One thing leads to another

9 10 2009

It’s happened again.

I finish one novel, wait, start another one. Then a new set of characters pushes into my words, and the new idea is set aside as a completely different novel unfolds.

I don’t understand it, but I go with it.

_____

So the President has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

I’m among those who wonders a bit about this, but I have a hard time seeing a downside.

This nearsightedness would apparently disqualify me from a career as a pundit, insofar as the bright lights of blovi-nation have deemed this as ‘having no upside’ (Mark Halperin, Time), as damaging (Mika Brzezinski), and a couple (George Packer, Mickey Kaus) suggesting he turn it down.

Yeah, because that would accomplish. . . what, exactly?

I’m not much of a nationalist, which, depending upon one’s definition, may mean I’m not much of a patriot, but why are all these ostensible America-Firsters so opposed to having something good come to US president?

_____

Biter Boy still bites. Not as often—not nearly as often—but even as he nears the end of teething (all four adult fangs are now in) he chomps more than he should.

Oh, and he knocked over his first plant this morning. Pissed me off, led to some, mmm, yelling, but as I was plopping the plant back into the pot, I remembered that Bean and Chelsea had their own bad encounters with their leafy co-inhabitants.

Jasper is also in full bathroom-fixation mode. Into the sink, sniffing the faucet. Running into the tub after I open the door after a shower, to watch the water finish its slow slide down the drain. And every time he hears me use the facilities he runs to inspect the process—sometimes to mildly distasteful results.

I should note that his fascination is strictly observatory: he does not appreciate forced participation in bathing.

_____

I hate grading. Have I mentioned that?

That’s the one, big, drawback to working at a community college: no teaching assistants on whom I can offload the papers.

_____

I’m not much either for Twitter or Miley Cyrus, but jeez Louise, even I took note that Stage Dad Billy Ray is pushing for her to, uh, what the hell’s the story? Oh, yeah, she shut down her Twitter account, and Mr. I-Miss-the-Limelight is begging for her return.

Excellent idea, ’cause I’m sure the SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD girl doesn’t have enough to do, what with going to school, starring in a t.v. show, promoting an album, and whatever else an over-scheduled future-rehab patient does.

Now that’s some fine parenting.

_____

Your socialist-feminist-pomo-cranky blogger is. . . looking for corporate work.

Baby needs a new pair of shoes.

_____

C.’s got a new post up at SoundofRain about moving on, hashing out, and forgiveness.

I haven’t yet responded because I don’t know how to respond. Moving on? Check. Hashing out? Check—sometimes. Forgiveness?

Have I mentioned that I can move on?

_____

Newsflash! Migraines suck.

_____

EmH has a post responding to a question I asked: Why support a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians?

Haven’t yet responded to her (grading: grrr), but it’s a certainly a reasonable position, one to which I am resigned.

Still, even this resignation is studded with uneasiness, insofar as I don’t see how the two states can actually be accomplished without massive—and forced—resettlement. Ethnic cleansing, in other words.

I’m not one to state (to continue the hygiene theme) that ‘we’ should wash our hands of the whole thing, but I wonder if the continued (over?) involvement of everyone and her mother in Israel and Palestine’s business doesn’t simply make it easier for Israelis and Palestinians to avoid dealing directly with each other.

Not that there’s any way to keep everyone’s mother out of this.

_____

I have a decent, if complicated, relationship with my parents—a situation which I’d guess would describe most adult kids’ relationships to their parents.

Perhaps that’s why I find this site, My Parents Were Awesome, so poignant.

Yeah, they once had lives that had nothing to do with us. Lives with their own complications.

And the beat goes on.


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Categories : Musing, Stray bits

Jane says

4 10 2009

Do you know Jane?

‘Jane’ was the name of the underground abortion service in Chicago in the late sixties and early seventies; it wound down after the Roe decision in 1973.

As told by Laura Kaplan (who was a part of Jane) in The Story of Jane, a number of women in the Chicago area put together a not-for-profit and completely illegal service, one which they eventually expanded to include pap smears and female health education. Although a few members were eventually busted (somewhat by mistake), they operated for years with the knowledge both of police and various ‘legit’ medical professionals.

That such an underground service existed is not a surprise. What is stunning, however, is how completely fucking radical these women were. They initially relied upon various sympathetic and/or mercenary doctors to perform the abortions, but eventually learned how to do them themselves.

You got that? These women received training from a guy who received training from a doctor—and went ahead and performed not only D&Cs, but also vacuum aspiration, and, eventually, second-trimester abortions.

I’m as pro-choice as they come, but even I blanched when I read that. Fucking hell, I thought, second-trimester abortions done in apartments and hotel rooms?!

But they were good. One woman did die—a death which led some members to drop out, and to a great deal of turmoil for those who remained—but her death was almost certainly the result of an infection caused by  abortion attempts performed elsewhere. Upon realizing the extent of her infection, Jane members told her to go immediately go to the hospital; she waited more than a day, then died at the hospital.

Kaplan describes the meeting following the woman’s death:

As details of the story were recounted, a numbness spread throughout the room. They had founded the service to save women from dying and now the very thing they were trying to prevent had happened.

That was the whole point of Jane, to save women; even more, to give them a way to save themselves.

It wasn’t simply about making safe, inexpensive abortions available to women, it was also about women—both Jane members and those who used their service—taking responsibility for their own lives. Jane set up training for their members, and provided counseling for the women who came to them. They didn’t have moral qualms about abortion itself, but they were careful to ask anyone who seemed uncertain if she really wanted to go through with it. The decision, and the responsibility, lay with the woman herself.

Kaplan is not a deft storyteller, but she is an honest one. She details the egos and tensions, the difficulties of involvement with an underground organization, the conflicts with other women’s liberation organizations, and all the varieties of risk taken by Jane and the women they helped. All of these women shared desperation: the women (‘participants’, not patients) who came to Jane for help, and the members of Jane themselves, to help all who asked for it.

It was, in fact, that desperation to save women from unsafe abortions that led Jane to take over the operation itself, and to end up inducing 2nd-trimester miscarriages. If we don’t do it, they worried, what will happen to all these women?

There’s so much more to The Story of Jane. I used it in my ‘Women and Politics’ course I taught this past summer as a way not only to foreground reproductive issues, but also the issue of underground, anarchist, or DIY politics. Does underground work affect politics above the ground, or does DIY simply let the above-grounders off the hook? Or is the effect on ‘normal’ politics less the issue than the creation of one’s own politics?

I’m still chewing over those larger political issues. But when it comes to abortion, I wonder if Jane didn’t have the right idea. I’m a big fan of Planned Parenthood (see my links list), but they are at the forefront of putting abortion and contraception firmly within the medical sphere, i.e., within the sphere of specialization and  licensure and, most importantly, women-as-patients.

Jane insisted that abortion was something that women participated in, not that it was something done on or to them. This is your body, they repeated over and over and over, this is your life. In this context, the notion that women should have some idea of their own genitalia—a kind of mirror-empowerment which, honestly, always kind of put me off—seems less woo than utterly practical. How can you take care of yourself if you don’t know what you look like?

I know, there are both hospital-based and free-standing women’s clinics, not a few of which are also interested in patient or client education. And, frankly, autoclaves and medical education seem to me very good things.

But what about responsibility and liberation and solidarity? What of a woman’s (or any) emancipatory movement premised upon the simple declaration that you can and must free yourself? Jane was not encouraging women to bust out into chaos, but to recognize themselves as full human beings, and to inculcate a sense of responsibility not only to themselves but to those around around them.

With liberty and justice for all. Pretty fucking radical, huh?


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Categories : Musing, Review

Edward Moore Kennedy, lawmaker

26 08 2009
1932-2009

1932-2009

Stephen Crowley/New York Times

For all his personal and professional flaws, all his terrible errors, he did what he could.

Rest in peace, Senator.


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Categories : Politics

No no no no no no NO!

11 08 2009

People in favor of health care reform are not fascists.

People opposed to health care reform are not fascists.

President Bush was not a fascist.

President Obama is not a fascist.

Governor Palin is erratic, thoughtless, and ignorant. Not a fascist.

Karl Rove is manipulative, smug, and truth-impaired. Not a fascist.

Benito Mussolini: fascist.

Adolph Hitler: fascist.

Francisco Franco: fascist.

Fascism: (from the Latin fascis, or bundle) a movement which arose in Italy, designed around the notion of the corporate (as in corporeal) state, such that the unity of the state is comparable to the unity of the body, in which each member has a specific role to play, subordinate to the whole. It is not necessarily anti-semitic nor blood-obsessed, but, given its emphasis on the superiority and unity of the state, those designated as in any way opposed to or a drain on the health of the corporate body will be considered an enemy to be expelled or eliminated. It is a movement opposed to Modernity (as a set of ideas based on individual reason, liberty and equality), although it often makes claims of its unique ability to move society forward, into a more spiritual and robust future, and led by a strong and visionary leader. In both theory and practice it is militaristic, anti-rationalist, and often mystical, and tends toward approval of spontaneous outbursts of violence against enemies.

So is there no reason to be concerned about the rhetoric those who claim that Obama is a nazi-fascist-communist, or about the violence of some of that rhetoric? After all, members of Congress have received death threats, Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs have ‘joked’ about poisoning Nancy Pelosi’s wine and staking Howard Dean, and it is not too much to note that the election of an African-American man has undone more than a few people.

But pissed-off and violent ignoramuses do not a fascist movement make. Yes, they can do great damage—see Timothy McVeigh, or Eric Rudolph, Paul Hill, or the murderer of George Tiller—but one doesn’t have to be a fascist to do great damage.

That’s the point, isn’t it? There are plenty of people who are not fascists who are nonetheless threats.

Most, however, are not even threats. Some, like Beck and Palin, are twits. Some, like Gingrigh, are opportunists. Some—such as those who don’t want government interfering with Medicare—are uninformed.

But some just don’t like the plan. And they get to say so.

Dissent is patriotic—remember?


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They’re clouding up the images of my perfect day

27 07 2009

Two things.

One, I don’t much like how much morality infects politics. The rules, the norms, the players, the goals, are not the same.

Yes, I’ve read Foucault (oy, have I read Foucault), and I don’t think he’s in the main wrong about the creative repression of power in all spheres of life. That said, the  circulations of power are distinct, and even amidst such power moves, there are phenomenon which manage to corral meanings to themselves counter or even indifferent to dominant narrative. Thus, morality and politics each generates its own terms of existence.

Geek-speak out of the way, I am therefore bumfuzzled by my reaction to the question of whether a legal market in solid organs (kidneys, mainly, tho’ perhaps also partial livers) ought to be set up.

I have long opposed organ sales, oppose the sale of blood and plasma, and give the hairy eyeball to the sale of human eggs and sperm. (I’m also not crazy about the patenting of biological material, nor of whole creatures, as, for example, genetically engineered mice.)

But is this due to a general skepticism toward capitalism, a critique which begins in the sale of a person’s labor and which can, by logic, extend to the sale of a person’s parts? If so, the opposition is grounded in the ontological claims of socialism and would therefore be, politically speaking, acceptable.

(Never mind that the ontological claims of any political or economic theory are likely to be shot through with moralisms. That’s another post.)

No, my problem is that while I am generally skeptical of capitalism, I think my opposition to the sale in body parts can be—dammit!—traced to an unspecified moral unease.

Even this wouldn’t be problematic were I not also—or at least, until very recently—adamantly opposed to legislation to legalize organ sales.

You see the problem: impermissible moral/political comingling!

I have a wide anarchistic streak (which at various points runs parallel to various libertarian arguments), but I also don’t trust capitalist-markets to protect and promote the basic conditions of existence necessary to a human life.

But what of a regulated market? Or even a socialist market? Could such a regulated social market perhaps avoid the problems associated with the current system (organ shortages, black market sales, exploitation of organ sellers) without amplifying or otherwise legitimizing the horrors of those black market sales?

(There’s also the question of whether those (as a class) in need of an organ in any way deserve or have rights to organs—but, again, another post.)

I’d still be leery of even a well-run regulated social market (which could be configured in a variety of ways), but the leer would be merely moral; as a political matter, I don’t know that I could oppose it.

Dammit. My biases are clashing. I hate that.

Two. On the uselessness of most political and social commentary.

(I know, given what I just wrote, this is rich.)

I was laying in bed this morning listening to NPR and a promo aired about US policy and China and India and . . . *click*

Like it fucking matters, I thought. This group says jump UP and that one DOWN and then SIDEWAYS and DIAGONALLY and then someone suggests perhaps we should discuss this in terms of diving rather than jumping and everyone goes Oooh, how contrarian or revisionist or just plain crackers.

The Chinese & Indian leadership will do what it will do and the people will do what they will do and we’ll all occasionally look at one another and say So that’s what’s going on and be utterly and completely wrong—or maybe even utterly and completely right—and we’ll never know, one way or the other.

It’s not that I think political analysis or political action is useless—my heretical side has not yet overtaken its orthodox counterpart—but that for it to be of any use, it must be specific, oriented in a particular direction, and always always always aware of its own limits.

Natural scientists work off the null hypothesis, and statisticians build error into their calculations. Politics is a hell of a lot more complicated and unstable than physics (except, perhaps, in its quantum form, and even then. . . ), but pundits are a hell of a lot more arrogant than physicists in describing their reality.

Oh, christ, I’m about to go off on a digression on scientism and the misguided adoption of physical models of knowledge by the social sciences and the wretched belief that to understand is to control, but, y’know, it’s late and I’d really just wrap this all up.

So a shortcut: By all means, try to understand. By all means, share that understanding. But fer the love of pete, don’t think this means anything beyond the understanding itself.

But I don’t suppose one gets to be a pundit by regularly declaring, ‘But I could be missing something. . . .’


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Categories : Musing, Politics

Wait, what was that?

5 07 2009

Re: the soon-to-be-former governor of Alaska. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Some Freepers are peddling the line that she’s too good for politics, and her decision to ditch is evidence of her superior character—as opposed to, say, an inability either to govern or to develop the skills necessary for political leadership.

And as to complaints about Everybody Being So Mean To Her: If she can’t handle Katie Couric and David Letterman, how the hell could she handle Netanyahu, Putin, Mubarak—or Pelosi or Reid, for that matter?

Fair, unfair: Neither of these matters in political campaigns. Read some Machiavelli, fer cryin’ out loud—and if that’s too much to ask, remember Vince Lombardi.

Shees.

————————-

I know I have issues with community. It’s less that I’m enthusiastic about CAPITAL-I! individualism than I am suspicious of the group—especially a group which claims special status based on its group-ness.

Yeah, I have a past with cliques, the push-pull of wanting to belong and wanting to tell others to fuck off, but I don’t want to reduce this to psychology.

No, I want to reduce this to principle: Don’t tell me [who’s not a member of your group] that I’m less worthy [because I’m not a member of your group]. As a political matter, don’t claim rights based on your group which are denied those not members of the group.

In practice, of course, groups are often religious communities, and the rights claimed are based on the freedom of religion, not on the rights of the group.

All kinds of ways to take off from here, but, after my friend E. called me out on my bias yesterday, I think I need to stay right here, and consider what is principle and what is, simply, prejudice.

Background: I’ve mentioned previously encounters with religious folk which I’ve considered insulting. In one case, two women wouldn’t take an item from my hand, but asked that I set it down before they would touch it. In the second case, a man responded to my outstretched hand with a mumbled request that I withdraw it, out of respect for him and his religious beliefs.

In both cases, I took their reactions to me to be based on their religious beliefs, and further inferred that they thought I was lesser or would somehow taint them with my touch. In both cases, I (behaviorally) respected their expressed wishes, but I was also offended.

E. was puzzled by my response, especially to the situation with the two young women (religion unknown; from their dress, either Christian or Muslim was a possibility). Why do you think that has anything to do with you, she asked?

Because I was there!

Yeah, but they weren’t asking you to do anything offensive.

Huh.

As to the second case, with the no-handshake man, she focused on his explanation for why I should respect him. Why would he assume you’d know about his religious beliefs?

Another good question. I assumed he was Hasidic, although he wasn’t wearing a fedora and it was so dark that I couldn’t tell if he had peyos, but, as E. pointed out, Orthodox men will wear the shawl—and Orthodox men will shake a woman’s hand.

Yes, I agreed, I’ve shaken hands with Orthodox men, and, come to think of it, I don’t know for sure if he was hasidim.

Given my skepticism toward groups and my disdain for patriarchy, I bundled together a few pieces of information about this guy into an unmerited heap of a conclusion. I thought it was about the group and the group’s beliefs about women and his expectation that I alter my behavior to suit him—and I was offended.

But maybe it wasn’t really about me. Maybe, as E. pointed out, his English just wasn’t that great, that he didn’t know a more polite way to make his request.

Well, dammit, E., what are ya doin’, making me rethink these things? I was so comfortable in my anti-fundamentalist stance and here you go redirecting my attention. What the hell kind of friend are you, anyway?

Hmpf.

I’m fine with my skepticisms and criticisms, but I’d rather not be reactionary. So I’ll follow this redirection, see where it takes me—and try to keep my biases out of my way.

Thanks, E.

————————-

Inspired by a segment I heard on WNYC about members of They Might Be Giants banning certain phrases, I humble ask for the retirement of the following (I direct this to myself, as well):

  • Meh
  • Wow. Just wow.
  • Batshit crazy (I do like this one, but, Enough.)
  • Just sayin’
  • teh gay/s
  • ZOMG! WTF?! ROTFL, et. al.
  • Meme (I have always hated this term. Always. Goddamned genetic reductionists.)

I probably should ban ‘heh’, as well, but no need to get all Puritan, here.

———————-

Jasper update: He is on,

or off.

No in-between.

A little less smelly (gave him a washcloth rinse yesterday), but still in need of a dunking. With soap.

Very friendly, and eager for a lap. Good purr.

Ten week-old kittens have really tiny heads. Tiny teeth, too, but sharp.

Still working on the biting. No biting.

Working on the staying off of computer keyboard, too. He’s logged me out of Firefox a couple of times, opened about fifteen help windows, and at one point sent my computer into hibernation. Fancy feet on that boy.

Not so much in the litter box, however. Jasper has no litter skills. Yes, he uses his wee box (a cereal box with the back cut out, lined with a plastic bag), but he’s a bit fuzzy on the whole covering-one’s-leaving concept: He’ll scratch at the air, at the floor outside of the box, on the wall next to the box, but actually in the box? Not so much. [I know, I should retire this one, too, but it’s too good to lose!]

I hope his skills improve when he moves to the big box.

He has gotten within a foot of Bean, who has responded with hisses and yowling. At one point she swiped at him, but, as he was a good foot-and-a-half away, nothing happened.

Still, at some point there will be contact, and he will learn that Bean is Queen.


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Categories : Stray bits

Power to the people

15 06 2009

The extreme form of power is All against One, the extreme form of violence is One against All. —Hannah Arendt

The events in Iran thrill, in every sense of the word: the demands for liberation, the fear of the reaction, the unpredictability, and as the most basic argument for a notion that power is about politics—the public gathering of citizens—and that violence is the antithesis of power, that it scatters the public and as such, eliminates power.

Violence: Witness the crowds literally scatter as the motorcycle cops accelerate into them, their riders swinging batons at anyone near.

Power: Watch the crowd assert itself against the agents of the state, pushing back against the police and security forces, as when those around a BBC reporter kept a security agent from interfering with his broadcast.

Unfortunately, as Arendt knew, politics was bound up in what she termed the ‘frailty of human affairs’, such that Wherever people gather together, [political space] is potentially there, but only potentially, not necessarily, and not forever. Power is evanescent, ‘not an unchangeable, measureable, and reliable entity,’ but one utterly dependent upon the presence of others, a presence which can be dissipated by apathy, more urgent needs, and, of course, weapons.

But while violence can destroy power, it can never become a substitute for it.

Ahmadinejad and the Iranian security apparatus may succeed in dispersing these crowds, in denying these bodies politic their destabilizing (not least because of their unpredictability) potentialities, but in so doing will have condemned themselves:

[From the destruction of power] results the by no means infrequent political combination of force and powerlessness, . . . In historical experience and traditional theory, this combination. . . is known as tyranny, and the time-honored fear of this form of government is not exclusively inspired by its cruelty. . . but by the impotence and futility to which it condemns the rulers as well as the ruled.

Yes, there is always the concern about mob rule, but as the photos [hat tip: Daily Dish] and videos of protesters aiding injured policemen attest, the ‘mob’ in Iran are the ones wearing the uniforms—or the be-robed men directed the men in uniform.

Who knows how this will end: the beauty of Arendtian politics is inseparable from its terror, the potentiality from its frailty.

But still! To witness what we can do! The promise. . . !


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Violence cancels politics. . .

14 06 2009

. . . and politics cancels violence.

It’s a basic Arendtian equation.

See what’s happening in Iran: check out Andrew Sullivan’s blog, The Daily Dish.

I was never a huge fan of Sullivan’s, especially in his brash I-know-how-to-be-an-America-better-than-you-do phase, but in these past few years he’s been chastened by life—and become a much more interesting thinker as a result.

More to the point, for this post, is that he’s been posting as fast as he can on the situation in Iran, throwing up amazing photos (here, among others) and videos (here, and here, among others)  of street protests, as well as a variety of commentary on the elections. The urgency of the posts matches that of the activity; the Times’s coverage is pallid, by comparison.

Fascinating, heartbreaking, and breathtaking. Go. Read it all.


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A girl in trouble is a temporary thing

4 06 2009

One more question, and I swear to god that I’m done with this topic (for awhile).

This is directed [out into the ether] to those who would enact a legal ban against abortion:

What will you do to the women?

It’s a simple question, but I’ll be damned if I’ve been able to come up with an answer. I’ve checked pro-life web sites, asked this question in comments sections of blogs, listened to those who want abortion made illegal, and no one will say what would happen to women who want abortions and act to obtain them.

Most declare they have no intention of charging women—we’re all just victims of the big, bad abortion industry—unless those women happen to be the ones providing the abortion. No, those on the receiving end, well, we’re to be pitied for being dragged into the maw of the baby-killing machine.

Erin Manning, who comments on and occasionally subs for Rod Dreher at Crunchy Con, accused me of scaring up a Handmaid’s Tale-style scenario when, some time ago, I asked this question to the Crunchy commentariat. (And, honestly, all I did was ask the question, nothing else.) She then went on to outline a future in which life is valued and women and children protected and supported and valued and families supported and, um, valued and. . . it’s all good!

With those nasty abortionists out of the way, girls and women will apparently be liberated from the degredation of sexual autonomy and boys and men will cherish us as the sanctified vessels we are.

I’m only exaggerating a little bit. Really, she wrote in rose- and golden-prose of this spectacular, life-affirming, future. And she absolutely refused to engage the question of law, order, and punishment.

So, to repeat: If abortion is outlawed, what happens to the women who seek abortions?

Anyone?


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Sisters are doing it for themselves

3 06 2009

Nothing like teaching about women and politics to fire up the ol’ feminist engine.

I’ve been a feminist since junior high, when my college-age sister brought home a Ms. magazine she had received free on campus. Zing! I had a subscription all through high school.

(I also joined a local chapter of NOW. Meetings took place in a nearby town, so before I had my driver’s license, my mom or dad would have to drive me to the meetings.)

And I was a loudmouth in college, of course, and noticed how left-wing men could be incredibly piggish around women. I wore my buttons and shouted my slogans and. . . not much more.

In grad school I studied contemporary political theory, but not feminist theory. There was a fair amount of essentialist crap floating around at the time (women are more maternal, more peaceful, more cooperative, better. . .), as well as the psychoanalytically-influenced theory from Europe. Psychoanalysis: bleh.

So I fell out of it. Yes, still a feminist, but, after awhile, I just stopped paying attention to feminist movements, to actual feminist activities. Distracted, for all kinds of reasons.

Well. The past year or so I’ve been teaching a basic politics course which my department prefers to center on women. I’ve kind of resisted this, wondering about the students in my courses, worried that the men in particular would think this isn’t ‘real’ or ‘serious’ politics.

Stupid, I know, but I did have to remind myself, repeatedly, that I wouldn’t make apologies for teaching a course which centered on race or class, and that, last time I checked, women were, oh, about half the world’s population. We matter! Yeah, we do!

Right?

This summer, however, I’m teaching a course explicitly about women and politics, so I don’t have to worry that the students are going to feel suckered into learning about girl stuff: they know straight up what they’re getting into. And, boy, nothing like reading how women are screwed at every level of politics to rekindle my energies.

One student had asked for some form of analytical framework for the course, and I responded that the main approach would be to consider 3 levels of analysis: at the institutional or official/governmental level; at the level of civil society, in which movements may be directed either toward affecting official policy or toward other institutions and attitudes within civil society; and at the marginal or underground level, which may encompass everything from (peaceful) separatist movements to illegal acts (such as social support networks for illegal abortion) to activities in repressive states. One of the texts I used tracks roughly along these lines, although their third level is that of revolutionary movements.

Regardless, women are screwed at every level. Sure, there are the good and noble exceptions (institutionally: Scandinavia, Rwanda, South Africa), but, far more often, women’s concerns are shunted aside, women’s movements marginalized, and, in repeat of what I saw in college, even in revolutionary situations, women’s liberation takes a back seat to ‘national’ a.k.a. men’s liberation.

Tough economic times? Cut social welfare provisions. Uncertain security situation? Women must fall back and support the men. Taking over the state? Oh, women will be free ‘after the revolution’.

I know, I know: This is nothing new. Still, I have forgotten so much, have resigned myself to so much, even as I kept stating my fealty to the feminist cause. I stopped paying attention.

I’m hardly ready to go jump over any barricades—I am old and lazy, after all. But it wouldn’t kill me to do more than just bitch about this stuff.

And even if I’ve fallen behind on my feminist analysis, I’ve kept up with my political analysis. Thus, my anarchic streak meets up with a refreshed feminism: DIY feminism and anti-patriarchy. No more compromises on women’s liberation, no more standing back or apologizing for daring to think that the emancipation of half of the fucking world might maybe sorta possibly matter.

Half of the world? Did I say that? How about the whole fucking world? Yep, I’m newly comfortable with discussions of patriarchy (a word that I used to sidle away from, embarrassed), and how it traps men as well as women. Yeah, it sucks that women have to prove their ‘toughness’ , but it also sucks that a man can’t be gentle without having his masculinity questioned. And while women have been able to move into so-called masculine fields—because, of course, women would want to move into something better—men have a far more difficult time lowering themselves to enter so-called feminine fields. Chick lawyer? Check. Guy kindergarten teacher? Um. . . .

Enough. I’m too much the post-structuralist/modernist to think that we can ever be completely free of the nest of power relations, but that’s hardly an excuse for not getting rid of the ones we find odious now.

And that ‘we’ includes me—because, as history clearly demonstrates, ain’t nobody else gonna liberate me. DIY, indeed.

(Image from Red Buddha Designs)


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Categories : Musing, Politics

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