Taking a vacation

I registered Seeworthy on June 20th of 2004, shortly after I finished my sophomore year in college. It was the first summer that Blogathon took off, same-sex marriage had just been legalized in Massachusetts, and another Democrat was running for the presidency. I mention this because it still seems like I’ve only been babbling here at Seeworthy for a few months, but it’s been a few years already.

I suppose it’s time for me to face it; I don’t have much to say right now, or at least, much new to say. Maybe that’s the pressure that comes with a rise in readers, and as I’ve seen the visitors here go from the dozens to the hundreds to occasionally thousands, I’ve felt increasingly pressured to be brilliant and new! While at the same time worrying about my own career and privacy. My plans for the future are very different now than they were in 2004; back then, I was planning to maybe translate the poetry of Zinaida Gippius, or just become a world-famous poet and novelist myself. Now… well, I guess I’ve gone the academic route, which - while fulfilling - has made me a little paranoid about what I write here (will my students read it? my advisers? future employers? my neurotic family?). For the past few months I’ve been wondering what would win out - my desire to interact with my awesome readers and the other great bloggers I’ve come to admire, or my impulse to retreat and, maybe, reclaim a little privacy?

So, obviously, I’m doing the retreating thing, at least for now. Seeworthy will remain up indefinitely, of course - I’m in no rush to take down everything, and maybe eventually I’ll pop back here and start posting again (hey, Loobylu did it). I’ve still got some pretty sweet projects in the works, though, so while Seeworthy is going quiet, I’ll be piping up elsewhere online. No worries, kiddos - you’re not entirely rid of me yet.

Being identified as Muslim should not be a smear

Which is why, really, I was so disappointed to see that on the Obama campaign’s new website, Fight the Smears, he includes this “smear” and his defense against it:

(insidious “The Smear” image on the side)Barack Obama is a Muslim
LIE: Barack Obama is a Muslim
LIE: Barack Obama attended a radical madrassa
LIE: Senator Obama was sworn into the US Senate using the Koran

(blue glowy Obama-esque “The Truth” image) Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian

While I agree that it’s a vicious tactic that conservatives (and many ignorant liberals/Democrats) are using when they use “Muslim” as a smear, a threat of un-Americanness, I think it’s perhaps even more disappointing that the Democratic candidate feels the need to “prove” he’s not a Muslim, that he himself lists being Muslim as a “smear.” What the heck? Whatever happened to true progressives not propagating Islamophobia, but fighting it? I’ve supported Obama for a while now, but this is really disappointing. Eric at Grave Error sums up the situation pretty well:

He should have said, “No, I am not a Muslim, but even if I were, this is the United States of America where it is not illegal to be a Muslim, just as it is not illegal to be Jewish, Christian, Hindu, or atheist. We cannot afford to lose our most precious values lest we risk reducing ourselves into an intolerant totalitarian nation.”

Honestly, how can we be so politically correct and politically careful all the time about every other class of people and on every issue, yet such raging Islamophobia gets a free pass?

Did I just hear that correctly?

Another reason why Jeopardy is the greatest game show in the history of game shows: the term “pwning noobs” was just used. Not just used, explained in a video clip by Geek Squad.

Rebecca Walker’s feminism

I’ll start off by saying that I don’t think her recent writings really summarize Rebecca Walker’s feminism, but they do suggest some disheartening things about her take on feminism. I poked around a few blogs and didn’t see many folks talking about this, but perhaps it’s just old news by now. I did see Kevin at Slant Truth had a post about it, and I agree with some of what he said (notably the conclusion).

So, for those who missed it, Rebecca Walker wrote a piece talking about the horrors of her childhood and how feminism dooms women to motherless misery. Those who know me, and my own recently maternal contemplations, know that I’ve certainly grappled with anti-mother/anti-child sentiment in the feminist academic community, but I’ve tended to come to the conclusion that mainstream feminism - as well as truly radical, progressive feminism - affirms motherhood as a choice that women should be free to make. One of the most notable misogynist, anti-feminist gems in the piece?

Then I meet women in their 40s who are devastated because they spent two decades working on a PhD or becoming a partner in a law firm, and they missed out on having a family. Thanks to the feminist movement, they discounted their biological clocks. They’ve missed the opportunity and they’re bereft.

Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness. It is devastating.

Ah, of course - feminism has created generations of godless academic harpies doomed to lesbian spinsterhood because they value their career over reproducing. I like how Walker doesn’t mention the men who won’t have/aren’t interested in having kids, and instead focus on their careers. Being a bachelor has been something honored for decades (centuries?), but when women choose to be single - or child free - it’s “devastating.” Shame on feminism for betraying all of us.

She goes on to speak of how she doesn’t want to hurt her mother, then tells the reader how

My mother would always do what she wanted - for example taking off to Greece for two months in the summer, leaving me with relatives when I was a teenager. Is that independent, or just plain selfish?

Yeah, I’m gonna go with independent on that one. And while I certainly don’t know Walker or know what it was like for her growing up (beyond what she wrote in Black, White and Jewish, anyway - and that’s a whole other post I’ll have to write someday), being left with relatives for two months one summer so your mom can travel seems, well… A little on the low end of horrific parental behavior. I don’t talk about it much, but I grew up poor with a mother who abused drugs and abused me, and even with that I know that there are millions of folks who had much, much harder childhoods - and I’m not going to blame my mother’s issues on any broader political movement of which she may have been a part (though she wasn’t). While I wouldn’t call Alice Walker a shitty parent by any means (again, based on both the memoir and this article), I think it’s ludicrous to ascribe any parenting issues to feminism at large. There are shitty liberal parents, shitty conservative parents, and great liberal and conservative parents. That second-wave (and third-wave) feminisms had their issues doesn’t mean that the movements deceived all women or caused families across the country to fall apart.

A discussion started about Rebecca Walker on a Women’s Studies email list I’m on, and after searching for the article I also bumped into this article on CNN, where Walker uses the laughable term “reverse-sexist” - about as absurd as the concepts of “reverse-racism” and “homosexism” that I’ve heard of.

In retrospect, after reading some of the problematic things she wrote in her memoir, I suppose I shouldn’t have been terribly surprised/disappointed to read these two articles. I’m curious, though - for those familiar with both Alice Walker and Rebecca Walker, what are your thoughts? Does Rebecca identify as a feminist, and if so, is it really feminist to cast women who choose to be child-free as symptoms of a larger, deceptive feminist movement?

Why does Rachel Moss hate your fat (/trans/disabled) body?

I have no idea why, but she does.

Amp has a great summary of the fatphobic, ableist, transphobic rant posted by Rachel Moss (a student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s Department of Environmental Chemistry and Technology program, or maybe their Inorganic Chemistry program [I’m not entirely sure which] - hardly one of those anonymous, idiotic internet trolls) at the Something Awful forums just following WisCon, a feminist science fiction convention. Apparently Moss - a former commenter here at Seeworthy, surprisingly* - went to the conference, covertly took photos of conference-goers, and then posted the photos - often including the individual’s names and locations - at the SA forums, complete with some old-time misogynist raving. She posted a quasi-apology to her blog yesterday, but today she’s backpeddling, essentially giving a hearty “Fuck you!” to all of the people whose photos she posted. No substantive response, of course, to her obvious misogyny, ableism, fatphobia or transphobia, and the only thing she apologizes for? Hurting the kids. How thoughtful.

What really gets me about this situation is that Rachel has, in the past, self-identified as a feminist. She’s a member of various feminist communities, and has asserted - at least here at Seeworthy - that she is a feminist, and finds harassment of fat people to be not such an awesome thing. The question which emerges for me from all of this is what kind of feminism Rachel has grown up with, what branch of feminism it is that’s told her attacking and harassing fat people (/trans people/people with disabilities) is an okay thing to do. Certainly, I’ve encountered plenty of feminists in my research and activism who weren’t exactly ready to embrace fat feminism, but I don’t believe I’ve ever met anyone who really identified as a feminist who simultaneously loathed, seemed to be repulsed by the concept of fat people being treated like human beings and being happy with their bodies. In a movement where we have things like National Love Your Body Day, where there’s tremendous research and activism around eating disorders and beauty standards, are so many supposedly radical people still struggling to get it? And, furthermore, what are some of the less obvious ways that fatphobia gets disseminated - both inside and outside of the academy? Let’s have a dialogue. Let’s talk about it. Because I still don’t understand why this keeps emerging from squarely within “feminist” or progressive communities/individuals. Maybe I want to believe we’re more on top of our shit than we are, that the feminist movements are better with body image than general society.

What’s going on here?

* Full disclosure - Rachel used to be a friend on Livejournal, and I celebrated what I saw as her efforts to work through her internalized fatphobia/sizeism. Looks like I was duped!

** It seems folks are having trouble getting ahold of Rachel - she’s blocked comments on her Livejournal, and there isn’t any other way to get ahold of her. She did, however, leave her email here at Seeworthy a while back, so if folks want to jot her a line to express their disappointment or just ask what’s up, I believe you can get in touch with her at zathlazip@yahoo.com. And Rachel, if you’re reading this, I’d love to hear from you - as someone who was once sorta friendly with you, I’m genuinely curious about the decisions you’ve made.

*** Other good posts on this: What Rachel Moss Did, Rachel Moss and the Situation She Created, Two Quotes on the WisCon Drama, and A Modest Invitation

By rain or shine they apparently mean vastly inferior in rain.

I graduated yesterday, and because it was rainy they ended up moving our ceremony inside. This was a little disappointing - it only rains, what, five days a year in San Diego, and of course it rained on the big day. I went to the commencement last year, and it was a gorgeous spring day out on the lawn.

We didn’t get a whole ton of not-blurry pictures of yours truly in getting my degree - I think Colleen was high on the realization that, no, she wouldn’t have to pick me up after a 10 o’clock class let out EVER AGAIN, and the giddiness must have made her hands a little shaky. There were a few snapshots of the day that I appreciated, though. It’s a little deceptive, though: the “group photo” was more “group fifteen minutes of photos,” and though I’m sure forty or so photos were taken by various faculty, students and family members, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t looking at the camera for any of them. Brilliant!

I was going to suggest we play “spot the fattie” to guess which one was me, but I just realized that there are two fatties in the photo - myself, and the ultra-rad, ultra-famous Esther Rothblum (one of the editors of the fat studies reader). I’m going to mention that she’s one of the editors every time I talk about her for the rest of my life, because how cool is it to say that she was my mentor for my Master’s degree.

Anyhow, I’ll be celebrating this weekend, and more frequent postings should return on Monday. Namely: what the hell is up with Whitney? ANTM? What the hell happened there?

Embracing the Preggo

Internets, can we talk about something? Because I feel like, as much as I identify as a rad(ical) fattie and a feminist, I am often harboring this weird mix of anti-pregnancy and anti-fat prejudice, and here’s what it revolves around: maternity clothes, and the merging of the maternity section and the fattie section at my local Target.

I’m not pregnant, and for most of my life as a fattie (at least while I’ve been fat enough to shop in plus-size sections) I have resisted shopping in the maternity sections of various stores. I’m not fat, I’d reason, and it was insulting to me that all plus-size clothes were often placed next to the maternity sections, as if all larger bodies were the same. My fat body was not shaped like a pregnant body, and if someone ever saw me wearing maternity clothes and asked when I was due, I’d have to tell them to go fuck themselves.

My partner does not share this opinion. Far from it, she reasons that if the clothes are cute, and they fit well, why does it matter what section they’re in? After all, I occasionally wear clothes from straight sizing sections, and I’ve worn clothes from men’s sections - and I’m neither a man nor a straight size. It’s something that I’ve begun to work through very recently, as my body shape has changed a bit - I believe it’s been mentioned elsewhere, but I think my main struggle is with shape prejudice, perhaps, and also prejudice against pregnancy (or being perceived as pregnant).

You might think in Women’s Studies that there was a natural acceptance of women choosing to reproduce, but I’ve found the opposite to be true; I’ve heard both faculty and students sneer derisively at women in the academy who choose to reproduce, heard them scoff at how these women weren’t really empowered, but were buying into a heterosexist patriarchy that told them they had to reproduce. I think, over the past couple of years (and even my last year or so at Smith, though I wasn’t in Women’s Studies), I’ve internalized these views - problematic in and of themselves, but when you add on the fact that C and I are talking about having our own kids in the near future, it makes me wonder how I’ll deal with this prejudice when I’m experiencing it from both sides.

It’s a difficult thing to own up to a prejudice and try to work through it, but I’m engaging in the process. Today when we were out for a fan (because, my god, do you people realize there’s a twenty degree temperature difference between San Diego and East County San Diego? BECAUSE EFFING-A THERE IS), looking for something appropriate to wear to graduation and grumbling about how the maternity section had completely swallowed the plus-size section, I saw a shirt I thought was adorable.

Yeah, you guessed it. According to the tag, it’s a maternity shirt by Liz Lange. Internal struggle! Body prejudice! Do I buy the shirt that I think is cute, and is available in my size, even though I’m clearly not (as far as I know) pregnant? Will people think I’m pregnant? What will the cashier think, when s/z/he sees me buying a maternity shirt and assumes (correctly) that I’m just plain ol’ fat?

Being as it’s summer and hot as hell, I bought it. It probably seems silly, agonizing over a shirt like that, and maybe most fat people don’t fret about the clothes they’ll buy, but where I shop and what I buy has been an issue for me ever since I was big enough to buy clothes in the plus-size stores. My warped body issues told me that this maternity shirt would look terrible on me and make me feel incredibly self-conscious. But internets? THIS IS NOT THE CASE.

Yeah, so I ended up totally adoring the maternity top. It fit me in all the right places, and holy crap, check out my rack!* As you can see in the picture, I clearly could not resist the checking-it-out impulse myself. The experience has been something of a lesson to me; the woman at the check-out counter didn’t give me any funny looks, nobody asked to touch my belly, and I felt more comfortable and at ease in it than I’ve felt in anything I’ve worn for a long time. I’m still working out my body issues, but I can safely say that I won’t hide from the maternity-mushed-into-plus-size section anymore, and I’m going to try to consciously work towards not feeling so weird about my apparently moderately-baby-bump-shaped body. If any other fatties have been having similar feelings about maternity clothes, my best advice, post-victory shopping, is this: try it on. If you hate it, don’t get it. But if you like the way it looks, don’t let your weird feelings keep you from looking totally awesome in your clothes.

Hmm. I should really have posted this to Fatshionista.

*Yeah, that’s pretty much the last time you’ll ever read/hear me say that.

CA lifts ban on gay marriage

Just got a text message from my friend Michelle, and I wanted to share the big news: it looks like the California Supreme Court has lifted the ban on gay marriage. Regardless of whether you’re a big fan of the institution itself, I think many will agree that at least it says something about the validity of same-sex relationships.

Edited to add: My partner just reminded me that after we had lived in Massachusetts for a couple of years, Mass got gay marriage. After we’ve lived in California for a couple of years, California gets gay marriage. We’re moving to Ohio next - I’ll be sure and keep folks posted on our progress!