On [has] been

He is not my forever mate.

I think I figured that out some time between our second date and now. The first two dates were really great. But then again, drunk me likes most things.

I'm realizing that there is a lot of stuff he hates. (I don't like hate. I think we shouldn't hate so much. I really only hate a few things. Toe-walkers and mouth-breathers, mostly.)

Fat people, for instance. One of the things he likes about me is that I'm skinny. Great. Flash forward seven years, to the birth of our first child and subsequent divorce based on the baby-weight that I haven't had a chance to lose.

He also hates wiggling. R once told me that me and his six-year old self would have gotten along famously because he once told his mom that "if you aren't moving, it doesn't count." I wonder what kind of strange six-year old snuggler he was.  I wiggle while we're snuggling, or before we fall asleep.I'll be adjusting, slowly shifting myself into sleep, and he'll say, "Just sleep!" as though I'm that obedient. The other night he said that and I kept wiggling long after I was comfortable just to annoy him.

When we're watching tv, if I say something - anything - he'll grab the remote, pause it, then go "shh!" at me and rewind to before I talked. If you want to hang out alone, do that. If you want to hang out with me, you're going to have to deal with side commentary. Especially when you've seen the episode at least once before.

He makes his bed every morning. Not usually a red flag, but if you know me, you know that this might present problems. Although, for the last week, I've been trying to at least return my bed to some semblance of order and have been successful. Worse than the making of the bed is the sheet tucking. He tucks it into the bottom like you're in a hotel. We switched spots one night for television-screen viewing purposes and I went to pull the sheets out and he screamed. Actually yelled "NO!"

But to be honest, it's not any of those things that proved to be the deal breaker. Minus the remote aggression and the fat-people-hating, there are compromises that exist. I'm a very adaptive person. I'll mimic your habits, tune in to your needs, find myself a niche in your life and fill it pleasantly.

It really ended for me when he moved my toothbrush.

I don't like the way he talks to me. I find his patronizing attitude frustrating. We argued about how your credit score is calculated and I found myself backing down because I wasn't 100% sure. I should have held my ground. I wasn't wrong.

So when he told me that he moved my toothbrush under his cabinet because he didn't want it to get dusty, I got mad. That's not even a smooth lie. I hope by "dusty" he meant "noticed by the other girl I'm bringing home" because that's how I translated it.

I woke up at his place at 5:57 that morning. I wandered around in the pre-dawn, unable to close my eyes again. I stood in the kitchen and watched the sun rise on another wonderful day. It was a moment of utter calm.


Nobody puts my toothbrush under the sink...

(...unless it's to prevent it from being literally contaminated by strange things. I personally don't like exposed toothbrushes, but that is beside the point.)


We went out together, rode the elevator in silence, and I kissed him goodbye.


Also, sidenote: Band of Horses is awesome. So awesome.

"Shame on all of you."

Yesterday's post got me thinking.

Racism blows. We can reiterate that until we're blue in the face.

And qualifying my perspective as being that of a white person isn't nearly enough.
I need to qualify myself as educated, white, woman, and liberal.
That changes things.

I compared it to being gay. (Why? I don't know - it was the easiest [not the best] way to make my point during our lunch discussion.) I spend so much time around my gay friends that I don't see them as gay. It's normalized for me. It's not a thing. There's no need to draw a line, to point out the distinctions, to separate.

I want my kids to be so exposed to people that they stop seeing lines and start seeing people.

It's the same as being _____. [Insert "other" there.]

The more we talk about "other," the more we emphasize it. The more we dwell.

Then I started thinking about the real world. (Sighing as I type this. Oh, real world.) There's not as much integration, not as much teamwork, community building, respect, tolerance....my list could go on.... as there could be. Certain solutions to "other"-ism or "other"-phobia aren't going to work for people with different mindsets - I forget that. The solution remains elusive.

But I would like to point out that even as we evolve to tolerate and eventually accept one "other," we replace it with another "other."

Division based on class differences, social differences, education differences: we're all guilty of it. I think part of being human is forming bonds with people who share similarities to you and then ostracizing people who don't have those interests, features, or characteristics. It's up to us to transcend that.

It's hard, though. I judge stupid people for doing stupid things. I'm sure people judge me for doing stupid shit all the time. I judge girls who wear Ugg boots, yet I get judged for my "if you can't wear it with black flats, why are you wearing it at all?" mentality (I do consider that judgement entirely deserved, for the record. I've grown out of Birkenstock mode...at least until I find my other black clog). I really try to promote a sense of solidarity among women, yet I know a few women I'd like to punch in the face. So here I am, being just as much of a hypocrite as the rest of us. At least I'm thinking about it, though.

Granted, we all aren't going to get along. It's not possible. But we should at least strive to respect and understand. Also, not possible.  But ideal. And beautiful.

I was going to post last week about the suicide of a gay teen on the East Coast. I didn't. I was too disgusted (not by him, by his tormentors). After his death, the people who taunted him continued to do so. They said they were glad he was dead. That the world was a better place. For him, it didn't get better. That's one reason we need to stop spreading hate.

That night I was watching the Big Bang Theory at home. And this clip really put it all into perspective for me. Please watch it.

A girl brings home a rather unintelligent date, and her neighbors (all science geeks) make fun of him mercilessly.

Zach (date): "Oh, I see. You guys are inferring that I'm stupid."

Sheldon (one of the neighbors): "That's not correct. We were implying it. You then inferred it."

...

Penny (girl): "You know, for a group of guys who claim they spent most of their lives being bullied, you can be real jerks. Shame on all of you."

Truth.

On Sluts. And the Racism/Feminism divide.

I've written about SlutWalks before, but a quick history: they stem from comments made by a police officer giving a speech. In it, he implied that women could avoid being raped by not wearing provocative clothing. The comments prompted so-called SlutWalks in major cities across the world. Women (and men) have marched (and are still marching) in protest.

To be clear, I really hate the word "slut." It's not a word I feel any inclination to reclaim. I don't want to be called "slut." I don't want to call myself "slut." It sends shivers up my spine. But I really like how moved people were to try and do something about it.

We live in a culture that is not supportive of women, of their clothing, or of their victimization. Rape victims are often reprimanded. Rather than addressing the rapists, we address the victims with criticism, complaints, judgement. New Jersey just passed a law to ensure that victims don't have to pay for their own rape kit processing. As of August 15, it hadn't been signed.

We were driving out of Chicago last summer and passed a scantily clothed woman on the South Side. "She's just asking for it," said my passenger. I nearly slammed on the brakes and made him walk. I turned to him and, while agreeing that her clothing was inappropriate for 4pm on a weekday, asked him how he'd feel if it was me who was being judged. Or how he'd feel if I got raped. "Would it be my fault?" I asked him. I often wonder what would happen, since I'm so outspoken about sexuality and sexual issues. Were I to be raped, would anyone believe me? Would I lose the respect of my peers?

Granted, there are things you can do to help mitigate the potential for rape, but often, nothing can be done. Rape is not the fault of the victim, no matter the circumstance.

The article below, published on the Ms. magazine website October 5, 2011, addresses the issues of racism within the feminist movement.

A few months ago, I purchased Girl Drive, a  look at everyday women across America. What struck me was the disconnect that people reported feeling between feminism and their cultures. They spoke about feminism being for white girls. I actually fit the definition of their idea of what a feminist was: it's the academic, middle-class, white girl (basically college me). They spoke about being black rather than being a feminist. Or about being black before being a feminist. It's as though the idea of being a black feminist was impossible. Culture comes first. And sometimes, there's not enough room for both.

On the surface, it seems simple to bridge the gap between race and feminism. But it's not. Peace and love is way harder than you'd think.

Another article, mentioned in the article below, discusses other issues associated with black feminism. It argues that white women have benefited from the "racialized virgin/whore dichotomy," by fostering distrust of white women and blinding the white women to "what a SlutWalk would look like in solidarity with black women, with low-income women" etc. I don't entirely agree with that. I don't think that any women have benefited from the dichotomy, and that separation of women (by race, by income level, by immigration status, etc) only hinders our progress as we must fight among ourselves before we can fight for something else.

[Some] White women embrace feminism and that shouldn't be a reason that anyone else can't embrace feminism as well. People do. There are feminists of all colors. There are poor feminists and rich feminists.  Feminists who are double-jointed and feminists who aren't. Feminists who have longer second toes. Feminists who have wonky ears and who have no taste in music.

I am finding that more and more of racial tension (in specific situations and circumstances, not across the board) stems from our attempts to address and acknowledge differences because regardless of our own color, we're so hypersensitive to it. (It exists. We all see it. I absolutely accept that I have "white privilege" but disagree that it blinds me entirely.)

I realize that racism is still alive and well. Racism happens every day in institutions, from schools to prisons, in the media, in government. By acknowledging race before we acknowledge any other characteristic, we're limiting the scope of our focus. We can't see any further. Therefore, we make no progress.

I think that to move past it, we must put it aside. As educated individuals, we must simply step over it rather than letting it be a line that both sides draw. It has to start somewhere. It will trickle out around us. It will grow in the minds of our children. Progress.

As women, we can be that beginning. We can work together as women united by a stronger cause. We can embrace our differences, learn from each other, and begin to create a strong network of support. Regardless of color, women must realize that other women are not the enemy. Neither are men.

The enemy is the idea of inequality, of implied consent. The enemy lies in assumptions.

It is possible to be many things at once. Our connections, our histories, all of those things could lead us to create powerful webs of community. Instead, we let them divide us. We must stop seeing everyone as fractured statistics and start seeing them as whole people before we make any progress on this.

I agree with the author (of the second article - linked here) when she closes by saying:

There’s a reason why many rape survivors don’t come forward with their experiences. They do not want to be subject to such words by a larger society that still blames victims. At least the SlutWalk boldly takes on that word, and in doing so, invites us to empty it of its power and its racist, classist, hetero/sexist meanings.  Whether that’s possible is another debate, but for now, it’s useful to remember what Emi Koyama once wrote: “Everyone is safe when sluts are safe.”

What NYC SlutWalk Was, and What It Wasn’t

October 5, 2011 by Noelle Williams · Leave a Comment 

Union Square was packed when I arrived at this weekend’s inaugural New York SlutWalk. The crowd was mostly women, mostly young and mostly white. Clothing styles ranged from topless to scanty to normal street garb to formal. One woman wore a business suit. A common thread was “slut” in red and black markers across foreheads, arms, backs and chests. The red-and-black writing was striking: People silently write “slut” across a girl’s chest everyday, but here it was, literalized.

I wandered through the 3,000-person crowd amid signs such as “Women are Souls, Not Holes” and “If I was asking for it, I would ask for it.” “This is what I was wearing when I was raped” read one sign held by a woman in pajamas. Another held pictures of her battered body from a sexual assault a few weeks prior. As I talked with her and other NYC SlutWalkers, they all kept using the same word: empowerment. For many of them, it was the first time they had ever participated in a march about women’s rights, and it was the first time they felt surrounded by other people who “got it.”

When I finally found my way to the SlutWalk organizers, I was feeling pretty slutty and powerful myself. I’d even found a “Slut Pride” pin and attached it to my shirt. But as I reviewed my prepared questions, I remembered the serious qualms I and other feminists had with SlutWalk, such as the recent criticisms from women of color. When I asked Holly Meyer, one of the organizers, about these critiques, she had a simple response:

We have always been inclusive. We’ve always said anyone is welcome to come to our meetings, we’ve never excluded any group. It’s unfortunate that some people have that perspective and don’t feel welcome, but our message is to end sexual violence.

Plain and simple. The point of SlutWalk isn’t complicated. Or, at least, the NYC SlutWalk organizers don’t seem to think so.

Holly was proud to say that many of rally’s official performances were by women of color. From what I witnessed, those performers focused on calling for solidarity and inclusiveness, but did not get into the unique experiences that black and other marginalized women have had with sexual violence and words like “slut.” For example, Amber Stewart of Radical Women said during her performance:

We have to work to tear down racism, because there is no place in this movement for an Us versus Them mentality. We need all voices, all concerns brought to the table.

Holly told me some other great things about the NYC SlutWalk, like its pressure on the NYPD to have sensitivity trainings or its calls to the FBI asking for a change in the FBI’s definition of rape.

Despite all this, it’s easy to criticize the NYC SlutWalk as a rally for privileged white feminists, especially when women of color at the rally were few and far between. I also couldn’t help but wince when I saw a group of men staring, mouths open, at the woman in lingerie pole-dancing on the back of bike during the march. If I talked to those men today, I doubt they could tell me what the march was about.

Overall, however, I left the NYC SlutWalk feeling like it was a work in progress. Yes, it should focus more squarely on women of color issues. But it brought out thousands of New Yorkers against sexual violence at a time when Brooklyn NYPD are telling women not to wear skirts to avoid being raped. It allowed 3,000 New Yorkers to feel like they were in power for a few hours on a Saturday. We should ask SlutWalks to graduate to a higher level of feminist thinking that addresses race and deeper issues within rape culture, but I think we should also recognize them for the work in their freshman year.

Photo of SlutWalk NYC sign holder from Flickr user David Shankbone under Creative Commons 2.0.

On Breast Cancer

"I wanted you to hear it from me," she said. "I have breast cancer."

My birth mother's voice was steady. 

In the past two weeks, both my stepmother and my birth mother have been diagnosed with breast cancer. Neither case seems serious; both were caught early on. Treatment plans have yet to be finalized, although my stepmom's is further along in the process. Neither will lose their breasts. Both will lose lumps and endure radiation, possibly chemotherapy. 

My hands reached up to feel my own. 

"Damn it, Mom," I said later last night, "I worked so hard to grow these things. I can't lose them now!" 

She laughed. I'm serious. I have stressed about them since before they showed any promise of ever becoming real boobs. I've been known to declare "They're growing!" when they most certainly are not. I have obsessed since I was 13 and got made fun of on the playground for being underdeveloped. As the years progressed, I grew to love them. I'd like to think it's mutual respect. 

I've always assumed that I'll end up getting breast cancer some day. My birth mom's mom died of it. And now she has it. I'll be the third in a long line of cancer. I have tiny boobs - it's not like I'll miss a lump. On the plus side, after they have to take them, I can get a sweet new set. 

I guess I need to go get the genetic test done to see if I have the gene mutation indicative of breast and ovarian cancer. I'm scared to get it though. Not because I'm afraid to have breast or ovarian cancer, but because I'm worried that it'll preclude me from getting insurance coverage based on "pre-existing condition" bullshit. I guess it'd be nice to know about ovarian cancer before it happens, so that maybe after I have kids, I can  be proactive about minimizing my risk. 

I was getting my hair cut yesterday and my stylist was telling me about the breast cancer walk. (I was going to walk with Dad and J, but didn't because her daughters were going to be there - we have consciously avoided meeting and I didn't want to make an important day weird - so I declined.) She teared up as she was telling me about her boyfriend's mother and sister, who both died of it. And I found myself tearing up a little too. 

I have a doctor's appointment on Friday to discuss all of this. I'll be interested to see what they recommend, and I'm curious to see how my insurance will handle coverage for the test based on the fact that I'm adopted - will they still count my biological mother and grandmother, as well as various aunts, as close family incidences of breast cancer? I mean, they should. (Medical history-wise, being adopted sucks. I always write question marks on family history forms.)

I don't want to lose two out of my three moms. Not to breast cancer. I don't want to lose me, either. 

Let this all serve as a reminder to feel your boobs, people! Have someone else feel your boobs. Whatever it takes. Those monthly shower examinations could save your life.  

On Romance Novels

I swear I'll get back to work after this....but....

I love historical romance novels. 

When I write one, Evan Stone (below) shall grace the cover. I'm sure he'll say yes when I ask him....

Romance Novels, Hairless Chests, And 

'Everything I Know About Love'

by LINDA HOLMES

(published 10/3/2011 on NPR)

Sarah Wendell undoubtedly knows exactly what you're thinking when you hear the title of her new book,Everything I Know About Love I Learned From Romance Novels.

She's been working at the web site Smart Bitches, Trashy Books for years now, and she's heard everything you care to say about what kind of a woman would actually learn everything she knows about love from romance novels. You're thinking: This is how people develop unrealistic expectations and cannot form healthy relationships, and what's the deal with the bosoms and bodices and pecs and roses and OH RIGHT, LADY, I GUESS EVERYONE IS SUPPOSED TO BE FABIO.

(It's always Fabio in comments of this kind. Fabio is to romance novels as eating bugs is to reality shows.)

She knows. She's over it. I've been reading Sarah for a long time — and, in the interests of full disclosure, we chatter back and forth on Twitter now and then about Downton Abbey and what books I should read next — and I can tell you, you have nothing snide to say that she hasn't already been told. Probably many times. But she remains, as I said she was back in late 2009, one of the best explorers I know of the interesting aspects of things typically deemed lowbrow and unimportant, and this book is a great example.

 

Collecting comments from her readers and from authors, as well as drawing on her own experience as a reader and a blogger, she sets out to explore the relationship between what romance readers get from novels and what they experience in their own lives. She talks about the kinds of men you meet on the page, the kinds of conflicts that arise between couples, and the qualities that separate healthy relationships from unhealthy ones.

What Sarah ultimately identifies is not a one-way transfer in which books teach women (because it is mostly women) about romance. It's more of a feedback loop. That's the trick to the book's title. If it were entirely, totally accurate, it would beEverything I Know About What I Already Think About Love, I Learned From Romance Novels. While her thesis is not that a romance novel indoctrinates readers into believing in certain kinds of relationships — that would be creepy — there's a strong argument here that the genre helps readers identify and articulate needs and feelings they already have, as they notice what kinds of books and heroes they gravitate toward.

This is one of the interesting points about genre entertainment in general: when there are elements of formula, identifying which versions of that formula appeal to you is surprisingly enlightening. Which iteration of a hero, for instance, do you choose, and what does it mean when you do? Everything from personality to chest hair tends to be specified in great detail; you can pretty much take your pick.

I'll give you an example. (You knew I would.) I'm a romance reader myself, but I almost never read historical romances, which are probably more numerous than any other kind. I don't read the ones with the voluminous skirts and Lord Whomever and Lady Anne Blah Blah Blah whose father is the Duke or whatever happens in those books. (I don't know. I think they mostly drink sherry?)

Instead, I am almost entirely devoted to contemporaries, which are books set in the approximate here and now, in approximately the culture and world I live in. I had never given a whole lot of thought to why that is, until I read this book and realized that for me, freestyle back-and-forth banter is so fundamental to any remotely affecting flirtation that the courtly love stuff — people who cannot speak of their feelings because IT IS TABOO — is too restricting. I am what I am, and nothing charms me like a good zinger. I don't like status and manners interfering with everybody yammering a mile a minute. (See above: I am what I am.)

Other people are the opposite: they're charmed by the restriction, and they find the unspoken things to be the most romantic. Corsets, in that way of seeing the world, are sexy precisely because they're an obstacle. I prefer for the obstacle to be stubbornness and never shutting up. Potato, po-tah-to. But the fact that I feel this way is something I arguably learned and noticed from reading and then reflecting on these books. (None of which contain Fabio, I'll just have you know.)

There are plenty of variations on the theme. Some people find possessive, aggressive partners (within reason) to be alluring, and some find them terrifying. Some people like a lot of overt reassurances that they're loved, and other people like things to go unspoken. When you really, really love a book that does, in fact, have a lot in common with other books like it, it's a kind of spelunking into your own tastes, not only in reading, but in reality. Not because you actually expect anything to go as it does in a book, but because individual elements jump out and make one book up your alley while another isn't. Why ... well, why does your brain see the book and say, "This one"? It's not necessarily the book you learn from as much as it is the fact that you picked it.

The sex chapter, incidentally, works basically the same way. It's less about "I read this in a book, so this is how you do this particular thing," and it's more about ... well, let's make it about handholding, just to keep things on the up and up. The analogy would be that the book would allow readers an insight like, "When I read about having my right hand held, that's not sexy, but when I read about having my left hand held, that's very sexy, so maybe I'll ask the next guy to hold my left hand instead of my right hand." There you go; you've learned something. Not about handholding, but about you.

Lest you conclude the book is entirely analytical, I will assure you that it contains Sarah's trademark snappy, funny writing, as well as her tireless defense of the readers she's met. One example:

Ironically, many people who disdain the romance genre and look down on the women who read it presume that reading about courtship, emotional fulfillment, and rather fantastic orgasms leads to an unrealistic expectation of real life. If we romance readers are filling our own heads with romantic fantasies, real men and real life won't and cannot possibly measure up to our fairy-tale expectations, right? Wrong. Wrongity wrong wrong wrong. That accusation implies that we don't know the difference between fantasy and real life, and frankly, it's sexist as well. You don't see adult gamers being accused of an inability to discern when one is a human driving a real car and when one is a yellow dinosaur driving a Mario Kart, but romance readers hear about their unrealistic expectations of men almost constantly.

It's always refreshing when anybody cares about anything enough to put a title on a book that is guaranteed to draw the same angry snorts she's been hearing for the last ... oh, five or ten years. I am inspired to write a book called I Am Made Of Television, Slapstick And Jackie Collins Books. I owe no less.

Read an excerpt of Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels

On Collecting Thoughts

...this is a post full of random thoughts. Nothing cohesive and certainly no structure. non-apologies, in advance.

Driving home last night, I saw the leaves strewn about on the road and I realized that it's really fall. Apparently, the massive amounts of pumpkin spice lattes I've been consuming have done nothing to drive that home.

That said, I have no idea what I'm going to be for Halloween and I'm started to stress about it. I was Snow White for three of the past four years, which worked out really well. I missed last year, which was a relief creatively and a major bummer in all other ways.

Any thoughts?


It's like that scene from the movie Mean Girls where she shows up at the party dressed in costume, and all the other girls are wearing lingerie and ears.

(linked here - not the best, but whatever. I'm at work, trying to shove ravioli down my throat and type at the same time.)


I want something with a lot of fake blood, or something funny, or something super clever. My friend E has some pants that are her "smarty-pants"...she painstakingly glued packages of Smarties candy all over them. That's cute. I don't want to do that, though.

I don't want to be anything slutty...like a slutty cop. I've never understood that. Besides, furry handcuffs are lame. But then again, I could be Lieutenant Dangle from Reno! 911. That's slutty and a cop. But not in the way you'd expect.

I was 0 for 2 at going out this weekend, so perhaps that's why the party itch is so strong for a Monday. Friday and Saturday were both "let's drunk dial Katie and tell her how much fun we're having and invite her out at ridiculous hours" nights. Boo. Responsibility is so overrated.

Long bike ride with Mike on Friday evening. My Camelbak started leaking down my back nearly immediately after we left the house, and by 7th Avenue, it was dripping down my legs when I stood up. Thankfully, it was a warm night, but it made for a very uncomfortable ride. I hope the weather holds long enough that we'll be able to do a few more of those before it gets too cold.

On the plus side, I did a ton of laundry and cleaning this weekend. My closet is actually being used as a closet. I just don't get why people hang clothes up. But I'm doing it. We'll see how long this lasts.

I was out having dinner on Broadway with R the other night, and he asked me if I'd ever gotten my second bookshelf put together (he built the first one for me back in February - I'd like to interject that I was in the middle of doing it myself, but he interrupted and finished it. I can dig that kind of masculine projection. It saves me some work). I looked back at him and smiled, "I've been meaning to call you about that." He laughed at me. You'll notice he didn't build it for me, though. So that's my goal  for tonight. Consider my handyman independence fostered.

Btw, 8tracks.com is my saving grace at work. And so is this mix: 

Love to all, and Happy Monday!