Transgender Day of Remembrance
Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. Queenemily has written about witnessing and remembering:
So what I want to acknowledge is that there’s a paradox, that no trans person can truly witness for the murdered–especially those we’ve never met. And yet, with due caution, I think we should. Not to further our own goals, not to get legislation passed that protects only the already-privileged or to wallow in self-pity, but to honour the memories of every single trans person murdered this year, and to acknowledge the violence that our community lives with as a whole. To acknowledge that even in death, transphobia and cissexism mean that the murdered are not properly remembered, not even by the correct names and pronouns–and those people should be remembered as the right sex. That is our task for today (surviving ourselves, as well as prevention of more of the same is our task for the rest of the year). The example of Levi suggests that the task of witnessing may well be impossible, but we should attempt it nevertheless.
Gudbuytjane writes:
In the face of a cisdominant culture that enforces false narratives to keep trans women marginalized, it is imperative we make our voices heard. I’ve written about this before, and I believe it is an essential process for dismantling cissupremacy. The most important voices to be heard are our dead, and the responsibility for those voices lies with those of us who are still alive. Not for cis culture to consume, not even for ourselves, but for these women who are no longer with us; By giving them dignity we give ourselves dignity, and demand it from a culture which withholds it from us. Even if it is only knowing their name or a tiny bit of their story, it gives back to them some of the humanity their killers took.
Although cisdominant media inevitably focuses on the murders of these women, pieces of the stories of their lives nonetheless get through. This is how she died is supplanted for brief moments by This is how she lived. Amplify that. Know the stories of their lives, and tell the stories of your own. Not just on November 20th, but every day.
Remember. Remember throughout the whole year, and bear witness for the dead.
Getting an IUD
I had an IUD put in about two and a half weeks ago. In the process of deciding what form of birth control would be the best for me, I found out that while almost all of my female friends have used oral contraceptives (the Pill), none of them had used an IUD. This meant that the Mayo Clinic and Planned Parenthood overviews of IUDs were my only sources of information, and although they were informative and helpful, I would have liked to have been able to ask people what their experiences had been. Relying on anecdotes is unscientific, but it’s reassuring to hear them, and they make me feel less alone in struggling to decide what the best form of contraception is for me. It’s reassuring to talk about these things and have conversations: “I’ve had an IUD, and I’ve had these concerns, and I was fine,” or “I’ve had an IUD, and I’ve had these concerns, and I wasn’t fine, and this is what I did.” So here are my experiences with the IUD.
Motivation: C asked if we could have sex without condoms. Once I worked through some rape-related trauma that was triggered by that idea, I thought it would be nice, too. C was remarkably supportive throughout. He also listened to me while I freaked out about various BC methods and reiterated that it would be ok if I didn’t feel comfortable with using any of them, and we could stick with condoms. Men, here’s a clue: be more like him.
Deciding on a method: I didn’t want to use the Pill because remembering to take it every day would have been annoying. A forgets it all the time, and I initially scoffed at her forgetfulness. Then I remembered that during the spring, I would occasionally forget whether or not I’d taken my daily Claritin, so maybe I shouldn’t be casting stones about forgetting to take medication.
I was on the Nuva Ring for a month while I was waiting to get the IUD inserted. It slipped right in and it didn’t hinder sex. Based on one month’s observation, it also improved my cramps and PMS. For the first couple weeks, I had a hard time adjusting to the idea that this little thing that I couldn’t even feel hanging out inside me was going to keep me from getting pregnant, but I gradually got over that mental block. It helped that I could stick a finger in my vagina and check that it was still there (it never fell out, but I worried nonetheless).
The IUD has three primary benefits for me: (1) cost; (2) longevity; (3) ease. I think that insurance is covering my IUD, but even if it doesn’t, the cost of the IUD will be about the same as two years of co-pays for oral contraceptives or the Nuva Ring (this is an assumption based on my co-pays for other prescription medications). The Mirena IUD, which contains progestin and is the hormonal IUD, lasts for five years, making it cheaper over the long run. For those five years, I don’t have to go to the pharmacy every month or three months to refill a prescription; remember to take a pill every morning; or worry about a Nuva Ring popping out. The IUD is in there, and I don’t have to worry about getting pregnant for the next five years. The IUD comes in a hormonal form (Mirena) and a non-hormonal form (ParaGard, the copper IUD), and I chose the Mirena because a side effect of ParaGard is worsened cramping.
Insertion: After my first appointment with the ob-gyn, when we discussed birth control and I decided on a Mirena IUD (a hormonal IUD), the ob-gyn said that he would insert the IUD when I began my next period. Dr. F had also done my annual pap smear at that appointment, and he wanted to wait for the results before proceeding with the IUD. If my results were abnormal, which happened last year, then I would need a colposcopy and possibly additional testing, so Dr. F wanted to get the pap smear results and get any necessary procedures done before inserting the IUD. This delay also gave me time to get tested for HIV before having the IUD put in. Dr. F offered an oral contraceptive or Nuva Ring sample to use in the meantime, and I chose the Nuva Ring.
When my next period rolled around, I called Dr. F’s office and made an appointment to have the Mirena inserted. At the appointment, Dr. F applied some local anesthetic to my cervix, which I hardly felt. He checked the position and location of my uterus and said that it would feel like a cramp. Did it ever–it was an instantly induced cramp, ugggggh. Dr. F then inserted the IUD, gave me a tampon, talked about common side effects (cramping, light spotting), and said that he would check it in a month to make sure everything was alright. The entire process took all of 15 minutes, from taking my pants off (full disrobing wasn’t required) to walking out the door.
Overall, the procedure was easy. I am in my mid-20s and have never had children, and Dr. F didn’t ask about my relationship status, whether I’d had children, or whether I planned to have children. When I said that I wanted to try birth control, he rattled through a list of common options, including the IUD. Dr. F is an elderly, white, male ob-gyn, and entirely professional, i.e. executed his duties without ideological blathering and gave me the birth control that I requested. As Keori recently wrote, this is not always the case when it comes to IUDs.
Side effects: Cramping. Bleeding. After the procedure, I took 2 ibuprofen. The cramps were awful, but no worse than the ones I usually get before a period, which respond to ibuprofen. These cramps did not. Over the next few hours, I took a total of 8 ibuprofen and spent a lot of time in the bathroom wishing for the cramps to stop. After a few hours, they did.
The cramps have returned every day, although not as fiercely as the first day. They get better and worse; every time I think that they’re improving, they get worse a few days later. Fortunately, they always respond to ibuprofen.
The bleeding is more annoying than the cramping, right now. “Light spotting” is a misnomer for what’s going on; the blood drips out in spurts, much like the way menstrual fluid does, enough to thoroughly stain my underwear and get on my pants. I have to use either a tampon or a pad, because I got tired of scrubbing at the blood stains. The bleeding is probably also causing anemia and fatigue; my iron count is low to begin with, and ever since I got the IUD, I’ve been tired almost every day. Walking up the slightest incline makes my legs ache and I feel sleepy all the time. Like the cramps, there are good days and bad days. A couple weeks ago, C and I were on our feet all day traipsing around MoMA and the Ferry Building, and I was fine. Today, I needed a nap, felt better for a few hours, felt fatigued again, and had to take the bus home from work instead of walking. Being tired makes it difficult to concentrate, think, or stand up for long periods of time.
The IUD hasn’t significantly affected sex. There’s usually blood mixed in with the semen and lubricant, which makes cleaning up immediately after penetrative sex more of a priority than it was when I was on the Nuva Ring. The fatigue means that a couple times, I’ve been tired to have sex. The tips of the IUD’s strings poked C once, but he doesn’t usually feel them (I don’t feel them inside me at all, except with fingers). The IUD is effective immediately if inserted within seven days of starting your period, so C and I could have had celebratory sex after my appointment with Dr. F, but I think I felt too crappy for that and so we put it off for the next day.
Holiday cards!
It’s that time of year again! If you would like a holiday card, please leave your name and address in the comments. I’m turning on comment moderation, so your info will be kept private. Also feel free to link to your wishlist, if you’ve got one online.
5 Things
I think I’ll treat “today” flexibly — I tend to make these posts while there’s still some time remaining in the day, so the evening stuff never gets counted. So from now on, I’ll think of “day” as including the bits of the previous day that came after the 5 Things post. Five things that made me happy today/last night:
- SpeakForEquality.org: local SF activists (“some clergy, some electeds, and some other young punks like myself,” according to local activist Kip Williams, via email) have created a petition asking Speaker Nancy Pelosi to take an active leadership role in passing comprehensive civil rights legislation for GLBTQI folks. The petition will be delivered to Pelosi’s office after the health insurance reform passes. Please sign the petition, especially if you live in Pelosi’s district, and spread the word.
- I woke feeling well rested, without the headache, stomachache, and nausea that plagued me last night.
- C and I had a talk last night about him carving out time for us to spend together. It was a rational conversation, one where we listened to each other’s concerns and tried to come up with a mutually acceptable solution. I know that he has a large quantity of work to do every week, and so if we’re going to spend time together, some of that time will necessarily be spent with him doing work and me doing something else. He knows that I’m being understanding but that I would like to spend some of our time together doing stuff together: talking, hanging out, museum exhibits, walks, whatever. It was a reasonable conversation, even though I was sobbing during most of it–proof that being emotional and being rational are not mutually exclusive–and I’m happy with the way we talked through things. It’s so different from the way most conversations of this sort go, particularly with my parents. I spent the whole day feeling sick with anxiety, until I remembered that C is a reasonable, caring person, and it was highly unlikely that he would scream at me or dismiss my feelings. And he didn’t, and we’ve found a way to work things out. It gives me hope that I can break free of the constraints of nature and nurture and have a happy, functional, and honest relationship with another human being.
- C and I talked about carving persimmons like mini jack-o-lanterns!
- Death Star jack-o-lantern
Q & A
PD: why do i always have friends who are selfish shitheads??
AP: *shrugs *
AP: because you have bad taste
AP: HAHAHHA
PD: thank you
Okay, not all of my friends are selfish shitheads. I just need to cut off the ones that are.
5 Things
Drat, all the things that made me happy were things that happened last night. Does that count? I’ll come up with five things that have made me happy so far today and then do give things from yesterday, too.
- It’s a bright, sunny day. Feeling sunlight on my skin is soothing and energizing.
- Cuddling with C this morning. His room feels so much cozier and homier than mine, and I like waking up with him there.
- I have a bright yellow, smiley face stress ball on my desk at work. C’s mom, Ms. C, sent us a Halloween care package, and the stress ball was part of it. I like that it’s bright yellow–such a cheerful color!–and squishy and smiley, and that it’s something thoughtful that Ms. C sent. It makes me think of my own dysfunctional relationship with my parents, and wonder wistfully, why ours couldn’t me more like C’s and his parents’.
- Winter is coming: late mornings, early nights. I’ll miss the sun, but I love the way the city looks at night, cloaked in a dark blue sky. After sunset, the sky shades from black in the east and orange in the west in a swiftly changing gradient.
- I got a seat on BART this morning. W00t!
Ways Not To Talk To Women
In the same vein as this post on how not to strike up conversations with women, I would like to say:
Dear Creepy Asian-Fetishist Limo Driver,
YOU ARE NOT GOING TO GET A WOMAN INTO YOUR CAR BY SAYING, “I’LL GIVE YOU A RIDE FOR FREE BECAUSE YOU’RE A PRETTY ASIAN, LADY.”
Do you want to know what response your come-on actually produces? This mental chain:
- Ew, what a creep.
- Ew, way to reduce me to my ethnic phenotype and Western fantasies about exotic Asian sex kittens.
- Ew, way to comment on my body and looks and make me feel extremely uncomfortable, whereas previously I had felt confident in my body and gorgeous and happy to be dressed up for my own pleasure.
- Ew, no way am I getting into a car with you, with no guarantee that you’ll keep your hands off and drop me off where I ask, rather than locking the doors and assaulting me, or stalking me around my apartment building once you know where that is.
This limo driver has harassed me twice now, with the result that I no longer try to catch a cab home after the symphony or the opera, because I know that he’s there and that if he sees me without C, he’ll harass me and he won’t take “no” or “leave me alone” for an answer. He’s the reason that I leave out the front door of the opera house and hurry across the street to the bus stand, rather than going out the side exit that passes by the cab queue.
Dear Men,
Street harassment is not acceptable. If it hurts your feelings that you make me feel unsafe, consider that my feelings of fear, anger, and upset are probably way more intense than your temporary feeling of being miffed that you’re not entitled to the smiling attention of every woman in the world.
Sincerely,
PD
Your Body, Your Perspective
The body you inhabit affects your life experiences. This is a very basic, “duh”-level truth, one that goes a long way toward explaining why people have difficulty understanding different kinds of oppression, because the experiences they have are fundamentally different. When I walk down the street by myself, men yell at me, stare at me, and try to get in my way. When my male friends walk down the street by themselves, they … walk down the street. Voila. Amazing! So, when I talk about how infuriating it was to walk two blocks to BART twice a day on the way to and from work, and how I’m hyperaware of the men on the street, they have to think to understand it, because it’s not something that they’ve experienced. They don’t intuitively understand that this is part of my everyday life, that I’m not exaggerating or making things up. They doesn’t understand that as they might allocate two units of mental energy to digging our their keys, I have to allocate two units of mental energy to putting my shields up and power walking past the men hanging out in the plaza, pretending that if I pass them fast enough, I won’t hear them commenting on my body.
I knew this, and yet, I was shocked when C and I had this conversation about white and male privilege:
C: [talking about how it was depressing to realize that he has, and has benefited from, white and male privilege] Sorry, you’re probably thinking, “Ugh, what does he have to complain about?”
PD: No, I know it’s hard to deal with the realization that you have privilege, especially having grown up in a culture that argues that VAWA is sexist against men, or that affirmative action is racist against white people–
C: I really don’t think that’s the culture I grew up in.
PD: Really? You’ve never had a white man claim that he’s oppressed by anti-discrimination? At school, during orientation, there were those minority peer counseling groups–you never had a white boy come in claiming that white is a race, too, and that he’s oppressed by racism?
C: No, and if he had, he’d have been laughed out.
PD: *stunned silent*
I was shocked, because that happened during the first week of college: hip, “I’m so liberal and enlightened that I recognize that white is a race, unlike you racist, backward POC,” white boys coming into minority peer counseling groups saying that white was a race and so they should be allowed to attend these groups, too (and turn what were supposed to be safe spaces for POC into fora that privileged the voices of white boys). It really happened. And people have argued to my face that “VAWA discriminates against men!” and “women’s shelters discriminate against men!” and “affirmative action discriminates against whites!” I’ve experienced this so many times that C’s assertion that he’d never encountered this and that if he had, the perpetrators would have been laughed out of the room, dumbfounded me. He wasn’t saying that these things didn’t happen, just that he’d never seen them, and it was such a drastically different experience of race, gender, and bystander support from mine that I was shocked.
And then I realized, he’s white and he’s male. Of course he’s not going to experience idiot white boys trying to take over POC spaces, because firstly, he wouldn’t have been at the minority peer counseling group to begin with, and secondly, those idiots would have assumed that he agreed with them on account of their shared whiteness, and wouldn’t have brought up their distorted conceptions of race-based discrimination.
C is wonderful and I adore him. It remains shocking that our life experiences have been so drastically different, and not in the sense that individual lives are different, but that they’ve been so fundamentally influenced in broad strokes by our race and gender identities.
5 Things
I am in an abnormally foul mood today–not just irritable, but genuinely angry, to the point where I’m half-afraid of spending time with the +1 today because I’m afraid I’ll bite his head off undeservedly. Ergo, I will take a leaf out of Sahiya’s blog and post about five things that made me happy today. It’s only 12:34 P.M. but goddamnit, the whole morning can’t have been a loss.
- Being
ScrabbleLexulous buddies with Sahiya. We play Scrabble! Our chats are interspersed with seemingly random interjections of “yours” (her) and “urs” (me), which is shorthand for “your turn in Scrabble.” Yay wordgames and wordgame buddies! - Technically from yesterday, but it’s still entertaining: TFLN: “(630): all i remember is you climbed in a garbage can and said you were trashed.” The punning and the visual! Awesome! Also, I have a special fondness for Oscar the Grouch and his worm friend hanging out in the trash can on Sesame St.
- C, my lovely boyfriend, came home for lunch, and just seeing him made me feel much, much better. And I didn’t take his head off!
- Boss S IMed and said that she had taken care of some scheduling issues. I had been dealing with the issues for the past week and quite frankly, I just needed her to go straight to the top because my counterpart and I didn’t have the necessary influence to get this taken care of. Now it has a chance of being resolved.
- C just walked in with a bowl of chicken soup and a bagel and egg sandwich! I have conference calls back to back from noon to 4 P.M., so I don’t have time to make or get lunch, and he made lunch! He’s so thoughtful, and he cooks, and I adore him.
Music & Memories
In the process of reinstalling the OS on my creaky and cranky laptop, I’m going through my music collection. There has to be an easier way to do this than saving everything to an external hard drive, copying it back onto the reinstalled laptop, and creating playlists for each album. Syncing my iTouch to iTunes will also wipe the iTouch clean, I’m assuming, including contacts and notes. The process would be so much more convenient if it were possible to pull data off the iTouch and onto my laptop; is this possible, or does the data transfer only go from iTunes to iTouch? It’s a remarkably stupid way of running things, that and the inability to sync an Apple mp3 player to more than one computer without wiping its contents. My trusty, old, workhorse Zen Creative Jukebox might have been lacking in aesthetic appeal, but I could pull songs from the mp3 player to the laptop and vice versa, and it worked with any computer on which the Zen software had been installed.
But enough of my anti-iPod/-iTouch/-iTunes ranting! What I meant to write about was today’s trip down memory lane, courtesy of going through my mp3 collection. Certain albums and mixes remind me of certain places and times in my life, because I tend to listen to albums obsessively for a period of time, then discard it in favor of something else. Freezepop’s Fancy Ultra Fresh brings to mind hot summer days in Rome, black cobblestones, riding up the Gianicolo on the red 44 bus, Latin, and a crush on a classmate. The Killers’ Hot Fuzz reminds me of living in Boston, walking home late at night and talking with my best friend from high school, who was also commuting home at the same time, even though he was two hours behind me. And so it goes: certain sounds evoke memories of people and places–the interior of a bus, singing in a bar, hours alone in a dark room, the dim glow of red lights and the tang of developer and fixer. One memory triggers the next, forming a chain of reminiscences.
1
Starting anew with the things that made me happy today.
Things that made me happy today:
- I spent last night with the +1 at his apartment, then came back to the city today. He was out the door earlier than I was this morning, and so, before I left, I knotted up our ropes in a neat daisy chain and draped it over his pillow with a short note: A domani.
Coping Strategies
When engaged in annoying discussions related to privilege or systemic oppression of any kind, step back, take a deep breath, and cease to engage. Sometimes, it’s just not worth it, because there are some people who refuse to get it and are not arguing in good faith.
Caption:
off-screen person: “Are you coming to bed?”
person typing at computer: “I can’t. This is important.”
off-screen person: “What?”
person typing at computer: “Someone is wrong on the internet.”
That’s my new sign for “Quitting discussion because engagement is futile.”
Other coping strategies when filled with anger at the sheer awfulness of systemic oppression: think happy thoughts. Remember that there are people who are good, people who care. Remember that any, “I. Fucking. Hate. Men.” statement would be sufficiently riddled with exceptions as to remind oneself that one does not, in fact, hate men as a group, just the ones actively wielding their privilege (including the privilege of being ignorant and demanding spoon-feeding education).
Ways Not To Strike Up A Conversation With A Woman
Dear Men-Who-Want-To-Talk-To-Women-But-Don’t-Know-How,
You’re interested in having a conversation with a woman, or at least that’s the impression I get from the way you yell and holler at me. (For the sake of this post, let’s pretend that I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt; let’s pretend that you’re not just catcalling and hollering as an act of aggression intended to establish your dominance over the women you’re harassing.) If you are in fact interested in having a conversation with a heretofore unknown woman without making her feel like a sex object rather than a human being with hopes, dreams, and aspirations, here are some tips on what not to do.
DO NOT:
Come up to a woman and say, “I’ll give you a ride for free, because you’re Asian.” [Man in question is a limo driver] When she says, “No, thanks, I’ll take the bus,” and walks away, follow her down the street and harass her with supposedly flattering comments about her hair, her dress, her ethnicity and repeated requests to get into your vehicle.
WHY NOT: It makes you annoying, because you didn’t leave her alone when she expressed disinterest. It makes you a disgusting, racist fetishist, because you’ve explicitly said that you’re interested on account of her race, and presumably whatever assumptions you’re making about it. It makes you creepy, because you won’t leave her alone and physically followed her. It makes you even creepier and potentially dangerous, because you won’t leave her alone and are intent on getting her into a vehicle that you are in control of.
Open with comments on the woman’s race or appearance, such as, “Hi, are you Chinese?” or, “Hi, gorgeous.”
WHY NOT: It implies that you are a creepy, racist Asian fetishist. It implies that all you see about her is her race. It reduces her down to her race, and there’s a probability of 1 that she’s heard the question before and is tired of complete strangers playing 20 Questions with her race and identity. Furthermore, even flattering comments about her appearance are problematic, because they’re nearly always implicitly sexist and support the assumptions that women are supposed to be decorative and attractive, and that they’re doing it for the observers, not for themselves. Their appearance is not for your evaluation.
Mutter, “Hey, sweetheart!” under your breath as you’re walking past a woman on the sidewalk.
WHY NOT: If you actually want to talk to her, muttering at her while you walk past and away is a bad strategy. It says, “I’m not really interested in talking to you, I just feel entitled to comment on you/your body in passing, as if you were an animal at the 4-H fair.” It also says, “I’m commenting on you–not to you, but on you–with no prior interaction, so the only thing I have to consider is your appearance, and I’m judging it, as if your appearance is for my sake, not yours.”
Call, “Hi,” at a woman in front of you as she’s walking through a subway station. Call, “Hi,” again after she ignores you. Call, “Can you hear me?” after she ignores you again.
WHY NOT: Calling at random people in the crowd is not a winning technique. Would you stop in the middle of your commute for some random person yelling at you, whom you’d never met before, who couldn’t be arsed to say, “Excuse me,” or come up to you or even enter your field of vision? Expecting her to stop, turn around, locate you, and engage in conversation with you after you’ve tried to call her to heel like an off-leash dog is sheer entitlement: a feeling of entitlement to her time and to her attention. It’s flat out rude, as well as stupid.
If you do want to have a conversation with a female stranger–I said, “have a conversation,” mind, not, “chat her up and hit on her”–and don’t want to come off as a sexist creep, here are some suggestions:
DO make sure you’re not bothering her. If she’s using her phone; listening to music; reading a book; looking at the bus map; or otherwise engaged, don’t interrupt her. Would you want to be interrupted by a complete stranger? No, not everyone minds it, but it’s better to err on the side of not being an ass. Bear in mind that some of these things are defensive techniques that some women have adopted specifically to keep asses away–”If I look busy/have headphones in/am buried in a book, maybe he’ll leave me the fuck alone.”
DO pay attention to her reactions. If she answers with monosyllabic words, keeps her attention focused on her book, doesn’t try to carry any of the conversation, or pointedly tells you that she’s married and waiting for her spouse (whether or not she’s got a ring on), politely end with something like, “It was nice to meet you,” or, “have a nice day,” and leave off.
DO introduce yourself or say, “Excuse me,” or find something relevant to say. For example, I was once holding a sack of pears at the farmers’ market, and a man asked if I’d tried the apples at his stand, and we had a conversation about stall fees at the various markets in SF. It was an interesting topic, and although I’d initially gotten weird vibes from him, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he wanted to have an actual conversation.
Of course, then he ruined it by saying, “Actually, I only wanted to talk to you because you look so pretty.” In other words, he wasn’t actually interested in having a conversation with me about farmers’ markets–he was interested in getting my attention because he thought I had a hot bod, and for some reason, he thought I’d like to know that. Way to make me feel reduced to a sex object.
Actually, that’s been my experience multiple times in the past. For the guys who whine that they can’t have an innocent conversation with women because women will assume that they have ulterior motives, all I have to say is this: stop having ulterior motives. No guy who’s actually been interested in having an innocuous conversation with me has given me the creep vibes. We’ve had innocuous conversations that passed the time on the bus or in a coffee line. The only guys I get the annoying creep vibes from are the ones who inevitably indicate, whether by verbal or physical gesture, that it’s not a friendly conversation they’re after.
Sincerely,
PD
Where Are the Men?
Another annoying NYT article, this time in the Health section, “From Birth, Engage Your Child With Talk,” chastises Brooklyn “mothers and nannies … tuned in to their cellphones, BlackBerrys and iPods, not their young children.” While the article’s basic premise (talk to your kid!), the article is off-putting in two respects:
1. Things were better in the old days! We had no high-tech devices then, so everyone was a great parent!
2. Damned mothers and nannies! Too selfishly absorbed in their conversations, emails, texts, and music to devote every waking minute and iota of attention to their babies or charges!
The first is the kind of knee-jerk, anecdotes-are-data, regressive, technology-warps-our-minds thinking that I don’t have much of a counter for, because it’s so patently ridiculous. Does a parent have to give every bit of her or his attention to their child? What if the kid’s asleep? Or tired? Or cranky? Or if you have a business call? Is it ever permissible to check your text messages in the presence of a toddler, or is it always a diversion of attention you ought to be paying to the kid? Actually, if you’re a parent, are you allowed to have a life independent of dancing around your child?
The second just grates. I want to know, where are the fathers in this picture? Why aren’t they out taking their kids for strolls and talking to them? Why isn’t any of the responsibility on them? At least the mothers and nannies are having conversations in the presence of the kids, so the kids are picking up some words; the fathers aren’t even around! They’re neglecting their kids’ verbal development entirely! OH MY GOD NO!
The assumptions behind the comment about “mothers and nannies” are that (1) women are always 100% responsible for child-rearing; dad isn’t even in the picture; (2) since they’re the ones responsible for child-rearing, women have to devote 100% of their attention to their kids. That latter point makes it difficult for women to have a life outside their kids…which I guess is the point. Gotta love the patriarchy.
Who’s stupider?
David Brooks, or the NYT for hiring him? At worst, his columns reek of a complacent, self-satisfied, privileged understanding of the world that has no connection to the experiences of anyone not rich, able-bodied, white, male, heterosexual, and cisgendered. At best, his columns are idiotic maundering about how he’d rather be a rugged mountain man than a beach lounger, but alas, he’s chosen to be a beach lounger. Wah, wah–seriously, cry me a fucking river. His most recent column, “The Next Culture War,” falls into the latter category. It’s classic David Brooks: sweeping statements that paint a picture of the good old days in America, when everyone was affluent but frugal, materialistic but moral. And then came the last 30 years, when society as we knew descended into depravity! Crass consumerism! Greed! Never before had such things happened in America, especially not among the ranks of the wealthy!
“Human nature, in no form of it, could ever bear prosperity,” John Adams wrote in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, warning against the coming corruption of his country.
Yet despite its amazing wealth, the United States has generally remained immune to this cycle. American living standards surpassed European living standards as early as 1740. But in the U.S., affluence did not lead to indulgence and decline.
That’s because despite the country’s notorious materialism, there has always been a countervailing stream of sound economic values. The early settlers believed in Calvinist restraint. The pioneers volunteered for brutal hardship during their treks out west. Waves of immigrant parents worked hard and practiced self-denial so their children could succeed. Government was limited and did not protect people from the consequences of their actions, thus enforcing discipline and restraint.
Whenever I read one of these columns, I wonder how one gets to be an op-ed writer for the NYT. The excerpted paragraphs are full of broad assertions with nary a shred of supporting evidence.
The old WASPs were notoriously cheap, sent their children to Spartan boarding schools, and insisted on financial sobriety.
That sentence falls into the “disconnected from anyone outside his economic stratum” category. “Notoriously cheap” means sending your kids to “Spartan boarding schools?” Right. I’m sure Choate and Andover and whatever other New England bastions of private schooling Brooks is referring to are the height of spartan anti-luxury and frugality.
This sentence falls into both the disconnected and the “sweeping, inaccurate generalizations” category:
Our current cultural politics are organized by the obsolete culture war, which has put secular liberals on one side and religious conservatives on the other.
I suppose that if you’re rich, white, able-bodied, straight, cis, and male, then silly things such as women’s rights to control their own bodies, along with access to reproductive health care, or the right of GLBTQI people to live, work, marry, and love without harassment are part of the “obsolete culture war.” Going off my experience escorting at Planned Parenthood last week, the “culture war” is by no means obsolete. The fervent anti-reproductive rights effort to ban all funding for abortion from health insurance reform also indicates that the “culture war” is ongoing and relevant to contemporary politics. Additionally, the divide is not nearly as clear cut as “secular liberals” and “religious conservatives.” There are many people of faith who are liberals (such as the Christian church with a booth at Folsom St. Fair) and many conservatives who are atheists.
And, of course, any column on the decline of modern American civilization would be incomplete without the obligatory poke at fat people:
Chain restaurants went into supersize mode, offering gigantic portions that would have been considered socially unacceptable to an earlier generation.
What I want to know is, why do my high school teachers have higher standards for argumentation, writing, and intellectual rigor than the editors of the NYT op-ed section?
P.S. Quit it with the “society was great for hundreds of years, and then it declined.” Things were never better in the age of the maiores, David, and that song and dance were worn out way before Sallust and Livy got to it.
Minor Gripes
In Play the Game, the romantic comedy I mentioned in my last post, one trick that the male lead uses pick up women is to “unexpectedly” find gift certificates to Charlie Trotter’s in his coat pocket and say, “Oh, I’ve been looking for these! Gift certificates to my girlfriend’s / mom’s favorite restaurant! Oh, no, they expire this weekend, and my girlfriend / mom is out of town until next week! Here, why don’t you take these, and take someone who appreciates good food?”
At that point, the woman is supposed to bite her lip, look thrilled but hesitant, look coyly up at the lead through her lashes, and say, “Oh, I couldn’t, unless–why don’t you come with me?”
Of course, the male lead accepts, and they happily have dinner at Charlie Trotter’s.
The problem is, no one offers a complete stranger gift certificates to Charlie Trotter’s. It would be akin to saying, “Oh, look, I forgot that I had $300 in my pocket! Would you like to have it?” Charlie Trotter’s isn’t a casual restaurant or even a medium-expensive restaurant, it’s the kind of place that only offers tasting menus at $150 a head. Trotter is one of the most influential chefs in America and was the first to do small plate tasting courses. You don’t just offer a complete stranger your gift certificates to Trotter’s. It’s not believable; get your incidental details right, people, especially when they’re a running joke in the film.
I fully admit it’s a stupid nit to pick, but it bothered me throughout the movie. Frankly, it’s easier to rant about than everything else that bothered me about the film.
I Wish
…that movies would stop making jokes about getting people drunk in order to “have sex” with them. Deliberately feeding someone alcohol in order to get them drunk so that they’ll “have sex” “with” you is rape. Interestingly, it assumes that your victim would not willingly choose to do so when in her or his right mind, which ought to make it even clearer that plying her or him with drink is an explicit attempt to get her or him to the point where her or his judgment is seriously compromised and she or he is incapable of consenting to sex. Having sex “with” someone without their consent is rape. Getting someone to a point where they’re not capable of giving consent means that they are by default in a state of not consenting.
Rape is not just forging ahead and having sex when your partner says, “No.” Rape is having sex when you’ve made it so that your partner is incapable of saying, “No,” or is too drunk to know what the hell yes and no mean, or what they’re saying yes or no to.
The latest offender in this regard is Play the Game, an indie romantic comedy where a young, able-bodied white man tries to teach his old, white grandfather how to pick up “chicks.” One thing he mentions is that when you’re sharing a bottle of wine with a woman and she pours more wine into your glass than hers, it’s a sign that she’s interested in you. As an illustration of this idea, the young man has a bottle of wine with a woman at the bar and then tells her that he needs to go home to his girlfriend. Immediately, the woman asks him to stay for just one more drink and tops off their glasses. Cue a shot of the wine glasses, which look like this:
Her wine glass is a third full. His wine glass is full to the brim.
Hardy har har, indeed–except I must have been the only person in the theater not roaring with laughter. The wine pour becomes a running gag in the film, reoccurring again when the grandfather’s girlfriend slips powdered Viagra into his wine goblet and pours it completely full. Drugging someone without their knowledge! Getting Grandpa drunk and aroused when he’s already expressed an unwillingness to have sex with her! Specifically putting Grandpa in a position of physically wanting to have sex while mentally compromising him in order to overcome his intellectual desire to not have sex! HARDY HAR HAR! Later, the main character pulls the wine trick with the woman he’s been pursuing for the entire film, who has handily resisted him and expressed interest in other men the entire time–HARDY HAR HAR! Pouring people wine to overcome their stated resistance to having sex with you–HARDY HAR HAR!
Getting someone drunk in order to compromise their judgment so that you can have sex with them is rape. Yet, Play the Game treated it as a joke, presenting it as something that’s acceptable for young people to do at bars and as something that’s laughable for old people to do in retirement homes. It’s not a bloody joke, it’s a crime, but the movie normalized it as harmless fun, common behavior, and worst of all, as a sign that your rapist is romantically interested in you. Gee, I guess rape victims should feel flattered, eh?
On the one hand, women are frequently blamed when rapists rape them, and the victim-blaming is even more intense if the women have had so much as a drop of alcohol. The UK government even ran PSAs suggesting that being raped was the consequence of women drinking. On the other hand, pop culture serves up entertainment that treats getting people drunk in order to rape them as harmless fun. Rape is such a joke–if you’re the one pouring the wine.
