11 or 12 hours each day, and were prohibited from keeping food and toys in these cells, which lack any privacy. Although some of these conditions have improved slightly, they are still far from adequate.

In addition, access to adequate medical, dental, and mental health treatment is severely limited and, as a result, many children suffer from chronic ailments that worsen as they are left undiagnosed and untreated. Children are not afforded meaningful educational opportunities. Guards frequently discipline the children by threatening to separate them from their families.

The ACLU has taken action through lawsuits:

The ACLU recently filed lawsuits against federal officials charging that conditions at the Hutto facility violate provisions of the 1997 court settlement Flores v. Meese which mandated that children in federal immigration custody should be:

• released promptly to family members when possible
• kept in the least restrictive setting possible
• guaranteed basic educational, health and social benefits

The ACLU lawsuits seek release of the children together with their families from the Texas facility under appropriate and humane supervision. According to Lisa Graybill, Legal Director of the ACLU of Texas, “The choice is not between enforcement of immigration laws and humane treatment of immigrant families. There are various alternatives under which both can exist.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Heart at Woman’s Space: The Margins reports* a great list of ways for people to take concrete steps to help Malalai Joya, who has been suspended from the Afghan parliament for insulting warlords.

Here are some of her suggestions, but make sure to check out her post!

YOU CAN do so in the following ways:

- Write to Afghan officials and file your protest for expelling and prosecuting Joya, while the terrorists and human rights violators in the parliament were provided immunity before any court for their past crimes last month.

- Express your concern for Joya’s security during the court sessions as the fundamentalists currently hold key positions in Afghanistan’s judiciary.

- Circulate this letter and ask lawyers and defenders of human rights in your area and country to come forward and help Joya during her court proceedings and defend her.

- Donate to Joya’s security fund online at www.malalaijoya.com/donor/donor_info.php to help improve her security with necessary equipment and facilities, while she is now deprived of all official facilities.

Letters of protest can be sent to the following sources:

President Hamid Karzai
khaleeq.ahmad@gmail.com
president@afghanistangov.org

Supreme Court of Afghanistan
aquddus@supremecourt.gov.af

Afghanistan’s Parliament
hasib_n786@yahoo.com

Interior Ministry
moinews@gmail.com
wahed.moi@gmail.com

Justice Ministry of Afghanistan
info@moj.gov.af
hidayatr@moj.gov.af

We thank you for your prompt action and support and hope you will forward a copy of your letters to mj@malalaijoya.com.

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*edited to fix an error.

For some reason this post at Women of Color Blog and this post at the way here reminded me of my childhood, and the social class dynamics of growing up poor.  In her post on Women of Color blog BFP mentions working at McDonalds, which reminded me of my own food service experiences.  I worked in fast food, but my first actual food service experience was in elementary school.  This is where Monica’s post fits in.  Somehow in a very long comment thread the subject turned to government cheese (or in Rosyln’s words “gubmint cheese”), which they served in the cafeteria at my elementary school.¹

How do I know what was served in the cafeteria at my school?  Well, like all of the other kids in the 5th and 6th grade, I worked in the cafeteria.  I can imagine the middle class mostly white suburban readers gasping now because no “respectable” middle class school would ever make their students work in the cafeteria, but my school did. 

Here’s how it worked.  There were a total of two 5th grade and two 6th grade classes.  Each week one of those classes had cafeteria duty, and most of the students in the class would go down to the cafeteria around 10:30 and start helping the janitors and cafeteria workers serve lunch to the students.  There were different jobs, which were gendered and assigned base on skills.  The most prestigious job was selling ice cream since it involved actually having to count money, and the teacher picked the smartest kids.  It was also cooler out in that part of the cafeteria, and only people who had an extra 30 cents to spend on lunch could buy ice cream, so there wasn’t any deluge of kids running to the counter.  The rest of the student workers were in three groups, which were assigned by the cooks and janitors.  You had the lunch servers, who put food on trays.  This was mostly girls with a few boys mixed in, and it was the moderate prestige position.  Then, there were the lowest prestige positions: dish washers, (mostly girls), and tray dumpers, (mostly boys).  The tray dumpers had to empty the trays after the students were done eating, and take out garbage.  Oh and I almost forget, that there was a person who had to wash tables, which I believe was one of those mid-level prestige jobs.  Lunch generally ended around noon, and we had recess around that time period. 

The students were paid for their work in free meals, and of course this work was also considered valuable job training because it taught us about hard work and responsibility.  Moreover, in a low income school, this was one more way to save money.  I don’t know that they could afford to hire that many people to work at the school because the local tax base was very low.  The school also saved money by getting government subsidized food, such as government cheese. (Which in my opinion was pretty good, but that’s for another debate.)

I suspect lunch was very different than it would be in a middle class school for other reasons as well. 

The majority of the kids in my school were eligible for free lunches, and very few kids packed their lunches.  How do I know this?  Because we had to line up for lunch based on how we were paying–free lunch kids went first, then reduced lunch ($.45), and full price lunch was last ($.75).  Most of the kids lined up for free lunch.  I also remember when my mother finally got a full time job teaching special education at the school because I got to move to the back of the lunch line with Jason and Aaron, who were the “wealthier” kids in my class.  My Dad said we were probably still eligible for the reduced price lunch, but my mother’s pride was not going to allow her to have her kids on reduced lunch while she was teaching in the school. I also knew many of our kids were eligible for free lunch because I looked at data when I was in high school and we were campaigning for a school levy.  All of the people campaigning were given a sheet of paper that had data comparing our school to other schools in the state of Ohio based on test scores, per pupil spending, teacher pay, and other relevant socio-economic indicators.  As I looked through the sheet all of the numbers were very low, mostly in the bottom 20% or bottom 5%.  Finally, I got to the end of the chart, and I leaned over to my mother and said,

“Hey mom we’re really high in this one.  What does AFDC mean?”  My mom replied,

“That’s welfare.”

We both started laughing because it was the only figure where the school was actually in the top 5%. (I don’t think they had teen pregnancy or drop out rates because we would have been in the top on those, too.)  

In junior and high school things were a little different.  The kids still served lunches, but it was only the kids in special education who worked in the cafeteria, and they did so almost every day.  Those of us who were not in special education were weeded out of food service, and we spent our time in the classroom.

I’ve been reflecting quite a bit on social class over the last 5 or 6 years, especially as it relates to education.  I know my own children are not going to grow up like me, and I have mixed feelings about that.  As much as I know that many middle income people would find it offensive to have their kids work in the school cafeteria for free food, I have more mixed feelings.  Poor kids and working class kids seem to grow up quicker, and they are not coddled in the ways that middle and upper income kids are.  I suppose many people are going to say having kids serve in the cafeteria is child labor.  I guess it is, but I’m more ambivalent about it.  I’ve been doing this type of labor since the 5th grade. I stuffed envelopes for my dad in high school, and I worked as a Whopper flopper at Burger King.  I think work is valuable, and I think we shouldn’t shame people because their jobs are low paying or low prestige, but the other side of me knows that we are really funneling kids into the occupations that we expect for their social class.  Middle class kids don’t have to grow-up as fast, in part because they will be starting their labor force participation later and because their parents know their incomes are going to be directly linked to having a higher level and better quality education.

I know I’m the exception.  I’m the person who grew up in the very poor environment and “made it out” thanks to my mother’s college degree, my smarts, my determination, help from others, and lucky breaks (I’ve written a little about this before.).  There is a huge part of me that feels happy that I had the experience of being poor, of having an outhouse, and of having to working in the school cafeteria, but that is largely because that was temporary for me.  For a long time I didn’t regret these things because I didn’t really know exactly how middle class people really lived.  Of course, I knew that they had wealthier schools (and indoor plumbing) and more opportunities, but I couldn’t clarify what exactly those were.  I guess the one advantage I have at this point is that I am fairly able to go back and forth across class divides–I know about government cheese and I know what feta cheese is too. :)  I wouldn’t be able to do this had I not grown up poor, and I wouldn’t have know how hard working and determined poor people are.  I also wouldn’t recognize the advantages and privileges of my current class position, and I would treat them more as a given.

Congrats you made it to the end of this loooong piece!!!

1. I also remember my dad going down to the fire station and getting some government cheese to eat at home.  I would suspect that many people who have been poor and are over the age of 30 are familiar with government cheese, but if you are not, go check out the link. (back)

Awhile back, I read an excellent post by Hugo called Words are not fists: some thoughts on how men work to defuse feminist anger.

In this post, he writes about how the men speak in his women’s studies class:

…two of the guys did something that I see over and over again from men in women’s studies classes. They prefaced their remarks by joking “I know I’m going to get killed for saying this, but…” One of them, even pretended to rise from his desk to position himself by the door, saying that “Once I say this, I know I’m going to have to make a run for it.” Most of the women laughed indulgently, and I even found myself grinning along.

…one thing I remember from my own college days that I see played out over and over again is this male habit of making nervous jokes about being attacked by feminists. In my undergrad days, I often prefaced a comment by saying “I know I’ll catch hell for this”. I’ve seen male students do as they did today and pretend to run; I’ve seen them deliberately sit near the door, and I once had one young man make an elaborate show (I kid you not) of putting on a football helmet before speaking up!

All of this behavior reflects two things: men’s genuine fear of being challenged and confronted, and the persistence of the stereotype of feminists as being aggressive “man-bashers.” The painful thing about all this, of course, is that no man is in any real physical danger in the classroom — or even outside of it — from feminists. Name one incident where an irate women’s studies major physically assaulted a male classmate for something he said? Women are regularly beaten and raped — even on college campuses — but I know of no instance where a man found himself a victim of violence for making a sexist remark in a college feminist setting! “Male-bashing” doesn’t literally happen, in other words, at least not on campus. But that doesn’t stop men from using (usually half in jest) their own exaggerated fear of physical violence to make a subtle point about feminists.

There’s a conscious purpose to this sort of behavior. Joking about getting beaten up (or putting on the football helmet) sends a message to young women in the classroom: “Tone it down. Take care of the men and their feelings. Don’t scare them off, because too much impassioned feminism is scary for guys.” And you know, as silly as it is, the joking about man-bashing almost always works! Time and again, I’ve seen it work to silence women in the classroom, or at least cause them to worry about how to phrase things “just right” so as to protect the guys and their feelings. It’s a key anti-feminist strategy, even if that isn’t the actual intent of the young man doing it — it forces women students to become conscious caretakers of their male peers by subduing their own frustration and anger. It reminds young women that they should strive to avoid being one of those “angry feminists” who (literally) scares men off and drives them away.

Criticism is not fists! This is a brilliant observation.

Of course, it’s obvious. If I say “Your idea is sexist,” then I’m not literally slugging you in the face. But at the same time, the joking frame allows the analogy to pass unnoticed. And when it passes unnoticed, its effect can be insidious. The women act to protect the man’s feelings. They soften their criticism so they won’t fulfill the violent imagery of the man’s preemptive metaphor.

But I want to take it farther than Hugo does. People don’t just say “don’t attack me” as a way of getting feminists to back down. They also say it because they have a sense of being attacked. Criticism is not fists, but people really seem to perceive it that way.

And the less privilege the person who’s making the criticism has, the more it feels like an attack. In this post, Ginmar quotes Amanda Marcotte: “The less right you have to talk in the eyes of the hierarchy, the louder you seem. Which is probably why black women are seen as the loudest people ever.”*

We see this in a lot of places, right? The common sense conviction that women talk more than men cannot be supported, and in fact, people find data that suggests that — in ordinary conversation — men talk more than women. If researchers externally impose a requirement that both men and women speak the same amount, then they both report that it feels like the men hardly got a chance to talk at all.

Women aren’t supposed to talk, so when they talk, they’re seen as talking A LOT. Black women really aren’t supposed to talk, so when they talk, they’re seen as talking REALLY LOUDLY.

Women aren’t supposed to criticize, so when they criticize, it’s not just words — the surprise of their criticism feels like fists. And when women of color criticize? Well, then it’s World War III.

Read the rest of this entry »

From WIMN’s Voices: Malalai Joya is Suspended from Parliament.

A few excerpts:

Twenty eight year old intrepid Afghan MP, Malalai Joya, has just been suspended from Parliament for comparing warlords in power to donkeys. Joya is the youngest and most outspoken member of Parliament and has survived 4 assassination attempts for denouncing warlords, many of whom were funded at various times by the US government in the fight against the Soviets (1980s) and the Taliban (post-9-11).

…It is clear that the US’s post-Taliban experiment in Afghanistan intended to fool Americans into believing that Afghan women were being liberated. We were convinced by the Bush administration and the mainstream media that “democracy” and “women’s rights” were the new buzzword in Afghanistan. But the US government did several things that ensured women’s political, economic and social rights would never be realized: they empowered the misogynist pre-Taliban warlords who now sit in government, they installed a pro-warlord puppet President into office (Hamid Karzai), and they have fought a futile war in the countryside against “Taliban remnants” that has achieved nothing but a legitimizing and strengthening of the Taliban. How could women possibly have any rights in such a situation?

…Today women in the Afghan Parliament have two options: they can remain silent and betray the people they are supposed to represent, thereby ensuring their personal safety. Or they can speak out in defiance of the blanket of silence surrounding the war criminals, and risk their lives like Malalai Joya. In such a context do words like “democracy” and “women’s rights” have any meaning?

Read the rest.

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Headline fixed per a correction provided by Lu. Thanks, Lu!

The Erase Racism Carnival is up at The Angry Black Woman. Go check it out!

I didn’t link to brownfemipower’s amazing post about la familia and immigration, because I wanted to say something. I wanted to argue for open borders. Then I thought that when I get round to writing about open borders then those comments should stand alone.

brownfemipower covers so much in her post including transience:

In Michigan, it’s different. Detroit, Flint or Saginaw may have established Mexican communities–but in the community I grew up in, there wasn’t one single family that had grandparents or even parents who had been born there. All of us whose families had settled in the neighborhood had multiple friends that disappeared after a year–their families moved back to Mexico or Texas or over to other farming states for work. Two of my best friends as a child left Michigan in the second grade. Only one wound up coming back to Michigan–when we were both in high school.

And as somebody who worked in the fields–I can remember falling in love with a dark-skinned, lightly muscled boy who smiled at me every time I walked past. He was there for one season and I never saw him again. A common happening in migrant work.

These disappearances were very upsetting to me, but I lived–just like I know the people who disappeared lived as well. We’re all used to it, and we’ve learned to accommodate shadow figures, shadow relationships into our lives.

Go read brownfemipower now.

Is anyone (else) going to be at Wiscon?

From an essay called The Revolution Will Not Be Funded; a later draft of this essay appears, I believe, in the book of the same name.

The corporate nonprofit structure encouraged by tax law doesn’t just promote financial short-sightedness through its focus on grants. This corporate structure is an intrinsic part of existing oppression, so it also inhibits the most radical aspects of our work. Suzanne Pharr, longtime Southern activist working against racism, sexism, homophobia and economic inequality, recites a straightforward list of losses that social justice movements have suffered as a result of common nonprofit fundraising strategies: The nonprofit sector, she asserts, has given us more government and corporate money, less autonomy from those sources of money, less community membership and involvement in organizations, more corporate mimicry, and more professionalization of roles within grassroots movements.

The effects of all this? Organizations are no longer places where money and leadership are controlled by their constituents. Instead, leadership jobs go to those from the outside: people with degrees in social work, accounting and nonprofit management. With fewer people involved in organizations and with money coming from the nation’s financially powerful, the direction of nonprofit work veers away from the struggles of the people in whose name those organizations often operate. The money covers financial reports, professional grantwriters’ salaries and strategies for meeting funders’—not organizations’, let alone movements’—goals. As a result, organizations that began as radical grassroots associations of individuals become corporations that largely copy the mainstream economy. They are professional, though not educated on the ground about the actual issues; organized, but not effective; compliant with tax laws, but not responsive or accountable to community needs.

Mommy needed new glasses, so we all trucked down to the glasses store (well, the glasses section inside Wal-Mart). I’ve never met a baby who didn’t like trying on glasses.

More below the fold…

Read the rest of this entry »

(cross posted at Ambling Along the Aqueduct*).

Awhile back there was a thread at I Blame the Patriarchy about feminist science fiction. Here’s an incredibly incomplete list of some feminist-minded science fiction that I love. The stories and novels won’t be shockingly new to most people who are well-versed in fantasy & science fiction, but I think they’re newish to people who don’t really watch the genre. I’m also going to skip some of the more obvious feminist canon, such as Tiptree, Butler, Delany, Russ, LeGuin, Atwood, and Piercy. If you haven’t read them, go out and read them!

With those provisos in mind, I’m confining myself to three short story recommendations, and three novel recommendations, so please don’t take this list as representative of anything except the first few wonderful things that occurred to me. I’ll probably revisit the topic later. :)

SHORT STORIES:

	Knapsack Poems by Eleanor Arnason “Knapsack Poems” by Eleanor Arnason is what I’ve been calling my favorite short story since I ran across it in an anthology last year. It’s about some convincingly alien aliens whose physical presence involves a radical reinterpretation of gender and body. Since it’s online, I’m not going to say more. Go read. :)
	Love’s Body, Dancing in Time by L. Timmel Duchamp Love’s Body, Dancing in Time is a short story collection by L. Timmel Duchamp, the editor of the feminist publisher Aqueduct Press. In this collection, she explores gender, sexuality, and self-definition, through interesting characters, worlds, and extraordinarily beautiful imagery. All of the stories reflect a deep engagement with feminist ideas, rendered striking and moving through Timmi’s unique interpretations. Timmi’s work has an academic cast which the pedant in me really enjoys; one of the stories in this collection is an alternate history examination of Abelard and Heloise, written as an academic paper. My favorite story in the collection is “The Gift,” the story of a woman from a world with a binary gender system who travels to another world and falls in love with a man who is a member of a third gender.
	With Her Body by Nicola Griffith The stories in this collection are striking and dark, with strange, beautiful imagery. My favorite story in the collection is “Yaguara,” the last story, which carried me away — past writer brain, past self reading the book. In the afterword, L. Timmel Duchamp writes a fascinating analysis of Griffith’s stories; she discusses Griffith’s exclusive use of women as sexual creatures which creates a world where women are not othered in response to men’s sexuality. She also talks about the constructs our culture has built around feminine versus masculine fiction — for instance, how universality is constructed as masculine, so that feminine characters are seen as ‘limited’ and ‘embodied.’ While Nicola’s stories were so beautiful as to carry me past the intellectual interpretation of the work while I was reading, I was pleased to have the concepts brought to my attention by Timmi’s afterword when I was done.

NOVELS:

	Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson This book weaves through the consciousnesses of three black women in different places and historical periods: a slave in the Carribean; a dance hall girl who was the lover of Charles Baudelaire; and an Egyptian slave girl who worked in a brothel, and later became a saint. I found this book utterly seductive. Reading it was a profoundly moving experience, for me. The prose is gorgoeus, and there’s a kind of fiery, driving strength that propels the tension through disparate places and events. The reader gets to know each character intimately, and Nalo’s deft, insightful, poetic prose allows each storyline to carry the weight of untold and unwritten histories. Unsurprisingly, it’s really smart about the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, spirtuality, history, and the tension between colonized and pre-contact reality. For more good reading, check out Nalo Hopkinson’s blog.
	The Slave and the Free by Susie McKee Charnas The Slave and the Free seems to be a rerelease, compiling the books Walk to the End of the World and Motherlines which were originally released separately. I wasn’t sure whether or not to include these books, because they seem to me to be just as much feminist classics as Tiptree or Delany, but I don’t think I’ve met many non-science-fiction-oriented people who’ve read them. And that’s sad. These books postulate a post-apocalyptic dystopian future in which women’s oppression has become literal slavery, homosexuality has been naturalized, and the men interact according to the hierarchical guidelines of age cohorts. A female slave escapes the dystopian society at the same time as it begins to collapse. Leaving the boundaries of the country where she was born, she joins the Freewomen who live outside. Among them, she finds not utopia, but an ambiguous society. The novels raise sophisticated questions about what utopia and dystopia are or should be, always choosing the complicated answer over the simplistic one.
	China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh I wasn’t sure whether or not it was fair to call this book explicitly feminist — not that it doesn’t reflect feminist ideas, but feminism doesn’t seem to me to be one of its projects. And then, as I was poking around on the internet, I saw that it’s a recipient of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award — which is given to science fiction work that plays with gender. The characters in this novel are indeed portrayed with deep characterization that doesn’t abide by gender roles, but I imagine that the Tiptree committee may have been drawn by this book’s portrayal of a world in which homosexuality has been heavily stigmatized (in America) and made illegal (in China). In this novel, China is the major power, and America is a colonial backwater, which has significantly altered the political and cultural landscape of the world. The novel is told in episodic bursts. The main character has three or four chapters, but the people who wind through his life get to tell their own stories, often in ways that don’t relate directly to the main character’s plot. I was drawn in by the book’s simple imagery and prose, and by the effortless way in which it drew deep characters and a startling world. The prose is both deceptively light and emotionally evocative. Each turn on world politics, race relations, and gender, feels effortlessly smooth and accurately drawn.

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*Two of the books mentioned on this list were released by Aqueduct Press, a press I have obvious ties to. I bought a slough of their books last year and I’m still working my way through them. The work is at the front of my mind. :)

As I mentioned previously, I had severe — can’t sleep can’t concentrate can’t deal with life level severe — pain in my left wrist and hand. Also, I couldn’t bend my fingers or wrist. Eventually, I got a shot of anti-inflammatory (injected into a buttock, not into my arm, but my butt hasn’t gotten any smaller as a result), and a day or so later things began to get better. Sooooo much better. Still not completely well, but getting pretty close.

When I was wearing a splint, it was interesting (and a bit irritating — which is a bit unfair of me, since the advice was kindly meant, but I was in pain!) how often non-doctors would offer me a diagnoses. I’m not talking about friends, but about near-strangers I’d meet at work or in a store. The popular consensus seems to be that my problem was (is?) carpel tunnel syndrome, even though I lacked the numbness and tingling typical of CTS.

The last person I saw (a physician’s assistant; the physician herself wasn’t available for an appointment for weeks) I saw seemed to be leaning towards a diagnosis of psoriatic arthritis, not a happy possibility.

We’ll know more after the next round of blood tests, but I think she’s mistaken. True, I have a large rash on my side; and I can see why a rash combined with hand and wrist pain would make someone think “psoriatic arthritis.” But the rash doesn’t resemble psoriasis at all, to my eyes (not scaly, no patches around my elbows or knees, not red enough, in two big patches rather than lots of clumps…). Nor did my pain precisely resemble any of the typical kinds of pain patients with psoriatic arthritis experience.

As it happened, I also had no primary care physician (although I have one now, who I will perhaps see in person someday). Which gave me an opportunity to see how truly horrible it is to be relying on urgent care centers and emergency rooms for one’s physicking. Maybe it really is psoriatic arthritis; neither the ER nor the urgent care doc even considered the possibility, because neither of them knew I had a rash. (They didn’t ask, and it didn’t occur to me that it could be a relevant thing to mention.) This country desperately needs universal health care.¹

Anyhow. I can type again, but I don’t want to overdo it, so I’m going to take it light on blogging for at least another week or so. But, meanwhile - welcome back, me.

1. I’m not saying universal health care would have solved my problem; I am saying that people who think that ERs and urgent care centers are in any way adequate for people who can’t afford health insurance are wearing rose-colored glasses two inches thick. (back)

UPDATE: Comments on this thread are closed.

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So, there was me, grumbling that my post about Durkheim’s “tyranny of the majority,” the Overton window, and the general concept of politics as rationalization, had become a thread about whether or not rights for gays hurt people anyone, and then I realized, that’s a silly thing to do.

Meet the new post, which is the post for debating whether or not gay rights hurt people anyone. I submit that they do not. Robert and Sailorman submit that they do. Which people Who? queried I. How, and why?

Replies Robert:

Well, vis a vis discrimination laws:

Their identity: People who own rental property in a number of cities (Berkeley and San Francisco among them) which have passed ordinances adding sexual orientation to the list of banned categories of discrimination in housing.

The harm done: Their ability to dispose of their property as they wished - specifically, to have a degree of control over the people living in their house - was constrained. In addition, their ability to behave in non-discriminatory but carefree ways is impinged. Instead of not caring at all about the sexual orientation of an applicant, a landlord now has to care about it even if he or she has no intention or desire to discriminate.

Some of those people, a lot of them even, didn’t want to discriminate in that fashion anyway; others (usually for religious reasons, though not always) did. Even the former group is negatively impacted by the law - the creation of a category of discrimination opens them to false claims (whether malicious or simple misunderstandings) of such discrimination even when they did not intend to discriminate.

Pre-ordinance, Landlord X might reject Tenant Y for some bona fide reason, or if he just didn’t like the cut of her jib. Post-ordinance, if X rejects Y and Y happens to be gay, Y can make a claim (however implausible) that X discriminated on the basis of orientation. X must now take exceptional care in rejecting gay applicants for bona fide reasons - particularly if through happenstance X ends up renting to a straight tenant instead.

So, what Robert is doing here is asking for “can’t refuse to rent house to gay people” a.k.a. “landlord can’t dispose property as zie wishes” to be defined as “hurt.”

I’m opposed to this definition, because of a metaphor that I’m going to steal from The Angry Black Woman, whose archives I spent a shocking amount of yesterday reading — on account of her being so brilliant, and all.

If a child has ten pieces of candy, and his sister has no pieces of candy, and there are only ten pieces of candy in the house, and his mother takes five pieces of the child’s candy away [ETA: to give to his sister], then the child losing candy will cry. The child losing candy is not losing rights. The child losing candy is not being oppressed. The child losing candy is *experiencing* hurt, but he is not actually being hurt.

Privelege is something we often only notice when it’s lacking. A space that priveleges both men and women equally will be perceived as discriminating against men because it does not cater to their interests.

And so here.

So, please shift the argument about gay rights and hurt here, and please wander to the other location if you want to talk about politics as rationalization, the evils of extremism, or the tyranny of the majority, or kittens.

Oh, okay, you can talk about kittens in either thread. I’ll start.

UPDATE: Sailorman would like the following quotes to speak for his position:

Take gay rights and abortion rights, for example: they seem pretty obvious to ME, and I don’t much give a shit [if] granting them pisses the hell out of some people.

I don’t doubt, though, there are people whose lives have been personally worsened by the granting of abortion rights or gay rights. I just don’t care about them.

I apologize for the implication that Sailorman is trying to take rights away from gay people. It was unintended. I simply disagree with him; I do doubt that there are people is anyone whose life has been personally worsened by the granting of gay rights.