For all booksellers who lived through The Secret

Hanna sent me this link this morning from the blog Wondermark Lite. I thought particularly of all of you who worked with me at Barnes & Noble when a certain book was at the height of its popularity.

Introducing Minerva

Straight from the awesomely talented hands of my brother Brian comes the Future Feminist Librarian-Activist patron goddess, Minerva (or, as I affectionately call her, "Minnie").

Minerva was, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Roman goddess of "handicrafts, the professions, the arts, and . . . war." I thought this was a good combination for those of us seeking to put scholarly interests to work in a real-world, politically aware, context.

Sartorially, she owes her style to the American suffragists, with a nod to the European bluestockings of a slightly earlier area. I like to imagine she will be watching me sharply from behind those spectacles, making sure I remember what I came here to school to learn, and briskly challenging me to do something meaningful with my education on the other end.

Please join me in giving her a warm and respectful welcome.

The radical idea that boys are people

In the same vein as the post I wrote on teen fatherhood a couple of weeks ago, Jill over at the blog Feministe has written about a recent study on how teenage boys understand their sexual and romantic relationships. Results? Contrary to popular "common sense" assumptions that boys are driven by their physical sexuality and interested in girls only as sexual objects, the teenage participants in the study indicated that they value relationships in a much more holistic way.

Go check out the post!

Campus Safety: Panic or Pragmatism?

I've been meaning to write about the way safety is handled on the Simmons residence campus for a while now, but this photograph finally provoked me into action:


This poster, courtesy of the "gotcha" campaign, in which residence staff come around at random hours to check and see if dorm room doors are locked, is only the latest in a whole series of educational tactics students here at Simmons have been exposed to over the school year. We have also been warned against "piggybacking" (letting someone unknown into the dorm with your swipe card) with posters that describe in ominous terms incidences in which women have been raped and murdered by assailants in their dorm rooms because of an unlocked door.

We also receive campus safety alerts via email, which alert us to acts of aggression that happen in the neighborhood of the college. Each email concludes with a list of basic safety measures:

As always, the College is concerned for the safety of our community members. We recommend the following precautions to maximize your safety:

• Be aware of your surroundings
• Do not walk alone at night whenever possible
• Do not listen to your iPod while walking
• Always make sure to walk on well lit streets staying on the same side as the street lights
• Be aware of the people around you
• If you carry a cell phone, make sure the battery is charged and it is turned on
• If you are walking alone at night tell a friend when you are leaving and when you expect to arrive at your destination

If you see anything suspicious or would like a walking escort between campuses, please call the Simmons College Public Safety Department

While these emails are usually matter-of-fact and probably the best approach to keeping students informed about what is happening around the campus, I also wonder about the ubiquity of these awareness campaigns, and how they feed into a culture of fear about life in an urban environment--particularly life as a woman in an urban environment.

Clearly, as a woman in my mid-twenties, having lived and traveled alone in a variety of places, the question of personal safety is not a new one. And to some extent, I agree with the common-sense advice of the campus officials: it's usually a good idea to keep your door locked (if for no other reason that the desire not to have someone steal your computer), and to "be aware of your surroundings." However, it becomes a particularly interesting question to consider in the context of a college campus, surrounded by college-age women who are being sent particular messages about danger in the world and how they ought to protect themselves from it.

As a feminist, violence against women is something I am aware of in a political, philosophical, and personal sense. In feminist circles, we refer to a "rape schedule"--the idea that ability to move freely in the world is curtailed by our awareness of the possibility of physical violence. As Jessica Valenti explains in a Salon interview:

Can you explain the concept of a "rape schedule"?

I first heard about it in my women's studies classes. It's the idea that every woman in one way or another lives on a rape schedule. Every action you take is built on an awareness that you could be attacked: from walking with your keys in your hand, to locking your car doors at an intersection, to deciding to go home a half-hour earlier. There is no public space for women; the whole world is a prison where you have to be constantly aware at all times that you're a potential victim. What's more terrifying is that it's not necessarily preventative. Most rapes are committed by people you know and trust and let your guard down with.

So there are concrete ways in which my being-in-the-world is limited because of the fact of my sex: I fantasize about going backpacking in the Adirondacks, for example, but solo camping in remote areas is out; and on the other extreme my freedom to move about urban environments after dark is a constant question mark.

On the other hand, feminists in the last twenty years have raised the question of how much the media spotlight on particular acts of violence (for example, random attacks by strangers) get highlighted while other acts of violence (such as those perpetrated by intimate partners, who presumably would have access to your dorm at your invitation) are not the focus of these scare campaigns.

Also, it is important to note the assumptions this email makes--particularly that it is possible to arrange to walk in company, and that you have an individual whom you can make aware of your daily movements. I don't believe the advice not to walk alone would be a piece of advice offered to men as a matter of course. And I wonder what those of us who live alone are supposed to do? Call up our closest relative and tell them when we leave work in the evening? What's with this "while you are sleeping" line in the "gotcha" poster? Coming, as it does, on the tail of flyers that describe the violent rape and murder of a young college girl in her bed while she was sleeping, there's a definite over-tone not merely of material security against theft but also of sexual violence.

So I am troubled by the way in which women at Simmons college are constantly reminded of their vulnerability (however statistically unlikely) to violent attack. I wonder whether it is simple pragmatism, or whether it is schooling young women into a sense of danger that is, overall, misleading and socially controlling. Thoughts?

The Deadwood of the British Empire

This week, in GCS410 (Gender, Race & Imperialism), we read and discussed the book Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World, by Trevor Burnard. Thomas Thistlewood was the younger son of a farming family back in England who ventured into Britain's colonial territories in search of a better life. He ended up in Jamaica where he worked as an overseer on several plantations before eventually buying his own land and becoming a moderately successful planter and master of slaves. Over the course of his nearly forty years in Jamaica, he kept a minutely detailed (if emotionally opaque) diary, detailing in list form such things as the punishments meted out to his slaves, the books he read, money he owned, and each of his many sexual encounters.

What I thought of when reading the book was how similar 18th century Jamaica seemed in its system of violent domination to Deadwood, at least as portrayed in the HBO series which tells the story of (largely white) settlers in the Black Hills during the late 19th century. Jamaica was a dangerous proposition for European immigrants--people tended to live fast and die young. You really would have no incentive to move there unless you had nothing to lose. Thistlewood would have been right at home working for Swearengen or Cy.

Some of the students in class questioned the utility and ethics of spending so much time examining the life of a violent white imperialist. When does such scrutiny of such a person, they seemed to be asking, tip over into forgiveness? When does explanation pave the way for apologia? I don't know what this says about me, but I believe it is often the examination of those historical characters whom we find the most abhorrent or the most inexplicable that prove the most valuable in understanding the past. Texts such as Thistlewood's diary--precisely because they are problematic--require our attention as historians. If we limited our historical inquiry to those people with whom we sympathized entirely, we would probably find ourselves with a very short list of acceptable topics. And we would learn nothing we did not wish to know about the human condition.

What Women Want: Insecure Men?

don't worry boys: we'll be your interpreters for the evening

Just in time for Valentine's Day, the Wednesday edition of the Boston Globe had a feature story on the website www.hertaste.com, the gist of which is summed up in their tagline: "you are being overlooked by women for details you didn't even know mattered." The Globe explains:

"Guys think it looks good," says [site co-founder] Panagopoulos . . . "But what men think looks good and what women think looks good are two different things." Adds [co-founder] Kassner: "What guys miss is that women are picking up on little details. It's like a secret world that guys don't have a clue about."

And what, pray tell, are the the "little details" men know nothing about? The categories on the Hertaste homepage are "fashion," "garage," "pad," and "gifts." That's right: guys categorically, it seems, don't know how to 1) dress themselves, 2) purchase the right car or car accessories, 3) furnish a house or apartment, or 4) shop for gifts that say "I actually know and really like you." Those life skills are all part of the secret world we women live in that guys are clueless about. So the women of Hertaste are here to save the day.

I find this incredibly offensive to women and to men alike.

The premise of the website is this: That men must--but don't know how to--make themselves attractive to (hot) women (as evidenced by the chicks lounging on the homepage). This narrative of male incompetence at understanding women draws on the tired pop psychology theory that "men are from Mars and women are from Venus." Such thinking dehumanizes women by suggesting they are so different from normal human beings (men) that they aren't even from the same planet. It also belittles men by suggesting that they're such idiots that they're incapable of actually relating to their fellow human beings (women) without an intermediary to translate women's mysterious feelings and motives.

Specifically, in this case, Hertaste deploys this pervasive narrative of gender difference as part of a time-honored marketing strategy: building on, or manufacturing, insecurities in order to sell stuff. Dudes! Women will think you're a loser if you don't buy expensive clothes, electronics, drive a suave car, or give her expensive jewelry. What ever happened to romantic notions like--uh--having a real conversation? Enjoying a shared interest in literature or movies? Or even--more prosaically--simply prioritizing student loans over a black leather couch?

Fundamentally, my problem with this website is summed up in its very name: her taste. This isn't a website about learning how to better express who you really are, but rather a site that encourages people to perform the sort of gendered identity they think "women" as a group will have the hots for. I can't speak for all women out there, but let me just say that's about one of the biggest turn-offs I can think of.

Dr. Victoria and Her Frankenstein*

I was just talking to Hanna last night about what a time travel junkie I am: if the novel has time travel in it, I'm there. I blame this on Jack Finney's Time and Again, although it's possible that exposure to the chronological idiosyncrasies in The Chronicles of Narnia as a child weakened my immunity.

Over winter break, I picked up entirely by chance a first novel by author Camille DeAngelis, which is, in its own way, a story of time-displacement. Mary Modern, a beautiful and heartbreaking re-telling of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, is set in the near future. Lucy Morrigan, a brilliant young geneticist, turns to her father's mysterious basement laboratory when all attempts to conceive a child with her boyfriend Grey fail. She successfully clones her grandmother Mary, but instead of an infant she ends up with a twenty-two year old woman with memories of a life she never lived and a husband who is long dead.

It is Lucy's irrevocable actions that drive the narrative forward, but it is Mary's voice and strength of character that capture our attention as she wrestles with the unutterable solitude of her existence and the question of how to move forward into an unknown future.

*Thanks to brother Brian for the title of this post, which is shamelessly stolen from the "Girlz n' Monsterz" series by J. Scott Cambell.