A friend of mine who does not like jazz–especially anything that has a saxophone in it–told me once about a conversation she and her ex-husband, a serious jazz-lover, had over dinner with a couple, the male half of which also loved jazz, while the female half felt similarly to my friend. This second woman defined her dislike by saying something along the lines of, “I don’t need to sit and listen to a bunch of men masturbating,” a reference both to the emphasis in jazz on the improvised solo and to the fact that most jazz musicians–or maybe most well-known jazz musicians–seem to be men. My friend said she felt an immediate click of rightness when her dinner guest made this statement, which led to a long discussion about the comparison between music and sex, between improvisation and solo sex–though, of course, jazz improvisation is not usually done in solitude. I have written elsewhere about the connection I made early on in my own sexual awakening between the orchestrating of sexual pleasure during lovemaking and music, but what my friend’s story made me think about was how, say, a certain kind of jazz solo, where the musician explores subtle nuances of melody and harmony, or the various ways in which you can slice up a beat to create different rhythmic textures, corresponds to the kind of masturbation in which you use the pleasure you are giving yourself to explore yourself, either through the fantasies that arise while you masturbate or through the different kinds of awareness your solo lovemaking gives you of your own body; and then I thought about how rock solos or blues solos or the large solo concerts that Keith Jarrett once gave all have an analog in masturbation, from the kind that is just a release of sexual tension to the kind that is an affirmation in deep sadness and/or joy–and/or the entire range of emotions it is possible to feel during sex, which means pretty much all the emotions of which human beings are capable–of the fact that you are alive, which for me is what defines the sound of the blues, to the kind that is large and complexly motivated and that you may never fully understand.

Masturbation is, as all sex is, a working through of who we are and how we feel about ourselves, of what we wish for, of what we wish to avoid, of the history of our bodies, of everything that makes us human in the capacity of our bodies to experience that humanity; and there is a way in which sex is the creation of a symbol of that humanity: in the pleasures we move through on our way to orgasm, not because orgasm is the only and necessary goal of sex–though in masturbation orgasm usually is the point–but because each orgasm, whether we are conscious of it or not, is something to which we have to give meaning, and meaning requires history, not only the specific history of the sensations that brought you to this particular orgasm, but the larger personal and cultural history that each of those sensations taps into. I know I’ve had orgasms that changed me. Some were solitary and some were shared, but all of them captured a truth about myself that I needed to face if I was going to grow, sexually and otherwise.

This symbolic aspect of sex–which may or may not be an accurate way of talking about these things, but which makes sense to me–reminds me as well of something I read a long time ago in Suzanne Langer’s book, Feeling and Form about how music is the symbolic representation of the process of human emotion and that it is this symbol which the composer creates on the page and that the performer plays into existence when he or she performs; and so it occurs to me that sex, solo or otherwise, is the playing into existence of that part of ourselves that is waiting to become, and sometimes we will understand what we are becoming in and through sex, and sometimes sex is what opens us up to the fact that this understanding is what we need to find.

So I am wondering: What have people out there understood? What have they found? Which are the orgasms that have changed you?

Cross posted on It’s All Connected.

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — Sudanese police fired tear gas and beat women protesting at the trial Tuesday of a female journalist who faces a flogging for wearing trousers in public.

Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussein could receive 40 lashes if found guilty of violating the country’s indecency law which follows a strict interpretation of Islam. The 43-year-old says the law is un-Islamic and ”oppressive,” and she’s trying to use her trial to rally support to change it.

”I am not afraid of flogging. … It’s about changing the law,” Hussein said, speaking to The Associated Press after a hearing Tuesday.

Hussein said she would take the issue all the way to Sudan’s constitutional court if necessary, but that if the court rules against her and orders the flogging, she’s ready ”to receive (even) 40,000 lashes” if that what it takes to abolish the law.

Hussein was among 13 women arrested July 3 in a raid by the public order police on a popular cafe in Khartoum. Ten of the women were fined and flogged two days later. But Hussein and two others decided to go to trial.

In an attempt to rally support, Hussein printed invitations to diplomats, international media, and activists to attend her trial which opened last week. She also resigned from her job in the U.N.’s public information office in Khartoum, declining the immunity that went along with the job to challenge the law.

Around 100 supporters, including many women in trousers as well as others in traditional dress, protested outside the court Tuesday.

And from another article:

Police have also cracked down on another woman journalist, Amal Habbani, who published an article in Ajrass al-Horreya newspaper (Bells of Freedom) entitled: “Lubna, a case of subduing a woman’s body.”

I am awed by Ms. Hussein’s courage and determination. She’s now been banned from leaving the country, either out of pure vindictiveness, or to make it harder for her to appear in the media.

Anne of Carversville (whose blog is all over this story) has posted an English-language translation of an interview with Lubna Hussein. In the interview, Ms. Hussein claims that three of the women lashed for wearing pants were teenagers, one as young as 16.

(The photos came from this AP photo gallery. The blog title quote came from this article.)

UPDATE: More commentary on this case:

• Katha Pollitt at The Nation
• The F Word
• Earwicga
• Feministing
• Woman’s Media Center
• Cruella-Blog

SECOND UPDATE: Here’s a petition you can sign in support of Lubna Hussein.

I wrote this a long time ago, but I never got around to posting it, which is why the articles it refers to are old. I think it’s still more or less relevant though.

The fellas and lasses over at Feminist Critics have a tag for issues called What Feminism Got Right. Well, here. This is something Feminist Critics (the site, not the general population that might be so titled) Got Right.

Dick jokes are awkward.

So, let’s start with a personal anecdote. When I was in college, I had an acquaintance who decided to try to commit suicide because of his penis size. Also, because I wouldn’t date him, and neither would my boyfriend. (He’d decided we were to Become Polyamorous on his say-so.) Also, although I didn’t know this at the time, because he had profound issues with paranoia, delusion, and depression, and tried to commit suicide about once a week, particularly if he could find a (usually several years younger) female to reassure him that no, he shouldn’t do it! He was smart and good and wonderful and unique and worthwhile! (For the record, I do think that he would have hurt himself if the women he trapped into spending their evenings reassuring him had failed to reassure him. Just because his attempts were manipulative and a plea for attention didn’t mean that they weren’t also genuine.)

But anyway. The first time I talked him down, the initiating trigger was that his penis was so much smaller than my boyfriend’s.

So, already there are mixed feelings. There’s pity for Manipulative Suicidal Dude (MSD?) because this angst over his penis size was obviously deeply felt, and very painful for him, enough so to trigger suicidal thoughts — even if a lot of things did.

Simultaneously, I have the same sense of WTF? about the whole situation that I had then. The overt reasoning for why the MSD was so upset about his theoretically small penis was that the small penis proved he was “less of a man” than my boyfriend. As evidence for this, he proffered the fact that I was dating boyfriend instead of MSD. Therefore, boyfriend’s bigger penis was better able to please me. Or something.

However, the whole theoretical centering of me as the issue — alas my small penis shall never please ye! — seems suspicious. For one thing, boyfriend’s penis was indeed big. And, consequently, it was often painful. I do not like big penises, not because of aesthetics or morality or anything, but out of simple preferring not to hurt.

But, of course, no one was asking me.

That doesn’t mean other women don’t like big penises, and I do remember conversations in college in which other girls would say, “OMG, I had a threesome with very-good-looking-blond-boy-on-our-hall, and he’s ENORMOUS!” or, with a cat-who-seized-cream smile, “I love my boyfriend’s (expletive expletive superlative indicating very large) penis.” I also remember that my shudder of oh dear god, how can you possibly like that, ow? was not totally unique to me.

So, we have here an issue in which the women’s opinions really aren’t being solicited. My “ow” was irrelevant to the point of being written out of the scenario in favor of my wholly imaginary (sorry, ex-boyfriend, but yeah) “ohhhhhh.”

The real meat, if you’ll excuse me, of this competition wasn’t heterosexual — with me involved — it was homosocial. It was between boyfriend and MSD. This was fairly overt. MSD, in pre-suicide-attempt complaints, said that he couldn’t stand to live because Boyfriend outdid him in all ways. He had a better car, bigger dick, and a girlfriend (namely me) — and why, there’s that pesky woman showing up again, but not as a person, as a reward object.

So, there’s an undeniable ugliness here. Dick-size contests, in my experience, have been primarily homosocial, with women and women’s experiences both used as an excuse and effectively ignored.

But that’s only one salient pole (cough) of analysis.

In a number of other ways, MSD’s insecurity about his penis seems, to me, to be a good parallel for some kinds of women’s body insecurities. For instance:

1) MSD’s penis, by the reported averages, wasn’t actually small. It was actually perfectly penisly average.

Now, partly MSD was here a victim of statistics. A lot of penis size studies used to be based on self-reporting. When given the chance to say where their penises were size X or size X+1, men proudly reported themselves as X+1, leading to studies that yielded an average of X+1 inches — which I believe for years was 6 — when in fact, the actual data-as-measured produced an accurate measure of X, or 5. So, the majority of dudes were mistakenly told they were genitally sub-average.

Let’s look at women’s dress sizes. The majority of women think they are too fat, and that their bodies are unacceptable. They aren’t victims of specific studies with incorrect methodologies, but of widespread and systemic cultural beliefs and portrayals of women which create a visual default of a size X, when the majority of women can be found at size X+8-10.

There’s also 2) It didn’t matter the least little bit that MSD’s penis wasn’t actually small. Nor did it matter that I (or other women) reassured MSD that, even had his penis been small, that was still fine, because we preferred that or didn’t care. Because the problem that MSD was experiencing had very little to do with actual bedroom antics with women. It had to do with self-perception based on unrealistic ideals and associated with concepts of masculinity as divorced from the actual performance of masculinity.

When I write that I prefer penises on the average-to-small side — which I do — I can’t help but think of all those so-helpful men who launch themselves into threads on women’s bodies to assure us lamenting lasses that “they think curves are hot” and “I’ve never seen the appeal of skinny bodies anyway.” The reaction to this is inevitably, and justifiably, grumpy. Thanks, we reply, but we don’t need you to stigmatize skinny ladies (or, in the parallel, large penises) on our behalf.

And besides, we point out, the problem isn’t whether or not we can find a dude who wants to fuck us. We’re married; we’re asexual; we’re involved; we’ve had more sex in the past week than you’ll have in the next ten years; we get enough ‘reassurance’ of our ’sexiness’ from strangers with roving hands on the subway. The problem is the social attitudes which malign our bodies as gross, which mean that our wages go down as our waistlines increase, which indicate we will be treated poorly by strangers in public places, and so on.

Although women’s anxiety over body image is often framed as being a woman’s desire to be (or be seen as) more attractive, that’s a red herring. If that were the case, if our problems were solely based on the need to have partners who are attracted to us, then our body image problems would vanish with the introduction of men who are attracted to us. I’m married; I don’t want to attract any more men; my body image issues persist, though thankfully my eating disorders don’t.

As woman gain weight, their femininity and worth is called into question. As men’s perception of their penis size declines, their masculinity and worth is called into question.

The problems are very different in scope, in the kinds of social consequences that exist, and in how publicly the insecurities are paraded. It seems unlikely that a poorly endowed man will suffer lowered wages, mistreatment in public spheres, and so on.

However, there’s a pain here that can be understood, via analogy, to be somewhat similar in its core.

*

So, dick jokes.

Liberals’ use of dick jokes are premised on the idea that all liberals (all feminist liberals?) should theoretically understand that penis size — beyond extreme cases — is more or less irrelevant to sexual experience. We’ve all heard the stats about how the sex-sensitive nerves in a woman’s vagina can be more than adequately rubbed, prodded, and pleasured, by all but the most diminutive dicks. We all theoretically know that there are lots of ways that couples can sexually pleasure each other besides penis-in-vagina intercourse, and that there are grave problems with the elevation of the model of an enormous tree trunk thrusting into a delicate woman as if it were a battering ram.

So, to some extent, we’re saying: “Here, we all know that this isn’t something that matters. Isn’t this framework in which masculinity is based on cock size ridiculous? Yes, it is.”

However, we’re doing something else, as well. We’re tapping into the framework that penis size = masculinity.

There’s a cultural narrative that penis size is related to masculinity. With dick jokes, liberals are identifying people with an abusive, unhealthy, or anxious masculinity that leads them to do asshat-type things. They’re then making overt the connection between masculinity and penis size, and subverting that relationship by making the comments that would apply to the masculinity directly about the penis size. (Rather than saying, “You don’t need to be so anxious about your masculinity, dude. You’re a man no matter what you do,” we say, “You don’t need to worry that much about your dick, dude. It’s the way you use it that matters, not the size.”)

Both of these uses of dick jokes become unfunny when the joke moves from a theoretical framework to talking about an actual penis. In the first case, in which liberals are reassuring each other through humor that everyone knows dick size is irrelevant — well, you know, not everyone knows that. Or if they do *know* it, they don’t necessarily feel it. The cultural meme saying that a man is robbed of all masculinity if he has a small penis continues to have power even when one intellectually knows that it’s bunk.

In the second case, the joke works as long as it’s clear that what the liberal is targeting is not an actual penis, but an inflated sense of masculinity. The moment that an understanding of the poking at the framework disappears — that’s the moment when the joke starts to go flat, or look nasty, or both.

It’s absolutely vital to maintain the separation between mocking what a penis stands for, and mocking actual penises. I hope that liberals will, by now, accept that when you insult something as ‘gay’ or someone for being ‘fat’ you aren’t able to actually confine your meanness to just that person you’re targeting; you end up more generally aiming at all fat and gay people. If Rush Limbaugh, for instance, is mockable not just because he’s an asshat who extrudes pre-digested food products whenever he opens his mouth, but also because he’s tubby, then you’re saying that tubbiness is an objectively bad thing which can therefore also be used to malign people with whom you agree.

Now, it’s okay to mock fatphobic people for being fat, because they are trying to hurt other fat people while ignoring their own bodies. It’s okay to mock homophobic people for being gay when they try to use their influence to hurt other gay people.

And it’s pretty much okay to mock over-anxious masculinity by mocking penises, as long as you can make sure that your text never condenses the concept and the physicality. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to attain that level of precision in a humorous text. Combine that with the actual trauma that you can expect to have inevitably been experienced by some, probably young, guy in your reading audience, and you end up with a difficult situation.

So: dick jokes are sometimes okay, but difficult to pull off, and have the potential to trigger people.

I think liberals might be better advised to make fun of big penises when they want to lampoon the connection between anxious masculinity, and dicks. I find it both more amusing and less fraught when a liberal responds to some bloviating, hyper-masculine, stomping asshat with, “Yes, thank you, we all know your penis is enormous,” rather than suggesting the penis is small. It gets across all the same points about the silliness of the construction of American masculinity as something that can be easily lost, but it has less potential for triggering innocent bystanders.

And anyway, everyone’s penis is tiny compared to this.

From an Associated Press story, reporting on the widespread objections among mom-bloggers to the “new Dora” doll planned for October:

Mattel and Nickelodeon both say there are two major misconceptions about the new Dora, which is not replacing the “Dora the Explorer” cartoon, but will be a new interactive doll aimed at the five-to eight-year-old, or tween market.

“People care so deeply about this brand and this character,” Leigh Anne Brodsky, president of Nickelodeon Viacom Consumer Products, says. “The Dora that we all know and love is not going away.”

“I think there was just a misconception in terms of where we were going with this,” Gina Sirard, vice president of marketing at Mattel, says. “Pretty much the moms who are petitioning aging Dora up certainly don’t understand. . . . I think they’re going to be pleasantly happy once this is available in October, and once they understand this certainly isn’t what they are conjuring up.”

Part of the confusion stemmed from the silhouette that was released, which made Dora look more like a Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan than a young girl. For the record, the doll does not wear a short dress, but a tunic and leggings. And while she looks older (she’s supposed to be about 10), with longer jewelry and longer hair, she doesn’t have makeup and seems pretty much like a 10-year-old girl.

Nickelodeon and Mattel say that as part of unrelated research, they found parents wanted a way to keep Dora in their children’s lives and have their daughters move on to a toy that was age appropriate.

“The idea is Dora for more girls,” Brodsky says. “The whole point was this was created because moms said help us.”

Oh, those silly, silly moms! When will they realize that Nickelodeon and Mattel only want to help?

But then again… compare and contrast:

(Also, it looks to me like maybe the image on the left is wearing a dress, which cuts off at knee-level, as opposed to the tunic on the right which cuts off much higher and is worn with leggings. Silhouette found here and here.)

Confusingly, there’s another silhouette illustration of the New Dora I’ve seen, which is just the non-silhouette illustration with the details blacked out. As far as I can tell, Mattel released two different teaser silhouette drawings, but I’m not sure of the timing.

Honestly, assuming the newer illustration reflects what the doll will look like, things could be much worse. The original Dora will still be on TV. Dora’s new outfit is funky and fashionable, without being overly sexualized as the Bratz outfits are. And I’m always happy to see a mainstream doll that’s not white. There’s still a ton wrong, but there are way worse dolls on the market.

But still — the original Dora was ever so much cooler.

More blogging about “New Dora”:

Womanist Musings: Dora The Explorer Matters To Boys
Sociological Images: Seeing Is Believing
Viva La Feminista: Why Mattel and Nick Have It Wrong (Highly recommended. Check out her Dora tag as well, for more Dora-themed posts.)
The Hand Mirror: Dora’s new silhouette announced
Embrace Your Age: Keep Dora Exploring!
The Mommy Files: Dora The New Sexy Explorer
Feministing: The New Dora
Shakesville: Sooo

Finally, let me link to my own post from 2007, to make the point that this isn’t the first time Dora’s owners have thought “boy, if we could only sell a thinner, more girly Dora doll, we’d make a killing!”

A few months after my boys were born I stumbled across a message board for twin moms, I really started to enjoy the tips and the sense of community that I gained from reading and posting on the site.  One of the things I enjoyed most was the forum for breastfeeding mothers, which gave me a strong sense of belonging and encouragement, and at that time, I needed encouragement.  Breastfeeding was and is a struggle for me.  I don’t know how things would be different if I was trying to feed only one baby, but I know breastfeeding two babies is one of the hardest things I have done.  While the Mommy message board is a great source of support for breastfeeding, it’s also a place where many of the most contentious elements of motherhood and womanhood are laid bare.  Sometimes it’s the stereotypical Mommy Wars– women in the paid labor force and women not in the paid labor force– but one of the more contentious debates is the bottle vs. breast debate.

As Hugo points out one subset of the Mommy Wars, is the “boob wars”:

And I’ve become aware of what might, for lack of a better term, be called the “boob war” — a sub-conflict within the larger “Mommy War” that continues to rage, exasperating and frightening and dividing women. And into this fight comes a bombshell article in the new Atlantic Monthly: Hanna Rosin’s The Case Against Breastfeeding. More on the article later. (Cap taps, belatedly and with apologies, to Rod Dreher and to Scott.)

The term “Mommy Wars” generally refers to the public and private debates, common among the middle and upper-middle classes of the developed world, about what makes a “good” mother. For years, the chief front in these wars has been the battle over daycare and work outside the home, though other conflicts rage in areas like nutrition and natural childbirth….

I read the Rosin piece; someone posted it on the twin Mommy board.  I felt a great deal of sympathy for the mother who posted it.  She said it helped her to feel less guilt about not breastfeeding, and from that point a discussion ensued with many formula feeding mother’s talking about how they feel that breastfeeding mothers are looking upon them unfavorably.

I’ll be frank; I don’t like the article, but there is one part of the article that stands out as true to me¹ :

In her critique of the awareness campaign, Joan Wolf, a women’s-studies professor at Texas A&M University, chalks up the overzealous ads to a new ethic of “total motherhood.” Mothers these days are expected to “optimize every dimension of children’s lives,” she writes. Choices are often presented as the mother’s selfish desires versus the baby’s needs.

I have a great deal of empathy with mothers today who are striving to mother under a mothering ideology that demands perfection.  What I also find fascinating is how both breastfeeding and formula feeding mothers really have the same underlying feelings; both groups feeling that their decision on infant feeding is not respected.  Anytime these kinds of issues come up the Mommy board mantra is “do what works for you” “don’t judge each other’s parenting.”  The down side is that this places limitations on honest communications between these mothers, and the upside is that mother’s, who are already operating under ideology that demands parenting perfection, feel validated.

Nevertheless, topics like this are hotly contested on Mommy boards, and one thing I find most fascinating is that many Mommies blame each other, not the dominant ideology.  Here’s how I respond to the debate over this article on the Mommy board:

Women’s “choices” are often very heavily scrutinized, I wouldn’t say it’s primarily from women but from the entire society, and the hidden radical feminist in me says it’s because women as a class are not truly free. Every behavior that we engage in is held to a different set of standards than our male counterparts, and as you say we damned if we do and damned if we don’t. The can be extended to the abortion debate, the SAHM (stay at home mom) vs. working mom debate, debates over women and domestic violence, debates over women and plastic surgery, debates over hormone replacement therapy, and the list could go on and on. And I guess what bothers me is that we consistently divide women into dichotomies–e.i. virgins/w*hores, good girls and bad girls, bi*ches and nice girls. Thus, all of our behaviors are viewed in this context. I use the term choices loosely because I think that society convinces us that we have more choices than we really do. So many of our behaviors (or “choices”) occur in a societal context where we are so heavily scrutinized that our freedom is limited. It’s limited by peer pressure, it’s limited by sexism; it’s limited by patriarchal ideology; it’s limited by bottom line capitalism; it’s limited by racism; it’s limited by poverty; and I’m sure I could come up with a host of other factors that tell us “choices” are not just personal decisions.

Unfortunately this is where this crabs in a barrel problem comes in because we all feel heavily scrutinized but rather than blaming the social system that creates this mess we blame each other, and no matter what our so called “choice,” the constraints on our full personhood are still there.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also say that constraints on mothering are radically different in diverse groups of women.  For example, the breastfeeding vs. formula feeding debate has much different meaning for middle and upper income white women living in the US than it does for poor women of color in developing countries.  The the structures of gender, race, class, sexuality, and nationhood operate simultaneously.

I’m not one who think women all have to tow the line and agree with each other, but what gets lost in translation is how social forces much greater than us shape our “choices” to formula feed, breastfeed, or combo feed our kids.

1. I have several critiques of the Atlantic Monthly article that I would like to touch on in another post. (back)

Edited to add: Author’s Preface: I see each post in this series as one section of a single piece of writing, not as a discrete essay unto itself. As a result, while each section may contain its own argument, it is not really possible to know whether an issue that you feel is important will or will not be left out of the argument made by the entire piece if you’ve only read a part of the series. I certainly do not mean this caveat to be, in any way, an inoculation against critique, but given the modular nature of posting to blogs and of how blogs are read, it is a caveat I’d like you to keep in mind if you find yourself wondering, and commenting on, why I have not addressed something you feel needs to be addressed. Thanks.

///

To protect the privacy of the individuals involved, some names have been changed and some identifying details have been fictionalized.

Where I lived in the early 1970s, sixth grade was when boys got to see the movie–or maybe it was a narrated film strip with line drawings–about erections, nocturnal emissions, menstrual periods and such (girls got to see it in fifth grade). Seventh grade, if I remember correctly, was when they started teaching about sex itself, which I assume would have included a discussion of birth control, though I am not sure, since a paperwork mix-up placed me in the health class that did not include sex education. So I know I did not learn about birth control there; nor, I am equally sure, did I learn about it in the yeshiva I started attending when I was in eighth grade, where the only classroom-based “sex education” I remember receiving was in Rabbi W’s all-boy gemara class. He would preach at us week after week about the evils of co-ed dancing–it was the season of sweet 16 parties for the girls–and explain how it inevitably lead to unwanted teenage pregnancy. (The boys and girls watch each other dancing, you see, and then they want to slow dance, and so they are touching each other, and then one thing leads to another and, sooner or later they find someplace dark, and before you know it, her belly is big and both their lives are ruined.) My classmates and I talked about sex, of course, but since none of us were even thinking about actually having it, what we talked about tended to be theoretical and had little do with practicalities like preventing an unwanted pregnancy. Three incidents of such talking stand out in my memory, from 8th, 9th and 10th grades respectively.

I first learned about the baseball-diamond-as-metaphor-for-sex in 8th grade, because the big question was whether or not, at someone’s bar mitzvah to which I had not been invited, Robert “got to second” with Sharon over or under the shirt. “Over or under,” of course, was a huge question, one that my classmates pondered at great length, wondering why she would let him get that far, how cool it was that he could get her to let him get that far; or maybe he didn’t have to do all that much persuading, maybe underneath the “good girl” image that Sharon so carefully cultivated was a whole other person that those of us who knew her only in school had never met; and did this make her a “slut,” and how, precisely, did getting that far, did her letting him get that far, obligate him to her in terms of commitment; and what the hell–some people were smart enough to ask–did commitment mean in ninth grade anyway?

I could not imagine why what Robert and Sharon did or did not do with each other was anyone else’s business, nor did I think that the question of when a girl stepped over the line and became a “slut” was anything other than stupid, but I was new to the school, though, which meant no one thought my opinion mattered very much, and so I was almost never included in these conversations. Still, I do remember one time that I spoke up, asking–in response to I don’t remember what–some far-less-articulate version of the following questions: The whole point of touching a girl’s breasts is to bring her pleasure, right? What is wrong with Sharon wanting that pleasure or with Robert wanting to give it to her? And why are we talking about it like Robert was running bases and Sharon was playing (ineffective) defense? You make it sound like sex is a competition that the girl has to pretend to lose, just a little bit at a time, in order for both people to get what they want.

I was not naive. I knew that boys did in fact put “notches on their bedposts” depending on how far they got with any particular girl, and I understood that girls who went too far put that hard-to-pin-down thing called their reputation at great risk. I knew these things, however, as facts, and while I accepted them as information I needed to know about how the world worked, I did not really understand them, and, more to the point, I did not like them. Anyway, no one said anything when I was finished talking. All I have is a picture of my classmates’ faces turned towards me in a momentary, non-comprehending stare, and then they turned back towards each other and continued talking in the terms that were relevant to them.

The second talking-about-sex moment that I remember from yeshiva happened when I was in 9th. The boys in my class were scheduled to take a trip to the very famous Lakewood Yeshiva in New Jersey. I don’t remember why I didn’t go, but I was the only boy in my grade in school that day, and so, since our religious classes were all canceled–it would not have occurred to the administration to send me to class with the girls–I spent the morning shooting hoops in the gym. (The day was split: religious classes in the morning, secular classes in the afternoon.) After lunch, the girls and I decided we would cut classes for the rest of the day. After all, how much teaching would go on with more than half the class missing? So we went out to the back of the school, where one of the girls pulled out a copy of the Ann Landers sex test that had recently been published in one of the local newspapers. (What looks like the version of the test that the girls and I were talking about, can, if you’re willing to wade through some religious self-righteousness, be found here.)

We cut our first period class, which might have been math, talking and laughing about what was, for most of us at the time, the entirely theoretical nature of the items on the test; and we were doing absolutely nothing that would have been considered inappropriate anywhere other than an orthodox yeshiva, where the simple fact of our being alone together was cause for concern. Because of what could happen–remember Rabbi W’s worries over co-ed dancing–if we lost control of ourselves. Because of how, even though we were doing nothing but talking, it would look to an outsider that we are alone together in the first place. Then, just as second period English was about to begin, one of the girls who had gone inside to use the bathroom came running out to tell us that the boys were had returned. Apparently, they had stopped to get a blessing from Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, one of the most important rabbis of the 20th century. He gave them the blessing, they got back in their bus to go to Lakewood, and the bus broke down, forcing them to return to school. We ran into the building, rushed upstairs and, remarkably, made it to second period English on time, though it was only a few minutes into Mrs. Lynch’s lesson before Rabbi S burst into the classroom, pointed one by one to each of the girls and said, “You! Out!”

When he did not point to me, I thought perhaps I had escaped detection, but he came back a few minutes later, flung the door open with the same law-enforcement air about him, pointed to me and said, “You too!”

We were suspended, the girls and I, not only for cutting class, and not only because the idea of one boy and twelve girls hanging out alone in the back of the school was unseemly, but also, and to some administrators most importantly, because we had been talking about sex. When we were told that, before we’d be allowed back into class, our parents would have to come in to speak personally with Rabbi S, who was only available in the afternoons, I had to ask if my mother, since she worked, could come in the morning to speak with Rabbi F, the dean of the school. You would have thought that speaking to the Dean would be more serious than speaking to the principal of secular studies, but when my mother came in, all Rabbi F said was, “Mrs. Louras [her name from her second marriage], Richard is a real mensch, a wonderful boy. He made a terrible mistake, but we’re sure he’ll never do it again.” That was it. He and my mother exchanged some pleasantries, told me to go back to my class, and wished her a good rest of the day. My mother, who couldn’t imagine why they were making such a big deal out of the whole situation, collapsed laughing against the wall just outside the school entrance. “Remind me,” she said, “Why were you suspended again?” (To be fair, it’s not that my mother did not think I should be punished for cutting class, but she could not imagine that I was being suspended for a first offense or that the “real” problem, as it had been explained to her, was that I’d been alone with the girls and that we were talking about sex.)

I find it hard to believe that Rabbi F did not say more because he did not know why I had been suspended; nor do I think he did not consider my “offense” a very serious one. Most likely, he was just uncomfortable talking about such things with a woman, especially a woman like my mother, who in her jeans and one-button-too-many-undone button down shirt, her long denim frock coat and her afro, did not at all fit the image of the nice, middle-class Jewish mother with whom he was used to dealing. He never said anything else about the incident to me, either, but an incident that sticks in my head as somehow connected this episode took place later that year. Rabbi F pulled me aside one day while my class was in the library and, speaking very softly, indicated with this chin a new girl in the class whose boyfriend everyone knew was not Jewish. (Indeed, it had been the boyfriend who encouraged her to go to yeshiva so she could learn about her heritage.) He said something about her being a very nice girl, and attractive, and how it was a shame that she was dating a non-Jewish boy. Maybe–and I wish I could remember the exact words he used, because I remember thinking even at the time how absolutely precious his phrasing was–I could get friendly with her, not too friendly, mind you, but friendly enough that she would see just how much Jewish boys had to offer her. I refused, of course, and I think this may be the first time I am telling this story to anyone.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author’s Preface: I see each post in this series as one section of a single piece of writing, not as a discrete essay unto itself. As a result, while each section may contain its own argument, it is not really possible to know whether an issue that you feel is important will or will not be left out of the argument made by the entire piece if you’ve only read a part of the series. I certainly do not mean this caveat to be, in any way, an inoculation against critique, but given the modular nature of posting to blogs and of how blogs are read, it is a caveat I’d like you to keep in mind if you find yourself wondering, and commenting on, why I have not addressed something you feel needs to be addressed. Thanks.

///

To protect the privacy of the individuals involved, some names have been changed and some identifying details have been fictionalized.

Recent events in my life have started me thinking deeply, for the first time in many years, about condoms and what it means to use them. Not that I have failed to take condoms seriously. I have worn them when I needed to, refused to have intercourse when they were not available, and I have a ten-year-old son who knows what condoms are and why, all else being equal, everyone who has sex should use them. I am, though, also old enough to remember (and boy does it feel strange to use that expression) when safe sex was pretty much exclusively about birth control. I might have learned that using condoms would help keep me from catching or transmitting gonorrhea or syphilis, the only two STDs I knew about at the time, but I’m not sure. Instead, the focus in my sexual education when I reached puberty was on the need for a young couple planning to have non-procreational sex to do everything they could to prevent the woman from becoming pregnant, and that meant, for men, being willing to wear a condom unless the woman was on the pill, using a diaphragm or had an IUD.

It did not occur to me that there might be more to pre-AIDS male heterosexual responsibility than simply keeping a barrier between my semen and the body of the woman in whom I would otherwise have left it until I was having sex regularly with a woman I thought I was falling in love with–we were each in our early 20s and using only condoms–and I realized I did not know what she would do, or even what she thought she would do, if she became pregnant. Condoms, after all, do fail. I was as certain as I could be that I did not want to become a father, but I was also certain that the ultimate choice of what to do if she did become pregnant was hers. So, if a condom did fail, it suddenly occurred to me, and she decided not to have an abortion, I would be a father whether I wanted to or not. I knew I’d do my best to live up to the responsibilities that fatherhood would bring with it, but I did not think my relationship with that woman would survive. Not only would I have resented her for having made the decision that made me a father, but I did not yet know if the love I was beginning to feel for her was, as they say, a love that would last, and having to be parents to a child–forget whether or not we would have, or could have, gotten married–was not the circumstance under which I wanted to find out.

I will not retell here the story of what happened when I tried to talk to my girlfriend about my concerns, except to say that I was completely unprepared for her to tell me she had no idea what she would do if she got pregnant. It wasn’t that I expected her to know with 100% certainty what action she would take, or that I was looking for some kind of contractual agreement that would insulate me if she at first said she would have an abortion and then changed her mind; nor was I thinking that the only answer acceptable to me was the one I hoped she would give, i.e., that she would have an abortion. What I wanted, first and foremost, was that we should talk, openly and honestly, and then, once each of us knew where the other stood, we could make a decision about what we should do in response. It had never entered my mind, though, that the person who would be pregnant if pregnancy happened would even think about starting to have sex without some sense of what she would do.

Given that my girlfriend had not thought about this, or at the very least was unwilling to tell me what she thought about this, I did not see how we could continue having sex, or, to be more precise, how I could continue having sex, knowing first that our fucking put me at risk of becoming an unwilling father and, second, that if I did become an unwilling father, it would probably mean the end of our relationship. I’d been very happy with the sex we were having before we started fucking; I assumed my girlfriend felt the same way; and I saw nothing wrong with rolling things back to our pre-intercourse days until we were able to talk about this. I wanted to be with her, plain and simple, and that desire far outweighed for me the pleasures of putting my latex-covered penis in her vagina. So, more or less–at my insistence, not hers–we stopped fucking.

That “more or less,” of course, is important. Sometimes I was the one who initiated the sex we had, and sometimes she was; and I honestly don’t remember how many times “sometimes” actually means, but I am sure it was not a lot, at least not relative to how often we’d been fucking before we had this conversation. I also remember nothing of what we said to each other after these instances of “falling off the wagon,” though I am pretty sure that neither of us reproached the other. I do remember, though, that after each of those times I would tell myself it was the last one, and that I was disappointed in myself when that proved not to be the case.

Eventually–I don’t remember how much time passed exactly–my girlfriend told me she’d decided that if she got pregnant she would have an abortion, and we started having intercourse regularly again. Years later, however, in the fourth or fifth year of our relationship, in one of those let’s-talk-about-our-history-together conversations, she told me that she’d lied to me, that she’d always known she would not have an abortion if she got pregnant, and that she’d thought my plan had been to withhold intercourse as a way of pressuring her into having sex with no strings attached. She’d only said she would have an abortion, she explained, because she’d been convinced I was going to leave her if she did not eventually give me what she thought I wanted. She then went on to tell me that she’d realized a while back that she’d been wrong, that I had in fact been sincere in everything I told her, even if I had not always practiced what I’d been preaching. Indeed, given my behavior (I was not then, and I am not now, particularly proud of the “more or less” at the end of the paragraph before last) it’s hard to blame her for thinking the way she did. It didn’t, and doesn’t matter that I was not the only one who initiated the fucking we did when we were supposed to be abstaining. Every time I allowed it to happen, I was acting like the manipulative hypocrite she initially thought I was.

My girlfriend was right about one thing, though. I really wanted to mean what I said when I told her that it was more important to me not to put our relationship unnecessarily at risk than it was for me to have intercourse with her, and I really wanted to mean it when I said that stepping back from the fucking we were doing would not diminish either the pleasure or the meaningfulness of the sex we had. I was not a man who saw fucking as a way of accumulating notches on my belt; I did not, or at least I thought I did not, feel the connection between fucking and manhood that so many of my friends seemed to feel, whether they were out getting laid as often as they could or involved in a serious relationship. Sex, I thought I believed, was simply sex, a way of touching, of giving and taking pleasure in my own body and the body of my lover; and while genital fucking might be one aspect of that pleasure, it certainly wasn’t the only, or even the main way in which that pleasure could be shared. This, at least, was what I wanted my perspective on sex to be. Yet it very clearly was not, for I had been perfectly willing to put at risk a relationship I thought might develop into a real future so that I could fuck the woman I was in that relationship with. It didn’t matter who initiated it or that it was always consensual. It didn’t matter that when we did fuck it was a very rare exception to the rule of abstinence I had wanted us to follow; and , perhaps most important, in these terms, it didn’t matter that I wore a condom each and every time we did it.

Cross-posted on It’s All Connected.

(Note: soon after I started writing this this morning, I realized that it’s heavily influenced by BFP and Jess’s (Re)Thinking Walking series at Flip Flopping Joy. I’ve had a troubled relationship with walking for a few years, but their essays helped me crystallize a lot of thoughts that were amorphous, and I doubt I would have come to this essay without them.)

About five years ago, I worked as a computer services aide at a public library. Most of my job consisted of running around the main branch fixing problems and installing software. Sometimes the running around was virtual - we had a program called VNC, which allowed us to freak out librarians by manipulating their computers remotely - but more often than not, it was physical. I’d run around. Well, walk. I loved this job because it allowed me to move, exercise, be active, interact with people, hide out occasionally in the stacks with a book as software installed or there was a lull in demand. So one day I was walking around, carrying a box of floppy disks from one project to another, when on the mezzanine between two floors, I felt a sudden stabbing pain in my hip.

I stopped, stunned. I’d never felt pain like that in my life. Holy shit, was it strong! What the fuck!?

But by the time I’d even registered it, it was gone, so I kept walking. About ten minutes later, I felt it again. It was so absurd that I actually laughed out loud. It was perversely fascinating.

That day, my hip felt tender for awhile but it went away by nightfall. I didn’t even think to mention it to my boyfriend. Over the next few days, though, it started to come back gradually - not a sudden, stabbing pain anymore, but rather a sharp ache, like a cramped muscle or a joint that needed popping. It would almost reach a crisis point and then fade. I’d always had back problems, so I assumed it’d go away on its own, but it didn’t - instead, over the next few weeks, it got so bad that I began to have trouble walking. Not that I stopped walking; after all, I didn’t think anything was actually wrong. I considered myself kind of a sissy about pain. The limping? Oh, whatever, I figured everyone got that sometimes. Every day I’d walk downtown to meet my boyfriend for lunch and ignore the stabbing, aching, and squeezing that was going on around my tailbone. I’d have to stop several times to rest it and rub it (not that either had any effect). I still rode my bike. I refused to take pity on my pelvis. I kept pushing it to do whatever I felt like doing - except, as the pain got worse and worse, I began pushing it just to behave normally. Read the rest of this entry »

I was curious about this book until I saw this little gem by the author on Jewcy:

Whatever we say about women and men being equal now and tomorrow - I have three daughters who I want to see beat the world - throughout the whole human past, including the Jewish past, men and women have had different rules, different roles, different thoughts, and different lives.

Biology and common sense both tell us sex is something women have and men want. We can try as hard as we want to talk our way around this, but we can’t make it any less true–for the Jews or any other people.

But I’m sure your book is very smart. Jewish men? You guys have got a long way to go. (That goes for all you Gentile fellas, too.)

PS - So, when I feel aroused, is that really just the need to unload myself of all that pesky sex? Or maybe Judith Butler has just brainwashed me into imagining that I enjoy it.

Dang, think of the poor lesbians - so much sex and nowhere to put it.

UPDATE: The author has responded to a comment I left on the Jewcy post, defending what he wrote as “an exaggeration, but a useful one.”

(Cross-posted at Modern Mitzvot.)

I’ve really enjoyed the Buffy comics, even though I stopped reviewing them. After a while there are so many ways you can say “It’s great that Buffy had sex with someone that I don’t hate so much I would like to pickle them in brine, but do they have to draw all the women looking the same?”

What draws me back to talking about the Buffy comics isn’t the series itself (although it’s getting really interesting and exciting), but the letters column at the back of last month’s issue (the Harmony issue for those who subscribe). The last letter in the column said:

I’m not loving the way the characters are drawn. I know they’re comics and that’s how men typically draw women in comics, but why does Buffy have such a tiny waist and such large breasts? Seeing the way she was drawn in #10 was a real let down; Buffy looked more like Heidi Montag of Jenna Jameson than Buffy. I don’t have anything against a tiny Waist (I have one myself!) or large breasts (okay, those I don’t have, as most women with tiny waists don’t have naturally. But it was disappointing to see Buffy have an unrealistic, unattainable, Barbie-esque body type. I don’t understand why Buffy’s looks are clearly modeled after Sarah Michelle Gellar, but someone decided to inflate her chest.

I wish I had a scanner so I could show you the image she was talking about, but I’m sure you can imagine it. [I'm guessing this is the panel you would have inserted --Amp.]

I want to draw attention to how specific the author’s point is. You could write, but all she is saying that in the comics female character’s waists have got smaller and their breasts have got larger.

You can tell the reply is going to be full of weaseling because Scott Allie immediately turns over the reply to one of the few women who work on the comics.¹ Sierra Huhn an assistant editor spends the first few sentences blathering on about how Buffy is much better than other comics, because the women don’t have big breasts and itty-bitty waists (she clearly didn’t look at the first frame of #10 before she wrote that).

She ends with the mealy mouthed “The last thing we want is for anyone who reads this comic, or works on this comic, to feel like we’re in the business of exploiting women” (actually the last thing she says is ‘yay Buffy means more women read comics,’ which is so irrelevant that I’m ignoring it). Which is nice side-stepping what was actually brought up (the original letter didn’t mention exploitative). It’s also an interesting rhetorical technique when the facts are against you (the way women look in the comics is limited and emphasizes extreme hour glass figures) you say “I don’t mean to make people feel that way” - shifting the topic from what exists to other people’s feelings.

But it’s in the middle that she gets really offensive:

It’s true most of the characters are attractive (have you seen the show?), and thin (Slayers have to follow a pretty strenuous exercise program…just sayin’…), and sometimes Buffy may be more buxom from one issue to the next. It happens. But not unrealistically so, and not all the time.

Because we all know training regimes give women large breasts and small waists (you think slayers spend hours doing the “I must, I must, I must, increase my bust arm thrusts?). It’s a ridiculous and insulting answer to a serious question.

That’s not even what I object most to what she says. It’s that she’s stepping on the greatest moment of the history of TV.

Those of you who watched the show will remember Buffy’s last speech. For those who don’t Buffy is talking about doing a spell to share her slayer power, with all the potentials all around the world (it’s way cooler than I can make it sound in a sentence). And as she was doing this there is a series of images of girls becoming slayers, at school, at home, and on a baseball diamond. It means a lot more if you’ve watched the show, but you get the idea.

One of the slayers is fat. She isn’t not-skinny, she isn’t Hollywood fat, she isn’t a size twelve, she takes up space. And she stands up and uses her body and her strength to stop stops the man who is trying to hurt her. Meanwhile we hear Buffy’s voice saying “Everyone who can stand up; will stand up.”²

Why haven’t we seen her in the Season 8 comics yet? Don’t tell me that she started a strenuous exercise programme and now she’s got a tiny waist (her boobs would presumably be the same size) and is one of the many identical looking slayers you see in the background, because I will hurt you.

[Image curtsy: Screencap Paradise.]

1. There have been eleven men and one women involved in producing the art of the comics (that’s pencils inks colours and letters) and five men and one woman have written scripts. Jo Chen does most of the covers, and the designer has always been female. Listed in the front is three editorial staff and a publisher. The Publisher and Editor are both male, but usually one of the editorial staff is female. I say this not because I necessarily think the comics would look any different if they had more women involved in their creation, but to point out that given how few women are involved in producing the comics to put one forward to justify the way women’s bodies are drawn is tokenism of the worst sort. (back)
2. Random piece of Buffy trivia - that was the last shot of Buffy Joss ever shot. (back)

Author’s Preface: GallingGalla’s comment on the third post in this series has made me think I should add this preface: I see each post in this series as one section of a single piece of writing, not as a discrete essay unto itself. As a result, while each section may contain its own argument, it is not really possible to know whether an issue that a reader feels is important, such as GallingGalla’s concerns about how accusations of self-hatred are also accusations of treason, will or will not be left out of the argument made by the entire piece if you’ve only read a part of the series. As I said in my response to GallingGalla, I certainly do not mean this caveat to be, in any way, an inoculation against critique, but given the modular nature of posting to blogs and of how blogs are read, it is a caveat I’d like you to keep in mind if you find yourselves wondering, and commenting on, why I have not addressed something you feel needs to be addressed. Thanks.

To me, the point was obvious. Basing the Jewish claim to the land of Israel on the Jews’ own reading of the Hebrew Bible was asking the overwhelmingly non-Jewish world to accept as objective and incontrovertible the truth that Judaism claimed as its own, never mind the implication that the disenfranchisement of the Palestinians was somehow the will of the monotheistic god. To assert that line of reasoning as an argument for Israel’s right to exist, I suggested, was self-defeating at the very least–even if, as a believing Jew, it was a cornerstone of your faith.

“I never took you for an SHJ,” said one the colleagues with whom I was talking.

“An SHJ?”

“A self-hating Jew.”

The other agreed. “My husband,” she said, “would say you were an antisemitic Jew.”

I stared at my colleagues across a sudden gap of estrangement I did not know how to bridge. I had never been called self-hating before, but I understood it meant that, in their eyes, I’d revealed myself as a Jew who accepted an antisemitic definition of Jewishness. It was a logic I had heard often when I was in yeshiva, though my teachers always used it to explain the antisemitism of non-Jews who were critical of Israel: To suggest that there might be a perspective from which Israel’s existence as a Jewish state was not self-evidently valid, my rebbes would say, in many different ways, over and over again, was to suggest that the Jews had no right to claim such a state in the first place, which was also to imply that the Jews as a people ought not even to be.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was having a conversation with a friend a few weeks back, and the talk turned to his romantic difficulties. He’s a good guy, but has limited romantic experience, and tends to put women on pedestals and engage in bouts of self-pity punctuated by occasional dips into ‘chicks dig jerks’ territory. As you can imagine, these tactics have not led to astounding romantic bliss.

Anyhow, I was explaining that I think that part of his difficulty is that he thinks of women as essentially different from men, where I don’t believe that they are. The topic of different ‘gendered messages’ that people get came up, and I found myself saying, “I don’t actually think that any gendered messages, no matter how ostensibly positive the messages may be, are actually good.”

He was taken aback, and asked, “Wait, none of them are good?”

I thought a minute before saying, “No. None of them are good. Do you have an example of a gendered message you think is actually good?”

“Yes! Women should be taught that their bodies are sacred.”

That’s when I realized it was probably hopeless. *Sigh*

Anyhow, I open the question to you, dear readers . . . are there positive gendered messages? I figure things that rely on differences in biology are a gimmie (Men don’t need to be taught that they have the choice of whether or not to carry a child to term. Women don’t need to be taught to wear a condom. Etc.), but beyond that, can you think of anything? I’m uncomfortable with absolute statements, but right now my position is fairly absolute, which is why I’m opening this up to discussion.

Please do not comment unless you accept the basic dignity, equality, and inherent worth of all people.

It’s a very loaded word ’sexy’. And I’ve been thinking about it since reading a post on Yes Means Yes, about striptease aerobics (admittedly a topic I know nothing about). Jacinda, who wrote the post, enjoys the classes, they make her feel sexy, and she’s trying to unpack that.

To be seen as sexy by someone else is something that can happen regardless of gender. And any one can feel sexy as in horny. But it is women’s role that means that being desired (or desireable) is something that you feel. Women’s sexuality or our own desiring, is deliberately muddled with being desired.

Which isn’t to say that I think it’s anti-feminist to go to a pole dancing class. Because my politics are not about individual’s actions, and if people enjoy pole dancing classes they enjoy pole dancing classes. But I think feminists should be extremely critical of institutions that reinforce this dynamic of women as desired rather than desiring. It underpins so much of our ideas about sex and rape.

But that’s not what motivated me to post (for the second time in a week). What I wanted to respond to was her conclusion:

What I do struggle with, though, is the idea of sexiness. When we say these classes make women feel sexy how exactly are we defining that word? Does sexy simply mean men want me or does sexy mean I love my body because it’s healthy and strong and because I can have fun with it doing things like these over-the-top dances.

I find the first option much much less problematic than the second. Because in attempt to re-frame ’sexy’ she’s actually reinforcing really narrow views of acceptable (let alone sexy) bodies. Because not everyone’s body is healthy and strong, and not everyone can do any particular dance move.

That’s not a better way of understanding the meaning of ’sexy’, it’s a worse one. Firstly because it’s dishonest, as it hides the actual dynamic of the way women are framed as sex. And secondly because society has already slammed the door on many sorts of bodies being sexy, and this idea sits with the back to the door and tries to keep it shut.

There is no shame in feeling good because you feel desired, and there’s no shame in loving your body for what it can do. But the second is no more a liberatory political position than the first.

There is a new kind of poetry happening in NYC called The Poetry Brothel. The basic idea is that the poets are prostitutes and the patrons are johns who pay to have poetry read to them in private. There is also a featured performed, who is promoted in a tone recalling the promotion of burlesque, and the whole presentation in general, I think, is meant to recall the speakeasy’s of the prohibition era. Here is a review of the event. Some excerpts (I have eliminated some of the line breaks from the original):

The prostitute whispers, wets her lips and prepares to bare… her heart with a poem. Welcome to New York’s Poetry Brothel, where punters delve between the lines, not the sheets. At a weekend session in a Manhattan night club called the Zipper Factory the look was bona fide bordello. Literary ladies of the night flitted between intimate, candle-lit nooks, red lights and paintings of nudes. Some of the poetesses for sale sported retro-style garter belts and frilly knickers. One swanned about in a top hat and feather boa. But transactions at the Poetry Brothel are of the mind, not the body, and a moment with the catalogue, replete with pictures and whimsical descriptions, reveals what’s on offer.

The Madame — real name Stephanie Berger — came dressed for the part in low-cut dress, elbow-length black gloves and a peacock headdress. “I’d rather be in the bedroom hearing poetry than listening to some old man sitting on a chair on a stage,” she explained by the light of a guttering candle. One-on-one encounters, for which “clients” pay three to five dollars in addition to a 15 dollar entry fee and one free reading, took place upstairs. The “whores” read from their own material, much of which is free verse, making for intense, sometimes baffling performances.

…

But for those needing a break, the Poetry Brothel laid on flamenco guitarists, a fortune-teller, a blackjack table and a bar specializing in port and whisky[.] The young hedonists, most of them students, appear to have struck a surprisingly successful formula. “There just aren’t that many poetry readings where poets show a lot of cleavage,” said The Professor, otherwise known as Jennifer Michael Hecht, aged 43 and a real life professor at Manhattan’s New School. She teaches writing to many of the Brothel’s regulars and is proud of the result.

…

“It’s kind of like the Weimar Republic without the Nazis. At two in the morning you have 20- or 30-year-olds lying all over the place reading poetry,” she said.

…

The Madame promised that the Poetry Brothel welcomed all. “Many are young men with perhaps a secret interest in poems,” she murmured. “Just look at the menu. Get a recommendation. Or say you don’t care. Say: ‘I need poetry. I’m hungry.’”

On the Poetics Listserv to which I subscribe, there has been a mildly heated discussion of this. Here are some snippets (I have retained all original punctuation, etc.):

Ruth Lepson wrote: cooptation of poetry by capitalist objectification of women. not funny. to use a brothel as a metaphor is disgusting. I remember when Denise Levertov criticized a poet for using napalm as a metaphor for personal pain, saying you don’t know what it feels like & it’s much worse than the way you are characterizing it.

Adam Tobin wrote: Why is the capitalist exploitation of women at a brothel worse than, say, the capitalist exploitation of women at a Zipper Factory? It’s just a different kind of labor, no? Given that some artists are seemingly comfortable with capitalism, why should they not acknowledge it in the name of their ventures?

I understand, of course, that brothels have a particular history with a
particular kind of violence attached to it, but so do factories. Do you
direct the same righteous anger at Andy Warhol?

John Cunningham wrote: Political correctness be dammed, I like the idea of “Poetry Brothel”. Firstly, isn’t feminine or feminist poetry (whichever you prefer) spoken from the body. Secondly, here is a legally sanctioned place of ‘intercourse’ (the poetic kind, a.k.a. communication) where the practitioner are protected. For those of you who are speaking out against the body being used in commerce, why are you not speaking out against football or hockey where male bodies are being used in commerce? When you consider the damage that is done to the male body during that contact sport and the lingering effects of it in terms of permanent injury and disability such as arthritis and other diseases, isn’t this just as bad? Or is it that one affects women whereas the other affects men? If we’re going to get on a train, lets get on the right one - the one that carries both male and female on equal terms.

Gwyn Mcvay wrote: Omigod, you’re so right. I hurt in my anterior cruciate ligaments for all of those men FORCED or DECEIVED into collegiate and professional sports every year; BEATEN if they try to leave; often denied any other employment options in the case of being transgendered; not allowed to keep a PENNY of their earnings… oh wait.

First, I have to be honest and admit that I have not actually gone to The Poetry Brothel, so I cannot report firsthand on what it is like, and so what I am talking about here–as were most of the people on the Listserv–is the idea of it, and I confess to being of two minds about this. On the one hand, The Poetry Brothel strikes me as brilliant satire; on the other hand, I think it goes too far for precisely the reasons that Ruth Lepson articulated in her response. But maybe that’s what good satire is supposed to do; and yet, talking about it as satire implicitly ignores the fact that it is an ongoing event, where real people spend real money, which someone somewhere is collecting and using (for whatever purpose).

Any thoughts?

Cross-posted on It’s All Connected.

Cross-posted from The Mustard Seed.

“Any male who wears as woman’s attire in public for immoral purposes shall be guilty of an offense and on conviction be liable to a fine not exceeding one thousand or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year or both.”
-Section 28, Syariah Criminal Offenses (Federal Territories)

Unlike other majority Islamic countries that have law based on Syariah or have secular laws influenced by Syariah, Malaysia doesn’t allow for sex change operations. Countries such as Egypt, under the dictatorial secular ND party allow for sex changes for those whom are considered to benefit from such operations; the same with the Islamic Republic of Iran under mullahs of the Guardian Council.

However, in Malaysia this is not the case (even though it used to be until the early 1980s) which has caused much despair and trauma for the Mak Nyah (transsexual) population in Malaysia estimated to be numbered at around 25 to 30 thousand.

Journalist and videographer Poh Si Teng, whom I have the pleasure of calling my friend and have been able to work with, decided to spend some time with Mak Nyahs in Kuala Lumpur to chronicle their hardships, feelings, and thoughts about being Mak Nyah in a society that rejects them with its laws and its homespun take on Sunni Islam.

Her documentary (click here to buy), titled Pecah Lobang (”Busted”), chronicles the lives of Mak Nyah prostitutes in Kuala Lumpur who have taken to prostitution in order to support their families (as they can’t normally find jobs within mainstream society). Along with putting their lives within the lens of a video camera she also gets them to open up and talk about police brutality, relationships with their families, and their relationship with God.

Read more »

This is a documentary by my wonderful friend (whom I had the honor of meeting in a mass media and law class which has developed into what will obviously be a life long friendship) Poh Si Teng.

National Review editor Kathryn Jean Lopez asks a very important question about this Washington Post article about 16-year-olds shopping for bikinis. No, not, “Why was the Washington Post running an article about 16-year-olds shopping for bikinis?” — that would be a reasonable question, the answer to which is “because it’s an interesting article.” Seriously, it’s an article about how teen girls see themselves, their concerns about their bodies, their feeling pressured to dress to attract boys, and their general existence as girls in a society that sees them first as sex objects. It’s thought-provoking, and a strong indicator that we haven’t reached a post-feminist utopia.

So did Lopez ask how we can teach girls to respect their own bodies? How we can teach them that their existence is not defined by the opinions of the boys — or their own perception of what boys’ opinions will be? How we can help them through the period of adolescence when they’re most apt to see themselves in the worst possible light?

No, of course not.  KLo’s question is far less interesting:

This Washington Post piece on three 16-year-old girls shopping for bikinis in Tyson’s Corner is begging for a dad to be on the scene. Mom’s no help — one of them provides financial assistance because a teenage girl just has to have a bikini, you know. “Bikinis are more popular because they’re sexier. They draw a guy’s attention.” Where’s dad to just say no?

Because that would fix everything!  Yes, instead of being a teenage girl who’s concerned about her body and unsure about how boys view her, she’d be a teenage girl who’s concerned about her body and unsure about how boys view her, but with a dad who is making that even more difficult — and not by asking hard questions, but by simply saying, “No daughter of mine is going to be wearing a bikini!”

That solves nothing. That just leads to a girl buying a bikini and putting it on in secret, to a girl who is now not just concerned that boys view her as sexy enough, but that her father views her as too sexy — too much of a tramp. It doesn’t make her feel better. It makes her feel worse.

What these girls need is, frankly, what this article spurred, and what it hopefully will spur — discussion. Questions. Hard thinking. Consideration. That doesn’t mean they’re all going to put the bikinis back and wear surfer shirts, not this time around, because these things don’t always take root immediately. But the girl who realizes today that she’s more comfortable in a less revealing swimsuit is the girl who next year begins to recognize that society’s views of women are skewed, the girl who hits college and begins to study feminism in earnest, and begins to reshape herself into who she wants to be.

By letting her listen, and think, and learn her own lessons, she will grow up to be a woman who is able to come to her own decisions, and live her own life. A dad or mom who simply says “no” is not doing her any favors. That doesn’t mean there are never times when a parent should say “no” — there most certainly are. But those times are fewer at 16 than six, and swimwear, frankly, is not where the line needs to be drawn, not if that line is to mean anything.

(Not yet proofread; please bear with me.)

For me, one of the most striking things about pregnancy has been how pregnancy affects embodiment. In particular, I’m referring to how societal interactions and structures make affect social psychology and social interaction. One of the things I’ve noticed in the last few months of my pregnancy is the tendency for people to move over when I walk by them.

I first noticed this among men, especially younger men. It was almost like they would jump out of my way when they saw me coming. Some were clearly being gracious and definitely trying to be polite and considerate, and others looked almost scared, as if I was going to go into labor on the spot. What was fairly consistent was a lack of verbal interaction or sustained eye contact. Older men (those who seem to be over 50), have had very different reactions. They tend to hold doors, make more eye contact, and even strike up conversations. I’ve notice a little bit of difference in relation to ethnicity. Since I live in a neighborhood with many immigrants and different racial groups, I have day to day interactions with many men from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. In my own experience, both Latino and West African men (not African American, but West Africans) are much more likely to have to smiling, friendly, excited reaction. It seems that American born men (or those who are heavily assimilated), regardless, of race are more likely to jump out of the way and avoid eye contact. It is possible that many Latin American and West African cultures are very pronatalist that men view pregnant women in different ways than American men.¹

As for women, it took much longer for women to do the move over thing. I’ve only noticed women moving over in the past few weeks when my stomach has been huge² My experience has been that women are less likely than men to give this pregnant woman extra physical space. When women do move out of the way, it feels different. It rarely feels like their scared, but I do get a sense of pity from some of the women who move over. For most of the women who have a noticeable reaction to my pregnant body, their physical reaction is not really one of distancing themselves. They tend to try to do helpful things like hold the elevator, and then ask the programmed questions like: “When are you due?” “What are you having, boy or girl³?” Women, especially older women, may offer their own personal stories. Although I’ve also had some elderly and young women, act in a way that I interpreted as rude. For example, I’ve had a few cases of elderly women rushing to get ahead of me in line, which I would generally ignore if I wasn’t pregnant. I think there is an interesting conflict between women who are slowed because they are pregnant and women who are slowed because they are older. In terms, of ethnicity I haven’t noticed many differences. The Latinas in my neighborhood tend to have the most favorable reactions, but I felt that I had more pleasant interactions with Latinas before I was pregnant, so it is hard to know how much pregnancy has changed my interactions. I know I’ve had several cases of women speaking to me in Spanish about the babies, and I speak enough Spanish to communicate a little. I’m not comfortable generalizing about racial or ethnic differences in women in relation to moving over, but I think there are other race/class/gender differences in how women react to pregnant bodies or the idea of pregnancy.

The other factor that seems to influence how men and women react to my pregnant body in public interactions is the whether or not I’m alone, with a woman, or with a man. When I’m with my husband, I don’t get as many move over reactions from anybody, male or female. Moving over seems to happen more when I’m with women or, especially, when I’m by myself. I think when I’m with a man, who appears to be my partner, people think I have someone to “take care of me,” so they don’t feel compelled to respond.

From a social psychological perspective, this has made me very aware of my pregnant body. I rarely forget about being pregnant when I’m out in public. Of course, the smiles and other reactions make a big difference in how I interact, but the one that I really notice most is the move over reaction. That reaction has made me a little more sensitive to people with visible, physical disabilities. I don’t see pregnancy as a disability, but I think there are similarities in how people reaction to disabled bodies and pregnant bodies. Moving over is definitely one thing both groups have in common. I can see how people in each group can have their sense of self altered by these repeated move over interactions.

1. I know in my partner’s culture–Nigerian, Igbo–there is a special word that means “mother of twins.” I’ve been called that by almost everybody in the family, male or female, and the connotation is very positive. (back)
2. Remember I’m carrying twins, and right now my belly is bigger than almost any woman I know who has had a baby, so I have wondered if the reactions of other women would be different if my stomach was a more typical size. (back)
3. The question about gender take on another dimension when the person asking finds out that you are having twins. People get really excited, and the most common question I’ve gotten is, “Do twins run in your family?” (back)

In case you haven’t noticed, my blogging has been lighter than usual since October. Well the main reason for that has been because I’m pregnant. I told my co-bloggers, so they wouldn’t think I was abandoning the site..

Now that I’m in just out of month 4, I’m finally happy to report that my life doesn’t revolve around the fear of throwing up on strangers. :) For a while, from months 2-4, I was battling morning sickness, and the usual first trimester sleepiness. I’m still concerned about a few things like the fact that at almost 19 weeks I weigh the same as I did when I got pregnant. In fact, one of the most fascinating things about pregnancy is the way it has altered my eating habits and my metabolism. When I was in the throws of morning sickness, for some unknown reason the more unhealthy the food the more likely it was to stay down. I’ve never eaten so many McDonald’s Big Mac’s in my life. What’s even funnier is the fact that I ate that kind of food and lost 6 pounds. I felt like I couldn’t possibly eat enough food to maintain my weight, and I was even more shocked when I read that I was supposed to eat 2600 calories a day (300 extra calories per fetus). I’ve always been a person who loves eating and food, and by medical standards I’m in the overweight category, but suddenly, I didn’t want to eat, and these two little fetuses were performing liposuction on my thighs and butt. My husband kept joking about the fact that I had the incredible shrinking booty, which he thought was bad and my mother and brother thought was great. (Now, there’s a cultural difference if there ever was one–West African ideas about booty beauty and White American ideas about booty beauty.) Fortunately, I’ve gained my 6 pounds back, but I seem to be stuck right at the same weight. I promise I’ll write more about this since it really seems to be the one issue that is bothering me the most–I keep wondering how I’m going to gain 30 lbs in 20 weeks.¹

Of course, I’m going to write about the pregnancy because there are so many juicy issues. The gender issues are obvious, but other issues like body image (which I alluded to above), medicalization, racism, and the rampant classism/materialism that surrounds birth and children. I already have some good stories to tell already, so be prepared. Plus, when the little ones are born, I’ll even have some baby blogging to do.

1. For those who don’t know the weight gain recommendation for twins is higher, but doctors also seem to be all over the place in terms of what they suggest. My OBGYN suggested a 44lb weight gain for a woman of my height who is of average weight. Since I’m overweight, she suggested 30-35 lbs. (back)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9

Update: I have decided to take the text of this post down until I have a chance to revise and repost it. The comments I have received–and thank you to all who have posted them–have convinced me that, as I said in comment #19, my words are both conjuring things I do not intend and failing to make distinctions that I do intend, and this weakness in the writing means that what I want to say, the questions I want to ask and explore are not only not getting across, but are being misrepresented. It’s not so much that I think the revision will change the mind of anybody who has posted a critical comment, but that, at least, the criticism will be directed at what I actually mean to say, not the unintended implications of my having said it not as well as I should have. Hopefully, I will have that revision up within the next week or so.