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April 30, 2006

The Difference between REAL Feminists and the Devout Mormon Kind

I've generated a fair amount of heat for myself because of my announced intention to stay the fuck away from Mormon feminists whose primary allegiance is to the Mormon part of that phrase rather than the feminist. I came to this decision after an experience I allude here, about finding a Mo-fem blog where a married non-feminist dude (he's a HUMANIST instead, but he tries to muster some interest in feminists, since he's married to one) came along and asked the age-old question, "But what about MEN?"

And wouldn't you know, most of the women started falling over themselves to say, "Oh, don't ever imagine that we'd forget about MEN! We're the NICE variety of feminists! We LOVE men! Oh, yes, men suffer! Men's problems are important! Men's problems are EXACTLY WHAT WE WANT TO DISCUSS HERE!"

And then I came along and left the following comment:

I'd like to ask: is this one of those feminist forums where a man will jump in every so often to remind the women that "men have problems, desires, concerns and issues too"?

I see it happen a lot, particularly in Mormon forums, where women are taught to defer to men, even on topics like feminism. I admit I am surprised to see it happen so quickly here, and surprised as well that no one has commented on the gender dynamics involved when, in a forum designed to promote women's voices on women's issues, a man calls attention to men's concerns, after which women rush to agree with him.

The further problem is that not only does Dude call attention to men's concerns, he also invites a comparison between women's struggles and men's struggles, ostensibly in an effort to show they are the same--and, it would seem, to remind women not to imagine that their problems and difficulties are more severe or more important than that of a man in the same situation.

Perhaps it is just me, but it seems to me it is the job of feminism to call attention to ploys like this, and it is the job of men who truly want to respect women's forums and women's voices to find other arenas in which to invite such comparisons and make such reminders. Women are told in so many ways that their concerns are not as important as men's; it seems remarkably insensitive and unkind to draw attention back to men so that women do not focus on their own difficulties, even in a forum like this.

And guess who became the naughty one in all of this? That's right: the feminist who questions male behavior and motivation. Which is why I said, "I'll have a big order of getting the hell out of here, to go."

WHEREAS if you go read I Blame the Patriarchy, when some dude drops in and does something similar, he's offered thorough (and far less diplomatic) critiques like this, from Ron Sullivan:

One thing an old broad like me has seen many many many times already is some huffulacious oh-so-sincere dude walking in to a group of women almost at random and telling them

a/ what they should be doing in their free time;
b/ how to do it right;
c/ how to be feminists;
d/ why he has their best interests at heart, really;
e/ why he’s qualified to give them orders;
f/ that they’re intolerant, which is self-evidently a Bad Thing;
g/ that they’re preaching to the choir (and the biggest surprise is that they’re preaching);
h/ that some of his best fucks are women;
i/ how to be better feminists;
j/ that they’re not serious enough;
k/ that his wife thinks he’s the greatest;
l/ what God thinks;
m/ why whatever he’s doing this month is more important then feminism;
n/ that feminism is boo-zhwah, and that’s self-evidently a Bad Thing;
o/ that they’re shrill — wow, I almost forgot shrill;
p/ that they can’t pee standing up;
q/ that they should be ashamed of themselves;
r/ that they just don’t welcome open and vigorous debate;
s/ that he needs a beer (this is followed by an expectant silence);
t/ that they’re taking everything he said wrong;
u/ that they’re unreasonable;
v/ that they’re ~touchy~;
w/ that they’ve never said anything about oppression of women in (choose sauce: Iraq, Afghanistan, China, sub-Saharan Africa, the southeastern USA, the ghet-to, Brazil, Antarctica)
x/ that they should apologize to him because his parents had him circumcised;
y/ that he Is Too A Feminist (which evidently means something);
z/ how they should transcend feminism and embrace humanism.

Pick any two menu items and get the third half-price; pick any three and get the fourth free. With five you get a can of wine. And if you’re the guy in question, you get a free hot cup of Shut the Fuck Up.

And Twisty herself examines the question Can a Liberal White Dude Be a Feminist? (she pretty much answers no, using this excellent analysis from Chris Clarke to support her reasoning), and concludes

But do MF dudes [male feminists] grasp this? No. Unaware that they are still flaunting precisely the white male privilege from which feminists aspire to be liberated, they insist on joining the rank and file so that they can explain feminism to the stupid women. They must infiltrate right down to the core (one example of which core would be, say, this blog, which expressly caters to a female audience of radical feminists). Once in, they start leaving the seat up and throwing their weight around, with the result that they either get laid (or its blogular equivalent, successfully hijacking the thread), or start whining and threatening that we’re nothing without them and accusing us accursed ungrateful humorless prudey hairy dykes of not kissing their asses with sexy enough lips.

Personally, I still think men can be feminists, since feminism is an ideology, not a biological state. I even think Mormons can be feminists. I just think, more and more, that since feminism requires a recognition that patriarchy is bad, and that (almost?) all male privilege and (almost?) all of Mormon doctrine and practice are rooted in and dedicated to the continuation of patriarchy, there will be these awful moments when a male feminist's allegiance to feminism will be in conflict with his allegiance to his own male privilege, or a Mormon feminist's allegiance to feminism will be in conflict with her allegiance to Mormonism. I hope that in those instances, the allegiance to feminism will win out, but I don't hold my breath.

In the meantime, it's nice to see feminists who take pride and pleasure in pointing out just how full of shit patriarchy really is.

Posted by Holly at 4:45 PM | Comments (5)

April 28, 2006

Bad Habits

This entry on Dale's blog, about why it is that we buy books and don't read them and then go and buy more books, reminded me of this poem, which starts off being about that very same thing. It's another old poem, written and published in the early 90s.

And oh! Guess what! This is my 200th entry.

Bad Habits

I have books I've never read,
and I buy more.
This makes me sad,
so I imagine I will read them all
in a burst of desperate determination
when I reach a place without bookstores.

It's not that there are no bookstores,
it's that the place is an island.
No, it's not that the place is an island,
it's that I make my house into an island
and pretend I can't leave.
That's when I start reading.

The story doesn't go any further than that.
OK it's not that the story doesn't go further,
it's that I'm afraid to admit
all that's left to me is hope
for a happy ending.
Hope confuses me always.

It's not that hope confuses me,
it's that it leads to other confusing things.
Hope in a right thing leads to dissatisfaction:
everyone else tries to convince you
your hope in a right thing
is really all wrong.

You can try to be strong if you like.
It doesn't matter:
one day when you're tired of sleeping,
bored by the weather and finished with your books,
your hope in a right thing will turn into
hope in a wrong thing.

It's not that hope in a right thing
turns into hope in a wrong thing,
it's that hope is a habit
as hard to break and useless
as remembering the phone number
of the house you lived in as a child,

it's not even that hope is a habit,
it's that hope is a garment
that fits you and fits you
until you awaken one morning
thinner and shorter
and suddenly dressed in despair.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (6)

April 27, 2006

Limits of Civic Pride

I've lived in some fairly miserable cities in my life--Kaohsiung and Shanghai spring to mind. Reese Witherfork tells me that Kaohsiung has gotten worse since I was there in 1986, and everything I've read assures me that Shanghai has gotten better since I was there in 1991. Still, I have no particular desire to return to either, and whenever I've felt inclined to lament the shortcomings of anyplace I've lived in the past 15 years, I can always cheer myself up by saying, "At least it's not as bad as Shanghai."

Although not as crowded or filthy or schizophrenic or cruel as Kaohsiung or Shanghai, the city I live in now isn't exactly glamorous or exciting (which I'm told Shanghai has become in certain ways, though even when I lived there you could find glamor and excitement if only you had loads and load of foreign currency, which I lacked). Instead, like so many once prosperous cities in the rust belt, it's economically depressed and culturally deprived, blighted by urban decay and bad management. Some cities have managed to remake themselves into something that can draw industry and tourists, but this place hasn't--partly because it's also cursed by crappy weather.

I can't help feeling, however, that it could be a reasonably appealing place if only someone could shape it properly, then sell that shape to other. Apparently the city council feels the same way too, because billboards have been springing up around town, bearing slogans to help residents feel good about their city.

Unfortunately the slogans are thoroughly half-assed. Instead of actually promoting the city, citing its strengths and inciting pride, the slogans bear witness to just how little civic pride we've got. One big billboard features big block letters written on notebook paper, stating,

It's OK to love this town. --Anonymous

Anonymous? Anonymous? The city council can't even find someone willing to go on record saying that it's OK to love this town? Then there's the fact that we're not assured that it's GOOD or GREAT to love this town--no, it's merely OK. Every time I pass the sign I snort in derision. The billboard is worse than blank air or even a derelict brewery in terms of announcing and advertising the city's strengths: blank air can at least provide you with a decent view of the land or city scape, while an abandoned beer factory announces to teetotalers that the place has cast off some of its hedonistic devotion to booze and announces to imbibers that at some point residents understood what a city needed to keep its residents happy.

Another billboard points out that "Lots of places are cold in the winter." Well, that's true, but it's not exactly a motto that warms the heart--or anything else, for that matter.

I'm waiting for a billboard that tells me, "Buffalo has more vacant houses than we do," or "Be glad you don't live on an Indian reservation." Though I could always offer them a slogan of my own: "This town isn't as unpleasant as Shanghai in the early 1990s."

Posted by Holly at 9:41 AM | Comments (6)

April 26, 2006

A Guy from Dorking

Found this story in the Times of London on the results of--I'm not making this up--The National Housework Survey of Great Britain 2006.

This survey was commissioned by a British cable television channel, the Discovery Home and Health channel, I guess so it could create a reality TV show, Cleanaholics, which, according to the Times, will "[follow] 27 women and three men as they plough through their chores. " The website claims the show "delves into the psychology behind [the cleanaholics'] routines, and asks – is cleaning the new therapy?" A provocative question indeed!

The headline of the Times story is, "The women who think housework is better than sex," because a third of the 2000 women surveyed reported that cleaning house was more rewarding than having sex.

But I think the real gem of the Times story is the final paragraph:

Graham Peters, 40, of Dorking, one of the minority of superclean men (about one in ten), says he wishes he could cut down on his cleaning habit. “I’ve always been tidy,” he said, “but if I got a young female to clean for me, I would give up tomorrow.”

"If I got a young female to clean for me"?!

Has he ever looked into a cleaning service?

There are plenty of things I would give up tomorrow if I could get someone else to do them willingly, graciously, free of charge, for me: mowing my lawn, servicing my car, dry cleaning my fine woolens.... Oh wait! I forgot! I CAN get someone else to do those things for me, willingly and graciously! I just have to PAY FOR IT, because people tend to expect to be paid for their work!

Oh, wait: I forgot something else: People expect to be paid for their work.... unless that work is housework, and it's done by a woman.... Then it's supposed to be UNPAID. AND it's supposed to come with the added bonus of FREE SEX once the house is clean.

And yet, I imagine that given Graham's attitude, any "young female" he could find to clean for him would be one of the women who find housework more rewarding than sex. Who wants to get it on with a guy who's primarily interested in free maid service? I wonder if they asked THAT of the women who prefer housework to sex.

Posted by Holly at 9:17 AM | Comments (10)

April 24, 2006

Monty Python and the Holy GPA

There are many ways in which I'm a hard-ass ball-breaker of a professor--my students assure me of this--but one way in which I'm nice as nice can be is the fact that I allow my students to make up for missed quizzes and minor assignments by watching movies. That's right: for students who are earning passing grades on major assignments like papers, I'll let them compensate for bombed or missed reading quizzes (which I never had as an undergrad 25 years ago, because it was assumed that we'd just actually read the work assigned, and we actually did) by renting a movie. Actually, they can rent not just a single movie but as many movies as they need--for students who aren't total goof-offs, I offer unlimited extra credit (although it only applies to missed quizzes and the like, not for crappy papers, which makes the writers of crappy papers upset) in the form of watching films I deem relevant and worthy. Not only that, but I email them a list of such films owned by the college library, so they don't even have to leave campus to watch these movies if they see fit.

There are many reasons why I do this, most of which involve the fact that it makes my life easier. It makes my life easier when I can tell a student who missed class the day of a pop quiz, "Relax. This doesn't have to have any impact on your semester grade. You can just watch a movie or two to make up for the lost points." It makes my life easier to ask, "How many of you have seen Sunset Boulevard?" and see most of the hands go up. I often invoke great movies as a way of making points about books we're reading, and it's depressing when none of my students have seen something that is both a terrific movie and an important cultural touchstone like A Streetcar Named Desire or When Harry Met Sally....

They need to see this stuff, and if I have to bribe them in order to get them to see it, well, I'll do it! All they have to do is watch the movie, and then "write a brief summary that demonstrates to me that you actually watched the movie instead of cribbing a summary of it off the internet somewhere." And what they often write in such summaries is something along the lines of

I was so bummed when I first started to watch Dr. Strangelove because it's old and in black and white, but before long I really got into it and was surprised at how funny it is. Now I want to see more movies with Peter Sellers.

or

When I first started watching On the Waterfront, I thought I would hate it because it's old and in black and white. I still think the gangsters were kind of lame (Tony Soprano would completely laugh at these gangsters) but I was really glad to know where the "I coulda been somebody! I coulda been a contender" stuff came from. Plus, I totally get the whole Marlon Brando things now! Watching this movie changed my life, because I've never been sure what to major in before, but now I know I want to major in film studies.

That's right: watching a Marlon Brando film for one of my classes changed someone's life. I admit I'm rather pleased by that.

Not all the movies I suggest are in black and white; I also try to find recent movies that are relevant to works we've read, so when we discussed Through the Narrow Gate by Karen Armstrong I offered credit for watching The Magdalene Sisters. I offered then EXTRA extra credit (15 points instead of the normal ten) this semester to see Brokeback Mountain, because it was out in theatres and we were reading David Sedaris on what it meant to be gay and because Brokeback Mountain was both really, really good and important. When we read Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee by Meera Syal about East Indian culture in Britain, I offered extra credit if they watched Bride and Prejudice.

Recently a very good student came to my office to ask about his quiz grade. I'd given a pop quiz on one of only two days he's been absent this semester, which is why he's getting a B instead of an A in that portion of his grade. He said he'd be happy to watch a movie to improve his grade but was in the mood for "something light." He's a bit older, 28 or 29 instead of 20 or 21, and has both a good work ethic and a really lively mind. Since he wanted something light, I said, "Have you seen any Monty Python?" And he had not.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have an extremely bright student who is almost 30 and who has never seen a single Monty Python movie! Is this OK? I submit to you that it is not!

I am giving this student a chance to improve his grade simply by watching Life of Brian or Monty Python and the Holy Grail!

When I taught high school on an Apache Indian reservation, I had the school buy Holy Grail so I could show it to my students--I feel that strongly that they need to be familiar with the cultural references in it--and they freakin' LOVED IT. Not one of them had seen the movie before, but they all got it, and they walked around afterward saying, "It's only a flesh wound" and "‘Can't I have just a little bit of peril?' ‘No, the peril is too perilous.'"

How can you go through life not having seen The Holy Grail? It's unthinkable. But there will be people on this planet who have seen this movie because of ME. And on certain nights when I can't sleep, I remember that fact, and it calms me.

Posted by Holly at 9:38 AM | Comments (9)

April 20, 2006

Victory

As you might have surmised from my somewhat briefer-than-usual posts this past week, I'm horrifically busy. It's the end of the semester and I'm swamped. Two weeks from tomorrow it will all be over; grades will be submitted and I'll be free!--to start working on a bunch of conference papers, finally do something about my lawn, go shopping for something to replace my hideously ugly couch.

So--in lieu of a more timely and topical post, you get a poem, published a couple of years ago and written a few years before that.

We all got down behind the barricade.
We crossed that bridge when we came to it, and
50 million times after that. On a small
clean triangle of dirt someone had planted
hyacinths, which seemed to offer as much
promise as an engagement ring, though who
was betrothed to whom we could never figure out.

The enemy had a pulse and a vigorous
sense of outrage. Also an excellent
profile, handiwork of one of New York's
finest plastic surgeons. But no one likes
someone who foists, who forces something on
another by manipulation or schemes,
and once he lost his contact lenses and
everyone saw how awful he looked in
glasses, even the women with bobbed hair
who had formed the bulk of his volunteers
were no longer vulnerable to his charms.

Ours was a hollow victory. He was not,
after all, the acclaimed supremo of
robbery and slapstick, merely someone
with a sporty car and a long line of
credit. For all the legends of his
loathsomeness circulating among us,
for all the predictions of doom based on
scrupulous readings of venerable scrolls,
there should have been more of a fight. God knows,
once you haul out the heavy artillery,
you need something to shoot at. When the
vicissitudes of battle left us not just
skittish but downright cowardly we began
to see how chaos sets you up for a sudden
jumping of regimes. We took down the barricade,
armed ourselves with simple common
eccentricities and marched off, looking
for another target, a fragment of
an angel, the head of a king, a dragon passant.

Posted by Holly at 8:52 PM | Comments (2)

April 18, 2006

As Good as My Day Was Going to Get

Warning: this post is cute to the point of being cloying. If you have a low tolerance for cuteness, don't read it. It will gross you out. It might also make you think I'm kind of pathetic, but I'm willing to take that risk.

As I've mentioned, I suffer from insomnia, which I sometimes treat with alcohol (a couple of beers or a shot of vodka being my preferred alcoholic treatment), antihistamines, or prescription sleeping pills--or, if things are really bad, both booze and pills. It's not ideal but desperate means call for desperate measures.

I also have trouble waking up. I've met--and marveled at--people who stir, open their eyes, then immediately and joyfully rise to greet the day! Not me. I stir, notice that it's morning; I look at the clock and feel profound relief if I don't have to get up in the next half hour or so, then snuggle in my blankets and doze cozily for as long as I can.

Last week sucked. Crap happened and I was anxious. As a result, I didn't get a single night of chemical-free sleep all week.

Until Sunday night, that is....

My cat Dinah often sleeps at the foot of my bed. She's black and white, cute and cuddly, and if I ever get around to learning to use the digital photo I got for Christmas (I asked for it specifically so I could post photos on my blog), I might even upload a photo of her here.

I woke up a time or two Sunday night, but still managed to go back to sleep without drugs. (Yay!) At about 6:30 a.m., I woke, turned onto my left side, nudged Dinah with my foot while making a series of silly noises intended to beckon her to me, and lo and behold, the noises work. She draped herself over my right shoulder and we both went back to sleep for a while. Then I rolled onto my back and she adjusted herself to curl under my chin, but the only place for her head was on my cheek, so that's where she stuck it. And I could feel the vibrations of her purring against my head and my bed was warm and comfortable and I thought, "This is perhaps as good as my day is going to get."

The day didn't suck. The weather was decent; work was decent; I wore an outfit I really liked. But it never did get better than lying in a warm bed I had no need to leave before I was ready while my nice little cat purred against my face.

Posted by Holly at 10:34 AM | Comments (6)

April 16, 2006

Playing The Clash Made Him a Terror Suspect

Here's a story I would have only imagined could appear in something like The Onion, but according to The Daily Mail (which I admit sort of reminds me of The Onion), it really happened.

Some British guy got hauled off an airplane and questioned for three hours because he played London Calling by the Clash and Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin in a taxi, and these songs scared the taxi man. I admit the lyrics to "Immigrant Song" are scary, but only because they're so incredibly silly--I included a link to the lyrics so you can see for yourself in case you're unfortunate enough not to be thoroughly familiar with Zeppelin III.

Read it and weep: all you need now to be to be suspected of terrorist sympathies is a fondness for classic punk and rock.

Thanks to Spike for sending me the link.

Posted by Holly at 9:50 PM

April 14, 2006

The Hinge

Today is the twentieth anniversary of the event I think of as the hinge of my life. Twenty years ago today, when I was 22, a great dark door swung ever so slightly ajar after I slammed against it so violently I cracked a rib and got a concussion. I knew instinctively that freedom lay beyond the door, but I was too frightened, too weak and muddled, to push it any further. Instead I retreated further into the claustrophobic darkness of the tiny, stifling room I inhabited, even though there was no place for me in it: it was agonizing to live there, but it was familiar, and it was also home to everyone I loved. How could I ever leave it?

That probably sounds histrionic and hyperbolic, but hey, there are times to say "today is the twentieth anniversary of something that really sucked" and then there are times to try to capture a certain profound, visceral distress accompanying an experience that can still quicken your pulse and bring bile to the back of your mouth, even after two decades.

Here's another way of saying it:

Because I wanted to discover the availability of grace and explore my own capacity for goodness, I decided to serve a mission. I volunteered to go wherever I was sent; I was sent to Taiwan. Each morning for a year and a half I pinned on my dress a piece of plastic on which someone had scratched thirteen Chinese characters, three of which were my name and ten of which were Jesus Christ End of the Earth Disciple Church, a fair enough translation for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The heart is silent, a fist-sized cone pointing down, forward and to the left, clenching and unclenching, inside a cage of cartilage and bone. The sound of the heartbeat is caused by turbulence in the blood as blood meets a closed valve, not by contractions of the heart itself.

The rib cage is shaped like a beehive, which the Mormon Church adopted as an icon, symbol of enterprise, harmony, sweetness. As a missionary I dropped through my neighbor's kitchen roof and snapped one of my ribs, one bar of the cage, right in two. Nothing escaped, nothing was freed. I only damaged my icon.

I converted people. I lost my faith. I wept. I understood nothing so well as the groanings of a body at prayer. I was told that what God wanted from me was a broken heart and a contrite spirit. I offered him both. He gave both back to me and that's what I was left with.

And here's yet another:

One muggy Monday afternoon I sat on my back balcony in central Taiwan, reading two aerograms from my friend Martha and talking into a tape recorder to her, morosely explaining my analogy of God as a bad basketball coach. I dropped one of Martha's letters; it landed on the roof of the neighbor's lean-to kitchen; I decided to try to retrieve it. Instead of regaining the letter I plummeted right through the roof. How foolish I felt, sitting cross-eyed and crying on my neighbor's kitchen floor amidst all the rubble I'd created, shouting "Hello, hello" while she stayed upstairs, shouting back at me in Chinese, "What is it? What do you want?" What I had wanted was a witness from God that he found me acceptable even with all my doubts and problems, but deep in my heart I suspected that falling through a roof was probably a sign of something else.

Here's the crux of one of two problems I was trying to work out on that tape to Martha:

Mormons believe that every last human being who has ever lived must be given the opportunity to accept the true church and be baptized, and that's why they aggressively pursue missionary work to convert the living, and do genealogy to find the names of everyone who was ever born so that baptisms can be performed for the dead, as the apostle Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 15. It's staggeringly ambitious and more generous than some plans of salvation, but still, the logic has always struck me as flawed. In Mormon scripture, God tells Moses, "For this is my work and my glory: to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" (Moses 1:39). In the Missionary Training Center we were shown a pie graph charting the number of adherents of all the world's religions. It was supposed to underscore how pressing it was that we get busy and convert the rest of the world, but I remember staring at it, thinking about the huge wedge of humanity on the chart that was Muslim, the huge wedge that was Hindu, the huge wedge that was Buddhist. Each of those religions has fewer adherents than Christianity--about a third of the world's population is Christian--but the Christian wedge seemed less substantial and imposing because it alone was fragmented into various denominations, in order to call our attention to the tiny, tiny wedge that was Mormon: in 1985, about 9 million of the earth's 5 billion inhabitants were Mormon. I considered that tiny fraction and thought, "For someone who is supposed to be omnipotent, God isn't meeting with much success in his work and his glory." Surely if it really mattered to him that the whole world hear the message of Mormonism, he'd work harder to get it out there. The Church had only been around for a little more than 150 years; if he were really anxious to offer the truth to every last human being who ever drew breath on this planet, why would he wait so long to reveal it? I felt there were several logical conclusions one could draw from this state of affairs: perhaps God wasn't omnipotent, or he didn't really care about us, or the Church wasn't as necessary to salvation as its adherents liked to claim--or perhaps all those things were true.

The crux of the other problem was this: what about art? Can God love someone who loves art and beauty and human endeavor at least as much as she loves God? And if not, why are those things so wonderful? Is creating and enjoying great art worth going to hell for?

Here's the upshot of the fall: No solutions to either problem, just more confusion. That led in turn to spiritual despair, a dark night of the soul that lasted a hell of a lot longer than a night and eventually required medical treatment. When I started crying a few weeks later and couldn't stop for hours or days at a time, I wasn't given any help or treatment, aside from the advice to work harder and thus offer my own suffering as a sacrifice to building the kingdom of the Lord; but when my body rebelled and made me so sick I could no longer sleep or digest food with any regularity, I was sent to a hospital for a barrage of tests, which eventually revealed that there was nothing whatsoever wrong with any of my organs or systems, at which point the doctor saw fit to ask me about my life, and figured out that I was depressed. (Keep in mind this was 1986, before the Prozac revolution.) I got my first prescription for anti-depressants from a trio of Freudian atheist psychiatrists who spoke to me in Mandarin while I answered in English. They could make absolutely no sense of the profound grief I felt whenever I thought about God or the Church.

The fall happened, by the way, in a particularly Edenic part of Taiwan: a small community with spacious streets and clean air (unlike the filthy cities Taipei or Kaohsiung), neatly cultivated banana fields, and a spectacular view of the marble mountain where Sun Moon Lake, Taiwan's most popular honeymoon destination, was located.

So that's right: I had a fall in an tropical edenic paradise, and I am a woman created out of a broken rib. A tidy metaphor, isn't it? I've written a book about it, trying to make it neat and comprehensible, but it's still all very messy, and I need to go be sick now.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (10)

April 13, 2006

Gender, Fiction and Reading Preferences

Yesterday I came across this article (published a week or so ago) in the Guardian UK about gender, fiction and reading preferences. Frankengirl and Mysticgypsy, you'll be pleased to learn that Jane Eyre was the novel most often cited by women as having the greatest influence on them. The novel most men cited as influential was The Stranger by Camus.

The report is fascinating and draws some interesting conclusions: Women's favorite novels were "surprisingly varied" and women found it easy to discuss the influence fiction had on them, "producing a number of key moments in their life at which they unselfconsciously acknowledged that fiction had offered them guidance or solace," while men's preferences were limited to a much smaller cluster of works, and "men were more reluctant than the women to discuss the influence reading might have had on them." As for why that might be,

Jon Elek, lecturer in English at University College London, told us: "I guess that if you admit to having a watershed novel, then you're admitting to having a watershed moment, which is something that a lot of men don't necessarily want to admit to. And to admit to having five [as respondents were asked to do] - oh, come on!"

The researchers summarize some of their findings thus:

Our final top 20 of men's reading clearly shows a majority of books with strong active narrative themes - books that might traditionally be described at quintessential boys' books. No surprise there, perhaps. Except that both our recorded interviews and questionnaire responses show these choices being made on the basis of a conscious commitment to novels that take the reader in a direction of personal development. Men's reading choices tend to identify themselves with novels that include intellectual struggle. Personal vulnerability is represented as a more or less angst-ridden struggle against convention, a sense of isolation from social normality. Catastrophe and the struggle to rise above circumstance characterise the plots.

Part of the reason for this, we decided, was that, to a far larger degree than women, men's formative reading was done between the ages of 12 and 20 - indeed, specifically around the ages of 15 and 16. For men, fiction was a rite of passage into manhood during painful adolescence. Many men admitted that they had read little fiction since, though mature men returned to fiction reading in later life, and expressed increasing enjoyment in reading for "self-reflection".

Between 20 and 40, many men we talked to openly showed an almost complete lack of interest in reading which drew them into personal introspection, or asked them to engage with the family and the domestic sphere. On the other hand, those who had remained avid readers could see distinct patterns emerging in their choices which differed from those selected by women.

A final conclusion is that

men use fiction almost physically as a guide to negotiate a difficult journey (but would rarely admit to this downright being the case). They use fiction almost topographically, as a map. Many of our women respondents last year explained that they used novels metaphorically - the build-up to an emotional crisis and subsequent denouement in a novel such as Jane Eyre might have helped negotiate an emotional progress through a difficult divorce, or provided support during a difficult period at work, or provided solace when things seemed generally dull.

Even if you get bored by the reseachers' commentary on their study, make sure you scroll to the bottom of the page and read the summary of both Jane Eyre and The Stranger--very witty!

Posted by Holly at 9:25 AM | Comments (6)

April 12, 2006

Random Question Meme

A silly meme I've seen around the blogosphere and decided to answer myself.

1) Who is the last person you high-fived?
My colleague, Dr. Sweet Baby Jesus, a few weeks ago, by the copy machine.
2) If you were drafted into a war, would you survive?
No. And then I'd be reincarnated as an English professor who is obsessed with war literature.
3) Do you sleep with the TV on?
I don't do much of anything with the TV on. And I don't like any noise while I sleep.
4) Have you ever drunk milk straight out of the carton?
Who hasn't?
5) Have you ever won a spelling bee?
No, but I came close. And the trauma I suffered in losing is probably one reason I became an English professor and dedicated a large portion of my life to marking misspelled words in the writing of young adults.
6) Have you ever been stung by a bee?
Not that I remember.
7) How fast can you type?
80 or 90 words a minute.
8) Are you afraid of the dark?
Nope. I dig it.
9) What color are your eyes?
Blue, about the shade of broken-in Levi's.
10) Have you ever made out at a drive-in?
Nope.
11) When is the last time you chose a bath over a shower?
Last night.
12) Do you knock on wood?
Not generally.
13) Do you floss daily?
Every night.
15) Can you hula hoop?
No, but I can hula. I had real hula lessons, in Hawaii. I can belly dance too. My hips are one of the most impressive parts of me.
16) Are you good at keeping secrets?
I'll never tell.
17) What do you want for Christmas?
Cash.
18) Do you know the Muffin Man?
No, but I am intimately acquainted with the Cookie Monster.
19) Do you talk in your sleep?
No.
20) Who wrote the book of love?
Oh! I know this one! I know it thanks to Robyn Hitchcock and the song "Freeze" off the totally awesome album Queen Elvis:
I know who wrote the book of love!
It was an idiot!
It was a fool!
It was a slobbering fool with a speak defect and a shaking hand.
And he wrote my name
Next to yours
But it should have been David Byrne or somebody
21) Have you ever flown a kite?
Yes, but not well.
22) Do you wish on your fallen lashes?
No.
23) Do you consider yourself successful?
I guess. Just not as successful as I want to be.
24) How many people are on your contact list of your cell?
What's a contact list?
25) Have you ever asked for a pony?
Good god, no. My grandfather was a cowboy and I regularly rode horses when we visited him. I knew how much horses ate and pooped, and how easily they could step on you. Why would I want a pony?
26) Plans for tomorrow?
Wash my hair. Do some laundry. Pick up a visiting writer at the airport. Attend his reading. Go to dinner. Think about how much I wish I didn't have to teach on Friday.
27) Can you juggle?
No.
28) Missing someone now?
I've traveled around so much and left so many places behind that I don't very often miss anyone, even people I love very, very much.
29) When was the last time you told someone I Love You?
Sunday.
30) And truly meant it?
Sunday.
31) How often do you drink?
Depends on what's going on.
32) How are you feeling today?
Not so great. I was awakened from a sound sleep by a phone call at 2:30 a.m. and it was of course a wrong number. I hate when that happens! Then I couldn't go back to sleep until I had a antihistamine and a shot of vodka. I got six more hours of sleep after that, but I feel a bit hungover, as you'd expect. Plus the weather is all gray today. However, I am cheered by my plans to wear these really cool dark green, men's wear Oxfords today with striped knee socks and a skirt.
33) What do you say too much?
I've been told I say, "I don't know" too much, but I think it's good to admit one's basic ignorance.
34) Have you ever been suspended or expelled from school?
No.
35) What are you looking forward to?
The end of the semester.
36) Have you ever crawled through a window?
I doub it.
37) Have you ever eaten dog food?
No.
38) Can you handle the truth?
I can handle the truth much better than being lied to.
39) Do you like green eggs and ham?
This reminds me of moldy leftovers I found in my mother's refrigerator.... No. I do not like green eggs and ham.
40) Any cool scars?
I have a totally cool scar: the incision at the bottom of my abdomen from exploratory surgery done when I was 14. I'm very fond of the scar, for some reason, even though I resent the surgery, which was totally unnecessary. But I like the way the thin, straight scar complicates the landscape of my body.

Posted by Holly at 9:34 AM | Comments (6)

April 10, 2006

The Really Dead Women Writers Meme

This meme was started by Bardiac. I found it thanks to Heo Cwaeth. I tried to do this cheater thing where I had Heo Cwaeth email me the html she used to post her entry, but it didn't translate well for whatever reason. Her version is better than mine because it has links to ALL the various texts, not just the ones she added. I'm sorry, but I'm too lazy to do that for you; if you want to learn about these other texts, you'll have to click on the link to HER post.

(Note as of Tuesday, April 11, Bardiac has compiled a list of all the contributions)

Starter Five from Bardiac:
Behn, Aphra - Oroonoko
Christine de Pisan (aka Pizan) - The Book of the City of Ladies
Julian of Norwich - Revelations of Divine Love
Locke, Anne (aka Ane Lok, etc) - A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner
Marie de France - The Lais of Marie de France

Dr. Virago then adds:
The Paston Women - The Paston Letters
Margery Kempe - The Book of Margery Kempe
Anonymous - The Floure and the Leafe(Her reasoning for this is on her blog)
Lady Mary Wroth - Poems

La Lecturess then adds:
Anne Askew - The Examinations of Anne Askew
Mary Sidney - Psalms
Anne Finch - Poems
Katherine Phillips - Poems
Teresa of Avila - Life

Amanda at Household Opera then adds:
Bradstreet, Anne: collected poems
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Fama y obras póstumas
Lanyer, Aemilia: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
Wroth, Lady Mary: Urania

Medieval Woman then adds:
Trotula - The Diseases of Women
Female Troubador Poets:- La Comtessa de Dia - "A chantar m'er" & other Trobairitz poetry excerpted.
Hrostvitha of Gandersheim (c.930-c.1002) - Plays Gallicanus & Dulcitius

Heo Cwaeth then adds:
Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) Scivias and Liber Divinorum Operum
Rachel Speght (1597 - Some time after 1621) Mouzell for Melastomus and Mortalities Memorandum
Anna Comnena (1093-1153) The Alexiad
Frau Ava (1060-1127) First named German poetess. "Johannes," "Leben Jesu," "Antichrist," "Das Jüngste Gericht" (That's in MHG)
Dhuoda (9th century, inexact dates) Handbook for William: A Carolingian Woman's Counsel for Her Son (at Sunshine for Women) and a dual-language version from Cambridge UP

Continuations of this meme have occurred all over; check the comments on the various blogs listed above to find other early women writers. Dr. Crazy was the one who brought up the most obvious entry of all: Sappho. (I admit I hadn't thought of Sappho myself, and I admit I was ashamed. Doh!)

One of my favorite continuations is courtesy of Natalie at Philobiblion; she adds:
Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon (A lady in waiting to the Japanese empress c. 965AD)
Eliza Haywood The History of Miss Betsey Thoughtless (1751) (and much else)
Chen Tong, Tan Ze and Qian Yi, authors of The Peony Pavilion: Commentary Edition by Wu Wushan's Three Wives (1694) They were his successive wives, by the way...
Isabella Whitney, The Copy of a Letter, lately written in meeter by a yonge Gentilwoman: to her unconstant lover (1567) and A Sweet Nosegay, or Pleasant Posy: Containing a Hundred and Ten Philosophical Flowers (1573)
Elizabeth Elstob, The Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue (1715).

Given that several of the early women writers I'd add have already been mentioned, I thought I'd discuss the early women writers I personally would recommend. Bardiac suggests the list focus on women who have been dead for 300 years, but she also mentions the scarcity of attention in college courses to women who wrote before 1800, and people seem to have interpreted that as the cutoff date as well. I'm going to follow suit in a couple of cases, because it makes the list easier and more fun for me to compile.

1. Elizabeth Tudor (1533-1603): My first great historical crush. The woman wrote some great letters and gave some truly eloquent speeches, AND she wrote poetry.

2. Margery Kempe (c. 1373-1440), The Book of Margery Kempe: MK is my favorite illiterate author. She dictated the story of her life to a scribe--perhaps her confessor. She cried a lot (she was rather proud of that fact) and was probably really annoying to be around, but the story of her spiritual development is fascinating.

3. Aphra Behn (1640-1689): I read several of her plays 20 years ago but don't remember them. What I do remember is reading some scandalously funny poem in an undergraduate lit survey about how some sexy encounter in a pastoral setting was ruined when the hot young shepherd pursuing the hot young shepherdess couldn't get it up.

I also remember wandering around Westminster Abbey 20 some-odd years ago, looking down, and realizing I was standing on Aphra Behn's grave--except that it wasn't in poets' corner; it was out in some vestibule. I wonder if this is a legitimate memory, or one I made up? I will have to ask Natalie at My London Your London if she can verify where in the abbey AB's tomb is.

(Note: Natalie got back to me with this passage from Maureen Duffy's biography of Behn:

Thrysis [Thomas Sprat, Birmingham's old chaplain, who was Dean of Westminster], I believe, was responsible for her burial in Westminster Abbey on April 20th, no doubt backed by Burnet and by those of sufficient wit and position not to mind the odium or satire that accure to them from such an act. She lies in the cloister and not among the 'trading poets' in poets' corner, but with the Bettertons and Anne Bracegirdle. (p. 294)

So, Natalie concludes, "it sounds like she was classed as 'theatre' rather than 'literature.'"

Natalie also posted the question on Philobiblion; check there to see if any discussion has been generated on the topic, and also to find a link to a picture of the tomb. The engraving on the tomb reads, "Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be Defence enough against Mortality.")

4. Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672): the first North American poet, and my personal favorite Puritan poet. (And I admit I have a soft spot for Puritans, having been one for many years without really realizing it--not in the sense of being a prude but in the sense of being "an iconoclastic, language-fetishizing, constantly self-scrutinizing, fiercely individualistic, hard-working lover of The Word who is pretty sure God isn't very nice and doesn't much like me and that it's MY FAULT, and who has therefore been subject to bouts of despair, bleak and desolate despair, which I don't much talk about because when I do, most of the world tends to assume my descriptions are inflated, exaggerated, melodramatic and not especially sincere," as I once stated elsewhere.)

5. Mary Rowlandson (1637-1710): A History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, also known as The Sovereignty and Goodness of God. (You can download the whole thing here.) Rowlandson was a 17th century New England housewife who was captured by Narragansett Indians during King Philip's War, then wrote an account of the ten weeks she spent traipsing through New England in the winter as a captive before she was finally ransomed. She was very much a product of her time: racist, provincial, convinced that the events of her life were orchestrated by a god who cared about nothing so much as teaching her a lesson. Nonetheless, I find her text remarkable for its uncensored honesty, even down the gratitude she feels that makes her grasp the hand of an Indian and weep with happiness, because he has brought her good news--which she instantly regrets, for proper Puritan housewives do not grasp the hands of Indian men while weeping tears of joy. I am also always moved by her account of the death in her arms of her six-year-old daughter, who has been exclaiming for days, "I will die, let me die." I am fascinated by her discussion of her tobacco addiction and her discovery that profound hunger and fear of starvation changes forever your relationship to food--you are always afraid of hunger after that, she says. There is also some cool prose: people are "knocked on the head" (a mildly nicer term for having one's skull cracked open) and when they misbehave, told to straighten up or someone "will break my face." Students find the text thoroughly problematic, which of course is just one more reason to teach it.

In order to be acceptable to Puritan audiences, Rowlandson's text required an introduction by an upstanding Puritan male assuring readers she was writing this only to show the sovereignty and goodness of God (hence the name) and not to sensationalize her own sensational experience. Nonetheless it was hugely popular and spawned all kinds of imitators. In fact, Rowlandson created the first uniquely American literary genre: the captivity narrative, a story in which a person (generally a woman) is captured by Indians, tormented in various ways, then released or ransomed or able to escape by her wits.

6. Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784): one of America's most remarkable poets. Born in Africa in 1753, she was kidnapped into slavery at age seven. English was not even her first language, she didn't possess (as Alice Walker points out, borrowing from Virginia Woolf) ownership of her own body, much less a room of her own, and she still managed to write "hymns, elegies, translations, philosophical poems, tales, and epyllions-including a poignant plea to the Earl of Dartmouth urging freedom for America and comparing the country's condition to her own."

7. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823): Radcliffe is acknowledged as one of the great innovators and popularizers of the Gothic novel; one website I looked at claims that The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) "was the world's first 'best-seller.'" I admit I've read more about her than by her, but one of these days I'll do it.

8. Fanny Burney (1752-1840), Evelina. I read this 22 years ago in a survey course on the 18th century novel (a class I liked so well I almost focused on that period for my graduate work) and REALLY liked it. I keep saying I'm going to read it again.... Maybe I should just read some of her other novels instead.

9. Jane Austen (1775-1817): OK, OK, I know this is kind of cheating, because none of Austen's works were PUBLISHED before 1800. But several of them--Lady Susan (special for its deliciously wicked main character), Northanger Abbey and First Impressions (which was the first draft of Pride and Prejudice), were almost certainly written BEFORE 1800. I just think it's important to remember that not only did she write really great novels, she helped shape our expectations of what a good novel should be, back when it was still rather a new form.

note (several hours later): I got an email from Spike, asking, "Where's Mary Wollstonecraft?"

Doh! So now I'm adding

10. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797): One of the most important feminists in Western history, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women. A new biography of her was published last year, Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft by Lyndall Gordon. I haven't read it but a friend has and says it's fabulous.

OK, that's what I've got now. If I think of someone else I should add, I will.

Posted by Holly at 9:28 AM | Comments (2)

April 8, 2006

License and Licentiousness (Or, Self-Portrait as Loud-Mouthed Slut)

Here are some examples of what I looked like as a painfully inexperienced 25-year-old Mormon virgin. (They're popups instead of embedded because that way they don't end up anywhere else on the internet; sorry if this inconveniences anyone.) The first is the portrait of me my mother still displays in her home:

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This next one was taken in Provo, Utah, before I went to my second mission president's homecoming talk. Check out the shoes! I still have them but I hardly ever wear them, these great peau de soie pumps with rhinestones on them.

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This last one was taken in the family room in my parents' house. I like how this huge television (by the standards of the late 1980s) is still surrounded and dwarfed by this massive wall of books. There were heavily-laden bookshelves in every room of the house I grew up in, with the exception of the bathroom--and in that room, there was a magazine rack built into the wall by the toilet. I think that explains something about who I am.

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Anyway, the quality of the photos isn't the greatest: they were scanned on an old scanner and resized with old software. Still, I think I am not flattering myself excessively when I suggest that although the photos are blotchy and blocky in the way that digitized images sometimes are, they nonetheless suggest that I was a reasonably attractive young woman--at least, I had good hair and great ankles, and I knew how to work a clutch purse.

Now, I realize that this might sound like sour grapes, but the fact of the matter is, that at the point in my life when I was pretty much the hottest I'll ever be, I hardly ever dated. Why? Because I was Puritan feminist with a piss-poor attitude about pretty much everything, but especially religion and relationships.

That state of affairs had a lot to do with my mission, which I've written about in bits here on the blog and which was the greatest trauma of my life. I finished it six days before my twenty-third birthday. When I returned to college to finish my bachelor's degree a few months later, I attended Church meetings sporadically and tried to cultivate friendships with non-Mormons, but since I didn't drink, hated going to bars, was constantly obsessed with God and usually melancholy, I met with little success.

You would have been hard-pressed to find someone more virginal and uptight than I was. I had thoroughly absorbed the message about sex crammed down our throats at church: "Sex is filthy and disgusting; save it for someone you love." Occasionally some non-Mormon guy would ask me out, but I ended things the second he asked me to put out. I just wasn't going to do that, for so many reasons, ranging from fear of religious reprisals to deep-seated prudery.

As for how things fared with Mormon guys, well, let's see: a grand total of, hmm...TWO asked me out between the time I returned from my mission and the time I left the Church nearly three years later. The first guy asked me out after I first invited him to see Depeche Mode with me (I won tickets on the radio--about the only time in my life I've done that) and we dated for a while, until he got too thoroughly on my nerves. The second guy--well, he was a 20-year-old missionary, which means he was expressly forbidden to date, but since we'd fallen in love at first sight I hung out with him anyway, made plans with him to get married and live happily ever after, etc, none of which happened because he was, it turns out, gay, though we're still good friends to this day.

Why wouldn't Mormon men date me? I was pretty; I was bright; I had FABULOUS homemaking skills--I cooked, baked, sewed, knitted, and kept a clean house. I was good with babies. I managed my finances well. I would have made an ideal wife. Except there was that piss-poor attitude part....

I was outspoken, you see--outspoken to the point of being confrontational, and I simply could not muster any reverence for patriarchy, which translated into a profound cynicism. If I thought something was full of shit, I said so, even if I was talking to a priesthood leader in direct authority over me. And the fact that I was outspoken and not cowed by male authority was a sign, someone finally told me, that I was also a slut.

I'm not kidding.

Like I said, I was about as virginal and uptight as a girl can be. But plenty of people at church believed I had been sexually active for years. The logic went like this: I was outspoken and critical; because I claimed license to speak, I had to be licentious. It's a very old argument. It has gotten many women in trouble, including Anne Hutchinson, who liked to elaborate on each Sunday's sermon later in the week in her seventeenth-century New England Puritan home. That was fine as long as she only taught other women as they sewed together, but she acquired a reputation for wisdom and insight--and men began showing up to hear her. But church leaders knew that women could not possibly teach men, and stepped in to stop it. Hutchinson was put on trial, where she claimed the authority to preach the word of God. The prosecution argued that any woman who formulates doctrine and interprets the word of God must by definition be sexually promiscuous, for she has betrayed her sex by claiming a role allowed only to men. Hutchinson was convicted of a number of crimes and expelled from the community--she was excommunicated.

Which is why I shouldn't have found it the least bit remarkable that when a Mormon man wanted to shame me into shutting up in the discussion on John's blog, he resorted to criticizing what he knew about how I have conducted my sex life, information he gained from reading the sex archives of my blog. After first belittling my credentials and questioning my professionalism (which was every bit as offensive as he intended it to be, but I could live with it), he wrote:

And since when is sleeping around enlightened behavior Holly? You yourself have come to the conclusion that casual sex outside of a committed relationship is unlikely to bring you any kind of lasting emotional or physical satisfaction. I sincerely hope that isn't what you meant by "working one's ass off to figure certain things out." You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble by asking your average Beehive or Mia Maid about the law of chastity; they would tell you (standing on the shoulders of their enlightened ancestors) that it wasn't intended to keep you from having fun, but rather to bring happiness and trust, and save you from heartache and unhappiness, in your personal relationships.

A Beehive, by the way, is the name given to 12- and 13-year-old girls in the Church youth group; a Mia Maid is the name for girls in the 14- and 15-year-old category. As I said, I thoroughly absorbed the church's message on sex and could have spouted it back to myself, but it wouldn't have saved me any trouble, since it never told me how to deal with getting my heart broken by a man I never slept with, or by one who dumped me in the midst of one of the most committed relationships I've ever been in. "Fun" had little to do with it, and I also can't help thinking that if I'd been given healthier messages about sex when I was indeed a Beehive and Mia Maid, I might not have had such problems figuring out how to navigate gracefully through the challenges involved in sex when I finally started having it.

I said a bit of that to him.... I also wrote,

I want to point out something else you've done in this conversation that I haven't: I haven't heretofore resorted to pointedly denigrating your personal decisions about how to live your life. I admit I read your comments to John about why you stick with the church and thought, "Here's another one of those cowards who knows the church is a crock of shit, but doesn't have the guts to do anything about it." But I refrained from bringing that up, or trying to use it against you.

To the guy's credit, he did apologize for getting personal, and acknowledged the accuracy with which I characterized him. But it was small comfort after he got Melchizedek* on my ass, talking to me like he was some priesthood leader empowered to discuss the details of my life while the details of his were off-limits.

And I think that's all I have to say on that topic for the time being. My next post will have nothing to do with Mormonism, I promise.

*The Melchizedek priesthood is the authority by which adult men wield power in the Mormon church.

Posted by Holly at 2:06 PM | Comments (16)

April 7, 2006

Pots Shocked and Dismayed to Learn Kettles Also Able to Call Things Black

A progressive Mormon blogger I know recently posted something about a book he's been reading, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence by Mark Juergensmeyer. One of the blogger's conclusions was that "the perpetrators (and those who support their acts) are not necessarily sick or crazed--they merely have a different way of looking at the world."

I found that statement a bit troublesome, and left a comment stating, "It's all fine and good to remember that about the perpetrators, but the world would be a better place if they'd remember that very same thing about the rest of the world they're attacking: the secular establishment doesn't promote birth control and women's rights because we're sick or crazed; we just have a different world view."

I then added,

The whole thing is just one more reason why anything that teaches people to say something like, "The church I belong to is the only true and living church on the face of the earth" [a phrase commonly spouted by Mormons] is bad. Any time you have an institution that teaches its adherents that they are singularly special possessors of a singularly complete truth, then you're going to have problems. Which is one more reason I consider being a devout Mormon and actually "having a testimony" [which means knowing, not merely believing, core precepts of Mormonism are unimpeachably true] a form of spiritual darkness, and prefer to keep my distance from such people.

The wisdom of such an attitude, of course, is self-evident and therefore unremarkable to a great many people. However, to a "devout" Mormon, even an open-minded progressive one, it's so astonishing and troubling he can scarcely wrap his mind around it. Hence the comment that soon followed mine:

I've never bought into the notion that "The church I belong to is the only true and living church on the face of the earth", though I recognize there are many (perhaps most) LDS that say that.... I don't feel like I have to distance myself from such people as much as educate them to broaden their horizons and choose their words more carefully, because I do consider myself "devout LDS" (whatever that means). I feel I do have a testimony of certain gospel principles, but I'm puzzled why you might think that indicates spiritual darkness. Isn't the realization of specific truths more of an awakening? Or are you talking about a wholesale, unexamined buying into the whole package (speculative traditions, doctrinal warts and all)?

while someone else wrote

I still resist your spiritual darkness label for devout believers, partly because this implies that people who aren't constrained by such beliefs are somehow more enlightened.

As I related this story to a friend, (the son of a Baptist preacher), he interrupted at this point to ask, "Wait a minute. You mean these guys have never exercised enough imagination to figure out what it feels like to hear the message of Mormonism, and be told that if you don't buy into the teachings of the Mormon church, you're just not seeing the big picture or grasping the truth? You mean it's never really occurred to them that someone might think about Mormons the way Mormons think about everyone else?"

"That's pretty much what I mean," I said. "And when they were confronted with someone who did, they not only couldn't understand why I'd feel Mormons are unenlightened, they also got all defensive and hurt because of my preference for, as I put it, ‘the average secular beer-drinking Jill or Joe,' because I think such people are not only more intellectually interesting, but kinder than the average Mormon. And again, this despite the fact that Mormons are notorious for preferring their own company and not playing well with others. You're told repeatedly as teenagers not to date non-Mormons. Some parents don't even like their kids having non-Mormon friends, because they can lead their kids astray, help them embrace things like R-rated movies and patronizing establishments like Starbucks, even if all you buy there is hot chocolate."

Anyway.

There's a lot more to rest of the story.... But the rest of the story sucks. My final comment read

Throughout Jesus's ministry, he distanced himself from the establishment. He preferred hanging out with sinner and publicans to spending his time with loyal defenders of the faith, both because he found sinners and publicans more receptive to genuine truth, and because they seemed to have purer hearts, their good deeds seeming to spring from more honorable motivations. When he did end up in discussions with the orthodox, and even with those less orthodox who were nonetheless loyal to the establishment, he argued that it was harmful and beside the point to focus rigidly on things like a person's sexual history or adherence to dietary codes; instead, he thought people should consider the ways in which buying too quickly into a doctrine could be a form of spiritual darkness.

I don't want to say that I've been Jesus in this scenario, but I do want to suggest I haven't been a scribe or pharisee.

But I don't want to trace the course of how I ended up there. I want to focus on the way sexuality was eventually used against me, because it is so often used against women who challenge the religious establishment, but this is already kind of long, so I'll wait to do that later.

Don't neglect to read yesterday's post on the 11th Article of Faith.

Posted by Holly at 9:32 AM | Comments (8)

April 6, 2006

High Councilman Calls Eleventh Article of Faith "No Longer Relevant"

Remember when I vowed that I'd never get sucked into another icky discussion with Mormon women who WANT to be feminists, but can't quite bring themselves to acknowledge the problems inherent in patriarchy? Well, I am happy to say I've managed to avoid doing that--however, I somehow forgot that something much, much worse than Mormon wanna-be feminists is bona fide Mormon priesthood holders!

Yeah, that's right, Holly's been smacked down by an avuncular servant of the lord, who finds it hard to understand why she feels the church is A) intellectually inadequate and B) inhospitable to someone like her--and this despite the fact that he all but calls her a slut! There will be more on all this later--I'm planning an entry, but it involves uploading photos, and because my software is old, I always have problems getting the photos the right size.

In the meantime, I thought I'd post something I came up with for the Sugar Beet, a (now defunct) website of Mormon satire, that expresses what I think of most Mormons' attitude toward tolerating other people's religious and ethical beliefs.

FYI: today is the anniversary of the founding of the church. That's right, 176 years ago today, on April 6, 1830, Joseph Smith hung out in some old guy's living room (Peter Whitmer Sr, to be exact) and officially organized a church which had as its basic tenet the claim that Joseph Smith was the one and only person on the face of the earth authorized to know and transmit God's will to the rest of us. And hey, in case you thought accepting bullshit like that might be a sign that you're a bit gullible, well, let me tell you, a high-minded Mormon man has told me recently that that just ain't the case!

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(Pima, AZ) In a recent talk to the Pima Fourth Ward, High Councilman Layton Bryce warned members not to be led astray by too much emphasis on the Eleventh Article of Faith, which states, "We claim the privilege of worshiping the Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship, how, where, or what they may."

Bryce began his talk by reading the passage, then stating, "Sometimes people use the Eleventh Article of Faith as an excuse to refrain from doing missionary work. They say, 'I don't want to force my beliefs and opinions on people I have to live and work with. My friends and neighbors know what I believe, and if they're interested, they'll come ask me.'"

"But that attitude doesn't really fit in with our ideas about missionary work, brothers and sisters," Bryce added. "We know that we need to convert the world to the true gospel. I'm not saying we should force people to be Mormon, but we need to do all we can to persuade and teach people as to the right way to believe."

Bryce explained that the Eleventh Article of Faith was necessary in the early days, when the Church faced oppression and had not converted millions of people to the truth. "But now that the truthfulness of the gospel is accepted by so many people, that particular article of faith is no longer relevant in the ways that it once was."

Bryce went on to say that, "The events of September 11th have underscored the danger of letting everyone worship God as they see fit. There could always be some extremist who believes that worshiping God involves killing innocent people."

Reaction to the talk was mixed. Marge Pepper stated, "I definitely felt the Spirit as President Bryce was talking. I have always been bothered by the Eleventh Article of Faith. First of all, it doesn't start with 'We believe' like all the others, and I never could see why we should just let everyone else believe whatever they want when we know the Church is true. It would be better if we just got rid of it--after all, twelve is a much nicer number than Unlucky 13."

However, Roger and Joan Cannon both expressed concern over the message. "I thought Free Agency was central to the Gospel," Joan said. "It's as if he's forgotten the story of the War in Heaven, where it was decided that we all needed to be able to choose what we accept."

"What's President Bryce going to do, anyway?" her husband Roger asked. "Write to the Brethren and ask them to delete that passage from the scriptures?"

Upon hearing of such objections, Bryce dismissed them. "My talk has nothing in common with Satan's plan in the pre-existence. Remember, Satan was evil and wanted to thwart God's plan, while I am simply trying to help God accomplish his plan in the most straight-forward way possible. After all, I did say that we shouldn't force anyone to be Mormon."

Posted by Holly at 2:04 AM | Comments (8)

April 5, 2006

Well Below Prime

A couple of weeks ago I received Prime, starring Uma Thurman and Meryl Streep, in the mail from Netflix. A few days later Reese Witherfork mentioned that she was trying to get through this movie but found it boring, disappointing and "too Hollywood." Because RW is pretty freakin' astute, this assessment was enough to transform the mild anticipation I felt about the movie into vague apprehension, but as I am nothing if not dutiful, and as I eventually ran out of other things to watch, I finally put the damn movie in the dvd player, only to discover that Ms. Witherfork was right, and then some.

This movie is dreadful for so many reasons, but I'll list a few of the worst.

1. Everyone remarks repeatedly on how unusually charming and funny the male lead is, but he never says a single truly charming or funny thing.

2. The male lead has a best friend who behaves so repulsively that he can never get a second date with a woman. After he insults a woman to the point that she refuses to see him ever again, he waits a few days, drives to a bakery, buys a cream pie, then drives to her home and throws it in her face. This is played for laughs.

3. The character played by Uma says completely stupid things to her therapist. For instance, after this 37-year-old shiksa goes to bed with this 23-year-old member of the tribe, she tells said therapist how great the sex is (the joke being that the therapist realizes that she is the mother of this hot young stud). Much to the therapist's dismay, the hot divorcee elaborates--something to the effect of, "This is a weird thing to tell your therapist, but I'm too embarrassed to tell anyone else this. This guy has the most perfect penis."

Well! And this from a woman with a whole coterie of hip gay friends. I admit I am hag to only two fags, and it's been a while since I've been in therapy. Still, it seems to me that if you've got a slew of gay BFF's, you tell THEM how great your boyfriend's penis is--for one thing, they might be interested, if somewhat skeptical. They're among the people most likely to ask for details.

4. The juvenile nature of the male characters, the fact that the male lead is so great in the sack and the fact that the movie is written and directed by some young nobody makes it easy to imagine a really annoying scenario explaining how the movie was made: some young guy is thinking about how great it would be if he could bang some hot 30-something actress like Halle Berry/ Uma Thurman/ Nicole Kidman--then asks himself how he could possibly seduce HB/ UT/ NK, only to realize he could pull it off thanks to his wit, charm and perfect dick, of course! Then he remembers that his mother would be completely horrified, so he could never tell her....but what if she found out anyway? Hey, that's a great plot for a movie!!

5. The dialogue is so unexceptional and the pace so slow that after the first 20 minutes I kept hitting fast-forward. I'd stop if it looked like there was any real conflict or character development, which wasn't that often--and when I did slow the dvd player to normal speed, what I saw was so plodding and predicable that I still could tell exactly what was going on--as well as guess what would happen next. The movie was 100 minutes long, but I managed to watch the whole thing in half that time.

6. However, the most upsetting thing about this movie is the shame it arouses--that's right, shame: shame at watching Meryl Streep's degradation. One of the finest actresses of our day has been reduced to playing an incredibly annoying role in an incredibly annoying movie. It's enough to break your heart, and not in a Deer Hunter kind of way.

Long story short: avoid this movie! It is prime shit, and it will wound and depress you.

Posted by Holly at 9:09 AM | Comments (6)

April 4, 2006

US Criticizes Foreign Dude Who Fails to Care for His Own Country First

Here's an article in the NY Times criticizing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for--get this!--spending all kinds of money to fix things in foreign countries when there are still poor people in Venezuela. Thanks to this article, we learn that

Mr. Chávez is "spending considerable sums involving himself in the political and economic life of other countries in Latin America and elsewhere, this despite the very real economic development and social needs of his own country," said [Bush appointe] John Negroponte, the American director of national intelligence, in February at a Congressional hearing in Washington.

Can you imagine?! A president of some resource-rich country in the Americas, spending lots of money abroad while people in his own country go hungry, cold or naked, while there are children who are uneducated, people in their prime without work, and old people who are sick and alone? What would it be like to live in such a country? And what would it be like for citizens of other countries to know that their lives are shaped by the hypocritical meddling of a government eager to buy influence abroad, even at the expense of its own citizens' well-being?

p.s. Here's a response from Counterpunch that's pretty insightful.

Posted by Holly at 9:50 AM | Comments (3)

April 3, 2006

Daylight Saving Time Sucks

Yesterday morning I went through that strange ritual of setting my clocks ahead. I have many clocks: at least two in every room except the bathroom (just one in there, but you can see it from the bathtub), plus a clock in the basement and one of the back porch. Typically when Daylight Saving Time rolls around or goes away, I adjust all my clocks BEFORE I go to bed, but I was suffering from a cold Saturday night, went to bed early and so forgot. I hacked, coughed, sneezed, snorted, tossed and turned in the darkness; when I awoke fully to glorious daylight, I glanced at the clock and saw that it was only 6:57 a.m. I felt a moment of satisfaction when I realized that it was early enough that I didn't need to get up, that I could luxuriate in my warm bed a while longer--until I remembered that DST had started and a full hour had been lost during the night.

OK, I know that within a given time zone, places in the east are, relative to actual solar time, earlier than places in the west. I'm not at all in favor of every major city figuring out exactly when noon is, then setting its clocks to be precisely accurate in terms of that. I don't mind time zones--I can live with the fact that Detroit and New York are on the same clock, even though they're more than 600 miles apart and on opposite sides of the Eastern Time Zone. (There are repeated announcements in the Detroit Airport informing you that it's in the Eastern Time Zone--apparently a lot of people think it's in Central.)

But once we accept that the sun moves around the earth in 24 hours and mark that movement in 24 slices, why screw with the system by having everyone Spring Forward and Fall Back? I don't understand why it makes life better to decree that for almost seven months out of the year a particular point in the progress of a day is 9 a.m. when that same point is 8 a.m. for the five or so months remaining. Most people have trouble getting up in the morning, so what good does it do to make them wake up earlier? Why can't we just say that what we call 8 a.m. shall remain 8 a.m., and start our day later or earlier, as convenience dictates? (I vote later: I heartily applaud those schools that have done away with 8 a.m. classes, and wish my institution would do the same.) Why do I have to move all my clocks ahead in April and back in October?

In the 18th century, dinner was generally served in the afternoon, so that it could be prepared, eaten and cleaned up after by natural light. Candles and lamp oil being very expensive, it was a real status symbol to eat dinner late enough that you had to use artificial light in order to see your meal and your companions (root pan, bread; prefix com, with; the word originally meant "the ones you eat bread with")--and imagine the expense involved in providing candles for the help to wash the dishes by! One justification for DST is that it saves energy in that more things can be done by natural light, but given how much people drive, how many people work in buildings without much natural light, and how much people use electronic equipment throughout their day, I doubt DST saves much energy, if any.

I once checked out a book from the university library called Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time by Michael Downing, kept it for two or three semesters, then returned it unread. I plan on doing something similar with Seize the Day: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time by David Prerau. I learned this from reading the dust jackets and on-line summaries of the two books: DST has little to do with agriculture (farmers generally resent it) and plenty to do with military and industry. It is the dumbest idea Benjamin Franklin (whose other inventions include the fire department, bi-focals and, of course, the Franklin stove) ever had, and a strange custom we should get rid of.

Posted by Holly at 9:43 AM | Comments (8)