OK, so one of these is my article. But still: my take on the VP debate.

Also, read Natalia’s piece here. Really. You must.

Posted: October 4th, 2008 under Politics, Shameless self-promotion.
Comments: 1

Latoya has an excellent post up at Feministe about Sarah Palin and Condoleezza Rice, the similarities between the two, and the need for voting based on a person’s policies, not their anatomy.

Posted: September 14th, 2008 under Feminism, Politics.
Comments: none

I feel like I should have some deep political insight right now, less than two months from the election, but the only insight I have is that this shit has gone on for way too long and wasted way too much money.

So instead, I have a couple of beautiful posts to share with you.

I’ve been thinking about love a lot lately. At first when I escaped my relationship I just wanted to get out, be alone, have time that was entirely my own and I really didn’t care to try and think about it, or at all feel anything. I wanted to play.

I still enjoy my alone time and I frankly don’t think I have the time or the emotional capability to deal with love right now. At least not the way it’s commonly thought of. I wonder if I really do want that–ever.

But there are bits of love all over the place in my life, however strange and unruly and improper they may be. And it is still the strongest thing in the world.

Love is radical, and its tears will extinguish Hell, but only if we burn with it. It is not enough to love quietly, mousily, in the safe spaces, because love is radically unsafe. Love will throw you through Hell and walk with you on the hike out. Love does not let you hide behind walls, it will slice you open, it will make you bleed.

Love is an act of blood. Love is an act of bone. It is your breath.

I don’t want to love someone again until I can really throw myself into it. Until I meet someone willing to throw themselves into it as well. To admit that there are no rules.

I say let’s call down the thunders, then. Let’s stand and fight. Let’s own that our love is a matter of artillery, and fire salvo after salvo. Let’s hold hands and kiss and fuck and dance while all over, rock shears from the cliff-faces of their shuddering world and it frays at the seams. Let’s defiantly exist, exist hard, right next to them, public, brazen, beautiful. Let’s drill and march and right on their doorsteps let’s have unacceptable bodies and loud music and food whose aromas they find foreign and offensive. Let’s fucking sing.

And love can be itself a political act. But that’s too narrow. Too little and petty a word for it. It can be revolutionary.

Posted: September 13th, 2008 under Love.
Comments: 2

Not like this is the first time I’ve posted about this.

But see, this is the thing. Natalia wrote in response to Twisty’s comment that women should repudiate femininity if they can, because they will never have equality unless they are de-otherized.

Because butch women are apparently never raped or treated with sexist scorn. Because I’ve never had my ass grabbed when I was wearing pants or not wearing makeup. I mean, should we all transition in order to get rid of Class Woman? Well, wait, clearly that’s not allowed either.

I have breasts. I have curvy hips and an ass that next to no one is going to confuse for male. Should I lose a bunch of weight in order to make my body as boyish as possible, in order to repudiate femininity and more easily what, pass as a man?

I know I’ll be accused of oversimplifying, so I’ll pull out my own Advanced Blamer card here and quote Susan Bordo, talking about anorexia.

“On the other hand, even as young women today continue to be taught traditionally ‘feminine’ virtues, to the degree that the professional arena is open to them they must also learn to embody the ‘masculine’ language and values of that arena–self-control, determination, cool, emotional discipline, mastery, and so on. Female bodies now speak symbolically of this necessity in their slender spare shape…Our bodies, too, as we trudge to the gym every day and fiercely resist both our hungers and our desire to sooth ourselves, are becoming more and more practiced at the ‘male’ virtues of control and self-mastery. The anorectic pursues these virtues with single-minded, unswerving dedication…
Explored as a possibility for the self, the “androgynous” ideal ultimately exposes its internal contradiction and becomes a war that tears the subject in two–a war explicitly thematized, by many anorectics, as a battle between the male and female sides of the self…
Protesting the stifling of the female voice through one’s own voicelessness–that is, employing the language of femininity to protest the conditions of the female world–will always involve ambiguities of this sort…
As her body begins to lose its traditional feminine curves, its breasts and hips and rounded stomach, begins to feel and look more like a spare, lanky male body, she begins to feel untouchable, out of reach of hurt, “invulnerable, clean and hard as the bones etched into my silhouette,” as one student described it in her journal…
Through her anorexia, by contrast, she has unexpectedly discovered an entry into the privileged male world, a way to become what is valued in our culture, a way to become safe, to rise above it all–for her, they are the same thing…
To reshape one’s body into a male body is not to put on male power and privilege. To feel autonomous and free while harnessing body and soul to an obsessive body-practice is to serve, not transform, a social order that limits female possibilities. And, of course, for the female to become male is only for her to locate herself on the other side of a disfiguring opposition…
For if femininity is, as Susan Brownmiller has said, at its core a ‘tradition of imposed limitations,’ then an unwillingness to limit oneself, even in the pursuit of femininity, breaks the rules.

The fact is that since “masculine” has been constructed as the neutral form for so long in ‘patriarchal’ society, for women to “repudiate femininity” doesn’t give them a neutral option. It mostly leads to the embrace of masculine bodily and clothing signifiers–thus, you catch women comparing how long it’s been since they’ve shaved, when body hair has been socially constructed for so long as a signifier of manhood. Women congratulate themselves for not dressing in a feminine manner, when the opposite is to adopt clothing gendered masculine.

So to “repudiate femininity” is not at all to do away with a gender binary. It is instead to adopt the other half of it–the masculine half.

I know there will be people who read this and say “That’s not what Twisty meant!” And of course a certain picture of femininity is valued in our culture above others. I have written and linked above about the changing creation of masculinity and femininity across (Western) culture, and how maintaining masculinity requires as much discipline as femininity.

But I am merely illustrating the fact that policing women’s bodies is NOT a feminist act. Policing women’s femininity is not helping women. It is still playing into the same double bind that Bordo is talking about when she writes of anorexia. Being able to dress and look how we want and still be respected as intelligent individuals capable of all the things men are capable of–THAT would be liberation.

Of all the options out there, all the drag I could wear, I choose several options. My closet is a costume chest full of personae for me to play with. Today I have to meet my students for the semester for the first time–the rest of the semester they will see me in the lab and so in jeans and clothes that I won’t be too sad if I get photo chemicals on. So today I put on a skirt and a nice shirt and I play teacher. Later I’m going out for drinks with a friend, so I will play pretty. Right now I’m writing, so I am lounging in my PJ’s. All these things are options for me. Options. Some are feminine, some are not. And I require people to treat me with respect and listen to me no matter how I am dressed. Which, to me, seems to be a better way of teaching them that feminine /= stupid or unworthy, rather than having to disavow anything sparkly or femme because it might make them take me less seriously or “other” me.

After all, isn’t repudiating femininity what patriarchal culture was all about?

Bordo, Susan. “The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity.” From Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, taken here from Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory. Conboy, Katie, Nadia Medina and Sarah Stanbury, eds. Columbia University Press, 1997

Posted: September 5th, 2008 under Feminism.
Comments: 9

thoughts on Hurricane Gustav up at GlobalComment. (thanks again, Natalia)

Posted: September 3rd, 2008 under New Orleans, Shameless self-promotion.
Comments: none

I’ve got my own thoughts on the nomination, and they’ll be up later. But for now, WOC PhD (as usual–she’s one of the best bloggers out there and I’m so glad she’s returned to regular posting!) has an excellent rundown of Sarah Palin, plus some bonus analysis of Hillary Clinton’s misplaced comments.

Posted: August 30th, 2008 under Feminism, Politics.
Comments: none

It’s the anniversary of a lot of things, but right now the one topmost in my mind is Hurricane Katrina. With Gustav shooting New Orleans the death look as I type, I can’t write any more about Obama or Palin. All I can do is hope that it doesn’t happen all over again.

I have a picture of the French Quarter as my background on my laptop right now and on my Twitter page. I miss New Orleans all the time, but never more so than when she’s threatened.

There’s not much we can do about Gustav yet, but there are places you can donate that are still trying to rebuild New Orleans from Katrina, which struck three years ago now.

And cross your fingers, knock wood, and pray to anything you might believe in that Gustav fizzles before it causes any more destruction.

My Private Casbah and WOC PhD have more.

Posted: August 30th, 2008 under New Orleans.
Comments: 1

I have some fun and some serious for you this morning.

1. Publius on Obama’s economic policy and reasons to be excited.

2. Ren’s posts on Feministe. All of them. Because she lays it all out there: treat sex workers as people, please. It ain’t friggin’ hard. Or shouldn’t be.

3. Prof BW has a call to arms: Blog Action Day on Poverty. I’ll be trying to do this. You should too.

4. And some fun, as promised: BFP has Lita Ford, Joan Jett, and Joan and Bruce Springsteen duetting. Yay!

Posted: August 25th, 2008 under Economy, Feminism, Politics, Rock'n'roll.
Comments: 2

So I recently wrote an article on the 20th anniversary of the Sandman for Comic Foundry magazine. It will be in the next issue, so pick it up.

I made an excellent playlist to listen to while I was re-reading and staring at interview transcripts and writing, and though I can’t share my actual music with you, I thought I’d share my list, anyway. Isn’t there an option on iTunes somewhere that you can make a playlist and people can download things if they want them? Or is that just wishful thinking on my part?

Anyway, list below the fold. Because it’s really long. But I put in some pictures, too. Read more »

Posted: August 21st, 2008 under Art, Dreams, Rock'n'roll, comics.
Comments: 4

h/t Natalia Antonova.

Reasons: Pipeline (in case that’s intercepted the alternative is Russian pipeline), NATO (’our former in our very soft South underbelly can’t be part of NATO’), and personal dislike of our President Saakashvili by Russian Prime Minister Putin.

Then there is Kosovo - “if they should get independence, why shouldn’t the Ossetians?” - the thinking goes.

Then there is Iraq - “if US can hang whomever they dislike, why can’t we?”

Go read it all. Now.

Posted: August 18th, 2008 under Fighting, Politics.
Comments: none