I actually did draw a cartoon last week, but it’s slated to appear in Dollars and Sense, so I’ll have to wait a few weeks before posting it online.

Anyhow, the cartoon I drew last week (which I haven’t posted) was rather grim, so this week I went for just being silly.

I kinda like how her skirt came out, except in the first panel, but I’m feeling too lazy to redraw that.

I’m trying to do less detailed pencils, instead drawing more in the “ink” stage (”ink” in quotes since I draw the whole thing on computer anyway). Hopefully this leads to a more spontaneous line and a looser feel.

The Health Select Committee has just recommended extending paid parental leave to six months, to encourage breast feeding.

As a supporter of paid parental leave (or, more accurately, as someone who believes that paid parental leave doesn’t go nearly far enough and that parenting should be resourced as the work it is) I should be happy.

Here’s the reason the Health Select Committee has decided breastfeeding is important:

The promotion of breastfeeding for at least the first six months, and preferably for the first year, is widely recommended, as it has an important protective role against obesity during childhood and adolescence, and may also protect mothers against obesity and diabetes.

Apparently women are en-slimmening machines. The main value of our breast-feeding, indeed of parenting in the first six months, is preventing fat cells.

This is from the report into obesity and type 2 diabetes; I may write more later. Although what I actually want to do to the report is to batter it, deep fry it, and then slather it with icing.

From Asheville Indymedia, we have the heartwarming tale of what happens when the Klan decides to march through Knoxville, TN, and are met on their march . . . by clowns. The photo with the article is awesome. Check it all out here.

A while back, in one or another of the threads, I mentioned to Amp that for certain groups and certain individuals, responding to them seriously, addressing their arguments as if they’re actual arguments, etc., is sort of counter-productive, in that it lends them credibility they wouldn’t have otherwise.
This is a lovely example of how I think we ought to to deal with folks like that.

I have very fond memories of teachers’ pay negotiations. My sixth form maths teacher was a staunch unionist and also very distractable. We could get a good half hour off calculus with a well-timed question like “What’s happening with the teachers pay negotiations?” Teachers didn’t go on strike when I was in High school, but more recently they did, and students took some really awesome support action. A Secondary teachers’ strike has a real potential to radicalise young workers.

So I’m really excited that New Zealand secondary teachers have voted to go on strike in a couple of weeks. I’ll be there.

* Has anyone else ever seen a video called Mom’s on Strike? It featured a young Yeardley Smith (voice of Lisa). The basic plot-line is pretty self-explanatory. A woman left to do all the housework for her family goes on strike (with a picket line and everythign). Then the father left all the work to the two daughters, and they joined the picket-line too. We watched it in a Social Ed class in high school - which led to a pretty cool discussion about girls’ experiences with housework in their families (I went to an all girls school).

The American Prospect: How Fundamentalist Christian Morality Is Killing Africans

Beatrice Were contracted HIV from her husband, a common occurrence in a region where women make up the majority of new infections and marriage is a primary risk factor. For those like her, the White House’s AIDS prevention mantra — which prescribes abstinence and marital fidelity, with condoms only for “high risk” groups like prostitutes and truck drivers — is a sick joke… Organizations in Uganda are afraid to speak up about condoms or distribute them because they might lose needed [U.S.] funding.

Obsidian Wings: Yes, For The 100th Time, Athiests Can Recognize Good From Evil
Hilzoy demolishes the self-satisfied Christian argument that only people who believe in God can tell right from wrong. And when you’re done reading her post, you may also want to read these posts on Pandagon and Shakesville, too. (Update: The Shakesville link appears to be dead. Hopefully it’ll be repaired in time.)

What I mind, of course, is that my time is getting short, that I won’t see my youngest grandchild grow up — those things that you’re gonna miss. I remember my father feeling like that. I have a poem about it — he knew he wasn’t gonna see the end of the Vietnam War. He said: “Goddammit, I’ll never know how they got out.” There’s a lot you won’t know. And there’s sadness because your friends are dying. And with the terrible things in the world, with the idea that you’re gonna leave the world maybe worse than you found it — I don’t like that feeling at all.

Grace Paley died last week. She was 85, and had lived the sort of life anyone could be proud of. She was a writer and activist. That quote is from an interview she did with Salon 9 years ago.

If you want to know more about Grace Paley, I recommend Robin Morgan’s fantastic tribute(link via Heart):

Grace was my neighbor, too, a decades-long Greenwich Village denizen. When I’d find her leafleting on 6th Avenue—for lesbian marriage, Palestinian rights, whatever—I’d stop to chat or join her. Passers-by rarely recognized the 4-foot-10-inches-tall, age-84 “little old lady in tennis shoes” as a titan of American literature. Once, while I skimmed a leaflet’s jargon, she whispered sadly, “I didn’t write it.” Obvious, but her wordsmith’s standards leaked, though she quickly added, “Lissen, so what, it says what’s needed.”

I don’t know enough about Grace Paley to write a proper tribute. I just want to talk about one paragraph she wrote, a paragraph that has stayed with me. I haven’t actually read any of her books, just her collection of non-fiction writing Just As I Thought.I loved this book so much. It’s about women, writing and activism and I think you should go and read it right now. The paragraph I loved most went like this:

It is possible to write about anything in the world, but the slightest story ought to contain the facts of money and blood in order to be interesting to adults. That is, everybody continues on this earth by courtesy of certain economic arrangements; people are rich or poor, make a living or don’t have to, are useful to systems or superfluous. And blood - the way people live as families or outside of families or in the creation of family, sisters, sons, fathers, the blood ties. Trivial work ignores these two FACTS and is never comic or tragic.

I’ve come to see that statement as the most important feature of good fiction. So much of what is untrue, or uninteresting comes from authors who ignore their characters’ blood, or money.

Grace Paley fought for the things that matters, whether in her fiction, or in her life.

Idaho Senator Larry Craig was arrested and pled guilty to disorderly conduct after he was caught propositioning an undercover police officer for sex in an airport bathroom.  Pam has the run down on his votes on key gay/lesbian policy issues:

* Voted YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage. (Jun 2006)
* Voted NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes. (Jun 2002)
* Voted NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation. (Jun 2000)
* Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage. (Sep 1996)
* Voted NO on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation. (Sep 1996)

This would be funny is this guy didn’t wield so much power, but at least he didn’t say a black man scared him into offering a blowjob like the last Republican who was caught doing this.

Is anyone keeping count of how many Republican politicians have been caught in gay sex scandals this year?

Welcome to the 16th Erase Racism Carnival!

Angry Black Woman: Ask the Angry Black Woman!
ABW invites her readership to ask her anything about racism, and they do, in a comment thread that’s long and fascinating enough so you might want to pour yourself a cup of coffee before you sit down to read it. What’s even more impressive than the variety of questions asked is how perceptive and well-put the answers are.

Feline Formal Shorts: Race Relations 101
Not just one post but a whole series of posts, explaining the basics. The above link leads to the whole series so far, which (so far) includes “What Can I Do?,” “Let’s Start With Hair,” “Colorblindness,” and “What If I Screw Up?” This should all be required reading for well-meaning white folks who want to be anti-racist allies (uh, that is to say, me).

Loteria Chicana: Defending The Comparison Of Elvira Arellano And Rosa Parks

C.N. Le: The Downside of Diversity
The blogger, a sociology professor, discusses how progressives should react to a recent study which found that the most diverse communities in the US are also the most suspicious and least public-spirited communities. As is often the case, Audre Lourde points the way.

(And while we’re reading C.N. Le on the subject of diversity, read this post about an interesting multicultural college program that is successfully increasing graduation rates, especially among minority students.)

The North Star: It Ain’t Privilege, It’s Injustice

…and so the white Leftists who think they are down because they have got the courage to lamentably declare, “We’ve got White Privilege,” it would be more accurate and truthful to say instead, “We are beneficiaries of racism,” or “We participate in a racialized system of oppression.”

And when you’re done reading the above post, you may also want to read this related post at Black Looks.

Too Sense: Pipes Dreams
This post discusses some of the ugly anti-Arab racism revealed in the objections to a new “Arabic-language and culture school being opened in Brooklyn.” Daniel Pipes, predictably, is among the Arab-bashers.

The Unapologetic Mexican: Atlanta Politician Proposes Legal Ban On Baggy Pants
Seriously. Oy.

Eric Stoller’s Blog: TSA Says That Arabic T-Shirt Not Allowed On Planes

would not let Raed Jarrar board his flight at John F. Kennedy Airport until he agreed to cover his t-shirt, which read “We Will Not Be Silent” in English and Arabic script. According to the complaint, Harris told Jarrar that it is impermissible to wear an Arabic shirt to an airport and equated it to a “person wearing a t-shirt at a bank stating, ‘I am a robber.’ “

1 is A, 2 is B: The English Beat
Interesting discussion of a now-obscure Brit ska band, and how racial politics interacted with the skinhead and ska scene at that point in history.

Anti Racist Parent: Ten “Do”s And “Don’t”s For Transracially Adoptive Parents
You know, this may be the only really great blog post I’ve ever read that begins by praising the TV show “Different Strokes.”

Jessie The K: Disability Rights Critique Of “Colorblindness” As A Saying
I can’t believe that in all the countless times I’ve objected to the “colorblind” ideology, this take on it has never once occurred to me.

American Indians In Children’s Literature: Review of Gail Haley’s Two Bad Boys

The entire process of eliminating what makes the story sacred is what makes Haley’s version a desecration. Two Bad Boys is the cultural equivalent of retelling the Easter Story and leaving out the crucifixion. It’s that insensitive.

All About Race: “Glamour” editor “decides that natural black hair has no place in America’s” corporate offices.
More criticism of the “Glamour” editor’s comments:

* Angry Black Bitch
* Sex and Race
* Black Looks

Pandagon: Documentary On The Politics Of Hair

I am old enough to have experienced the “pleasure” of the thermal hot comb — you rested it over the gas flame of the stove to heat it up. Then the pressing oil was carefully applied to your hair and that comb sizzled through the kinks till it was bone straight, hissing as you prayed the comb didn’t touch your scalp. This is what black women did to emulate straight hair.

Ally Work: Why There Is A BET, And There Isn’t A WET

Part of the reason we don’t call our groups white is that we don’t even realize that these groups are catering to us. Part of being white means not having to think about whiteness and the opportunities it grants. In fact, even thinking about whiteness makes many of whites uncomfortable, which is why the reaction to BET is so strong.

La Tertulia: Xenoglossophobia (fear of foreign languages)
After a friend was “chided at her own son’s birth party for speaking to him in Spanish,” the blogger put out a call for similar stories. After reading this post, all I can say is: Oy, there are a lot of xenoglossophobic jerks out there.

Angry Black Woman: Preview of Interview With Novelist David Anthony Durham
Anti-racist fans of the fantasy genre will be really damn eager to read Durham’s new novel after reading this post. Anyway, I am.

ImmigrationProf Blog: Immigration Raids Will Not Be Scaled Back For 2010 Census
This is a switch from past policy, and is almost certain to lead to an undercounting of immigrants, many of whom are people of color.

BlogRhet: Race & Ethnicity: It Matters

On the other hand, I can’t shake the feeling that only white people don’t see color because well, they don’t have to. When you’re the majority and part of the race that dictates what’s “normal”, race isn’t much of an issue to you personally. That’s not to say that I’ve lived my life solely through the lens of being Hispanic (because let’s face it: in Miami, I’m in the majority and it’s white Anglos who are minorities), but I am well aware that, outside of South Florida, in person, that is what jumps out first, and that is what “marks” me, far and above anything else.

How does this translate in a medium like the Internet?

AngryBlackBitch: The Vick Investigation, Dog Fighting, And The Loss of a Teachable Moment
A Bitch, speaking as a mentor for black youth, criticizes the knee-jerk defenses of Vick that she’s seen from some civil rights workers.

Angry Black Woman: Just Say No To Relaxed Hair

At the risk of bringing on an inundation of hate mail and hate comments, I must say what I feel: Don’t Do It. Don’t relax your daughter’s hair. Please, please, please, for the love of follicles, Just Don’t Do It.

All About Race: Elvira Arellano has been Deported. Do you feel better?

…It is not right to have an entire class of people allowed in, brought in, to work without the right to stand up for proper working conditions. I know it is not right for Americans to pretend not to care about a person’s immigration status when that person is working for less than minimum wage in sometimes deplorable conditions to produce cheap food. And I don’t buy the argument that “you’re here illegally so I as a citizen can avert my eyes and turn my back when you fall prey to gangs or abusive employers.” No. I am my brother’s keeper, period.

All About Race: The Racial Reset Button
Carmen D. issues a challenge to those who want to “move on” past racial issues.

Recently, I’ve been asked both directly and in roundabout ways, “When do we get to press the racial reset button?” The people who’ve asked this question seem to feel tired of dealing with racial issues and in particular are frustrated by the level of “black anger” they encounter. [...] I think it’s a fair question and one that I’ve been thinking about for some time. And I have come to the conclusion that I, too, would like to hit the “racial reset button.”

Blackprof.com: What Are The Consequences When The Powerful Are Impervious To Justice?

Kameelahwrites: Making Black Girls “Ladylike”

Based on two years’ observation at a Texas middle school, the Ohio University study found that teachers’ class-and-race-based assumptions of black femininity made them more likely to discourage behaviors and characteristics that lead to class involvement and educational success.

Marketing Whore: Some Interesting African-American Media History
Marketing Whore provides links to “A 1963 interview with Leonard Evans, founder of 1953’s the National Negro Network, titled ‘Why Do We Need a Negro Sunday Supplement?’”

Black Women In Europe: UK Study Shows Discrimination Against Asian And Black Women By Employers

Zuky: Angry Asian Gathering
A really interesting analysis of where Kai thinks anti-racism activism (particularly in the Asian-American community) should be going, using a recent panel discussion as a bouncing-off point. Here’s a sample, but Kai covers a lot of ground, so I hope you’ll click through and read the whole thing:

I think that outrage and protest occupy an important place within media activism, especially when your community is more or less shut out from most all other avenues of expression in mainstream culture, marginalized, mocked, disrespected, and misrepresented in the popular imagination. But I think that outrage and protest gain even more power when they occur within an overarching media movement that incorporates the additional elements and dimensions that I’ve mentioned. For example, it seems to me that a major reason Beau Sia’s open letter got through to O’Donnell and elicited an apology is that it was an act of positive cultural production, an act of artistry and humanism, not a narrowly-conceived ideological condemnation.

Rachel’s Tavern: Researching Race
Rachel discusses how academic methodology and academic culture effect the study of race and racism.

C.N. Le: Why American Indians Join The U.S. Military

Angry Asian Man: Racism In The Motel Industry

Interesting story in TIME on the large number of South Asian-owned hotels that have popped up along America’s historic Route 66: No-Tell Motels. Members of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association now own 37% of the U.S. hotel industry. Unfortunately, the trend has prompted a xenophobic, racist response from competitors, with AMERICAN OWNED signs popping up outside motels around the country. Let me translate that for you… what they mean to say is, “NOT IMMIGRANT OWNED” … or dare I say it, “WHITE OWNED.”

And then head over to Resist Racism and read a very similar post about covert racism in the dry cleaning industry.

Vox Ex Machina: Nobel Peace Prize Winner Mistaken For Beggar, Thrown Out Of Hotel
Vox writes, “This is why arguments like ‘Pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ are kind of counterproductive in the face of racism. Even when people have the right combination of determination, luck and ability and actually manage it, they can still get screwed by racism.”

Black Amazon: The Devil’s Curly Hair
There’s no way I can sum up this post: It’s too complex and multilayered. And there’s no way I can leave it out of this Carnival, because it’s too good and too interesting. It’s about sex, and more specifically about the intersection of race, sexuality, sexism, the pressures to be chaste and the pressures to NOT be chaste, and it’s named after a line from The Simpsons Movie. If that’s not enough to get you to go read it…

My DD: Systemic Injustice and Coalition Building

It’s true that there is simply no way the Democratic Party is likely to lose Black and Latino votes to the Republicans any time soon. Also, many good arguments have been put forward in the netroots about the inherent problems of single-issue advocacy. Yet it weakens the progressive electoral coalition if allies in minority communities feel like they’re the only ones who care about topics like these, the only ones who will talk about the rank injustice going on under the sanction of law, because they lose capacity to be able to engage on other topics. It’s also crucial to think long term about strengthening ties for the benefit of the next generations of progressives, to make sure that the racial disconnect and all its attendant resentments won’t be kicked down the line, like the bill for Bush’s tax cuts.

The above quote is just a sample; there’s some good analysis there. I also liked this, from the comments: “We go nowhere if we think the white male middle class demographic can be the core of progressive politics.”

Kimchi Mamas: Two Formative Racial Experiences, Both Involving Parents

Growing up, I tried to ignore such racially charged, derogatory comments, but on occasion I realized some people were just a product of their environment. And sometimes, I would get to know these people and eventually, befriend them. It wasn’t that I necessarily wanted them as friends. It was more selfish; I needed to know that people weren’t inherently cruel and callous and that they could change their attitude.

The North Star: Yale, Stereotypes, and Being The Long Black Biker On A Bike Tour Of Middle America

Daisy’s Dead Air: Medical Apartheid
Daisy provides an overview of some of the work of Harriet Washington, who has researched the history of medical abuse of African-Americans, from slavery to recent times. Daisy argues that this is one major reason many African-Americans “are tremendously skeptical of the medical establishment.”

Reappropriate: Yellowface In “Chuck And Larry”

(Reappropriate is offline right now, but I’m including this link anyway, since with luck it’ll come back online soon. Meanwhile, here’s a quote:)

A lesser publicized but equally weighty concern over this film, however, is its prominent use of yellowface for Rob Schneider’s (surprisingly) uncredited role as the minister who weds Chuck and Larry. [...] Bearing a stereotypical mushroom cut, bucked teeth, jaundiced skin, and glasses reminscent of Mickey Rooney’s Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Schneider plays up the ‘r/l’ slurs and stilted “Chingrish” typically used to mock recent Asian immigrants.

Stereohyped: Great quote regarding Lindsay Lohan

Lindsay Lohan avoids felony charges, and any serious jail time, in part because the judge took into account her unstable upbringing. This makes total sense, since all the blacks and Latinos flooding our prison system had such wonderful home-lives.

Slant Truth: Please Stop Playing The “Free Speech” Card!
Because being criticized is not a violation of your free speech rights.

Egotistical Whining: Brief Comment On “Hairspray”

Too bad social progress isn’t actually made by big dance numbers. That would be a lot more fun than court cases and hashing things out with people you disagree with.

Double Consciousness: An Arab School? Must Be One of Dem Crazy Jihadi Places!

Oh hold on to your pants white folks! They’ll be jihadis running rampant in New York city and in our public schools!! Oh sweet Jesus! Imagine it! These Arab and non-Arab children actually learning about another (or their own) culture! And learning another language besides English! Another language besides English! Oh the humanity!

Paul Krugman: How Racism Could Help Rudy Giuliani Win

Sepia Mutiny: Mo’ Harold and Kumar
Okay, maybe this really isn’t one of the best posts I’ve read this month, but I just loved that movie (despite the sexism) and finding out there’ll be a sequel made me happy.

I hope I can be forgiven for linking to a couple of posts that have appeared on “Alas” in the last month.

Alas, a Blog: Whiteness = Nerdiness?

One reason whites aren’t cool, hip or trendy is that we are always in style. Cool whiteness is usually coded as the All American or Preppy style and it is epitomized by thin white people with blond hair and blue eyes. Perhaps hyperwhiteness, whatever that is, is not cool. I have heard people on occasion pejoratively say–”That’s so white.” But what is most striking to me is that in American culture there are always white celebrities and pop culture icons who get to define the trends. There are a few token blacks, Latinos, and Asians as pop culture makers, but whiteness always gets a place at the cool kids table.

Alas, A Blog: White Lies
This political cartoon by me is, I think, better than most of my cartoons.

SOME ENDNOTES FROM YOUR TIRED HOST

A word about the pictures: The paintings illustrating this Erase Racism festival are from artist Robert Shetterly’s series Americans Who Tell The Truth. Clicking on each image will bring you to a page with a larger version of the image, as well as some biographical information about the person depicted. Curtsy: All About Race.

Thanks for reading this far! I hope you enjoyed this edition of the Erase Racism Carnival, and that you may have even discovered a couple of bloggers you hadn’t previously been aware of.

Thanks to everyone who sent in submissions and suggestions; thanks to the “Erase Racism” organizers and the 15 previous hosts, who have provided me with so much reading for nearly a year and a half now; and mostly, thanks to all the bloggers who continue to write in opposition to racism.

The 17th edition of the Erase Racism Carnival will by hosted by Susan at ReadingWritingLiving.

(Edited to add: Not counting the many posts that have been lost to various causes over the years, this is post number 3,000 to appear on “Alas, a Blog.” Just thought I’d mention.)

If you haven’t already, I urge you to read Part 1 and Part 2. (If you haven’t read Part 2, or haven’t read it in a while, you might want to read it before reading Part 3, if only because the last paragraph of Part 2 feeds very specifically into what Part 3 is about. I will also say that Part 3, more so than either 1 or 2, contains material that some people might find disturbing and/or triggering. The issues raised by that material are resolved not in Part 3 itself, but later in the essay. I ask, therefore, for your patience in that regard, and I also ask that you be patient if my response(s) to comments about that material ask you to wait until I get to those later parts of the essay.)

Part 3

Sitting on my bed with her back against the wall, Beth–who’s come to visit during my first year of graduate school–is telling me something that I wish I could remember. Indeed, in the first drafts of this essay, including the one that was published online, I wrote this passage as if I did remember. I had her telling me that she’d decided to study fine art, a decision I’m pretty sure she actually made around the time that what I am about tell you took place; and it may have been that her decision was what we were talking about. Beth had been struggling with how to give what she considered legitimate and purposeful expression to the creativity that was in her for some time, but the fact is that I don’t remember and to let you think that I do would be to create, if not a justification–because justification, while it was the first word that came to mind, is wrong for what I want to say–than a logical explanation for something that I have in been trying unsuccessfully to explain to myself for more than 20 years.

So, Beth is sitting on my bed and talking, but I am suddenly listening from a place so deep inside myself that the sounds leaving her mouth no longer coalesce into meaningful units. There is a moment of blankness and then, as if someone else has taken control of my brain, I am forced to watch a vision of myself getting up from the chair when I’ve been sitting, putting one hand around Beth’s throat, holding her against the wall, and with my other hand slapping her back and forth until she is senseless and bloody. I see myself screaming in her ear, letting her drop to the floor and kicking her in the stomach as hard as I can. In the vision, my mouth moves but no words come out.

Unaware that I’ve stopped hearing what she has to say, Beth continues talking, gesturing to emphasize the importance of her words, imploring with her eyes for I-don’t-know-what, and then the violence in my mind begins again. Realizing that my hands have clenched into fists, I excuse myself and move quickly to the bathroom. Locking the door behind me, I take deep breaths and splash cold water on my face. When I’m sure the impulse to lash out has passed, I flush the toilet and go back to the bedroom where, thankfully, Beth notices it’s time for me to go to class, and she tells me she’ll finish later. I grab my books, kiss her quickly on the cheek and, knowing I will need some time alone to try to sort out what has just happened, tell her that I have work to do in the library and therefore won’t be back until just before we’re supposed to go out for dinner.

The afternoon sun is warm on my face, so I decide to walk to class instead of taking the bus. Beth’s decision to become an artist should make me happy. (I know I just wrote that I am not sure this decision is what we were talking about, but it was an issue in our relationship at the time, and since I’ve mentioned it, I don’t want to leave it hanging without at least some explanation.) Not only does it mean that she’s choosing to do what she really wants to do, but it also holds out the promise of a resolution to a tension between us that I had given up being able to do anything about. More than once, Beth has told me she’s afraid I will become more committed to my writing than to her. Now that she has her own art to commit to, I’m hoping she’ll begin to see that the two commitments need not be mutually exclusive.

I’m starting to feel a little better, more in control of myself, but I begin to realize that I will never be able to sit through class. I need somewhere quiet, where I can sit by myself and really think about what happened this morning.

I head to the library.

My idea as I settle into one of the chairs on the second floor is to  write out what I’m feeling in a letter to myself, a strategy I’ve used before when I don’t know what’s going on inside me. As soon as I put my pen to the page, though, what comes out does not begin Dear Richard. Instead, it is the beginning of a poem:

 I want a bearded man, shirtless, in faded jeans,

to come one barefoot night and take me in his mouth.

I don’t know where the words come from, but the shock of recognition when I read them is immediate and frightening, and I know there is a clarity in them that I am not fully able to see. Staring at the page, unable to write another word, I wonder if I’m trying to tell myself that I’m gay and that the problem I have with Beth is that I should be going out with a boy instead. I remember Brian and how we became friends in our senior year of high school, watching a teammate strike out trying too hard to hit the ball over the fence during a gym-class softball game.

“I don’t get it,” Brian said to no one in particular, shaking his head from side to side as the other boy slammed his bat to the ground, threatened to beat the shit out of the pitcher, and stormed off the field as if he’d failed to make a team he’d dedicated his life to making. “I just don’t get it.”

“Get what?” I asked.

We’d been standing next to each other through most of the class, but Brian looked at me as if he were seeing me for the first time. “What’s the big deal? I mean, it’s not like he’s going to fail for striking out.”

“You’re right,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Brian’s face lit up as if he were visiting from another country and had at last found someone who could speak his language. Then his eyes narrowed a little, “Yeah, but at least you can hit the ball.” It was a test; he was not much of an athlete.

“So I can hit the ball,” I responded. “So what?”

And we were friends; and we quickly became best friends. Sadly, though, what I remember most about our friendship is the day it began to end. “You’re just different,” he told me. We  were sitting in my room. “I’ve never met anyone like you, and they just can’t accept that.”

“I’ve never met anyone like you before either,” I said, not even bothering to ask him who they were.

“But they’re saying we’re closer than we should be, that we’re not, you know, normal.”

“So? When has either of us ever really cared about what they have to say?”

Brian looked so grateful for these words that I thought he was going to cry, and his eyes did start to grow big with a feeling that welled up in him, but then he looked away and almost whispered, “Maybe they’re right. Maybe we are closer than we should be.”

I tried to convince him that he was wrong, but it didn’t work. He started–or at least in memory, he started bringing female friends along whenever we went out, and–again, as I remember it–college applications, yearbook committee meetings and other graduation-related work suddenly kept him so busy that he had less and less time to see me. The summer after graduation, while I was working at a sleep-away camp in Massachusetts, we wrote letters, but when I came home, he was gone, off to his freshman year at Cornell University. I probably had his phone number and address, but I don’t think I ever used them, and I don’t remember receiving either mail or phone calls from him. We did try once to reconnect during the winter break of our freshman year, meeting for a drink at one of the bars we’d hung out at when we were still close. He brought his girlfriend, a dark woman I remember sitting silently in the corner of the booth while Brian and I struggled to find things to say to each other. The conversation is lost to me now, but I can still feel the finality of our good-byes, neither of us even pretending we’d try to see each other again.

At the end of the academic year, while I waited on line to register for my sophomore classes, I met the woman who’d sat next to me in twelfth-grade English. “Whatever happened to your friend Brian?” she asked.

“He’s at Cornell,” I answered, “but I haven’t heard from him in a while.”

“You know,” she said, “everyone thought the two of you were gay.”

“I know.”

“Were you?”

“No.”

With cinematic timing my turn to register came next, and I gave her a small, silent wave as I walked to the registrar’s window. I have continued throughout all these years, however, to wonder about my answer. It was the answer I think Brian would have wanted me to give, and I gave it without a second thought. Despite its literal truth, however, or, rather, its truth given that what the woman probably wanted to know was whether Brian and I had been having sex, the word “no” has felt dishonest to me for a long time, as if what I had done was to deny the emotional content of our friendship, not characterize its physical nature.

When I think about Brian now, I often wish to have back that moment when he decided “they” were right and we were wrong. Not because I think I could have done anything differently to change his mind, but because envisioning how things might have been different is a gesture of defiance I wish I had made a long time ago, a way to begin figuring out the answer I ought to have given to the woman from my English class, and of understanding why I responded with a homoerotic poem to the violence I imagined years later doing to Beth. We ended up not going to dinner that night. After I wrote those two lines, I felt better, calmer, more at peace with myself, and so I was able to tell her about the vision my imagination had conjured for me. We spent the night trying to figure out where in our relationship my anger came from, but our only success–at least from my point of view, since it left me bent over, laughing with hysterical relief–was that I found the courage to scream what I was really feeling, and they were words I regret even now, “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!”

Beth, of course, was horrified and deeply, deeply hurt, but instead of breaking up with me, or at least putting some distance between us while I tried to figure out where my rage was coming from, she stayed with me for the rest of the weekend, a decision I can only describe as courageous and loving, and we talked and talked our way into the feeling that we could stay together, which we did for five more years. I was immensely grateful to her for that, though I don’t think I ever expressed that gratitude sufficiently.

What disturbed me at the time–aside from the content of what I imagined–and what continues to haunt me whenever I think about it, is that I didn’t even know I was so angry. There were tensions in my relationship with Beth, as there are in any relationship, but nothing of a magnitude, or at least nothing I experienced as of a magnitude, that corresponded even a little to the violence I’d imagined myself doing. Even now, more than two decades later–and in all that time I’ve had nothing even remotely resembling the experience I’ve just described–I find myself wondering what I don’t know about the subterranean workings of my psyche. I am an angry man–though I am now a much less angry man than I was when I first wrote this essay–and I know that much of my anger is sexual, and if there is anything that being a man is supposed to give you license to do, and I am talking here about deeply held cultural values, not the laws of any given country, or the ethical or moral principles taught by religion, it is to take your sexual anger out on the bodies of others, usually women, and to do so with relative impunity. I have, as you will see, good reason to be angry. Part of what writing and rewriting this essay has been about, for me, has been learning to stop being afraid of my anger and, therefore, of myself.

Cross-posted on It’s All Connected.

I’m going to organize this as bullet points for each episode. 

Gods Jewish Warriors

• I thought this was the best one of the series. 
• It was balanced in showing both the extremist settlers, and the more mainstream Jews who were opposed to the extremists.
• They gave ultra-orthodox Jews a free pass on the sexism issue, which was unfair.  They noted the treatment of women by Muslim and Christian fundamentalists, but mentioned nothing that I recollect.
• I was also impressed with how they discussed the international dimensions of the settler movement, and the fundamentalist Christians and right wing Jews who provided money and support to the settler movement.
• They also discussed the changes throughout history and covering the various peace agreements between Israel and its neighbors.  One of the most disturbing parts of the special was the discussion of the killing of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.  If you don’t know the story, you can click on the link.

God’s Muslim Warriors

• I felt like this one was a little more predictable because we are quite accustomed to critiques of Muslim fundamentalists–people promoting violence, Jihad, etc.  I do wish they would have highlighted more of the moderate leaders, and more people opposed to Islamic fundamentalism.  They did interview a few people who left extremist groups, which was interesting, but I wish they would have talked with people who were fighting these extremists all along.
• I thought the scenes of the Iranian women protesting were the most moving.  Heart has several postings on the women’s movement in Iran; you can find them here.  Many of the Muslim countries in the Middle East have draconian anti-women policies, and these policies are often justified in the name of religion.  By far one of the most consistent trends with Muslim, Christian, and Jewish extremists is their disdain for the rights of women.
• They did very good at focusing on the international dimensions of the movement; in particular the growing movement in Europe.  What I also found interesting was how both the Christian and Muslim fundamentalists were obsessed with the “cultural decay” in the West, focusing mostly on the decline in traditional definitions of family, materialism, and hedonistic popular culture. 

God’s Christian Warriors

• This was by far the worst of the three.  First, they didn’t show any of the Christian fundamentalists who advocate murder and violence.  There was a brief mention of bombing abortion clinics, but I wish they would have had an in-depth interview with someone like American terrorist Eric Rudolph or any of these people who have engaged in violence at abortion clinics. What about the Christian Identity movement?  What about Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps and his family?  They did talk with Christian fundamentalists, but they didn’t talk to the ones who engage in or promote violence like they did in the first two parts of the series.
• I was happy to see them discuss gender, and the treatment of women, especially when Christiane Amanpour told the one minister that the Taliban said the same thing as him. That was classic.  But they didnt get into the depth that they could have– discussing churches who barred women from being ministers.
• There were not enough interviews with people opposing Christian fundamentalism.  They had two ministers who stepped away from some parts of the movement.  I liked the Minnesota minister, who couldn’t figure out why these groups were so obsessed with homosexuality as a sin, but not materialism, greed, or gluttony.
• There was no coverage of the international nature of Christian fundamentalism.  You would think it is only in the US, but there are places like.  Several of the countries in the pink on this map prohibit abortion even in the cases of rape and incest, and Christian fundamentalists are responsible for promoting this in many countrries.  This list also includes some of the various Christian based terrorist groups around the world.

What do you think?

[Bumped to the top by Amp!]

The 16th Erase Racism Carnival will be taking place here on “Alas” this month!¹

There’s no special theme required;we just want to see blog posts published since July 27th having to do with “creating a world free of racism.” Please submit links to any good posts you know of, by email, by leaving a comment with this post, or by using the submission form at the Blog Carnival “Erase Racism” page.

Deadline is August 26th, and if all goes well the carnival will be posted by the end of the day on August 27th.

1. So why am I making this announcement after I’ve quit blogging? I volunteered to do this before I quit, you see. (back)

There’s a really interesting post at Feministe on tensions between feminist attitudes towards violence against women and a radical (or liberal, or progressive) analysis of the prison system. It’s certainly been a tension I’ve felt as I’ve cheered some men being locked-up (Brad Shipton and John Dewar) and despaired when others were let free (Clint Rickards). Bean quotes from Daniel Lazare’s discussion of Marie Gottschalk’s book:

Gottschalk’s assault on ’70s feminism is sure to raise the most eyebrows. She argues that the women’s movement helped facilitate the carceral state by promoting a punitive approach to sexual violence that was unmitigated by any larger political considerations. This single-minded focus led to what The Prison and the Gallows describes as unsavory coalitions with tough-on-crime types. In the State of Washington, women’s groups successfully marketed rape reform as a law-and-order issue so that, when the measure finally passed in 1975, it was “in part by riding on the coattails of a new death penalty statute.”

I don’t think any coalition between anti-rape activism and law-and-order types is necessary, but I don’t think it’s the responsibility of anti-rape activists to make sure our work doesn’t get co-opted.

I was listening to the radio today and heard that the supreme court had allowed the appeal of a man who had murdered his wife and one of the reasons was because the judge in the case had wrongly said that the defence of provocation isn’t available if someone had decided to kill someone else. I said to myself “Jeez didn’t the judge know that a defence of provocation is always available when a man kills his sexual partner?” (for full details the supreme court decision is available in pdf

The hate the provocation defence - I am sick of hearing ‘the bitch asked for it’. But here’s the thing - ultimately I don’t want Laxman Rajamani to be in jail. I don’t believe in jail. I don’t think the threat of jail stops men being violent against women. I think violent men who go into jail almost all come out more violent. I don’t think the protection that while in jail violent men are mostly only going to be violent to other men is enough for a system that churns out men more violent than they go in.

So when I argue that the provocation defence should be scrapped, or talk about the defences that should not be available to rapists, I’m not arguing that because I think these men should be in prison. I’m arguing against these defences because I think they do real damage to women, either individually as witnesses in trials, or collectively as rape myths and women-as-property is all throughout the court and media.

I think feminists need to continue standing up against our court system, and the way it values women’s words and women’s lives, but we need to do so from a stand-point that the current justice system offers abused women almost nothing.¹

The article bean quoted seemed to run together non-state actions against rapists, with the war on crime:

In Berkeley, antirape activists picketed an accused rapist’s home. In East Lansing in 1973, they “reportedly scrawled Rapist on a suspect’s car, spray-painted the word across a front porch and made warning telephone calls late at night.”

To which I say “Awesome”. I believe that the most powerful women have against rapists isn’t prison or the state (which will not act in our interests), but naming.

Edited: I realised that I needed to signal that my friend was joking when talking about Brad Shipton. Particularly outside NZ, where people don’t know who Brad Shipton is, and what he represents. I also know that lynching has quite differnet political meaning in America. I should have made clear that it was a joke earlier, sorry.

1. In my original version of this post I included this sentence: “As a friend joked, when I talked about this tension: “The correct political position is that they should let Brad Shipton out of jail so we can lynch him.” One of the dangers of writing on the internet is that words can have very different historical and political meaning in different places. I know enough about American history that I shouldn’t have included that sentence. (back)

While I write a bit about bodies, fat and ‘the obesity epidemic’ I don’t write that much about the health aspects of this. Mostly because I largely find them irrelevant. Other people can do very good jobs of proving that the causative relationship between having a high BMI and negative health outcomes remain unproven at best. I think that in many ways this gives too much ground. Even if, someone down the track, they managed to prove that there is a causative relationship between being fat and dying earlier, then my problems with the way people talk about ‘the obesity epidemic’ wouldn’t change. Partly this is empirical - we have a couple of generations of women (particularly white middle-class women) who have been (and are being) told that their value as a human being was dependent on not taking up space, that hasn’t made all middle-class white women skinny. But it’s also part of my wider analysis: I don’t believe that health issues are an individual problem (let alone an individual moral problem).

But sometimes I read something that makes me go ‘How can anyone believe the shit that gets promulgated?”

In this case I was listening to a radio interview and they were talking about the death rate among Pakeha and Maori.* In this discussion the interview mentioned part of this was because the death rate from cardio-vascular disease has decreased hugely (over 50% for some ethnicities). This was partly because cadio-vascular disease is decreasing, and partly because people with cardio-vascular disease are living longer.

So where’s this ‘obesity epidemic’ and how is it supposed to be killing people if death from cardio-vascular disease has halved?

* Apparently the gap has gotten smaller, which is great until you hear that the Maori death rate between the ages of 1-74 is still two to three times that of Euopean/Other. Also just because it can’t be repeated enough health disparities were widening in the 80s and 90s:

It seems likely widening social gaps during the 80s and 90s, including income and unemployment differences between ethnic groups, were at least partly responsible for the widening health inequalities, Prof Blakely said.

CNN is airing a special on relgious fundamentalism; it is a 3 part series.  Tonight is God’s Jewish Warriors, and in the next two days they will cover God’s Christian Warriors and God’s Muslim Warriors.  If you are watching, what do you think?

New York City has been debating the merits of a program that would charge drivers a $8.oo a day fee to travel into the most congested part of Manhattan during peak travel hours (For those unfamiliar with New York, we’re talking downtown where all the big skyscrapers are.).  The fee was called congestion pricing, and it is designed to reduce pollution and traffic congestion in the city of New York.  The fee would only be charged once a day, and tolls coming into the city could be deducted from the fee.  Many were complaining that this is an undue burden on middle and working class people.  Some said it would harm businesses, and others felt it would not reduce traffic.  Some suburbanites are up in arms because this will make their commute much more expensive.

I have to be honest, while I’m sure this is a burden on some middle class people, I feel that many people are being really whiny about this and they are refusing to take the financial hit that many of us in the New York metro area already take.  I don’t even drive into Manhattan, and I have to pay $8 a day in tolls.  I travel from Westchester to Long Island and route that is basically inaccessible via public transportation.  People who travel from Queens to the Bronx also have to pay the same toll, and we aren’t even talking about the most congested parts of the city.  People who drive into Manhattan at least have the chance to take reliable public transportation.  So right now the people who are not heading into the primary areas for rush hour traffic are paying out the wahzoo, and those traveling into Manhattan, are not going to have to pay a premium to do so.  To me this seems absolutely backwards.

I know $8 is costly I’ve been paying it for years, but I don’t have much sympathy to others who are heading into a very inaccessible area and are refusing to take on any burden to do so.  I also know this is hard to understand for people who haven’t lived in the NYC metro area.  This area has horrible traffic, and the geography does nothing to help.  Manhattan is an island, and Queens and Brooklyn are part of another island (Long Island).  You also have Staten Island, which is obviously an island.  The only borough that is not an island is the Bronx.  So everywhere you go you are crossing bridges, and most of those bridges have tolls ranging from about $2.50-to $8.00 (The default seems to be $4 or $4.50 if you don’t have a EZ pass.).  The bridges are often bottle necks for traffic, and an accident on a bridge can cause major delays (sometimes hours) The good news is that even though traffic is really bad, public transportation is well developed, especially in Manhattan.  There are some weak spots for public transportation–traveling from suburban area to suburban ares is generally not easy via public transportation.

However, in the long run we are going to have to make some sacrifices.  If I can already pay $8 a day to travel from suburb to suburb, my neighbors can pay the $8 to go into Manhattan.  We need to reduce air pollution in New York, and cutting down on car traffic is one way to do that.  I’m sympathetic to the small percentage of folks who are plumbers and other service workers who cannot take pubic transportation into Manhattan because they have to lug tools with them, but others who drive to Manhattan don’t get a lot of sympathy from me, especially when people who are not even driving in the most congested areas pay the same (or more) in tolls.

Project Runway has got everything you’d want in a reality show, interesting challenges, weird people and a look at a different world. In the most recent episode here in NZ the challenge was to design for another contestant’s mother or sister. There was a lot gross about the way things were done; the designers got to pick the relatives, which was a ‘we want skinny people’ version of picking teams at school. But the episode as a whole was fascinating, most of the designers were truly stumped by designing for people who weren’t models, particularly fat people who weren’t models.

I think it was Robert Best who said “I don’t understand these proportions”. His day job is to design for Barbie.

Jeffrey, who is a misogynist prick at the best of times, said “If I go then there’s nothing I could have done - I couldn’t have prepared for this challenge.”

It makes me want to read about the history of fashion to figure out how we got here. Where there is a whole occupation, models, to make women to fit its clothes. We’re so used to this ridiculous artifice that it’s absurdity is only brought home when barbies proportions make sense to a designer, and a woman’s, any woman’s, proportions do not.

One of these things is not like the other,
One of these things is not the same…

Can you guess which one?

Oh, I take it back. They’re all hilarious.

Read the rest of this entry »