“Just ask whether Lumeric was a man or a woman.”
“And what’s the right answer?” Candy asked.
“Both,” Malingo and Jimothi replied at the same moment.
Candy looked confused.
“Lumeric was a Mutep,” Malingo explained. “Therefore both a he and a she.”-from Clive Barker’s Abarat, where Lumeric the Mutep was also a magician of the highest order.
Giving Birth (& Other Metaphors for the Creative Impulse)
I chose to take my road without children. It doesn’t make me shallow or immature, it makes me realistic. If I had children it would be to satisfy other people, not me. I am a lover, daughter, sister, writer and friend. I don’t need the label of mother to make me more. I am enough.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this article since Marlena posted a link to it, because it is so often my own experience (except that I never moved to the West Coast and most of my friends are right here, in the tri-state area, and still I see them about as often as she sees hers). That said, I know that having children is a lot like a new relationship in the way it can completely occupy someone, becoming their sole focus for a while. But I also know they come back; maybe they don’t come back as the same person they once were, but they do. Older, wiser, fatter, perhaps.
For me there’s been a simultaneous self-occupation, in my writing, which is a kind of trade-off. My friends with children understand that my writing occupies my mind and my time better than anyone else. But what bothers me about women “disappearing” into having children is when they expect the rest of us to want to, or otherwise to think that everyone cares about the details of what their kids did. I mean, I know I bore people because I have gender on the brain. I don’t assume spending eight months writing a book is a universal experience.
Most of the women I know certainly know that child-rearing isn’t either, but other parts of our culture do assume that. For us childfree types, it becomes kind of tedious, explaining that we don’t want children or don’t feel incomplete or that – god forbid – we are completely oblivious to any biological clock that’s supposed to be ticking so loudly in our heads.
You’d think, what with overpopulation, those of us who choose not to have children would be encouraged – but we’re not.
Often what I hear from parents is something along the lines of “It’s the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done,” as if my life is without meaning because I don’t have children. My standard response these days is, “Well apparently you’ve never written a book.” Smug Street can go both ways, after all.
Chopped Liver, Then
One of my favorite writers, Christopher Hitchens, wrote an article about why women aren’t funny for Vanity Fair.
Not A Passing Grade
The US was ranked 66th in women’s political empowerment, of 115 countries, because we’ve never had a female president and because only 15% of congressional positions are held by women.
Overall we were ranked 22nd, and we were 65th on educational attainment:
While fewer girls are enrolled in elementary school in the US, women far outnumber men in enrollment at the secondary and tertiary levels.
I’m sure it’s not a big surprise to anyone that the Nordic countries scored best, but considering recent news from Darfur and Afghanistan, I’ll stay put, thanks.
The World Economic Forum has the report available in .pdf format.
Wear White Tomorrow
from Amnesty International:
The Sudanese government and the government-sponsored Janjawid militia have used rape, forced displacement, abductions and mass murder as weapons of war for more than three years. Darfuri rebel groups have also committed serious human rights violations against civilians. Women and children are often driven from their homes with few or no possessions and continue to be in danger in refugee and displaced persons camps and settlements.
On December 10th, thousands of activists from more than two dozen countries will stand up for the rights of women and girls in Darfur. We hope you’ll stand with us and write in white. Wear white, a global color of mourning, in solidarity with Darfuri survivors of sexual violence and write letters calling for an end to rape as a weapon of war in Darfur:
http://www.kintera.org/TR.asp?ID=M7219332210661857438353065
Now is a crucial time for action on Darfur: funding for African Union peacekeepers in Darfur (AMIS) runs out at the end of December. Until the United Nations arrives, AMIS is the only available force that stands between Darfuri civilians and deadly violence.
Many of you have sent messages and placed calls to your Senators, urging them to help ensure the safety of civilians in Darfur. We are sincerely grateful for that. We hope you’ll continue to stand with us and write in white on December 10th:
http://www.kintera.org/TR.asp?ID=M7219332310661857438353065
You can help put an end to the ongoing violence against women and girls in Darfur. Thanks again for everything you do.
Sincerely,
Naoma Nagahawatte
Stop Violence Against Women in Darfur Project
Amnesty International USA
Not Just Killed
I reported recently on the attacks on Afghani girls’ schools, but now their teachers are being killed – and in brutal ways.
Mohammed Halim, a 46 year-old man from Ghazni, was taken from his home and partly disemboweled before his limbs were tied to motorcycles and torn off, according to the New Zealand Herald. Halim is the fourth teacher to be murdered by Taliban extremists in Ghazni, a center of violence among the Taliban, US, and Afghan militaries, reports The Independent.
He’s the fourth teacher who was killed for disobeying the Taliban’s orders because he continued to keep teaching girls, and the other teachers are fully aware of what they’re being told:
Fatima Mustaq, the director of education in Ghazni, says she has received many death threats, due to her gender and her unwillingness to stop educating girls, The Independent reports. “I think they killed him that way to frighten us, otherwise why make a man suffer so much?”
This kind of violence echoes the kind of violence used against trans people, and goes to show how deeply gender infractions upset jerks. In Afghanistan, a girl learing how to read is apparently at least as threatening as someone born male wearing a dress is here.
If the US could guarantee that I could work guard duty protecting these teachers’ lives, I’d sign up. Fatima Mustaq and Mohammed Halim are my new heros; I wish there were a way to let the Taliban know that every person killed for disregarding their orders would become a folk hero – maybe then they would quit creating more.
Why Women Can’t Jump:
In a nutshell, because the International Olympic Committee won’t let them. They ruled on 12/5 not to allow the Women’s Ski Jumping Event from the 2010 Winter Olympics. They’ve cited the paucity of competitors, but other events, with even fewer competitors, have not been cut.
“The recent IOC decision to block women ski jumpers from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics is blatant discrimination and a stunning move that harkens back to the Dark Ages,” according to Deedee Corradini, the former Mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah and President of Women’s Ski Jumping USA.
You can can more information at the Women’s Ski Jumping USA site:http://www.wsjusa.com.
When I’m Not a Feminist
We all read a lot about women having babies and not having careers as a result, and some feminists tend to present women’s inability to have a career and have children as a form of gender discrimination.
But you know, I don’t think it is. I thought that was the point of choice – that women who choose to have babies can, and women who don’t choose to have babies, don’t. The women without babies are then able to work the ungodly hours required of the top strata of high power jobs, and the women with them aren’t.
& I know that’s an unpopular opinion, but I thought that was the whole “revolution” birth control brought with it: that women can CHOOSE whether to have children or not. I wonder often if this assumption – that women need to have babies – isn’t a result of all that “women are nurturing” bullshit. I don’t know. I’ve wanted to be childfree my whole life, and what I see are a lot of women in my life who wanted children – wanted them more than their careers – and made that choice. So why the bellyaching? We all make decisions, and we all have to live with them. To me it’s such a fantastic thing that women have been freed from having to have babies, that there are healthy ways to prevent pregnancy and plan to have a family (or plan not to have one).
I have a funny feeling there’s a privilege thing in here somewhere that might blind me some. I just can’t imagine walking into the universe expecting the world to allow me everything I wanted. I mean, imagine if I wrote an article claiming that it was “discrimination” because I can’t hold a high power job *and* write novels – which I can’t, because of the time required of both. I’d be laughed right off my blog, and well I should be if I made that argument. But some feminists portray having a baby as some requirement of woman-ness, and I thought the whole point was – it’s not. We’ve freed women up to have careers if they want. Or to have babies if they want. & That’s all cool.
I mean, if women want babies and don’t want to give up their careers, adopt and marry a house-husband father type.
Of course it is expected that women raise their children once they have them, & that’s the problem, as far as I’m concerned. The expected gender roles are unfair, because fathers are and can be parents as much as women can be mothers. Is it “fair” that men can have children and expect their wives to take care of them? No. But I don’t see why women can’t decide to have children and expect their husbands to take care of them – especially if the women is the one making the higher salary.
But in speaking to a feminist friend recently, she told me she’s having an absolute blast raising her son and not working so much – but still somehow sees it as “wrong” that she can’t be a litigator at the same time. I just don’t get it. She not only chose to have a baby but to raise the baby; she could have gotten a nanny and gone back to work at that high-powered job. She didn’t. And again, that’s all good. But I don’t see it as discrimination; I see it as a decision. Would she catch some flak if she went back to her fulltime job and left a nanny and her husband to raise her child? Sure. But she could do that, if she wanted.
It’s not like those of us who are childfree don’t catch flak. Or that those who decide to stay home with their kids don’t catch flak. The thing about being a woman is that nothing you do is right: someone, somewhere, will have a problem with whatever choice you make. But for me, being a feminist is in supporting any woman in her choices, and that includes calling her out when she’s complaining about having to make them. Having a choice doesn’t mean you get everything; it means you get one thing & you have to live without the other.
But then again, I was raised by Devo.
Preview of Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity
Mattilda, the editor of That’s Revolting: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation, has a new anthology called Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity that just came out, and I contributed an essay called “Persephone.” It’s a bit different from my usual, so I thought I’d post a small preview here.
I’ll be doing a Five Questions With… interview with Mattilda about this new book, too.
I used to be something you might call heterosexual – not straight, because straight carries connotations about picket fences and children and normalcy that have never been up my alley. It is awkward being monogamous around the poly set and legally married when I’m in queer crowds, but both of those things are as true as my heterosexuality, even if it’s not easy to see any of them. They are the old tattoos, or the memorabilia that tells me how I ended up in this new place, with this new tattoo, the same way a transwoman might see her penis as a reminder that she came by womanhood in a slightly different way than the expected route. Some women change their names when they get married; I changed my public identity instead: queer though formerly known as heterosexual, queer though married, queer due to binary, queer in context, queer by association, queer due to no fault of my own, queer as a result of cupidity.
Five Questions With… Max Wolf Valerio
It’s been a while since a Five Questions With… Interview, but I can’t imagine a better re-entry interview than one with Max Wolf Valerio, the author of The Testosterone Files. Max and I “met” as a result of us both being published by Seal Press, and because we were both friends with the late, great Gianna Israel. His Testosterone Files are a fascinating account of his move from his life as a radical dyke and poet to being a ‘straight guy.’
1) I often joke that I only ever “passed” as a straight woman, and there were parts of The Testosterone Files that made me feel like you “passed” as as lesbian. Is that even close to right? How do you feel about your former identity now?
Yes, I definitely did “pass†for a lesbian, a dyke, whatever you wish to call it. I was dyke-identified for at 14 years, and more, if you count my adolescence. Early on, I realized I was attracted to women, and so, a lesbian identity made the most sense to me. It was all I knew to name myself. The idea of transitioning in 1975 and before, when I was a teen, was completely off the map.
I am proud of the person I was as a dyke, and I learned a lot in my years as a lesbian. I understand many of the finer points of feminism, in all its permutations. Through lesbian feminism, I also came to an understanding and empathy for other types of radical politics. It was quite an education, and an amazing immersion in female life. Ultimately, dyke life is about immersion in female life I think, and it provided an axis for me as well as a point of departure.
However, as I show dramatically in The Testosterone Files, I was much more than simply a lesbian feminist or dyke. I was, actually, just as involved in the punk rock scene, as well as in being a poet who crossed all lines of identity and just “wrote†and read for an audience that appreciated poetry as an art form period. So, this involvement gave me an “out†from dyke life and provided a portal to the fact that there is so much more out there in the world than simply lesbians or feminism. This portal would prove to be invaluable as I came into male life.
On the other hand, I think my perspective was a bit constrained anyway from being a lesbian all those years. I have had to re-examine many of my feminist beliefs and attitudes anyway, even if I was not entirely cloistered within the dyke perspective. Some of these attitudes no longer fit my male life, and I find them to be restricting. More importantly, I also have come to see that certain of these ideas were just wrong-headed, even if they served a purpose for me then. I mean, some of the anti-male attitudes, and anti-het attitudes that I absorbed. These attitudes and ideas not only do not serve my present life, they are not rooted in truth. I think I was often coming from a place of defensiveness, and I have learned, and am learning, to drop that.
Even so, I have many fond feelings about my past dyke life, and about lesbians in general, and will always feel related.