Reconcile

Let’s see, what’s the funniest part about this picture? [which is too wide to fit in this blog]

Is it the way the man appears to be shooting out of his pants like a genie?

Is it the way our two young lovers are about to do it on a hard floor with dancing lights?

Perhaps you go simple and say it’s the ridiculous expression on his face.

For my money, there’s hilarity in the emphasis on their angular jawlines

Snark and possible captions for the image welcome in comments.

This post can only describe my defecation and orgasm experiences.

Being often housebound, with depression and all, in a place with a comfy bathroom and a deal more privacy than the college dorms had, has allowed me to get in tune with my body. I’ve been more able to see the connection between what I eat and how long it takes to travel through my digestive system. And because my dad works and I’m home alone so much, I’ve been able to experiment with activities normally considered private. (For example, leaving the door open.) And of course, both activities tear me away from the computer and interpersonal contact (virgin here; all of my orgasms have been masturbatory), which can lead to wandering thoughts. It’s become increasingly clear to me that both shitting and gilding the lily share several points of similarity that merit examination.

It’s the necessity of being in tune with one’s body where I would like to start the comparison. Both activities really require me to focus on an area of my body that I normally don’t focus on. Often I’ll be focused on whatever brilliant intellectual pursuits I am pursuing at the time, when my lower brain gives me a poke and my higher brain takes notice, thinking, “oh, is it that time again?” I think about when the last time it was that I pooped or orgasmed, and what’s going on to make me need to do it this time, and whether I’ve been doing it unusually much or whether it’s about damn time. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about this, it just all goes through my head–I’m doing checks on my body, making sure things check out. Then I have to make sure my environment is appropriate for meeting my body’s needs. Really, both activities are opportunities to get in touch with my body. (And I don’t think my mind and my body are separate; but it’s difficult to talk about this without implying that.)

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I have a longer post on something else entirely planned, but as it’s finals week and all, I don’t have the time to write it out just now.

So this is an open thread to discuss how much you loathe self-identified “hopeless romantics.”

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Every once in a while various of my friends and I discuss the question of time travel. What would it be like to live in a past time and place? Would we like to be in the times of chivalry and hear songs of courtly love? Would we like to chill six hundred years ago in the Americas? How about going to see the original Greek tragedies? Witness the Renaissance from Florence? Who wants to be with the first to cross the land bridge from Russia to Alaska? Or be a part of the early generations in Australia?

Inevitably, of course, we suffer a reality check. If I were in ancient Greece, as a woman, I would have very few rights. Chivalry is the same way. How many people with disabilities feel like they would have survived certain times in the past? So too do my trans friends wonder how they would have fared. I know that I would not have been allowed to be open about my desire for other women in many of these times. Of course there have been cultures in the past that honored these identities, but Western history especially has largely been a history of terrible maltreatment.

But when we say “If I lived in this time and place…” what do we think of as ourselves? What is “I”?

The last time I had this conversation and said “but as a woman…” a man responded, “But as someone who speaks English, you wouldn’t be able to communicate either.” I said that of course if I lived back then, over there, I would be speaking their langage. It didn’t take much thinking to declare that what language I speak isn’t important to being me.

But what aspects of me do I shed as I go to live in the past? And what can’t I leave behind without being me? So I have to consider that I’m a woman in thinking about how I would fare, but I don’t have to consider my language learning. I know I would consider my bisexuality to be an aspect of myself that travels with me. How about race? How does a white girl get to be with the first people in Australia? Would they treat me differently because of that? Who was I born to?

What about class? What if I live in a culture that has no middle class? Do my poor friends think that if they were in the early middle ages, they could have been knights or clergy? Or do they picture themselves stuck as farmers at the mercy of anyone rich enough to be better armed than they are?

What stays with you? What is you? What do you leave behind? Surely you leave behind your fashion aesthetic–or do you? Does whether you keep your disability depend on whether your were born with it or whether it was trauma-induced? If you are a tradesperson, do you imagine you take those skills with you? Or is work just what you do?

How much of what is indispensable falls along the axes of privilege and oppression? What are the exceptions? Do you suppose that you take the circumstances of your birth along with you–whether your parents were married when they had you?

What aspects of yourself do you keep? Who are you?

In high school I was involved with the school’s literary magazine for two years–one year as part of the writing submissions committee, and one year as head of that same committee. I do have a bit of an ear for poetry, and let me just say that that ear was tortured in the review process. It didn’t help that some English teachers made submission to the magazine a requirement and provided specific poetry prompts for their students to write on. The first year it was “I am” poems (“I am a weekend / I am a box of crayons / I am a playful bunny,”) the second year it was “odes,” to their beds, their goldfish, their cars.

Of course when we heard a good poem, we all knew on the instant that it was good. There were edge cases, but when it was good, it was good.

My ear extends to prose as well–I’m a pretty reliable peer editor, and I can hear when Harry Potter clunks. I know this isn’t a unique skill–I’m not trying to brag. I’m just saying that for me, there is good writing and there is bad writing and I can tell you which one a given piece is.

But it’s really difficult to define, isn’t it? At least it is for me. I’m interested in talking about what good writing is and what bad writing is.

It’s also pretty clear that just because writing is bad, doesn’t mean it’s not enjoyable. Clearly people enjoyed The Da Vinci Code, which is an awful, awful piece of writing. They’re not wrong for enjoying that book–different strokes for different folks, right? But then how do we talk about the benefits of good writing when you can enjoy writing exclusive of its quality?

What does it mean to say something is good writing or bad writing? Can we talk about bad writing and good writing without running into oppression and privilege? If so, how? If not, why not?

Please discuss!

Hello friendly people! Today I have a request for help from people who like music.

As a kid I was raised on soft 90s and oldies, both of which I still enjoy, but which I have come to realize are impossibly dorky. Also, my parents never really talked about music, so even though I know a lot of songs very well, I couldn’t tell you the artists or song titles. I really know very little about the history and culture of music, which is especially egregious in Seattle, like not knowing all about ordering coffee. I also have almost no formal musical education.

My relative ignorance about music cuts me out of a lot of conversations, and, consequently, I have been making very slow, timid efforts to become more aware of musical culture and expand my musical tastes. I haven’t stopped liking oldies, soft 90s stuff, or musical soundtracks, but happily I’m pretty easy to please and I seem to like a little bit of everything.

So because this is my blog, what I’m going to do is basically talk about what I like so far in music and ask you all for recommendations based on that! Okay? Okay.

In general, one thing I seem to like in music is the lovely voices–I’m big into musicals for that reason. Bernadette Peters definitely comes to mind, as do Whitney Houston, Michael Ball, and Freddie Mercury. I also love the main actress in Glee whose name I can’t be bothered looking up. I’m also big on music actually sounding like music, with melodies and stuff. I like bouncy songs, sad songs, and songs that tell stories.

Here are twenty-five artists whose songs I have some of (anywhere from one song to two albums) and really enjoy (favorite songs in parentheses):

Tori Amos, five songs (Winter)
Erykah Badu, one album (Danger, Bag Lady)
Common, one song (Heaven Somewhere)
David Bowie, four songs (Rock n Roll Suicide)
Michael Jackson, three songs (Man in the Mirror)

Billy Joel, several songs (Piano Man)
TV on the Radio, one album (Golden Age)
The Eagles, one song (Desperado)
Alanis Morissette, six songs (You Oughta Know)
The Fugees, one album (The Mask, Stand by Me)

Depeche Mode, one song (Damaged People)
Gogul Bordello, seven songs (American Wedding, Shy Kind of Guy)
GooGoo Dolls, one album (Iris, Know Who I Am)
Tom Waits, two songs (We’re All Mad Here)
Ida Maria, one album (Oh My God)

Journey, one song (Don’t Stop Believing)
Mama Cass Elliot, two songs (Make Your Own Kind of Music)
Luthor Vandross, one song (Dance with my Father)
Marc Cohn, one song (Walking in Memphis)
Pat Benatar, five songs (Shadows of the Night)

Vanessa Williams, four songs (Remember Me This Way)
Meatloaf, several songs (Objects in the Rear View Mirror)
Liza Minelli, one album + Caberet soundrack (Maybe This Time)
Bowling for Soup, two songs (Girl all the Bad Guys Want)
Sean Paul, one song (Get Busy)

Right. So. I figure there are some people out there for whom giving music advice is a pleasure. I would like to have some song/artist recommendations! Please?

It’s kind of important to name a suggested song by an artist that you would suggest, preferably more than one, that’s just how my mind works. It’s really important to me to have a lot of women and a lot of POC in my library, so those recommendations are extra-appreciated. Oh, and I think I’d like to hear more hip hop especially. But all the other genres too.

Oh, and if you have any, like, observations about my musical tastes, that would be a big help for when I have conversations with people about music. So I can say “oh yes, I am more inclined to songs with minor keys” or whatever the hell.

Thanks in advance!

Hi everybody. On Wednesday, Shakesville’s Question of the Day was “What is the worst book you have ever read?” (My answer: The Da Vinci Code.) Shaker Brian G said Harry Potter, and I replied:

Brian G:Now I have a complicated relationship with Harry Potter, and I think good fandom has come from the books but it is pretty undeniable that Rowling 1) stinks at emotional/grief writing, 2) likes to shove her hero’s goodness down our throats, 3) hasn’t thought her magic system through very carefully, and 4) was unable to keep some very twisted sexual messages out of her books.

Shakers ozymandias3 and pandoradeloeste asked me to elaborate on 4), which I did in the comments. It was pretty epic, I’m not going to lie–but it was not epic enough for me, and so I am reproducing it here, but with citations added!

Harry Potter is a bit of a sore spot for me. How much I loathe books can be expressed by the formula L = TP, or Loathing equals Terrible (how terrible it is), times Past (how much effort I put into it when I used to like it). So for that reason, Twilight, whose P is zero, also has an L value of zero–doesn’t matter how bad it is, I don’t happen to give a shit. As it happens, Harry Potter is no slacker in the T department and has the highest P of any book series in existence. You do the math.

So without further ado, I present “Things that come to mind as examples of the twisted sexuality in Harry Potter.“

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Whipping Girl is published by Seal Press? Fuck.

I love the students in my multicultural studies class. I am falling in love with some of them. I fall in love easy.

It’s an introductory course. I consider my understanding of social justice theories and history to be sorely lacking, having educated myself in a hackish sort of way by reading blogs and following links upon links, by forging friendships and carving out spaces within communities. I’ve read hardly any books on feminism–a couple of bell hooks, Dworkin’s Intercourse, that multiracial view of eating disorders one by Becky Thompson. I’m familiar with, and in love with, Letter from a Birmingham Jail…and that’s about it.

So although I’d say that in some ways, my understanding of multiculturalism and social justice is more advanced than some others in the class, what I know is very uneven, very rough, and I could really use a space to learn some theory and history. I was very eager to take this class. I was very much afraid, though, that it would have two or three jackasses who just didn’t see sexism, or racism, or who thought Zinn’s People’s History of the United States (our textbook) was just bashing white men.

But it hasn’t been that way at all. My fellow students have been thoughtful, open, and respectful. They see where oppression happens.

In fact, the biggest disappointment has been the professor. I have a lot of respect for him–he has real world organizing experience and he knows what he’s talking about very well in some areas–he’s particularly good, I think, on gender and on race.

He’s pretty fuzzy on gender identity and sexuality, though. I wrote him a letter about a couple of things he got wrong with respect to transness on an assignment sheet, and he was completely willing to acknowledge it and go over it with the class–but he still got it wrong. He told the class that transsexual was transgender + HRT/surgery. Really! He has the correct definitions of those words on the test he wrote as the midterm, but he doesn’t understand it without looking it up, and even when he was reading the written definition, he got it wrong. He also uses “homosexual” as a noun.

His ideas on disability are also, to my mind, wrongheaded. He prefers the term “differently abled,” and uses that term to suggest that everyone is differently abled. I understand the point behind this, trying to say that being deaf isn’t a lack, isn’t worse than being hearing, but by suggesting that we are all differently abled, I think he’s erasing the real way the minds and bodies of PWD interact with society and the world around them–the fact of the difficulties we have that TABs simply don’t. Perhaps everyone has different abilities, but not everyone has disabilities.

When he doesn’t know an answer, he never says “I don’t know; I’ll look it up and get back to you tomorrow.” He only gives a wrong answer. It pisses me off because as a professor he has a lot of influence over what his students think and how they understand oppression and power.

I suspect that he has had to deal with jerkass students in the past and has integrated strategies meant to deflect those students, but it’s a letdown in a lot of ways. One thing he does a lot is raise a discussion question with the conclusion he would like us to reach already in mind. (This is a pretty common strategy I have seen with my teachers.) When he conducts the discussion looking for one conclusion, envisioning only one path, he doesn’t really listen. I think he unconsciously disengages from students who aren’t following where he wants to go, even though sometimes what they have to say is also a valid line of thought and could be explored to great effect. He’ll say “right, that’s good”–and move on to the next student, hoping they’ll “get it.”

I understand why he does this. There’s only so much class time. He wants to teach us what he knows, in an important subject, and he does have good things to say.

But the students have good things to say, too. They bring with them their lives–sixteen valuable viewpoints that my professor cannot provide on his own. I’ve heard them–they tend toward the insightful. We’ve learned from each other. They’re not perfect, now–”I don’t see my friend as disabled/gay” has come up a few times. Still, I came to the class hoping I would learn theory and history. I’ve learned more, in fact, about the lives of my fellow students, and I love them for it.

It’s a good class, and the professor is part of what makes it good. I just think that in a class whose goal is to make us more engaged with multiculturalism and social justice, he should be more willing to engage with us on our terms.

Warning: whiteness follows.

I’m doing the Craigslist thang, where I post my personal, get a modest number of responses, and strike up some conversations with some folks. If I ever make it to a date with any of them, it will be my first date ever. Needless to say, I have a bunch of issues surrounding this. I’m intimidated to start with. So it’s not a great breeding ground for rationality.

Of course the social dynamics of Craigslist have always been fascinating to me, even when they disgust me as well. (An example of fascinating/disgusting would be men who feel the need to specify that they are into FEMALES in ALL CAPS. It’s like they’re advertising their homophobia right up front!)

I’ve gotten maybe four replies from POC. This is where I think things might have been better if I’d never come to anti-racism. Before anti-racism, I would probably have disliked their response/picture for vague reasons that I didn’t realize had to do with race, deleted their responses, and we both would have moved on with our lives.

Now? Now, that I spend my days analyzing absolutely everything along several axes of privilege and oppression? I notice their race. If my first impression is that I don’t like their response/pics, I think “Is that because of their race? Should I look closer?” If my first impression is that I do like them, I think “Am I just thinking I like them because I want to seem anti-racist to myself?”

Then I think, “What about these other things that I don’t like about them? Am I just looking for excuses to not deal with them because of their race? Would I interpret this as negatively if they were white? Would I spend so much time analyzing their pictures if they were white?”

“What if I meet up with them? Can I ethically go on a date with a POC when I still have all these issues around race? Couldn’t I hurt them? Am I treating them like a stepping stone in my anti-racist journey? Will the issues ever go away? Why can’t I stop thinking these thoughts?”

And I think, am I doing anti-racism wrong? Is this normal? Is this going to be a lifelong thing, like fighting my negative image of my own body? How do I, as a person with depression who is really susceptible to self-loathing and beratement, work through my racism without engaging in self-hate and without getting angry at myself for not having it “right” yet?

Ugh. I’m so pissed at myself for having these thoughts. And I’m so pissed at the world for putting all this bullshit in my brain.