Feminism: Not just a dessert topping anymore.

So there's this story on Salon this week... here's the link- Feminist Article - the jist of the article is, though, that young women, when professing traditionally feminist sentiments, deny that they are feminists.

I do it.
I believe in abortion on demand, without questions, for anyone who finds themselves afflicted with an embryo or fetus.
I believe in equal work for equal pay.
I believe that men and women should be equally protected and prosecuted by the law.

I am not a feminist. I believe in social justice. I believe in a basically libertarian worldview, with exceptions that would protect the destitute and otherwise marginalized. I don't believe in the factionalized circus that is modern feminism. I love Camille Paglia. Andrea Dworkin (RIP, etc) gives me heartburn. Susan Sontag leaves me cold. The vagina monologues left me feeling like the only kid in the class without an imaginary friend. My vagina wouldn't wear a hat or say anything. Eve Ensler said, this past election, that women vote with their vaginas. I use the pen provided in the booth, actually.

I have a loathing for most of the institutions of female culture. I don't like the cattiness, the obsessions with appearance, the consumerism, the fundamental superficiality of it all. Even feminists are obsessed with appearance. They talk about 'the male gaze', body image, whether pornography liberates or opresses. Balls to all that, and I goddamned well don't mean ovaries. Feminism seems to argue that women are pushed into this outward (to the mall) and downward (at their bodies) facing culture as a substitute for fulfillment. Women aren't pushed. They run. It's so much easier to care about how you look than what you do. It's so much easier to blame society for asking too much. I'll agree with feminists that women are poisoned by culture; but women chug that strychnine because it's cheap and goes down so smooth.

My sister is an anorexic. She almost died. She had osteoporosis at sixteen. She menstruates dust and ghosts. She still doesn't eat well. She didn't catch it from a magazine (or a toilet seat). She got it herself. She studied it. She watched the lifetime movies and read 'Reviving Ophelia' (a gorgeous manual for any teenage girl seeking instant drama and artistic depth, it gives you the inside track on eating disorders, self mutilation, and all kinds of fun ways to make people realize it's SO hard to be you!). And she got it. And the therapy. And the group hugs. And all of a sudden, her life was simple. Her life was anorexia. Grades, after-school jobs, getting her license, all fell away. My sister is a feminist.

I am not a feminist. I'm pro-abortion (fuck choice- I'll say it- I'm glad abortion exists. Abortion is a truly feminist act. It frees women from a biological inevitability that opresses more than any inadequate girl's soccer budget) I'm pro-woman, insofar as a woman is a person. I'm glad that the feminist movement existed, and that the pill (which I love, which I worship, which I exalt) is covered by health insurance in my state. I donate to Planned Parenthood and NARAL, even though I can't afford to. I hated the Taliban, and Female Genital Mutilation and AIDS in Africa are feminist causes I can get fully behind.

But feminism doesn't seem to be about helping a 4 year old in the Sudan, or a 15 year old in South Africa. It seems pre-occupied with cushioning the world for middle-class women. They want date-rape counselors on every street corner in Ohio, but condoms in the hands of prostitutes in Sierra Leone is too far away, and too hard. They want stiffer sexual harassment laws, but teaching women to read (which reduces infant mortality), or offering micro-loans to families in the third world (an aid program that works)- aren't on the list. Feminists should toughen up, live their lives, take responsibility for their own happiness, and turn outward. When being a feminist means that you're for the basic rights of women everywhere in the world before your own ego and neuroses, I'll be a feminist. Until then, I'm a domestic misogynist, and international feminist.

Germans? Sexually deviant? No!

"Do you love children more than you want to?"

So, apparently, in Germany, there's a campaign of print ads and posters that exhort pedophiles to seek treatment rather than sweet young...rather than offending for a first time. This campaign, while well meaning, raises a lot of questions on further contemplation.
For example, in what publication would you place an advertisement aimed at pedophiles? What magazine would admit that was their demographic? "Why, yes, we DO seem to be found in the background of your finer child-porn shoots..." and, what readership, upon finding that in their publication, wouldn't be offended? I've read in my psychology classes that pedophiles tend to gravitate towards publications meant for children, and those about children. Would the readers of german parents magazines be comfortable with the thought that someone might be reading that article on diaper rash more recreationally than educationally? And what about a Highlights for children? Who wants to explain to little Hans, on the way to Goofus and Goebbels or whatever, a full page ad suggesting that you not touch Johnny.
I believe, by the way, that parents SHOULD confront the fact that their reading material is entertainment for a disordered few. Parents should admit that there might be a stranger in the audience of the school play, and that there's definately some people with illicit interests in little girl's pageantry. So those ads, I think, ought to be in publications aimed at parents that might be purchased by people with other interests in children. Of course, when parents are asked to confront the dangers that children might face (even with the knowledge that the actual risk is statistically insignificant), they react with righteous anger, outrage, and enough foam childproofing to create a life-size model of those fat motorcycle twins. Child molestation is awful. It shouldn't happen. Pedophiles should seek treatment. But the fact is that most sexual abuse happens within the context of the family, and familiar car is more dangerous than a menacing stranger. But kids don't walk to school these days (that's why they're all so goddamned fat- seriously. Most kids are so fucking fat. That's one way to combat pedophilia, I suppose. Who wants a little porker, right?), because their parents think it's not safe. They don't play outside, or make up their own games, or interact with anything not approved by four councils and two magazines as safe. Increasing the parental fear quotient will do more harm than good, I fear.
Another thing- these ads rely on the pedophile to identify his behavior as deviant. The problem is addressed as one of personal choice, convenience. It asks "Do you love children more than you want to?" , framing pedophilia as an inconvenient habit. "Do you smoke more than you want to?" A dangerous pedophile is not the one who is already tormented by his compulsions; a dangerous pedophile is the one who's already built a system of justifications around it. The pedophile fortified with thread after thread of message boards comparing child molestation to s and m or lesbianism, is the dangerous pedophile. And he's not going to be convinced by an advertisment in 'Sesame Street Parent' or 'Modern Veal' or 'Prenatal Fun' to seek treatment for something he enjoys. The pedophile who wants to discontinue his behavior will be directed towards treatment by these ads, but the bottom line is, they just perpetuate the idea that sexual abuse is mostly strangers in dark alleys, not Uncle Jimmy in the rumpus room.


[germans]

Ben Wallace.

Ben Wallace, Maybe.


An explanation for female people:
This is Ben Wallace.
Ben Wallace is a center for the Detroit Pistons. Ben Wallace is a large man, although small for a center. Boys told me that. Ben Wallace has formidable hair. Very early in this season, Ben Wallace revealed to the world a great evil, and, in the revelation of that evil, ameliorated it for a time. That evil was Ron Artest, and for that, and that alone, I will always feel a great affection for Ben Wallace. But, for the second season in a row, the Pistons find themselves in the finals, against a team that everyone predicted will crush them. As of yet, they have not. And now, I shall procede with the blogging.

I know why the Pistons won the last two games. I know why, even though sports pundits (spundits? spoondits?) predicted the series would end in five, it will go to seven. The reason is Ben Wallace. And not just the sheer wall of muscle that, by force of will, has coalesced into more than six and less than seven feet of center; but something slightly less tangible. Something that might yeild to the touch (tangination?). Something that might some day turn gray. I'm talkin' bout the 'fro.

And if Hello had worked when I first started fighting with it...I would have been the first to say so. Instead, all these other folks have been stealing the novelty of my (!) original insight, and making ME seem slow.

The Mercury News reported this quote from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal

''That's what she said," Ben Wallace recounted. "She said let your hair down and go out there and play some basketball . . . or else you can't eat."
Since eating is something that Ben Wallace takes rather seriously, he decided to heed his wife's suggestion. As it turned out, it was definitely a Fear the `Fro night for the first time in the series."
-Tom Enlund, Milwaukee Journal Sentinal

It was a night to fear the 'fro. And I called it from the moment he took the court. I called my boyfriend before the game began. I asked him "Tell me, have you seen Ben Wallace? Have you seen the hair?" He hadn't. We waited. The hair was out. It was amazing. I told him, before the ...whatsitcalled...when the game starts and the guys jump up...what the result would be.

The fro. The fro has the power. As my diagram above reveals, Ben Wallace's power emanates from his 'fro. The hair itself, when unfurled, acts as a powerful antenna. It channels various forces to allow him, and his teammates, to commit unprecedented feats of basketball. It works by drawing the energy from other players both bench players on Detroit and other basketball players not playing that night. That's why it works best in the later rounds of the playoffs- fewer other players playing. Additionally, the stronger the east, the more strength for the Pistons to draw on. The east was great this year, what with Shaq and Gary and Al and gahhhhhh....let's admit it...Lebron....and others. The 'fro also works as a potent conduit for Soul-onium, the essence of soul. This is also shown in my drawing. It looks like a skull or a ghost, because most of the unused souls in the NBA come from New Jersey, LA and Indiana, so they've been dead for a long time.

I also put a flaming basketball in there, because I think it's pretty cool.

[NBA]

Al Jefferson is my soulmate.

The conclusion might be arrived at that women shouldn't be sports fans. I agree, we shouldn't. Personally, I can't handle it. The emotional highs and lows it leads to are just too much. I get too attached to players, and am broken-hearted when they are traded. I cried when Antoine Walker was traded, and again when he came back. My boyfriend and I drove down to New Jersey, to see that last game with the Nets, I couldn't sit still on the way down from excitement, and I threw up on the car ride home from sheer misery. Going to Ikea helped a little, but not much. (I am female, after all. Home furnishing and chocolate are enough to blunt most major traumas) That game was hard for me. Doc Rivers (valiant! true! loyal defender of players! setter of high expectations!) was ejected in the first two minutes. Vince Carter had, I think, a career high for three-pointers, and a season high for points. I hate motherfucking Vince Carter, but I hate goddamned Jason Kidd more. And I hate the goddamned Nets.

People tell me that there is no Nets/Celtics rivalry. I don't care. I don't care at all. I hated the Nets first because they seemed soulless. Look at Jason Kidd and tell me there's something alive and ensouled behind those eyes. I don't believe it. Vince Carter admits that he played poorly in Canada in order to get traded. Doing that is slimy. Admitting it is worse. It's degrading to the sport. I was ready, briefly, to believe that the Nets had a reason to exist. Eric Williams, a player who did his best for the Celtics, was traded by the perfidious Danny Ainge. This trade had a bright spot, unlike most of Danny Ainge's other early trades, which seemed mostly designed to switch out talented black men for gawky white men*. It put Eric Williams, the 'Prince of Newark' on a path to go back to New Jersey, his home state. He just wanted to play at home. He just wanted a team that would match his tattoo. He wanted to be near family. Of course, because New Jersey is even more duplicitous, shameless, and unsympathetic than Danny Ainge (who is a Prince in his own right, by comparison) they swiftly traded him, even further away. So now I hate New Jersey even more. They're soulless, and inhumane, and traded away a player ready to accept the state, the meadowlands, the smell (there IS a smell) for what it was.

You know who I love, though? Al Jefferson. I love Al Jefferson. Al Jefferson, a rookie on the cusp of not being one, is amazing.

To prove that women should not be sports fans, I'll say how I really feel about Al Jefferson: I love him. I want to nurture him and give him pie, even though he shouldn't have pie because he needs to stay in shape. I want him to be happy and make friends and stay in Boston forever and ever and ever. I want to know that the Celtics love him. Sometimes I imagine him hugging his teammates, and it makes me happy. The story the Globe Magazine did on him in the spring pretty much made my year. He wants to drink regular coke! And eat Doritos! But he can't! He gave Antoine his number back, for nothing! He wears tall socks! He cried after the playoffs were over for the Celtics (so did I)!

On the court, he's fearless. He blocks like he was born doing it. He dunks. 265lbs, 6'10, gets up in the air like he was made of, well, Ricky Davis. He's barely twenty, and he's number 9 in the whole NBA in offensive rebounds. Offensive rebounds. Those are the hard ones. He's number 8 in the WHOLE NBA in field goal percentage. He's wicked great, and I love him. He's amazing to see. He's not afraid of Shaq. He's not afraid of Ben Wallace. I can't remember how he did against Yao, I just remember that Boston won. He plays like everything is on the line, every game, but you can still see him enjoying being there. Even when the sweat pours off him, even when you can see him realize he's made a mistake (I wouldn't know what a mistake looks like in the NBA, so I get boys to tell me), he still likes it.

I love him so much.



[Celtics]

Zombies, Diego Rivera and Me

Diego Rivera ate people. Not a lot of people talk about that. Of course, not a lot of people talk about Frida Kahlo's intra-vaginal shrapnel or the theory that they both probably had sex with Trotsky, but, he certainly did eat people. He bought, stole, or generally misaproppriated the bodies and cooked them into stews, which he then ate with his oh-so-bohemian friends. It is not known (by me) whether the solo browed one partook.

Zombies might eat people. It depends on who you ask. Some sources say that zombies merely tear the flesh and gnaw the bones. Others say that they actually eat the brains, but do not digest them. Whatever they do, they seem to have a drive to interfere with the contents of the skull.

In two weeks, I'm going to disect a brain and spinal cord. It might be true that the original owner of that brain is walking around today, probably not thinking about some agreement they made to donate their remains to science. (read Stiff, by the way- wicked good book on cadavers) If they are thinking about it, I'm sure they didn't intend to have their grey (and white) matter poked at by a bunch of slack-jawed UNDERGRADUATES.

Yeah. Undergraduate. And I'm not pre-med. In fact, I doubt anyone in my class is. We're psych majors, for the most part, and people who are trying very, very hard to fulfill their science requirement without taking a lab science. BIO 102.2, and then this: Behavioral Neuroscience. At a state university. A mid-level state university, with a decent reputation for research, but with the locals, it's like home. Home, of course, being the place where they have to let you in. I respect my teacher (professor, I guess). He seems to be trying to teach a rigorous course. He seems to be trying to treat his students like people who can be expected to master difficult material. He looks like a gym teacher more than a PhD, though, and when he mentioned that he hoped to get us 'good brains', but they were more likely to be those of alzheimers or parkinson's patients, I realized that this class might be more than we all signed up for.

I will do the brain lab. I will do it because this is the one opportunity I have to see a human brain (with any luck, I hope) and I'm not the type of person to pass up anything once in a lifetime. I just really can't see the whole exercise as much more than a waste. When people donate their bodies to science (seriously, read Stiff by Mary Roach) I think they consider that they might be disected by medical students, maybe scientists, maybe academics. They don't consider a room full of undergraduates, most of whom chose their major because it's one of two that require less than twelve classes, doing it as part of a requirement for a two-hundred level course.

This isn't a hand. It's not a liver. It's not a heart. There's nothing more individual in life and anonymous in death than a brain. It's singular. I don't want to cut into something that held a lifetime's memories, feelings, thoughts, education, sins, remorse, guided every heartbeat and breath- like it's some goddamned frog. It's not like this will somehow pass on the accumulated knowledge of the individual who gave their brain; it will just pass on the very common and universal knowledge of how A brain looks and feels. It's not worth it.

Honestly, I'd rather do a fetus. Because dead fetuses (fetii?) are funny. And they haven't done anything. I have very little respect for the singularity of something that has experience only of aqueous stasis inside someone else. A fetus, in my opinion, doesn't even carry the weight of potentiality. Sponteneous abortions are part of life's design. This life begins at conception shit doesn't seem to take that into account. It's like saying that college graduation begins at tenth grade. Sure, everyone who graduates college began tenth grade (with some rare exceptions), but the majority (I think- I'd check it if this was a paper) of people who begin tenth grade don't finish college.

Besides, everybody likes making more fetuses.




[Neuroscience]

In fact, I wear quite a lot under my apron.

Someone left a gift in the restroom at my work today. At least, I assume it was a gift. Some people might assume it was a threat, or a mistake, but I'm an optimist. When someone leaves pornography lying around, I just assume they believe, as I have occasionally, in the great karmic circle of porn. Or perhaps they just wanted to share it with my co-workers and I, and were too shy to slide it over the counter.

What was so kindly and anonymously gifted was actually of interest to me: Barista porn. I didn't even know it existed. There it was, though. Women in pigtails, green aprons, and nothing else. In case one was so focused on the apron that one missed the split beaver coyly displayed below, the caption to the spread said "These girls don't let anything come between them and their aprons!". Generous use of various coffee accompaniments (whipped cream, chocolate syrup, etc) followed, as the aprons were discarded.

Coffee girls come only after record store girls in the romantic and sexual aspirations of the post-college urban male. They've managed to supplant the naughty nurse and sexy librarian, perhaps by daily being present and at least minimally archetypally consitant. Nurses have stopped being young, efficient single women in short white uniforms. Librarians are mostly obsolete, made rare in life by electronic card catalogs, not to mention google and amazon.com. Every couple miles (or blocks {or feet, it seems}) there's a girl in her twenties, who really wants to know how you're doing, and sell you 8 ounces of milk and 2 ounces of espresso with your choice of flavored syrups. And she'll remember your name, and that tuesday is the day you work late, and your drink. She'll laugh at your joke, and tell you her major. You'll tip her a dollar, and you won't know why.

I knew about the barista cachet before I took this job. I embraced it, at first. Being part of a stereotype is freeing. I wore more makeup than usual ( I almost always wear none) took care with my clothes, being as titsy and quirky as possible within the guidelines of the dress code. I flirted. My third day, a man wrote a poem about my eyes. I blushed, and he wrote a poem about that. I'm disarming, and I have a good memory. I'm not pretty enough to intimidate anyone, so even shy men like me, and women are comfortable with me. In fact, the shy men are the ones who love me. I have one or two men who only come in when I'm there. I have to admit, I like it. I've always been a background person, so I like being put in this category of occupationally sexually desireable women. It's nice.

However, I really can't endorse what that woman was doing with that portafilter. It's just not sanitary.

[Barista]

Fuck Dolby.

Fuck Dolby.
A lot.

I like to sit in the front rows of movies. I like feeling the screen loom above me. I like not having nodding heads between me and the fourth wall. I also like to stretch my legs way out. Now, I can't do that. In even the palest, blandest, beige and blonde romantic comedy or faux-brit hist-lite costume drama, the seats shake and the walls vibrate. Each preview, even, is louder than the last. Directors must bribe screenwriters to include scenes of thundering hooves, anything that can be set to wild drumbeats, screaching tires, rumbling crowds, violent weather ...

"Can we have this scene take place during a tornado?"

"Sir, this movie takes place in Washington, DC."

"A hurricane, then?"

"It's an educational picture, sir"

"Haven't you ever heard of dramatic license?"

"It's about how a bill becomes a law. And it's a documentary"

Maybe not exactly like that, but close. I just saw "Kingdom of Heaven"*, though.
By the time the previews were over, I was tired of hearing. I was tired of the assaultative quality of their attempted sonic persuasion. I wanted to go home to the comfort of my television and remote control. Away from the constant pounding of the pre-show shilling. These weren't war movies, or action, or horror.

One was about golf. Apparently, the story of a young man struggling to overcome class constraints to someday play professional golf can best be conveyed at a decibel level familar to me from my favorite hot-dog stand in the flight path of an international airport.

I remember seeing, probably ten years ago, what I thought was the loudest movie, ever. Independance Day left me shaken, invigorated, and with lingering heart palpitations from the bass. It was amazing. For the first time, the experience of seeing a movie in the theater was, for me, distinct from the quality of the plot and actors. I enjoyed it. I never thought about whether it was a good movie or a bad movie- I enjoyed the hell out of it. I was also twelve. Maybe fourteen. But, still- id4 (as the in folks like to call it) blew my tits off.

Dolby works. It sells. It inflates and it smoothes rough edges. It's the pancake makeup on the acne-scarred face of hollywood (over dramatic? suck my metaphor, guy). Pits and plot-holes seem to dissapear, at least momentarily. With the wonderful picture quality of DVDs (and the fact that a DVD now costs about what it costs for two adults to go out to the movies) they've got to give you something for going to the theater. I'm not denying the pure enjoyment of getting lost in a summer blockbuster on a searing day. There's nothing quite like the combination of entertainment and air conditioning in the middle of july.

The problem with dolby is the problem with marijuana; it makes abject laziness completely tolerable. Instead of being suspenseful, movies are loud. Instead of being thought-provoking, movies are loud. Instead of being funny, movies are loud. Instead of being scary, movies are loud. It is possible to make a quiet, scary movie. "Night of the Living Dead" is a quiet movie. (slow zombies=hotness bytheway) I'm not going to claim that older is better; that's not always true. I'm no luddite. I love technology ("28 days later"- completely digital video- I love it). I just wish people could think AND use it at the same time, on a semi-consistent basis.

Why can't they make more movies like Die Hard? Die Hard, the heart, if not the soul of american action movies and the godfather of summer blockbusters, is a fairly quiet film. It begins on an airplane. The film follows a single hero, moving mostly alone through an office building. Helicopters, explosions, and gunfire are accents that enhance, not create, the dramatic tension of the film.

* 'Kingdom of Heaven' sucked, by the way. Don't bother. Actually, it was beautiful. The production designer, costume designer, cinematographer, foley guys...all did a flawless job. They deserve a lot of credit. It's only the screenwriter, director, and actors who should feel ashamed of themselves. It looks like a brilliant movie. However, it makes no sense. It's a movie about the crusades that does not feature a single character with any strong religious feelings either way. No one has any reason to do the things they do. To solve this problem of motivation, occasionally characters will engage in unneccessary exposition. There was a sublimely unmemorable exchange between Orlando Bloom and some woman with a lot of eyeshadow that basically amounted to "I had an affair with your father. And now I'm going to have an affair with you. " "Ok" followed, two scenes later with "I'm going to sleep with you, for some reason I'll explain with a clumsy, meaningless simile" "Ok". Just worthless. But as a person who has slaved in the technical theater, and a few student films, I need to say- the techies did wonderful jobs.



[Dolby]