Prioritizing the Paranoias

Been awhile since I commented on what’s on the bedside table.. I was reminded of this by a very good review/discussion of Ghost Map on Making Light today, which I read a little over a year ago but apparently didn’t write much about.

So.. in the order I remember them, this is what I’ve been reading lately (with the admission that “lately” is somewhat relative).

One Thousand White Women, by Jim Fergus. This is a fictional alternative-history account of the push to move the Native American tribes of the American West to reservations when gold was first discovered in the Black Hills of the Dakotas. It’s an extraordinary account of Native American living and a gripping story that neither shys away from nor glorifies the violence of either the Native American tribes or the American soldiers charged with “taming” them. I’m not well-versed enough in Native American history to speak to the accuracy of the events depicted, but it is a very well written and engaging book and really prompts the reader to think about perspectives. From situation at the beginning with the novels narrator - May Dodd - being committed to an asylum for promiscuity because she dared to have children with a man beneath her station and out of wedlock, to the stories of the other women (a freed African slave, an eccentric English artist, a pair of diamond-in-the-rough Irish twins, and many more), to the views of the Army Captain forced to enact the decrees of politicians in a world they’ve never been to much less understood, and finally to the glimpses - even though they are always “outside looking in” - of Native American society, I’m reminded (oddly) of when Obi-Wan (yes, yes.. I know) tells Luke that what he told him about his father was true.. “from a certain point of view.”

Prior to that, I read Forty Signs of Rain, by Kim Stanley Robinson. I am rather fond of KSR, though I don’t always understand him. I loved the Mars Trilogy, but struggled with The Years of Rice and Salt (which I keep thinking I should try to read again..). And in truth, I wanted there to be more depth to Forty Signs, the way I remember there being in the Mars Trilogy. This is the first in a series, and I suspect he’ll get into more depth in the later books, but I can’t help but feeling that he’s dumbed down the science in this one to make the message more accessible and.. that makes it less enjoyable - even though I might not have understood all the science had he included it. Twisted, yes, but true. In this one, he’s taking on (again) the message that we as a species are pushing our planet toward global environmental destruction. He deals with this more indirectly, but very powerfully, in the Mars Trilogy, too, so it’s a familiar theme, but.. *shrug* something just felt off in this one. I haven’t picked up the next one yet, but pr’bly will at some point.

I just started The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, by Maggie O’Farrell, but am not very far into it. At some point, though, I’m sure I will finally give in and read the next of the Kushiel series - Kushiel’s Justice - by Jacqueline Carey, especially as the one after that (Kushiel’s Mercy) is now available in hard cover. I love Carey’s style and the Kushiel universe is eminently enchanting for me, so I tend to reserve them for times when I can truly savor them.

And finally (though not the only other book on the bedside table, just the last I remember off the top of my head), I’ll read Funny in Farsi (link to Amazon), by Firoozeh Dumas, at some point as it’s the common reader on campus for the fall.

This is another one of those head-spiral posts.. another that I started originally some time ago and decided needed some exposure. I guess you could consider these my concession to the idea that my life shouldn’t have to be politicized for me to contribute to social justice.

Several months ago, I was reading blogs and came across this post from Bitch, Ph.D. and as I was reading it I kept coming back to the idea that this isn’t just stuff for a guy to do to show his girlfriend he supports her in “her feminism”. Most of the things discussed in the post aren’t about gender; they’re about basic respect for someone as a person. And while I know that at least by some definitions, that’s what the feminist movement is - respect for persons regardless of gender - taking that idea and labeling with one gender - *femin*ism - strikes me as disingenuous.

I resist being labeled a “feminist”* because I don’t think that there’s anything particularly gendered about human decency, and it rubs me the wrong way when one group tries to advocate for universal equity but then slaps a label on it to brand it as belonging to one gender (or race or creed or what have you). And I have to admit that I’ve wondered on more than one occasion about whether respect for people would increase if we stopped trying to make it about someone’s gender expression or their sexual orientation or their race or ethnicity or religion or, or, or.. Again, this ties in with the idea that if the point is equality, why should anyone have to emphasize who they are or what they’ve been through to be seen as part of the fight? Shouldn’t it be more important that they can hear and understand what others have been through, to acknowledge the injustice, and work to counter it?

*sigh* I’m tired of having who I am become a political statement. I am a person, just like every one of you. The fact of my personhood should be the end of the decision tree about how to interact with or think about me.

However, as Sociological Images illustrates so well on a daily basis (they are quickly becoming my new favorite blog), we as a society are obsessed with gender roles, with instilling them from a very young age and inundating ourselves with reinforcements of those roles at every waking moment. It’s insidious and frightening and all too often, completely overlooked. For example, the practice of using blue hats for boys and pink hats for girls in newborn nurseries may seem an innocent visual depiction of whether a child is male or female, but.. why? What does it matter what biological sex a child is if it’s in need of care or attention or love?

If it really were innocent and a matter of classification purely for the sake of sense-making (which.. well.. it isn’t.. can’t be, really) it might be a different matter. But we also go one step further and turn it into a question of power and control. Both the subliminal and direct sexualization of advertising (this one has images that may not be work-safe) are just two of the many ways in which we instill the idea that sex equals status and sex equals power. The idea that if a woman appears attractive must mean she wants to be objectified is so complicated it’s maddening - we’re raised in a society where beauty is overtly equated with success, so it’s ingrained into our heads from the very beginning that we should want at all times to be beautiful, but at the same time, in attempting to play that role, we’re portrayed as capricious, teases, or whores. And goddess forgive we may be both beautiful and intelligent.. (And no, it’s not any better being male..)

So.. to bring this back around.. I simply can’t justify the inherent contradiction in being a “feminist” when that label is used to mean equality for all. I want something better, something that doesn’t used a gendered label to try and epitomize a struggle to stop a persons gender from being used to evoke a pre-determined power structure or status hierarchy. Practice what you preach.. if it’s about recognizing the individual differences in each person and acknowledging their worth, don’t make that the province of one gender or another.

* In truth I resist being labeled at all. I understand the psychological need to be able to categorize our experiences to make sense of the otherwise completely overwhelming set of external stimuli we encounter on a daily basis, but there’s a difference between sense-making in your head and smacking someone with a label that you then use to determine how you interact with them.

Happy Pride..? Anyone else want to be Canadian this week?

And.. just.. gah. (via Sociological Images)

Pandora has been shoving Dave Potts at me lately. I rather like his stuff. Might have to break down and buy a CD.. course that would have been good to decide *before* placing a CDBaby order this afternoon (for Molinos, from the Paperboys).

Stephanie gives me yet another connection between the moon and silver. One might think there really was something mystical or cosmic behind my affinity for both..

Dad’s in town again the next couple days to finish the upstairs closet. While he’s here I might also wrangle him into showing me how to best strip the wallpaper in the kitchen.. or possibly putting the closet we want in the other bedroom (there’s no demolition portion for that one - just need to frame and hang the doors), so we can rip out the fake, ugly, utterly useless excuse for a closet someone installed in that room in order to be able to sell the house as a 3-bedroom. Both need to be done, but I’ve been feeling the urge to paint lately (and have a three day weekend coming up), so I might be leaning toward the kitchen (though we could also finish stripping the woodwork in the dining room and paint in there..), except that all the woodwork still needs stripping in the kitchen, too.

I have proof I’ve been spinning lately, too, but I forgot the camera at home this morning, so you’ll have to wait for it.

For reasons that will remain unknown, I found myself searching for images this morning and came across one of a painting by Pino that struck me in all kinds of “want that” ways.. Rather than hotlink the Kingsley Art Gallery’s images, I figured I’d like to the ones that I really liked after poking around a bit more..

Mystic Dreams - I think it’s the blue in this one that really just does me in.

Restful - this one reminds me of a friend.

Solace

I think one of the reasons his work struck me was that it’s in some ways reminiscent of Jack Vettriano, whose style I love. A friend gave us The Singing Butler for our wedding because it reminded her of the story of the night Jack and I met, and it’s still one of my favorite pieces. I keep meaning to track down a framed print of Mad Dogs, too, but I think that might have to wait until I redecorate the house so I could display them both. The Road to Nowhere screams Casablanca to me.. something about the anonymity of the subjects ..

A landmark comedian and a landmark theatre company.

Sometimes all it takes is bringing two real coders** into your office to check your logic to notice the mistake yourself. *sigh*

And I s’pose while I’m at it, I should admit that the idea of “having” to learn Visio makes the little organization freak in my head go *squee!*. It might even be enough to actually move me from dreading that particularly little project into actually doing it.. just likely not this week.

* I have had the discussion on more than one occasion about whether I’m a geek or a nerd. I don’t actually often admit to being either, but there are moments where I really can’t in good conscience get away with denying there’s not at least a little baby geek in there somewhere - especially weeks when the biggest single task I’ve been working on is a series of more or less complex query strings with nested if/else statements. I keep trying to get people to elucidate the difference between a geek and a nerd, and the closest anyone’s gotten is to say that a geek just has some better social skills.  Based on that, I think I definitely qualify as a geek, not a nerd.

** I’m not a real coder. I fake it well most of the time, but I’m really really not. I know enough SQL (which I still firmly believe isn’t a real “language” the way C++ and others are) to be able to get data out if I had to write my own Select statements, even with some pr’bly more complicated joins and/or limits, but that’s mostly knowing how the data works than it is understanding the code. Nested if/else statements are pretty much second-hand by now, but only because I know the tools I use. If you gave me a text editor and told me to code in any language, I’d laugh and then start typing pig-latin.

I was born on a Friday the 13th. I grew up on an Elm Street. Draw your own conclusions.

This is damn neat!

And while this is also damn neat, it’s also a little depressing. (via FlowingData.) I find it especially revealing to look at the % of median income spent on gas chart and noting that while CA may have the highest prices, they are near the bottom of the scale in terms of % of median income and while MO may have the largest block of lower prices, they are near the top of the scale in terms of % of median income.. data without context - such as just looking at the average prices - only tells part of the story.

One definition of grace (I especially liked the bit starting around 3:25).

There’s no way I can conceive of having the money to afford anyone to renovate my living space who would do this to it, but wow, would that be fun!

Good weekend to all!

The bulk of this was posted elsewhere more privately a few weeks ago.. but I’ve been thinking about it again, and decided it was time to clean it up and put it out there for more general discussion..

I’ve been doing a fair amount of existential head spiraling this spring and summer. Much of it is more or less interrelated - having to do with the ideas of labels and assumptions and politics and advocacy and privilege and, and, and - but manifests differently on different days. This little trip down the rabbit hole was triggered by this, but it coincides with this as well. (Other spirals have been caused lately by the Texas polygamist “scandal”, body image, interracial marriage, women gamers, how the media influences women’s self-perceptions, and feminism.)

My feelings about the debate surrounding same-sex domestic partner benefits* - or really more properly stated, about the fight for equality and the effects of societal privilege - are complicated. There’s no “nutshell” that I can summarize things to; there’s no “it’s too long, let me sum up”. It’s not neat and tidy, writing it all out hasn’t led me back to some grand summation that I can now insert at the beginning to make it all make some sort of sense. This isn’t about resolution.. I haven’t found the end of the spiral, and I don’t really think there is one.

I feel equal parts guilty for having the “good fortune” of having a partner who is of the opposite sex, and angry that because of that “good fortune” I’m complicit in supporting societal privilege based on sexual orientation. Guilty that I wouldn’t choose, that I haven’t chosen, *not* to accept those benefits - who would it really serve? That kind of gesture is really only a gesture unless it’s done by enough people to gain notice and force action and I’ve seen too many “personal crusades” become farces that do no one good - and angry that such privilege is so ingrained into our society as to make it near impossible for all but the already financial secure to make such gestures - with health care costs (as the most convenient example**) being what they are, who can really afford not to insure their partner given the opportunity?

I think the complicity is what eats at me most, because it doesn’t matter what my sexual orientation is, but because I appear straight, I’m complicit in perpetuating the societal privilege. And while I might choose to make my sexual orientation a political statement, that idea goes against my belief that who I love and who I sleep with are no one else’s business. Similarly, I could actively seek out another woman with whom to have a relationship for the sole purpose of making the point, but the idea of using someone else to make a political statement is so abhorrent to me that the idea is absurd. From a personal perspective, I prefer to keep my intimate life intimate; what happens between me and my partner is not open to public discussion or debate. Period.

From a political perspective, people who are straight don’t have to make their sexual orientation a political issue, so why should people who aren’t? It’s.. it strikes me as both counterintuitive and counterproductive - if the point is that it shouldn’t matter what gender my partner is in order for them to be eligible for benefits, why should my orientation matter in making the statement?

I feel this way about most social justice issues - and I’ve been accused of being naive and not wanting to actually work toward change but rather just sound like I do because of it. If the point is that as people we all deserve equal treatment, why should it matter if I’m white or female or married or educated or anything? Why can’t it just be enough that I’m willing to stand up for that equality? Why do I have to prove my credentials to “speak truth to power”? And trust me.. saying that I don’t doesn’t hold water.. I’ve been shunned and ignored by enough “marginalized” groups working toward social justice because I don’t appear to have those credentials to believe otherwise.

But I know that my choice to keep my private life out of the public sphere is also a privilege - one granted by the assumption that I’m straight (or the fact that I’m white, or, or, or..). And that brings me back to the idea that while I can work to equalize (and therefore reduce the effects of) privilege, I have to be privileged to do so. To be heard, I have to have a voice, but having a voice apparently means I can’t speak truth because I “obviously” haven’t “been there”.. or I wouldn’t have a voice.

And.. part of this is also at some level a recognition that while I could devote my life to fighting this (or any number of other) battle(s), I guess I’m selfish in that I want to *live* my life, too. Which is also, I know, an option available to me, again, because I am privileged.

And so we keep on spiraling down..

* My feelings about whether they should be available are not; there’s nothing particularly sacred about one man and one woman in my eyes so I think that partner benefits should not privilege that relationship above others. Yes, there are some lines I would draw - such that I think “partner” implies a relationship between consenting adult humans - but generally, I think that benefits should either be available to all self-identified families or to none.

** This same argument could be made for lots of other things for which one could make a stand if they were in the financial position to be able to afford it - such as shopping at WalMart. On the one hand, if you’re poor, or increasingly even lower middle-class (whatever that means), shopping at WalMart allows you to get the things your family needs at a lower cost to you. The fact that it might be doing so on the back of your neighbors, or that their policies of active wage depression contribute to the larger societal issue of non-living-wages which might be why you’re poor, or lower middle-class, are less likely to be principles you can stand on when faced with the choice between your principles and caring for your family. And we’ll not even get into the social stigma of what happens if you choose to stand on your principles and your family suffers and you’re viewed as being incapable or immoral for not putting your family first.

For what it’s worth, there are a couple more spirals ike this bouncing in my head.. one on the difference between gender and sex, and one on being female and resisting the feminist label, at least. I’ll likely clean those up in the next couple weeks and post them, too.

I’m actually hitting random *on* Random Wednesday! How neat. *smile*

First.. linkage.. (Which reminds me that I keep forgetting to mention.. the links in the sidebar are just the fiber-related blogs I follow.. if you’re really curious, you can see the full list of blogs I scan pretty much daily here.)

• This (thanks to Bitch PhD for the link) greatly appeals to the data geek in me as well as the totally non-news-junkie in me that really just needs a way to make sense of the flood of information and opinions about whatever is likely or unlikely or even possible come November. I hate listening to political news. Actually, I generally hate listening to most news at all, though NPR tends to at least keep me enough in the loop to not feel like a complete idiot. It’s one of those little quirks - I’ll gladly scan headlines every morning for the industry I work in and keep up on current issues relevant there, but more mainstream news just overwhelms me. There’s just a little too much information.
• Body image is a mental spiral that plagues most women I know in one way or another. It’s ubiquitous and perpetuated by so much of the mass media that there are days I wonder how any of us manages to crawl out of bed in the morning*. And while today’s F-word post is about body image as it relates to weddings, what’s sticking in my head most at the moment is the finding about how our partners wouldn’t change anything about us and a question about why we do this to ourselves. And.. that.. didn’t sit right in my head and I had to figure out why. And I think it’s because we don’t do this to ourselves; we’re raised in a culture and a society that implicitly and explicitly screams at us on a daily basis that happiness and success are the demesne of only the very thin and beautiful. We can’t escape the filters our heads create to deal with sorting and processing the daily glut of information we have to deal with; we can become more aware of them, we can consciously decide to (try to) ignore them, but we can’t really escape them completely. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to achieve a more healthy attitude about our lives (and our bodies), just that we, collectively, would also be better trying to learn not to blame ourselves for all our neuroses about our bodies. There’s.. well, a lot more bouncing in my head about all this, but for now, that’s.. all that’s coherent that I’m willing to share here.

Second, yes, for those wondering, I am still knitting (and spinning) just.. not as much. I need to post take updated pictures of Ornette - the right sock is to about the arch and looks rather lovely - and at some point I really need to spool the tussah silk/baby camel off the spindle it’s on and ply it so I can finish the rest. I’m a bit torn on next projects.. possibly picking up Catalina, or possibly starting a hoodie for me, or .. something else entirely. *shrug*

Third.. hrm.. there was a third when I started this, but I think it got lost. Might have been that we’re under another flash flood watch tonight and tomorrow.. 1 to 4 more inches on already saturated ground. Yup.

Fourth, pondering cutting my hair.. needs at least a trim, but I might get as much as a foot taken off. Yes, I’ll try to remember to get before and after pics if I go that drastic. *smile*

* And please, lest anyone feel the need to point it out, I’m well aware of how the mass media messes with the minds of men, too.