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January 31, 2006

Can They Be a Sensible Academy?

I just learned that Keira Knightley got an Oscar nomination for her insipid portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet in prd & prjdc! The movie as a whole got FOUR nominations, including art direction (yeah, it was pretty, but that doesn't make up for the lousy script), costume design (again, the clothes were very pretty, but they were NOT authentic--there was one gown Caroline Bingley wore that, while fabulous, was a thoroughly contemporary design), and "music written for a motion picture" (can't say the music made an impression on me).

I shouldn't gripe, I suppose: after all, even though it's watered-down, simplified, prettified Austen.... No, I should gripe. It's a mediocre version of a GREAT novel, and I rather hope Keira Knightley loses.

Posted by Holly at 11:41 AM | Comments (3)

Mellencamp, the Game

As I mentioned a million years ago (OK, it was five and a half months, but in blog time, that is the equivalent of a million years), my friend and colleague Dr. Sweet Baby Jesus introduced me to this game we call Mellencamp (if you want to know why, you have to read the original post), where you take two basically equal and/or frequently paired things, and decide which one you prefer.

If you're playing this game properly, you wouldn't ask someone, "Which do you prefer: a full-body massage, or a poke in the eye with a sharp stick?" Rather, you'd ask, "Which do you prefer: Swedish massage, or shiatsu?" Opting for one does not necessarily mean that you are dismissing the other as thoroughly vile. For instance, I prefer raspberries to strawberries, but that doesn't mean I don't like strawberries--I love them, in fact. I just love raspberries a teeny bit more.

I prefer

sunset to sunrise
questions to answers
the Middle Ages to the Renaissance
skirts to trousers
pedicures to manicures
mountains to the ocean
the west coast to the east coast
the desert to the tropics
Arizona to the other 49 states
Tucson to Phoenix
saguaro to any other cactus, though I also really like those purple prickly pears
Jane Austen to the Brontes
Emily Dickinson to Walt Whitman
meticulously produced rock music like Pink Floyd to punk
new wave to grunge
Christmas to New Year's
baths to showers
water skiing to snow skiing
aisle seat to window
raspberries to strawberries
chocolate to any other form of candy (though I like a heck of a lot of candy)
wild berry skittles to regular
pecans to walnuts
Mexican food to Italian
tortilla chips to potato chips
Coke to Pepsi
vodka to gin
beer to wine
margaritas to martinis
sobriety to drunkenness (I grew up a teetotaler, and while I have learned to appreciate the occasional, decent booze buzz, I'd still rather have my thinking unclouded and my motor skills sharp)
coffee to tea
decaf to regular (because caffeine really screws with my sleep)
hyacinths and crocuses to chrysanthemums and asters
maple leaves to the leaf of any other tree (having lived in someplace that has sugar maples, I can now understand why the Canadians put a maple leaf on their flag--they're just really cool)
deep colors--especially greens, reds and blues--to earth tones
cats to dogs (I really love dogs, but I find cats require less maintenance, so I prefer them as pets)
solitude to crowds
jacks to tiddly winks
jump rope to hop scotch
seeing my acupuncturist to seeing my MD
Elizabeth Tudor to Mary Stewart
Gene Kelly to Fred Astaire
Bette Davis to Joan Crawford
Buffy the Vampire Slayer to its spinoff, Angel
Spike to Angel
People who call themselves feminists to people who, for whatever reason, don't
Curious skeptics engaged with the mystery and even godless heathen to the religiously devout and orthodox of any ilk
holly to ivy

OK, there are a few pairings where one choice is obviously right and the other is obviously wrong--like ANYONE actually prefers Angel to Spike, or tiddly winks to jacks? (I really used to love jacks. Someone with children between the ages of, say, five and 11, tell me: do children still play them? Can you even buy them?)

I tag any and every blogger who reads this to make and post a list of your own.

Posted by Holly at 9:01 AM | Comments (13)

January 30, 2006

Patriarchy Really Is to Blame

It seems there is more than one person in Texas who has figured out that PATRIARCHY IS TO BLAME.

Here's a story from Women's e News about a new program to rehabilitate batterers. Unlike many other programs designed to treat batterers, which "have typically looked at how batterers use violence to control their victims--or counseled them on how to manage 'out of control' anger--staffers at Travis [County Sheriff Department in Austin, Texas] say this program assumes that violence arises from a decision based on deeply-held beliefs of male dominance, not a flash of 'uncontrollable' emotion."

Instead, batterers are shown that they have choices. In group meetings, batterers "are led step by step to recall and re-enact what they felt, thought and did as domestic conflicts escalated and turned violent. Often, [George Jurand, coordinator of the San Francisco sheriff's department's Resolve to Stop the Violence Project] said, the offenders can be expected to voice the idea that, as men, they should be dominant. This 'male-role belief system' is then linked to its destructive consequences: arrest, imprisonment or loss of family."

An important feature of the program is having offenders listen to the stories of survivors of violence, who describe the terror and pain such violence inflicts on women and their children.

Classes are also taught and workshops led by men who once were batterers themselves, and focus making batterers accountable for their decisions to use violence. The program shows significant results: data reported in 2002 showed that "compared with offenders who did not participate, [program] participants showed an 80-percent steeper decline in repeat violence after 16 weeks. Those spending 12 weeks in the program showed a 51-percent steeper decline and those in the program for four weeks had a 42-percent steeper decline in repeat violence."

Well, imagine that: teaching men who commit violence against women that IT'S WRONG, THAT THE MEN ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VIOLENCE AND THEY CAN STOP IT, actually works.

Posted by Holly at 8:54 AM | Comments (1)

January 27, 2006

Holy Underwear

The Happy Feminist posted an entry about words and phrases she doesn't like, one of which is panties. I also hate that word, but I quit using it when I quit wearing conventional underwear and started wearing the temple garment, or Mormon sacred underwear.

This is a strange thing a lot of non-Mormons don't know anything about, and I've been accused of making this up. I swear to God, I am not. Anyway, below is the explanation of garments I provide in my book, which is forthcoming god-only-knows when. (Supposedly my agent has it at a couple of presses now.)

***

Because of the Fall of Adam and Eve, I had to begin wearing special long white underwear known as the temple garment before I could go on a mission. The temple garment symbolizes the status of Adam and Eve before God after they ate of the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Upon discovering their nakedness, Adam and Eve cover themselves with fig leaves, then hide from God when he visits the garden. When they finally come forward and confess, God first curses Adam and Eve, then replaces their flimsy fig leaf aprons with coats made from animal skins--which, as someone pointed out to me once, means that God had already introduced death into the garden, since he had the hides of dead animals to give Adam and Eve. It's those skins that the temple garment represent: a shield against primordial nakedness, a reminder of what can happen when you deceive or disobey God.

Garments are not to be discussed. They're underwear, they're a daily fact of life, but they're forbidden as a topic of conversation. It would be easier not to talk about them if they functioned better as underwear, but they're neither very practical nor comfortable. They also look funny: they have small geometric symbols embroidered at the navel, each breast, and the knee. They cover enough of you to limit the clothes you can wear over them. It's easier for men; their version has sleeves about like those of a t-shirt. But the women's version has short cap sleeves, which means you can't wear sleeveless shirts. Nor can you wear mini-skirts or low-cut blouses. The worst feature is that women's garments are made to fit a single body type: a woman with full but not huge breasts. I am not especially bosomy, and I never had a single pair of garments that fit me properly.

Anyone who has been in the Church for any length of time knows about garments: it's hard not to notice what your parents' underwear looks like when it comes out of the laundry. You develop an eye for certain details and often can tell when someone is wearing garments, which conveys instantly the fact that this person is a practicing Mormon in good-standing who has been through the temple. You get the garment just prior to a ceremony called the endowment, which Brigham Young, the second prophet of the Church, explained this way:

Your endowment is, to receive all those ordinances in the House of the Lord, which are necessary for you, after you have departed this life, to enable you to walk back to the presence of the Father, passing the angels who stand as sentinels, being enabled to give them the key words, the signs and tokens, pertaining to the Holy Priesthood, and gain your exaltation in spite of earth and hell. (Journal of Discourses 2:31 1853)

In other words, heaven is a very exclusive club, which God has guarded by a gauntlet of angels. And no matter how righteous you might have been as a mortal, you can't get in if you don't know all the passwords and the secret handshakes as revealed in the temple. It's because you get the garment in the temple that you aren't supposed to discuss it; the temple isn't discussed, the rhetoric goes, not because what happens there is "secret," but because it's too "sacred" to be the topic of small-talk. You come to understand the meaning of the temple garment and endowment more by absorption than by instruction.

***

If you want to read more about the temple garment and what it represents, I recommend the chapter, "Mormon Garments: Sacred Clothing and the Body," (198-221) in Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995) by Colleen McDannell. A passage from it:

To wear garments is to assent to the "secrets" of the ancestors and elders. By placing a cloth over the most intimate parts of the body and embroidering on it sacred signs, Mormons acknowledge the claim that their religion has over them. At the same time, they interpret the limits and meanings of that claim. That reflection brings tensions and ambiguities that are never easily resolved.

McDannell also points out that "Mormons who decide to stop wearing garments make a strong statement to themselves, their family, and their community. Mormons may challenge doctrine, drink a beer or two, or stop going to services but when they stop wearing garments those around them know they have left the faith."

Which was true in my case: it was the symbolic act by which I told my family I was leaving the church.

It was really hard.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (4)

January 26, 2006

Church Condemns Homophobia on National Coming Out Day

Here's the bit of satire I promised yesterday. This piece was originally published in The Sugar Beet, a website of Mormon satire, in 2002. I got in a spot of trouble for it--plenty of people couldn't understand why anyone would attack a document claiming that "that the disintegration of the family [caused by things like uppity women and gay people wanting to get married] will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets." But I still feel the attitudes I mock here deserve to be mocked.

You can still find the original version on the web if you want to go looking for it. The version below differs slightly from the earlier one: I've changed a sentence in the third paragraph because I am a compulsive fact-checker (that's one reason I had to leave the Mormon church: its facts don't check) and discovered that my original summary of McKinney's defense was incomplete, so I had to fix it.

(Salt Lake City, UT) October 11 was National Coming Out Day, a day on which gays and lesbians admit their sexual identity to themselves and others. In a show of support for the day, the Church issued a statement condemning homophobia. "Homophobia is un-Christlike," a spokesperson for the Church said. "We can't tolerate or condone violence against so-called gays and lesbians, even when they do something so heinous and disgusting as to insist that their perverse desires are actual parts of their eternal, god-given identities."

The spokesperson went on to say, "Remember, these people are sons and daughters of God, and are welcome as members of the church, as long as they do not imagine that they have any right to find happiness and companionship in a relationship with someone of their same sex, as God finds that utterly repugnant. We must do all we can to help these unfortunate people see that they are violating their divine natures, as well as the divine decrees of God, by ever imagining that there is nothing grotesque, obscene and evil about same-sex relationships. And pistol-whipping them and leaving them to die by the side of the road doesn't really help in that mission."

The mention of pistol-whipping was a reference to Matthew Wayne Shepard, a 21-year-old openly gay student at the University of Wyoming. On the night of October 6,1998, Shepard was beaten, tied to a fence on a remote highway in Wyoming, and left to die by several young people, one of whom, Aaron McKinney, was LDS. Shepard died of his injuries on October 12, 1998. McKinney did not deny that he kidnapped, robbed and beat Shepard, or that he pretended to be gay in order to lure Shepard into leaving with him; his defense was that he intended only to kidnap and rob Shepard, not to kill him, but flew into a rage when Shepard "fell" for the gay act and grabbed McKinney's genitals. McKinney was eventually convicted of felony murder. He received visits from home teachers up until the conviction.

Many members of the Church responded with support for the statement. "We shouldn't kill those 'so-called gays and lesbians,' to use a phrase you hear at Church, even though it would do the world a lot of good to get rid of them once and for all," said Marjorie Kimball, 34, of Walnut Creek, California. "Have you ever walked down Castro Street in San Francisco? It's disgusting. But taking a gun and cleaning out the whole area really isn't what God intends, since he can just wait until they all die of AIDS and then send them straight to hell."

Mark Jefferson, 42, of Madison, Wisconsin, stated, "In a really liberal place like Madison, where you can end up being friends with people who are gay or lesbian and kind of grow to care about them before you even know certain things about them, it can be hard to keep in mind how wrong homosexuality really is. It's a good thing we have the Proclamation on the Family up in our house, to remind me 'that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.' It's kind of weird to realize that all the terrorist attacks and the impending war in Iraq are a result of efforts in Hawaii and California and Vermont to legalize gay marriage. But even though these people are bringing about Armageddon, we have to try to forgive them anyway and hope they go straight before it's too late."

Posted by Holly at 9:35 AM | Comments (0)

January 25, 2006

Non-Homophobe Fears Homosexuality Will Hasten Decay of Civilization

A practicing, believing Mormon I've collaborated with on a couple of projects has posted something on his blog about how, although he doesn't think he's a homophobe because he has been friends with gay people and recently drank decaf with a gay man in his own kitchen, still, he's upset about Brokeback Mountain because

there's something about homosexuality that always makes me think of the Roman empire crumbling and stuff like that. It seems to come to a head pretty late in a civilization's decline, By the time it becomes prominent, I think it's equivalent to the bruises you start to see on a piece of overripe fruit. It represents a new, deeper level of decay.

He acknowledges that there are probably

many individuals for whom homosexuality does not seem like a choice. But I think there are as many or more people for whom homosexuality is an option but not a foregone conclusion (in other words, they're in the middle of that 6-point spectrum used to rank homo vs. hetero). I haven't seen [Brokeback Mountain] yet, but I think depictions like this that get people thinking about homosexuality will cause many to go ahead and explore it, whereas they probably never would've if society kept a better cap on it.

He goes on to conclude that

deep down, I'm alarmed. I see more bruises forming on the fruit. I think we're in trouble. To mix in another metaphor, compared to the heterosexual sexual revolution of the '60s, I think the gay movement is like crack cocaine next to pot, in terms of potential to ruin people's lives and upset the right balance of things. (emphasis added.)

Before discussing this further, I want to say that I'm sure there are many individuals for whom homophobia does not seem like a choice. But I think there are as many or more people for whom homophobia is an option but not a foregone conclusion (in other words, they're in the middle of that 6-point spectrum used to rank homophobia vs. tolerance). Having spent 26 years as a practicing Mormon and seen Mormon homophobia in action up close, I think the post by this guy is a perfect example of how religious doctrine that justifies homophobia will cause many people to go ahead and explore it, whereas they probably never would've if society kept a better cap on it.

The author of the post I quote here, for instance, probably started out as a two or a three--more tolerant than not. But years of indoctrination into the Mormon church have helped him become an advocate of one of the most dangerous threats to all humanity: ignorant intolerance dressed in the guise of righteous religion.

Reading the post upset me profoundly, because this is someone I work with, and not only is his message homophobic and bigoted, his logic sucks: he feels justified in announcing his conviction that the gay movement is extreme in its "potential to ruin people's lives and upset the right balance of things"; he expresses openly his dire fears and grievous worries that acceptance of homosexuality will hasten some sort of dangerous, dreadful moral decay--but he rejects the label of homophobe! And this despite the fact that homophobia means "an irrational fear of homosexuality and homosexuals." Given that he proclaims his uh, righteous fears of homosexuality's threat to virtuous, upstanding society, given how overwrought, paranoid and hyperbolic his fears are (what the hell is he doing invoking the fall of the Roman empire? I thought that had to do with putting an emperor in charge of the government, and with the fact that the Goths sacked the capital.... Then there's the fact that the Greeks accepted homosexuality, and they are, after all, the basis for what we in the Western world call civilization), he seems to fit the definition of a homophobe to a rigid, straight H--OK, he's not a virulent, rampaging homophobe, just a mild, meandering one, looking for rotten fruit in the garden of life, blaming the rot on others--god forbid he consider the possibility that HE and his beliefs are responsible for such things.

How can he fail to see that he is a homophobe? Why is he willing to embrace thoroughly homophobic attitudes, but not the label that goes with them? (I do wonder why people are afraid of being labeled a bigot, but not of actually being one. I also wonder why they aren't afraid to reveal such thoroughly inadequate thinking, so that they end up seeming not only bigoted, but unable to follow clear reason.)

I also found the post profoundly ironic, because one of the projects I worked with him on was The Sugar Beet, a website of Mormon satire modeled on The Onion. And when I wrote for the Sugar Beet, I got in a little trouble for a piece I produced to assuage some of the grief and shame I felt when I learned that Aaron McKinney, one of Matthew Shepard's murderers, had grown up Mormon and received officially sanctioned visits from representatives of the Mormon church up until his conviction--at which time the visits ceased and he got excommunicated, because you can't be a convicted felon and a practicing Mormon, any more than you can be an uncloseted homosexual and a practicing Mormon.

I've had people tell me--make that, I've had Mormons tells me--in all seriousness, that homosexuality is a sin akin to murder--and the treatment McKinney received pretty much demonstrates that, at least in the view of the Mormon church, that's true.

And omigod, it's not attitudes like that that will cause the end of civilization! It's not bigotry and greed and vicious illegal wars and wanton devastation of the environment that will destroy the United States--no, it's the fact that there are people in this country who think it's OK to choose a same-sex relationship.

Good god, that is so FUCKED UP.

I'll post the story from the Sugar Beet tomorrow.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (16)

January 24, 2006

No-Bake Choco-Nut Cookies

It's been a very long time since I've posted a recipe, so here's one I make fairly often. It's incredibly easy--so easy, in fact, that it was one of the very first things I learned to make on my own, back around age 8 or so. Most cookie lovers have some sort of no-bake recipe but this one is extra yummy.

3 cups rolled oats
5 tbs cocoa
1/2 cup each chopped pecans, coconut and mini chocolate chips
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup milk
6 tbs butter

Combine oats, cocoa, nuts, coconut and chocolate chips in bowl. Heat milk, sugar and butter in small saucepan over low heat just until it boils, stirring constantly to avoid burning. Pour over oat mixture; stir well. Drop by spoonfuls onto waxed paper. Let cool at least ten minutes. Makes about three dozen medium-sized cookies.

When I was little I liked to wait until the cookies got a bit stale, then dissolve them in a glass of milk, which resulted in chocolate milk with a nice sludge of oats and pecans and such at the bottom of the glass. Now I just cut the recipe in half and make about 18 cookies, which lasts me about three days. They're really good for breakfast.

Posted by Holly at 9:53 AM | Comments (2)

January 23, 2006

My New Favorite Rejection Letter

That title is both ironic and a tad oxymoronic: it's not like I have an old favorite rejection letter, and I've never received a rejection letter I like as well as any of the acceptances I've gotten. Still, some rejections are less vile and upsetting than others. Here's one I got last week that doesn't make me want to give up not merely sending my work out, but writing poetry altogether:

Dear Holly,

Apologies for the delayed response! I really enjoyed "Portrait of a Bedtime Storyteller" but got a bit lost toward the middle. The ending is magnificent, though. Would love to see more of your work.

Very Best,

Poetry Editor

Apologies are indeed in order for the delayed response: this journal had my submission for NINE MONTHS. It's not at all unheard of for literary journals to hold your work for six months to a year before they get back to you, and that long response time is one reason journals that don't accept simultaneous submissions totally SUCK the putrefied body parts of long dead farm animals. This journal at least allows simultaneous submissions, so the poems they held practically forever were also seen by other journals, one of which is now going on ten months for its response time.

But at least the editor liked my work and want to see more. So one of these days I'll send more out.

Posted by Holly at 9:27 AM | Comments (3)

January 20, 2006

The Invisible Woman

I'm tired. It's been a long and crappy week, so I'm going to take the easy route of posting a poem today. It's old--I wrote it in 1990, and it was published in 94. It's also a feminist revenge fantasy featuring a big ol' act of vandalism, so it fits in nicely with recent themes.

The invisible woman is angry.
Boy is she mad.
She took her books to the library last night
and last night she burned the library down.
She hates all her stories and
nobody else wants to read them
either. They go like this:
I don't want to be here.
There's not any place in this world I want to be.
Someone should tell her howling
is the wrong thing to do at the moon,
the moon's just a flashy advertisement
above the fire engines saying
STAY TUNED FOR TOMORROW'S EPISODE OF THE SUNRISE!
Still, the man in the moon, if there is one,
had the very best view
when the burning roof smashed flat
all the shelves of burning books,
the firemen gesturing with
grim authority and their hoses
to anyone wanting to gasp in amazement
at the light and the noise, up close.

No one thought about the invisible woman
when the engines were called in;
no one thought about her when the engines drove away.
She doesn't know this.
The invisible woman dreams of
Death by Public Hanging
until she realizes all clues linking her
to the library fire are invisible too.
She thinks of an old man crying,
probably the man in the moon.
The invisible woman is happy.
The invisible woman's relieved.

Posted by Holly at 8:54 AM | Comments (1)

January 19, 2006

Are We Having Fun Yet?

I am happy to report that I have a new window. I just opened my curtains so I could gaze at it with satisfaction for a few moments. It's solid and unbroken and a much better state of affairs than I woke to three days ago. There are only a few lingering annoyances about the whole business: first of all, although the glaziers washed the inside window before they installed the storm window, they didn't get all the grubbiness off it: you can still see a few smudges where the snowball or chunk of ice thudded against the inside window. Secondly, there are a few bits of glass and other debris trapped on the sill between the storm and the inside window, and since neither opens, the only way to get rid of said debris is to remove the storm window. Of course I won't do such a thing in the middle of winter, but I'm anal-retentive enough to get someone to help me do it when the weather warms up, because I just don't like knowing those bits that shouldn't be there, are.

And third, as I mentioned in yesterday's post, I'm still mulling over the unpleasant idea that some people find vandalism fun. I've been the victim of such "fun" a time or two before. One Saturday morning during my last spring in Iowa, I got up, went out to my car to run some errands, and discovered that someone had kicked in the tail lights during the night. My neighbor told me that someone had knocked over his motorcycle and broken its mirrors.

I dutifully reported the incident to the cops. A nice middle-aged policeman came to take the report. "I don't get it," I said. "Why do people do stuff like this? Why do they think it's fun?"

"Too much alcohol and too much testosterone makes people stupid and mean," he said. "Add in that warm weather's finally here after a really long winter, and you've got all kinds of petty vandalism going on."

But that still doesn't explain why people think vandalism is fun. And as much as I would like to believe that women and girls as a whole don't get off on inflicting damage, I know better.

When I was in high school, there were these girls I knew through church whose idea of a fun way to pass a Tuesday evening was to go to Safeway, fill up a grocery cart with perishables like sirloin roasts and ice cream, as well as health and hygiene items like Preparation H and maxi-pads, then abandon the in the middle of the cereal aisle. These were girls who would stand up during testimony meeting and weep feelingly as they talked about the importance of living a Christ-centered life. When I heard them laughing over how much fun this activity was, I said, "Wow, letting perfectly good food spoil and delighting in making someone else clean up after you--that's the kind of thing Jesus would definitely approve of. Way to be a shining example of the gospel in action! No wonder you feel so strongly that the church and all its teachings are true."

To which they replied, "Sheesh, what a stick in the mud you are. No wonder no one ever asks you out."

Then there were a few of my friends who thought it was really fun to go to Pizza Hut, sit in a booth where you had a view of the door into the bathrooms, plug up the toilet in the ladies' room with toilet paper, then watch the expressions on people's faces sharpen in dismayed disgust as they realized they were standing in a few inches of water backed up from the toilet.

"Why on earth do you guys want to do something so stupid?" I asked. "First of all, it's a crime--it's vandalism. Second, it's taking pleasure in someone else's misfortunes. Is that really the kind of person you want to be?"

Melanie--who also really liked the abandoned grocery cart approach to fun--scowled at me. "You're such a killjoy, Holly. Next time we come to Pizza Hut, if I have anything to do with it, you won't be invited."

(Ah, Melanie: the girl who told me that she had it on very good authority that drinking caffeinated beverages would be enough to keep you out of the celestial kingdom, even if you obeyed all the other commandments of the gospel. But there was no commandment expressly condemning willful acts of damage to others' septic systems, so she could still get into heaven while I, Coca-cola drinker that I was, could not.)

As I said, I understand a desire for revenge without necessarily approving of it. But Melanie and the others had nothing against the other patrons at Pizza Hut, or even against the employees, managers or owners of Pizza Hut. They just found it amusing to see people be unhappy, uncomfortable and inconvenienced.

WHY? Why do people think such things are fun? Why is it funny to see someone slip on a banana peel and fall down? I never thought that was funny, even as a very little girl. "Why are people laughing when that man is crying?" I would ask. I never liked slapstick, and I have always hated Groucho Marx, whose humor is predicated on not merely mocking but humiliating and tormenting people who have done him no great wrong, who are simply weak or stupid or unattractive. I don't find such things funny; I find them despicable. I not only don't want to hang out with people who do such things, I also don't want to hang out with people who laugh when others do them.

And if that makes me a killjoy, so be it.

Posted by Holly at 9:09 AM | Comments (7)

January 18, 2006

A Pain in the Pane

Sunday night I heard and felt some sort of concussion rattle all the glass in my upstairs windows. It was about 10 p.m. and I was in my bathroom, getting ready for bed. I could have sworn something had been thrown at and broken one of my windows, but I checked every pane in every window upstairs, and they were all fine. So I got in bed, read for a while, slept heavily, got up on Monday morning around 9 (because it was a holiday and I didn't have to go anywhere), went downstairs and opened the drapes in my living room, and discovered that the big pane of plate glass in the storm window in the front of my house was broken.

The good news is that only the storm window broke; the panes on the window inside are still intact, so I haven't had frigid air blowing into my living room; nor have I had to worry about someone crawling into my home through some giant hole in the front of my house. And that is genuine good news and I am grateful that things aren't as bad as they could be.

The bad news is that someone threw something at my window--from the marks on the unbroken pane behind the storm window, I'm guessing it was a very firmly packed snowball or a chunk of ice (there's been plenty of it in the streets lately)--hard enough to break it.

I looked at the window for a few minutes, and then I did what needs to be done: I hauled out the yellow pages, looked under "glass," and called someone to come see about replacing the broken panes. The receptionist told me that they'd been "bombarded" with calls all morning. "Someone was busy last night," she said. "I don't know if it was a full moon or what...."

"It was," I said. "And the beginning of the semester, and the night before a holiday."

"Anyway," she said, "there are lots of broken windows, all over town--east side, west side. Since you've still got the window inside that's not broken, we might not get to your place until tomorrow, if that's OK."

I told her it was OK. And indeed, on Monday, it was OK. But Tuesday I sat in my living room and watched as the sky grew gray and sullen. The wind became fierce and rattled the jagged shards against each other; every so often I'd look up just in time to see a few more nasty chunks of glass break free from the casing and clatter against the inside window before shattering on the sill.

A guy from the glazier's finally showed up around 3 p.m. "How you doing?" I asked.

"Better than you," he said, eying my window.

He was helpful and pleasant, and figured the best way to deal with the problem was to take down the broken storm window, take it in to the shop, and replace the pane there--he said it would be easy and quick and not that expensive: the estimate he gave me was just over a hundred bucks. I was very glad about that last bit: I'd hoped it wouldn't cost much more than that, but I'd certainly been prepared to pay more.

The problem with doing it right away, he added, was that the wind was so ferocious and what was left of the window so brittle and jagged that it was too dangerous to try removing the storm window alone, and he wouldn't let me help him--he said he needed another professional, and that it could be a day or two before he could make it back with help. "If I were you, I'd just close the curtains for a couple of days and hope for the best," he said.

But this morning around 8:30 I heard still more glass breaking, and when I went downstairs, the guy was back with a partner and they were cheerfully knocking out the remaining scary bits. "You caught us breaking in!" the new guy said, grinning.

"You caught us breaking something," the first one said.

"Well, I'll leave you to it," I said. I may even have a new window by noon.

It occurred to me that the breaking of my window could have been intentional, that someone--a disgruntled student, perhaps--could have been angry enough at me to want to damage my home. But a couple of things lead me to suspect (hope?) that it was an act of random vandalism: first of all, I've been pretty generous when handing out grades the last couple of semesters; secondly, mine was one of many, many windows broken Sunday night--I find it highly unlikely that every pane shattered ended up that way because it belonged to someone in particular.

And I don't get it. I don't see the appeal of vandalism for vandalism's sake. I admit I find it therapeutic to throw a rock, good and hard, but I try to throw it at something that won't break: a tree, for instance, or another, bigger rock, or a body of water at least the size of a bathtub. I also understand revenge; I understand wanting to hurt someone who has hurt you first. I'm not saying I approve of it or am proud when I indulge in it myself, but I understand it. But the appeal of random vandalism--that I definitely don't understand.

I'll have more to say about this tomorrow.

Posted by Holly at 9:31 AM | Comments (2)

January 17, 2006

A Bad Case of the Crankies

You know you've got a bad case of the crankies when you find you'd rather tackle filthy, foul, anti-social tasks like cleaning the cat box and scrubbing your toilets than attend to intellectually stimulating, socially rewarding pursuits like writing a few blog entries, posting some comments on blogs you like reading, and answering your email.

Which is how I felt yesterday.

What can I say. It was a holiday and I didn't have to go anywhere or see anyone, and the litter box was starting to smell up my entire basement and the toilets looked so grubby I could hardly bear to pee in them.

And I was very cranky. One reason was the stuff I posted yesterday about how climate change is going to speed up and render parts of the world uninhabitable--I did the math, and if Lovelock is right, by the end of the century Phoenix will regularly have high temperatures of 135 F--and another was that when I mentioned global warming to my mother the other night, she did that standard, stupid, Pro-Bush anti-planet thing of telling me it was a hoax.

There are other reasons why I'm cranky, at least one of which I plan to tell you about soon.... I've been mulling over this unpleasant occurrence and its implications for a good 24 hours--I even woke up in the middle of the night and spent some time brooding over it.

But the holiday is passed, my toilets are clean and now I've got work to do that requires me to deal with other people, so I'll get busy doing it.

Posted by Holly at 9:29 AM

January 13, 2006

Fun and Games

During my recent visit in Arizona, at each of the homes I hung out at, I played a game. At my parents' house I played Chinese checkers; at my sister's house I played the Turner Classic Movies version of Scene It?; at my brother and sister-in-law's house I played Carcassonne.

Chinese checkers was one of my favorite games when I was little--at least, it was my favorite game to play at my grandmother's house. My grandmother had this really cool set: a round, flat tin about the size of a dinner plate that served as both playing surface and storage for the marbles: you pushed a lever and suddenly six shallow holes appeared, each holding ten very beautiful translucent marbles of a specific color. When I saw that my mother had bought a set I asked her what happened to that set and she said she didn't know, but she bought the new one because she did remember how much we liked the game. I convinced her to play with me a few times, and when she got tired of that, I played myself, trying to figure out the fastest way across the board. It was so much fun that I think I'll have to find a set and someone to play with.

I am not a terribly competitive person, which is one reason I suck at sports: I prefer winning to losing, of course, but winning often doesn't seem worth the work it requires, and as long as my opponent doesn't gloat or play dirty, I can lose without minding much. This attribute comes in handy when I play any kind of trivia game with my sister Lisa, who has one of the best memories I have ever encountered in my life, and generally takes any and all who challenge her. When she was a teenager, her boyfriend (subsequently her husband) took her home to meet his parents, and they ended up playing Trivial Pursuit. She got a question about the name of a man who spent his life tracking down Nazi war criminals, and when she knew the answer--Simon Wiesenthal--her future father-in-law became enraged, convinced she had cheated. He couldn't believe that this perky bleached blonde whose shoes and handbags always matched had the intellectual capacity to even understand what it meant to hunt down war criminals, much less remember the name of someone who did it. I watched the same thing happen with a guy I was dating: we sat down to play Trivial Pursuit with Lisa, and she ended up kicking his ass and mine. He was flummoxed and angry; I couldn't have been more pleased if I'd won myself, since it meant he finally admit to me that Lisa was a lot smarter than she first appeared.

Anyway, all of this is to say that I lost when I played Scene It? with her. Not only did she knew the directors of movies she'd never seen, but she also just got a lot of easy questions: "What country was The Sound of Music set in?" Then there was this one category of question that I got wrong and she got right every time: you'd see someone's high school yearbook photo, and have to figure out who it was. "How can you tell who these people are from these grainy black and white photos?" I asked. "They don't look anything like their publicity shots."

"I guess I can just see the diamond in the rough," she said.

This game comes with a DVD; a lot of the questions involve watching a film clip and then providing some detail about it. There are cards with questions, but they're not so interesting, and after a while, we set the DVD to "party mode," which meant it just cycled through all kinds of clips and all kinds of questions. Then we weren't competing; we were just seeing what we knew about the movies, and that was really addictive; we stayed up far too late doing that.

The game I liked best was Carcassonne. My sister-in-law, Mia, really loves board games, and she and my brother have a bunch. But this one was special. It involves selecting tiles (laid face-down, of course) on which were bits of river and/or road and/or a town and/or a cloister and/or farmland, which you then arranged to form medieval settlements, farms and roadways around a river. I totally dug it, and I totally won, every time we played, either because of 1) beginner's luck or 2) the fact that I was most likely a medieval French peasant in a past life and so understood intuitively the goal of the game.

My all-time favorite game is Celebrities, which requires no special equipment. (If you don't know how to play, let me know--I'll try to post something about it in the future.) I admit I don't own any game equipment except a deck of cards, and I had all the games removed from my computer because otherwise, I would waste time playing them. But all of the games I played over the holidays are worth owning, and I may break down and buy one.

Anyone want to tell me about a game you really like?

Posted by Holly at 9:35 AM | Comments (3)

January 12, 2006

People Often Enjoy Sleeping with Co-Workers, But Get Little Support when Doing So

An interesting piece from the Independent UK detailing a study in Britain recommending that companies find ways to support people who have affairs with co-workers. Chantal Gaultier, the researcher, "found that while the employees said that their productivity had not been affected during the affair, all admitted that their workplace performance had decreased after their romance broke up." Ms. Gaultier goes on to conclude that "Although all of the couples split up, none of them regretted the affairs. Most said they would do it again if the occasion arose. While some of them were married, they did not express feelings of guilt, which shows the fact that people are going to be having these romances whatever companies do.

"The problem is that, after the split, these people often have to work together and see each other every day. This can have problems especially when there is no support or help for them from their employers."

I admit to dating a co-worker or two, and no one at work helped me out.... I can't really think what I would have wanted my employer to do, but then again, certain circumstances meant that the stakes weren't very high. However, I can think of one time when one coworker dated another coworker and it ended badly, and the employer really made things worse.... Most places have some sort of policy about how to deal with sexual harassment, but I think some sort of sensible policy that recognizes that dating does not always equal sexual harassment, would be in order.

Posted by Holly at 8:34 AM

January 11, 2006

Love vs. Whatever

As promised in yesterday's post, here is a list of scenarios about various ways people approach relationships and marriage in which love and other concerns might be in conflict.

Before presenting the list, I instructed my students to let memory and imagination run wild, to think of every dysfunctional relationship they'd either been in or witnessed.

A. Imagine that you go home and say, "Mom, Dad, guess what. I'm engaged. He's so great. He's a sculptor and, well, he's unemployed right now, and he just dropped out of school because he felt like his teachers couldn't really understand his vision but he's so talented, he's so great, and I'm going to drop out of school and go to work and support him until he makes it big." They say, "Um, OK, well, when can we meet him?" and you say, "When he gets out of rehab." I don't care what you say about marrying for love instead of more practical concerns--your parents would FREAK.

B. Imagine that a friend who grew up in a really conservative religious home in rural Iowa. She's always had a thing for bad boys, and she falls in love with this guy who spends all his money on his Harley. And he loves her too--he treats her really well--and they get engaged. Both families are HORRIFIED. Her family says, "Did you have to fall in love with a criminal?" His family says, "Did you have to fall in love with someone whose dad is going to call the cops as soon as someone lights up a joint at your reception?"

C. Imagine another friend. She's really smart, president of your sorority, has a 3.9 GPA, does all this other extra curricula stuff, gets accepted to Harvard medical school. Now, she loves Big Macs. And she finds an all-night McDonald's near her apartment in Cambridge and studies there. And she falls in love with the manager. He's a really nice guy but he dropped out of high school because he had a drug problem and his parents stuck him in rehab. He finally got a GED and he worked his way up the ladder at McDonald's and that is the extent of his ambition: he wants to work for McDonald's his whole life. They get engaged, and her family FREAKS. "You're going to be a radiologist and earn $300,000 a year and he's going to flip burgers his whole life and earn $30,000 a year! Can you really believe that is going to make you happy?" But is MONEY the ONLY issue? Then there are his friends. They HATE her. "She's f*ckin' bitch, she's such a snob, acts all high and mighty 'cause we drink Old Style, gets all mad when we want take him to boxing matches, blah blah blah."

D. Now imagine that your dad dumps your mom for a 19-year-old stripper. Who are they going to hang out with: his friends or hers? Will they HAVE any friends but each other? Will any of your siblings refuse to talk to him? Will you still talk to him?

E. How many of you know someone who broke up with a boyfriend or girlfriend because that person wasn't ambitious enough? Examples:
1. He's not on the football team any more, and I really want to date a football player because I'm a cheerleader, and that's just more fun
2. He asked me to marry him and I really love him, but all he wants to do is work for his dad and take over the farm. I want to travel, and I don't want to raise my kids in Truro, Iowa.

F. How many of you know someone who got dumped, and instantly went out and dated or made out with or slept with or MARRIED the first person who came along, just to prove that SOMEONE wanted them, that they weren't just going to be all heart-broken and sad over the creep who dumped them?

G. How many of you know someone who just can't stand to be alone? As in "I hate not having a boyfriend because I hate going to the movies by myself and it's no fun at parties if you don't already have a boyfriend and besides, I need somebody who, like, can fix my car and help me carry heavy things"–the issue of significant other as personal servant.

H. How many of you know someone who got married because they were pregnant or had gotten someone pregnant?

I. How many of you know someone whose favorite pastime is not just flirting, not just sleeping around, but trying to make people fall in love with them? How many of you have met a modern-day version (male or female) of Henry Crawford from Mansfield Park, who says, "I have two weeks to kill, and I want to make someone fall in love with me. I want her to smile at me, and keep a chair for me by herself wherever we are, and be all animation when I take it and talk to her; to think as I think, be interested in all my possessions and pleasures, try to keep me longer here in town, and feel when I go away that she will never be happy again. I want nothing more."

J. How many of you know someone who married for love, but who, as the years went by, either fell out of love, or found that they didn't love each other as much as they thought, or found that they couldn't stand to live together, and so got a divorce?

K. How many of you know someone who fell out of love but stayed in a bad marriage because of kids, or because they didn't have enough skills that they could get a decent job and support themselves if they left?

L. How many of you know someone who dated, got married, seemed to be completely in love with someone, then left the relationship because they'd realized they were gay?

M. How many of you know someone who got married just so they could get cheaper health insurance?

N. How many of you know someone who says, "I want to be a virgin when I get married, and I only want to have sex with a spouse I really love, my whole life." How about someone who says, "I want to get laid as often as possible by as many different people as possible." How many of you know people in between those two extremes? Now imagine how grossed out Austen would be--not just in a religious sense of sin, but in a sense of demonstrating a lack of self-worth and self-dignity-- if she could witness a Saturday night at some undergraduate meat market bar, all these girls just desperate to go home with some loser who is never going to speak to them again. Imagine her writing a book about that.

O. Now. Who can tell me about the dating and marriage practices among British people who own at least two houses, a huge house in the country as well as an apartment in London, who sends their kids to Oxford and who own at least one Rolls Royce and one Jaguar? OK. That is the modern version of the class of people that Austen is writing about, and if you don't know any of them today, you don't know that things have changed that much. I admit I don't know for sure, but my guess is that people of that class marry for much the same reasons as they did 200 years ago, and as evidence I offer the very public failure of a marriage between people of even higher classes, i.e., Charles and Diana--a marriage that was billed, by the way, as a love match, though we know now all about Camilla, and what Charles was really after in that marriage.

We have little room to take the moral high ground when it comes to relationships. Our legal system is better; our educational system is better; women have more rights and opportunities, but when it comes to the interpersonal stuff, I think it likely that on a whole, we date and have sex and get married and get divorced for reasons every bit as pragmatic and/or deplorable and/or convoluted and/or pure as any motives anyone had in Austen's day. Instead of thinking how relationships have changed since Austen's day, I want you to think about how they might be exactly the same. Your writing assignment for next week is to pick any relationship in Emma and to write about a relationship you personally have observed that parallels it closely in some way.

Posted by Holly at 1:22 AM | Comments (3)

January 10, 2006

Prudent Matches

I've been reading all over the blogosphere about the January 3, 2006 NY Times editorial by John Tierney, discussing how smart, educated straight women are likely to end up alone because they won't date dumb men with bad jobs: these women actually do something so calculated and unromantic as consider a man's earning potential in deciding whether or not to marry him.

I admit I haven't read the editorial--I don't subscribe to the paper version of the Times, so if I want to read its columnists on line, I have to pay for the privilege, and I wouldn't fork over my last dingy centime or any other piece of no-longer-current European currency to read a single word by that shithead Tierney. Thus, my response is based only on a few excerpts and synopses provided by others. And my reaction to the synopses and excerpts I have read is pretty much this:

Duh. So what.

I mean, OF COURSE INTELLIGENT, EDUCATED STRAIGHT WOMEN TEND TO THINK ABOUT HOW MUCH MONEY A GUY IS LIKELY TO EARN IN DECIDING WHETHER OR NOT TO MARRY HIM. AN ABILITY TO GRASP THE IMPORTANCE OF THINGS LIKE FINANCES IS PART OF WHAT MAKES THEM SMART AND PART OF WHAT HELPED THEM BECOME EDUCATED.

Before I pursue that premise any further, let me make one thing clear: I'm a big believer in love. I love a lot of people. I've been in love and it has changed my life in ways I'm still grateful for. I think falling in love is one of the best things that can happen to someone. I believe in the redemptive power and possibilities of love.

And I used to think that the fact that you really, truly loved somebody sort of meant you HAD to get married, because if you love someone as much as I loved a couple of people, your feelings for them OBLIGATED you to vow to spend the rest of your life with them.

Funny how things work out.

I'm sure someone will accuse me of being as cynical and cold-blooded as John Tierney seems to have labeled my entire demographic group for what I'm about to say next. But despite my belief in love I question whether or not it is really the main reason we marry, and perhaps I feel that way not only because I am a 42-year-old single woman with a PhD, but because I'm a 42-year-old single woman with a PhD who twice in her life rather expected to get married to men I loved whole-heartedly--once I was even engaged. But I didn't end up marrying either of those two men I loved so deeply. The fiancé I didn't marry because he was gay, though we're still friends, partly because he had the decency NOT to marry me--it would have been pretty easy for him to go through with the wedding so that he could live a conventional "straight" life, much like the guys in Brokeback Mountain (which I saw with Wayne over Christmas and which I plan to write about in the near future). The other I didn't marry for a whole range of reasons including the fact that he never asked me and that, as he informed me eventually, he was "ashamed" (his word--I'm not making this up) to love me because he knew his father wouldn't approve of me: I hadn't gone to an ivy league university, like his family did; I was from rural Arizona instead of the suburban Connecticut; I had had braces but not a nosejob as a teenager. (The guy's father was a plastic surgeon, and this rotten ex of mine had miserable teeth but a finely sculpted nose.) The fact that I was more likely to finish my dissertation and get a job than he was, was actually another strike against me--he felt threatened.

So yeah, I learned a few lessons there about prudence.

I also know too many Mormons who got married far too young to the wrong person--a person whom, in their limited experience, they honestly believed they loved. But they were 21, fairly naive, incredibly horny and anxious to remain a technical virgin long enough that they could get married in the temple, which means "obeying the law of chastity," or not committing fornication. What they actually married for, some of them discovered eventually, was lust, curiosity and boredom.

I also know people who got married because (as they admitted either at the time or when they tried to figure out how they ended up in such a screwed-up marriage) they felt it was the next step in adulthood, and although they claimed to love the person they married, the marriages didn't last long--though they often lasted longer than they should have.

I also know people who got married primarily to obtain health benefits for themselves or their partner. Some of those marriages have survived; some haven't. But as advocates for gay marriage point out, a legally recognized marriage is important not because it creates or recognizes any kind of LOVE, but because it creates and recognizes economic and social privileges and rights.

This whole discussion reminds me of what happened when I taught a course on the novels of Jane Austen at the University of Iowa in 2001. (Which isn't surprising given that the title of Tierney's article is "Male Pride and Female Prejudice," although the way the article is summarized--"Traditionalists seem to be a dwindling minority as men have come to appreciate the value of a wife's paycheck"–suggests that Tierney's never read Austen carefully enough to notice the plethora of fortune-hunting men chasing little girls with big dowries.) The course was an evening course that met once a week for two and a half hours. I had 20 students, 19 young women and one young man, which made for an interesting dynamic: there was one night when the guy had to leave early, and after he walked out of the room the rest of us looked at each other and burst out laughing--there was this cool slumber-party feel to the rest of the evening. (He also mentioned at the end of the semester that he had learned more from that class than from any other class he had ever taken--he had never realized how much he didn't know about women. Imagine!)

Anyway, although I loved the class, I was extremely disappointed when I collected the first batch of papers: all but two or three of them advanced the simplistic, facile assertion that "In Austen's day people married for money, but today, we marry for love." It pissed me off because it was wrong on both counts, and it meant the students weren't paying close attention either to the books we were reading or the lives of people around them. In Austen's day, money was certainly a consideration but it wasn't the only one, and there was and remains a difference between a cold-blooded hunt for the richest spouse you can possibly catch, and a realistic recognition of what kind of income you have to have if you want to raise two kids and send them to college.

So to prove my point I wrote up a list of various scenarios involving love, status, social background and wealth, which I'll post next time.

Posted by Holly at 9:19 AM | Comments (3)

January 7, 2006

In Praise of the C Word

In the January 1, 2006 Sunday NY Times Magazine, there is a piece by Daphne Merkin as part of "The Way We Live Now" column that begins, "These are cruel times for vaginas." The piece goes on to describe various procedures that can be done to "improve" the appearance of external female genitalia, ranging from the "so-called Brazilian waxes" to labiaplasty, which "fixes" labia that are too big or too small or otherwise "defective."

I rather like the tone of the article: Merkin makes it clear that she finds the whole business hogwash, though I think the best section is devoted to the silliness of "hymen-reattachment surgery,"

once a desperate stratagem undertaken by young women from Muslim, Asian and Latin American cultures that demonized the loss of virginity before marriage, [which] is now being hawked as a way to enjoy a second honeymoon. If it's unclear whom this procedure is meant for--aging women hoping to catch a flagging penis with the semblance of undeflowered innocence?--it's even more ontologically ungraspable how stitching a hymen back together vitiates the psychological experience of having already lost your virginity.

Nonetheless, I was bothered by the fact that in her opening sentence, Merkin uses the term "vagina" when she should have used the term "vulva" or "pudendum."

Don't believe me? Consider these definitions:

vulva: The external genital organs of the female, including the labia majora, labia minora, and vestibule of the vagina. [Latin, womb, covering.]

pudendum: the human external genital organs, especially of a woman. Often used in the plural. [Latin, neuter gerundive of pudere, to make or be ashamed.] (The fact that the term is literally rooted in shame is the main reason I will avoid using it.)

vagina: The passage leading from the opening of the vulva to the cervix of the uterus in female mammals. [Latin, vagina, sheath.]

I know, I know: some of you are pointing out that we've covered this territory before: there's a section on it in Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues: Ensler includes a letter from Jane Hirschman, honorary chair of the Vulva Club, membership in which cannot be extended to Ensler (much to the dismay of those already in the club), because membership is "predicated on the understanding and correct usage of the word vulva and being able to communicate that to as many people as possible, especially women." Ensler includes the letter without responding directly to it, and although she names the next monologue "The Vulva Club," once that piece is done, she goes right back to using the word vagina to mean both vagina and vulva.

I think it's good that we can talk openly about the vagina, but I wish we could talk openly about the vulva too. I think how awkward it would be if, when we wanted to talk about an arm, we never used that word--even though it was available to us--opting instead to use the word hand, which was supposed to mean both that thing at the end of your arm with fingers on it, and the arm itself, in contexts that didn't always make it clear which body part you were actually referring to.

Sadly, in pop culture, the generally accepted and acceptable term meant to invoke all of female genitalia is vagina. Vulva, apparently, is too fastidious and precise; cunt and pussy are too crude. (More about those terms later.) But that raises the question: WHY is vagina the more familiar, accepted term?

In 2001, at Sunstone, I participated in a Mormon version of The Vagina Monologues, though it had to be retitled: it went by the name "Sacred Spaces: Mormon Women's Faith and Sexuality," though I thought it should have been called "The Vagina Testimony Meeting." I began my piece by stating that

I am happy to participate in the project of claiming the sexuality of Mormon women as sacred spaces. But I'd like to ask: what does space mean? Are we talking geometry, as in "the infinite extension of the three-dimensional field of every day life"? Are we referring to "sufficient freedom from external pressure to develop or explore one's needs, interests, and individuality," as in, "I need my space"? Or are we talking about "a blank or empty area"? I'd like to cast my vote for the freedom to explore our needs, interests and individuality, but I have a feeling that first we'll have to carve out a blank or empty area in which to claim "sufficient freedom from external pressure"--in particular, pressure from the dogma that sex outside of heterosexual marriage is evil--in order to make that exploration.

I go on to ask

Should I think of my vagina as a space? I know that in the male world, a vagina, mine included, is defined primarily as a space, an empty area. But unless you're giving birth, spaciousness is not a vaginal virtue--tightness is what makes for a good vagina, and exercises are prescribed to tighten a loose vagina up.

The vagina, spacious, tight or otherwise, is not the only organ of female sexuality. Why, aside from the fact that it is a receptacle for a penis, is the vagina so often the focus of discussions of female sexuality? The vagina is a deep subject but I would like to broaden this discussion, add a few contours. I would like to say the word pussy. I would like to say the word cunt. These words, unmentionable in many circumstances, refer not to the vagina but to the vulva, which includes the major and minor labia, the clitoris, and the "vestibule" of the vagina. I need these words to help me answer another question: What is the female equivalent of phallic? It can't be vaginal, which sounds as clinically medical as penile or testicular. It better not be hysteric, which, derived from the Greek word for womb, has too many negative connotations. Phallic refers not just to genitalia but the symbolic power of masculinity. What is the female equivalent, what word refers not only to genitalia but the symbolic power of femaleness? And what is that power? If such a word already exists, I don't think I've heard it, and so I propose a word: vulvic. I want to invoke the power to unsettle present in the word cunt. I want a word involving not just a sacred space but a sacred presence.

So that's right: I'm one of the few people--if not the only person--to say cunt at Sunstone, in front of an audience that included 75-year-old Mormon men. An audible gasp of astonishment rose when I said the word, and a few people strode from the room in outrage, but I kept right on going. I'm used to pissing off Mormons.

I admit that like Kate at Cruella-Blog, I am and have long been a fan of the C word. (Scroll down for Kate's defense of the word. As for why I include a euphemizing asterisk in the spelling of it, it's just so my blog doesn't come up when people are googling the term for porn sites. Note: I finally decided that writing "c*nt" was silly, and I came back and just wrote the word properly, as it deserves to be written: CUNT.) I like how strong it is: one clipped syllable, with plenty of firm consonants. I much prefer it to the term pussy, even though I quite like cats. I don't like that pussy is diminutive or animalistic, and I HATE that it's used by men as a term of derision for a weak, cowardly man: it really bothers me when straight men, who claim to take pleasure in women's bodies, invoke women's bodies as a way to insult other men. Admittedly, calling someone a cunt is about the worst insult you can hurl at him/her (compare it to calling someone a dick) in part because of the term's generalized ability to unsettle people, but to me, that's one indication of the word's inherent strength, one more reason it deserves my usage and respect.

I praise not only the word itself, but what it represents, and I also praise women who love their cunts as they are.

A follow-up to this is posted here.

Posted by Holly at 5:24 PM | Comments (8)

January 6, 2006

Home Again

As you'll no doubt have surmised if you read my entry about what happened when I picked up my mail, I'm home. I left my sister's house in Mesa well before dawn on Tuesday and got back to my house in northwestern Pennsylvania well after dark. I can't say my trip home was anything approaching an ordeal: the only problems were that 1) the airport was PACKED and getting through security took about as long and involved as much standing around and responding to the commands of officials in silly uniforms as a college football game, because the Fiesta Bowl had been the day before and seemingly every last person who went to the damn game had a flight out of Phoenix the same time as mine; and 2) my flight was delayed about 30 minutes because we couldn't leave without our flight attendants, who got stuck in traffic on the freeway. But once they showed up, everything was fine: I made my connection on time; my suitcase rolled onto the conveyor belt early and intact; the weather here in PA was OK (rain rather than snow); I didn't have to call a cab because there was already one waiting, blah blah blah.

Back at my house, I was greeted by Dinah, my cat, who was yowling and needy and distressed with me for leaving her, albeit healthy and well-fed thanks to my extremely reliable neighbors. My plants were all alive and aside from the cats toys scattered all over the living room floor, the place was pretty tidy (I always straighten up before I leave, because I hate coming home to a messy house), and I was really glad to be home, blah blah blah.

I AM glad to be home, really and truly. But I never enjoy the first day or two after I get home from a long journey, because there's just so freakin' much to do, and most of it isn't that fun (i.e., spending three hours sorting through a gigantic stack of mail). I generally find the outbound part of a journey much more pleasant and pleasing than the return. Outbound, my suitcase is filled with clean clothes and gifts I'm excited to give someone; I feel virtuous and entitled to fun because I've arranged for business to go on without me for a week or two; most of all, I'm looking forward to spending time with people I haven't seen in a good long while. But on the trip home, I've got a suitcase full of dirty laundry and souvenirs I'm not sure I should have bought; I'm a bit apprehensive about how long it will take me to catch up on the work I've been ignoring; I am well aware that it might be a very long time before I again see the people I've just said good-bye to.

But oh well. A far worse option than dealing with all that would be never going anywhere in the first place.

At this point I've pretty much put my life back in order. I've restocked my refrigerator and cupboards; I've done four loads of laundry; I've gone in to campus and turned in my syllabi to be copied, because classes start Monday. (That's right, Monday, January 9th. Most other universities start January 17th, after Martin Luther King Day. Not my institution, unfortunately, because I could really use another week to get ready for what will be a very busy semester.) And now I think I'm ready to stay home for a while--I have no trips planned until May. Because although I would hate it if I never traveled again, a few months of sleeping every night in my own extremely comfortable bed (the thing I've liked best about being home has been waking up each morning in MY BED, not a bed vacated by one of my nieces so I wouldn't have to sleep on the couch) seems pretty damn appealing.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 PM

January 5, 2006

My New Favorite Cheese

Having written recently about my new favorite plastic bag, my new favorite French cover band, my new favorite fantasy boyfriend, I figure I might as well also write about my new favorite cheese. It's Purple Haze, a wonderful soft goat cheese flavored with lavender, from Cypress Grove Chevre. Go out and buy some! It's unbelievably yummy.

Posted by Holly at 12:36 PM

My New Favorite Plastic Bag

Yesterday when I picked up my mail--all twelve tons that had accumulated during the two weeks I'd had it held--there was a package mailed from Scotland by a friend. It contained a t-shirt bearing the cover art from The Queen is Dead by (of course) the Smiths. I am not much one for wearing clothing with slogans or writing on it, but I will wear this shirt.

I've blogged about my loathing of excess packaging as well as my fondness for cool plastic bags, an eccentric interest, perhaps, but one I like to think is harmless if not virtuous, given that I reuse for as long as I possibly can something a great many people throw away. Much to my delight, included in the package was the bag in which the shirt had been carried from Unknown Pleasures, the store where it was purchased. The bag bears a claim that it is "Probably the best carrier bag in Scotland," as well as a blurb from John Peel, stating, "I was talking to a guy the other day who was trying to convince me that CDs were better than vinyl because they had no surface noise. And I said ‘listen mate, life has surface noise.'"

I personally still prefer CDs to vinyl, but I am willing to believe that the carrier bag I've got now is indeed the best one ever to have come out of Scotland, and I will treasure it for a good two to three years.

Posted by Holly at 11:44 AM