once again upon a listserv: some follow-up thoughts about #thatdarnlist

Note to non-archivist/librarian readers: this blog post is largely professional insider discussion and, while it may be interesting to some of you it will likely be tl;dr for many others. You have been warned!

a radical feminist cabal (via)

In the three weeks since I published my post about professionalism, privilege, and power, discussing the Archives & Archivists listserv, I’ve had further interesting adventures -- both inspiring and dispiriting -- around what I wrote, how I wrote it, and the manner in which it was shared. Having (mostly) weathered that storm, I offer a few further thoughts about what went down, and how, and the manner in which I’ve chosen to participate in this conversation moving forward.

My last substantive listserv email on this subject went out to the listserv on June 5th and can be read here. The two listserv threads to which that message refer can be read in their entirety here and here. What I would like to share in this post are two items of gratitude, four items of critical reflection, and finally an invitation.

For those wishing to skip straight to the invitation, please see my sounding of interest.

---

1) I am grateful to connect with so many likewise-minded and open-minded librarians and archivists since writing my initial post.

A huge big thank you to every individual who linked to, retweeted, liked, commented, emailed, and otherwise showed support and understanding for my arguments around these issues. I tried to thank as many of you as I could directly and personally. As I remarked to one man who spoke up in support, I may not “need” defenders but it is awfully nice not to feel alone in my perceptions or isolated in speaking up. Those who could not speak in public spaces, but did so in private, also counted in this way.

The outpouring of thanks I received from people (a majority women, but also men) who have experienced or witnessed professional bullying and marginalization in our field confirms my own perceptions that this is not an isolated “bad apple” situation. Instead, it is a community-wide, cultural problem that requires a collective response. I have been thinking about ways to continue the conversation with all of you (more below), hopefully calibrated to give particular support to those with the fewest emotional or professional “spoons” to give.

2) I am grateful for my co-workers and supervisors who value my attitude, approach, and contributions.

I want to particularly thank the individuals at my workplace, including people to whom I report as an employee, who have supported me and affirmed my right to speak up. It was a sweet victory, I’ll admit, to be explicitly thanked for the professional manner in which I conducted myself. Some of my detractors have suggested my employer should be ashamed of my behavior; instead, I am proud to work at an institution where challenging my profession to do a better job at being inclusive and social justice oriented is valued. As a supervisor, I have tried to foster a workplace culture of engaged professionalism and passionate advocacy. I also demand that all of my staff, regardless of their age or professional status, be treated with respect as human beings and archivists/librarians. I thank my mentors for modeling and making this possible.

3) “Benign neglect” is not benign. It’s just neglect.

Moving on to more critical points, I’m going to begin by reiterating that abdication of responsibility for a situation is, in fact, an active decision for which a person or group bears responsibility. When individuals are being bullied, harassed, condescended to, discounted, or otherwise marginalized, “benign neglect” is not benign. It’s just neglect.

In this situation, we had a group of people, the Dissenter(s) and Supporters, explaining that situation Q wasn’t working for them -- for a variety of intertwined reasons. Then we had a group of people whose response could be summed up as “I like things the way they are,” or “The way things are works for me.” There is nothing wrong with that experience; it is yours. Yet it does nothing to address the issue, which is that the status quo isn’t working for other people. Yes, your experience is part of the picture. But it’s not the only, most important, or truest perspective on the situation. Even if situation Q is the most ideal world you can imagine for yourself, I believe the fact that it is not working for someone, perhaps actively injuring them, should be of concern. To you.

But it became clear over the course of the situation that the majority of those speaking up within the listserv forum do not feel that way. I hope (suspect) this is not true of the over six thousand subscribers, the majority of whom are lurkers.

IMPORTANT: If you’re one of those concerned individuals, please take the time to comment on the SAA draft Code of Conduct before comments close on June 22nd. This Code of Conduct is a formal statement that SAA does not condone, among other things, “abusive verbal comments,” “deliberate intimidation,” and “sustained disruption of talks or other events.” While not sufficient on its own, a Code of Conduct gives Dissenters and Supporters a framework for seeking redress. Even if you are not a dues-paying SAA member, you can email your comments and support for the CoC to saahq@archivists.org.

4) As I predicted in my original post, the dynamic of bullying and exclusion did repeat itself again … the following week, and again … the following week.

Following my post, which was eventually circulated to the listserv by X himself, we had an “on list” discussion that basically replicated the original discussion. Only with a few extra juicy contributions from “professionals” accusing me of gross impropriety and paranoid delusion. This time, I was cast in the role of Dissenter (with some excellent Supporters). Once again we had Fixers, Defenders, Concern Trolls, Drama Queens, and Shamers all piping up in the more or less predictable pattern.

As I prep this post to go live, I'm watching the cycle unfold all over again.

My central takeaway from the experience is therefore that I learned nothing new that I hadn’t learned from last time; the “discussion” only served to further reinforce my judgments regarding the collective will to change that I had made earlier. As I wrote on Twitter:

@DerangeDescribe @herodotusjr @adr @Dont_Read_AandA the sad thing is how each retaliation re: my #thatdarnlist post reinforces my argument.
— feministlibrarian (@feministlib) June 13, 2014

This dynamic also reinforces my point (perhaps not as clear as it should have been in the original post) that the individual I called X is not personally the core problem here. I have some issues with his attitude and actions, but his behavior causes problems not primarily because of how he behaves but because of how the community incorporates -- dare I say centers -- him and others with a similar M.O. Again, this is not a "bad apple" situation, but a community culture issue.

5) It is not my job to educate the (obviously reluctant) list community on the dynamics of social inequality. 

I've had some people encourage me to approach SAA about collaborating on a fix to this situation. I gotta say, my feels at this point are that I'm not feelin' it.

(via)

On the one hand, I’m an inveterate Meddler. As my wife can tell you, someone punches down and she glances at her watch to start counting down the seconds until I can no longer help myself. That’s how this whole kerfluffle started, after all. Last year, I subscribed to A&A after years of just skimming the archive because someone was being a bully and I couldn’t let that sort of nonsense stand. I waded in this time around because of more or less the same dynamic. And I know I’ll be wading in again (and again, and again) in future.

But ultimately, the suggestions that I “reach out” to SAA or otherwise labor in a more formal capacity to change the situation leave me pretty skeptical. There are people who do this sort of training for a living; I am not one of them. And, as the Code of Conduct demonstrates, we’re not reinventing the wheel here. I refuse to fall into the trap of what might be called “teaching up,” or buying into a framework that requires the oppressed to educate the oppressor before those in power consider the need for change. I shouldn’t have to “ask” or offer my labor in order for education and change to happen. It should be (and hopefully is) happening from within.

6) Which brings me to the point that all of this is, in fact, emotional/mental/physical labor. Professional labor.

I’m aware that throughout this debate I’ve chosen (and it’s been a conscious choice) to play according to the rules of a politics of respectability. There’s a reason my boss got praise for my professionalism from others in the field, and that’s because I exerted a powerful lot of will over my desire to compose emails that were more along the lines of “I can’t even with this effing entitlement,” or “You, sir, are a paranoid dipshit.” This was exhausting. It cost me several sleepless nights (and the subsequent price of excessive coffee). I sat at my computer shaking with adrenaline, poured over every obsessively-crafted email and comment before hitting “post” or “send,” and had to keep going back after my words went live to re-read them and reassure myself I had said what I meant to say, the way I meant to say it.

Taking a page from Melissa McEwan’s recent playbook, I’m acknowledging (and will continue to acknowledge) this labor, and its unequal distribution along a number of vectors including gender. I’m going to go out on a limb here and speculate that I spent more time considering how to discuss my detractors' (and in some cases accusers') arguments than at least two of the more vocal individuals spent thinking about me as a human being and as a colleague. I am extremely lucky (see #1-2 above) to have allies, among them supervisors, whose trust in my professionalism I have earned. If I were someone more vulnerable, the accusations that were leveled against me within this professional community could have had real consequences for my career.

I don’t get the sense the individuals who clicked “send” on those emails or “post” on those comments actually thought about that -- except perhaps in the hopeful "she ought to be put in her place!" sense.

This highlights the dynamics (gendered and otherwise) at play here that I outlined in my original post. I -- the younger, early-career librarian, queer female blogger -- understand that my (professional) reputation is contingent on those with more power in (my professional) world “allowing” me to speak. I write, I revise, I document, I supply evidence, I qualify. While at least one of the men who disliked what I had to say wrote emails calling me a “radical feminist” (intended to be insulting but, um, it’s kinda right there in the name?), demonstrating poor reading comprehension and research skills, and suggested to a forum of six thousand individuals in my field that I had leveled baseless accusations of “moral impropriety” against X -- a (deliberate?) distortion of my argument.

Emails to which he signed his own name, job title, and place of work.

My point is that while I was up sleepless at 2am wondering if my carefully worded emails or carefully personal blog posts were going to upset someone, somewhere, whose opinion I care about -- or whose opinion may have professional consequences for me -- or who might decide to take out his anger against me in more personal ways -- this individual felt comfortable writing a troll-worthy rant about my “Soviet” politics and sending it tied to his real-world identity to a listserv at least nominally administered by his national professional organization. With (apparently) little or no fear of the consequences.

If that isn’t evidence of structural, socialized entitlement I’m frankly not sure what is.

7) The Amiable Archivists' Salon

Which brings me to the seventh and final thought I would like to share with you. And that is something most of you reading this post already know. Working for a more just, kind, inclusive, world (or profession) is work. It’s emotional work, it’s political work, it’s physical work.It takes spoons. Sometimes we have ‘em, sometimes we don’t. And it’s important to know how and when to use the spoons you have to give. So I've been thinking about how I want to use the spoons I have for this particular situation.

After reflection and discussion, I’ve decided I would like to establish an Amiable Archivists’ Salon*, a discussion and support group for those experiencing marginalization within the profession. The listserv lurkers who’ve contacted me more often than not express feelings of intimidation and isolation -- not just on the list, but in their chosen feel more broadly. I would like to do what I can to address that, building ties among us that can hopefully lead to more effective profession-wide intervention and cultural change. I'm a meddler (see #5) and I know I'll keep wading into this situation and trying to make it better, but I'd really rather not do it alone -- or fearful of being "the only one."

If you are interested in participating in these discussions, please fill out this brief ten-question survey to let me know who you are, what issues you want to see addressed, and what your goals for the group would be. If I receive six or more responses by July 1st I will contact the potential participants by email and together we can decide next steps.

*h/t to my wife, Hanna, for what I feel is a suitably "tea time & teach-ins" nom de groupe.

on dying well [a book and a radio show]

This past week I received and read an advance review copy of Changing How We Die: Compassionate End of Life Care and the Hospice Movement by Fran Smith and Sheila Himmel (Viva Editions, 2013). The reading involved a lot of spontaneous weeping on public transit, which I tried not to feel ashamed about: Big emotions are pretty appropriate where end-of-life narratives and choices are concerned. I couldn't even tell you what emotion I was feeling that prompted tears other than BIG -- it was joy, grief, surprise, longing, anger, fear, gratitude, all wrapped up in the moment at hand.

My paternal grandfather died at home in hospice care, and the whole family was grateful that they made it possible for him to die well in many respects.

I hadn't thought about it before reading Changing How We Die, but the modern hospice care  movement-- having grown out of the countercultural moment of the 1970s in many ways -- shares a lot with the homebirth/midwifery/doula and homeschooling/unschooling movements. No wonder it feels like "of course" to me in many ways: an impulse toward low-intervention, person-centered care; placing the individual (laboring mother, learner, dying person) in the decision-making role; providing mindful, non judgmental support; holistic attention to all aspects of being; a preference for home-based rather than institutional care. I'm curious whether anyone has thought to look at the homebirth/homeschool/hospice movements as a continuum of care across the lifecycle, and what placing these movements side-by-side might teach us about lessons learned and possible future directions.

Food for thought.

Then, the radio came on this morning in time for "On Being" with Krista Tippett and it was an interview with Dr. Ira Byock who works in palliative medicine and hospice care. If you're interested in the question of how we die -- and what it might look like to die well -- I highly recommend listening to the podcast or reading the transcript.

Audio here.

Transcript here.

on being out day [a belated post]

This Friday, October 11th, was International Coming Out Day.

I thought, in passing, about writing something but I was distracted by trying to get things done at work and by the fact my wife was getting a chest x-ray for pneumonia. And then picking up antibiotics (thank goddess for antibiotics) for her. And remembering to feed the cats. And pick up something for dinner.

Hanna in the redwoods (Sept. 2013)

So this is a belated post on the theme of coming/being out. I don't have anything particularly original to say, except that I am grateful to all of the people throughout history, past and present, who have conspired to make International Coming Out Day an unremarkable occasion in our day lives. Hanna and I live in a time and place where our bisexual inclinations and same-sex relationship are known and largely honored structurally in our workplaces, with our landlord, at our health center, in our city, state (and now, finally, the federal government), by our friends and relations. We hold hands and kiss in public, speak of things sexual while dining out, review queer porn, blog about being dykes.

We don't fear being evicted, fired, blacklisted, jailed, physically attacked, disowned or disinherited, treated as sick because of our sexual selves, or otherwise grossly discriminated against. And if any of these things were top happen to us, we would have advocacy organizations and a network of supporters to turn to for aid.

In many ways, our security is exceptional: many queer folks still live in the toxic closet, or cover aspects of their identities, for fear of social and material marginalization. The young and the old, the gender non-confirming, trans folks, queer people in nations that still actively persecute sexual minorities.

There is obviously still work to be done.

But this week, I'm grateful in my own small domestic way for the work of activists and the kindness of those people in our lives who together made it possible for my Friday to be, in part, a story about leaving work half an hour early so I could get to the pharmacy and pick up Hanna's antibiotics. A story about a boss and colleagues who sent well-wishes for Hanna's quick recovery. A story about a health clinic that knows were a couple and has no problem letting me pick up her medications.

A story about going home to my wife.

the statement on trans-inclusive feminsm and womanism [signed!]

I've been seeing this statement coming through on my RSS and Twitter feed for the last few days, and have finally had a moment to sit down and sign it. 

It should be upsetting to us all that the need to specify trans-inclusive feminism and womanism exists, but it does so I want to spell out my support. I also want to take this opportunity to thank the trans people and allies who have pushed me -- in person and in print -- over the past ten years to learn about trans issues and un-learn toxic myths and stereotypes. You have immeasurably enriched my life and my feminism. I will do my best to live up to the vision all you have challenged us to fulfill.

[text via feministsfightingtransphobia]

We, the undersigned trans* and cis scholars, writers, artists, and educators, want to publicly and openly affirm our commitment to a trans*-inclusive feminism and womanism.

There has been a noticeable increase in transphobic feminist activity this summer: the forthcoming book by Sheila Jeffreys from Routledge; the hostile and threatening anonymous letter sent to Dallas Denny after she and Dr. Jamison Green wrote to Routledge regarding their concerns about that book; and the recent widely circulated statement entitled “Forbidden Discourse: The Silencing of Feminist Critique of ‘Gender,’” signed by a number of prominent, and we regret to say, misguided, feminists have been particularly noticeable.  And all this is taking place in the climate of virulent mainstream transphobia that has emerged following the coverage of Chelsea Manning’s trial and subsequent statement regarding her gender identity, and the recent murders of young trans women of color, including Islan Nettles and Domonique Newburn, the latest targets in a long history of violence against trans women of color.  Given these events, it is important that we speak out in support of feminism and womanism that support trans* people.

We are committed to recognizing and respecting the complex construction of sexual/gender identity; to recognizing trans* women as women and including them in all women’s spaces; to recognizing trans* men as men and rejecting accounts of manhood that exclude them; to recognizing the existence of genderqueer, non-binary identifying people and accepting their humanity; to rigorous, thoughtful, nuanced research and analysis of gender, sex, and sexuality that accept trans* people as authorities on their own experiences and understands that the legitimacy of their lives is not up for debate; and to fighting the twin ideologies of transphobia and patriarchy in all their guises.

Transphobic feminism ignores the identification of many trans* and genderqueer people as feminists or womanists and many cis feminists/womanists with their trans* sisters, brothers, friends, and lovers; it is feminism that has too often rejected them, and not the reverse. It ignores the historical pressures placed by the medical profession on trans* people to conform to rigid gender stereotypes in order to be “gifted” the medical aid to which they as human beings are entitled.  By positing “woman” as a coherent, stable identity whose boundaries they are authorized to police, transphobic feminists reject the insights of intersectional analysis, subordinating all other identities to womanhood and all other oppressions to patriarchy.  They are refusing to acknowledge their own power and privilege.

We recognize that transphobic feminists have used violence and threats of violence against trans* people and their partners and we condemn such behavior.  We recognize that transphobic rhetoric has deeply harmful effects on trans* people’s real lives; witness CeCe MacDonald’s imprisonment in a facility for men.  We further recognize the particular harm transphobia causes to trans* people of color when it combines with racism, and the violence it encourages.

When feminists exclude trans* women from women’s shelters, trans* women are left vulnerable to the worst kinds of violent, abusive misogyny, whether in men’s shelters, on the streets, or in abusive homes.  When feminists demand that trans* women be excluded from women’s bathrooms and that genderqueer people choose a binary-marked bathroom, they make participation in the public sphere near-impossible, collaborate with a rigidity of gender identities that feminism has historically fought against, and erect yet another barrier to employment.  When feminists teach transphobia, they drive trans* students away from education and the opportunities it provides.

We also reject the notion that trans* activists’ critiques of transphobic bigotry “silence” anybody.  Criticism is not the same as silencing. We recognize that the recent emphasis on the so-called violent rhetoric and threats that transphobic feminists claim are coming from trans* women online ignores the 40+ – year history of violent and eliminationist rhetoric directed by prominent feminists against trans* women, trans* men, and genderqueer people.  It ignores the deliberate strategy of certain well-known anti-trans* feminists of engaging in gleeful and persistent harassment, baiting, and provocation of trans* people, particularly trans* women, in the hope of inciting angry responses, which are then utilized to paint a false portrayal of trans* women as oppressors and cis feminist women as victims. It ignores the public outing of trans* women that certain transphobic feminists have engaged in regardless of the damage it does to women’s lives and the danger in which it puts them.  And it relies upon the pernicious rhetoric of collective guilt, using any example of such violent rhetoric, no matter the source — and, just as much, the justified anger of any one trans* woman — to condemn all trans* women, and to justify their continued exclusion and the continued denial of their civil rights.

Whether we are cis, trans*, binary-identified, or genderqueer, we will not let feminist or womanist discourse regress or stagnate; we will push forward in our understandings of gender, sex, and sexuality across disciplines.  While we respect the great achievements and hard battles fought by activists in the 1960s and 1970s, we know that those activists are not infallible and that progress cannot stop with them if we hope to remain intellectually honest, moral, and politically effective.  Most importantly, we recognize that theories are not more important than real people’s real lives; we reject any theory of gender, sex, or sexuality that calls on us to sacrifice the needs of any subjugated or marginalized group.  People are more important than theory.

We are committed to making our classrooms, our writing, and our research inclusive of trans* people’s lives.

Signed,

Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook (librarian, historian, writer)
Allston, Massachusetts
USA

[click through for the full list of signatories]

in which I write letters: NPR, I'm disappointed in you

To: abross@npr.org
From: feministlibrarian@gmail.com
Re: Chelsea Manning

Dear Ms. Bross,

I am contacting you as a lifetime listener and longtime supporter of National Public Radio. As a teenager I began contributing to Michigan Radio as soon as I began to earn my own paycheck; my wife and I are currently sustaining members of WBUR and WGBH in Boston. I usually look to National Public Radio for thoughtful and respectful in-depth reporting that is conscious of the full humanity and agency of the individuals whom its reporters speak to and about.

Your decision to ignore Chelsea Manning's explicit request that we honor her gender identity and use her chosen name as well as conventional female pronouns is an unethical one. It is a decision that robs her of what little agency she has left as she enters a military prison -- the right to personhood, and the ability to articulate who she is. Surely Pfc. Manning is the one individual in the world who can know more intimately than any of us who she is. For NPR to contradict her own explicit self-definition is a profound act of arrogance and erasure.

I hope the coming days see reversal of your initial decision, and an apology to Manning and all of the trans people out there who have had to live through yet another round of media mis-steps around a high-profile individual who happens to be transgender. I was truly sorry to see NPR complicit in this perpetuation of trans-bigotry and ignorance.

In hopes of a better, more inclusive tomorrow,
Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook
Allston, MA

h/t to @SexOutLoudRadio for the email

stuff that may be keeping me from blogging (as much) this summer

During the past few weeks, I've been reading stories on the internets about which I have Thoughts and Feels, but for which I have very little (if any) time or energy to blog about. Non-internet stuff has been happening, in that way that takes attention and emotional-mental-logistical energy. In that way that takes up all the brainspace and physical time/space otherwise filled up with typing words that become blog posts.

canoes on the Charles River lagoons, 2008

So blogging might be a little slower around here than it has been in the past few months. Here's a run-down of some of the things I'll be doing when not seen in this space:

• I've been getting back into some personal (not-for-work) history research in the cracks between my other obligations. I'm on what we call in the business a "fishing expedition" looking for a project that will yield something interesting and original on the crossroads of gender, sexuality, and religion within the Christian left during the 1950s-1980s (focusing on the early 1970s). My starting point is the Methodist Student Movement publication motive magazine (1941-1972), outspoken on issues such as poverty, civil rights, and cold war politics, the staff of motive experienced a decline in denominational support when they published an issue on women's liberation in 1969 through to the final two issues, published independent of the church, on gay men's liberation and lesbian/feminism. My current line of questioning circles around why Christian theology provided a robust vocabulary for speaking about some leftist issues -- but seems to have failed its young activists on feminist and queer issues. I'm keeping busy reading motive, some personal papers of its editors, and surveying the secondary literature ... a few hours a week, stolen when I can.
• Against my better (or perhaps simply more self-centered) judgement, I've been Getting Involved at work with some advocacy issues related to organizational transparency and employee benefits restructuring. As a small non-profit cultural institution (we employ a staff of about fifty) we're facing some post-2008 financial fallout that requires reduction in benefits. Questions about how decisions have been (and will be) made, and how employees will (or will not) be involved in the process are a live concern. I've been tapped to be part of a staff advisory group, and volunteered to be on a retirement planning committee. If any of you have reading suggestions for good books or articles about worker advocacy in the non-profit, non-unionized workplace I'm happily taking suggestions!
• General workplace busyness during the summer season, which is when many of our fellowship recipients make time to visit the library to conduct their research, and casual visitors in Boston on holiday make an appearance.
• For the past two months, Hanna has been working her way through an allergy identification diet which has demanded particular attention to cooking and a lot of learning-on-the-fly about alternate ingredients. So far, the likely suspect is gluten intolerance, which will require a reorganization of the kitchen, our shopping & cooking patterns, and all that jazz. Do you know how hard it is to find non-preachy gluten-free cookery books?
• I've been trying to spend more time reading offline and doing other non-internet activities, particularly on the weekend. Some of those things I've blogged about in my book review posts. I'm also enjoying such things as The London Review of Books, The Lesbian Connection, Bitch magazine, and back issues of our various professional journal subscriptions (The American Historical Review and Library Journal and Oral History Review and so forth). 
• Biking means less time to read offline while commuting. As whingey as this sounds, biking more to and from work reduces my leisure reading time by as much as five hours per week -- a not insubstantial amount!
• I've been seeing a wonderful uptick in personal emails over the past few months, as long-distance friendships have evolved from blog-based to email-based exchanges. This is a positive development, in my personal opinion, but also means that much of my writing and discretionary intellectual energy gets pulled in the direction of one-to-one conversations rather than blog posts sent out into the aether.
• And yep, I'm still fiction (and fan-fiction writing)! For example, the piece of erotica I submitted last weekend, and the series I'm adding to on a weekly basis over at AO3.

And finally, as a reminder, you can generally see/catch me on Twitter (@feministlib) if you're curious about what I've been reading and thinking about in 140 characters per notion. Also, emails (feministlibrarian [at] gmail [dot] com) will usually rouse me (see second-to-last-bullet-point above) since I love correspondence.

In the meantime -- hope y'all are doing well and have kick-ass summer plans. I'm sure we'll see one another around!

post eleventy-hundred: nerd blessings

Today, after making a trek to Harvard's library privileges office in the middle of the first heat wave of the summer to apply for spousal library privileges (what could be nerdier than that?) I finally made the time to watch Wil Wheaton's message to a baby nerd, which Hanna sent to me several weeks ago via the Mary Sue.

I thought it was appropriate to share as my 1100th post here at the feminist librarian.

Stay cool, everyone, and spend some time this weekend loving your favorite things as hard as you can.

comment post: unfinished thoughts on non-consensual sexualization

Regular readers of this blog may remember that over the past year or so I've been haunting the conservative Family Scholars Blog hosted by the Institute for American Values (IAV) think tank founded by David Blankenhorn, sometime high-profile opponent of same-sex marriage. In part, I follow the blog because my smart and funny friend Fannie is one of their guest bloggers. I am also deeply interested in the worldview of people whose understanding of how the world works, and what values will increase the well-being of humanity, are so different from my own.

Last week, I found myself sucked into a comment thread at the FSB wrestling with the subject of what I'll call "non-consensual sexualization." My working definition of non-consensual sexualization is public expressions which frame another person's appearance, presence, or actions in a sexual light without their participation or consent. You might also call this plain old "sexual objectification." I'm using my phrase here because I think it's important to highlight the non-consensual part of what's going on here.

(because I won't post naked pictures of myself online*,
have this lovely view from Montague Book Mill instead)

I've been thinking about non-consensual sexualization a lot recently due to feminist discussions of the internet phenomenon of revenge porn and also because of the question I got on Twitter about the ethics of real-person fan fiction (RPF), particularly RPF that is sexually-explicit (see my extended response at the end of this post). Both of these situations -- revenge porn and RPF -- involve taking people the creators know in real life (either in person or through media of some sort) and sexualizing those individuals. With revenge porn the intent is malicious and generally misogynist: to humiliate the subject by way of sexually-explicit images or sexually-explicit chatter. With RPF the intent is usually enthusiastic on the part of the creator: they're engaged in the act of fantasizing about the individuals (usually celebrities of some sort or another) engaged in generally positive sexual situations and relationships.

At the level of private thoughts, sexualization of others is something that many of us engage in every day when we take note of another person's gorgeous hands or sexy ass. When we enjoy the chemistry between actors in a television show, or admire the outfit of a passerby on the street. When we harbor a crush on our political science professor in college or wake up from a really hot dream about this kid we sat behind in first period English (or watched shyly across the room in Sunday school). I think of sexualization as the mental-emotional process of considering another individual in a sexual light. This can be actively desiring (if we imagine that person as someone we'd like to be sexually intimate with) or passively admiring (if they're either out of reach -- your favorite actress --or not someone you'd actually want to have a sexual relationship with, say someone not the gender of person you are oriented toward). This type of sexualization seems, to me, no-one elses' business. Our own interiority is a private sandbox for self- and world-exploration, the ultimate safe space.

However. Once we make private thoughts public, social responsibility comes into play. Which is where the FSB comment thread re-enters the discussion. Barry, the author of the original post, recounted an incident in which a (male) classmate at a swimming class commented to Barry in an aside on the (female) instructor's body as it appeared in a swimsuit. Barry was uncomfortable about the comment and later mentioned his discomfort to his classmate, who apologized for his remark. The point of Barry's original post was that speaking up about a comment you find troubling can sometimes be less dramatic than you fear.

Many women, myself included, thanked Barry for speaking up in this instance and holding another man accountable for the way he was sexualizing the female instructor of the class without her consent, creating a situation where the man's classmates (and potentially the instructor, if she had heard) would feel uncomfortable.

Yet several frequent (male) FSB commenters insisted that Barry -- and by extension those of us supporting him -- were basically taking all the fun out of (hetero)sexual flirtation and OMG thought police!! For example, Kevin offered:

Barry’s heart, as always, is in the right place: a public place, safe and welcoming for anyone who wants to be a part of it. And having the courage to object to someone’s unseemly behavior. But this sexy gal is also in a position of power, itself a safe space: presumably she can kick anybody out of the class she wants.

While Hector has other concerns:

If men refrained from admiring good looking women, I wonder how you think people would ever date or marry each other.

When a number of us pushed back against this reading, suggesting that there was a difference between thinking someone is sexy and saying someone is sexy in an non-appropriate context, these commenters dug in even harder, again refusing to understand the distinction between thinking and speaking:

So he’s not even allowed to THINK something about this instructor?? I’m glad the thought police have arrived! “That way” was compliment, by the way. ... Elsewhere in the pool, a woman whispered to another, “OK, I get it, this instructor chick is a babe. So she has to wear the skimpiest bathing suit around, in case we didn’t notice?!” ... Is that comment ok, or should the other woman voice her objection. ...This is hilarious! 

 Note how Kevin (above) assumes that I (the person he is responding to here) will not object to the two women sniping about the instructor's "skimpy" bathing suit, when in fact I would suggest that such body snarking is in the same class of inappropriate behavior as the presumed "compliment" of the man at the center of this discussion. Both types of speech create a social climate within the class whereby the instructor's physical appearance and bodily presence are seen as relevant to the teaching of swimming technique. Both comments sexualize and objectify the instructor in a situation where she is not authorizing that way of interacting with her.

As I said in the comment thread, we're not talking here about a request that the teacher move to a new location where all of the students can see her demonstrate a movement. That would be a comment relevant to the activity of the class. The teacher's perceived level of hotness is not relevant to her ability to teach her students how to swim. And to bring that evaluation into the class is rude. It's an example of non-consensual sexualization, and something which women and sexual minorities in particular experience every day.

While I was putting this post together, this TEDx talk on the gendered nature of sexual objectification came across my dash that explores the broader political implications of widespread, non-consensual sexual objectification:

(Yes: While it happens less frequently, straight cis white guys can also be non-consensually sexualized. For example, exhibit A: Romney/Ryan slash from the 2012 election cycle YES IT EXISTS.)

I don't have a major conclusion to this post, so I'm gonna throw it out to y'all: What are your thoughts on the ethics of sexualizing others? What does it look like to recognize our sexual interest in other people without treating them like sex objects? And -- perhaps most importantly -- how to we model a culture of sexual subjectivity and mutually-consensual pleasure for all in ways that encourage men like Kevin and Hector to re-think their notions of what constitutes wanted, sexualized attention?**

I look forward to your thoughts!

---

*I have some lovely photographs of my naked self which I've taken over the years in celebration of my bodily presence in the world. I've often thought of sharing them online, but I won't because of the way women who share visual images of their nakedness are punished socially and professionally for that level of self-disclosure. That self-censorship is one example of the pervasive sexual policing women (more acutely than men) face for publicly acknowledging their unapologetic corporeality.

**I mean, I managed to successfully express my sexual interest in the subject of my affection and panty-dampening desire without treating her like a hot commodity that I'm entitled to consume publicly without her active enjoyment and participation. So I'm totally a believer in the "it's possible" but I'm not sure how to help the unbelievers see the light here.

you know you're a giant nerd when ...

... your NPR membership card arrives in the mail and you're super excited to a) feel like a grown up again 'cause you can afford to be a member of NPR for the first time since starting graduate school, and b) because WBUR is awesome enough that they actually had a way for us to join as a family and the membership card features both our names.

Um, yeah. That's it for now. 

comment post: pressure to self-disclose in the classroom

unidentified classroom, possibly in Georgia (Library of Congress)

I subscribe to a number of listservs through H-Net, an online hub for humanities scholars. This past week, on  H-HistSex, the list for History of Sexuality, there's been a discussion about class exercises for the first day of class in a gender/sexuality course. I can't link to the conversation "thread" as a stable link, but you can find all of the relevant emails in the January 2013 log with the subject heading Re: Exercise for first day of class in gender/sex course. The resulting conversation was one that I thought some people who read this blog might be interested in. So I'm sharing a few excerpts here (all publicly accessible through the message log above) and wrapping up the post with my own comment which I sent out this afternoon to the group.

Several faculty contributed ideas about "getting to know you" activities that included some sort of topical self-disclosure and/or exercise designed to prompt personal reflection about sexuality and gender. For example:

I teach an introductory class ... and it's often fun to make them stand up and ask them to sit if the statement you make applies to them . . . to see who is the last one standing. You can use all kinds of "gender" statements like "I've dressed as the 'opposite' sex" or "I've seen a drag show." They seem to like this exercise.

And:

I have found that simple writing a three paragraph first person narrative as an opposite gender as useful exercises. Students have responded initially as very difficult to do. But in the end they find it increased awareness of gender issues.

Or:

Think of a pivotal experience that made you aware of the construction of gender in your own life.  Use details to describe a specific incident or two.  It could be either a positive (empowering) incident, or negative (discriminatory, hurtful) incident...Not only does it get them thinking of the issues we'll be covering, but it has turned out to be a wonderful "getting to know you" kind of exercise.

To which some people pushed back, suggesting that such activities can be experienced as threatening or alienating to some students:

You don't want to instantly lose shy, introverted students who have not faced explicit or alternate understandings of sex and gender. Some students do NOT want to talk in front of large groups.  Further, there might be students from very conservative backgrounds who will be lost if they are pushed too quickly.

Or, as another contributor pointed out:

We might want to reconsider activities that require students to self-expose by standing or moving or agreeing/admitting to statements. This can be very problematic for any students who are/identify/gravitate toward the non-normative (i.e., trans- and genderqueer students, students who may be questioning their gender and/or sexual orientations, as well as for students who are disabled). There requires a lot of imposed confession of students. Ditto the activity that requires students to write as the "opposite" gender -- what do I write about if I am identifying as trans or gender queer?

What I think is most interesting is the resistance that these cautions provoked among some other contributors. One person wrote:

If students aren't exposed to this theorization of the personal and personal theorization in our classrooms with forthcoming discussion leaders that role model critical thinking then where exactly will they be exposed to it? A puritanical fear of sharing about gender and sex and sexuality seems to me counter-productive to the very purpose of feminism and women's/gender/sexuality studies.

That was the contribution that finally prompted me to enter into the discussion myself, from the perspective of someone who has been in the study, not instructor position, as well as someone who has thought deeply and observed closely the power dynamics in the classroom. Here is my full comment [with a few clarifications added in brackets]:

In response to the observation "A puritanical fear of sharing about gender and sex and sexuality seems to me counter-productive to the very purpose of feminism and women's/gender/sexuality studies," I would just like to offer a couple of thoughts.

I am a former women's studies student (B.A., self-designed major) and have experience in graduate school in gender studies classrooms as well, although my advanced degrees are in History and Archives Management. I believe in the power of self-disclosure in the classroom, but I also think that it is important that student[s] feel INVITED rather than REQUIRED to share aspects of their life story, particularly in a classroom setting where there is a power dynamic (all classroom settings) and before trust between students and between each student and the faculty member has been established (e.g. on the first day of class). I have been in situations where there was pressure to share aspects of my life story that I didn't feel comfortable sharing, and later felt a (low-grade, admittedly) kind of violation [as a result]. I have also been in class with students who do NOT experience schools as safe spaces, OR who experience schools as safe spaces precisely because they don't require that level of self-disclosure (which the students associate with bullying, etc.).

So while sharing personal experience can be very powerful in the right setting, it can also feel violating and can cause students to turn away from the very type of gender theorizing we hope to encourage them to pursue. Perhaps if such exercises are done early on in class (or, indeed, at any point during the semester), the sharing of reflections by the student could be optional? (And I mean truly optional, with no pressure from the professor to disclose what they don't feel comfortable disclosing.) Obviously, the professor can do everything possible to model an open and non-judgmental space, but it is impossible to know what baggage every student may carry into the classroom -- particularly around experiences of sex and gender which are so deeply personal (and often private, even if not shameful) experiences.

I think the success of such sharing turns on consent. Think, for example, of the psychological difference between choosing to self-disclose one's sexual orientation or gender identity and being "outed" by someone when you weren't ready or didn't feel safe doing so.

I am all for open discussion about gender and sexuality, but I think every student is in a different place in terms of their willingness and ability to speak in deeply personal terms about what those things mean to them. The option for speaking about those ideas with a little more distance and self-protection, particularly at first, seems respectful of that variation among learners.

I had at least one participant email me off-list to thank me for speaking up. I think the entire exchange is a really important example of how mindful we all need to be about the situation nature of self-disclosure and the way that power dynamics can make something that sounds liberating (and might even be liberating for some people in the space) coercive, an abuse of professorial power.

Yes, as the faculty member responsible for teaching the class, you can ask your students to do difficult intellectual and even emotionally-stretching tasks. In a class on sexuality and gender a responsible professor will likely push most of their students to the edge (or beyond) of their comfort zone at some point during the semester. However, there is a difference between requiring students to think critically about gender and sexuality and demand that they share aspects of their identity or experiences in a room full of quasi-strangers, at least some of whom are likely to hold negative beliefs -- or at least misconceptions about -- those qualities. I would not have felt safe, for example, speaking about my emerging bisexual desires in the women'e studies classes I took as an undergraduate because of remarks other students had made about bisexual promiscuity. I would have not felt safe talking about my interest in pornography or BDSM role-play around some of my women's studies faculty. In graduate school, I had a trans friend who came out (voice shaking) in order to combat some of the stereotypes being tossed around in class, and felt conflicted about that self-disclosure after the fact. I had friends from working-class backgrounds who struggled with feelings of difference; simply saying as an introductory exercise that they came from a household below the poverty line wouldn't have made them feel any more like they belonged in the classroom space.

There are ways to allow for self-disclosure without demanding it -- mostly by modeling acceptance as a mentor and encouraging students to examine their pre-conceptions about others. When you speak up as a faculty member and challenge a student's sloppy thinking you're sending a message to that quiet student in the back room that they can also raise challenges to similar statements, without prefacing those arguments with a litany of self-identity qualifications. And I'd argue that this ultimately makes the classroom a safer space for everyone within it to listen, to speak, and stand a chance of being heard.

baby steps by my alma mater

I've been critical of my alma mater, Hope College, here on this blog in the past -- particularly when it comes to the institutional refusal to affirm the queer faculty and students on its campus. I stand firm on my pledge not to support the college financially until such time as its anti-gay policy changes.

However, I do also believe in giving shout-outs to those at the college who aren't letting the official policy stand in the way of affirming the humanity and equality of those of us in the Hope College diaspora who happen to be queer.

In that spirit ...

When Hanna and I sent out our wedding announcements in late September, I sent one to the Hope College alumni office; friends and family members were betting on whether or not the announcement would run in the alumni magazine's list of news from graduates (births, deaths, marriages, advanced degrees, and so forth) that fill the back of each issue.

They had about even odds for and against running the notice at all.

But I got the latest issue of News From Hope College this weekend and there we were on page 27.

Of course, as there is a "Marriages" section of the News, the announcement would have more appropriately gone there since, you know, we got married.

But I imagine someone had to fight to put our "union" in the magazine at all, and I'm all for recognizing baby steps when they're taken in the right direction.

So thank you, Hope College alumni office -- you exceeded my fairly jaded expectations. You're not going to single-handedly woo me back into the fold, but I do appreciate the acknowledgement that Hope alumni are here (and queer) right in the pages of the News from Hope.

real-life adventures in class, gender, race, and sexuality

Last night I was working an event at the MHS that involved spending one portion of my evening standing out on the sidewalk, a few blocks away from the building, holding an electric lantern to light the way for guests moving from one location to another. I was one of about seven lantern-bearers spread out across a quarter-mile path from Point A to Point B.

Standing in one spot for 45 minutes, not soliciting nor waiting for public transit, and holding a lantern, certainly attracts attention in the city. Maybe a dozen individuals and/or groups of people stopped to ask me politely what I was doing, particularly if their path had taken them past one or more of the other lantern-bearers in the chain.

I happened to be standing at a station on a fairly busy stretch of sidewalk near a bus shelter, but on a bridge crossing over the Massachusetts Pike. It was long after dark, about eight o'clock, and my back was against the high fence that stops people from committing suicide off the bridge. I could see my fellow lantern-bearers down the way in both direction, each across an intersection though in plain sight.

(via)

A (likely homeless) man with a shopping cart containing his belongings came up the sidewalk. I nodded to him and he took this as an invitation to stop and talk with me.

I wasn't particularly opposed to chatting with him; I've had some nice -- if brief -- conversations with folks who live on the streets in Boston, mostly the familiar vendors of the Spare Change newspapers Hanna and I purchase when we have cash on hand.

Still. It was dark, and I was alone. He was a man, taller than me.

Still again: he was homeless, while I was working a fundraising event for the cultural institution I work for that pays me a healthy living wage with generous benefits. He was African-American and I am White.

I didn't want to be impolite.

"Can I have your lantern?" He asked me.

"No," I said, with regret, "I need it. It belongs to my place of work."

He mumbled something further that the wind snatched from my ears. "I'm sorry, I don't have any money with me," I apologized, assuming he was asking for spare change.

Perhaps he wasn't, as he was undeterred: "You have a husband?"

"I have a wife." I corrected him, in what I meant to be a fairly light and playful tone.

"You have a husband." It was a statement, not a question.

"No, I have a wife." I corrected him again in the same tone.

He had parked his shopping cart to my left, not entirely blocking my movement in that direction, but definitely an obstacle on the pavement. People were passing by at a steady rate, but no one was slowing down to check out the situation. I nodded and made eye contact with a few, just to be clear there were folks around.

"You ever been with a man?" He asked, crowding toward me where I stood against the the fence, arms out as if to hug/grab/grope me.

"Not at all interested!" I said firmly, and slipped away to my right, walking swiftly down the sidewalk to the nearest corner, well lit and populated, where I waved to my compatriot across the way.

The man didn't follow me.

As I said in my email reporting the incident (on-the-job harassment, after all, should always be documented), I never felt truly unsafe. I was in a busy neighborhood, connected to people who stood shouting distance away. We had a traffic cop at the intersection to my left to help with foot traffic, who had exchanged pleasantries with me earlier in the evening.

I'm not sorry I nodded at the man.

(I am sorry he's homeless.)

I'm not sorry he stopped to talk with me.

(I am sorry for all the times people have treated him like he's invisible or unwelcome.)

I'm not sorry that I made it clear I was queer.

What I am most definitely sorry about is that he thought it was appropriate to invade my personal space and try to get friendly in an uninvited, anti-gay, sexual way.

But there's an even deeper set of reasons why I didn't feel unsafe, and I want to acknowledge them: I've never been the target of sexual aggression or anti-gay violence. I've never been truly vulnerable to street harassment. I haven't had to learn, out of necessity, to avoid the gaze of strangers. I have almost never not felt entitled to walk and stand wherever, whenever, in the city I now call home.

I was aware, even as the words came out of my mouth ("I have a wife.") that they could be dangerous words to say.

For many people, in many places, they are life-threatening words to speak allowed.

The fact that they tumbled from my lips with only a split-second hesitation, that I repeated them -- asserting my truth in public spaces --, that I felt confident in my right to do so, and that I could return to my place of work and document the incident, including what I said and what was said back, without fear of victim-blaming or slut-shaming, all of these facts are hard-won privileges still denied too many queer folks here in Boston and around the world.

So I'm not sorry, and I don't think I'd do anything different if I had the exchange to do over. I'd like to think there are times and places to educate people who pull shit like that on how inappropriate it is, but I doubt this particular exchange was the place or the time.

I hope Man on the Bridge learns, eventually, that sort of behavior is Not Cool.

And I hope the rest of us keep on working toward a world in which no one has to experience sexual aggression for standing alone on a sidewalk at night, for making eye contact with and speaking to a stranger, and for telling the truth about their relationships when asked.

please exercise your right to vote

Ohio, 1912 (via)

Hanna and I went up to our local polling station around 7:15am this morning to cast our ballots. The lines were long, but moving quickly and we were in and out of the school cafeteria in about 30 minutes. Everyone was polite and efficient, and for some reason the signs offering translation services (Vietnamese, Russian, Spanish, and more) made me tear up. As brokenly human as our election process is, I'm grateful to have been born in a generation where my right to participate is taken for granted, rather than something I need to fight for. Queer folks who are same-sex marriage supporters have to experience their civil rights up for a vote, and often see those rights rejected by their fellow citizens ... but at least we get to cast a vote for our own equal rights. Women during the suffrage campaigns could only batter on the door in righteous anger (or speak words of forceful persuasion) in a long, slow struggle to be let in. I am grateful that so many of them did.

Please vote today. Even if you're voting for the other guy I sincerely want you to make your preference known. I know there are flaws in the system, and I have friends who are cynical about the process and abstain on principal - and I understand their reasons and respect that it's their right to do so. But I'm going to encourage you to make your voice heard in a different way today: by making an affirmative decision about which direction you would like our nation -- and each state within it -- to move. If you don't cast a ballot in the first place, if there are disputes over voter fraud or recounts there won't be a ballot from you to re-count.

(via)

Regular readers of this blog will be unsurprised to know I voted a Democratic ticket. At four this morning, when the cats woke me up to demand breakfast, I lay in the dark and enumerated the reasons why -- given the two-party system -- Democratic candidates are really the only option for leftist me:

1. The social safety net. Welfare and "entitlements" may have become dirty words in contemporary American politics, but my vision for what government is good for actually starts (and largely ends) with provision of basic care for its citizenry, particularly the most vulnerable. I have friends currently surviving in part thanks to government support -- food stamps, WIC, unemployment insurance, government-subsidized student loans, social security benefits. Both Hanna and I have benefited from state-subsidized health care and federal student loan programs (say what you will about the cost of higher education, federal loans made our advanced degrees and subsequent financial stability possible at a relatively sustainable price). In our elder years, we will hopefully benefit from whatever iteration of social security is available. As global climate change becomes a reality, disaster relief will be the difference between utter devastation and recovery and resilience for more and more of us. My ethics demand that I support a government that will continue to provide these to the best of its ability, and actively work to bring material security to us when we need it most.

2. Reproductive justice and bodily autonomy. I'm a person with female anatomy; my body these days is the subject of intense debate and scrutiny in the political realm, particularly due to its capacity to sustain a pregnancy. Despite the fact that I do not plan to procreate, I am still deeply affected by a world which sees persons with uteri as individuals whose bodily autonomy is not secure and subject to the political agendas of others. Self-interest demands, therefore, that I vote for politicians who -- at least at the party level -- recognize my humanity as a complex reality, not just something that exists in the absence of others' trumping interests.

3. Civil rights and social justice for queer folk. Democratic politicians are not consistently supportive of equal civil rights for queer folks -- and not all Republicans are anti-gay. But taken in aggregate, the Democratic party is the only viable political party that is actually making moves toward supporting my rights as a citizen with same-sex desires to not be discriminated against in law because of those desires.

Here in Massachusetts we also had the opportunity to vote on legalization of medical marijuana and physician-assisted suicide. I voted in favor of both. I have known enough people facing difficult end-of-life decisions, including my late grandfather who died in 2007 of aggressive lung cancer, to know that we should all have the right to choose when and how to die, when the opportunity to choose is available to us. Although my grandfather's condition deteriorated too rapidly for him to reach the point where assisted suicide was actively on the table, he had that conversation with my family and the hospice care folks who helped our family through the process of his death. And when it comes to marijuana, I don't actually think it should be criminalized at all but will take what I can get in terms of de-criminalization. Hopefully, as medical use becomes more widespread and aboveground the stigma against responsible use will lessen and regulation will move out of the criminal justice system and perhaps into the public health realm.

This is what same-sex marriage looks like

Same-sex marriage is on the ballot in four states today: Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington. E.J. Graff has been writing about the history and prospect of each measure over at The American Prospect, and I encourage you to check out her thoughtful state-by-state analysis. I know two families in Minnesota whose wee ones (ages four and six) are passionately supportive of the same-sex marriage campaigns and I'll be thinking of them today. I want them both to know - Noah and Lilly I'm talking to you! -- that regardless of the political outcome, they're growing into fine people who are being the change we want in the world. Even if our guys don't win this time around, that you care about fairness and kindness matters and will still make a difference, now and every day we move forward together.

mobility in the city [a few thoughts]

Warning: This is a rambling post full of thoughts in progress.

My friend Molly is in the process of writing a book about parenting-while-feminist and in our little writing group, #firstthedraft, we've been talking about the politics of "babywearing" (carrying your infant and/or small child in a backpack or sling, etc.) versus strollers. My parents generally used packs -- front and back -- in the mid-80s when I was small, as well as wagons, tricycles, car seats, and various bike attachments, to tote us around. I don't remember that we ever had a stroller per-se, but then we also lived in a small enough town that for daily getting around a car was essential and strollers were thus less so. But I do remember using strollers as a childcare provider in my teens, as a way to move toddlers I physically couldn't carry over distances of more than a city block or two (about the distance they had the stamina to walk on their own). I never thought of child transport options as very political in nature.

Here in the city, though, I've learned, strollers are a Big Deal. Everyone has Feelings about them: how big they should (or shouldn't) be, where they should (and shouldn't) be allowed to travel, when (if ever) they are reasonable to be on public transportation. Parents and non-parents alike take all sides and sometimes blood is shed (or at the very least ill-will is fostered).

Last week, I suggested on Twitter that the whole problem might be solved if only we could create little steampunk baby carriers that were balloon or propeller-powered and could hover at about 7-8 feet from the ground. The caregiver could then walk along tugging the carrier along on a tether and strollers would take up the sidewalks and/or precious room on the T no more!

still from The Red Balloon (via)

(Though I suppose then we'd be arguing about low-hanging trees and awnings on storefronts. Sigh.)

I actually think identifying this social rough-and-tumble as one about strollers and parenting choices  says something about how we, as a society, compartmentalize parents and their (especially wee) children into the category of Other, a group of people who enter the public realm on sufferance from the rest of us -- those of us who, we like to believe, only take up an "appropriate" amount of space on the T, on the sidewalk, who move at the right speed from point A to point B, and are able to time our inconvenient errands for those times when, even if we do take up more space then usual, we will somehow magically not slow down, crowd out, or inadvertently invade the personal space of our fellow city dwellers.

Those of us, in other words, who assume we have a right to be in public space when and how we need to ... as opposed to those Other folks whose right to the public square only extend as far as their ability to imitate the space-taking habits of the default citizen (Us).

So what I want to talk a little bit about in this post is how, in an urban environment, especially if you do not own a car and/or are trying to get by using it a little as possible, you're just going to get in peoples' way. Even if you don't have dependents to transport. Even if you don't have serious mobility issues that require extra gear (walker, cane, chairAnd errands are going to take a lot of effort to complete. And chances are you're going to need some sort of wheeled conveyance to get them done -- unless you're lucky enough that you don't have a bad back or a bum wrist or weak ankle and can afford a gym membership and the time to bench press on a regular basis.

Errands in the city take much more time and planning, in my experience, than they did in the car-dependent town where I grew up (or perhaps, I should clarify, much more than they did for me and my car-owning family; for the folks in my hometown too poor to own a car, life was further complicated by a crappy-to-nonexistent public transit system). It's something I've had to get used to, as a former smaller-town dweller turned urbanite. And I think perhaps this helps me see more clearly the similarities across types of transport-aides that some other people don't -- because we're so used to tuning our brainwaves to "judge" when parents-and-children come into view.

Hanna and I finally bought this shopping cart this year

I'm going to use, as an example, the errand I ran earlier this week to pick up our first monthly allotment of winter veggies from Stillman's farm where we are CSA subscribers. Stillman's is out near Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and drives the produce into the city to various pre-scheduled pick-up locations. The closest pick-up point for us was in downtown Boston about two miles from where I work at the MHS. The pick-up time was 2-4pm.

Setting aside, for a moment, the privilege of having a job with a) an hour-long lunch break, and b) the ability to leave on an errand and not worry about getting in trouble if the subway is delayed and I get back a bit late, this sounds like a relatively easy transaction. Take a late lunch, go down, pick up veggies, return to work, take veggies home at the end of the day. If I were living in my home town, this errand would have taken about twenty minutes, maybe, leaving 40 minutes at either end to actually eat lunch.

In Boston, this errand means the following:

1. Remember to take the wheelie-cart with me to work (which means dragging it along on our morning walk of approximately three miles) so that I will be able to transport the heavy winter vegetables on my own.

2. At 2pm, walk to the closest T stop and wait for a train that will take me the right number of stops from Hynes Convention Center to Haymarket (approx. 10 minutes)

3. Maneuver the empty cart into the T, off the T, and up the escalator at Haymarket, and two blocks to the drop point (approx. 15 minutes).

4. Transfer the vegetables from the back of the delivery truck into the cart (approx. 5 minutes).

5. Stop at a nearby sandwich shop for a sandwich and iced tea -- admittedly an "optional" step, though to go without would have meant foregoing a midday meal; as it was, I didn't have time to actually eat the sandwich until I was walking home that evening (approx 10-15 minutes).

6. Carry the cart, maybe 45 pounds fully loaded, down the stairs to Haymarket station; they have an elevator but I didn't have time to locate it; the elevators to below-ground stops are often poorly marked. The escalators go up, but not down.

7. The first T to pull into the station was headed in the right direction, but not to the appropriate stop. I got on anyway, since I was now starting to feel anxious about getting back to work roughly on time. In order to board the train, I had to lift the cart up the stairs and maneuver it around the other passengers to a quasi-secure "parking" spot midway down the car.

8. At Copley Square I had to transfer trains, meaning I needed to maneuver around standing passengers carrying the laden cart down to the platform, and then repeat the process boarding the train again. All of these situations were made comparatively easy by a) the fact I'm physically able to lift the loaded cart for short bursts of time, b) I was traveling mid-afternoon instead of rush hour, c) I wasn't getting hate-stares from people who automatically resent the presence of strollers in the subway. (steps 6-8 took maybe 20 minutes).

9. At Hynes, I had to disembark and haul the cart up three flights of stairs (only one of which is equipped with an up escalator) to street level, and then wheel the cart from the station to the MHS. (5 minutes)

10. At the end of the work day, I knew that rush hour on the T precluded trying to get my shopping cart on the T unless I wanted to wait for 45 minutes to an hour for any train empty enough to accommodate me. Since I am able to walk, and didn't have to rush home for any reason, I walked home -- a distance of about 3 miles -- pushing the cart ahead of me.

This is the labor it takes to do one errand in the city when you're relying on public transportation and your own two feet. I'm not writing this post in a bid for folks to pity me -- we made the decision to subscribe to the CSA this winter, after all, knowing the time and effort it would take to get our fresh veggies. But I do hope that focusing in on the logistics of one errand this way points out how most of us, at one time or another, even if we are able-bodied adults sans children moving around our environment, are awkward to accommodate. And also point out how the environment is as much "at fault" as the awkward human being in question.

Rather than bitching about those of us who crowd the sidewalk with shopping carts, strollers, or walkers, we might think about the assumptions that led to sidewalks being a certain width (i.e. that all those who use the sidewalk are people who can walk unaided and unburdened with goods). While some of us might be able to carry our children (or our groceries) in wraps or packs or tote bags, others may not be strong enough to carry 45 pounds of produce (or exhausted toddler) for three miles -- or time our outings before/after rush hour in order to actually fit on the T without the other passengers complaining or resenting you.

More and more, I find myself thinking about how the ideal citizen-worker in our world these days is the perfectly-able young adult without any dependents, who never gets ill, and is somehow (magically) perfectly self-sufficient. Not only do they never behave awkwardly in public, take up more space than we think they should, turn up their music louder than we'd like, lose their train of thought in the grocery aisle, or fumble with their wallet at the cash register ... they manage their bodies (and those of their children) and personal belongings so that the rest of us can imagine they are not there.

Oh, I've been there. I've been annoyed and judgy and exhausted and angry and in the headspace where I just want to get home and not deal with one more stranger ever anywhere. But that's just not the way the world works. We're all awkward, noisy, thoughtless, slow. We all take up more space, sometimes, than others think we should.

And it seems like an important exercise or practice for each of us to -- regardless of how we feel and what we think of others' choices and presence --  realize that they're probably just trying to get around the city like we are, and that sometimes getting from point A to B is an awkward, clumsy process. One that does, in fact, take up space in the world.

And that we all, in fact, equally entitled to be mobile, and to move around the city when and how we need to in order to live our lives.

support black cat rescue! [wedding giving]

Geraldine, on her first day at our home (Oct 2009)

I went back and forth about whether to put up a shout-out for this fundraiser on my blog - but what's a fundraiser for if you don't, you know, raise funds for the charity in question?

As I shared in my wedding planning posts, in lieu of a gift registry Hanna and I decided to ask people to donate to Black Cat Rescue, the amazing foster organization that took Geraldine and her kittens in off the street and made it possible for us to bring her into our family. She's been with us three years this weekend, and we hope she's not too angry at us for adopting her a little kitten-niece in the form of enthusiastic Teazle.

Gerry and Teazle napping

Gerry helps Hanna do yoga

We've set up a FirstGiving page to process donations which will go directly to Black Cat Rescue. I hope y'all will at least take a moment to consider giving something small ($1, $5, it's all good!). They're good people doing good work on a strictly volunteer basis. The funds we raise will go toward supplies and medical care for the cats they take in.

fighting anecdata with anecdata

So I'm in the middle of reading a review copy of Hanna Rosin's The End of Men and the Rise of Women, which ... with a title like that, you really can't expect much, right? And your suspicions would be confirmed. But one of the truly annoying things she's doing is profiling hetero relationships in which everyone is miserable.

And portraying all men as dunderheaded two-year-olds.

I HATE IT WHEN JOURNALISTS DO THIS.

You'd think, reading books like this (or, ahem, The Secret Lives of Wives) that not a single happy experience was being had in the world of hetero relations since, oh, I don't know, V-J Day. Or possibly since women got the vote. Or maybe around the time Mary Wollstonecraft penned Vindication.

So, more or less in self-defense -- or, more to the point, in defense of the many awesome non-abusive, humanly-flawed-yet-engaged-with-life men I know and love -- I've compiled a list of men in our cohort (the "end of men" cohort, in which dudes are apparently, "obsolete") by way of giving them all a massive shout-out for general awesomeness and, well, disproving Rosin's hysterical claims that the world is rapidly devolving into a dystopic "matriarchy" (I swear, if she makes this claim one more time in the pages of The End I may emit a tiny shriek of despair).

Aiden is a passionate social justice activist working at the Durham County Library.

Brian, my brother, a middle school art teacher, free-lance illustrator, and graduate student, married to my sister-in-law Renee, a landscape painter.

Brian, my boss's boyfriend, who's the IT guy for a school, is training to be a voice actor, and moonlights as a musician.

Collin, my friend Diana's boyfriend and all-around awesome person who works in digital archives management (and in his spare time does things like cook gourmet meals, build letterpresses, and send us cute pictures of bunnies).

Dan, a former Library Assistant at the MHS was just promoted to Assistant Reference Librarian; he enjoys cycling and soccer in his free time.

Drew has spent the last ten years working in computer programming and web design.

Eric, my friend Molly's husband, just finished his PhD while parenting full-time and is looking for professional work (also while parenting an infant and six-year-old) alongside his wife.

Erik, Hanna's best friend from High School, became a father earlier this year; he bartends while his wife works as an accountant for the state.

Henry works in IT and in his spare time enjoys hiking and traveling with his librarian wife.

Jeremy, my former colleague at the MHS, moved on to a position at LibraryThing and handles user communications and outreach, as well as spear-heading their project cataloging famous peoples' historical libraries.

After completing his library science degree, Jim is working as a documentary editor and considering renewing his dedication of music.

My dear friend Joseph is a plant breeder who's just sent his first book to press and completed the first round of paperwork to begin nation-wide trials for an ornamental corn hybrid. He's also thinking about fostering rescue kittens when he finishes the process of buying a house.

Josh, Hanna's acupuncturist, also teaches yoga and meditation while his fiancee works in a hospital.

Patrick, husband of Bethany, is completing a PhD in Philosophy and Mathematics, after extensive graduate work in both the US and UK.

Nate currently works at CostCo while pursuing documentary film-making; his wife teaches English and is completing her first YA novel.

I'm sure I've left someone out, so ... feel free to fill in the gaps in comments! Please. And I promise a more coherent review of Rosin's work once I've actually had the patience to finish it.