Mondays on the Margins: Rape Culture - We're All Soaking In It

I don't want to talk about it. I don't know what to say about it. People are sick of hearing about it. I feel small and cowardly when I don't talk about it. Some people I know have already said things about it. Hannah did a good from the heart post. Bon did a good from the brain post, which I like to think of as the "it's not that we don't see your side, it's just that your side is whiny and entitled and suckholish - here's why" post. Rehtaeh Parson's father did a post that will rip your heart out, and a while before, this post by Hannah's friend Carol about Amanda Todd really made an impression on me.

I'm going to come at this through books, since that's kind of what I do. In 2010, I read a book called I Don't: A Contrarian History of Marriage by Susan Squire. Reading it was one of those a-ha moments that you have about something where you've kind of been peripherally aware of something but suddenly it hits home with an unpleasant burning thud. I had much the same sensation when reading Betraying Spinoza by Rebecca Goldstein - in that case it was how naive I had been and how incomplete my knowledge was about how far back and how wide-ranging the persecution of Jewish people went and was. With Susan Squire's book, it was a similar realization that really, as far back as the beginning of civilization, it's impossible to escape the conclusion that men as a gender are really deeply and strangely and almost morbidly suspicious of and sort of frightened and disgusted by women. I've been meaning to buy a copy, and to read some of her suggested sources, but the notes I took are enough to remind me of how the whole book made assertions and conclusions that were disturbing and yet oddly recognizable: how men preferred to keep marriage and sexual desire separate; how men, particularly religious men, viewed lust as something shameful but excusable in themselves, and shameful and unforgivable in women; how the thought of women gaining any kind of power made men hysterically and violently afraid. Do I have to clarify that when I say "men" I don't mean "all men", but rather "a monolithic block of male people who had the power and made the laws and formed the interdependent structures of culture, religion and tradition that kept women as a gender subjugated and disenfranchised"? Perhaps it's best if I do. 

 A few days ago I read a book by an author who I've enjoyed in the past. She writes the kind of mysteries that I try to confine my mystery-reading to these days - mysteries with complex characters and intelligent, insightful writing. Most of her books are stand-alones, but as it happens, I read a book that was a sequel to this one and only then realized that there was one that took place before. For that reason, I know that the female police officer in this book and the male detective do become a couple in the subsequent book. 

In this book, the female police constable has a history of an abusive childhood and homelessness. She is working to address a systemic problem of frequent, brutal and unprosecuted gang rapes in black neighbourhoods in her area of England. She talks passionately about rape victims thinking of the rape as killing the person they were, so that a different person is left afterwards.

The male police detective treats her with unreserved hostility for their first few meetings. He says things to her like "You certainly scrub up well" and "Shut up - most women in your position would be scared shitless. How come you're not?"

Then there's this passage:  “I was still wearing high-heeled shoes, so when the hand grabbed the back of my hair I was thrown completely off balance. There was nothing to brace myself against, no way to fight back, as I was pulled down the last two steps and into the shadow beneath. A weight I hadn’t a hope of resisting pushed me forward until my face was up against the wood of my front door. I felt something cold and hard press against my neck and knew there was a knife at my throat.     ‘This is how easy it is,’ said a voice in my ear. ‘This is the last thing Geraldine felt.’     ….Taking a deep breath, I turned round slowly.     Mark Joesbury was shaking his head at me, like I was something forced into his way but far beneath his notice. In his right hand he held his car keys. It had been a key, not a knife, at my throat.     “Are you out of your fucking mind?” he said, in a voice that would have carried easily up to the street.”

So he demonstrates his concern that she's in danger of being attacked by.... attacking her. After she falls in the river while pursuing a suspect and almost dies, he drags her back to the river and forces her to go on a boat, as some kind of 'therapy'. When she says she's not comfortable and asks to go back to the car, he says, "Do I strike you as someone who gives up easily?"

Finally, in her hospital room he makes sexual advances. She tells him he's been a complete bastard and he acknowledges that he has, and says "Dana thinks I fancy you rotten and I’m taking the time-honoured male path of venting sexual frustration through unreasonable aggression.”

I don't know if I would have felt the same disbelieving squirminess reading this if I'd read it before the events of the past year or so. So here is an author that I respect, an author who spends half the book writing sensitively about the effects of rape and the related problem of an indifferent justice system, and the other half  of the book outlining a romance in which the man uses his superior physical strength against the woman, verbally abuses her, and then excuses it in the name of 'fancying her rotten'.

Something's rotten, that's for sure. There's also a scene in which the policewoman's female superior directs the man to drive her home. When the policewoman exhibits a clear reluctance to get in the car with him, instead of asking why or letting her get a cab as she suggests, her superior snaps "Oh for God's sake, he doesn't bite". So there we go - a female figure of authority delivering her neatly into a situation where she's forced to be alone with a man who's menaced her. Complicity - sometimes it's an ugly word, isn't it?

See, the thing is, I don't want to read in this manner. I don't want to view everything through a wary and defensive lens. Few people do, although rape culture apologists thing that we take some kind of self-satisfied pleasure in it. Are these the choices we have now? Either reading or listening and watching and walking and living in a state of humourless, joyless hypervigilance, or risking being the next Amanda Todd or Rehtaeh Parsons, or being her mother, or the mother of one of her rapists or tormentors? 

I don't know. Things have to change, it doesn't feel like anything can change. I don't really know what to say, I don't feel like I've said it properly, too many people aren't listening, but being silent doesn't help. We can't go on, we'll go on. 

Surly Thursday - The Ashes of Irony, or why David Denby can Suck It

A while back, before Christmas, I listened to Terry O'Reilly on CBC interviewing Christy Wampole about her New York Times essay called How to Live Without Irony. Something about what she was saying really struck a chord with me, because, as I've mentioned, I do have certain deeply entrenched smartass tendencies which I realize are a form of irony. I realize this because I took a seminar on irony for one full semester in grad school (and at the end of it I STILL wasn't entirely sure I had a firm grasp on the concept). I had a male friend in university who once observed that when we were talking or writing letters to each other, whenever I found myself getting into deep emotional waters I had a habit of employing some kind of technique to puncture the airiness of the moment and bring it back to earth, sometimes with a resounding thud. I thought about it, and responded that maybe it was because I lived in a residence where the overwhelming majority of people were science and engineering students - it was more than  your life was worth to go around being poetic or profound.

Was that it? I remember when I was a child or even a young teenager feeling excruciatingly sensitive, frequently peeled raw by the world and other people. Maybe I would have started using irony defensively no matter where or with whom I lived in university. And I absolutely do get that it's a defensive move - as Wampole says, "(irony) signals a deep aversion to risk". If you never express or display anything with complete honesty, you're shielded to some extent from the scorn of anyone who might take issue with your thoughts or feelings. You give yourself the automatic safety of a fallback position - "I didn't mean it. I didn't give you access to what I REALLY thought. I was joking." It's maybe a little dangerous, though, to get out of the habit of saying anything serious. Saying what we really think and letting people fling their arrows as they may would be a sad thing to lose.

Over the Christmas holidays I took Eve and my mom to see Les Misérables. I've seen the stage play three times and loved it and I wasn't sure how I would feel about the movie, but my mom asked me to take her since my dad hates watching movies in the theatre, and I knew Eve would be into seeing anything musical.

I loved the movie. The music that I loved from the play was there, and the camera being directly on the actors as they sang gave the experience an immediacy that I hadn't had watching from the second balcony. I don't remember ever crying at the play, just feeling giddy and breathless with admiration. In the movie? I bawled. I flung great sheets of tears off my cheeks. I had to bite my lip to prevent myself from sobbing audibly. The funny part was that I could see how another person watching would find the extreme close-ups on singing actors cheesy. I found it heart-wrenching and transporting.

On Facebook, Nan drew my attention to this review of the movie by David Denby in the New Yorker. Wow, did David Denby ever not like the movie. That's cool. Different strokes for different folks, right? Oh wait, but David Denby thinks that if you did, by chance, like the movie, love it even, that you are in desperate need of help, that you are tasteless and troubled and in need of a guiding hand. He critiques the movie in a way that is meant to show us poor cretins the light. I agree with one commenter that his review is 'pompous, snarky and mean', but I also think it's kind of dumb. I get really annoyed by movie reviewers who don't review movies based on their own merits - what they are clearly trying to do, and whether or not they succeed. The Ottawa Citizen has one reviewer who has actually criticized kids' movies for being juvenile. "Those talking cars are just creepy". WTF? Yes, movie reviewers are basically paid to judge, but could you judge in a halfway intelligent manner?

"Didn't any of my neighbours notice how absurdly gloomy and dolorous the story was?", David Denby asks. Well, it was about the 1832 rebellion. And a bunch of grindingly poor and oppressed people. Which, you know, actually existed in real life. Were you under the impression you were supposed to be at a screening of H.M.S. Pinafore? Maybe read your ticket more carefully next time.

"Russell Crowe as Javert, his implacable pursuer, stands on parapets overlooking all of Paris and dolefully sings of his duty to the law. Then he does it again. Everything is repeated, emphasized, doubled, as if to congratulate us on emotions we’ve already had". Well, no. See, the first time he does it he is supremely confident in his incorruptible faith. The second time he does it he is racked by an ultimately fatal doubt. It's a thematic repetition that I think is actually quite clever, but even if you don't agree, it's hard to see how you would argue that both scenes are meant to elicit the same emotion.

Fantine is "a pure victim who never asserts herself". Dude, she was a woman in 1830s France who had a baby out of wedlock and then loses her job. How, precisely, would you suggest she assert herself? She does what she can to support her child, selling the only thing she has left - her own body. I call unfair (and douchey) assertion on your part, David Denby.

"The story doesn't connect to our world". No, not remotely. There are no groups of people living in substandard conditions, hoping by protest to change the government in our world. Very astute.

"Every emotion in the movie is elemental. There’s no normal range, no offhand or incidental moments—it’s all injustice, love, heartbreak, cruelty, self-sacrifice, nobility, baseness". Well, David Denby, it's a musical, not Seinfeld. Ever seen an opera? Big, sweeping emotions are kind of what this genre tends to deal with.

I had a friend who went to the movie (because her daughter wanted to see it, in all fairness, obviating my being able to say "pro tip - if you don't like uplifting or depressing songs, maybe avoid musicals in future".) She hated it. Knowing this, I admitted that I loved it, that it made me cry. She called me sappy. Honestly, it hurt my feelings a tiny bit, but she was just expressing an honest opinion. You don't like the movie? Fine. You don't like the movie David Denby-style? You can suck it - it's not my problem you're too tone-deaf to hear the people sing.

Anyone still with me? Man, being unironic seems to occasion a lot of words. The next thing that happened was that I saw, in a retweet, (if I had been following this dude, I wouldn't be now), someone saying something to the effect of 'is Zadie Smith actually crying out for our help?' about this essay in the New York Review of Books (man, what is with New York and the discursive politics of irony?).

I read the essay. I thought it was quite lovely. I went back to Twitter and followed the discussion a little further. Someone else agreed with the first man, and said they refused to believe the essay was written without irony.

What do you think? Do we need an irony intervention? Do we need to go on an irony fast? And by saying 'we', am I still being defensive? Do I need a 'thirty days to an irony-free you' program?

I don't know. But I'm thinking about it. Unironically.

Why I Won't Be Eating at Chick-Fil-A

I know I'm late to the party with this one. I have a terrible habit of hearing about stuff like this, going all incandescent with rage, then immediately getting so tired that I can barely lift my fingers to type, and thinking that nothing I say will make a difference anyway. It very well may not. But there was a story in this book about an older man who was protesting something, and somebody told him his protest wouldn't change anything, and he laughed and said something like "I'm not protesting to change the town, I'm protesting so the town won't change me".

So I won't be eating at Chick-Fil-A. Some people have said it's not accurate to call the owner a 'hater' just because he says he believes in the traditional definition of marriage. And if we're talking a matter of degree, well then I guess I'd have to say people that merely say "I believe in the traditional definition of marriage" are preferable to people who go out looking for homosexuals to beat up, or people who carry signs with hateful slogans outside gay weddings, or people who torture and murder other people because they're gay. But Chick-Fil-A also gave money - a sizable amount of money - to organizations that exist because they think being gay is wrong. Disordered. Less than. All these people think that the world would be a better place if gay people did not exist; if they have to exist, all possible measures must be taken so that they cannot live, love, marry and work towards a fulfilling life in the same way that heterosexual people do. I don't know about you, but if you dig down deep to the root of that, I sort of think you find hate.

Some people think it's ridiculous to decide not to patronize a fast-food establishment because of its owners political or religious views. They don't care if their dry cleaner supports breastfeeding, they say, or if their dentist doesn't love animals. It's true that I'm not rigorous in inspecting the moral foundation of the owners and operators of every establishment I give my money to. Life is short and busy, and I'm a little on the lazy side. But if the person who takes a profit from a business lays his beliefs out there on a plate for all to see? I'm not going to go out of my way to ignore it. I will take this opportunity to vote with my lousy seven-fifty and buy my cardboard french fries somewhere else.

I talked to a friend in New York about this issue and she said that, while she can agree to disagree on some things, some things are too fundamental and important to merely call a 'disagreement'. I get this. I can't say I'm fully able or willing or ready to disengage from everyone in my life who doesn't wholeheartedly support gay marriage. I do, however - and I wonder if religious people get this - feel profoundly saddened and uncomprehending of their position. Of all the things in this world to be offended by, to be disgusted by, to feel violated and horrified and moved to act by, I am truly stunned at the fact that large numbers of people would choose this - someone who loves someone else of the same gender. And I can love the 'sinner' and hate the 'sin' right back at them.

So I don't think Chick-Fil-A restaurants should be vandalized, or legislated out of business, or even that their owner should be silenced. We all know people like him exist. He can go ahead and freely speak his disordered, unfortunate, wrong and, ultimately, to me, hateful thought. But I won't be eating at Chick-Fil-A, because I strongly disagree with his definition of marriage and family.

Also, I think the name Chick-Fil-a is really, really stupid.

Also, I'm Canadian and we don't have them here. But, you know, in theory I wouldn't eat there anyway.

Faith (not the George Michael song)

Scintilla prompt Day 6: Talk about an experience with faith, your own or someone else's.

Faith.

I had this when I was younger. My mother was a devout Catholic - still is, more or less. I went to Church every Sunday, and sang in the choir, and then played the organ for the choir. I went to Communion and Confession. I tried to root out every poisonous tendril of sin from my cracked and grimy soul, and still believed most of the time that I was going to hell.

But I had faith. That God was real. That I needed to follow the rules. That believing was more important than knowing.

I got a little bit older. I read a lot. I looked around some. I started to feel something else.

Doubt.

That we should feel superior to other people because we went to church once a week.

That the people in my church were following the rules they said they believed in.

That 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions' was a kind and Christian thing to say to an anxious eleven-year-old.

That anyone had all the answers.

People call someone a Doubting Thomas if they want evidence before believing in something. Thomas was the apostle who asked to touch Jesus' wounds before believing that he had risen from the dead. Jesus reportedly said about Thomas, 'blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed'. I'm thinking Thomas probably felt a little less beloved than the rest of the apostles when Jesus said this.

I once had faith that a man who said he had locked his keys in his trunk on a Sunday and needed a hundred dollars to pay a locksmith so he could pick up his kids in the park was telling the truth. That man robbed me. I once had faith that a man who said he just needed directions to the hospital was telling the truth. That man tried to hurt me. I once had faith that if I had sex before marriage or said Jesus Christ in anger or told a lie that I would spend eternity in agony and torment, and that this would be a proper and rightful thing. So do I want to feel something with my hands or see it with my eyes before I believe in it?

You're goddamned right I do.

My children ask a lot of questions. They want to know how things work, and why they work that way. They will keep asking 'why?' until they understand completely. I think this is a good thing.

So yes.

Doubt.

That I need the promise of a heavenly reward or the threat of eternal fire to persuade me to treat people kindly, and to refrain from cheating people or hurting them.

I know people who have faith. I don't begrudge them this. Sometimes I miss that feeling of absolute belief. But wedged like a dusty sapphire between my former faith and my present doubt, my constant striving to do well and to add beauty to the world even if this life is all we have, there is something else. Something that comes from loving fiercely, and feeling deeply, and drinking in the flawed and fallen world like wine.

I think it might be Grace.

In Defense of Baseball. And Irony, I guess. OR, the practical exact opposite of Wordless Wednesday

I got a tiny bit head-bitey this morning while responding to Nan's comment on yesterday's post. I sent the reply, then felt kind of upset and wondered if Nan and I were still going to be friends - I've never broken up with a virtual friend before, but I was feeling just as icky as I do when arguing with a real-life one. Then I figured we'd probably work it out, and then I wondered why her comment stung so much. I know she doesn't like organized sports. Do I not routinely bitch about organized sports, I ask myself? Self, I admitted, I do. My friend Zarah comes to visit every summer, and we usually get together once with another woman who's been friends with Zarah and my husband since before university. This woman is very athletic, and over one dinner she said she thought organized sports were wonderful and kids who didn't play them really missed out on something. Zarah found this offensive. I found it amusing.

My sister and I didn't play organized sports, beyond a little soccer when she was pretty young. My parents came from the prairies and the wilderness of extreme northern Ontario, and they weren't familiar with them or disposed to encourage us to play them. My husband, on the other hand, played hockey, often competitively, from the time he was very young. Should we have gone ahead and procreated without discussing the implications of this? Perhaps not.

I still don't really love watching hockey, even when my son's playing it. I do enjoy the fact that he's progressed, and it is entertaining to see the same kid who used to skate over and try to help kids from the opposite team up when they'd fallen go after someone for the puck in the corner. But it's kind of just a big jumble of kids for the most part, and if I can't see his number sometimes I don't even know which one is mine. And it takes up a good part of our week-ends all winter, since there's a game or a practice every Saturday and Sunday.

But baseball is different. We stumbled into it - I don't even remember what happened, there was a sign up somewhere, he'd hated playing soccer the last summer, we thought we'd give it a shot...

The spring season is May and June, and it's two games a week, which is pretty intense when the kids are still in school. In the first year of rookie, the kids hit the ball off a tee. Nobody can catch, the throws are all over the place, several of them skip the bases instead of running. They all want to play backcatcher because you get to wear the cool equipment, and then they can't see anything and they stumble around and the ball bounces right off them, assuming they ever get near it. Each at-bat ends when the team has gotten five runs in or there are three outs. In early rookie, we've been in many tight twenty-five to twenty-five games. It's pretty adorable, actually.

Then they play a second year, and some of them also play in the summer. The level of play starts to go up, because they play so many games. The first time a kid on a team catches a pop fly is magical, and hilarious - the whole park goes silent, and the kid usually looks like he's thinking 'holy crap! Was that supposed to happen?' Some kids start to pull away from the pack in ability, and some still have no clue what's going on - which is fair, because I've been involved in five or so seasons and I still don't know all the rules. What's nice is, for the most part, as excited as people get when one of the good kids hits a home run, everybody gets just as excited, if not more so, when someone who hasn't gotten a hit all season finally gets one.

On the whole, I've been really impressed with the families and coaches we've been in contact with. To be fair, it's not all sunshine and sunflower seeds - one coach had to step down one year because, well, he was a douchebag who cared more about winning than teaching the kids he was coaching about sportsmanship - AND THEY WERE SIX. And our friends had their summer ball coach politely suggest that they withdraw their kids one season because they were going to pull the team down (which is most definitely NOT the spirit the League advocates, although unfortunately the family didn't find this out until much later). But most of the coaches are exemplary - and I include my husband in this - about trying to instill some discipline and sportsmanship while still making the game fun for the kids. So yes, they are asked to sit on the bench while waiting to bat without too much yelling/hitting/wrestling/throwing, and yes, they are asked to be focused and ready to play their positions when they're in the field, but they're always praised for their efforts, whether they're successful or not, and they always get freezies or rice krispie squares at the end. One year my husband and his co-coach read jokes from a 100 Stupidest Jokes book instead of running drills to warm up before playoffs. If a player struck out at bat, he had to smile or else he was made to smell a baseball sock that hadn't been washed since the beginning of the season when he got back to the bench.

It's true that they are asked to sit or stand still sometimes when they don't want to - maybe even when it's practically impossible to, or feels like it. But I really see a real sense of satisfaction when any part of the team suddenly puts it all together and things start working like they're supposed to.

It turns out (and no one is more shocked than I am) that my son is an ultra-uber-crazy good baseball player. This has done wonders for his confidence, which was sorely lacking when he started playing at age six. When he started he was on a team that pretty much carried him, and since then he has been on teams where he was by far the best player, and ended up helping out the less-experienced ones. I feel like it's taught him a lot. My daughter is decidedly NOT a scary good baseball player, and she really likes it too (well, not at the moment, but generally). She's the only girl on the team, which hasn't been a barrier to her being accepted at all (there's also a funny story about my friend's daughter Rachel's team, and the time about halfway through spring ball when all of a sudden the word went around the bench that "Psst! Hey! Rachel's a GIRL!").

Holy crap, longest post ever. About baseball. Which is a sport. How strange. I could go on, but I won't. Anyway, these are my thoughts on why I really like Little League Baseball and why I thought I was kind of justified in telling the boys to stop kicking the gravel. And Nan - it's just what I believe, I'm not bothered if you have a dissenting opinion - except a little, at first. I'm trying to grow.

Suck it Up, Ya Pussies

In a recent episode of Modern Family (the awesomeness, oh the awesomeness), the flamboyant gay character Cam is directing the play at the school attended by two of the extended family's children. When his partner Mitchell suggests that perhaps Cam's directing ambitions are a little steep for an elementary school play, Cam indignantly says "Why do you always have a to throw a wet blanket on my dreams? You do it all the time and do you know what I end up with? Wet dreams -- I heard it as soon as I said it; just leave it alone."

I'm using this as a humorous example of a curious phenomenon. Some people do indeed hear the words that come out of their own mouths - other people? Not so much. Once I was standing around in Halfway Lake Provincial Park with my junior ranger boyfriend and some of his friends. One of them asked me why I kept ripping leaves off the bush and tearing them up into little pieces, and I said "I don't know, I like to have something to do with my hands", and before it was even out of my mouth I knew it was a mistake (see how I followed one possibly dirty statement with another one there?). On the other hand, I had a friend who once walked up to a guy in a parking lot and said "could you please jump me?" when her car was dead and couldn't figure out why everyone was laughing.

Our city council recently had to impose an ban on outside water use for most of the summer in parts of Ottawa, including the part where I live. This is due to a faulty water main, which means we'll be getting our water for the next few months through a much smaller pipe. If we overuse water, the system will become depressurized or dry, which results in bacteria growth which in turn could result in indoor water being unsafe to drink without boiling. In order to mitigate the inconvenience, the city is offering water trucks to top up pools and hot tubs and rebates on rain barrels.

Okay, it's not ideal. Our summers are hot, and few images are more evocative of summer than kids running through a sprinkler. I enjoy gardening, and looking at other people's gardens when I walk around the neighbourhood. But some of the reactions I've read and heard in the past few days seem, to say the least, out of proportion, and I keep thinking "do you seriously not HEAR yourself? Because if you did, how can you say that with a straight face?" It's "ridiculous" -- which part? That a water pipe was faulty? That we have to conserve water in order to maintain its safety for drinking? That we have to not do a few things that, honestly, are kind of dumbass anyway (like watering grass that serves absolutely no practical purpose)? Let's not forget -- they're topping up HOT TUBS -- this isn't exactly the pinnacle of hardship and deprivation. Someone the paper interviewed said "rain barrels? Come on, this is getting out of hand - it's like the green bins in the recycling program". You'd think we'd been asked to boil our children rather than gather rainwater and compost food. And then there's my favourite so far -- "this isn't a third-world country!" Um, yeah -- that's why our worst problem at the moment is dusty cars and brown lawns rather than inadequate food, medicine or shelter.

I get it. It sucks. We're used to our modern conveniences being on-hand and uninterrupted. If I had young children who were in love with their turtle pool, or had just moved into a house that didn't have a lawn yet, I'd be annoyed. ANNOYED. Not enraged or livid or apoplectic. Government makes a lot of decisions that are shortsighted, wrongheaded, and just plain stupid. This doesn't appear to be one of them, and no matter how many times people stamp their feet and say it's 'unacceptable', it doesn't change the fact that it appears to be necessary. Of course, a lot of people are taking the measured approach - like one woman in the schoolyard said "we're still better off than 98% of the planet". That's someone who hears what she says. Unlike these people.

The Naked Truth

I've done everything possible to avoid blogging for the last couple of days, from cleaning the kitchen to sorting obsessively through old photos, from sleeping eighteen hours to cutting out twenty-three paper hearts for Eve's valentines. There's a pair of boys' cargo pants sitting on the dresser by the front door that we bought at Wal-Mart before the cruise because Angus had no lightweight pants for formal night, so we went to Wal-Mart the night before we left even though I hate Wal-Mart and hate it even more now that they have groceries, and bought two pairs of pants in two different sizes so we could return the one that didn't fit, and then I washed the ones that fit before we left and left them in the dryer and forgot to pack them anyway (fuck) and now the pair that didn't fit is on top of the dresser and I keep opening the top drawer to verify that I have the receipt but I still keep not taking them back because, well, I HATE Wal-Mart, and I'm not sure the wretched Wal-Mart experience is actually worth the eleven dollars, and this just seems like a giant stupid metaphor for my life right now, because I'm just so almighty buggerfucking tired, and I sleep too much and drag myself around to get the bare minimum done, and looking at all the stuff left over after the bare minimum makes me feel horrible and guilty, which just makes me more tired.....

...and this is perhaps why I've been avoiding blogging, because once you uncork the sludge in my brain it's a most unsavoury stream of bleck that comes flooding out. 

So I read a couple of blog posts this week about naked people. Specifically, blog posts that objected to people being unashamedly naked in the gym change room. Actually, one blog post finished up by concluding that she probably shouldn't be objecting to the naked person -- the other one was unapologetically against the naked person being naked, even though the person in question was nice and helpful. 

Now I'm not trying to take a stand against either of these bloggers -- one of them I really like and one I don't even know, and in any case both posts were clearly meant to be funny, not hurtful, because the people in question would be highly unlikely to see them. It's just that they reminded me of a couple of things. One was a few years ago when Jamie Lee Curtis posed in her underwear, in all her fifty-ish un-surgically-enhanced, slightly saggy glory. The other one was a picture of an old woman, about seventy, naked, taken from the side. She was not 'well-preserved', 'fantastic-looking for her age', and bore no resemblance to Sophia Loren or Catherine Deneuve. Life, childbirth and gravity had clearly taken their toll. Both of these photos generated letters that were very surprising to me in their disgust and vocal objections to having these photos printed. There were phrases like "I have no interest in seeing something like that" and "that is not something that should ever be photographed" and "oh god, my eyes, my eyes" (okay, I'm paraphrasing, but the implication was there). The comments on these posts were similar -- the tenor of the conversation was, if you MUST change clothes at the gym, then go ahead, but please spend as little time with exposed skin as possible, and for the love of god, don't go wandering around where someone else might accidentally see you and be struck blind or something. 

And it sort of makes me think, what the hell? If somebody is comfortable enough in their own skin to stroll around the gym changing room, put on makeup or skin lotion, be photographed for a magazine, and this makes you cringe, is it at all possible that you're the one with the problem, and not the naked person? There's enough talk about how our society is obsessed with looks and youth and perfection that one might think we'd be applauding someone who's clearly not too hysterically repressed to let it all hang out (in the women's changing room, remember -- it's not like they were strolling down the median of the 417 or something). 

I don't like how I look naked. I don't like how things bulge out and hang down where I'd rather they didn't. But I didn't like how I looked naked when I was younger and firmer and pre-stuffed-with-baby and all the issues that came along with that either. The female body is a freaking marvel, when you think about it. It can grow a whole other person, and withstand great pain in order to put this other person into the world. It can generate food for its young. And when people see it in its natural state, what they really want to say is "cover that thing up"? I'm not comfortable being naked around other people. But I definitely recognize that as my hang-up. If someone else doesn't have that hang-up, more power to them. And now, because I feel like that ending was kind of lame, I will conclude with the first thing that popped up when I googled 'naked jokes': 

Sunbathing in the Buff:  A man was sunbathing in the buff at the beach. For the sake of civility, and to keep it from getting sunburned, he had a hat over his private parts. A woman walks past and says, snickering, "If you were a gentleman you'd lift your hat." He raised an eyebrow and replied, "If you weren't so ugly it would lift itself".

Remembrance

I don't have anything profound to say. It just seems wrong to write about cute stuff my kids said or stupid stuff I'm worrying about today. My husband is planning to take his grandfather to the dinner at the Legion tonight (hopefully he won't heckle the Peacekeepers this time). I went a couple of times -- it was wonderful, and sad. The very first time I visited Matt, Grandpa started telling war stories; I didn't realize until afterwards that this was the first time Matt had heard any of them. It was riveting. It wasn't all hell, of course -- in a way, the war was the only way he would have seen as much of the world as he did, and some of the times were grand old times indeed. But the parts that were hell were appalling, horrifying, unimaginable for those of us who weren't there. I worry sometimes that, as his short-term memory deteriorates but his long-term memory remains crystal clear, he will be trapped in those hellish memories. And then there are the soldiers today, who are in a hot, alien country, enduring conditions we can't even imagine for a cause that a good part of this country thinks is false and unworthy -- how hard must that be? My husband was gone last week and will be gone Monday for two weeks, and it's hard. But I don't have to worry that he's going to get shot or run afoul of an improvised explosive device while I try to run a household alone for months at a time. So yeah, I'm going to remember today. And try to stop whining.

Would you have shot him? Why or why not?

Today after taking the kids to school I came home and read this column in the Ottawa Citizen, reprinted from the Edmonton Journal. By the end of the column, my blood was duly boiling. I was outraged on behalf of these people who were victimized by criminals, seemingly abandoned by an ineffective policing system, and then criminalized when they took steps to protect their own homes and businesses. It was like I was a doll with a series of buttons that this piece was expressly designed to push.

So I thought I should take a step back and think about it more carefully.

I was incensed when I read about David Chen, the Toronto shopkeeper who intercepted a shoplifter and, when the thief swore at him and fled, caught and tied him up with the help of two of his employees and held him until the police got there. Mr. Chen ended up charged with assault, kidnapping and forcible confinement. This just seemed stupid to me. The only reason the thief was 'forcibly confined' was because he obviously wouldn't have consented to wait nicely until the police could show up to arrest him. I freely admit that a couple of days ago when I heard on the radio that the charges against Mr. Chen and his employees had been dropped I said "yay", right out loud, through a mouthful of toothpaste.

In the other two cases referred to by Mr. Gunter, there was actual violence -- by shotgun and hatchet. In one of them, one of the burglars died, and the homeowner was given life in prison for homicide. My feelings are less clear for these cases. On the one hand, the burglar that died was trying to climb out a window, so he presented no imminent threat to the homeowner who shot him, and therefore it can't be called self defense. On the other hand, he wouldn't have died if he hadn't been robbing someone's house.

I looked at a few other pieces Mr. Gunter has written, and his tendencies are clearly conservative and against anything that can be deemed appeasement or political correctness. He feels that the justice system has tilted sharply in favour of criminals' rights and away from those of victims. I'm an easy mark for a sentiment like this -- I am a 'good citizen', and I can easily identify with the rage and indignation of people who are repeatedly victimized by criminals and get no satisfaction from the police, until they feel like they have no choice but to take the law into their own hands. I've never robbed anyone or broken in anywhere, so I'm unable to see the criminal's side of it -- how you can be going about your business stealing stuff and suddenly have a bullet in the leg for your trouble (sorry, sorry -- not helpful). I'm not familiar enough with the law to know how much latitude there is in how they are applied. It does seem that there's a difference between shooting someone who has entered your house or business unlawfully and shooting someone just for the hell of it. It must be infuriating when you are told to 'let the police handle it' when it seems that they never do handle it. But it also seems like there might be (oh how I hate this phrase) a slippery slope argument to be made also. Gunter says that criminals have become bolder over the last generation because they know that fewer Canadians have guns. Not only am I a little skeptical of this statement, I also don't want to feel like criminals are less bold only because they think more Canadians have guns.

Anybody want to jump in here? My head is spinning and I haven't even showered yet. I'm about to tackle the Halloween decoration clean-up -- anyone who tries to break in here today is going to get a serious witch's broom over the head.

The Young Girl and the Sea

I'm speaking of this girl. We talk a lot in the mommy-blogging world about parenting choices, parental judgement, parents judging other parents...Abby Sunderland has been a lightning rod for these issues. I've been thinking a lot about this, every time another article or editorial appears, especially in the hours when she was out of contact before she was found safe. I purposely didn't google what other bloggers were saying, because I wanted to try to figure out what I really think, whether or not it's a popular opinion.

A lot of people have expressed the opinion that Abby's parents are crazy, neglectful or some combination of the two to let their daughter attempt this. I don't remember the same kind of rhetoric or publicity when Abby's brother Zac sailed around the world alone in 13 months when he was 16 -- I'm not sure that there really wasn't any, but I don't remember it.

Would I let my sixteen-year-old sail around the world alone? My gut-level reaction is 'not a chance'. But I don't have a sixteen-year-old. Abby Sunderland has been sailing large boats for years. Her interviews make it clear that she is strong-minded and independent. In a couple more years, she could have made the decision to do this on her own. We all know that some eighteen-year-olds are nowhere near mature enough to undertake something like this, while some fifteen-year-olds could probably do it. Is it possible that her own parents are a better judge of her fitness for something like this than the strangers who have suggested they should be 'whipped like mules' for allowing it?

An editorial in my local paper compared Abby's situation to that of Jessica Dubroff, a seven-year-old who tried to fly a plane across the U.S. and crashed and died in the process. I really don't think this is a fair comparison, because...well, jesus, she was SEVEN. The same editorial (entitled 'Bad Parents') says we all want our children to achieve but someone has to know 'the difference between having adventures and sending out children out to risk their lives'. Well guess what? Everyone risks their lives just by leaving the house every morning. Cripes, people risk their lives by NOT leaving the house in the morning. When I make the decision to start allowing my kids more independence by letting them walk home from school alone or go to the park with a friend, I'm running the risk that something terrible will happen and everyone, including me, will think that I should have been protecting my child. So much of how an event is viewed depends on a totally arbitrary outcome. Yes, there are levels of risk, and young people exhibit varying degrees of adventurousness. Letting your child sail around the world alone is a few steps up from letting her walk to Grandma's (and even that, it must be admitted, went horribly wrong that one time). The fact remains that simply being alive is a fatal condition, and we can't protect our kids from everything.

I don't know Abby Sunderland's parents. I think some of their comments about Abby being 'in God's hands', and God controlling the waves etc. are a little naive. But I don't believe that they thought they were sending their daughter out to risk her life unreasonably. I believe that they were terrified when their daughter was missing and relieved and jubilant when she was found safe -- which corroborated her father's claim that the safety features of her vessel and her own knowledge and competence would mitigate the risk.

I've talked before about trying to be non-judgemental, and how difficult it is. I know it's hard not to speak up when it looks like parents are being careless and risking their children's health or safety. It's also easy to be immmoderate and somewhat ill-considered without considering the nuances of the situation when you don't have to put anything behind your comments.

So what do you think? Is it refreshing that, in a culture that could be said to infantilize young people to an alarming degree, these parents allow their child this degree of self-determination? Or are they cuckoo Christians who deserve all the lambasting they get? Or something in the middle? (I thought I should talk about something other than my birthday for a change. I went for a 5k walk this morning. My feet don't hurt any more than they did when I was 39).

Uglification and Derision: Outrage, Part 1

I just read this over at Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia's blog (I read it on a recommendation and tried not to love it, because I'm a contrary and perverse creature, but I failed. It's lovable, dammit). Apparently a St. Louis sex blogger who blogged anonymously and whose blog mentioned nothing about her job, was fired because her boss somehow came across her blog and was disgusted. That's it -- you're fired because you blog about sex and I find that disgusting.

'Scuse me? No, really, EXCUSE ME? Yeah. I know. The internet is forever. Anything you say online can and will be used to flagellate you by any asshole who comes across it in the present and future. And if your boss fires you for a stupid-ass reason that doesn't happen to be a stupid-ass reason that falls under various categories of discrimination, you have to take it up the (butt-plugged or not) ass (yeah, that's a little crude for me, but it's germane to the plot so I'm leaving it in). And I can't say I find it all that surprising. A lot of Americans, and Canadians, and Corporate America (and Canada) especially have a long rich tradition of hysterical repression and denigrating people who stand out, who push the borders of 'polite' discourse, who say words like 'vagina' in public. I just want to go on record saying I think it's... what's the word... DUMB.

Some people think the internet leads people to share too much. I think the people who share too much have always shared too much. The fact that they now have this medium to do it with and now they can share too much with waaaay more people? Yes, it does bear thinking about. But the hysteria on the part of the shared-with needs to be addressed too. Hey, everyone who's offended by sex blogs, or things people say on Facebook: there's this nifty thing you can do that should help -- it's called looking away.

A while ago there was a big kerfuffle about something a nurse had written on Facebook. A doctor had written in her status update that she was sleepy and wished the baby she was delivering would come soon. Her friend, a nurse, responded something admittedly crude and off-putting, like 'oh fuck it, just cut her'. Someone else who was the doctor's friend took great offense and described her own horrific c-section, which resulted in the nurse reacting defensively, blah blah blah. Some bloggers took up the cause, urging that someone should report her to her hospital and/or try to have her fired.

Was the comment inappropriate? The definition of 'appropriate' is 'especially suitable or compatible'. In the context of discussing a woman's labour and delivery? Pretty f*ckin' inappropriate. In the context of Facebook, a vast internet playland of frivolousness and frippery? Things become a little more slippery. Yes, the comment was stupid and offensive. People say stupid and offensive things all the time. Should she have been fired for a stupid, offensive comment that she made while not in her workplace? If she made the comment at a party or in a bar and was overheard, would people be grouping together planning to report her to her boss? Do we just ban all people with any propensity for making stupid offensive comments from the internet? Is it free speech, or is it only free speech for people who don't regularly make giant ass-hats of themselves when they open their mouths (speaking as one who has regularly been asshattish)?

To be continued....

Happy Mother's Day -- now shut up and smile

I'm still not sure about writing this post. It seems stupid that I feel like I have to write this post. But it's been spinning around like a nasty little sharp-toothed spinny thing in my head for a few days, particularly in the shower, and shaving my legs is unpleasant enough without the nasty spinny stuff, and hey -- Crazy Mayor Lady asked for a Mayhem guest post, so where better to spin off my stuff?

I read this article a few days ago. I read Suburban Bliss long before I read any other blogs, and I had heard a bit about Michele McBee, who is apparently just the epitome of churlish, venomous, ungrammatical, unimaginative bitcherness (when bitterness marries bitchiness). I don't read Suburban Bliss all that often anymore, not because it's not every bit as funny and real as it's always been, but because Melissa Summers is a total success who doesn't need or notice my readership or comments, and I prefer to spend the majority of my blog-reading time on people for whom I am part of a community instead of merely an audience. When I have time, I catch up on it. She's funny and truthful and a little wacky and loves her kids and finds motherhood rewarding, difficult and sometimes overwhelming. Because of this, thousands of people adore her blog, and a few people feel justified in telling her that she's a neglectful, ineffective, alcoholic mother who shouldn't have had children. In the article, Michele McBee says bloggers like Summers make motherhood 'a horrible, nasty experience', and 'so much harder than it has to be'. She 'worries about some of these kids', so she very helpfully and graciously offers her negative opinions on Summers' personal appearance and that of her kids, and questions her husband's sexuality -- you know, to point out how motherhood is easy and to help the children.

I know, I know -- why get mad at stupid people? Why waste my breath trying to refute the stupid vituperative ramblings of stupid people? Maybe they can't help being stupid. Maybe they're lacking some crucial gene for intelligence and we should be holding a telethon to raise money for smartness transfusions. The problem is, it's not just stupid people that are always ready and willing to chuck sh*t at mothers. There was a column I read in my local paper a few years ago, which I think I've mentioned before, because it really struck a nerve for me. It was a smug male columnist mocking one of those emails that periodically gets sent around, in which the salaries for various jobs that mothers do are added up to some fairly large number and everyone's supposed to stop for a minute and realize all the stuff mothers do for free. Yeah, it's a little cheesy, but as someone currently involved in doing all that sh*t for free, it's nice to see. This columnist made some conciliatory remarks about the fact that motherhood might be a little tough, and we should respect mothers, but 'surely not based on the putative value of diapering and sandwich-making'. The fact that he used the words 'surely' and 'putative' only made me want to kick him in the slats even more.

Motherhood is hard. Motherhood is lifelong and constant and yes, it is intensely joyful and tremendously rewarding and sometimes just downright enjoyable, but it is also incredibly freaking difficult. If it's not? YOU'RE NOT DOING IT RIGHT!!!! Michele McBee has asked Melissa Summers why she had kids. Why did we have kids if we weren't going to bliss out on every single moment? Um, because we don't live in Cartoon F*cking Fairyland where little birds carry away the dirty diapers and mice wearing little clothes sweep up the house and scrub the toilets? Nobody cares about the value of diapering and sandwich-making? That's right, they don't -- AND THAT'S WHAT MAKES IT HARD, YOU BIG STUPID STUPIDHEAD! Because no matter what Big Stuff is going on -- medical issues, bullying problems, drug problems, legal problems -- all the small, annoying stuff still has to get done. By the mothers.

According to Socrates, the unexamined life is not worth living. But if you're a mother daring to do a little examining of your mothering life, be prepared for people to say a great number of things that essentially boil down to: Nobody forced you to have kids, so don't whine about it. I know a fair number of people who have chosen to have kids. Not a single one of them wanted kids but decided to forego them for the good of the planet -- some of them imply that this was a factor in their decision every now and then, and every now and then I imply that they're full of sh*t. We decide a lot of things in life -- where to live, what to work at, what colour to dye our hair. Sometimes we complain about them.

I don't mean to suggest that this is more than a few stupid people or smart people with localized stupidity in this area. Most of the bloggers I know and read and comment on and see commenting on my blog are wonderful, supportive, understanding people. It can't be overestimated how helpful it is to know that you're not the only one who gets tired of cleaning up the same mess or answering the same question, or loves the sound of your children's voices ninety-eight percent of the time and the other two percent of the time finds them akin to the sound of a pterodactyl mating with a leafblower. And that's why it's so out of line for people to equate voicing negative things about motherhood to being a bad mother. Because if we can't talk about them, then things will get really ugly.

People slag celebrities. People slag politicians. If you get any kind of famousness thing going on, people are going to judge you, and gossip about you, and try to cash in on your reputation by riding your coattails, whether they're flattering you or vomiting their acidic bile in the comments section of your blog. In a weird way, I guess Melissa Summers could consider being targeted by Michele McBee and the other harpies a sign of success. I'm so not famous, I feel pretty safe. But anyone attacking a mother for hinting that motherhood is anything but one hundred percent fabulous one hundred percent of the time is attacking me. And beware the wrath of me -- I know a LOT of uncomplimentary adjectives.

Am now going to fire this off to Tracy and trust she will spice it up with some funny cartoons. Thanks for the loan of the soapbox. Hope you all had a great mother's day with your nearly-perfect children.

Happy Anniversary to my friend the hooker

Cool thing number one: I actually remembered what I'm supposed to blog about today.




Cool thing number two (WAY cooler than thing number one): My friend CJ at Don't Lick the Ferrets and her T21 Traveling Afghan Project. Today is the one-year anniversary of the project, which has a hand-made (by CJ) afghan traveling all over the world to different families who have a family member with Down's Syndrome. The afghan travels with a journal and photographs of everyone who spends time with it.

I love everything about this project. I worked with quite a few people with Down's Syndrome in my days with the Associations for Community Living in Sudbury and Hamilton. Without wanting to romanticize or idealize their condition -- many of them have serious health problems -- they are the sweetest, funniest, most genuine people you will find on the face of the earth. CJs daughter is the cutest little button ever.

I also love the traveling aspect. All the people of this community sending on this object, made with love, along with their own experiences, hopes, joys and wishes. It's not often that you come across something so pure, something that puts a little more beauty and joy into the world, without sucking anything out. I'm happy to spread the word. Pass it along, if you're so inclined, and help keep the happy hooker hooking happily.